426 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



in them. Hut they are being replaced by edifices more in keeping with the architecture 

 of the neighbourhood, and affording better accommodation alike for the public and for 

 the officers administering the local business of the Department. 



On the north side of Flinders Street, in an easterly direction from the Custom 

 House, are the extensive bonded stores of Messrs. Grice, Sumner and Co., one of the 

 oldest mercantile firms in Melbourne, the offices of a local printing and publishing com- 

 pany, and the large warehouse of Rocke, Tompsitt and Co. Beyond Elizabeth Street, 

 at one corner of which still survives a fragment of primitive Melbourne, the mingled 

 simplicity and solidity of the facade of the Mutual Store arrest attention, and perhaps 

 invite inquiry as to the business transacted in such spacious premises. Founded and 

 conducted upon co-operative principles, it has gradually grown from small beginnings to 

 a position in which it is enabled to combine great public utility with financial prosperity, 

 supplying its numerous share-holders with everything required for household use, and 

 receiving and disbursing as much as eighty thousand pounds sterling per annum. Its 

 success has led to the institution of the. Federal Store in the same street, adjoining 

 which is the Port Phillip Club Hotel, with its arcaded upper storeys and broad frontage, 

 covering the ground once occupied by a rural hostelry standing well back from the road, 

 and known far and wide throughout the length and breadth of Victoria, in the pastoral 

 epoch of its history, as the resort and rendezvous of squatters and country folk at holiday 

 seasons, when commodious inns were few and far between in the rising township of 

 Melbourne, and there was but little choice of recreation or variety of companionship. 



A few paces farther, and Swanston Street opens out to the left, and the approach 

 to the new Prince's Bridge on the right. In the early years of the colony there was 

 no other method of crossing the Yarra than by a punt, and when, at the close of 

 the year 1850, a bridge of a single arch had been thrown over the River and opened 

 for traffic, a work was believed to have been achieved which would last for centuries. 

 But its duration did not extend beyond the life-time of a single generation, and it was 

 pulled down to make room for a structure not unworthy to span the Thames, the 

 Tiber or the Tagus. Its width between parapets is ninety-nine feet the full width of 

 Swanston Street and its length over all is four hundred feet; the width of the River 

 at the site being three hundred and twenty feet. There are three river-spans of arched 

 iron-girders resting on bluestone piers and abutments of one hundred feet each, and one 

 shore-span of twenty-five feet. The ends of the piers and abutments are finished with 

 polished granite columns, with carved capitals of Malmsbury bluestone, a balustrade of 

 Malmsbury stone and cappings to the balustrade of polished granite ; the outer girders 

 are covered with ornamental castings. The roadway is made of wooden blocks and the 

 foot-path of tarred paving, and is carried on curved plates covered with Seyssel asphalt and 

 cement concrete : provision is made for the cable-trams. The roadway is thirty-one feet 

 above low water, and extends at that level up to the hill at the Immigrants' Home. 

 Then; are upwards of one hundred and forty thousand cubic yards of material in the 

 south approach, and over one hundred thousand cubic feet of ashler, one thousand tons 

 of wrought-iron and two hundred tons of cast-iron in the Bridge. The heaviest stones 

 the granite columns weigh twenty tons each. David Munro and Company were the 

 contractors for this bridge, the contract was signed in November, 1885, and the foun- 



