| ⚪ | British Princess Victoria Dock Melbourne |
MELBOURNEis a fine city. Its buildings and streets, also its parks and gardens, far surpass those of Sydney. Meloourne and Sydney are both rivals, and the people dead enemies. Sydney has the advantage over Melbourne with its magnificent bay and harbour. Melbourne has about a dozen theatres. All electric light and very good cable cars, on the American style. Everything except tobacco and eatables is dear. Fruit and suchlike is, of course, every cheap. Melbourne is much dearer for things than Sydney. It costs twopence to send a letter from one street to another, there being no penny postage. We had no rain the whole time we were here. The docks were very empty. Most of the time there was only seven deep-water sailing ships in, and about the same number of steamers. The mail-boats can't come up the Yarra Yarra, as there are too many turnings, and lie at the once famous shipping port, Port Melbourne. The ships in port with us were the Lochs ‘Clarron’, ‘Ness’ and ‘[- ? -]’, ‘Samuel Plimsol’, ‘Hollyrood’, ‘Bandaneria’, ‘Iteta’, ‘Aidgowan’, ‘Nixiv’, ‘Cupica’ and ‘Tamar’. We lay alongside the shed in Victoria dock the whole time, taking about three weeks to discharge our cargo, and a week to load 700 tons of ballast, which the two mates and Skuse and myself had to work ourselves. All hands, including the Bo'sun and third mate, got paid of0f. The new side in the deck house cost £130. The Captain and Mates tried their best to run us out of the ship. From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. it was Slavery and Misery, but from 6 p.m. till 6 a.m. it was A.I at Lloyds. | |
| OCTOBER 1898 | |||
| Tuesday, 18th | Left Victoria dock with tug ‘Racer’ this morning at 10.30, and towed straight to sea. | ||
| Wednesday, 19th | Splendid fair wind passed through the Straits this afternoon. | ||
| Thursday, 20th | Going ahead well. Off [- ? -]. Pilot cracking on. | ||
| Friday, 21st | Heavy squalls, but Pilot is hanging on well. She is now tack and tack but making good headway. | ||
| Saturday, 22nd | Picked up tug about 8 a.m. the ‘Champion’ and towed at 10 knots. Passed quite close to Sydney heads at 11 a.m. Took harbour tug 15 miles off Newcastle at 5 p.m. Pilot came aboard at 6.30 p.m. Towed past the ‘Nobies’ at 7.30 p.m. and droped anchor off Stockton at 8 p.m. It is a lovely night, and Newcastle looks well with the lights all over the place. Did not finish mooring till after 10 p.m. as usual. | ||
| ⚪ | Newcastle, New South Wales |
It is twenty months now since we were here before, and there is very little improvement in the place. One thing very noticable is on the hill they intended building a very large monastery, and when they finished the money ran out, and it was left the way it was, untill they raised the necessary funds. It is still the same, only looks like as if it had been in a few squalls. As usual Newcastle is very busy with shipping. There being upwards of sixty sailing ships here. The average out put of coal for the week is 66 - 500 tons, and that is without any rush at all. Saturday night and Sunday night areThe nights of Newcastle. Sunday afternoons are very-enjoyable now too, as a band plays in the reserve and is attended by great crowds. We met a lot of ships here that we knew before. We discharged all our ballast at Stockton, which is on the opposite side of the river from Newcastle. Stockton hastwo street lamps. We also had the honour of knowing the Lord Mayor's daughters of this “famous city”. They loaded us in 48 hours at the ‘Dyke’, but if they wished it could have been done in half the time. There were ten ships loading at the dyke with us, all bound for different parts of the world. While sailing out, three girls were down on the rocks waving to us, and I thought it must be some of the girls I knew, so accordingly jumped up on the rail, and started to wave my hat frantically when all of a sudden I was interrupted by the ‘Old Man’ with “Whatever do you mean. Sir? Get down from that rail at once”. When I had time to recover myself and look around, I saw the mate dipping the ensign to them. They were the captain's cousins. Without any further incident we proceeded to sea. The pilot steamer ‘Ajax’ keeping close to us to pick up the pilot. The night before we sailed, 14 apprentices off the different ships rowed off to us to say Goodbye. We had an A.1 evening. | |
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