Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (20 page)

The blackfellas, who had been in these parts for thousands of years, have almost all left for parts unknown, having been hunted off the rest of their traditional lands, with only the occasional group to be seen here and there on the fringes of the encampments, living in their ‘humpies’. These structures consist of two forked sticks placed upright in the ground, with one horizontal stick perched between them, and upon that the Aborigines rest tree branches and large slabs of bark to give themselves partial protection from the weather.

‘They lie all around their fires at night,’ writes one digger to his family at home, ‘and all the covering they wear is a possum rug or a blanket thrown around them. Their principal food is the possum which they find out by knocking on the trees, and where they find a hollow sound they cut open the tree and so catch the opossum. They also kill Turkeys, pigeons and parrots with the boomerang which they are very expert at throwing.’

In truth, the diggers themselves are only marginally less nomadic than the natives, as the vast majority of them remain in calico tents and are capable of moving on short notice should news arrive of some other goldfield where the pickings are even greater. (Already, many have gone to try their luck at the new diggings at Forrest Creek.) True, a very few have constructed rough huts using split logs – known as ‘slabs’ – of eucalyptus trees and bark, but these are rudimentary shelters at best, and actually closer to rude.

Still, by now the settlement at Ballarat is starting to be established enough that some canvas saloons are even opening up for those who can afford a bit of fun. And many tents are in fact by now like small houses, frequently built around the solid structure of a large fireplace with a chimney, and a large hearth for cooking on.

The vast majority of diggers don’t mind the Aborigines who remain around and about. As recorded in the diary of one digger, Thomas Pierson, ‘They are given to theft otherwise inoffensive if not put up to be otherwise by whites, the bushrangers get them for guides.’

The diggers mostly want what is
in
their land, not this particular bit of land itself, and that is a crucial difference. Many of the Aborigines manage to survive by trading with the diggers. They give the diggers the amazingly warm and light possum skin cloaks that only they know how to make; in return, the diggers give to them grog and some of their strange food. And sometimes the diggers will pay to see them get all painted up and perform corroborees or show how they throw their boomerangs, something they are also asked to do for visiting dignitaries.

From late 1851 onwards, there are even – and this is an enormous breakthrough when they first arrive – a few white women. At first, when a woman very occasionally appeared on the diggings, the cry would go up, ‘There’s a woman!’, and instantly the tents would empty and head after head would pop up from the mine-shaft to gaze longingly upon her fine form while the suddenly self-conscious lady walked past, usually behind her suddenly protective and glowering husband.

‘There was no man, having the heart of a man, who did not bless the vision [of a woman],’ one of the first chroniclers of the times, William Bramwell Withers, would record, ‘while many an eye was moistened with the sudden tear as love, hope, disappointment, fear, struggled all at once in the homeless digger’s bosom.’

And, sure enough, where those women settle, the immediate area is soon brightened and practised eyes can spot her influence. The tins outside the tent are suddenly brighter; a suspended rope soon appears, on which is hung freshly washed laundry, including actual
sheets
; ‘a pet cockatoo, chained to a perch, makes noise enough to keep the “missus” from feeling lonely when the good man is at work’; and, of course, that good man is seen to have a smile for the first time in weeks – even a gleam in his eye – as he heads back to his tent after a long day’s digging.

As to grog, well, that is a little more problematic . . . but only a little. In an effort to keep good order, the government has placed a strict prohibition on the sale of liquors, but that is easily got around. For sly grog sellers are
everywhere.
They are men who either buy up big in Melbourne and smuggle it to the goldfields in the middle of drays carrying other supplies, or they have their own stills and make it themselves. Either way, if it is grog you want – nearly always hard liquor because wine and ales are far too bulky and expensive to cart – there is never a problem.

A nearby visitor noted, ‘No official supervision could prevent the smuggling of liquors, mostly of the vilest description.’

But it is still alcohol!

Drink up, lads, for tomorrow we may find gold!

