It was in a year "before the gold" that I had occasion to ride to Kalangadoo, across the Adelaide border near Mount Gambier. Kalangadoo was a cattle station, then the property of the Messrs. Hunter, Alick, Jemmy, and Frank, who then dwelt there, and led the half-laborious, half-romantic life which to the cattle-station holder of the day was allotted. The "Mount Gambier mob," as in colonial parlance described, was at that time composed of men the majority of whom had attained to social distinction. Not far off, at Compton, lived Evelyn Sturt, to my eyes the veritable fine fleur of the squatter type. In that year, let us say about 1850, he was a very grand-looking fellow—aristocratic, athletic, adventurous; an explorer, a pioneer, a preux chevalier in every sense of the word, a leading colonist, with a strong dash of Bayard about him; popular with the men of his set, and, it is unnecessary to say, a general favourite with the women.
He had the features, the bold autocratic regard[Pg 171] with which the early romance-writers were wont to depict the Norman Baron, whose part I make no doubt he would have acted creditably had Fate but arranged his existence synchronically.
The prejudices of the day being against a younger son's procuring a competence after the simple and masterful plan of his ancestors, he was constrained to betake himself with his brethren and kinsfolk to far countries and unknown seas. And right manfully had he, and they, of whom more than one name shines brightly on the pages of modern history, dared the perils of sea and shore, of waste and wilderness.
He had been an explorer, was now a pioneer squatter drawing nearer and yet nearer to the goal of fortune. He had been rich, he had been poor, had driven his own bullocks, and been hardly pressed at times. But whatever the occupation or garb in which he elected to masquerade temporarily, no one ever looked upon Evelyn Sturt without its being strongly borne in upon his mind that he saw a gentleman of high degree.
I admired him with a boy's natural feeling of hero-worship. All that I saw and heard of him heightened the idea. Not less stalwart than refined,
But in close fight a champion grim,
In camps a leader sage.
The hero besides of numerous local legends. He had leaped from a bridge into a flooded river and rescued a drowning man. He had offered to suck the poison from the wound of a snake-bitten stock-rider. He had quelled the boldest bushman in a shearing row.[Pg 172] He was chief magistrate, universal referee, good at all arms, gallant and gay. The modern exemplar of the good knight and true.
Willie Mitchell was a different type—a more recent importation—tall, slight, delicate in frame and constitution—cultured and artistic; he was the nearest approach to the languid swell that in that robust and natural-mannered epoch we had encountered. He had been enticed to Australia by one of the Hunters, who, it appeared to us bush-abiding colonists, were always going "home." They had very properly pointed out to him that he could obtain a high interest for his money by investing it in stock, living like a gentleman the while—a point upon which he was decided. He had recently purchased a small but rich cattle run in the Mount Gambier district, where the water was subterranean, and the cattle had to be supplied by troughs.
He afterwards sold this and purchased Langa-willi from Wright and Montgomery, who never did a bit of good after they sold it, the most perfect place and homestead in the West. But this by the way.
Why Langa-willi will always be a point of interest in my memory, apart from other reasons, was that Henry Kingsley lived there the chief part of a year as a guest of Mitchell's. It was at Langa-willi that Geoffrey Hamlyn, that immortal work, the best Australian novel, and for long the only one, was written. In the well-appointed sitting-room of that most comfortable cottage one can imagine the gifted but somewhat ill-fated author sitting down comfortably after breakfast to his "copy," when his host[Pg 173] had ridden forth with the overseer to make believe to inspect the flocks, but in reality to get an appetite for lunch.
I like to think of them spending the evening sociably in their own way, both rather silent men—Kingsley writing till he had covered the regulation number of sheets—or finished the chapter, perhaps, where the bushrangers came to Garoopna; Mitchell, reading steadily, or writing up his home correspondence; the old housekeeper coming in with the glasses at ten o'clock, then a tumbler of toddy, a smoke in the verandah, or over the fire if in winter, and so to bed. Peaceful, unexciting days and nights, good for Mitchell, who was not over-strong, and for his talented guest. I suspect that in England, where both abode in later years, they often looked back with regret to the peerless climate, the calm days, the restful evenings, spent so far beyond the southern main at Langa-willi. The surroundings were judiciously utilised by the author as furnishing that flavour of verisimilitude which added so much to the charm of his fiction. Baroona, where the Buckleys lived, is the name of a property not far from Mount Hesse, and Widderin, the name of Sam Buckley's famous horse, is also that of a hill visible from the plains of Skipton.
Mr. Mitchell, I may mention, was one of those investors who apparently have only to buy a place to make money out of it. He did so at the Mount Gambier station, knowing no more of cattle and their ways, when he bought it, than of the habits of the alpaca. He then bought Langa-willi, with 20,000 sheep or so, having the same pleasing[Pg 174] ignorance of their tastes and management; held it till after the gold; never did any work himself; spent a fair portion of his time at the Melbourne Club. Finally sold out at a handsome profit with a large stock of sheep, and departed to England, never to return.
This looks like luck. Doubtless there was an infusion of that most agreeable ingredient. But I have no doubt either that the mild and elegant William possessed a reasonable share of prudence, about which, like his other endowments and accomplishments, he said nothing. His first introduction to our Port Fairy community was at race time, when he appeared with the Hunters and Sturt, riding a beautiful little blood mare called Medora, a safe and easy mount, his long legs curiously near the ground. There couldn't be, however, a nicer fellow, and Australia will ever owe him a debt of gratitude for extending the hand of generous and delicate hospitality to the artist who first worthily illustrated her free forest life, her adventurous sons and d............