In the later days of 1842 I paid my first visit to Macedon, beyond which mountain our sheep-station, Darlington, had been formed in 1838. The overseer, on a business visit to Melbourne, whether in recognition of personal merit, or as desiring to do the polite thing to his employer\'s son, invited me to return with him. I jumped at the proposal. The paternal permission being granted, the following day saw me mounted upon a clever cob named Budgeree, a survivor of the overland party from Sydney to Port Phillip in 1838, fully accoutred for my first journey into Bushland—the land of mystery, romance, and adventure, which I have well explored since that day—that Eldorado whence the once-eager traveller has returned war-worn and pecuniarily on a level with the majority of pilgrims and knights-errant.
And o\'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot on ground
That looked like Eldorado.
We reached Howie\'s Flat, spending the night at the solitary stock-rider\'s hut near Woodend. I still recall the keenness of the frost, which came through the open slabs and interrupted my repose. Macedon was the first mountain I had encountered in real life, familiar as I was with his compeers in books. I regarded his shaggy sides, his towering summit, with wonder and admiration, as we rode along the straggling dray-track of the period.
Walls of dark-stemmed eucalypti bounded the narrow road; shallow runlets trickled across the rock ledges; while the breeze, strangely chill even at mid-day, but rippled the ocean 423of leafage. Gloomy alike seemed the endless forest ways, the twilight defiles, the rough declivities. At one such place my companion remarked, \'This blinded gully is where Joe Burge capsized the wool dray last shearing.\' I thought it would be a nice place for robbers. German stories of the Bandit of the Black Forest and such-like thrilling romances, which ended in the travellers being carried off into caverns or tied up to trees, began to come into my head. I was glad when we sighted the open country again.
We arrived at Darlington next day, not without adventures, in that we lost one horse. He slipped his head out of the tether rope, so we had to double-bank old Budgeree, who proved himself a weight-carrier, equal to the emergency.
What a change has passed over the land since then! Mr. Ebden was at Carlsruhe; Mr. Jeffreys close by; the Messrs. Mollison at Pyalong; and Coliban, Riddell, and Hamilton at Gisborne. Hardly any one else in the direct line of road. What waving prairies of grass! what a land of promise! what a veritable Australia Felix, was the greater portion of the country we rode over!
A decade has almost rolled by. What motley band is this which faces outward, from Melbourne, along the selfsame road on which old Macedon looks grimly down, as they ramble, straggling past under his very throne? They are gold miners, actual or presumptive.
Both worlds, all nations, every land
Had sent their conscripts forth to stand
In the gold-seeker\'s ranks.
Mother Hertha has for once hidden her treasures so carelessly that the most unscientific scratching shall suffice to win them. A hundred deeply-rutted tracks now cross or run parallel with the once sole roadway. Wild oaths in strange tongues awaken the long-silent echoes. All ranks and orders of men are mingled as in the old crusades. Different they, alas, in purpose as in symbol! Watch-fires gleam on all sides. Night and day seem alike toilsome, troubled, vulgarised by noise and disorder, strangely incongruous with the solemn mountain shadows and the old stern solitude.
424Again the years have passed. The lurid, early goldfields are no more. Order reigns where crime and lawless violence once were rife. Handsome towns have succeeded to the crowded, squalid encampments where dwelt the fierce toilers for gold, the harpies, the camp-followers, the victims. I am seated in a commodious stage coach, which behind a well-bred team bowls along at a creditable pace over a well-kept, macadamised road. We are en route to Sandhurst, now a model town, with trees overshadowing the streets, a mayor and a corporation, gaols and hospitals, libraries and churches. Yet, as we pass Macedon, tales are told of mysterious disappearances of home-returning diggers, which recall my early association of brigands with the dark woods and lonely ravines.
\'Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.\' Shade of Mr. Cape, is the quotation correct, or are we doing dishonour to that great man\'s memory,—\'building better than he knew,\'—and the careful heed of quantities, inculcated by personal application to our feelings, in the days of heedless boyhood? Times have changed with a vengeance. Again in Melbourne! It is changed, I trow. Great, famous, rich, one of the known and quoted cities of the earth. We have helped to produce this triumph. But at what a price? Our youth has gone in the process. When we look at all the fine things that fill one\'s vision by day, by night, within its lofty halls, amid its crowded streets, we feel like the man in the old story, who for power and wealth sold himself to the Fiend. \'All that\'s very fine, my friend,\' an unkind sprite whispers to us. \'You may or may not enjoy a part of this splendour, but you are not so young as you were. I won\'t mention the D—— in polite society, but the demon of Old Age will leave his card on you before long.\'
Yes, we are still extant, not wholly invalided, in this year of grace 1884. Instead of sitting on the box of Cobb\'s coach in Bourke Street at 6 A.M., while the punctual Yankee driver is waiting for the Post-office clock to strike, my old friend and I, en route for his well-known hospitable home on the spurs of Macedon, enter a comfortable railway carriage at mid-day. As we are whirled luxuriously through the grassy, undulating downs and wide-stretching plains which surround Melbourne 425on the north-east, we have ample leisure to enjoy the view. Macedon is visible from the outset, dimly shadowed, kingly as of old, raising his empurpled bulk athwart the summer sky. Passing the towers of Rupertswood, the thriving towns of Gisborne and Riddell\'s Creek—did I not know them in their earliest \'slab\' or \'wattle-and-daub\' infancy?—in two hours of extremely easy travelling, relieved by conversation and light literature, we see \'Macedon\' on the board of the railway station, and find ourselves at the village so named, built on the actual mountain slope. Piles of timber of every variety, size, and shape, which can be reft from the Eucalyptus obliqua or amygdalina, show that the ancient trade of the mountain foresters has not diminished. The chief difference I suppose to be that the splitters and sawyers are no longer compelled to lead a lonely, half-savage life, bringing the timber laboriously to Melbourne by bullock dray, and, one may well believe, indulging in a \'sdupendous and derrible shpree\' after so rare a feat. They now forward their lumber by rail, live like Christians, go to church on Sundays, and read The Argus daily for literary solace.
We relinquish here the aid of steam, and trust to less scientific means of locomotion. We are in the country in the sweet, true sense of the word—component portions of a company of wisely-judging town-dwellers, who by their choice of this elevated habitat have secured a weekly supply of purest mountain air, unfettered rural life, and transcendent scenery. Various vehicles are awaiting the home-returning contingent. Buggies and sociables, dog-carts, pony-carriages, and phaetons with handsome, well-matched pairs—the reins of the prize equipage in the latter division being artistically handled by a lady. Our party and luggage are swiftly deposited, a start is made along the rather steep incline—the lady with the brown horses giving us all the go-by after a while. Half an hour brings us to our destination. We leave the winding, gravelly road; turning westwards, a lodge gate admits us through the thick-ranked screen of forest trees. Conversation has somehow flagged. What is this? We have all in a moment quitted the outer world, with its still, rude furnishing—tree stumps, road metal, wood piles, and bullock teams—and entered into—shall I say it straight out?&mda............