: The Diggings the Bush and Melbourne or Reminiscences of Three Years' Wanderings in Victoria by Armour James - Victoria Description and travel

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THE DIGGINGS, THE BUSH, AND MELBOURNE;

OR,

REMINISCENCES OF THREE YEARS' WANDERINGS IN VICTORIA.

GLASGOW: G. D. MACKELLAR, 18 Renfield Street. PRICE NINEPENCE.

PREFACE

The following short narrative was written specially for a small circle of intimate acquaintances, who varied the dulness of village life by meeting once a week to read manuscript essays and selections from favourite authors. The time allowed for reading being limited, and the audience being partly composed of young people, I confined myself mainly to personal experience. As many of the company had previously heard me relate in an off-hand way, the leading incidents, detection would have been sure to follow any attempt at spicing my story with fiction.

The incidents are selections merely from three years' recollections of the Colony. Some who have never been further from home than in their annual visit to a watering place, have been pleased to call them adventures. The term may appear too strong to those who like the writer have reclined by a bush fire, listening to the stories of old hands, but as there may be much serious living without broken bones, I submit this brief history to those who think so.

James Armour.

THREE YEARS IN VICTORIA.

MARCH TO BENDIGO.

Early in the month of September, 1852, I landed at Cole's Wharf in Melbourne, one of four hundred passengers newly arrived from Liverpool by the "Lady Head" sailing ship. While yet at sea I had agreed to join a party of young men who intended starting for the diggings without delay. We found the lodging-houses overcrowded, with table-tops, chests, and chairs in use for bedsteads, and we were made acquainted with a considerable portion of the town before we found accommodation. Our capital being small we grudged the price asked, but were disposed to be thankful on witnessing next morning the shifts that numbers of our shipmates had been put to in getting shelter for the night. Some were lying among the barrels and bales of goods that lay lumbering the wharf. Some two dozen had made free with some piles of planks and built off-hand houses for themselves, but the night had been rainy, the roofs had leaked, and they looked anything but refreshed. Among these latter I observed a mother with a family of young children. A shawl hung across the opening that faced the road, but it was too scanty to screen her as she sat with a looking-glass before her setting her hair in order. The husband was absent, and the children sat with comfortless wonder in their young eyes, gazing at the rude throng that was beginning the bustle of the day.

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