But I cannot
boast that I ever made much profit out of it--that is, in cash--
as I found that the public taste for wine required to be educated,
and it took so long to do it that I had to drink most of the wine
myself. The best testimony to its excellence is the fact that I am
still alive.
The colonial taste for good liquor was spoiled from the very
beginning, first by black strap and rum, condensed from the steam of
hell, then by Old Tom and British brandy, fortified with tobacco--
this liquor was the nectar with which the ambrosial station hands
were lambed down by the publicans--and in these latter days by
colonial beer, the washiest drink a nation was ever drenched with.
the origin of bad beer dates from the repeal of the sugar duty in
England; before that time beer was brewed from malt and hops, and
that we had "jolly good ale and old," and sour pie.
A great festival was impending at Colac, to consist of a regatta on
the lake, the first we ever celebrated, and a picnic on its banks.
All the people far and near invited themselves to the feast, from the
most extensive of squatters to the oldest of old hands. The
blackfellows were there, too--what was left of them. Billy Leura
walked all the way from Camperdown, and on the day before the regatta
came to my house with a couple of black ducks in his hand.
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