Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (15 page)

Jemmy likes the Kerrs for their kindness and is happy to work for them, tending to a couple of flocks of their sheep.

On this particular day in late June, Jemmy is tending to one of those flocks in some of the wild scrub that lies next to Dr Kerr’s land. For hours he wanders through the bush, beside the creek and in the shade of the towering stringybarks and white gums, a very remote place that once was within the songlines of his clan, but is now lost for the clan is no more. And yet, Jemmy still moves easily, a man in his element, even though he has lost his natural right to it and . . .

And there. What is that? Jemmy is just following the tail of a flock over a low ridge when he comes face to face with an enormous stump of white rock thrusting through the ridge’s surface – the type of rock that the white man calls ‘quartz’ – and as the bright sun shines down upon it there is something gleaming from it, something embedded in the quartz. It looks like the same shiny metal that he had once seen on a gold sovereign.

The white men call the shiny metal ‘gold’, and Jemmy knows that in recent times it seems to be all the Doktah and his friends and relatives talk about. People have been finding it in creeks around here for the last few weeks, and every time they do it sets off another whole lot of conversations, along with people rushing out to see if they can find some themselves. There are a couple of smaller clumps beside the main outcrop, and when Jemmy turns one of them over he finds that the lower side is made up of the same metal. That clump is too heavy to move far, but a much smaller rock has the same properties, and he decides to take it with him. Perhaps it might please the Doktah.

Early the next morning, Doktah Kerr is walking up and down the veranda of his house in his slippers, enjoying his after-breakfast pipe, when his dogs suddenly start barking. Shortly afterwards, he sees Jemmy coming out of the bush.

The doctor likes Jemmy for his calm, quiet and dignified ways, and greets him warmly. But this time Jemmy does not seem so calm at all and immediately tells him has found something, something
important
, maybe even . . . ‘gold’.

Laughing uproariously, the doctor replies delightedly, ‘Fudge!’

His laughter stops as suddenly as a shot duck when Jemmy shyly shows the small nugget he has carried all this way. That
does
rather look like gold, Doktah has to admit, and he examines it closely. True, it is not quite as lustrous as he imagines gold to be in its natural state – this is rather more like slightly tarnished brass – but it is certainly worth further investigation. So in short order the horses are saddled and the doctor and his good wife ride off, with Jemmy trotting along just in front, leading the way.

The doctor is unaccustomedly nervous in case Jemmy can’t find the place again, but he shouldn’t be. Jemmy knows this country, grew up on this country, could find his way back there with as much ease as Doktah could find his way around the streets of faraway Sydney, the big smoke that Doktah and his missus also talk about a lot.

And there it is there, Boss, the very rock.

Dr Kerr can barely breathe – and nor can his wife – for it is gold alright, and a huge amount. It looks, in fact, to be the biggest nugget he has ever heard of, let alone seen. It is so big, embedded across three big blocks of quartz, that the only thing he and Jemmy can do in the end – after returning to the homestead to get a horse-drawn dray and implements – is to take the sledgehammer and break the quartz blocks down to get to the nugget itself.

And so it is that the largest nugget found in the world – in the 1851 years since our Lord Jesus Christ was born – is broken into two large chunks and many smaller pieces. Then Dr Kerr and Jemmy must strain – good Lord above, but the larger two pieces, still encased in quartz, are amazingly heavy – to get them in the cart. The largest chunk is like a golden piece of honeycomb, spotted with holes of an entirely random nature. All put together, Jemmy’s gold proves to weigh no less than 106 pounds, and the good Doctor is not long in selling 103 pounds of it for the princely sum of £4,140!

Now, a lesser man might have simply reckoned that as the gold had been found by his stockman, who was working on his property at the time, that fellow is due no part of the reward. But not Dr Kerr. Grateful for the find, he is sure to give his loyal servant Jemmy, together with two other Aboriginal workers he is close to, Long Tommy and Tommy Bumbo, ‘two flocks of sheep, two saddle horses and a quantity of rations, and supply them with a team of bullocks to plough some land in which they are about to sow a crop of maize and potatoes’.

