In George Street stands yet the first private residence built in Brisbane, erected by Captain Coley. It is in this street also, and with frontage to Alice Street, which runs along the botanical gardens, that the Queensland Club buildings have been erected. These are not merely exceedingly handsome, but shewn to the best advantage by the excellence of their situation, which again invests the premises themselves with the combined attractions, of extreme airiness and of a delightful prospect. There is not in Australia any clubhouse, the exterior of which equally pleases the eye, and not one which approaches this in the charm of open situation. One entire façade commands a view over the botanical gardens, and receives the full advantage from that direction of the sea-breeze, which on summer afternoons never fails in Brisbane not merely to temper the ardent heat due to the sun’s rays, but to substitute a delicious freshness. A continuation of George Street, passing through wide gateways, leads immediately to the Parliament House, and, beyond, by an avenue enclosed in foliage, to the governor’s residence. The Parliament House is a handsome building of cut freestone, consisting of a central block surmounted by a dome; the two wing buildings have high mansard roofs, and are connected with the main body by long curtains, the fronts of which are broken and embellished by ornamental balconies. In these two curtains are provided the halls for the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly respectively, the central building being partly absorbed in entrance hall and staircases, and the wings being apportioned to official suites for the President, the Speaker, and other officers of both Houses.

In the opposite direction, George Street loses its identity a little past the railway gates by branching into diverse roads, which respectively climb and skirt a steepish ridge intercepting the direct course. Here the Brisbane Gaol stood for many years after separation, but within the last decade the building has been demolished, and a new one erected a couple of miles out of town, on the south side of the river. In the early days the locality we speak of was wild bush. Not far from here Mr. John Petrie, while a youth, stood with a "tame" blackfellow looking on at a grand battle between two tribes of aborigines —an entertainment which had been announced for some time previous. Mr. Petrie’s henchman was a character in his way, being an old hanger-on at the settlement and famous for his gift of mimicry. He could give an imitation of the personal peculiarities and mannerisms of all the commandants of the penal era, and his talents in that respect won for him much consideration. The battle was very fierce and earnest. The Brisbane blacks were hard pressed, and driven back by showers of spears and war boomerangs. The last-mentioned weapons differ from the ordinary boomerangs. They lack the remarkable screw or twist in their shape that imparts to the gyrations of the latter the peculiar flight which carries them back to the hand whence they were flung. The war boomerang more accurately answers the description and name given in the drawings in De Brosse’s "Atlas" —sabre de ricochet, or rebounding sword. Flung with vigour, the weapon kept a direct line with incredible velocity, simply revolving on its axis, perpendicularly, wheel-fashion. Such a boomerang, hurled after a retreating warrior, came whirling and leaping along the ground unexpectedly, and smote Mr. Petrie’s companion full on the breast, smashing the bones and penetrating to the heart. This casualty put a stop to the battle. The combatants, probably alarmed at the prospect of retaliation by the authorities, separated, and the dead man’s relatives bestirred themselves and their fires to do honour to his remains. As a recognised friend of the dear departed, Mr. Petrie was complimented by the proffer of a small roast of him ready cooked, and some surprise was testified at his refusal to pay to the memory of his comrade the delicate tribute of taking at least a chop.

The remaining streets which lie parallel to William Street call for brief notice. Where they intersect Queen Street, retail business has, to some extent, overflowed into them. Elsewhere, they present few notable features. In Wharf and Eagle Streets, which follow the line of the riverbank in the lower part of the city, the majority of the shipping and importing establishments is situated, among which are a number of sufficiently presentable structures. One block is really fine and impressive. This contains the warehouses and offices of Messrs. D. L. Brown and Co., importers. The wharves themselves do not invite description, bearing an intimate resemblance to the Darling Harbour wharfages in Sydney, save that there are no projecting jetties, which would too greatly interfere with the navigable space in the river. In no part of the city has the natural contour of the surface been more modified than in Creek Street, which, crossing Queen Street at right angles by the National Bank, leads to the wharves. There, where a level, well-made street now exists, the creek which bounded Mr. Petrie’s garden once curved and wound between deep alluvial banks. The metamorphosis is here yet sufficiently recent to be incomplete. At one point the street is bounded on the right by the handsome and extensive warehouses of an importing firm, and by the new bright premises of the Royal Bank of Queensland; while on the other a deep grassy depression, where vegetation and rubbish contend for possession, is the last unfilled segment of the old creek bed. A little further down the street are the stores and residence of a citizen, there established about a score of years, who relates how, standing on his overhanging balcony, his sons used to fish in the creek, then flowing below.

