Sydney Heads

By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of Sydney Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a great sun and pierced the firmament of darkness with a far-reaching sword of light.

If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude, then we could know a place's climate by its position on the map; and so we should know that the climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the climate of Columbia, S. C., and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is about the same distance south of the equator that those other towns are north of it—thirty-four degrees. But no, climate disregards the parallels of latitude. In Arkansas they have a winter; in Sydney they have the name of it, but not the thing itself.

Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the British Government began to transport convicts to it. Altogether, New South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains; they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them; they were heavily punished for even slight infractions of the rules; "the cruelest discipline ever known" is one historian's description of their life.—[The Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie.]

Cancel Queensland

My health had broken down in New York in May; it had remained in a doubtful but fairish condition during a succeeding period of 82 days; it broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until after I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture engagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing Queensland. In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter weather was not advisable.

The City of Melbourne

October 4 Friday – The Clemens party was still at the Menzies Hotel in Melbourne. Sam’s carbuncle problem caused the cancellation of a performance planned for Bendigo’s Masonic Hall.
From Cooper (102-3): "The next day, Dr. Thomas Fitzgerald, the leading Australian surgeon of the day and the first Australian to be knighted for eminence in medicine, attended Clemens. The doctor froze and lanced Clemens's carbuncle, gave him an injection of opium, and prescribed plasters, which Mrs. Clemens conscientiously applied."

Mark Twain, his wife Olivia and daughter Clara, along with his agent Mr. R.S. Smythe took the seventeen hour overland express from Melbourne to Adelaide, October 11, 1895 at 4:30 p.m. Not far from Melbourne, Dr. N. T. FitzGerald detrained at "one of those mighty estates" where the surgeon lived.

On the Train to Adelaide

Why, a literature might be made out of the aboriginal all by himself, his character and ways are so freckled with varieties—varieties not staled by familiarity, but new to us. You do not need to invent any picturesquenesses; whatever you want in that line he can furnish you; and they will not be fancies and doubtful, but realities and authentic. In his history, as preserved by the white man's official records, he is everything—everything that a human creature can be. He covers the entire ground. He is a coward—there are a thousand fact to prove it.

We left Adelaide in due course, and went to Horsham, in the colony of Victoria; a good deal of a journey, if I remember rightly, but pleasant. Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor—one of those famous dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray, bare, sombre, melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long drouths, but a horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain. A country town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden plots, and plenty of shrubbery and flowers. 

November 1 -- noon. A fine day, a brilliant sun. Warm in the sun, cold in the shade—an icy breeze blowing out of the south. A solemn long swell rolling up northward. It comes from the South Pole, with nothing in the way to obstruct its march and tone its energy down. I have read somewhere that an acute observer among the early explorers—Cook?

Section title taken from Shillingsburg;s "At Home Abroad". Mark Twain returns to Sydney from his trip to New Zealand December 17th, 1895 and departs the shores of Australiasia January 4, 1896. He visits Sydney, Scone, Melbourne, Malverne and Adelaide. His final anchorage is at Albany, Western Australia. He does not go ashore.