Read We Are the Rebels for Free Online
Authors: Clare Wright
many of Melbourne’s social woes. All manner of temporary
structures were erected to serve as lodging houses. And, not surprisingly, disease
spread like wildfire through these unsanitary and overcrowded hostelries.
Colonial fever was a quaint name for a hideous ailment: typhus. It was spread by
head lice and characterised by headaches, chills and the foul smell of rotting bodily
fluids. It was exacerbated by overcrowding and poor hygiene. It took out young and
old alike, and it frightened everybody. Women were known to shave their pubic hair
so they wouldn’t get lice.
Influenza, scarlet fever, measles, tuberculosis and whooping cough all became endemic
in Victoria in the 1850s. All associated with high immigration, high birthrate and
congested living conditions.
CANVAS TOWN
Those too poor or too unlucky to find proper accommodation were left with one grim
place of last resort. Canvas Town was a tent city located on the south side of the
Yarra River at Emerald Hill. It’s now the site of the Victorian Arts Centre. Like
the township of Melbourne itself, Canvas Town was laid out in an orderly grid. Interspersed
with tent dwellings there were tent stores, bakers’ shops, butchers’ stalls, restaurants,
sly-grog shops and barbers’ shops. Inhabitants paid five shillings for a plot.
It sounds like a fine solution, but the eight thousand inhabitants led a squalid
existence. The Marco Polo Chronicle called Canvas Town the epitome of misery and
costliness . The land here was unforgiving: boggy in winter, baked dry in summer.
The only water supply was the fetid Yarra River, into which the tanneries and soap
factories of Collingwood and Richmond upstream had already emptied their disgusting
waste. Colonial fever, dysentery and crime were rife.
Martha Clendinning paid a ghoulish visit to Canvas Town one day, perhaps lured by
what Charles Dickens called the ‘attraction of repulsion’. The begrimed and unrecognisable
children who roamed about in packs, dodging and weaving carts that were loaded with
firewood, rumbling between the tents with their wretched occupants , horrified Martha.
Everyone and everything was covered in dust.
Henry Mundy provided the soundtrack: children squalling, women shrieking and men
shouting, the noise was uproarious . The colonial urban jungle of Canvas Town looked,
sounded and smelled like somewhere you’d want to escape from, not sail halfway around
the world to find.
Unable to get any accommodation at all, Thomas and Frances Pierson pitched a tent
at South Melbourne beach where sand flew in clouds thicker than I ever saw it snow . All a Lie that we were told in History or the papers , he fumes in his diary. This
is the most God forsaken accursed country I could conceive of.
Thomas, like so many others, felt royally ripped off.
LAW AND ORDER
Mud, filth, flies, teeming accommodation, drunken revellers, exorbitant prices, ominous
diseases and absent husbands. It sounds like the wild west, or at least Hollywood’s
version of it. But there is a significant difference. Melbourne was a far-flung but
loyal satellite of the British Empire: it was firmly based on British institutions.
By 1854, Melbourne already had a public library and a university. Within 30 years,
it would become an international metropolis. And in the imperial metropolis, unlike
Dodge City or Deadwood, one expected to be governed by the high standards of British
justice. As the Marco Polo Chronicle reassured its readers, the Genuine Spirit of
British Generosity, Nobility and Earnestness exists in the brave young city. They
would not need to fend for themselves: the mother country had their back.
But British respectability would certainly be tested. Camping life, like ship life,
created a community of intimate strangers. Tent living let in more than dust—it could
bring unexpected, and potentially uninvited, familiarity. As William Kelly said, if your candle at bedtime happened to be extinguished first, you might probably
structures were erected to serve as lodging houses. And, not surprisingly, disease
spread like wildfire through these unsanitary and overcrowded hostelries.
Colonial fever was a quaint name for a hideous ailment: typhus. It was spread by
head lice and characterised by headaches, chills and the foul smell of rotting bodily
fluids. It was exacerbated by overcrowding and poor hygiene. It took out young and
old alike, and it frightened everybody. Women were known to shave their pubic hair
so they wouldn’t get lice.
Influenza, scarlet fever, measles, tuberculosis and whooping cough all became endemic
in Victoria in the 1850s. All associated with high immigration, high birthrate and
congested living conditions.
CANVAS TOWN
Those too poor or too unlucky to find proper accommodation were left with one grim
place of last resort. Canvas Town was a tent city located on the south side of the
Yarra River at Emerald Hill. It’s now the site of the Victorian Arts Centre. Like
the township of Melbourne itself, Canvas Town was laid out in an orderly grid. Interspersed
with tent dwellings there were tent stores, bakers’ shops, butchers’ stalls, restaurants,
sly-grog shops and barbers’ shops. Inhabitants paid five shillings for a plot.
It sounds like a fine solution, but the eight thousand inhabitants led a squalid
existence. The Marco Polo Chronicle called Canvas Town the epitome of misery and
costliness . The land here was unforgiving: boggy in winter, baked dry in summer.
The only water supply was the fetid Yarra River, into which the tanneries and soap
factories of Collingwood and Richmond upstream had already emptied their disgusting
waste. Colonial fever, dysentery and crime were rife.
Martha Clendinning paid a ghoulish visit to Canvas Town one day, perhaps lured by
what Charles Dickens called the ‘attraction of repulsion’. The begrimed and unrecognisable
children who roamed about in packs, dodging and weaving carts that were loaded with
firewood, rumbling between the tents with their wretched occupants , horrified Martha.
Everyone and everything was covered in dust.
Henry Mundy provided the soundtrack: children squalling, women shrieking and men
shouting, the noise was uproarious . The colonial urban jungle of Canvas Town looked,
sounded and smelled like somewhere you’d want to escape from, not sail halfway around
the world to find.
Unable to get any accommodation at all, Thomas and Frances Pierson pitched a tent
at South Melbourne beach where sand flew in clouds thicker than I ever saw it snow . All a Lie that we were told in History or the papers , he fumes in his diary. This
is the most God forsaken accursed country I could conceive of.
Thomas, like so many others, felt royally ripped off.
LAW AND ORDER
Mud, filth, flies, teeming accommodation, drunken revellers, exorbitant prices, ominous
diseases and absent husbands. It sounds like the wild west, or at least Hollywood’s
version of it. But there is a significant difference. Melbourne was a far-flung but
loyal satellite of the British Empire: it was firmly based on British institutions.
By 1854, Melbourne already had a public library and a university. Within 30 years,
it would become an international metropolis. And in the imperial metropolis, unlike
Dodge City or Deadwood, one expected to be governed by the high standards of British
justice. As the Marco Polo Chronicle reassured its readers, the Genuine Spirit of
British Generosity, Nobility and Earnestness exists in the brave young city. They
would not need to fend for themselves: the mother country had their back.
But British respectability would certainly be tested. Camping life, like ship life,
created a community of intimate strangers. Tent living let in more than dust—it could
bring unexpected, and potentially uninvited, familiarity. As William Kelly said, if your candle at bedtime happened to be extinguished first, you might probably