6 November 1851, Geelong gets along

On this day a gold buyer in Geelong – an admittedly new occupation in this city – is just walking along, minding his own business, when a rather rough-looking character (who still can’t be as bad as he smells) suddenly heaves into view,
looking right at him
.
Is he about to be assaulted? Robbed?

‘Mr . . .’ the fellow addresses him. ‘I hear you’re a gold buyer.’

‘Yes,’ replies the Geelong man carefully, his nostrils twitching.

‘What are you giving?’

Ah-hah! The fellow only wants to trade gold! Relieved, the buyer replies, ‘Oh, if it’s a good sample, £3 per ounce, but I don’t care about buying very small lots. How much have you?’

‘I suppose pretty handy – 60 pounds.’

11 November 1851,
The Argus
reports . . .

It is not pretty reading. For this report, coming from Ballarat, informs the readers of Melbourne and wider Victoria what happens when a freshly arrived digger jumps into an abandoned hole to try his luck. Two government troopers arrive and ask him why he is in this hole. The digger, something of a ‘larrikin’, answers, ‘To wear out my old clothes’.

For his trouble, the unfortunate digger finds himself handcuffed and chained to a tree until the next morning! And now the correspondent of
The Argus
plaintively asks the question: ‘Now I ask Mr La Trobe if this is conduct to be tolerated. Is this the way to secure the goodwill of diggers who have plenty of arms and ammunition with them? Was this man a slave? Was he a wild beast? What was he? A free man, and to be thus treated.’

The reaction of the diggers themselves is reported to be equally savage, as placards soon appear all over the goldfields exhorting the diggers:

DOWN WITH LA TROBE!
–
–
THE COMMISSIONERS! PAY NO LICENSES.

ATTEND THE MEETING TONIGHT. THE GOVERNMENT OFFICERS ARE – – – SCOUNDRELS.

Such protests are deemed to be a good thing by
The Argus
correspondent, for, ‘Where is the man who will try to vindicate the conduct of the Government officials? They have been charged with partiality, imbecility, fraud and ignorance from the commencement of their career, and there they still remain. Whose blood would not boil at such a disgraceful stretch of authority as is here exhibited! Or who would not rather support the man thus shamefully ill-treated, than use his tongue, much less his arm, in defence of this mockery of a Government!’

The journalist goes further and takes direct aim at the irresponsible man who is most responsible for the coming disaster: ‘If Mr La Trobe is courting future fame, he will very soon have the honour of having his name handed down to posterity as the man who [severed] the few remaining links that still bound Victoria to the Parent State, for no man will sanction such acts of tyranny as this and when the diggers once resist his authority, that moment he may take ship, and flee the country.’

22 November 1851, the glad gold tidings spread to London and beyond

The news of the goldfields in Australia, particularly the staggering account of the finding of the Kerr Nugget, continues to spread throughout the world. On this day,
The Illustrated London News
has the headline story ‘The Gold Discovery In Australia’, and is beside itself with enthusiasm: ‘We have accounts of the progress made at “the digging” which shows that Australia is likely to surpass California in the wonderful productiveness of its fields. We learn, for instance, by the present advices, that in one hole lumps of gold weighing altogether 106 lb were picked up by an individual.’

Typical is the reaction of an 18-year-old Scotsman by the name of William Craig, whose entire soul comes alive as he reads the thrilling news from Australia.

‘YES, that’s the land for me!’ he would later describe his feelings. ‘A continent in itself, inhabited by only a few civilised beings and wild aborigines, while millions of acres of good land are waiting settlement by people of the right stamp.’

Another who is impressed by the things he reads in
The Illustrated London News
is none other than that red-headed Latin man of action, former Italian revolutionary Raffaello Carboni.

