With brown low cliffs and flats, the land stretches out to east and west as far as the eye can see.

On great patches of it a dense smoke lies heavily, here rising into huge horns blown backward by the incoming sea-breeze, there scattered and whirled into wreaths and lost in a grey and permeating mist.

No sign of verdure, as we mean by verdure in England; only everywhere low, closely-packed, sombre and bristly underwoods, the everlasting gum-tree scrub.

No rivers, creeks, or inlets.

The barren coast runs along unbroken for five hundred miles at a cast, from river-mouth to river-mouth, from harbour to harbour.

Such is a summer scene on the South Victorian coast, and in winter it is much the same, save that the air is crystal clear and pure in its freedom from the smoke of the bush fires.

It is a climate of sudden and cruel extremes.

The north wind in the summer blows down from the bare interior with the breath of a furnace, shrivelling up all vegetation, driving people within their closed and darkened houses.

The south wind comes direct from the Antarctic without a break and brings a “change” whose coolness is often icily chill.

Christmas is spent either in the nearest approach to a cellar, or close around the blazing fires. And sometimes both within a few days.