Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (23 page)

Let us give the last word on the subject, however, to the opening words of Samuel Sidney, who in his book
The Three Colonies of Australia
,
which has also come out this year, assures his readers that the discovery of gold will – yes, my friends – transform Australia from a mere ‘sheepwalk tended by nomadic burglars to the wealthiest offset of the British Crown – a land of promise for the adventurous – a home of peace and independence for the industrious – an El Dorado and an Arcadia combined, where the hardest and the easiest best-paid employments are to be found; where every striving man who rears a race of industrious children may sit under the shadow of his own vine and his own fig-tree not without work, but with little care living on his own land, looking down the valleys to his herds, and towards the hills to his flocks, amid the humming of bees which know no winter’.

18 March 1852, Forrest Creek receives a military ‘force’

It has taken a great deal of time, admittedly, but after Charles La Trobe’s desperate plea three months earlier to the Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, this is the morning, at 7 am, that from out of the thick mist suddenly appears at the Forrest Creek diggings the old army pensioners – the 99th Regiment! And, look, maybe they feel they are marching onto the diggings, but that is not the way it looks to the diggers. Shuffling, more like it. There are a little over a hundred of these ghostly figures in their blue cloth coats and forage caps, with bushy white whiskers, limping along the best they can.

One digger, Oliver Ragless, and his mates are having their usual morning repast of lightly burnt damper washed down by gallons of black billy tea when they see these extraordinary figures slowly emerge. When finally the diggers do make the arrivals out, the reaction is swift: they burst out laughing. This little posse is going to control the whole 25,000 of them? That is a
riot.
And it very well might result in one . . .

For all the pensioners’ drunken ways, however – and Police Commissioner Sturt would say of them, ‘[They] appear to me to be the most drunken set of men I have ever met with’ – the view of the authorities is that they are better than nothing. This very month the local foot police have gone on strike for higher wages, and it is now doubly important to have
some
men in uniform on the diggings. And the way things are turning out, it is becoming ever more apparent that in a choice between military and police, it is better to have military men because not only do you only have to pay them a shilling a day – ‘taking the Queen’s shilling’, as it is referred to – but, far more importantly, they can also be shot for desertion.

Late May 1852, on the Eureka, a man does not look a gift-horse in the mouth . . .

Strange, how things work out.

Sometimes, when the horse has bolted it brings great good fortune instead of calamity. On this particular day a Ballarat storekeeper by the name of Paul Gooch sends out a blackfella to look for his animal, and it this man who, as Gooch would later explain to the
Geelong Advertiser
,
‘picked up a nugget on the surface. Afterwards I sent out a party to explore, who proved that gold was really to be found in abundance.’ This place, just a mile north-east of Golden Point, comes to be known as ‘Eureka’, and within days hordes of diggers – with the Irish heavily represented – are streaming there.

And in equally classic fashion, from the central part of the goldfields, the diggers ‘follow the lead’, branching out as they try to follow the course of the ancient creek beds far below, where the jewellers’ shops may be found – always praying to find a junction of such creek beds, where the treasures would be guaranteed to make Aladdin himself blush.

In the case of the Eureka lead, it soon becomes apparent that it is heading to a junction with both the Canadian Lead and the Gravel Pits Lead – the latter of which lies right beneath the Government Camp. As noted by one of the first of the roughly contemporary writers to do the story justice, W. B. Withers, those three leads make up ‘the Golden Trinity that made Ballarat famous throughout the civilised world’.

16 June 1852, Gravesend, Kent, 27 miles east of London, on the south bank of the Thames

She is the good ship
Scindian
,
a three-masted barque of 650 tons, and on this sparkling English summer’s day she is shipshape and at last ready to go. For not only are her passengers all aboard and below decks, but the wind is finally blowing from the west.

Thrilled to be leaving many of their woes in their wake, the bulk of the passengers are in fact assisted emigrants courtesy of Caroline Chisholm’s Family Colonization Loan Society program, an organisation that receives strong support from the great Charles Dickens, among others. The system is that those emigrants (or their relatives in Australia) first put their life savings with the Society, which then lends the passenger whatever else they need to pay their fare. Then, once they land in the colony, agents of Caroline Chisholm welcome them, help them to find employment and arrange to have the debt repaid by convenient instalments.

With the weather-worn visage of one who has spent a lifetime at sea, and the grin of one who knows the moment he has been waiting for is at hand, Captain James Cammell gives the order: ‘Weigh the anchors!’ Like an echo, that order bizarrely grows louder as it is repeated down the chain of command from the First Mate to the Second Mate and the Second Mate to the sailors, who then begin the hard haul on the ropes, then the whole ship is suddenly alive with the booming command . . . ‘Weigh the anchor . . !’
‘
Weigh the anchor
. . !’ ‘WEIGH THE ANCHOR . . !’

The crew weigh the anchor, singing a ditty as they go, so as to keep in the same rhythm, even as the next order issues forth. And all haul now, lads, as we sing . . . and
haul
. . .
and . . . HAUL!

The cry goes up: ‘Raise tacks and sheets . . !’
‘
Raise tacks and sheets
!’
‘RAISE TACKS AND SHEETS!’

And sing as we haul, lads!

Oh, I’m bound for Australia, the land of the free

Where there’ll be a welcome for
me . .
.

When I’ve worked in Australia for twenty long years

One day will I head homeward bound

With a nice little fortune tucked under me wing

By a steamship I’ll travel, I’m bound.

So, ‘tis goodbye to Sally and goodbye to Sue

When I’m leavin’ Australia so free

Where the gals are so kind, but the one left behind

Is the one that will one day splice me.

