THE TURF HUNTERS OF MELBOURNE.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 34, 15 November 1871, Page 3

THE TURF HUNTERS OF MELBOURNE.

“ John Perrybingle” gives some wholesome advice to the turf-hunters of Melbourne in his latest contribution to the Weekly Times. He writes The young women that turned up their noses at the Australian youth, and went cracked over the Flying Squadron, have had their reward. They’ve been put into books, and shown how the squadron laughed at ’em, and spun yarns about the key of the kitchen garden at Toorak, and likewise benches under shady trees at South Yarra, not to speak of Fern-tree Gully and the little games there. A Fiying Squadron blackguard’s been writing a book on all this. Of course the man ought to be drowned, or kicked from Cape Leuwin to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and back again. Everybody,s swearing at him, in a manner of speaking, for ‘ kissing and telling ;’ but you can take my word for it that, in a general way, the chap that really does the kissing doesn't tell. It’s the lying humbug that would like to if he dared, that makes up these stories, and not the actual busser. Still, my dear friends, old and young, do you think it’s the square thing to do to pick up with a class of wandering sailormen, and to go and chuck your wives and daughters at ’em? Put it this way: What would you say if common people of my class did it ? How would you have sung out ‘ police,’ if we had hired all the furniture vans and carriers’ carts in the place, and had invited the Jacks of the fleet out for a spree ? But whatever would you have said, if when these aforesaid Jacks and rolled up from the Bay—smelling of rum and tobacco—we common, vulgar (ahem) people had taken Tom Bowline, and Ben Backstay, and the rest, and had handed our female wives and daughters into their charge for a day’s romp on the Brighton beach ? That’s the way to say it. We ‘lower orders’ don’t do that kind of thing anyway. We don’t give a chance to any dirty sneaking scoundrel to say to us, as the Flying Squadron cad writes of the Mayor’s picnic ;—‘ With an alacrity worthy of so great a Corporation, two naval officers and two young women were told off in each chaise.’ By the immortal Jingo, if any Mayor wants to give another picnic to a crowd of Jack Tars, the ‘young women’ had better bo left at homo darning stockings.”