The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (42 page)

Now that the weather had fined up, the last stage of the hotel's construction could gather pace. The bowling alley was finally operational but there were still seven bedrooms upstairs to be finished and the new concert rooms out the back. And of course there were bills to pay: £230 for paint—white, gold, green and vermillion; 150 squares of glass; cornices, wallpaper and ceiling paper; £320 to five contractors for the stables and concert room; £96 to the sawyer; £190 to Thomas Bath for ten casks of his porter and ten cases of his gin; Rutherford and Tingman, the wine and spirit merchants, would get £596 for twenty-five dozen bottles of champagne, sherry, and port, two thousand cigars, 124 dozen bottles of ale, porter and twenty-two gallons of whisky. Fifty single beds, ten double beds and one hundred pillows also had to be paid for. A massive bill, but it all paled in comparison to the £4540 owed to F. E. Beaver for cartage since May.
³
(This was the opportunity cost of building in winter, when the roads turned to something resembling Irish stew.) Some people might call the Eureka Hotel the
slaughterhouse
, but many believed that James Bentley was a fair dealer, upright, well mannered and in thriving circumstances. They needed no inducement to give him credit.

But the Eureka Hotel was not just a business, it was also home—to Catherine and James and wee Thomas, and the new baby quickening inside her. Just an ex-con and a Sligo girl—she was only twenty-two—but they had built themselves a fine home. Practically a palace. The hotel was also home to Catherine's sister Mary, and Mary's husband, Everard Gadd, to Duncan the barman and the nursemaid, Agnes Sinclair. Two other servants as well, Mrs Gill and Mary Haines. Michael Walsh, the waiter. Sam in the stables and George in the bowling alley. Isaac Rigby, the carpenter working on the adjoining concert rooms. Charles Smith, the cook and baker. The musicians: Augustus Neill, Edward West and Jacques Paltzer. And Farrell and Hance, the watchmen and rouseabouts.

Nineteen residents in all. It was quite a compound. Those who lived in a hotel were, by Victorian law, called
inmates
. So what did that make the hundreds of people who flocked to drink and gamble and bowl and dance there each night? Outsiders? Hardly. It was Catherine and James's job to make everyone feel welcome: offer hospitality. They did it well.

The change of season brought a flurry of activity, as if a clutch of baby spiders had burst from a taut maternal egg-sac and scattered into the warm spring air.
Business of all kinds has looked up amazingly,
noted the
DIGGERS
'
ADVOCATE
.
⁴
A ball was held on 2 September in the new Lydiard Street Arcade in aid of the Hospital Fund.
The sexes were nearly equal in number
, noted the correspondent,
some of the ladies did complain, but not much, that there was too little variety in the dances
. Resident Gold Commissioner Robert Rede, Magistrate John D'Ewes, Police Inspector Gordon Evans and
many leading storekeepers were there
. Down on the Eureka, the stores that had cleared out over winter were now returning. A glee club started up at Bath's Hotel. A lending library opened on the diggings, with copies of Dickens, Thackeray and Ida Pfeiffer, the popular writers of the day. Messrs Robinson and Cole opened their chemist at Ballarat Flat. Their inventory included:

Robinson's Dysentery Mixture, a never-failing remedy; Robinson's Carmative and Preservative for infants, Robinson's Patent Groats, Robinson's Amboyna Tincture for the teeth and gums; and surgical instruments of all kinds, trusses, cupping apparatus, enema apparatus, breast pumps, nipple shields, feeding bottles, puff boxes, etc.
⁵

Ellen Young's husband, Frederick, was a chemist but lacked Robinson's entrepreneurial flair.

New enterprises caught the waft of rejuvenation on the clement breeze. It was announced that a bathing house was to be erected near the Gravel Pits, at an investment of £900, offering hot and cold shower baths.
By making the luxury of bathing available to all, rich and poor alike, the proprietors will not only invite a large concourse of eager customers but also monopolise the business
, heralded the advertorial in the
TIMES
.
⁶
A time to plant, a time to reap.

Seeds that were furtively sown in the desperate clutch of winter would now begin to swell. Sixteen-year-old Anne Duke discovered she was pregnant with her first child. So was Margaret Johnston. She and James had married in August; theirs was a honeymoon baby, conceived along the road to Maggie's new home in Ballarat's Government Camp. Bridget Nolan would also be in her first trimester this Christmas. Realising her situation, Bridget was to marry her travelling companion Thomas Hynes on 2 October at St Alipius Church on the Eureka, with Father Patrick Smyth officiating and old shipmate Paddy Gittens as best man. Eight weeks later the young blacksmith Gittens would be beaten to death by redcoats amid a hail of bullets and the acrid smoke of a hundred fires. A time to be born, a time to die.

