Illywhacker

We have plans for entering the next big air race as husband and wife. Doubtless you will read about us in the papers but I would much rather, dear Dicksy, that you took the train up one weekend. I have spoken to Mummy and if you are wretchedly poor at the moment she will happily (yes, happily) pay for your hotel room here at the Oriental where we are quite the "Honoured Guests" and are known to all staff who we are privileged to call by first names although they (do not bite your red revolutionary lips with rage) are not permitted the return of this familiarity.

H. will take no money from us. It is a sore point and we have given up offering to help him while he establishes himself again. The loss of the aircraft factory was a cruel blow to him and now he must start to build up again. He is selling cars for Barret's, the Ford agents, working very hard indeed poor dear. He is also building a house although where or what it is he will not tell us. It is to be my wedding present from him.

Dear Dicksy, he is so kind. He looks after Mummy so nicely and does not complain when she wants to be driven here or there or become impatient when she wants to crawl along at five miles an hour, so slowly that men in horse-drawn wagons want to overtake and shout abuse at us. Hedoes clench his fists around the steering wheel and look like he could bite a rat, but he is quite lamb-like and does nothing nasty.

I have a lovely room overlooking Collins Street and I see all manner of celebrity walking below. Alfred Deakin, a fat old man, was at dinner last night (not at our table) and Herbert was kind enough to get his autograph for Mummy which was so nice of him, because he is not a groveller and the incident must have caused him pain.

I am writing ceaselessly. I am due for flying lessons on every Wednesday morning. I go to the theatre and the galleries. I remember the things that you taught me, Dicksy. I think of you as a true friend. If you will not answer my letters properly at least send me a postcard, unsigned if you wish, to let me know that you are, at least, opening the envelopes.

With much love and affection, your friend, Phoebe 63 Melbourne, in case you did not know, has its charms: botanical gardens, splendid churches, a high-domed public library where an old man can read the newspapers and stay cool on a hot day, etc. But there is no use denying that it is a flat place, divided up into a grid of streets by a draughtsman with a ruler and set square. The names of streets are just as orderly. King precedes William, neatly, exactly parallel. Queen lies straight in bed beside Elizabeth and meets Bourke (the explorer) and Latrobe (the governor) briefly on corners whose angles measure precisely 90 degrees.

Melbourne has a railway station famous for showing fifteen clocks on its front door, like a Victorian matron with a passion for punctuality, all bustle, crinolines and dirty underwear. It has Collins Street which is famous, in Melbourne at least, for resembling Paris, by which it is meant that the street has trees and exclusive shops where women in black with violently red lips and too much powder on their ageing cheeks are able to intimidate women like Molly McGrath by calling them "modom".

Oh, it's a good enough town, but it can take a while to realize it.

There is a passion in Melbourne you might not easily notice on a casual visit and I must not make it sound a dull thing, or sneer at it, for it is a passion I share – Melbourne has a passion for owning land and building houses. There is nothing the people of Melbourne care for as much as their red-tiled roofs, their lemon tree in the back garden, their hens, their Sunday dinners. You will not learn much about the city strolling around the deserted streets on a Sunday, no more than you will learn about an ants' nest by walking over it. Thus, when I seek something peaceful to think of, some quiet corner to escape into, I do not think of sandy beaches or rivers or green paddocks, I imagine myself in a suburban street in Melbourne on a chilly autumn afternoon, the postman blowing his whistle, a dog crossing the road to pee on those three-feet-wide strips of grass beside the road that are known as "nature strips".

The people of Melbourne understand the value of a piece of land. They do not leave it around for thistles to grow on, or cars to be dumped on. And this makes it a very difficult place for a man with no money to take possession of his necessary acre.

When Molly, Phoebe and I took up residence in the Oriental Hotel in Collins Street, Melbourne, there was pressure applied to me to accept money from the McGrath Estate in order to purchase land. I will not say I was not tempted, but I am proud to say I did not succumb. I found my land, and took it, although its legal owners (the Church of England) were not aware of it at the time.