But his untold riches of experience seemed never to condescend to
develop into riches of mere money--and perhaps without one pang of
regret to his versatile and resourceful mind.

This Beach was a sterile spot, afterwards fittingly called Sandridge,
and presented so little inducement to occupancy that these two
public-houses were the whole of it till well on to the days of gold.
Then The Beach awoke to its destinies. When the Melbourne and Hobson's
Bay railway was projected, in 1852, there were already a good few
houses, mostly wooden, straggling along either side of the original bush
track. Then arose the respectable suburb of Sandridge, to be finally
superseded by the municipality of Port Melbourne, which, with its mayor
and corporation, can now enter the London market with its own loan
issues.

The only other indigenous feature of this somewhat featureless Beach
which I recollect was a little virulently salt lagoon, situated in
complete isolation near the Bay, and only some hundred yards on the
right-hand side of the track to Melbourne. We all knew it was there, but
it had extremely few visitors, owing to its unapproachable surrounding
of bushes, and its bad repute from a countless guard of huge and
ferocious mosquitos. Without outlet for its extra-briny waters, and in
its desolate solitude, it might have aspired to be a sort of tiny Dead
Sea. With the advance of Sandridge this evil-omened southern Avernus
came in for better consideration, and by 1854, with a cutting into the
Bay, it had become a ready-made boat haven. The Melbourne maps now show
me that it must have reached still higher destinies.


EARLY MELBOURNE, ITS UPS AND DOWNS--1840-51.