“The influence of fire and water is well shown in this election, as one booth is burnt down and another is completely covered by water, so that voters had to be carried by boats to an imaginary polling-place situate in a launch placed over the site of the real booth.”

The late election for the Victorian Legislative Council was particularly cheerful in one department, in consequence of an intervention of Providence in the shape of a second-rate deluge which overflowed parts of the Northern Province and made it exceedingly difficult for the free and enlightened electors to trot up and record their votes with the promptness and vivacity that are so refreshing in taxpayers of advanced intelligence. In one or two places the theatres of action were laid waste by the wet, and a great expanse of dampness, floating water-logged dogs, cramped cats, drowned cows, tables chairs, out-houses, and other stray features of a submerged civilisation, hung over the country, and junks, scows, and other marine vessels were moored above the sunken booths, and the poll (that palladium of Victorian liberty to which the duly qualified voter is earnestly invited to repair early) was set up in imagination on their decks, and to these “booths” the electors had to sojourn through the wide waste of waters before they could record their votes for Protection and free, secular and compulsory education.

No country could reasonably expect a voter to go over two miles of water to exert his privileges if he hadn’t a boat, but such is the patriotism of the dwellers in that devastated neighbourhood that at the time appointed numbers might have been seen paddling for the poll in wooden tubs, hog-troughs, barrels, and tanks, while others launched themselves on hollow logs and wrecked cattle, and risked the dangers of the deep whilst floating off to the ballot box to plump for freedom and light. There were others, however, who were accustomed to wading to the poll through a sea of beer, and who regarded with alarm the increasing influence of the temperance party on modern politics – they abstained from voting altogether out of blank disgust for the change.

For the convenience of the aged and crippled, and to facilitate the approach of influential electors stranded at a distance, a service of boats was put on and electioneering agents hired mud-punts and moved over the face of the waters to trawl for derelict property owners and pick up such supporters as might be cast adrift rudderless on the raging deep. Of course, under such a stress of circumstances, warm party spirit was excusable in the aquatic touts, and no maudlin sentimentality was allowed to interfere with the pressing business of getting the right parties to the poll. When a tout, who was out fishing in the interest of the Freetrade candidate, came alongside a submerged house and found a mother and seven children stranded on a barn, the cat hooked to the clothes-prop, and the husband and father clinging to a chimney, he invariably hove to, and hailed the wreck:-

“Flotsam, ahoy there! What politics?”

If the swamped householder ran up Protectionist colours, the tout would intimate that he did not want him on the voyage and sweep the horizon for other prizes, and that family had to hang out there in the wet till an agent sailing under a friendly flag came along and picked up the survivors.

Electors were found suspended in trees and recovered from hen-coops, stables, monuments, and other elevated places, and the supporters of the two causes had a very hot time pulling up and down stream and halloing across the waters after castaways who might have a vote to spare for the right party. One man named Jones was particularly zealous in the interests of Freetrade (this is not the Jones you know – his name is John Jones). Jones was a disciple of Cobden at thirty “bob” a day. He is a selector between elections and an energetic man, goes at a thing when he undertakes to do it and rips through like a steam saw at a pine log. There’s no holding Jones. He launched his own boat and did more for Foreign-trade that day than the N.S.W. Association could lump up in a month; he tugged his old mud-punt about the face of nature for fourteen hours, chasing drifting electors and plucking qualified voters who swore by his man off spars and barns, and hauling piled-up boat-loads of the saved to the anchored official scow, there to poll straight for the abolition of tariffs and Bibles in State schools. Jones worked himself pretty well out of his skin, and then, when there was only about time for another excursion, he was taken aside by a prominent politician and refreshed with rum and pressed to excel himself in a last spurt round to glean some more votes from the remorseless waters for the salvation of the nation.

Jones buckled up again, and pushed off in his Dutch-built junk. Fired with renewed enthusiasm, he swept the waves far and wide, but all the voters appeared to have been taken off by this time, and the enthusiast was despairing of recovering nay more souls for the glorious cause when he was delighted to see a free and independent elector making signals of distress form a distance. The taxpayer had drifted into the current of the Campaspe, and was bowling down stream at a tremendous rate, reaching for straws and similar visible means of support, and making a terrible splash in his anxiety to secure a permanent place on the surface. Jones dug in his oars, and laid for the stranger. It was a stiff race, but the tout overhauled his man and pulled up alongside and furled his sculls.

“For the love of heaven, reach me a stick!” yelled the elector, sorting out about half-a-gallon of flood-water.

Mr. Jones kept his barque off, and floated a-breast of the castaway.

“Have you a vote for the Legislative Council?” he queried, with some show of anxiety.

The stranger’s affirmative answer bubbled up through the flood as he went under again.

“What are your political opinions, now?” resumed the tout, endeavouring to assume a casual, disinterested tone, as the swimmer came up, and took some fresh air. “Freetrade, I suppose?”

“No – protection to native industries, free secular and compulsory education, and Australian nationalism.”

“Dear, dear! That’s unfortunate,” mused the electioneering agent aloud. “I’m a Freetrader myself. I’m not soliciting the suffrages of the electors for the Freetrade candidate; I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

“Great Caesar, man!” shrieked the swamped-out patriot, “ain’t you going to fish me out of this? Can’t you see I’m catching my death of cold?”

“No doubt you have never given due consideration to the relative advantages of Freetrade and Protection for a young country like this,” continued Jones in the same musing tone, and affecting not to hear the Protectionist’s plea. “Now,” said he, seating himself on the edge of the boat, “suppose we argue the matter out.”

The stranger struggled gamely to hold himself afloat, but a wave struck him and filled him nearly up to the chin. Mr. Jones gave the man time to empty himself and control his feelings somewhat before resuming.

“Have you paused, sir, to consider that the new impost put upon eggs by the present Government will practically preclude the families of poor working men from indulging in that nutritious diet during the close season?”

“To h—-l with eggs!” spluttered the free and independent elector; “this ain’t no time for political arguments – I’m nearly done up!”

“Let me see,” said Jones, drawing out a bulky pocket-book, “I have here several columns of statistics bearing on the two questions; if you’ll excuse me I’ll read them to you.”

The elector beat the water with failing energy, and there was a look of despair in his face as he pleaded to be lifted out of the stream, but the Freetrade agent went ahead with his statistics, and reeled off long, agonising lists of figures, and aggravating statements, and deductions calculated to unship the intellect, whilst his audience was being bowled along in the water and making wild but ineffectual endeavours to reach the boat.

“Now you will appreciate the advantages of Freetrade,” said Mr. Jones, closing his note-book.

The elector appeared to waver.

“You recognise the force of my arguments?”

The elector went under and came up again, spirted, and seemed almost convinced.

“I am here soliciting votes for the Freetrade candidate, a cultured gentleman who will work himself threadbare for this district. Can I –“

“Book me for straight-out Freetrade and Denominational grants!” shrieked the elector.

Jones grabbed him as he sank, and hauled him onboard unconscious.

The Freetrade canvasser pulled back to the polling-place in the shortest time mentioned in history. The converted elector was pumped out, and zealous partisans applied hasty remedies for the restoration of the half-drowned, to which the rescued responded just in time to record the last vote for the noble cause of Freetrade and the consolations of religion in common schools.

"Edward Dyson"
The Bulletin, 14 December 1889, p8