7 July 1851, Victoria awakes to the news

It is the
Geelong Advertiser
that has the honour of breaking the news of James Esmond’s stunning find to wider Melbourne:

GOLD IN THE PYRENEES

The long-sought treasure is at length found! Victoria is a gold country, and from Geelong goes forth the first glad tidings of the discovery. Mr Esmond arrived in Geelong on Saturday with some beautiful specimens of gold, in quartz, and gold-dust in a ‘debris’ of the same species of rock . . . The specimens shown are sufficient to satisfy the most sceptical, whilst the respectability of the discoverer, Mr Esmond, is a guarantee against the practice of any ‘sham’.

15 July 1851, Melbourne consecrates and celebrates a different success

A holiday for everyone! For today is the day, dear friends, ‘to transform the chrysalis, “His Honour”, into the gay butterfly “His Excellency”’, and ‘the Port Phillip of yesterday makes way for the Victoria of today’. At half past ten, all of the troops, all the mounted and city police arrive at the Government Offices in the company of the heads of all the government departments, ready to witness Charles La Trobe, accompanied by His Honour the Resident Judge William a Beckett and the newly installed Attorney-General, William Foster Stawell, be so anointed. In the open space in front of the Treasury it is William Stawell himself – closely observed by Solicitor-General Redmond Barry among other leading officials – who has La Trobe repeat the sacred oaths, after which the Resident Judge declares that Charles Joseph La Trobe is now, officially, the Lieutenant-Governor of the colony. At this point the field battery fires its guns in celebration as a signal to the city, near and far, that the great event has occurred. The assembled multitude of the city’s leading dignitaries bursts forth with three cheers, and the band strikes up with a stirring rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’.

This is a very auspicious day in the colony of ‘Victoria’, as everyone is now delighted to call it. For on this day the impact of the Separation Bill passed by the British Parliament the year before is truly felt, as Victoria becomes a separate entity from New South Wales, one that will soon have its own Legislative Council – composed of 20 members elected by substantial property owners, together with ten members appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor – whose role it will be to advise the Lieutenant-Governor. True, this governing body is not going to be representative of the people at all, but only a certain section of the population, and that section will comprise the wealthiest and most powerful in Victoria: the squatters. But, for the moment, that fact is lost in the general celebrations of independence.

What it means, as
The Argus
has already noted in an editorial on the subject, is that, ‘The depressing influence of our connexion with Sydney is at an end. Our laws have to be discussed and amended amongst ourselves.’ And yet, opines the paper, from those to whom much is given, much is expected: ‘Let us remember this, in our aim to lift the dear land of our adoption into a high place in the scale of nations. Let us think of her in no lower light than that of the model colony, and strain our utmost nerve to justify the title. Let that be the Pole Star by which we ever steer; and even if we have to struggle with a baffling wind here, and an adverse current there, let us never falter in our course . . . We are one of the smallest, and youngest of British colonies, but we have that within us, which properly developed shall to some extent influence the destinies of the world.’

18 July 1851, Bathurst is agog

The excitement in both colonies is now overwhelming. For, back at Bathurst, the almost unhinged exhilaration engendered by the find of the Kerr Nugget is staggering in its effect. On this day,
The Sydney Morning Herald
, relying on its colleagues at the
Bathurst Free Press
,
report the news:

Bathurst is mad again! The delirium of golden fever has returned with increased intensity. Men meet together, stare stupidly at each other, talk incoherent nonsense, and wonder what will happen next. Everybody has a hundred times seen a hundred weight of flour; a hundred weight of sugar or potatoes, is an everyday fact, but a hundred weight of gold is a phrase scarcely known in the English language. It is beyond the range of our ordinary ideas – a sort of physical incomprehensibility – but that it is a material existence, our own eyes bore witness on Monday last.