After recovering as well as he could from the wounds he had received while fighting alongside Garibaldi, Carboni had been obliged to leave Italy for his own safety and, moving through all of France, Germany and Malta, finally finished here in London, where he has been working – far too hard, in his view, for far too little money – as a translator. The idea of finding golden nuggets in the Australian bush is really most appealing . . .

Other Europeans, like one Robert Rede, are luckier still. For they are already there. The well-educated 39-year-old son of a Royal Navy officer – who had once trained to be a medico at the Royal London College of Surgeons before drifting to Paris for nearly a decade – is a restless soul who just happens to arrive in Melbourne at this very time. Eager to try his luck in this new country, he soon makes his way to Bendigo and through both digging and doctoring – he becomes known as the ‘little doctor’, despite the fact that he hadn’t completed his medical studies – immediately does well.

29 November 1851, Victoria, the record is set straight

It is only a simple letter to the
Geelong Advertiser
,
and at the time is barely remarked upon. Still, it is the very notion that inspired its writing – the desire to set the record straight – that, with the passage of the years, will turn the letter into an ever more important foundation stone of truth. For the author of the letter is one Archibald Yuille, William’s cousin, and he is quickly to the point:

BALLARAT, 25TH NOVEMBER, 1851

Sir,

Perceiving that the name of the diggings here is usually pronounced incorrectly I beg to state that it is a native name, and that the accent is not on the last syllable, but on the one before it as written above.

It is a pity that Englishmen should spoil the euphony of the native language.

I am, Sir,

Your most obedient servant,

ARCHD. B. YUILLE

Owner of the Run Ballarat.

Early December 1851, Melbourne, whither the withering police

His name is James Yarrow, and he used to be poor, earning just four shillings a day for the Victorian police. But that was then, in the distant past, just over six weeks ago. Now,
now
he is rich. And he has the proof! Marching into the dim, dingy and stifling barracks where he used to live – he can now barely comprehend how he was able to stand the sheer dullness of it – he meets up with his old comrades, who are still wearing the same drab blue uniforms as ever, and pulls out the largest wad of notes they have ever
seen
.
There is £500 if there is a pound, and that is what he has earned in just six weeks on the diggings since he resigned! His former comrades couldn’t get that kind of money in seven whole years of walking the beat in Melbourne, wrestling with Vandemonians, Aborigines, drunken Irishmen and wild Californians, and James has earned this in just
six weeks
!
And it has all happened at a time when the price of bread has doubled and the price of wood and water has gone up five times, while their wages haven’t changed.

In response, some of his former colleagues immediately give notice, even as they prepare to head to the diggings. Others wait as long as that afternoon. Only a very few of the more timid souls do nothing, but within days what’s left of the Victorian police have a crisis at hand. It is so bad that the desperate Chief Commissioner of Police, Evelyn Sturt – the brother of the great explorer Charles Sturt, who was one of the first to penetrate the interior of the country – feels obliged to write two letters in quick succession to Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe, the second informing him that at a single muster, 50 out of his 55 city police had given notice and would cease service from 31 December 1851. And that, he claims, is ‘notwithstanding the considerable increase to their pay I was instructed to offer them’. In fact, he is soon authorised to offer his ordinary constables a 50 per cent increase –
six
shillings a day, for the next
12 months
– if they’ll only stay! And yet they’re simply not interested.

But what more can La Trobe do, beyond across-the-board civil service pay increases, to try to hold on to as many of his own employees as he can, as well as refuse licenses to men who have quit their jobs without notice? Not a lot.

Nowhere is the problem worse than sailors abandoning newly arrived ships. It is so bad that deeply alarmed ship-brokers send a letter to the Colonial Land and Emigrant Commissioners in London, urgently requesting that a few policemen and colonial soldiers can be placed on board each ship while in Port Phillip, with the specific task of ensuring no seamen try to steal away. Just to make the point, they also wonder if a warship posted nearby would also be helpful, not to mention some shuttle steamers to disembark emigrants so the ships themselves, with their precious sailors, can remain as far off shore as possible.