Burwood - 21 Coppin Gv, Hawthorn, Melbourne, VIC

” . . . Several pretty spots lie within pleasant drives of Melbourne.  Heidelberg, of which I heard great eulogy, I only saw from a distance, but the situation must be very lovely, embosomed in swelling woods, undulations, with the Dandenong range of hills in the distance.  Kew, though so near the city, is (or was tolerably fresh and unspoiled, with some fine trees, on parklike ground, and an extensive and pleasing view; and Hawthorn, on the banks of the Yarra, is a very pretty village; there, too, is the most charming cottage residence I saw in Victoria; and being the property and the creation of a public character, Dr. (now Sir James) Palmer, Speaker of the Legislative Council, I think I need have no scruple in mentioning it.  The great, and unfortunately too peculiar charm of “Burwood,” is the excellent taste with which the grand old native trees around have been preserved, and the quaint, picturesque Elizabethan house, so skilfully placed nestling among them, that the necessity of its own youth does not obtrude itself on one’s mind: all looks in perfect keeping and consistency.  The material is the darkblue stone I admired so much in Melbourne buildings, and it forms an effective groundtint for the lovely climbing plants, which are trained in graceful draperies about the house, one side of which is clothed with ivy, garlanded over with roses and fuchsias.  Masses of the dark shining foliage, and bright blossoms of the scarlet Tecoma, cover another part; and the grounds and flower borders beneath the patriarchal Euculyptus trees are full of bright forms and sweet odours, legions of violets adding their soft fragrance to the latter.  From the sloping bank of the Yarra, here fringed with young and graceful trees, is a vast, distant view of Melbourne (suggestive of London seen from Hampstead), just enough to enhance the beauty and quiet of such a retreat.  I saw nothing else so English looking as “Burwood,” in the whole colony; and my powers of encomium do not farther go.  The grand, old, gnarled, and bending gumtree, which figures in a sketch I made there, might almost be fancied an oak, especially with that arched porch and oriel window peeping under its branches, and is to me almost as much a reminder of home, as of the pleasant time when it was sketched.  There is also a “Cloth of Gold” rose in my garden here now, a gift of remembrance from thence, for I still sometimes gratify an old English habit, by bringing home floral mementos and reliques, from places visited, or mementos and reliques, from places visited, or friends left far away.  But our own removals have been such, that despite my desire to keep my garden pets around me, I can now look back, and trace them out by fives and tens, and twenties, inevitably left in former homes, sometimes to be preserved and cared for by other tenants, but far oftener to be forgotten and destroyed . . . “

Source:  Excerpt – ‘Over The Straits: A Visit To Victoria’ – by Louisa Anne Meredith – published 1861