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rn butter, cook a good damper, and mix a pudding. The worst risk you run is that of getting married, and finding yourself treated with twenty times the respect and consideration you may meet with in England. Here (as far as number goes) women beat the "lords of creation;" in Australia it is the reverse, and, there we may be pretty sure of having our own way. But to those ladies who cannot wait upon themselves, and whose fair fingers are unused to the exertion of doing anything useful, my advice is, for your own sakes remain at home. Rich or poor, it is all the same; for those who can afford to give 40 pounds a-year to a female servant will scarcely know whether to be pleased or not at the acquisition, so idle and impertinent are they; scold them, and they will tell you that "next week Tom, or Bill, or Harry will be back from the diggings, and then they'll be married, and wear silk dresses, and be as fine a lady as yourself;" and with some such words will coolly dismiss themselves from your service, leaving their poor unfortunate mistress uncertain whether to be glad of their departure or ready to cry because there's nothing prepared for dinner, and she knows not what to set about first. For those who wish to invest small sums in goods for Australia, boots and shoes, cutlery, flash jewellery, watches, pistols (particularly revolvers), gunpowder, fancy articles, cheap laces, and baby-linen offer immense profits. The police in Victoria is very inefficient, both in the towns and on the roads. Fifteen persons were stopped during the same afternoon whilst travelling on the highway between Melbourne and St. Kilda. They were robbed, and tied to trees within sight of each other--this too in broad daylight. On the roads to the diggings it is still worse; and no one intending to turn digger should leave England without a good supply of fire-arms. In less than one week more than a dozen robberies occurred between Kyneton and Forest Creek, two of which terminated in murder. The diggings themselves are comparatively safe--quite as much so as Melbourne itself--and there is a freemasonry in the bush which possesses an irresistible charm for adventurous bachelors, and causes them to prefer the risk of bushrangers to witnessing the dreadful scenes that are daily and hourly enacting in a colonial town. Life in the bush is wild, free and independent. Healthy exercise, fine scenery, and a clear and buoyant atmosphere, maintain an exci
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