A Backblocker's Pleasure Trip

The whole stretch of country traversed from the Murray River to Ballarat was pleasing to the eye. Victoria has innumerable beauty spots, with no repelling background like N.S.W., South Australia, and West Australia. Nearly every inch of her territory, like that of Queensland (excepting where the beastly imported prickly pear had formed choking wildernesses), was inviting to the settler.

But we had a grievance now. Our accommodation had deteriorated, whereas, considering the tedium of a long journey, it should have improved with successive trains. The cars were full enough before; now they almost bulged at the sides. Some of the passengers were full, too. A comatose bulk or a half-drunken wight, lolling and bumping against you on one side; a portly, straight-laced old dame, surrounded with parcels and baskets, on the other, and two or three youngsters sleeping among a bundle of shawls and pillows and feeding bottles on the floor, was a proposition that could only be taken seriously. I have been tightly sandwiched at times among nice girls, and didn't find it uncomfortable a bit. A vagrant tress, playing teasingly across one's face, and twining amorously around one's neck, in such circumstances imparted only delectable thrills. This company was too mixed and too old and too fat to make sandwiches with, while its hair only irritated. Neither could you enjoy a pipe there, for the portly old dame objected to smoking; and, though it was a smoking carriage, you were expected to consider the license suspended while she was present.