Williamstown were digging holes elsewhere. He pointed to a shop where we could purchase a spade. The father and grandfather of the child were decent people from “Auld Scotland,” and this seemed a strange way to bury a beloved one. However, there was no help for it. A spade was purchased, and while the shopman was taking his ten shillings for it, we had time to inquire where the minister lived. One went to tell him, and the others went over the trackless waste to seek the church-yard. It was close to the seaside, a rude fence round it, and large blocks of bluestone were studded between the scattered graves. The father fixed on a spot, and began his sad work. It was the first time he had ever known a parent dig his own child’s grave, and the tears ran down his face. His anxiety was increased when he found that there were only a few inches of soil on a rocky bottom. However there were deeper patches, and he found one and dug a grave. I wandered round the grave-yard until the minister should arrive. There were a few grave-stones, and a few graves fenced in, and round one or two a little walk of sand and shells with which the beach abounds. My attention was particularly directed to one grave—an adult’s by its size—but whose, or whether male or female, I could not tell. Someone’s body doubtless, and the rude memorial left was a little wooden cross, not carved, but simply two bits of wood—one long and one short—tied together by a bit of silk, torn from a kerchief, and on the upper piece two letters rudely carved; but I was aroused from my reverie by some one saying, “The Minister, sir.” I saw a tall man dressed in black, with a bundle under his arm, and a pair of long boots on his legs, duly bespattered with mud, for he had to wade some distance through rotten, boggy ground; he got over the fence, and before I got up he had unfolded his bundle, put on his surplice, and very kindly and feelingly performed the last sad service of the Episcopal Church. This was another thing my Scotch friends had never heard, and I knew that they thought this a queer country. The minister shook hands with the bereaved mourners; it was their feelings—not their dress—that betokened them. He very kindly refused a fee, bade us “good-bye,” and returned home, we to the ship.
The second sun that dawned on us found nearly all our sailors gone. The ship’s company consisted of the captain and his wife, the doctor and his family, and two men, who were either too lame or lazy to follow the rest. When the captain had to go ashore the doctor and his sons had to pull him to the beach. Next day the doctor had some business on shore, and the captain and the doctor’s sons constituted the crew. On both, and on sundry other occasions the boat was moored, and after a “nobbler” at Liardet’s we wended our way to Melbourne—a two-mile walk, and half way nearly knee-deep in watery mud. After leaving the beach we did not pass a tent between there and Melbourne.
