The company
had just paid 20 per cent dividend--the first as well as the last in
that way. In the jolly days up to that time every buyer got credit, and
there was plenty of business; but when the times changed the credit
bills were not met, and so the poor M.A.C., which had as usual
guaranteed them, got cleaned out.
Down Collins-street once more, we pass the primitive wooden cottage
residence of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, whose family of fine daughters were
already all married--Mrs. D.S. Campbell, Mrs. R. Russell, Mrs. Martin,
Mrs. Hutton--excepting the youngest, then a school-girl, afterwards
married to Nantes, of Geelong, D.S. Campbell's partner. Then came Craig
and Broadfoot's stores, and Alison and Knight's flour mills. At the end
was pretty green Batman's Hill, which has since been remorselessly
sacrificed for the great railway terminus. Batman's original wooden
house on the southern slope was, after his early death, occupied as the
Government offices by Mr. La Trobe, and this homely tenement did such
high duties for no small subsequent term. Down hereabout was also a
conspicuous line of five little wooden cottages, called Roach-terrace,
after Captain Roach, another very early colonist, which were each let at
5 pounds a week, although they would not have brought half that money by
the year at home.
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