Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and VictoriaWestgarth, William
History
Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria
Westgarth, William
Victoria -- Description and travel
Another feature of those early times, a lively and bright feature in
many respects, was the considerable number of young men, the younger
sons of good families--and, for that matter, the elder sometimes along
with the younger--who flocked out, in unusual proportion, I might say,
and who infused into the somewhat rough social scene the charm of high
culture and manners. Wild they doubtless were in instances not a few;
but even that may not be without its side of charm, at least amongst the
younger votaries. Some few eventually returned "Home," mostly those who
had been shipwrecked in the troubled sea of early-time speculation. But
most of them have remained to take their various and full part in
colonial society, not a few taking the very highest positions. Thus we
had the Stawells and Barrys, the Leslie Fosters, Sladens, Rusdens, of
town and neighbourhood, and the Campbells, McKnights, Irvines, of
surrounding squatterdom. Most of these are long since the fathers of
families, native Australians, including sons who not unfrequently
finished their education in the mother country--a dutiful deference
which Australia may surely not yet quarrel with. This habit is still
strong, even to the third generation in Victoria, amongst her well-to-do
colonists. The youths may not expect better training than from a Hearn
or a McCoy, an Irving or a Pearson, on the colonial floor; but such
diversion from rule will, in its occasional way, the better help to keep
the great scattering family united to their venerable mother--to keep
together the elder and the younger Britain.
Oxford and Cambridge in particular have, indeed, been quite run upon
from Victoria, and those two venerable mothers of English university
life can already command in and of that colony quite a small legion of
their alumni--the Clarkes and "Loddon" Campbells, the Finlays and
"Colac" Robertsons, the Websters and Westbys and Wilsons, who are now
the young or the still vigorous life of their colony. If some few of
these have remained permanently at Home, or if they pleasantly alternate
their domicile by such facile means as the marvels of modern
inter-communication afford them, yet all of them help, in more or less
degree, to strengthen that tie between the mother and her adventurous
colonial offspring which we must hope is never to be broken.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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