"Oh I see the monstrousness of man
When he looks out in an ungrateful shape."
--Timon of Athens.
The natives still strolled into Melbourne at the time of my arrival, and
for a couple of years or so after; but they were prohibited about the
time of the institution of the corporation, as their non-conformity in
attire--to speak in a decent way--their temptations from offers of drink
by thoughtless colonists, and their inveterate begging, began soon to
make them a public nuisance. But aboriginal ways did not die at once.
The virtues or integrity of native life, as Strzelecki would phrase it,
struggled and survived for some few further years the strong upsetting
tide of colonial life.
Returning one night, about 1843, from dining with Mr. William Locke, an
old colonial merchant, at his pretty cottage and gardens on the Merri
Creek, between four and five miles out by the Sydney-road, I diverged
westwards from the purely bush track which as yet constituted that main
highway of the future Victoria. My object was to escape the swampy
vicinities of Brunswick, a village about three miles out of town,
consisting for a number of years of three small brick cottages,
adventurously rather than profitably built by an early speculator.
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