Watching the most recent episode of Cranford on ABC the other night, I was struck by the reactions of the Cranford ladies when they travelled on a steam train for the first time, concerned that their eyes might pop out with the excessive speed.
A similar sort of episode is described in an account in the Sydney Gazette for 18th June 1831. The Gazette's correspondent travelled on what purported to be the first excursion trip by a steamer in Australia, when the Sophia Jane ventured from Sydney to Middle Harbour. In a breathless piece of reporting he waxed lyrical over the marvellous journey. The steamer had no sooner left the wharf at Sydney, it seemed, than it was racing over the quiet waters of Middle Harbour: “Her velocity was astounding.”
A similar sort of episode is described in an account in the Sydney Gazette for 18th June 1831. The Gazette's correspondent travelled on what purported to be the first excursion trip by a steamer in Australia, when the Sophia Jane ventured from Sydney to Middle Harbour. In a breathless piece of reporting he waxed lyrical over the marvellous journey. The steamer had no sooner left the wharf at Sydney, it seemed, than it was racing over the quiet waters of Middle Harbour: “Her velocity was astounding.”
I couldn’t help picturing the reactions of the handful of settlers living at Middle Harbour at that time, for whom the loudest noise would have been the ringing of an axe on a tree or the whinny of a horse. Suddenly, tearing over the water, laden with a hundred or more toffs quaffing champagne, with her engines going full pelt, the Sophia Jane breaks the silence, the harbinger of things to come.
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