My eldest brother, visiting Sydney from the station, thought we had better go to school for a year. Fortunately one was found where there were only eight boarders. The lady principal was the daughter of an English clergyman, and her brother, also a clergyman, had charge of the parish in which she resided, about forty miles from Sydney. She was a highly educated woman and a true Christian. We were treated as her own daughters, guarded from everything that could possibly sully the pages of our dawning womanhood. I have often thought what a wise thing it was that my brother suggested our going there. No poetry or novel reading now; more solid food for the mind helped to leaven what might have proved dangerous. My chief amusements were music and singing, and even in “The Golden South” I remember getting up in frosty weather to practise by candlelight with mittened hands and chilblained fingers. These schooldays were very happy. The large brick house with verandahs and balconies all round: the garden only divided from the river-bank by a thick hedge of aloes, and on the other side the high wall of the recreation ground of the Liverpool Asylum: this wall was the only one I ever saw fruit trees growing against as in England. Liverpool was certainly just the place then for a school, as we might walk from one end of the township to the other without seeing a single individual; but unfortunately for Madame’s peace of mind there were two residents who had large families of boys; however, as they were always absent from home during the week, and we never went out on Sundays except to church, she felt relieved. Our dear Madame never thought that her girls occasionally found boyish epistles written on aloe leaves. On Saturdays we were never allowed out of the grounds, so on these mornings attended to our wardrobes, and in the afternoon had a delightful time in an old weatherboard cottage in the garden roasting cashew nuts, of which delicacy Madame had a large quantity brought from the West Indies by a friend. We used to make presents of these, when properly prepared, to our friends.

One Sunday evening a great event for us happened. As usual we went to church, but being a cold dark night, no one was religiously inclined, so the Rev. Mr. Duffus, I suppose, thought “his sister and her schoolgirls were not sufficient congregation,” and adjourned to his house opposite. We with Madame followed, and I for one thought it a very good idea, as we with his children spent the evening before a splendid log-fire in their nursery. This and going there on Her Majesty’s birthday were the only occasions I remember anything like amusement away from the school. Being an exceedingly loyal people, the birthday was kept up by a huge bonfire in the paddock after a girls’ picnic in the Bush, on which occasion I saw a snake for the first time in Australia. Bessie D—— and I having gone at my suggestion to wander about in couples to see “who could find the most curious thing,” came upon an enormous carpet snake, decidedly the most curious find. We ran away screaming; but Madame soon came to the rescue and killed the dreadful creature. Only two of that band of girls are now left; one in her native land, and the other writing this near a small village in Hampshire, with a bitter north-easterly wind blowing.

That year at L—— was truly a resting-place for me before the real battle of life began, and it was well spent, for it drew together the threads, a little tangled, of a rather exceptional education. The dear Madame, who joined warp and woof so gently yet firmly, I can never cease to love. She has gone where her work will follow her; loved by many here, and in “the world beyond the stars” may have met some of her children again who have lived to call her blessed. This is a digression; but having finished my education and lived the greater portion of my life in the colony so many people despise and throw stones at, I feel bound to let my readers know that such things were more than forty years ago. Yet I cannot help adding that Sydney in the forties was in many respects not a comfortable place to live in, especially to those who had only been accustomed to all the luxuries of London life. Tradesmen were not over civil, domestics were scarce, and what there were, very incompetent. The older colonists were in this respect far better off. I knew a family who had a splendid estate about sixty miles from Sydney. The owner was a retired major who had at least forty servants, many living in huts near the house, among them a carpenter, blacksmith, and shoemaker, and also a large store on the property. One of the men, an Italian, taught his sons and daughters music, the flute, violin, cornet, and piano; he also formed a band of musicians from the men on the “Height.” There was also a theatre and billiard-room; in fact, this place fifty years ago was like a large manor-house with every arrangement for comfort and amusement. The owner once had the whole of one side of George Street south offered to him for a few hundred pounds, which he refused, as he wanted to add to the “Height.”

