Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria

I had long looked forward to one more visit to Victoria, perhaps the last I should expect to make, and the opportunity of the opening of the great Centenary Exhibition at Melbourne on 1st August of this year was too good to be lost. Accordingly, having been able to arrange business matters for so long a holiday, I took passage, with my wife and daughter, by the good steamship "Coptic" of the "Shaw, Savill New Zealand Line," as it is curtly put.

She was to land us at Hobart about 27th July, in good time, we hoped, to get across by the Launceston boat for the Exhibition opening, and she bids fair, at this moment, to keep her engagement. We would have taken the directer route, with its greater number and variety of objects, via Suez and Colombo, but we feared the sun-blaze of the ill-omened Red Sea in summer. We purpose, however, to return that way towards the coming winter.