Monthly Archives: February 2016

THE POST OFFICE

Perhaps the approval of the new post office was conferred too readily, because complaints began to be voiced about the ‘penny wise pound foolish’ approach being undertaken in building the first post office. In particular, there were criticisms that the office was only a small room 12 feet square, and that the delivery and receipt of mail would be carried out at a window that did not have protection against bad weather.

 We would suggest either the erection or the hiring of a suitable building on the part of government for the purposes of a Post Office, sufficiently capacious to admit of a receiving and sorting room, a private office for the Postmaster, and a delivery room which should have a window opening into a passage, lobby or verandah, for it will not be denied that the comfort of the public should not altogether be lost sight of in these arrangements

You can see an image of the old Post Office here.  The clock shown in the picture was not part of the original building.

JUDGE WILLIS

The Sydney correspondent for the Port Phillip Herald reported that Judge Willis was due to arrive in Melbourne soon.  He gave a hint of the trouble that was to arise during Willis’ time in Port Phillip

Mr Justice Willis has been appointed Judge at Port Phillip, and expects to be in time to hold a court in March. His Honor has been on bad terms with his learned brethren for some time; and probably wishes to have a court of his own, where he cannot be overruled. Mr Willis is a very learned, very clever, and above all a very conscientious man, but it must be admitted that he is rather eccentric; as an equity lawyer he is not equaled in the colony (PPH 19 Feb 1841)

MR NATHAN’S CONCERT

On 18 February, Melbourne was treated to a concert given by Mr Nathan at the Caledonian Hotel.The next day, the Port Phillip Herald reported that:

A vocal Concert was given at the Caledonian Hotel last evening by Mr Nathan and his talented Family. We have only time to notice that it was exceedingly well attended, and passed off with the greatest eclat. His Honor the Superintendent, J. Simpson and W. H. Yaldwyn Esquires, with their Ladies were amongst the company present.

Isaac Nathan was born in England in 1790, the son of a hazzan (Jewish cantor) and was so musically precocious that he was apprenticed to the famous London Maestro Domenico Corri to learn singing and composition.  Like all musical artists, he cultivated patronage links to further his career.  One such patron was Princess Charlotte (who had taken music lessons with him); another was Lord Byron, who Nathan urged to write words for the melodies of the synagogue service that Nathan was so familiar with.  The result was Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, which remained in print, along with Nathan’s settings, for the rest of the century.

Nathan’s career declined, however, with the death of both Lord Byron and Princess Charlotte and he was forced to diversify into writing newspaper articles on boxing and music and he penned popular operettas to cover his gambling debts.  He published a history of music in 1823 but with little prospect of rehabilitating his career, he and his family emigrated to New South Wales.

His concert in Melbourne consisted of eighteen items, five of which were his own composition.  A review of the concert noted that:

He appears, with an egotism perhaps in this case pardonable, to have selected several of his own compositions for performance.

He was not to stay in Melbourne for long. On his arrival in Sydney in April 1841 he established an academy of singing, became the choir master of St Mary’s Cathedral and organized the largest concert of sacred music ever heard in the colony. Later dubbed ‘the father of Australian music’, he composed Australia The Wide and Free, with words by W. A. Duncan, for the inaugural dinner of Sydney’s first council in 1842 and two other ‘choral odes’ Long Live Victoria (the Queen, not the state) and Hail Star of the South. He commemorated the 58th anniversary of the founding of Sydney with Currency Lasses in 1846  and wrote two works related to the explorer Ludwig Leichardt- the first mourning his disappearance; the second celebrating his imagined return.  His opera Don John of Austria (not Australia) was the first opera wholly composed and produced in Australia and it was performed at the Victoria Theatre in Sydney.  He also wrote  a strange miscellany of called The Southern Euphrosyne,  where he attempted to transcribe traditional Aboriginal music, the first serious attempt to do so.  He died in Sydney in 1864 after being hit while alighting from a city horse-tram.

The ABC Lateline program screened a segment on him in 2003, featuring his biographer Dr. Graham Pont. You can read the transcript here.

His Wikipedia entry summarizes his significance thus:

Nathan’s Hebrew Melodies must rank as a real achievement. Nathan’s music for them was in print in England at least until the 1850s and was known across Europe.

Moreover, Nathan can claim some credit as inspiring Byron’s texts. These not only in themselves diffused a spirit of philosemitism in cultured circles (indeed they became perhaps Byron’s most genuinely popular work); but they were used as the basis for settings by many other composers in the nineteenth century, both Jewish (Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, Joachim) and gentile (Schumann, Loewe, Mussorgsky, Balakirev, and others).

Nathan’s writings on music had little direct influence, small sales, and received no serious reviews in the press. In isolation, he struck upon and highlighted a theme which was at the time a major concern of the Jewish intellectual movement in Germany; the delineation and promotion of a genuine Jewish culture. The same spirit seems to have motivated his pioneering work with the music of the indigenous Australians.

Finally, Nathan’s indomitable refusal to admit defeat in life in exile – he undoubtedly paralleled himself with his hero Byron – has enabled him, from his concertising and writings on Aboriginal music, to be justly remembered by antipodean musicologists as “the father of Australian music

Isaac Nathan may have lived and worked in Sydney, but he came to Melbourne first!

