days the inflow of outside capital for Australian development was mainly through Melbourne, then the headquarters of all the great wool firms and pastoral agencies. But when Victoria built a protective wall about itself, much of its outside capital was diverted to Sydney, which has grown steadily at the expense of the sister city, and become infected with that American bustle which was once the characteristic of Melbourne only.
But even now, in New South Wales, there is something left still of the true colonial simplicity, which you will scarcely find near Melbourne. In Tasmania, for example, when the girls are of a fair age, the mistress of a house will often do without a servant, and, with her daughters, take the household duties on her own shoulders. One may be engaged, again, in manual labour, and yet not cut off from society. It is possible to meet in the morning a man dressed like a navvy, working on his farm or in his orchard, and to see him again in the evening in his dress clothes, and not concerned for his roughened hands. I have seen, in one of the colonies, a lady whose husband occupies the highest position in local politics, and is largely indebted to her tact and popularity for his long lease of power, doing some of the family washing on her back verandah, while her guests of the afternoon drank tea with her, thirsty and unashamed. That was due to a mistake as to her "at-home" day, and the washing was mainly lace and such matters; but she did not put the tub away. The Private Secretary to a Governor, in another colony, has been known to spend his affable summer three miles out of town in a small tent on the banks of the river, riding in to his work on a bicycle. Perhaps it is partly, in some way, a result of her sympathy with this sort of colonial realism, that not only in business, but in art and literature also, Sydney
