'A Rough Ride' on the Great Ocean Road

For people who have been on the Great Ocean Road you may, like me, be enchanted by this piece of travel writing. Sometimes in the process of researching a topic on Trove you encounter an article that you find enjoyable, not just because the writer has provided information which will come in handy, but because their writing has a certain charm, a satisfying sentence construction and the suggestion that the writer would probably have been a good guest to have over for dinner.  This is one of those articles.

Today's post is a cleaned version of an article as it appeared in the Camperdown Chronicle of 17 December 1878 ... nothing more. I bumped into the article while reading around the story of the Loch Ard wreck.  It is piece of writing by the methodist preacher W. H. Fitchett. If one enters "W. H. Fitchett" into the Trove search engine there are more than 9,000 newspaper articles. As I go to publish I have looked at none of them.  This post is a first step into his writing, and possibly a last one. With so much to read and write I would not want to commit to return to Mr Fitchett. I have other threads which are requesting my attention.

 I have highlighted sections from each paragraph that I particularly enjoyed.

A Rough Ride.
BY THE REV. W. H. FITCHETT, B.A.
WESLEYAN SPECTATOR.

Nature abhors monotony, as she is said to abhor a vacuum, and all sensible and busy Men will agree with Nature; for a monotony, whether of rest or of work, is alike unwholesome and unbearable. Idleness is only tolerable when alternated with seasons of busy work; and work can be energetic and successful only when sandwiched betwixt substantial slices of rest. Many of the American divines shut up their churches altogether for two months out of every twelve, and dismiss their congregations to a theological fast, or to such casual provender as they can pick up at other churches. Dr. Barker, of the City Temple, has just been trying the same experiment in England. The theory is that a congregation will enjoy its regular diet of sermons all the better when it has been compelled to do without them for a couple of months. One would imagine that there would be a considerable risk of the hearers making the discovery of how easy it is to exist without sermons at all, and never coming back again. Our Victorian churches give us the modest allowance of one Sunday in the year as a rest; and though many of our ministers cherish the superstition that their circuits would cease to exist if they left them for a fortnight, and all things be resolved into mere chaos, those of us who have made the experiment know that we are much less necessary to the existence and happiness of our churches than we fondly imagine we are. Nay, we have made the discovery that our circuits, like our wives, value us all the more for being compelled occasionally to do without us. It is scarcely an exaggeration, too, to say that regular and moderately frequent intervals of rest would add five years of working life to us all. In the interests of the Worn-out Preachers' Fund, therefore every Methodist preacher ought to be compelled by a vote of the Conference to deny himself and take his annual holiday.

With a light heart and a heavy valise, I stepped into the train on a Monday morning, a few weeks ago, for a run across country to Ballarat. Did ever a husband start on a journey of fifty miles without being compelled by his anxious wife to drag after him a world of utterly superfluous garments sufficient for an expedition to the North Pole? Although on pleasure bent, being like John Gilpin's wife "of a frugal mind," I took a second-class ticket for the journey. These cross-country trains, however, have only one carriage, into which all comers are packed. The day was hot, the carriage was full, and the mingled odours of bad tobacco and worse beer, of dirty clothes and perspiring feet, of opium-eating Chinamen and onion-flavored tramps, proved quite too much for my experiment in frugality, and I was glad to buy my way back in a carriage in which I could at least breathe. A day was spent in Ballarat with C ——, the second of the party—most genial of Scotchmen and best of friends— and was devoted to a settlement of the solemn question, which of us was the best croquet player. Six and a half lengthy games left the important matter undecided, or rather left each of us with the secret conviction that we could beat the other hopelessly but for misfortune and the perversity of the balls! Wednesday found us on the Western line, speeding through the pleasant and fertile country beyond Geelong. At Winchelsea the ladies and children of the party branched off to Lorne, and the two of us, reduced to temporary batchelorhood, but bearing our widowed condition with much fortitude, rattled on by train to Colac, and thence by coach to Camperdown, where S——, the third member of the party, took possession of us. Our hope had been, in the simplicity of our hearts, to drive from Camperdown to the scene of the Loch Ard wreck, and thence, sitting at ease in our buggy, to follow the coast to Cape Otway, the southern extremity of Australia, and to reach home by Apollo Bay. The hope of driving along this line of coast, however, soon exhaled as our knowledge of it increased, and under the stress of warning about creeks, rivers, quicksands, impassable forests and perpendicular cliffs, it seemed as if nothing short of swimming or hiring a balloon would take us round. S—— , however, was rich in horses and men, and richer still in a generosity and organising skill that made him willing and able to employ his resources for our relief. He took charge of the travelling arrangements, and but for him the expedition would have been impossible, or possible only at a cost which would have put it hopelessly out of our reach.