His eldest son and two daughters were amongst the dearest friends of my youth, the two eldest most accomplished musicians on piano and flute; I have often spent hours listening to them playing together. As was the case with many others of the early colonists, not a rood of land ever came into the possession of their descendants. In this case part of the estate was sold for a trifle to a friend of mine, who was having it put into partial repair when, by a strange fatality, it was burned down on the same night that the major’s eldest son died many miles distant. Some years after the youngest son bought back a piece of the old estate, intending to build a cottage residence on it: the plans were completed and all arrangements made when he died from a neglected cold. They are all gone now. The sons never married, so the name has died out, except that the estate and one street in Sydney still bear it.

When my school life ended, I returned to my home, which was now a pretty cottage, surrounded by a garden full of lovely flowers and shrubs, enclosed by a high white paling fence. The house had a verandah in front covered with white jasmine, roses, and honeysuckle. The entrance led at once into the drawing-room, from thence into another we called the music-room, and farther on into a back hall, from which you entered the dining and bed rooms. At the back a flight of stone steps led to kitchen, servants’ room, and laundry; at the other side a well-room and larder; at the end of the front verandah was a room we used as a study, and at the side a door leading to another flight of steps to a stone passage between our house and the next. It was the prettiest and coolest house I ever lived in in Sydney. While there my mother seemed to rally from a severe illness she had had and became her bright self again, with all her children around her once more; and having two very good servants, affairs were a little more cheery. My father nearly losing his life brought back again all her dislike to the colony. He had gone over to the north shore by the ferry collecting for his Australian cabinet of insects, when about four miles inland, going through the scrub, he felt something sting his leg; on looking down he saw one of the most deadly snakes gliding away. His first thought was, “If I have not a knife I am a dead man.” He had one fortunately, so sitting down on a fallen tree he cut the piece of flesh out round the bitten part, then tore his handkerchief in half, and tied the pieces tightly above and below the wound. It was an intensely hot January day, so that his four-mile walk through the scrub and sand was dreadful. When he reached the ferry the boat was on the other side; but a boatman near saw that something was the matter, and running towards him, asked, “What is wrong, sir?” My father was just able to answer, “Met with an accident; take me to the nearest doctor in Lower George Street,” when he fainted from loss of blood and over-exertion. The doctor knew my father, and when he had given him some brandy and restored him to his senses, asked him to relate what had happened. When we returned home from church the house was in commotion. My father was being walked up and down between two men, who were not to allow him to sleep on any account. He often said afterwards he remembered little about it, as he believed the brandy the doctor had given him made him intoxicated, he being a very temperate man, and never taking spirits at any time. The snake, as he thought, was one of the most deadly kind, and the doctor said the long walk after the bite had caused some small portion of the virus to mix with the blood. It was one of the few cases of recovery from that reptile’s poison ever heard of, and for some weeks the wound was most painful. This made me always most nervous in regard to snakes, and often spoiled my enjoyment of country walks. On two occasions I was only just saved from treading on them by the merest chance. Once sitting on the verandah of a friend’s house at Double Bay on a Sunday morning, I heard the words, “Don’t move; there is a snake round the leg of the chair you are on.” I obeyed, but the creature, disturbed by the voice, moved off the verandah and disappeared. That same day we were sitting at dinner when the report of the gun was heard, which at that time used to be fired by the mail steamers on arrival in Sydney Harbour; and my friend went out to see the steamer pass, when there was monsieur snake on the door-mat basking in the sun. This time nothing was done to disturb him till means were procured for his destruction, and he was killed. On the other occasion I was walking across Balmain with a friend. When passing through a rocky part we came to some water, James said, “Let me go first.” Just as he did so, I saw a large “whip snake” lying on the path. In an instant his foot was on it. Being a heavy man he crushed the head: if it had been my lighter weight it would only have disturbed the creature. I nearly fainted; but my friend began to scold and then laugh at my fears.