Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (27 page)

Chief Justice Sir William a Beckett, for starters, is deeply disturbed. As he makes clear in a pamphlet entitled
Does the Discovery of Gold in Victoria, Viewed in Relation to its Moral and Social Effects, As Hitherto Developed, Deserve to be Considered a National Blessing or a National Curse
,
it is a toss-up as to whether it is the way the diggers look or the way they live that is more appalling.

‘The general contempt of dress and personal appearance, the crowding together of numbers in places where decent accommodation can hardly be provided for one – the smoking and drinking and swearing . . . all this might have a tendency to weaken that regard for external decencies, and to impair that sense of self-respect, which lies at the foundation of the manners, not to say the morals, of civilized and domestic life. Certainly these are not the substantials of existence; but they are most valuable accessories, and without them we should speedily relapse into a state of barbarism.’

It has no effect. For
still
they keep coming.

CHAPTER FIVE

TO THE DIGGINGS

All aristocratic feelings and associations of the old country are at once annihilated . . . It is not what you were, but what you are that is the criterion.

John Sherer, an English digger

It is every man’s business to take care of himself here. They are just as independent in their speech as in their actions. It is a wonderful place to take the conceit out of men who expect much deference. The Governor was yesterday riding along among this crew, attended by one soldier; but not the slightest notice was taken of him, not even by a touch of the hat. They are just as free in helping themselves to your property.

William Howitt, on his first impressions of Melbourne in 1852

December 1852, launching from Melbourne

All up, this town is as wondrous as it is crazy, as rich in some pockets as it is poor in others, and as quintessentially
Australian
in some sections as it is merely ‘England transplanted’ in other parts.

Of course, for most of the fresh arrivals Melbourne itself is no more than a staging post for where they truly want to get to, which is the goldfields. Pushed along by the fact that the city is too cripplingly expensive to stay in long, most are not long in leaving.

An early exception to the exodus is civil engineer Peter Lalor who, along with his brother Richard and another Irishman, sets up as a liquor merchant in Melbourne before finding work planning the railway between Melbourne and Geelong. He has decided to follow his first instincts and seek rather more stable work than the diggings. For one thing, he is now courting his fellow passenger on the ship, Alicia Dunne, and given that she settles first in Melbourne and then in Geelong – where her uncle is a priest and can give her work at his Catholic school – he does not want to be too far from her.

For most of the rest of the new arrivals, just as in Europe all roads lead to Rome, in mainland Australia all roads lead to the goldfields. And it is along these roads in the latter months of 1852 – particularly those leading out of Melbourne – that a stream of people flows, originating from not only all parts of settled Australia, but indeed all corners of the earth.

Here are the native-born Australians, distinctive with their broad accents, rough dress with no hint of Europe about them and usually very weathered visages. Many of them look less born than quarried, and their skin tends to be darker than the Europeans’ from long exposure under the hot sun in these parts.

And yet they are not the toughest looking. That distinction belongs to the often limping, narrow-eyed freed convicts and ticket-of-leave men, who are desperate to restore their lives and gain their fortunes with one lucky strike – perhaps to the head of a newly wealthy digger they can steal from.

Then there are the ‘49ers’, usually, but not always, Americans who have been on the diggings in California, know what they are doing and are now trying their luck here after the easy pickings of the goldfields there have already been plucked. You can tell them by the fact that they habitually have beards, sombreros, coloured flannel shirts and, most fabulously, are ‘girthed in above the hips with a red sash, that was stuck round with knives’. The knives are described by prominent Legislative Council member John Pascoe Fawkner as the ‘murderous bowie’, and they usually are only part of the ‘bandit accoutrements’ these men wear, as they also have other daggers and revolvers on their persons. These are men to be a little wary of. It is not that they are bad men, necessarily, but they do, after all, come from that most dangerous of things: a
republic
.
Having lived free of swearing eternal fealty to Her Majesty the Queen, they are known to be sometimes dangerously independent in their political views, just as, having been in a very wild and oft violent place in the California diggings, there is no doubt that a lot of that wildness and tendency to violence has rubbed off on them.

On the strength of that reputation, a strong editorial in the
Empire
has even demanded that ‘no door be opened to receive the blood stained wretches’. But they keep coming anyway, often on specially chartered steamships that, for a $60 fare, promise, ‘a most favourable opportunity for those who are desirous of reaching the gold regions without delay, as it is fully expected that the passage will be made in 30 days’. The Americans seem not at all troubled by such wariness at their presence, with one of their supporters noting cheerfully that, ‘The worst scoundrels that ever infested California were from these Colonies’, so it must now be all even on the card. And he is right. In August of 1850, as one writer to
The Sydney Morning Herald
recalls, ‘out of sixteen awaiting trial for serious crime in San Francisco, twelve were from Sydney. At much the same time, while out of seventy in custody for thieving, forty-eight were from Sydney. Yours very truly, A Citizen of The States.’ The reputation of the Australians is so bad that by now incoming ships to San Francisco Bay are searched to make sure none is on board.

And getting back to the streets of Melbourne, there too, usually entirely separate from the rest of the press of humanity, are the tiny and oft barefooted Chinamen, usually moving in groups of 100, with huge bamboo poles stretched long across their shoulders, each end bearing their belongings and bouncing up and down in rhythm as they half-trot with their oh-so-curious wide-legged, short-stepped gait. An inscrutable invasion – at least that is the way it feels to most other nationalities, who eye them with cool disdain – the sense of their ‘otherness’ is heightened by the fact that beneath their strange wide, peaked straw hats their hair is shaved across the temples at the front, while at the back it extends into a long, braided ponytail tied up with a ribbon, just like an English girl!