Two days were spent in seeing the country round Camperdown, and in watching the busy spectacle of sheep-washing and shearing on a first-class station. Some of the fairest scenery of a certain kind in Australia, lies within fifty miles of Camperdown. It is rich in lakes — well-nigh a score, set like glittering patches of silver in the frame of the undulating landscape, being visible from one point. The clear atmosphere, the wide, far-reaching plains, all mottled, park-like, with trees, and stained with the deep and exquisite green of spring, give the eye the delight which comes of harmonious colouring, and wide, free sea-like space. And all around the sweep of the horizon, as though at once to accentuate and relieve the monotony of more space, and showing sharp and clear in perfect outline against the azure of the unclouded sky, rise isolated and graceful hills, the Cloven Hills, Mount Elephant, Mount Shadwell, Mount Leura, &c.; while far away to the north-east, the purple line of the Grampians stands like a wall against the sky. The country here is wonderfully rich and fertile; but over all these wide plains, art has been the handmaid of nature. The land has been elaborately cleared, drained, fenced, planted with rich grasses, and studded with plantations of forest trees. Nothing is further from the truth than the cry, invented by demagogues, and believed in by their dupes, that the great landholders have done nothing to improve their estates. On one station over which we passed, in addition to miles of stately quickset hedges, and a costly system of surface drainage, thousands of pounds have been spent in weaving a network of underground pipes, forming a complete water system for the whole station, and conveying the precious fluid to every paddock. On another station wide belts of plantation stretched for miles across the otherwise treeless plains, and completely changed the face of the country. It seems probable, indeed, that the climate of the country will be perceptibly modified by the extent to which tree planting is being carried out in the district. And a landholder who increases the carrying capacity of his estate three-fold by methods like these is adding to the wealth of the State as certainly as the miner who extracts the rough ore from the rocks, or the manufacturer who fashions it to the service of commerce. 

We slept two nights under the hospitable roof of a house poised high above the twin lakes of Mount Leura. The scene spread beneath this house is of the rarest beauty. The lake is a wide, perfectly symmetrical sweep of water, set in a ring of lofty, sloping banks-a mirror for the drifting clouds overhead, and reflecting every changing mood of the day--now glittering with the slant rays of the early sun, now darkening under the fading light and deepening shadow of evening, and yet again [mimicking] with a hundred dancing fires on its dark and watery firmament the star-thronged deep of night. Sinking far below the level of the nearer lake we catch a glimpse of the sister sheet. The two lakes lie within the sweep of the one mighty crater, and are parted only by a long, narrow wall of earth; yet one is lifted high above the other, and the waters of the two lakes are quite distinct in taste. We were very fortunate in our experiences here, as one of the very prettiest of natural phenomenon was performed as if for our private and exclusive delectation. The house stood on a lofty and narrow ridge that sloped gently downwards to the east. The sun was setting; a shower had just swept over the lake; the air was yet full of the falling drops, that glittered like descending pearls in the setting sun; and, exactly spanning the ridge, was a low, but gorgeous rainbow, the brilliant lines of many colored fire, perfectly defined throughout, seeming only a stone's throw distant; while high up in the sky, sweeping over our heads with vaster curve, but burning with fainter fire, was its double. 

