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CHAPTER XII.
1. Importance of the Year 1851.—The year 1851 was in many ways an eventful one to Australia.
In that year the colonies received from the Imperial Parliament the amended
Constitutions they had so long expected. Tasmania, South Australia, Port
Phillip, and Western Australia were now no longer under the absolute control of
Governors sent out by the colonial authorities in England; they could
henceforth boast the dignity of being self-governed communities, for, in 1851,
they were invested with political powers which had previously been possessed by
New South Wales alone. They now had the privilege of electing two-thirds of the
members of a Legislative Council which not only had the power of making laws
each for its own colony, but also of framing any new constitution for itself
according to its own taste and requirements. Each colony kept its Legislative
Council for only a year or two until it could discuss and establish a regular
system of parliamentary government with two Houses and a Cabinet of responsible
Ministers. Again, it was on the 1st of July in the same year that Port Phillip
gained its independence; from that date onward its prosperous career must be
related under its new title—Victoria.
But the event which made the year 1851 especially memorable in the
annals of Australia was the discovery, near Bathurst, of the first of those
rich goldfields which, for so long a time, changed the prospects of the
colonies. For several years after the date of this occurrence the history of
Australia is little more than the story of the feverish search for gold, with
its hopes, its labour, its turmoil, and its madness; its scenes of exultation
and splendid triumph, and its still more frequent scenes of bitter and gloomy
disappointment.
2. Early Rumours of Gold.—For many years there had been rumours that the Blue
Mountains were auriferous. It was said that gold had been seen by convicts in
the days of Macquarie, and, indeed, still earlier; but to the stories of
prisoners, who claimed rewards for alleged discoveries, the authorities in
Sydney always listened with extreme suspicion, more especially as no pretended
discoverer could ever find more than his first small specimens.
In 1840 a Polish nobleman named Strzelecki, who had been travelling
among the ranges round Mount Kosciusko, stated that, from indications he had
observed, he was firmly persuaded of the existence of gold in these mountains;
but the Governor asked him, as a favour, to make no mention of a theory which
might, perhaps, unsettle the colony, and fill the easily excited convicts with
hopes which, he feared, would prove delusive. Strzelecki agreed not to publish
his belief; but there was another man of science who was not so easily to be
silenced. The Rev. W. B. Clarke, a clergyman devoted to geology, exhibited
specimens in Sydney, on which he based an opinion that the Blue Mountains
would, eventually, be found to possess goldfields of great extent and value.
Some of these were taken to London by Strzelecki; and in 1844 a great English
scientist, Sir Roderick Murchison, read a paper before the Royal Geographical
Society in which he expressed a theory similar to that of Mr. Clarke. In 1846
he again called attention to this subject, and showed that, from the great
similarity which existed between the rocks of the Blue Mountains and those of
the Urals, there was every probability that the one would be found as rich as
the other was known to be in the precious metals. So far as theory could go,
the matter had been well discussed before the year 1851, but no one had
ventured to spend his time and money in making a practical effort to settle the
question.
Edward Hargraves.