If the news of the find thrills the denizens of Bathurst and beyond, far beyond measure, it does not – with the exception of Dr Kerr himself – thrill the squatters. As their workers now leave in droves, there are urgent communications with the government, suggesting, sometimes
insisting
, that the diggings be stopped immediately. Otherwise, they warn, their own operations will simply have to cease. In response, the government prevaricates – they are on the side of the squatters, but they also must be realistic. Such is the frenzy to get to the goldfields at any price, at any personal cost, that it is obvious no law the authorities might come up with would be able to stop the general flood.

25 July 1851, this way to paradise, from Geelong

While passing through Geelong once more, on the way back to his diggings, James Esmond had entrusted the journalist Clarke with the location of his find – on the condition that Clarke not publish it until Esmond has had time to buy his supplies and be back at Clunes. And on this day, after another find in the same locale confirms that Esmond is telling the truth, Clarke now gives specific directions in the
Geelong Advertiser
as to where the goldfield lies:

From Geelong to Buninyong is fifty miles; arrived there, Clunes Diggings are about twenty-seven miles further, to gain which make for Clarke’s, and from Clarke’s outstation turn off to Coghill – the ‘Gold Field’ is before you within a short distance – work! and success attend you!

On the same day, a letter to
The Argus
reports that in this location: ‘The diggers are in great spirits – our old cook has gathered an ounce. When they are provided with proper implements, they expect ten times the present produce per man. In spite of the extreme severity of the weather there are daily arrivals. There are forty today on the ground. Warren, shoemaker, is so sanguine that he expects to realise £2000 by Christmas. “Will not put an awl in leather again.” Such are his expressions. Esson is to commence cradling on Monday, under the direction of Esmond, who arrived today.

‘P.S. Ten o’clock, Sunday. David Anderson has returned from the diggings and says the cook has realised two and half ounces in a week.’

The
cook
!
Two and a half ounces in a week! The cobbler! £2000 before Christmas!

Though it is not yet a
rush
– the reports are too scattered and uncertain for men to throw it all in to pursue what is not yet truly confirmed – in short order gold –
gold
! –
is the only subject anyone cares to talk about. Do you think it’s real? Think this cove, Esmond, is on the up and up? At least fifty men do, and are soon on their way to Clunes, where they join the amazingly accommodating Esmond at the diggings.

Wednesday, 23 July 1851,
The Sydney Morning Herald
declares . . .

On this issue of the discovery of the Kerr Nugget, and
in
this issue, the
Herald
– rarely one to publish prose that is not as sober as a judge and as serious as the 1850 drought – simply cannot help itself and reaches for the purple ink as the ramifications continue to sink in:

From the monarch on the throne to the peasant at the plough, there will be astonishment, wonder, and admiration. From the palace to the cottage, from the drawing-room to the nursery, from the philosopher and the statesman to the school-boy, this Lump of Gold and the land which produced it will for a while be the all-absorbing tonic.

With this knowledge of the stunning riches that this brown land possesses comes a new-found confidence, a notion that perhaps Australia can be more than a mere offshoot of another country.

‘We have within ourselves, in our own rich and prolific goldfields,’ proudly proclaims
The People
’
s Advocate and New South Wales Vindicator
shortly after the
Herald
article, ‘the elements of all future greatness – the elements of future nationality, and of coming independence . . . Yes! We shall be a NATION; not a mere dependency of a far off country, which however we may venerate and love as a birth place of ourselves and our fore-fathers, has been to us in this our bright southern home, but a cruel step-mother.’

RAH!

And yet, even as these words are being penned and distributed, the story of the ownership of the nugget still has some way to go. For who truly does own it? Dr Kerr had felt that it was his to sell; after all,
his
stockman had found it. (As to that Aboriginal stockman, no-one is so ludicrous as to suggest that he owns it because he found it on land that was in fact his ancestral home.) The gold-dealer from Sydney, Thacker, Daniel & Co., had come up to negotiate a sale, paying Dr Kerr £4140 for the privilege. The government, however, has an entirely different view. As the gold has been found on Crown land, by diggers unlicensed at the moment of discovery, the official view is that the nugget belongs to
them
,
and it is so strong in this opinion that a ‘demand for its surrender into the hands of the government was made by the newly installed Gold Commissioner, Mr Hardy’.