After wavering for a day or two, we set off on Saturday for our coast trip, our plan being to spend Sunday at Glenample, the scene of the wreck, thence to take to the saddle and ride through the Otway range to Cape Otway, and to follow the coast round to Louti Bay. We were well equipped, S——, a whip of the first order, driving a pair of powerful horses, and a room, with a relay of three more, riding behind. A smart drive soon carried us past Cobden, and at once the civilised world seemed left behind us. It is unnecessary to describe the scenery on this road, for the sufficient reason that, except in very rare patches, there is none. Gloomy forest hills, and still gloomier valleys, spotted with quaking morasses, called "grass tree flats," and all crossed by a muddy winding track which would have made travelling impossible, except to horses as good or intolerable, except to spirits as gay and cheerful as ours. The gloomy road was no without its humors, however, for us ; perhaps because we were in that happy mood which invests the whole world with gaiety. We laughed on any provocation, or on none at all. A native bear, for example, clinging half-way up a tree, in his dark grey suit tipped with black, and gazing at us with an owl-like solemnity that Lord Burleigh himself might have envied, was found to have a quaintly clerical look, which awoke shouts of laughter. A dog rushed out of a wayside house to protest against us; his energy and wrath were such that he seemed to be all hair and bark, and could adequately express his feelings onlyby executing, at brief intervals, a series of wild revolutions round his own tail. The spectacle of a dog, in a tempest of barks, and racing at full speed, yet stopping to revolve every thirty seconds on his own axis, was exquisitely absurd. C----- produced the unpardonable joke that this animal would be very useful in case of bushrangers, as he was a good revolver. Threepence had been clubbed together as a premium for the best joke that could be invented on the road and this was at once handed to him. It must be confessed, however, that this imaginary threepence changed hands often during the trip. We got a deal of amusement out of the animal life we met with. No dweller in the city could imagine how much of amazement a country cow can succeed in squeezing, into its countenance when any unaccustomed spectacle is suddenly presented to it. How they did stare at us. Each beast we passed seemed to resolve itself into a mere horned and tailed note of interrogation, have been photographed. A perambulator, that seemed strangely out of place under the rough forest trees, stood on the edge of the road, with a baby in it. A young and motherly cow stood near, gazing upon it with a look of the most intense surprise and curiosity, and was no doubt meditating, in its bovine fashion, on the mystery of this unequal world, which does not provide perambulators for calves. 

We reached Glenample as the day was ending, and though two of us were absolute strangers, we were received with the most generous and unquestionable hospitality. The coast scenery here, as we discovered in our little rambles the next day, is absolutely unique. All the wealth of descriptive energy, and of pictorial art expended by the papers upon the scene of the wreck, yet leaves it undepicted and undescribed. Along the line of many miles the coast is absolutely beachless or nearly so; and consists of perpendicular cliffs of a soft, shady, light-colored sandstone. For miles on each side of the spot, where the Loch Ard struck, the sea rolls to the base of these cliffs without a patch of sandy beach, save at the spot where Pearce and Miss Carmichael landed. The nature of the cliffs has permitted the sea just to take what liberties it pleased with the shore. The land is accordingly scored with a maze of inlets, each inlet resembling a narrow lane of water flowing betwixt parallel walls of rock, rising 150 feet sheer from the water's edge ; and the watery lane ends abruptly at the foot of a transverse wall of cliff. A few miles to the south, and immediately below Glenample homestead, the inlets widen into little bays, and then there comes a stretch of sandy beach betwixt the cliffs and the sea. A long, tusk of rock, nearly 200 feet high, is thrust abruptly across the end of the beach nearest the wreck, deep into the sea, and brings your seaside promenade to a sudden end. But a tunnel has been cut for some 30 yards through this rocky wall, and opens to the eye and foot an exquisite little bay, in which stands a family party of gigantic obelisks, deep in the embrace of the yeasty waves. These obelisks are a most striking feature of this part of the coast. They arc of the full height of the land, say 150 feet from the level sea to the summit, but stand clear out from the coast itself. They seem like a line of Titanic sentinels, standing far out on the glassy floor of the sea, and keeping watch against some hostile fleet not yet risen above the horizon of the west. They are of all shapes; one is slender and symmetrical as a modern lighthouse; another is cowled like a monk; another has a core piercing right through its crown, and the setting sun pours through the opening a shaft of crimson fire till it resembles the glowing eye-ball of a Cyclops. The whole shore line has a weird and strangely peopled look from this array of stately, slender, and
lofty pillars. The shore, too, is pierced with mysterious caves. At one spot is shown you a "blowhole," a deep black chasm in the soil, an eighth of a mile from the edge of the sea; yet here, a hundred feet down, the waters are seething and moaning in eternal unrest, and racing mysterious channels yet farther inland. This is, perhaps, the most convenient spot for any one wanting to commit suicide in Victoria. The scenery on the whole is wonderfully picturesque and striking. If some enterprising showman could only detach a few miles of this part of the coast, and tow it down to the neighborhood of Queenscliff, and anchor it there, it would be reckoned one of the most wonderful sights in Australia.