And what of the continental Europeans, who are also here in force? Well, to start with, the southern Europeans tend to have slightly olive skin, while the northern Europeans are more often red – the hot Australian sun burns them quickly. True, that skin is not quite as red as the red pants the Dutch always wear for reasons unknown, but it runs them close. Too, with the Europeans there is a certain hardness to their eyes – they have suffered under repressive regimes at home – mixed with an odd sparkle, for they are here to begin again.

The Irish are the easiest to spot, usually gaunt and with that hollow-eyed look of people escaping from a land of recent starvation. They have a curious mix of general good humour, tempered by an innate anger for what they have been through at the hands of the English occupiers.

Even the Scots are heading there in force, with one lot marching to the diggings in draughty kilts behind other Scots who at first glance appear to be slowly strangling large, colourful cats, but who are in fact playing bagpipes. Tight behind are their oft stony-faced wives with the wee bairns all on drays. Perhaps what is worrying them and other people on the road is the contemplation of just what they are letting themselves in for in this strange country. For at least an inkling of what awaits them is to be found in the names of some of their destinations: Murdering Flat, Dead Man’s Gully, Dead Horse Gully, One-eye Gully, Rotten Gully, Poverty Gully, Terrible Gully, Grumble-Gut Gully . . .

Still they push on, trying to think of places they’ve heard of with much happier names, like Golden Gully, so called because its riches were discovered by a fellow who was taking a rest by lying down and passing the time pulling up grass by the roots – and with one set of roots came ‘a nest of golden nuggets’.

And it won’t be long before they will hear about ‘White Horse Gully’, which earned its name when an enraged beast of that description was snorting and cavorting all about, plunging its front and back hooves into the dirt, only to have yet more nuggets appear!

Dingley Dell? That place, newcomers are told, is a grassy tract by the water, beloved by bullock drivers who camp there at the end of a long day’s haul, listening to the ‘dingle’ made by the bullock’s bells.

Speaking of which –
c
rack
! –
push on!

Descending Great Bourke Street, many of the cavalcade make their last stop opposite the general post office to check if the last ship in to Port Phillip might have included a long-awaited letter from home, then head up past the Horse Bazaar. From there they turn into Queen Street and continue through a veritable forest of huge red gums, white gums and stringybark trees towards the small village of Flemington – which boasts some 40 small houses, an inn and a blacksmith’s shop – all of which lie some three-and-half-miles north-west of the post office.

Then the exodus continues overland, to Buninyong, Ballarat, Creswick Creek, Forrest Creek, Bendigo and all the rest.

After passing through Flemington and then by the Benevolent Asylum, some of the former criminals among this cavalcade look nervously at the road to their right, which leads to the recently constructed Pentridge Stockade –
those cells, those lashes, that gruel
! –
before setting their eyes once more resolutely north-west. Not for them anymore, that infernal institution – they are heading to El Dorado itself!

Pushing on into the deep bush, however, the light dims as it strains through the heavy canopy, and their heavy sense of foreboding rises as all signs of human habitation vanish, when suddenly they hear the most unlikely of sounds.

‘Without the slightest warning,’ as William Craig would recount, ‘our whole surroundings appeared to be alive with human revelry. Simultaneously peal after peal of what appeared like mockery of our dispirited frame of mind broke from the throats of a flock of laughing jackasses in the tree against which we were reclining. It was the first time we had heard that most remarkable of all Australian birds, and the human-like way in which they enjoyed their scrimmage for what appeared to be a large iguana was irresistible.’

And now they know why kookaburras are called the ‘settler’s alarm clock’. They also see an extraordinary, small, bear-like creature that climbs high into the trees and benignly blinks down upon them as they pass.

The further you get from Melbourne the more the countryside is crisscrossed by as many tracks as creeks, the tracks guided less by anything so prosaic as a compass and more by paths of least resistance through bush and swamps and around hills and other obstacles.

Yet it is not the physical rigours of passing through such rough country that presents the greatest danger. No, travellers both to and from the goldfields must be wary of bushrangers, most particularly in the areas around Black Forest, the Jim Crow Ranges and Bullarook Forest. Often working in gangs of up to half a dozen, these common criminals on horseback – frequently prison escapees and ticket-of-leave men turned to highway robbery – congregate in the thickest parts of the bush and frequently fall upon whatever isolated wayfarers they can find. Those heading ‘up’ to the diggings are usually relieved of whatever of their life savings they have left after buying their supplies, while those going ‘down’ to Melbourne are fallen upon and robbed of nuggets, money, cheques and gold receipts. In the case of those receipts, a frequent occurrence is for the bearer to be taken deeper into the bush and tied to a tree while one of the bushrangers gallops off to Melbourne and exchanges the slip of paper for the gold that the said receipt entitles the bearer to.

And so . . . what of the police?

What
police?

Oh yes, there is still some kind of police force
per se
,
but the truth of it is that just about every able-bodied man who was in the police when the gold rush began has long ago departed for the goldfields, leaving behind only a curious combination of the absolutely most loyal . . . and the dregs. And not all the men who had been recruited to replace those deserters are really
police
, as heavily represented among them are many drunkards, wastrels and ne’er-do-wells merely wearing police uniforms. This is the only certain job they can get, when even having the wherewithal to get themselves to the diggings like everyone else is beyond them.

Still, that bad patch on Mt Alexander Road? That is the result of gold fever run amok when some small nuggets had no sooner been discovered along the track than hopeful miners started tearing it apart. (The nuggets had actually fallen off a bullion wagon but, as there is little public money available, the road has remained in poor condition.)

The cavalcade pushes on with little respite, though those heading to Ballarat can at least take brief pause in the wilderness of Warrenheip, which lies at the base of a small pyramidal mountain just under three miles from the diggings, and refresh themselves with cool, fresh water at a well-frequented spring. And then they must push on again.