Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (16 page)

When Messrs Thacker and Daniel take such a dim view of this demand that they refuse to comply, the government sends in the police and the gold is forcibly seized, causing great outrage, followed by lawyers, letters and great legal manoeuvring, even as the public at large cries out in outrage at the government’s actions.

Finally, the government agrees to give the gold back to the finders, ‘provided they enter into a bond to pay Her Majesty a royalty of ten per cent, should the home government, upon inquiry into the merits of the case, insist upon such payment’.

The government is not without support in so doing, with
The Southern Cross
declaiming, ‘It is, no doubt, very hard upon the Messrs Thacker, but the case is altogether a singular one . . . If royalties are to be enforced at all, we cannot but consider 5 per cent on private lands, and 10 per cent on Crown Lands, as an exceedingly moderate impost, more especially as mines, minerals, and ship-building timber are reserved to the Crown in all deeds of grant. A premium for permission to work gold-mines cannot reasonably be objected to by a people desirous of preserving order, regularity, and good government.’

8-15 August 1851, gold fever spreads through Victoria

Now that it has been established that there is gold in the quartz country around Clunes, there are a number of other prospectors who wish to see if there might be gold in their own regions. One of them is an English-born blacksmith by the name of Thomas Hiscock, who now hails from the small settlement of Buninyong, just seven miles south of Ballarat. There would forever afterwards be speculation that perhaps James Esmond had talked to Hiscock as he made his way back from Geelong to Clunes, maybe even describing to him the kind of hills with quartz and surface gravel that gold could be found in . . . but for whatever reason, only shortly after Esmond had passed through Buninyong, Hiscock made a key decision. In the company of his son, Thomas Hiscock Jnr, and one of his son’s friends, John Thomas, he decides to go looking for gold in any likely spots they can find within cooee of their Buninyong home.

For many days, the men return to their homes each night empty-handed. But on this bright, shining morning of 8 August 1851, high on a slope of the White Horse Range, Thomas Snr sees a promising quartz boulder – he has been told this is what to look for – takes his pick and swings . . .

Lower down on those same slopes, the two younger men hear a sudden exultant cry from the older man that he has found
gold
at last!

Neither young man budges. They’ve heard it all before when old Tom had got excited about discovering small chunks of mica. But when he charges down the slopes to show them that this time he really
has
done it, there is no mistaking it. It glints, it gleams, it glitters, it
glows
,
its glory will never fade – it is gold!

And, as also follows the familiar pattern, the news is not long in getting out, allowing the rush to roar as it never has before.

While it had been one thing for a digger to try his luck at faraway Clunes, Buninyong is only a day’s hard ride away from Geelong and well worth having a go at.

Within just a few days the roads leaving both Geelong and Melbourne are filled with men from all walks of life, now practically
running
,
eager to try their luck as all of the Melbourne newspapers, including
The Herald
in
Melbourne,
The Argus
and
Geelong Advertiser
,
lead, day after day, with ever more breathless stories: ‘GOLD!’, ‘OFF TO THE DIGGINGS’, ‘EUREKA’, and most appropriately of all . . . ‘MANIA’.

Writing on 15 August, the correspondent for
The Argus
sums it up neatly: ‘Let all possible publicity be given to the great fuel, that an unlimited gold field exists in this, the finest colony in the Southern Hemisphere – the advantages we enjoy over our neighbours in Sydney cannot be too often repeated, or too glowingly penned.

‘Our gold fields are in close proximity to our ports, one within four hours walk of Melbourne, another within one day’s walk of Geelong, and others within one hard day’s ride of either town; we have a superabundance of animal food; we have a superabundance of the richest land for agricultural purposes, only waiting for what the mother country has too much of – labour; we have a climate that cannot be surpassed under heaven. All we require is an ardent desire implanted in our breasts to make headway, and a determined resolve that we shall not lag behind.’

As it happens, ‘lagging’ is one thing not apparent, as the flood of men leaving their other posts of work to get to the diggings thickens by the hour.