3. Edward Hargraves.—About that,
time, however, the rich mines of California attracted a Bathurst settler, named
Edward Hargraves, to seek his fortune on the banks of the Sacramento; and though,
among the great crowds of struggling and jostling diggers, he met with but
little success, yet he learned the methods by which gold is discovered and
secured, and laid the foundation for adventures in Australia which were
afterwards to bring him both wealth and renown. Whilst he toiled with
increasing disappointment on one of these famous goldfields, the scenery around
him, and the appearance of the rocks, recalled to his memory a certain secluded
valley beyond the Blue Mountains, which he had visited thirteen years before;
the notion floated vaguely through his mind that, perhaps, in that silent spot,
there might lie great treasures, such as he saw his more fortunate companions
from time to time draw forth from the rocks and soil around him. Day after day
the image of that winding creek among the hills near Bathurst recurred with
increasing vividness to stimulate his imagination and awaken his hopes. At
length this feeling impelled him to seek once more the shores of Australia in
order to examine the spot which had so often been present to his day-dreams. He
lost no time in sailing, and scarcely had he arrived in Sydney ere he set out
on horseback to cross the Blue Mountains. On the 11th of February, 1851, he
spent the night at a little inn a few miles from the object of his journey, and
shortly after dawn he sallied forth on his ride through the forest, carrying
with him a spade and a trowel and a little tin dish. In the cool air of the
morning the scent of the spreading gum trees braced up his frame as he plunged
deeper and deeper among those lonely hollows and wood-clad hills. In an hour or
two he reached the well-remembered spot—the dry course of a mountain torrent
which, in rainy seasons, finds its way into the Summerhill Creek. He lost no
time in placing a little of the grey-coloured soil into his tin dish, and at
once carried it to the nearest pool, where he dipped the whole beneath the
water. By moving the dish rapidly, as he had learned to do in California, he
washed away the sand and earth; but the particles of gold, which are more than
seven and a half times heavier than sand, were not so easily to be carried off.
They sank to the corner of the dish, where they lay secure—a few small specks,
themselves of little value, yet telling of hidden treasures that lay scattered
in all the soil around.
A few days were spent in a careful examination of the neighbouring
valleys, and when he was absolutely certain that the hopes he had so warmly
indulged would not prove empty, he set out for Sydney, taking care, however, to breathe no word of what he thought or of what he
had proved. On the 3rd of April he wrote a letter to the Colonial Secretary, in
which he stated that, if the Government were willing to give him £500, he would
point out localities in New South Wales where gold was abundantly to be found.
In reply, the Colonial Secretary announced that no preliminary reward could be
given; but that, if he chose first of all to point out the localities, he would
afterwards be recompensed in proportion to the results. He accepted these
conditions; and Mr. Stutchbury, the Colonial Geologist, was sent to accompany
him to the Summerhill Creek. On the 8th of May they set to work, and soon
obtained several ounces of grain gold; on the 13th, they discovered a single piece
worth £30, and next day Mr. Stutchbury reported to the Government that he had
seen enough to convince him that the district was rich in the precious metal.
Five days afterwards, the little valley of the Summerhill contained four
hundred persons, all stooping over the creek in a row about a mile long, each
with a dish in his hand, scarcely ever raising his head, but busily engaged in
washing the sand for gold. Lumps were frequently found of value varying from £5
to £200. A week later, there were a thousand persons at work on the creek near
the formerly lonely gully.
4. Rush to the Goldfield.—The
excitement throughout the colony now became intense: workmen quitted their
employment, shepherds deserted their flocks, shopkeepers closed their stores,
and a great tide of fortune-seekers pressed onward, day by day, to the west.
Most of these had sold everything they possessed, in order to make up a little
bundle of necessary articles. Yet there were very many but ill-provided for a
lengthened stay; they hurried along the road with the fallacious idea that gold
was simply to be shovelled into bags and carted to Sydney. But when they came
upon the scene, and saw that in the case of most of them it would only be after
weeks and months of severe and constant toil that they could be rich, they grew
faint-hearted, lounged for a week or two on the diggings, and then started for
home again; so that, for some time, there was a counter-current of grumbling
and discontented men passing back to Sydney by the road. These men thought
themselves befooled by Hargraves, and it might, perhaps, have cost him his life
had he fallen into their hands. On his trip to Sydney he was careful to
disguise himself, to avoid their threatened revenge. He received from
Government, however, his preliminary reward of £500, and, in after years, New
South Wales voted him the sum of £10,000, which was supplemented by a present
of £2,381 from Victoria. Other profits also accrued to Hargraves; so that he
was, in the end, recompensed for his toil and trouble with a handsome
competency.
The gloomy reports of returning diggers checked for a time the flow of
people to the west; but in the month of July an aboriginal shepherd on a
station near Bathurst burst in upon his master while seated at dinner, his eyes
glistening with excitement. He was only able to stammer out: “Oh, massa, white
man find little fellow, me find big fellow”. When his
master drove him in a buggy through the forest, the shepherd pointed to where a
hundredweight of gold was sticking out from a rock. It was so heavy that they
had to chop it in two with their axes before they could lift it into the buggy.
