But I must at the same time bear in mind that this heavy drag
applied to all landed property, restricting business in it and reducing
its value. Had Torrens's Act been then in action, I could not possibly,
with the resulting higher value of land, have secured my bargain at the
fifty pounds, probably not even at fifty plus the seventy.
THE EARLY SQUATTING TIMES.
"Our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
--As You Like It.
The title "Victoria" did not come to us until, on 1st July, 1851, we
bloomed into an independent colony, having succeeded, after a good deal
of struggle and contention, in getting separated from our mother, New
South Wales, who complimented us by being very loath, and even angry,
that so very promising a child should be detached from her. We had begun
as the Southern or Port Phillip District of that spacious colony, which
had already dropped South Australia, and eight years afterwards was to
lose yet another arm in Queensland.
I recall with interest and pleasure some early trips into the interior,
when it was in a very different condition from now, when the indigenous
reigned almost uninvaded throughout, and when aboriginal natives were in
many places as plentiful as colonists.
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