16 August 1851, La Trobe makes his move

Charles La Trobe feels he has no choice. While the results of the discovery of gold within his colony are to date as far as he can ascertain, ‘but moderate’, he feels they are sufficient to do as Governor FitzRoy has done before him in New South Wales and declare that all the gold found belongs to Queen Victoria, and so issues a proclamation:

‘Now I, Charles Joseph La Trobe, Esq., Lieutenant-Governor aforesaid, on behalf of Her Majesty, do hereby publicly notify and declare that all persons who shall take from any land within the said colony, any gold, metal, or ore containing gold, or who, within any waste lands which have not yet been alienated by the Crown, shall dig for and disturb the soil in search of such gold, metal, or ore, without having been duly authorised in that behalf by Her Majesty’s Colonial Government, will be prosecuted both criminally and civilly as the law allows . . . GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!’

This is shortly followed up with six key provisional regulations, ‘under which Licenses may be obtained to dig for, search and remove the same’, that include: from the first day of September ‘no person [is] allowed to dig, search for or remove gold, on land, whether public or private, without first taking out or applying for a license’; the license fee is to be ‘fixed at one pound ten shillings per month, paid in advance’; and, perhaps most crucially, ‘No person will be eligible to obtain a license, or the renewal of a license, unless he shall produce some certificate of discharge from his last service, or prove to the satisfaction of the commissioner that he is not a person improperly absent from hired service.’

And
that
should stop the flood of labour away from the squatters.

21 August 1851, reports come in from Buninyong, Clunes and . . . Ballarat

A man with a felicitous and evocative turn of phrase,
Geelong Advertiser
journalist Alfred Clarke – now out Buninyong way, where they are yet to hear of the recent proclamation – continues to tramp far and wide on the diggings on behalf of his paper, taking notes in his diary in elegant longhand.

A natural storyteller, he takes some pleasure in penning his thoughts, recording the feeling of this place, at this time:

The scene presents a strange appearance, picturesque enough, but somewhat lugubrious during the heavy rains. Tents are pitched, fires are burning, trees are cut down, the sound of the axe is heard in all directions, cradles are rocking, and men crouching down to the water’s edge are intent on exploring the golden sands, which like true modesty retires before undue advances?

Everywhere he walks, he sees men he knows from Geelong, men who have deserted the solid brick and mortar of that town for the flapping tarpaulin of Buninyong, who have exchanged – yes, these are the perfect phrases to capture it – ‘comfort for inconvenience, ease for hardship, ordinary travail for hard labour, and all is set at nought against the desire for gold, gold that is to be rent from the bowels of the earth. Neither rain or storm overpowers the desire; the cry is still “they come, they come!”’

And so they do. Every hour, at least, a new party arrives, a few with swags on their backs; many with guns, acting as a kind of advance party to stake a claim before their group carrying the heavy supplies arrives many hours later; and here a lone man on a horse, eager to try his luck. And now, come the evening, ‘the cradle rests, the dippers and the tin dishes are thrown aside for the night, the horses are turned adrift, and the busy workers have retired to their tents, the line of which may be soon be traced by blazing fires. Beef, biscuit, and damper, all, or some form the evening’s repast, are then partaken of, pipes follow, and a deep slumber looms on the eventful day.’

Just before they partake of this well-deserved rest, Alfred Clarke walks from tent to tent, documenting how they are faring.

‘Good evening, Mr Richard!’ says the journalist, ‘What luck today?’

‘Well, I don’t know, come and look, here it is,’ the digger replies, pouring the water from the pannikin to show the thin scattering of gold at the bottom.

‘How much do you say?’

‘Well, I don’t know, shall I say two ounces and a half?’

‘Don’t say too much – suppose you state two and a quarter, and then you’ll be within the mark.’

‘Be it so,’ replies Clarke. ‘I want but the truth.’

