Thirty Years in Australia by Ada Cambridge

On the 26th of July 1871 we moved into our second home -- not more than a mile or so from the first -- Dik again helping us. The chance to get a little more breathing-space and elbow-room, much needed since we had become a family, fell to us through the death of our friend the police magistrate. That sad event left his widow with means too small to permit of her retaining her pretty home for a day after she was able to leave it. We took it from her, and lived in it for about four months -- until G. was appointed to his first parish; after which our house was provided for us, with no rent to pay any more.

Distance lends enchantment to it, of course, but it is impossible that "Como" could have been other than charming, with its then surroundings. It had been the dwelling of two police magistrates, and the first and longest occupier had made the place, while his wife had been a gardener. My journal reeks of that garden. In the prime of the spring season (October 12th) there is an entry which credits it with "innumerable varieties of everything," including, naturally, "roses all over the house" and "our own asparagus for dinner every other day." The (even then) old house, masked with shrubs and hedges, surrounded by beds and borders full of sweets, turned its face upon a wooded paddock, through which a path led out to the road; the ground behind fell steeply to the "lake" so ambitiously named -- a large backwater of the river, preserved by the landlord (who allowed only himself and his tenant to shoot over it), and therefore the sanctuary of native aquatic fowl.