Anyone desirous of obtaining a comprehensive view of the city of Brisbane would naturally climb the ascent leading to Windmill Hill. The exertion would be amply rewarded. To the westward, the view extends over a middle distance of forest-clad undulations to the masses of the main range, distant some eighty or ninety miles, and rising in peaks to an altitude of from two thousand to three thousand feet. To the north, the prospect is closed within six or seven miles by the broken outline of Taylor’s Range, a minor chain. As the observer faces the south and east, the river shimmers beneath, its sinuous course now revealing, now hiding, the gleam of its reaches as they wind their tortuous path around the knolls and ridges which everywhere hem in the city. Of the suburbs, but a partial view, interrupted by the same impediments that obscure portions of the river, can be obtained, and to the northeast a high spur ridge close at hand intercepts the view altogether. But the whole panorama is charming, despite its partial limitations. To right and left, on the spurs which branch off from the Windmill Hill itself, the ridge is crested by a long line of villas and cottages, for the most part embellished with shrubbery and climbing verdurous plants. The steep declivities, broken by ragged gullies which dip abruptly towards the city, have been reserved from alienation, and constitute spaces for future public gardens and walks. As yet, indeed, they have been long denuded of the forest which once shaded their slopes, and have more recently been stripped of the irregular after-growth of bushes which, like a beggar’s rags, provoked conflicting sensations —appreciation of their picturesqueness and repugnance to their untidiness. These slopes, now naked and forlorn —looking, too obviously invite the hand of art to convert them into charming resorts to remain much longer unadorned. They need but to be clothed with verdant shrubs, and laid out in winding paths, and perchance graced with cool, breezy grottoes made musical by little tinkling rills, with dripping rocks and tiny pools, to become the pride of the citizens, and to contest for favour with the beautiful botanical gardens on the river-bank, which possibly owe less to natural inequalities of surface for their attractions than those of several of the other Australian capitals. Their frontage to the broad stream of the river is almost their sole advantage in this respect. But the art of the landscape gardener has been assisted by a friable alluvial soil and a climate favourable to a rapid and robust growth of the glorious vegetation of the semi-tropics. The bamboo here exults in the moisture of the lower grounds, which once were swampy jungle.

Should the Brisbane botanical gardens be entered from the Edward Street gate, the visitor would be confronted by a cool, dark arcade, whose leafy aisle is formed by the overarching curves of lofty bamboos whose stems and foliage form on either hand a palisaded wall pervious to the breeze, but impenetrable to the sun’s ardent beams. Through these stems, springing in clumps, is accessible and visible on the right the shimmering surface of a placid lagoon, margined with floating leafage of water-lilies. Beyond extends towards the, façade of the Houses of Parliament a swelling, grassy slope, studded with foliage trees. To the left lies a neglected flat, used for cricket and football practice, and reaching to the river-bank, whereon still frowns, in impotent menace, a battery of venerable smooth-bore thirty-two-pounder guns, tremendous in sonorous salutation on national anniversaries, or when the Governor, in state, opens Parliament.

Emerging from the lofty arch of leafy cane, the visitor proceeds, by devious paths bordered by groves of trees, native and exotic, to where the Madagascar traveller’s tree, with its secret store of crystal water garnered from the showers of months agone, mingles its palmy fronds with the indented clump-like foliage which crowns the Queensland bottle-tree —with its rotund bole of pithy substance —or the kurrajong, with its fibrous bark. It is from the bottle-tree that the aborigines carve their feather-weight shields; from the last-named they derive the hempy threads which they weave into cords and nets. "Bel gammon, kurrajong!" was the exclamation of the natives, who witnessed the hanging of seven white men, for murders of blacks on the Gwydir, on the prosecution of the New South Wales Attorney-General, Plunkett. "No mistake about the rope" is a free translation. But the beauties of aboriculture are our theme, and oaks which bear human acorns, such as Tristan indicated to Quentin Durward, are not embellishments to a landscape. Winding paths, grassy lawns and knolls, interspersed with beds of lovely orchids and groves of trees, beautiful or curious, and diversified by lily-bosomed ponds and radiant parterres of many coloured flowers and variegated foliage plants artistically inlaid, make the sum of the attractions of these elegant gardens.