And so it goes. The next tent has a party of six who, after three days’ labour, also have two ounces and a quarter of gold to boast of. The next one along, with four men, after three and a half days, have five ounces and a quarter. The next, a party of four, after two days’ work, an ounce and a half. The last party of three, after a day and a half, has just an ounce.

In sum, such pickings for such work are only okay . . . and beyond those who actually have found gold, there are many others whose only reward has been blistered hands, aching backs and severely depleted savings. They had hoped for El Dorado and found very little indeed. And so Clarke now chooses his words carefully to fulfil his duty to his readers, to be their man on the ground, writing, ‘And now one word before closing this despatch would advise all parties who have comfortable situations to stay at home, and “let well alone, “ make no sacrifices of the present for the future, but patiently await the result of the present experiments . . . I say wait awhile, rush not rashly to the christening of the gold-birth – there will be plenty without you at its baptism, and your time will be to celebrate its maturity . . . My last word is, “pause! before you plunge.”’

And yet for those diggers who have already plunged, the abiding sense is that there
must
be gold in heavier concentrations in these parts. But where?

So it is that, just like dingos looking for easy meat, many of the disappointed diggers follow the creeks and gullies that spread out from Clunes and Buninyong in all directions until . . .

Until, on this 21st day of August, a 26-year-old Irishman by the name of James Regan finds himself making his way back from the Clunes diggings that he has been checking out to Buninyong, where he has been based with his 75-year-old friend, John Dunlop, a one-time dashing cavalry officer at the Battle of Waterloo. Regan’s course takes him heading down a muddy gully and through the shadowy glades until he emerges onto the grassy slopes leading down into the valley they call ‘Ballaarat’. This is heavily worked squatting country, a place within a fifteen mile radius of where William Yuille had first established himself and where there are now some 20 stations. An English visitor to the area a decade earlier had noted in his diary, ‘What would the poor farmers at home think of having 150 and 300 square miles of excellent grazing or pasture land for £10 per annum?’

Not that Regan cares about that! For now he comes to a nice ‘gravelly slope with quartz boulders’, a little to the south of a heavily timbered and curiously dome-like hill on the northern end of Yuille’s run. This’ll do . . .

In his first attempt, he first takes a shovelful of soil from the slope before taking it to a nearby creek for some gentle panning and . . . meets all but instant success. The gold gleams in the bottom of his pan. A
lot
of gold. More gold in a few spades than he had been able to glean in whole hours of labouring at Buninyong . . . A good man, Regan quickly packs up and returns to Buninyong for John Dunlop, and the two begin searching in earnest.

Over the next few days they gather in no fewer than 104 grains of gold, weighing a very handsome four ounces – worth over £12!

Are they entirely alone at this point? Two years later, in late 1853, Dunlop would be asked that very question by a Select Committee of the Victorian Parliament: ‘When you arrived, you were sure there was no one there?’

Dunlop would be very quick with his reply, as there was absolutely no doubt at the time and he can recall it clearly: ‘No; there was no sign of anyone, only a few huts belonging to the natives.’

25 August 1851, the Buninyong goldfields stir with revolt

If there is one thing worse than scratching just a few specks of gold around Buninyong and Clunes when you had been hoping to find fist-sized nuggets, it is hearing the news that the government expects you to pay 30 shillings a month for the privilege!

It is for that reason that the news of the Lieutenant-Governor’s proclamation hits the nascent goldfields like a storm. Thirty shillings?
Thirty shillings
?
A pound and a half? At a time when they have no guarantees of earning anything at all? For many of the miners it is thirty shillings expenditure for what may potentially be a month of nothing. Many have spent their last capital buying picks, shovels and supplies before getting themselves up here on the expectation that they will soon find gold – in the absence of that gold, they are now stony motherless broke. What do you do when the government wants the value of half an ounce of gold out of you every month when you haven’t found that much?

It is for very good reason that 1 September, the day the tax is to begin, becomes known on the fields as ‘BLACK MONDAY’.