It was afterwards sold for £4,000. So splendid a prize, obtained in so easy a
manner, was a temptation too dazzling to be resisted; and the stream of people
along the Bathurst road was now tenfold denser than before.
5. Government Regulations.—When the population on the goldfields began to grow
numerous, the Government found it necessary to make arrangements for the
preservation of law and order. A commissioner was appointed, who was to act as
a magistrate; he was to be assisted by a small body of police, and was to take
charge of the gold escorts. As the lands on which the gold was being found were
the public property of the colony, it was thought to be but just that the
community, as a whole, should participate, to some small extent, in the wealth
raised from them; and the order was, therefore, issued that diggers should in
all cases take out licences before seeking for gold, and should pay for them at
the rate of thirty shillings per month.
New diggings were, from time to time, opened up, and fresh crowds of
eager men constantly pressed towards them, leaving the towns deserted and the
neighbouring colonies greatly reduced in population. For some months the Turon
River was the favourite; at one time it had no less than ten thousand men upon
its banks. At Ophir, and Braidwood, and Maroo the most industrious and
sagacious miners were generally rewarded by the discovery of fine pieces of
gold, for which the Californian name of “nuggets” now began to be extensively
used.
6. Gold in Victoria.—When Latrobe
was sworn in to fill the office of Governor of Victoria on the 16th July, 1851,
it appeared probable that he would soon have but a small community to rule
over. So great were the numbers of those who were daily packing up their
effects and setting off for the goldfields of New South Wales that Victoria
seemed likely to sink into a very insignificant place on the list of Australian colonies. In alarm at this prospect, a number of the
leading citizens of Melbourne on the 9th of June united to form what was called
the Gold Discovery Committee, and offered a reward of £200 to the person who
should give the first intimation of a paying goldfield within two hundred miles
of Melbourne. Many persons set out, each in hopes of being the fortunate
discoverer; and a report having been circulated that signs of gold had been
seen on the Plenty Ranges, there were soon no less than two hundred persons
scouring those hills, though for a long time without success. The first useful
discovery in Victoria seems to have been made on 1st July, by a Californian
digger named Esmond, who, like Hargraves, had entered on the search with a
practical knowledge of the work. His experience had taught him the general
characteristics of a country in which gold is likely to be found, and he
selected Clunes as a favourable spot. He found the quartz rock of the district
richly sprinkled with gold; and his discovery having been made known, several
hundred people were quickly on the scene. Almost on the same day, gold was
discovered by a party of six men, at Anderson’s Creek, only a few miles up the
Yarra from Melbourne. It is thus difficult to determine with certainty whether
or not Esmond was in reality the first discoverer; but, at any rate, he
received honours and emoluments as such; and in after years the Victorian
Parliament presented him with £1,000 for his services.
