Five Years Under the Southern Cross: Experiences and Impressions. Frederic C. Spurr
great heat of the sun.
The architectural mistakes of the early builders of Sydney are now being repaired—in truth, the city is in process of rebuilding. Entire districts of inferior buildings have been sponged out. In their place new and noble erections are rising. More than five millions of pounds sterling have been spent in city buildings since the year 1907. One day Sydney will wear a new aspect, and become as Australian in appearance as it is now in spirit. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Sydney to-day is the boom in building that has been in progress during the last few years. According to official statements, the amount spent in building in Sydney and suburbs during the last four years exceeds sixteen millions of pounds sterling. This includes city buildings, suburban buildings, State Government buildings, schools, etc. It is a prodigious sum of money. Practically a new suburb is being added to the city every year. The State is greatly prospering commercially; indeed, it has never been more prosperous. Everybody seems to have plenty of money to spend. The rapid building of houses is not due to speculation, but to genuine investment on the part of people who desire to purchase their own houses. The splendid municipal electric car system has linked up all the suburbs, and has thus contributed largely towards the general prosperity of the city. With the memory of the great land boom in Melbourne, one is at first disposed to ask whether this prosperity is as genuine as it appears to be upon the surface. It is assuring to learn from the Government Commissioner that “this prosperity is not ephemeral, and that even should the State be visited by serious drought conditions there would be no marked effect in the building trade for some years to come.”
There exists, without doubt, a certain degree of jealousy between the cities of Melbourne and Sydney. Sydney is the older city, and it is perhaps natural that her children should claim for her the superiority due to age. For my part, I do not interfere in these quarrels and jealousies. I smile at both parties, and point out the excellent qualities possessed by each city—Melbourne, every time, for ample thoroughfares, push, and American hustling; Sydney, for narrower streets and a more English type of life, and, above all, for unexcelled natural beauty. Melbourne has been deliberately made upon a definite plan. Sydney has grown as a tree grows; hence some of its branches are long and some are short. There is an immense difference between the two cities, but both are places of great importance. A century hence (unless, through sheer wicked indolence, a white population of British settlers not having been encouraged, the country is in the hands of one of the yellow races) Sydney and Melbourne may be a twin London.
If there exists in any part of the world a finer train than the express between Melbourne and Sydney, I have yet to hear of it. With observation car, dining and sleeping saloons, it represents the last word in luxury. There is only one drawback attached to it—the journey is not continuous in the one train. On the border of New South Wales passengers change trains, owing to the difference in the gauges of the two railway lines. This inconvenience is the heritage which early stupidity has bequeathed to the present generation. Years ago, before the Federation, the States were opposed to each other, even to the extent of constructing railway lines of a different gauge. To remedy this folly will be a costly piece of work. Just one little town on the route awakens my interest and recalls a famous episode. It is the town of Wagga Wagga. When the name is called out, instantly the Tichborne trial comes to mind. For it is in this remote, scarcely known town that Arthur Orton, the claimant, traded as a butcher. Here came to him the newspaper containing the advertisement for the heir to the Tichborne estates. And here was hatched in the butcher’s brain the little plot which ultimately sent him to penal servitude. Who could have imagined that from this hidden spot in the Australian bush there would issue an influence sufficiently strong to agitate the entire British nation?
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The approach to Sydney by rail is unpromising. It is only when the city is traversed, and the visitor is out upon the water, that the unparalleled beauty of the situation of Sydney is realised. It is easy, then, to understand why Sydney folk are proud of their harbour. There is nothing exactly like it in the whole world. I had always conceived the harbour as an immense circle, or semi-circle, of water, flanked by hills and houses. Instead of that, I found it to be a series of a hundred little harbours, formed in the most surprising manner, and consisting altogether of a frontage of two hundred miles. A natural harbour, it has the commercial advantages of an artificial one, for the water is deep, often fathoms deep, to the very edge. Thus the great liners of the Orient, P. and O., North German Lloyd, and other lines are berthed at the quays. One first rapid glance at the harbour near the quays gives the impression of a great maritime centre where boats flying all flags find refuge. There is a forest of funnels, a vast array of floating iron and steel.
The shipping out of sight, the remainder of the harbour is a panorama of natural beauty, of which thousands have taken advantage. All the slopes and all the heights are crowded with residences, large or small. In the more modest quarters the houses are small, but always picturesque. In the wealthier parts we are confronted with a series of small palaces. Picture Clovelly, Ilfracombe, Lynton, and Lynmouth all placed together, and united by a number of harbour inlets, and there you have an image of Sydney Harbour. To this add a sentimental touch of Italian life—the balcony—and the picture is complete, when the area of the whole is extended to embrace the frontage of 200 miles. The balconies! If I were to select the chief charm of these houses built upon the edge of the water, it would be, without the least hesitation, the balconies. Their variety is astonishing. No two are alike. Every house is a fresh surprise. It would seem as if architects and builders had exhausted all possible combinations of wood and stone for the production of the last word in picturesque effects. The gardens of these houses slope right down to the water’s edge. And what gardens! Is there any spot upon earth where so many roses are gathered together as at Sydney? Roses everywhere, whole bowers of them. Gardens ablaze with roses of every colour! We step into one garden belonging to a pastor of the city and find ourselves in a perfect paradise of flowers. Walls covered with trailing roses. Garden path lined with roses. Flower beds one mass of roses. Thousands of them! It is a unique spectacle. Sydney might add to its industries, if it has not already done so, that of preparing the attar of roses.
Nobody ever wearies of the harbour. In the early morning, or at noon, or late at night the charm, ever varying, never fails to hold the visitor. The craft upon the water in the daytime, the million twinkling lights at night, conquer the beholder. Every excursion discloses some new beauty. On the north side of the harbour a great and important town has sprung up. At every other bend in the road a vision of the water appears. Built upon a hill, or a series of hills, the whole northern suburb gathers to the harbour. Magnificent residences are rising every week. All is quiet, retired, attractive, and yet a brief ferry ride brings one to the Circular Quay, the heart of a throbbing business life. Retirement and bustle are but a stone’s throw from each other. On one side of the harbour are yachts, terraced houses, splashes of red-roofed houses nestling amongst masses of green shrub and tree and garden; on the other side, within coo-ee of the yachts, mammoth ocean liners lie, awaiting the moment of departure for East and West. This combination of suburbia and shipping very rarely exists in the world. Shipping generally means long lines of quays and docks removed from the residential quarters of the city. Here in Sydney, suburbia, on both sides of the harbour, looks down at the ever-expanding mass of shipping on the quays and in the coves. Even the largest steamers are moored near the Circular Quay, within a few minutes’ walk of the heart of the city.
Many of the larger houses have their own enclosed sea baths, built of stone, and admitting the water through a netted grill. It is impossible to bathe in the open harbour on account of the sharks which abound. The grill admits the water into the private bath, but excludes the sharks. The wretched creatures, however, often haunt the vicinity of these baths, in the hope of surprising a dainty human morsel. A novice experiences strange and uncanny sensations when, taking his modest dip, he sees the snout of a hungry shark thrust against the grill. If that grill gave way!!! The harbour is dotted with numerous suburbs, most of which are pleasure resorts. Of these Manly beach is said to be the best; it is the home of surf bathers. There is a magnificent service of ferry boats and electric trams running to every nook and corner in the harbour. And the fares are surprisingly low. It is not difficult to understand how, on a sultry summer evening, when the city is stifling, Sydney abandons itself to an aquatic life. And the harbour explains the pleasure spirit which dominates Sydney. A journalist who visited Australia a few years ago,