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want up-to-date "conveniences" - electric light and tramways and things like that. The
aristocracy are the people who own big stores. Talk about crude self-satisfied... The working
people are very discontented - always more strikes... It is rather like the Midlands of England,
the life, very familiar and rough... The people are all very friendly, yet foreign to me... The
tradesmen... are very unobtrusive. One nice thing... is that nobody asks questions... It's nice not
to have to start explaining oneself... This is the most democratic place I have ever been in. And
the more I see of democracy the more I dislike it. It just brings everything down to the mere
vulgar level of wages and prices, electric lights and water closets, and nothing else... They have
good wages, they wear smart boots and the girls all have silk stockings; they fly round on ponies
and buggies - sort of low one-horse traps - and in motor cars. They are all vaguely and
meaninglessly on the go. And it seems so empty, so nothing... That's what the life in a new
country does to you: it makes you so material, so outward, that your real inner self dies out, and
you clatter round like so many mechanical animals... Yet they are very trustful and kind and
quite competent in their jobs. There's no need to iock your doors, nobody will come and steal.
Nobody is better than anybody else, and it really is democratic. But it all feels so slovenly, slip-
shod, rootless, and empty, it is like a dream... Everything is so happy-go-lucky, and one
couldn't fret about anything if one tried. One just doesn't care... Nothing really matters. But they
let little things matter sufficiently to keep the whole show going... It is a weird place. In the
established sense, it is socially nil... But also there seems to be no inside life of any sort: just a
long lapse and drift... The country has an extraordinary hoary, weird attraction. As you get used
to it, it seems so old, as if it... was coal age, the age of great ferus and mosses. It hasn't got a
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consciousness -just none -toofar back... There is great charm in Australia... The people are
simple and easy-going and nice...'
It is to be doubted whether any of the Honeycombes had heard of DH Lawrence, or had read
his books. But he was right about the strikes. There was a police strike in Melbourne in
November 1923. As a result, on the Friday night before the Melbourne Cup, thousands ran riot
in the city centre, pillaging the stores in Bourke Street and elsewhere; 237 people were injured
in fights and as shop windows were smashed. None of the 636 policemen who went on strike
was reinstated. Volunteers, mainly returned soldiers, stood guard in the city until new police
recruits could be trained.
Lawrence was also right about the easy-going rather aimless society in which people lived; and
he was right about their basic concerns with 'conveniences', with wages, transport, toilets,
electric light and trams - things that made living easier still.
Trams began running in Footscray in September 1921, boosting property values, the building of
new homes and shops and the spread of suburbia west and south. Tramways also helped to
focus major shops and businesses in certain streets. While Hopkins and Buckley Streets and the
southern end of Nicholson Street declined, the northern section of Nicholson, as well as Paisley
and Barkly Streets prospered, people frequenting stores like Hooper's, Winner's (shoes),
Paterson's (furniture), Griffiths' (the jeweller's), Shaw & Co (the grocer's), Scovell & Spurling
(menswear), and Maples. Branches of Coles and Woolworths were yet to open in Footscray.
There were odorous hair-dressing saloons and boxing gyms and many half-filled pubs. There
were several picture palaces and several palais de danse, in addition to dance halls and halls for
every kind of social activity.
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