Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (39 page)

It is a
disgrace
, I tell you. But also useful fodder for those who want a republic.

The People’s Advocate
even goes so far as to print an assertion from the Provisional Committee of the Australian League, claiming of the particularly riotous son, George FitzRoy, that no-one could help bring about faster a republic than he. For after he and his friends, along with prostitutes, had been thrown out of the Windsor Inn, he needs to be thanked for ‘bringing the whole system of British Government in the Colonies into utter contempt, and proving to the satisfaction of all reputable and candid persons, that it ought to be put an end to, with all convenient speed, as being thoroughly unprincipled, discreditable, and intolerable’.

All that aside, Sir Charles Hotham is extremely heartened to now have crack military leadership and troops on call in Victoria. These men are not clapped-out military pensioners from Van Diemen’s Land – men who had proven to be drunken nightmares on the diggings. These are serious, well-trained troops – Redcoats, come to bolster his all-too-meagre force. Melbourne now has no fewer than 700 soldiers in the Victoria Barracks in St Kilda Road. With two companies of the 12th Regiment from England also due to land in Melbourne in three months, and a force of English police due to arrive shortly after that, Victoria will at last have a substantial armed force to preserve the Queen’s peace.

Mid-August 1854, Ballarat, trouble brews

One morning in his tent, just before dawn, Raffaello Carboni is suddenly awoken by the sound of thundering hooves just outside, as are all his companions in nearby tents.
What on earth is going on
?

Popping his head through the flaps, he instantly has his answer. Just up from where they are situated there is a sly-grog seller at the top of the hill, and just next to his store – nominally to sell other things – is a tent crammed as full as a goog with brandy and other spirits, newly arrived from Melbourne. The goldfields are overrun with spies – operatives from Government Camp who look like diggers, dress like diggers and sound like diggers but who are in fact no more than scurvy rats whose real job in life is to report to their bosses on whatever ‘illegal’ activities they can spot. Obviously, one of these spies has caught wind of this brandy and reported it, and now the mounted troopers, closely followed by their lesser species, the plodding government traps, go straight to the store.

‘Whose tent is that?’ asks the Commissioner to the storekeeper, pointing to the small tent in question.

‘I don’t know,’ comes the nervous reply.

‘Who lives in it? Who owns it?’ demands the Commissioner, bristling. ‘Is anybody in?’

‘An old man owns it, but he is gone to town on business and left it to the care of his mate who is on the night shift,’ replies the storekeeper miserably, surely knowing what is coming.

‘I won’t peck up that chaff of yours, sir,’ roars the Commissioner. ‘Halloo! Who is in? Open the tent!’

Still there is no answer, and so comes the order that was always going to come.

‘I say,’ says the Commissioner to two rough and swarthy troopers, ‘cut down this tent, and we’ll see who is in.’

These two ruffians in uniform instantly step forward and, just as a duck alights naturally on a pond and paddles happily, so too do they do what comes entirely natural to them. That is, after taking their swords and lifting them on high, they thrash about with savage joy and total disregard for private property, cutting the tent to ribbons. And there, just as the spy had told them, are the boxes of brandy and other assorted spirits.

But look there – wouldn’t you know it – the troopers just happen to have a horse and cart handy! That cart is brought forward and in no more than five minutes flat all of the precious, high-priced alcohol is loaded and taken off to the Camp.

There are few things that could have aroused the diggers to greater indignation. The infamy of it! The gross unfairness! The high-handed manner in which the whole exercise is carried out!

It is with this in mind that the diggers now gather around the triumphant troopers, roaring, ‘Shame! Shame!’

And maybe they would have taken it further and physically intervened, but two things stop them. Firstly, this particular sly-grog seller is a bit of a brute and many of the onlookers are not sorry to see his noisy establishment taken apart. And secondly, as Carboni characterises it, ‘The plunderers were such Vandemonian-looking traps and troopers, that we were not encouraged to say much, because it would have been of no use.’

