Mr. William Meek (Melbourne's first Solicitor) yvas appointed Honorary Secretary, and the next meeting yvas held at the residence of Dr. Barry Cotter (Melbourne'sfirstpractising physician), north-east corner of Queen and Collins Streets. This was on the 21st February, when thefirstballot came off, and Messrs. Arthur Hogue, J. Browne, H . N . Carrington, and Peter Snodgrass were enrolled. T h e Club had been three months in existence ; the members yvere increasing; a committee yvas appointed, and premises yvere being looked up to do duty until such time as funds yvould be available sufficient for the erection of a permanent Club-house. But m a n y years yvere to roll by ere this could come to pass. In June the Club had a house rented, viz, a rough, rakish-looking building at the corner of Collins and Market Streets, yvhere now this old friend, yvith a very n e w face, and so m u c h improved internally and externally as to be unrecognizable, appears before the public as the Union Club Hotel. In its original condition it yvas erected by Mr. J. P. Fawkner, as a third and revised edition of Fawkner's Hotel; but " Johnny" had grown tired of dram-selling, and retired to rusticate and grow grapes at Pascoe Vale, some eight miles from toyvn, on the M o o n e e Ponds Road, yvhere he had purchased a section of country land. A Club steyvard yvas next retained, and tyvo advertisements appeared in the papers, viz, (1) Inviting tenders for Club supplies ; and (2) AVanted a laundress, properly recommended. A n d so the Melbourne Club was n o w fairly started, and its beginning yvas quiet enough until September, when a row occurred, for the Port Phillip Gazette, of the 21st, announces that two gentlemen staying there (Messrs. Thomas and Cobb) "had fought yvith theirfistsover a card-table." In Kerr's Port Phillip Directory, 1841, amongst the local Institutions appears this announcement:— "Melbourne Club, established 1839. President, James Simpson, Esq.; Secretary, R e d m o n d Barry, Esq.; Club House, Collins Street." T h e Club remained at Fawkner's corner for some years, and throughout all its eventful career it never yvent out of Collins Street from those days to this. AVhere the Bank of Victoria is noyv built, Mr. Michael Carr, one of Melbourne's earliest publicans, purchased a half-acre allotment for £ 4 0 ; but it and its buyer soon obtained a divorce, the freehold passed into other hands, and a large brick house had been erected on the Collins Street frontage. This yvas occupied by the Port Phillip Bank during its short and troubled life, and when the Bank shut up shop there the Club moved doyvn from the western hill to the flat—then a swampy, uncomfortable place. But the house yvas more commodious than the one vacated, and it was soon turned into comfortable quarters. H e n c e again, after a sojourn for years, the Club migrated away far over the crown of the Eastern Hill, at a time yvhen the place yvas no longer in the bush, but becoming one of the mostflourishingand fashionable centres in the city. H o w it has fared since, how fat it has grown, and how respectable it has become, it is not for m e to chronicle, for I have nothing to do with those modern developments yvhich have been accomplished by the great changes wrought during the last thirty years, beyond stating that in 1882 there were 465 members on the books, and the premises are now the property of the fraternity, the capital value of the land and buildings being about £50,000. The Melbourne Club of 1882 is as the staid, comfortable, middle-aged, padded gentleman when contrasted with its boyhood of '42, when it yvas the rendezvous of the young rakes in town and the harum-scarum, full-blooded, full-pocketed, lightheaded scamps from the bush, whose frolics kept it, if not in hot water, in a state of almost continuous effervescence both day and night. If the biography of the old, or rather the young Club could be written, it yvould unfold a "strange eventful history"—the duels initiated, the practical jokes perpetrated, the nocturnal "wild oats" scattered about the town, in which no m a d freak seemed impossible, from the mobbing of a parson to pummelling a policeman, besieging a theatre or unbelling a church, demolishing a corporation bridge, or a wholesale abduction of signboards. Of such eccentricities a more detailed account will be given in another chapter. T h e Old Melbourne Club had many a hard struggle for existence; it had more than once run to the very end of its tether, yet it was always able to pull up just in time to avoid a smash. It seemed to have a charmed life, and so it lived, and struggled, and is n o w doing well and prospering.*
Particulars of the present state ofthe Melbourne Club (1888) are not obtainable.