7. Ballarat.—On the 10th of August
the Geelong newspapers announced that deposits of auriferous earth had been
discovered at Buninyong, and very soon the sunny slopes of that peaceful and
pastoral district were swarming with prospecting parties; the quietly browsing
sheep were startled from their favourite solitudes by crowds of men, who
hastened with pick and spade to break up the soil in every direction, each
eager to out-strip the other in the race for wealth. This region, however, did
not realise the expectations that had been formed of it, and many of the
diggers began to move northwards, in the direction of Clunes. But at Clunes,
also, there had been disappointment, for the gold was mostly embedded in quartz
rock, and these early miners were not prepared to extract it; parties from
Clunes were therefore moving southwards to Buninyong, and the two currents met
on the slopes of the Yarrowee, a streamlet whose banks were afterwards famous
as the Ballarat diggings. The first comers began to work at a bend in the
creek, which they called Golden Point. Here, for a time, each man could easily
earn from £20 to £40 a day, and crowds of people
hurried to the scene. Every one selected a piece of ground, which he called his
claim, and set to work to dig a hole in it; but when the bottom of the sandy
layer was reached, and there seemed to be nothing but pipe-clay below, the
claim was supposed to be worked out, and was straightway abandoned. However, a
miner named Cavanagh determined to try an experiment, and, having entered one
of these deserted claims, he dug through the layer of pipe-clay, when he had
the good fortune to come suddenly upon several large deposits of grain gold. He
had reached what had been in long past ages the bed of the creek, where, in
every little hollow, for century after century, the flowing waters had gently
deposited the gold which they had washed out of the rocks in the mountains. In
many cases these “pockets,” as they were called, were found to contain gold to
the value of thousands of pounds, so that very soon all the claims were carried
down a few feet further, and with such success that, before a month had passed,
Ballarat took rank as the richest goldfield in the world. In October there were
ten thousand men at work on the Yarrowee; acre after acre was covered with
circular heaps of red and yellow sand, each with its shaft in the middle, in
which men were toiling beneath the ground to excavate the soil and pass it to
their companions above, who quickly hurried with it to the banks of the creek,
where twelve hundred “cradles,” rocked by brawny arms, were washing the sand
from the gold.
8. Mount Alexander.—In the month of
September a party, who had gone about forty miles north-east of Clunes to Mount
Alexander, discovered near the present site of Castlemaine a valuable seam of
gold-bearing earth. The fame of this place soon spread through all the colony; many left Ballarat to seek it, and crowds of
people hastened from Melbourne and Geelong to share in the glittering prizes.
In October, eight thousand men had gathered in the district; in November, there
were not less than twenty-five thousand diggers at work, and three tons of gold
were waiting in the tent of the commissioner to be carried to Melbourne. The
road to Mount Alexander was crowded with men of all ranks and conditions,
pressing eagerly onward to be in time.
9. Sandhurst.—A few weeks later the
glories both of Ballarat and of Mount Alexander were dimmed for a time by the
discovery of gold on the Bendigo Creek, which seemed at first to be the richest
of all the goldfields. In the course of a few months nearly forty thousand
persons were scattered along the banks of the streamlet where the handsome
streets of Bendigo now stand.
In the month of May, 1852, there must have been close upon seventy
thousand men in the country between Buninyong and Bendigo, all engaged in the
same occupation. Melbourne and Geelong were silent and deserted; for all
classes were alike infected with the same excitement—lawyers, doctors, clerks,
merchants, labourers, mechanics, all were to be found struggling through the
miry ruts that served for a highway to Bendigo. The sailors left the ships in
the bay with scarcely a man to take care of them; even the very policemen
deserted, and the warders in the gaols resigned in a body. The price of labour
now became excessive, for no man was willing to stay away from the diggings
unless tempted by the offer of four or five times the ordinary wage.
10. Immigration.—Meanwhile the news of these great discoveries had travelled to Europe, so that, after the
middle of 1852, ships began to arrive freighted with thousands of men of all
nations, who no sooner landed in Melbourne than they started for the diggings.
During this year nearly one hundred thousand persons were thus brought into the
country, and the population was doubled at a bound. Next year ninety-two
thousand fresh arrivals landed, and Victoria thus became the most populous of
the colonies. During the two following years it received a further accession of
a hundred and fifty thousand; so that, in 1856, it contained four hundred
thousand inhabitants, or about five times the number it possessed in 1850. The
staple industry was, of course, the mining for gold, of which, in 1852, one
hundred and seventy-four tons were raised, valued at £14,000,000. During the
next ten years £100,000,000 worth of gold was exported from Victoria.
Some of the nuggets that were found are of historic note. The “Sarah
Sands,” discovered in 1853, was worth about £6,500. In 1857 the “Blanche
Barkly,” worth £7,000, was discovered; and the following year produced the
“Welcome Nugget,” which was sold for £10,500, and was the greatest on record,
until, in 1869, the “Welcome Stranger” was dug out, which proved to be slightly
larger.
CHAPTER XIII.
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