During the period of preparation, there were parties, receptions etc. to which he was invited. These were the times he kept saying to himself, “have I really got to go, or is there a feasible excuse?”
Alfred and Joe had gone to dances and similar things in London. Joe had continued with this style of life in London, and other cities around the world, which he had visited. Alfred enjoyed them when he went, but he felt the whole atmosphere in Australia to be artificial, that he was reluctant to go, especially as it had been over ten years since he attended a big function.
Wealthy and highly respected Australians held their own private dances, and he had only gone when he felt he ought to, at least these were places where he could possibly find a prospective bride. These functions were going to be different, with politicians and ruling members of society, not Alfred’s cup of tea at all.
Howitt family’s tour routes 1851-1854
Chapter 3 – Relaxing
It was 21st January, 1863, the day of the big funeral, and now it was over. Alfred Howitt made his way to visit his uncle, where he expected to find Joe and cousin Teddy, who was about Alfred’s age, and had accompanied Alfred on some of his earlier adventures, where he would hear some more news from Joe and update Joe himself. As Alfred was once again using their home for his accommodation, it would be reasonable to find Joe there, as the town was still too crowded to seek out an individual.
Uncle Godfrey had arrived in Australia in 1840, when he set up the first G.P. practice in Melbourne. He had brought a prefabricated house with him, made of a corrugated metal, in which to house his family, his wife’s brothers and a nephew. This would have been expensive, to transport all the way from England, along with contents. At the time of the Howitt family’s visit, a £1,000 house in London, ended up costing £6,600 out in Melbourne.
The population of Melbourne four years earlier had only been 136 people. It was a town that had increased very rapidly especially when gold was first found around 1850 creating a gold rush. The population by then had already increased to 76,000. Now ten years later, what on earth was it now? Alfred had no idea, except it felt over populated and crowded.
Godfrey was the respected medical man of the town, who also worked at the young hospital. He had become the president and honorary physician at the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum in 1847 and joined the new Port Phillip Medical Association. His accolades did not stop here. Between 1853 and 1855 he was the first vice-president of the Philosophical Society of Victoria and a member of its successor, The Royal Society of Victoria, at the time of the famous, but tragic expedition.
Even when in England he had published books on entomology and had helped in the foundation of the Entomological Society of London; he was also a member of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, the city where he had trained to be a doctor, and in 1839, (the year before his emigration), he published “The Nottinghamshire Flora”. Another botanist, named a pale blue, native Australian mallow, a monotypic genus, “Howitta”, in honour of the devotion Godfrey had given to botany. His entomological collection is now in the University of Melbourne, where he also funded a scholarship, which included his other scientific interests geology and zoology.
Godfrey’s family always gave Alfred a welcoming home, especially when things had been tough for Alfred, times when he was homesick in his early years in Australia, periods when he had not money, food or a job. Godfrey, at one time employed him to work on their farm, after Godfrey had obtained more land, which had never been dug. Alfred was expected to turn into a field, and put a fence around it. That had been in the past, may be this is what he would be doing again shortly.
Godfrey had even bought him a farm in Cauldfield, when Godfrey had been expanding his farming business. Alfred had fulfilled his obligations to his uncle, but then there came a period, when there had been a big recession, and the value of the crops he had worked so hard to grow, lost their profit, so he had left the farm.
Alfred had been a restless man when he had first been on his own in the new country. He had arrived with his father and brother, in 1851, but had stayed behind when his family returned to England, but they all knew Uncle Godfrey would be available should Alfred need help or support. His parents felt England was overcrowded, an expensive place to live where there were no jobs; the future was in the colonies.
Joes current job had now finished and he would have to find something else to do, but what. He had told Joe, that he really did not like Melbourne, which was muddy in winter, very hot and dusty in summer; as it was at the current time. It was very noisy too.
The gold diggers brought in their gold, and what a sight those ruffians looked. They often resorted to fights in the street etc., all very noisy. This is where Burke had excelled and been so good with his policing. The gold was running out, so there was a lot of friction between the diggers and those whose seam had run out; as a result there were many unemployed men floating around, taking money and food when and where ever they could acquire it.
That evening the three young men, described their impressions of the town earlier in the day, Joe and Teddy were the onlookers, whereas Alfred was a participant. Teddy had spent just about all his life in Australia, and he was sufficiently in the picture, to make suggestions, and even disagree with Alfred. Melbourne had been and still was in the turmoil of excitement.
“It seemed as if the people do not to want to go home.” Alfred told Joe. “I suppose it is inevitable, because they have never seen anything like it before, and they just felt they should make the best of this opportunity. They don’t know when anything like this will happen again”.
At 1 00.p.m, that day, the Castlemaine military band, (one of many), had struck up The Dead March of Saul; then the cortege had started to move. The numerous requests from various organizations to join the cortege, had causing some discontent, because many had been refused permission to play, yet the procession was still so long, that it took two and half hours to move the 5 kilometres to the cemetery. A newly constructed vault awaited the coffins, and the bodies, of Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills, the shy loyal English scientist, who had latterly become second in command, were laid to rest.
No one was sure whether Burke was a Roman Catholic or a Protestant, but at that stage in Melbourne’s history, the cathedral, had yet to be built, so the matter was immaterial. Burke himself was a bit of a mystery as far as his past was concerned. He had desperately wanted this mission to succeed, as his main aim in life seemed to be that of being famous, and this trip would seal his ambition. He succeeded in his aim, but not in the way he would have wished.
Here at Uncle Godfrey’s house, Alfred loved to be in the peaceful and relaxed atmosphere. He spent a lot of his time now trying to relax, because he could not forget the activities of the day, and what had gone before.
After a good nights sleep, and a rest from all the razzmatazz, the two young men set off for Alfred’s home, in the Gippsland district. Uncle Godfrey lent Joe a horse for the length of his stay in Australia. They both knew Godfrey would see that Joe would be lent a good horse and he was so pleased when he saw it. They were both good horsemen. Joe had acquired a bush hat, much more in keeping than the city hat he had been wearing, the Howitt family thought so.
Alfred Howitt, had been one of the pallbearers that afternoon, and had watched the melee which followed. He had also witnessed the confusion when Burke’s expedition cavalcade left Melbourne nearly three years ago. Was it really, nearly three years ago, he mused as he rode through the area of the bush called Prince Albert, named after Queen Victoria’s Consort. It was he, who had thought of an idea to show off the Empire, what they did at work and play, food production, making of objects the effects of the industrial revolution, etc. and all this was originally held in Hyde