The songs go on, even as dozens of sailors are now shinnying up the masts and the rigging like demented monkeys, and only seconds later the first of the sails is unfurled, catching that precious westerly wind.

Of course, with all the shouting the realisation hits all aboard that they are underway, and the ship suddenly disgorges onto its deck most of its 192 adult passengers with their 77 children, all eager to get a last look at England as it slowly, almost imperceptibly, begins to drift away.

Three of those adults are from the family of the late, great Fintan Lalor, who had given his life to the cause of liberating Ireland from seven centuries of British occupation. One of Fintan’s sisters, Margarett, who is in her early 40s, and his younger brothers – the 29-year-old Richard and 25-year-old Peter – have come to the heart-wrenching decision that the best thing is to leave all the troubles of Ireland behind and start anew in a distant land. And, of course, there are many on the ship just like them, members of the one family leaving behind everything they know to pay £26 for a steerage ticket – giving them the right to a rough sleeping berth and just 20 cubic feet of baggage space.

Standing on deck with the others are two young Scots from the small town of Lanarkshire, the 19-year-old Samuel Craig and his 18-year-old brother, William, both of them printers. Together they gaze more towards the open water ahead than the stifling, tight land behind. It had been William who had first read in
The Illustrated London News
the staggering account of the nuggets scattered around the Australian bush just
waiting
for those bold enough to travel to those remote parts to claim them, and he had finally convinced his brother: that is
us
,
Samuel, don’t ye see?

What Samuel sees now, just before dusk falls, is the English Channel stretching before them, and an hour after that the wind has picked up in company with the waves slapping hard against the bows of
Scindian
.
All of her sails are now completely filled with bounteous winds from the north, and her three oak masts creak happily under the joyous strain of it all. As the ship arrows south, the moonbeams sparkle in her wake, and their journey proper of four gruelling months has truly begun. You’d better be right, young William.

8 July 1852, La Trobe writes to the Colonial Secretary, Earl Grey:

A new working, called the “Eureka,” . . . as well as two or three others, were discovered in the month of May . . .

‘On all hands it must be considered that the population at the workings, taken as a whole, are as orderly and well-disposed as can be met with in any part of the colony. The comparative rarity of instances of grave outrage or of capital crime is a subject of great gratitude to God.’

Late August 1852, Philadelphia, USA, worries for Her Majesty’s servant

The British consul, William Peters, is not happy. A recent arrival from Australia has told him that, in part courtesy of work done by Americans, a Republican form of Government is in the offing, and things are moving so fast that ‘a speedy declaration of Independence of the Mother Country is expected’.

The idea of Americans in Australia – guests of Her Majesty Queen Victoria in a lately coveted part of the British Empire – working to promote such an insidious form of government as republicanism is anathema to Consul Peters. As a point of honour, thus, he feels obliged to give fair warning to the man who is effectively his counterpart in Melbourne – the nearest big city to where most of the Americans are centred on the diggings – and that is His Excellency Charles La Trobe. Taking quill in hand, he writes the letter.

For La Trobe must know that most of ‘that class of [Americans] now on their way to Australia . . . are bent on “extending the area of Freedom” and aiding their fellow men in the pursuit of “
Liberty and Republicanism
”. Indeed, an Order, entitled “The Order of the Lone Star”, has been established here within this last twelvemonth, and for this avowed purpose. “Believing” (say its founders) “that Liberty and Republicanism are essential to the happiness of Man, and to the full development of his virtues and intelligence, and that it is the duty of all men to aid others, to the extent of their ability in the pursuit of happiness; – regarding it as one of the first duties of American Republicans to endeavour, by all lawful and proper means,
to diffuse throughout the world the principles of Liberty and Republicanism
.”’

The important thing, Peters concludes, is for La Trobe to inform ‘our Authorities in that part of the world to be on their guard’.

Mid-September 1852, aboard
Scindian
, out on the Southern Ocean, heading towards Australia

How does one pass the time aboard a relatively small ship on a journey lasting at least a third of a year? The short answer is . . . with some difficulty. Certainly, playing the likes of chess and backgammon allows some of the sand to slip easily through the hourglass, as does endlessly reading and swapping finished books with other passengers. Too, when there is a lull in the wind it is possible to lower a boat and go for a row around the ship, always being careful to stay close, the way a baby chick does around a mother hen for fear she will up and bolt away.

For most of the ship’s company not used to sea travel, though, it all seems so unchanging, so endlessly
endless
,
that the sand moves only grain by grain. Day after day, on and on and on, each minute drags its weary way forward until enough of them are assembled for another hour to slowly drop away . . . Seemingly, nothing ever changes ‘neath the stark blue sky.
Nothing
.

And of course in such circumstances, fresh conversations with your fellow passengers are highly prized, especially with the more interesting of those passengers.

One fellow on this voyage particularly stands out, however, and excites the curiosity of the others. It is the handsome, curly-haired Irishman Peter Lalor, who is a great favourite of many of the ladies on board, none more so than a young Irish female by the name of Alicia Dunne, who appears to be quite smitten.

All up, this highly educated man, from a highly educated family, appears to the others to be ‘a picture of robust manhood’ and, in the words of one of his fellow passengers, William Craig, ‘From his demeanour I surmised he was a man who thought for himself, and that something would be heard of him later on. After a time a friendly feeling became established between us, and I discovered in him a man of high intelligence and of sterling worth, yet one who might be led into unwise courses by sheer impulsiveness. Still, he possessed important qualifications for a successful career – ambition, energy, and courage.’

In talking extensively to Lalor on the journey and becoming close, Craig understands that he comes from ‘a family of high social status and political influence in Ireland, [and that] his leading characteristics are patriotic ardour and a warm attachment to the land of his birth’.