Another pleasant trip about this time was to Yering, the Ryries’ station, situated nearly half-way up to the cool mountainous sources of the River Yarra.  This had already been made a charming home to any contented mind, satisfied to fall back upon country resources.  It was a cattle station, for, in the thickly wooded hills, hollows, and flats about sheep could not live—­at least, to any purpose—­and the homestead had the importance of a little straggling street, with the main dwelling at the top, as the end of a cul-de-sac, and the dairy and what not in marshalled line below.  We revelled in pastoral abundance.  I wandered into the adjacent woods, experiencing the sense of overpowering grandeur amidst their vast solitudes, with the gum-trees rising straight above me with colossal stems, not seldom 300 feet and more in height, and 100 feet, or even much more, from the ground without a branch.  When this “redgum” has elbow room, it expands in all variety of form, attaining in favouring circumstances vast dimensions, as in one example met with in the Dandenong Ranges, which measured 480 feet in height.  But in this Yering case, crowded as they were impoverishingly together upon flats of the river, they did not bulk out into such dimensions, but they shot up side by side, straight as arrows, rivals en route to the clouds.  Sad changes came to Yering’s happy and hospitable owners since, for, like many others, they had to “realize” in the bad times, and to quit a most pleasant home.  But Yering itself has thriven, and has since advanced into a great wine-producing district, whose wines Mr. De Castella, its later owner, has made to carry prizes even at European Exhibitions.

EARLY WESTERN VICTORIA ("AUSTRALIA FELIX").

“Oh! ’tis the sun that maketh all things shine.”  —­Love’s Labour Lost.

“He makes a July day short as December.” 
—­Winter’s Tale.

But my chief excursions, which have left a pleasantly vivid recollection of early colonizing life, were made to the far west—­the one in 1844, right through to the Glenelg; the other the year after, to the newly-founded township of Warrnambool.  The first of these was undertaken partly on business in the interests of the Boyd stations lately formed about Eumerella, a place of evil repute then as to the native hostility.  I had previously chanced to “chum” with Boyd’s Port Phillip manager, Mr. Robert Fennell, a young fellow as well-looked, gentlemanly, and pleasant as anyone could meet with, and with whom I both officed and housed to mutual satisfaction for two years, until his marriage with a daughter of John Batman.  And thus I came in for some few of the many Boyd commissions that were flying freely about in those years, and which were not at all unacceptable to any of us in that time of small things.  I afterwards, as I have pleasure in recording, received the hospitalities of the great commission-maker in his generously open house at Sydney.