On Sundays, diggers washed their clothes. Then, enjoying the blue skies and balmy air, they joined in hunting parties in the bush. Storekeepers continued to inflame the Sabbath Alliance by openly trading, vending and carting on the Lord's Day. It was the only day that diggers were not mining, so of course they needed to buy and sell, argued the shopkeepers. Members of the alliance trudged through the diggings, remonstrating with the violators of
the Pearl of Days
. A pulpit-thumping meeting was held at the Wesleyan Tent Chapel in the second week of September, attended by Resident Commissioner Robert Rede, who offered his full support. The
DIGGERS
'
ADVOCATE
, reporting the meeting, referred to Rede as
our strutting, swellish, little head commissioner, our little handsome functionary
.
⁷
George Evans attended the Wesleyan Chapel but was
not much pleased
by the tone of the minister. His brother Charles had forsaken religious observance for the time being; he was busy working at the Criterion Printing Office in partnership with a twenty-five-year-old Yorkshire man named Thomas Fletcher.

The Ballarat court held its General Sessions. Most cases pertained to horse theft;
the real blame for this deeply rooted crime
, wrote the court reporter, should lie with the auctioneers, a commercial
gentry
who were too liberally licensed. Horses were even stolen from the Government Camp,
as if to hold up the vigilance of our guardians to public scorn
. (Most of Ballarat's auctioneers were Jewish but the reporter's dog whistle largely fell on deaf ears, on this uniquely level playing field.) As the weather became more benign, thefts increased noticeably. Armed gangs and
flash mobs
skulked around tents, day and night. The chained dogs went ballistic.

Spring, it seemed, unleashed all the passions.

On 23 September, an assault and battery charge was heard in front of Robert Rede. The
BALLARAT TIMES
reported:

It was proved that John Doyle and John Doyle's wife threatened to rip open John Bidsil and John Bidsil's wife, and John Doyle and John Doyle's wife being unable to prove to the contrary, John Doyle and not John Doyle's wife was bound to keep the peace towards John Bidsil and John Bidsil's wife, and all within the realm of Victoria, for the term of six months, himself in the sum of £100 and two sureties of £50 each.
⁸

Slapped with such a ruinous fine, no doubt John Doyle wished he had been party to a recent milestone. On 8 September, a nugget weighing ninety-eight pounds was extracted from the Canadian Lead, the second most valuable lump yet extracted from Victoria's underbelly. It was named the Lady Hotham Nugget, in honour of Her Excellency's recent visit. Along with the gold from the washing stuff drawn from the same claim, the shaft produced over two thousand pounds of gold. Most claims around the area, reminded the
GEELONG ADVERTISER
,
won't pay the cost of sinking
.
⁹
But such finds always caused a fresh burst of enthusiasm and a new influx of cocksure diggers.

Down at the Adelphi Theatre, Sheridan Knowles played the Hunchback to rapturous applause.
It was the most intellectual treat we have had on the diggings
, said the
DIGGERS
'
ADVOCATE
reporter.
We congratulate Mrs Hanmer on the energy and ability of her management
. There was acclaim for fourteen-year-old Julia Hanmer too:
To see one so young as Miss Hanmer capable, not only of understanding but appreciating, and finely personating so delicate and difficult part as Julia demands our highest praise
.
¹⁰
Charles Evans was often in the crowd to watch Sarah Hanmer and her remarkable daughter perform. A time to laugh, a time to weep.

In mid-September, a new detachment of the 40th Regiment arrived to relieve the old pensioners who had held the fort through the long winter. The departure scene was one of great amusement, reported the
DIGGERS
'
ADVOCATE
:
nearly all of them were so drunk as to be scarcely able to stand, much less walk, in their proper order
. The publicans will lose their
staunch supporters
, scoffed the paper. Captain Russell, who had been in charge of the Pensioners, was placed in the Camp hospital. He was so drunk he'd become
deranged
.
¹¹

In the commissioners' weekly reports to the Melbourne Goldfields Office HQ, new father-to-be James Johnston noted at the end of September that on the diggings
the workings are progressing favourably but the want of good water is already felt at Eureka
.
¹²
Ballarat's population would increase by nine thousand people between September and December. As new hopefuls continued to stream in, the tide of nature's bounty was on its way out.

The weather here is remarkably fine and bids fair to continue
, predicted the
DIGGERS
'
ADVOCATE
on 16 September. Could the rhythm of life have continued to play out like this, under the clear, blue skies of a wide, brown, gold-laced land? An arrest here. A ball there. A death here. A new restaurant there. A nugget here. A play there. An intermittent changing of the guard. Good news. Bad news. Turn, turn, turn.

Perhaps Ballarat was coiled like a spring, clenched from winter's deep freeze of disappointment, frustration and grinding poverty.
Like the eternal sting of insects,
as German digger Frederick Vern put it, the petty tyranny and insolence of the administrators
maddened the people
.
¹³
Among the traders, victuallers and entertainers, the competition for custom was intense. The people of Ballarat were not ready to thaw; they were ready to pounce.
Everybody was ripe for anything
, reckoned Vern. Primed. Wired.
It only wanted the spark to explode
.