jo AUSTKALIAA PICTURES. 



pedestrian, he can accomplish a grand and quite a fashionable walking tour 

 through the Alps into Gippsland, striking the railway either at Bairnsdale 

 or Sale. He is in the neighbourhood of romantic ravines, picturesque 

 waterfalls, and grand fern scenery. Lyre-birds, bower birds and parrots will 

 be his companions, and if he chooses to diverge a little from the route, he 

 may break into virgin solitudes, and may measure giant gums unheard of 

 before. 



One feature is common alike to all Victorian towns and the bush — the 

 State school. In the towns the State school is a political structure. In the 

 bush let there be twenty or thirty children in a three-mile radius, and there 

 will be a wooden erection for the young people to attend. In some cases, 

 where the children cannot be otherwise reached, the teacher will meet two 

 or three families at intervals at certain houses. With a population of a 

 million the State has 230,000 children on its school books. The instruction 

 is ' free, compulsory, and secular,' and about this latter provision there is a 

 great stir. It is not, however, advisable to stray into vexed issues here. 

 Suffice it that there is no more general picture in Victoria, than that of the 

 children trooping to and from their lessons, and that many a parent feels his 

 existence brightened by the assurance that, come what may, ' schooling ' is 

 provided for. 



Where there are no railways which the tourist can use, he may depend 

 upon being able to proceed by ' Cobb.' ' Cobb ' is the general name for the 

 stage coach of the colonies, no matter who owns the vehicle, where it runs, 

 what are its dimensions. Any one who has not travelled by Cobb has not 

 properly ' done ' Australia ; and yet the fate of the black man and the 

 marsupial will, one plainly sees, be the fate of Cobb. He will be im- 

 proved out of existence, and thus another element of romance will fade 

 away. Our illustrations tell their own tale of moving incidents by field 

 and flood. Mr. Anthony Trollope wrote : ' A Victorian coach, with six or 

 perhaps seven or eight horses, in the darkness of the night, making its 

 way through a thickly timbered forest at the rate of nine miles an hour, 

 with the horses frequently up to their bellies in mud, with the wheels 

 running in and out of holes four or five feet deep, is a phenomenon which 

 I should like to have shown to some of those very neat mail-coach drivers 

 whom I used to know at home in the old days. I am sure that no 

 description would make any one of them believe that such feats of driving 

 were possible. I feel that nothing short of seeing it would have made 

 me believe it. The passengers inside are shaken ruthlessly, and are 

 horribly soiled by mud and dirt. Two sit upon the box outside, and undergo 

 lesser evils. By the courtesy shown to strangers in the colonies I always 

 got the box, and found myself fairly comfortable as soon as I overcame the 

 idea that I must infallibly be dashed against the next gum-tree. I made many 

 such journeys, and never suffered any serious misfortune.' 