AND THE WEATHER…

The weather was typical Melbourne summer weather- hot, followed by a cool change. On 16th and 17th February the weather was in the low 80s (28 degrees), but a cool change on 18th was followed by five days of temperatures below 70 (about 20) degrees.

HENRY DENDY ARRIVES

During this week Mr Henry Dendy arrived from England, bearing an entitlement to select 5120 acres of Port Phillip land under the Special Survey legislation that had been enacted in England.  This legislation enabled prospective settlers, while in England, to pre-purchase a general entitlement to land at one pound per acre, pay for it in England, then come out to Australia to select the specific land that he wanted to buy.  When news of this scheme reached New South Wales (and particularly Port Phillip as its most rapidly expanding frontier), Gipps, La Trobe and local purchasers were horrified at the thought of the best land being gobbled up before their eyes. Gipps quickly passed regulations in March 1841 to restrict Special Surveys to land more than 5 miles from the closest surveyed township, and to limit waterfront purchases to only 1 mile of 4 square miles of purchases, to avoid whole riverbanks being monopolized by one purchaser. After Gipps severely criticized the scheme to the Colonial Office, it was abandoned in August 1841.  Nonetheless, in these short months eight Special Surveys were instituted, three in what is now suburban Melbourne: Frederick Unwin’s Special Survey in Templestowe, Henry Elgar’s survey in Box Hill, and Henry Dendy- whose arrival was noted on 12 February 1841- who snaffled what is now prime blue-ribbon residential land in Brighton.

THE FIRST G.P.O IS COMMENCED

Initially John Batman took care of the mail deliveries, but in 1841 a dedicated post office building was commenced on the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth Streets, the site of the building that we still call the GPO even though it has been turned into shopping.   It included an eight room cottage for the postmaster (which seems rather generous) and a lobby and offices facing Bourke Street.  As time went on, it suffered from the frequent flooding of Elizabeth Street but in February 1841, the good people of Melbourne were very pleased with the building which they felt reflected credit on Mr Rattenbury, the Clerk of Public Works. They were particularly pleased at the design for the inward-mail post boxes:

 The plan adopted in America with so much advantage will be introduced of having a set of pigeon holes corresponding with the letters of the alphabet, which will be painted on the panes of one of the windows, so that any person going to the office may, by looking into the pigeon hole opposite the initial of his surname, be enabled to perceive whether there be any letters therein, and if none, of course he need not delay or trouble the postmaster by making enquiries.

NUISANCE DOGS

The Port Phillip Herald applauded the decision by the magistrates that stray dogs should be killed, but didn’t like the way it was implemented:

A number of those quadrupeds, which were destroyed about a fortnight since, were thrown upon a heap at the bottom of Elizabeth-street and loosely covered with earth. The consequence has been that they were speedily disinterred by the pigs and the stench arising from the mass of putrefaction has been insufferable

AN EXTREME CASE OF CHARITY

Settlers traveling to New South Wales without the bonds of family and neighbours from ‘home’ were vulnerable if their plans for a new life were disrupted by death or illness.

We rejoice that it is seldom our duty to revert to cases of poverty in Melbourne, but an instance has come under our notice of pecuniary distress, under circumstances which irresistibly urge upon us the necessity of appealing to the public sympathy. By one of the late vessels from England there arrived a Mr McLean, his wife and seven children, and eight days after their arrival Mr McLean died, leaving his family totally unprovided for. Mrs McLean is an entire stranger, without a friend or the means of subsistence and to add to her distress she is on the eve of her confinement. She is at present in a wretched hovel, in the rear of Mr Ley’s the Watchmaker, and only prevented from starving by some slender support furnished by the neighbours. Under the circumstances we trust the feeling of humanity is too strong in the breasts of our fellow colonists to require greater excitement than that produced by the mere mention of the case to ensure some assistance. Even a shilling will be of service, and there are few amongst us who could not spare something to mitigate the suffering of an unfortunate stranger amongst us. (PPH 12 Feb 1841)

HOW’S THE WEATHER?

Hot, actually. It surprises me, given that many of the new members of Port Phillip Society came direct from ‘home’,that  there weren’t more complaints about the weather and particularly about the heat. Also, given that white settlement in Melbourne had only started six years earlier, there must have been a degree of learning still going on about the weather patterns.

But at this time in 1841, the weather was so exceptional that it attracted the attention of the Port Phillip Herald of 16 February:

During the last few days the inhabitants of Melbourne have experienced some of the most intensely hot weather that has ever been experienced by the settlers in Australia Felix; the atmosphere has been dry and oppressive, accompanied by heat so well-known and so much dreaded. We have been informed that on Saturday evening the thermometer stood at 100 degrees in the shade at Mr Mills’ brewery, and since Wednesday it has never been below 93 during the day. The want of rain has been severely felt in the interior; in some places we are informed, not a blade of grass can be seen, and the most fearful consequences to the stock &c is anticipated, if the ground does not receive timely moisture. A storm passed over the town on the afternoon of Thursday with successions of [most?] vivid lightning, accompanied by peals of the most startling thunder; the electric [fluid?] struck a tree on the summit of the Eastern Hill and deposited it in several parts of the bark; a man who was standing near narrowly escaped with his life.

I have embraced my new vocation as a Lady’s Travelling Companion, and am off to Perth, Singapore, Mumbai en route (circuitously) to Nairobi. I have taken up writing about my travels, with some hesitation, on my earlier blog The Land of Increasing Sunshine.