If, standing on Windmill Hill, one is tempted in imagination to forecast the future aspect of the slopes and gullies which descend from his point of vantage, the mind is equally moved to dwell upon the character of the place when white men first occupied it. In the side of the old tower can still be found traces of the opening made to admit the shaft from the tread mill on which, when the windmill was out of order, prisoners toiled, without figure of speech, for their daily bread. Two tread-mills revolved on either side of the tower —one adjusted for punishment, the other for giving motion to the grinding stones, until, on the arrival of Mr. Andrew Petrie, he took to pieces the mechanism of the wind mill-which had been constructed on principles so faulty that the sails would not revolve —and replaced it with new parts which would work. At the foot of the punishment treadmill a soldier was always posted, and the point of his bayonet served as a stimulant to any prisoner who seemed likely to be benefited by its administration. It was at the foot of one of these gulleys that a stroller, approaching a camp of blacks shortly after Brisbane was founded, was horrified at the spectacle which met his gaze-they were roasting the body of a woman. Here, too, almost where the Observatory stands, once emerged from the forest behind, a mob of yelling savages dragging one of their own race whom they had just captured. Their prisoner had taken prominent part in the horrible murder by blacks of McGregor and Mrs. Shannon at a station on the Pine River, not thirty miles from Brisbane. The authorities had put a price on his head, and the Brisbane blacks had just caught him. It was here that, with horrid joy, they passed a pliant vine round the wretch’s neck, and a score taking hold rushed with yells of exultation down the hill, leaping over rocks and tree stumps, dashing through grass and scrub, and finally at Captain Wickham’s door, delivering a shapeless, battered something which, when they started from the hill, had stood among them a living man. It is but just to the memory of Wickham to say that he drove the brutes from his residence with indignation and disgust. The view commands the greater portion of the suburb, South Brisbane, level and business-like by the river, and picturesquely heaved up into irregular hills and vales in the background; it is pretty closely built on near the stream, and studded with cottages and villas in the rear. Farther, and facing the next reach of the river, the long, narrow promontory of Kangaroo Point is in view, its higher area divided into lawns and gardens of suburban residences, the extremity reflecting the sun from the iron roofs of shipbuilding yards and other industrial factories which fringe the river.

Close by, at the foot of the hill, lies the terminal station of the Southern and Western, and of the Sandgate railways. The last-named burrows at once into a spur and disappears; the former may be traced parallel with the course of the river till the ridges interposing it passes behind them, and is lost to sight.

The northern suburbs are not visible from Windmill Hill. Where Queen Street comes to an end, deflected by the river bank at Petrie’s Bight and intercepted by a ridge, the road in continuation swerves to the left, and then, resuming its original direction, is known as Wickham Street, and leads to the suburb named Fortitude Valley, this locality having been the first encampment of the emigrants brought out in 1849, under the auspices of Dr. Lang, in the ship "Fortitude." Beyond this quarter, which has its own business streets and a considerable residential population, extends, parallel with the river, the road to Breakfast Creek, which bounds on the right, between road and river, a considerable stretch of low, moist land, originally a partial swamp. This was the scene of the historical ludicrous experiment in the cultivation of rice by Mr. Peter Spicer, the Superintendent of Agriculture. Contemporary satirists used to allege that Mr. Spicer was likewise responsible for a sowing of split peas! Old records partially explain Mr. Spicer’s peculiar competence for his post. Influence ruled the day in those times, where appointments were in question, and Mr. Spicer appears to have been invested with the responsibilities and emoluments of agricultural superintendent at the establishment principally in recognition of his obvious qualifications as being son of one of Lord. Nelson’s captains, and godson of Admiral Beauclerk.

The frontage of the river here has of late been invaded by maritime and other enterprise. An extensive brewery stands just at the foot of a bold knoll which bears the name of Teneriffe. This establishment, viewed from the river, is perhaps the most picturesque brewery in the southern hemisphere. Its buildings are fairly embowered in foliage. On this strand also are the wharves of the Queensland and British India Navigation Companies, and the new furnaces of the Brisbane Gas Company are in course of erection. Yet, on the road from Fortitude Valley to Breakfast Creek, as recently as 1860 it was not safe for women to pass. The natives still found the track solitary enough to tempt them to outrage. A score or so of years earlier, a settler on Breakfast Creek shot a black who was, with others, robbing his garden; and the corpse was eaten, and the bones picked clean and forwarded to the Logan River before morning by the bereaved and affectionate brethren of the deceased.

From Fortitude Valley a road branches off northwesterly, and leads past the. Exhibition Building, a capacious wooden structure utilised for stock shows, agricultural, and floral displays, and occasionally for concerts. Immediately adjoining is, on the one hand, an extensive valley or open gully, reserved for recreative purposes, and styled the Victoria Park; on the other hand lie the beautiful gardens of the Acclimatisation Society, admirably kept, and embellished with statuary and ponds —once the unsightly clay-holes of a brick field. Here may be seen growing, side by side, plants of commercial utility, fruit-bearing trees, and ornamental shrubs, introduced to Queensland, through the exertions of the Acclimatisation Society, from every part of the tropical and semi-tropical regions of the world. To this society, and the enlightened researches and generous policy of distribution pursued by it, the private gardens of Queensland owe, to a great extent, the variety of their vegetation. The Victoria Park is as yet but a bare and ugly blank. The native forest has long disappeared, and tree-stumps disfigure the slopes of the valley. Muddy pools, once enlarged or created by brickmakers, lie in the lowest level. But here, as on the dopes of Windmill Hill, the situation is eloquent of future possibilities. The area of the reserve is ample, and, once steps are taken to plant and ornament it, the rapid growth which a semitropical climate induces will speedily create here a delightful open-air resort. Groves and lawns, winding walks, feathery clumps of graceful bamboos, and lily-bosomed lakelets, are all promised by natural opportunities and climate. Adjoining the park, and benefiting by the free airspace, stands in its own grounds the Brisbane Hospital, with breezy wards and a not inelegant aspect.