So, for the moment, all the diggers are left with is their festering discontent, a feeling that grows as the day progresses and they reflect on what has occurred. The Government Camp has not made this raid to prevent sly-grog selling. That is impossible and everyone knows it. The demand on the goldfields for grog at the end of both bitter and joyous days is so strong that the profits are huge for those who can provide it, even at outrageous prices marked up by as much as 150 per cent. And, yes, the diggers could go if necessary to the government-licensed, official establishments that stand by the main roads just a mile or two away, but why bother when there is a shop near-handy right here at the diggings?

So who really profits by closing down the sly-grog sellers? Why, the official grog sellers, of course, who have their competitors eliminated. What’s in it for the government officials to close down the sly ones, beyond nominal enforcement of the law? The fact that many of them – particularly, it is said, Police Magistrate John Dewes – are in cahoots with the official establishments’ owners.

For the difference between the sly-grog sellers and the official grog sellers is certainly not one of class or education. Take James and Catherine Bentley’s Eureka Hotel, for example. She’s alright, I guess, but there isn’t a badder bastard on the entire goldfields than him, nor a rougher man. And yet their hotel is where many of the Joes and the Commissioners gather to drink every night. Many of the diggers know the hotel as the ‘Slaughterhouse’ because in the lesser bars, well away from where the Joes drink, all kinds of assaults, atrocities and acts of ill-repute are notoriously common. One Ballarat pioneer, William Carroll, would later say of it, ‘It was generally remarked it was a wonder Bentley did not lose his license; the house was of infamous repute. As one of the oldest residents in the Colony, I can say I never knew so shamefully conducted a house. The worst characters lived about his place; midnight robberies were frequent, and life and property were not safe.’

19 August 1854, the Victorian goldfields tense and tighten

Things are tightening on the goldfields, particularly at Ballarat. In days of yore – which is to say mere weeks ago – there would be the regular cries of exultation as one group or another would find a nugget or a jeweller’s shop. Lately, though, the shafts are more likely to be shicers as the last of the easy finds seem gone. All that is left is hard, hard work to mine down deeper in the hope that the gold will come again. So tight have things been on the Eureka that Carboni notes it as a ‘Nugety Eldorado for a few, a ruinous Field of hard labour for many, a profound ditch of perdition for Body and Soul to all’.

While March to April of this year produced 135,000 ounces of gold under escort, and May to June 121,000 ounces, July to August is now on track to produce just 88,000 ounces – less than two-thirds of what it had been just five months earlier.

And, of course, with that tightening of the gold supply, many diggers are finding it harder to come up with the license fee month by month, and the resistance to it grows – all the more so since La Trobe had mooted its possible abolition. And the diggers certainly have the local press behind them, with one lead writer for
The Diggers’ Advocate
putting it particularly well.

‘Here we think is a good parallel for the digger,’ he posits. ‘The fisherman takes fish out of the sea and digger takes gold out of the earth. The latter uses the earth only in the same sense as the former uses the sea. Is the former ever taxed for the use of the sea? Does he pay rent for it? Legislation never stumbled into such an absurdity. On the contrary, it has generally encouraged the development of this branch of industry by offering a bounty.

‘If it were wise, it would carry out the same spirit in the case of the digger. The interest should be encouraged, not by a bounty, but negatively by the removal of whatever tends to repress it . . .

Down with the [Gold] Commission! Down with the license-fee! Let the colony begin to learn that its prosperity, under present circumstances, hangs upon the working of the gold-field.’

Saturday and Sunday, 26-27 August 1854, the great man and his good lady wife arrive in Ballarat

Quickly, now! Have you heard? The new Lieutenant-Governor himself is here! With his good Lady wife! And indeed it is true. At around half-past five in the afternoon, just after the heavy rain has ceased, His Excellency – who has come to the diggings in an effort to better understand the domain over which he rules – arrives from Bacchus Marsh, accompanied by his small entourage, which includes the delightful Lady Hotham in a carriage.

‘Is that the Governor, mate, with the four-and-nine [low-priced hat] and the white cravat?’ asks a digger.

‘No, you fool, that’s a Methodist preacher, that’s the Governor,’ his mate replies, pointing out the sinewy Sir Charles.

His Nibs! Lord Muck! He is here, among us. And he’s said to be a good cove, too. Just a few days earlier it had been reported that while in Geelong, on his way here, he had told a roaring gathering, ‘All power proceeds from the people. It is on that principle that I intend to conduct my administration.’

Hooray! That’s our kind of language, and this is the man who will see to our problems, most particularly on the subject of the license fees. He is the one who is going to put things to rights!

Once word gets out that it really is him, the diggers stream in from everywhere, eager just to catch sight of the man who embodies the power of the British Empire in these distant parts, a representative of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria herself. It is exciting, thrilling, to see his graceful form in the flesh, and though there is a sole cry of ‘Joe!’, no-one else joins in as full Vice-Regal reverence takes hold.

And the good Lieutenant-Governor and his lady are liked even more when, after taking the Sabbath off to rest and recuperate – for, of course, nothing ever happens on the diggings on the Sabbath – on this windy, cloudy Monday he makes his way around the diggings in his tweeds and mud-splattered shoes, frequently unrecognised and engaging many diggers in conversation. He seems so surprisingly
humble
for such a distinguished man. But there are issues that need to be addressed, and now is the time to address them.

While inspecting the process of puddling the rich paydirt coming out of Canadian Gully, Sir Charles is stunned by both the strength of the gold yield and the warmth with which the diggers welcome him and his wife. As to the first, the nuggets, by one account, ‘are as thick and perceptible as currants in a pudding, yielding as much as one pound weight of gold to a tub’, and he can scarcely believe the wealth these common men are generating before his very eyes.

Moved by the diggers’ welcome, Sir Charles asks at one point, ‘What can I do for you, my friends, in return for your kindness?’

‘Abolish the license tax,’ comes one frank reply, at which point all the diggers break out cheering.

The diggers again address this theme a short time later when, at a shaft situated just behind the Ballarat Dining Rooms, Sir Charles must pause to politely take receipt of a petition from a crowd of diggers, whereby they express their dissatisfaction with the licensing system.

His Excellency hands it to an underling and then steps forward to speak. The men gather close – in their thousands by now – and hang on his every word.

‘Diggers,’ he says in his plummy English tones, ‘I feel delighted with your reception – I shall not neglect your interests and welfare – again, I thank you.’

At the conclusion of His Excellency’s remarks, their acclaim is strong.

Hip-hip . . .

‘HURRAH!’

Hip-hip . . .

‘HURRAH!’

Hip-hip . . .

‘HURRAH!’

For now the diggers go well beyond being merely reverential and are positively adulatory. As the Lieutenant-Governor and lady Hotham make their way back to the Government Camp, the men outdo themselves in laying down massive slabs of wood – normally used to hold back the walls in their mine-shafts – upon the rough road to make it easier for the party to proceed. And, of course, all of the men have respectfully removed their caps and hats.

When the Vice-Regal party comes to a hole in the road that her Ladyship pauses before, a massive Irish digger, known to one and all as ‘Big Larry’, steps forward and – in a manner that Sir Walter Raleigh might have done, had he been three times the size, far from the civilised world
and
an illiterate stowaway – grabs Lady Hotham by the waist and steps across in one massive stride. ‘Hearty peals of laughter’ break out all around, including from the Lady herself. Still not content, Big Larry then walks in front of the Vice-Regal couple, playfully but forcefully brandishing a switch all around him so that no digger may come too close to them.

For her part, Lady Hotham, a large watch on a gold chain hanging carelessly from her neck her only adornment, and at a momentary distance from her husband, turns to one rough digger and says, ‘Well, I declare, these diggers are, after all, fine hearty fellows: I shall speak to Charles to be kind to the poor fellows, when we get back to town.’

It remains all in good fun, and for the next mile or so, even as they make their way towards the hated Government Camp – the place where too many of the diggers have had to proceed in chains – the party is met with cheers for the ‘Diggers’ Charlie’.