But we have touched the limit of detailed description. Brisbane is on every side surrounded by a fringe of suburban residences, for which the ridgy inequalities of the adjacent country everywhere afford a wealth of charming and salubrious sites. Means of access are more ample and convenient than might be reasonably expected, considering the limited population. From Woolloongabba —an outlying adjunct of South Brisbane —from Breakfast Creek, and from the Exhibition Building, tramlines extend to the city and converge into Queen Street. Numerous lines of omnibuses and waggonettes run to other parts of the city and suburbs. The railways also have frequent stations at outlying suburbs, so that there is no isolation. The population of the city and suburbs was last ascertained by a census taken in May, 1880. At that date the city proper contained thirty-two thousand five hundred and seventy-one, and the suburbs nineteen thousand one hundred and twelve inhabitants, shewing an increase of over twenty thousand during the preceding five years. The estimated present population is about seventy-five thousand. Several watering places have been established on the shores of Moreton Bay, to which, in the summer, citizens resort to enjoy the cool breezes of the sea. The oldest and most accessible of these is Sandgate, a few miles north of the mouth of the river, and distant from Brisbane by a good road, or by railway, about fourteen miles. The beach here is, unfortunately, but a strip of rather dingy sand, and other localities more remote, but more favourably circumstanced in this essential for a popular seaside resort, have been sought and found. At Sandgate, as recently as the year 1860, there was not a single settler, and a small party of men, who landed where children now frolic on the strand, were encountered and murdered by the blacks. This tragedy led to the establishment on the spot of a native police station to give security for the future, and, the public being thus reassured, holiday picnics to the place became popular, and gradually were instrumental in the erection of an hotel, in the first place, and ultimately of seaside cottages and villas.

Cleveland, on the shores of the bay to the south of the river’s mouth, about twenty miles east of the capital, early had pretensions to rival not merely Sandgate, but Brisbane itself. The residents of the town of Ipswich, burning with a desire to see Brisbane superseded by a commercial capital planted on the deep waters of Moreton Bay, fixed upon the town of Cleveland as the site. Their political influence in the early parliaments proved adequate to secure the erection of a jetty from a projecting tongue of land at Cleveland. This structure extended into water of a depth sufficient to permit ships of burden to lie alongside. By a curious omission, the whole project was reduced to a ridiculous failure. Although there was deep water alongside the end of the jetty, there was no corresponding channel through the shoals which surrounded it and barred all access. Cleveland consequently dropped from the potentialities of a capital in prospective to the comparative insignificance of a somewhat inaccessible watering place. A railway from Brisbane has, however, been authorised and surveyed, and the outlook for Cleveland has been brightened thereby.

At Humpy Bong, the spot where Oxley landed the first detachment, and which was almost immediately abandoned in Favour of the Brisbane site, the attractions of good soil, bluff ridges, and breezes blowing direct from the ocean, through the opening of Moreton Bay seaward, have induced a considerable number of citizens to secure lots of land and build summer retreats. But the shores of the mainland in Moreton Bay are almost uniformly unsuited for a really attractive seaside resort; the proportion of mud and mangrove to sand is too considerable. An exception was discovered at the extremity of the bay most remote from Brisbane. The name of Southport has been given to a village which faces the opening to the ocean between the southern extremity of Stradbroke Island and the mainland.. Here the breezes are constant and cool, the beach, although narrow, is of sand of dazzling whiteness and the water of limpid purity. The tamp of fashion has been given to the place by vice-regal example, and an hotel, said to be the finest in Queensland, affords accommodation to visitors other than Brisbane citizens who have built villas and cottages for themselves. The distance from Brisbane is about forty-six miles by coach. A pleasanter mode of access however, exists by small steamers, which, proceeding from Brisbane, thread the narrow, islet-studded channel from the northern portion of Moreton Bay, which Flinders had conjectured to be the embouchure of the river he presumed to discharge into the bay. This smooth-water passage occupies but a few hours, and the trip is all the more popular because it is possible to return on the same day.

cont...