by Clare Wright
Jacinta di Mase, my literary agent, for her quiet dignity and steely determination to make this book fly. You are a ripper.
The team at Text. What a dream it has been to work with you all. Thanks to Michael Heyward for bringing me into the fold, and to Emily Booth, Jane Novak, Rachel Shepheard, Kirsty Wilson, Shalini Kunahlan and Chong Weng Ho for bringing the book to life. Hats off to my editor, Mandy Brett, for her skill and fine mind. There are not enough thank-yous, Mandy.
Friends and family, so many of you, but especially Justine Sless and Katrina Carling for school pick-ups and sleep-overs on demand; Richard Perry for a lifetime of books; John Goldlust for lunchtime chats; Madeleine and George Wright for their faith; and Ruth Leonards, mother extraordinaire, for letting a thousand kindnesses bloom.
Bernie, Noah and Esther Wright, my favourite people.
And Damien Wright, who has loved me and loved me and loved me through a lot.
ILLUSTRATIONS
All illustrations are courtesy State Library of Victoria unless otherwise stated.
Endpapers
The digger’s road guide to the gold mines of Victoria, and the country extending 210 miles round Melbourne. ‘Carefully compiled from authentic sources & lithographed by Edwd. Gilks. Aug. 1853’. Published by S. Leigh 93 Flinders Lane East.
Plate section one
1 Queen Rose: Ballarat Historical Society Collection.
2 Eugene von Guérard, Old Ballarat as it Was in the Summer of 1853–54, 1884, oil on canvas. Collection: Art Gallery of Ballarat. Gift of James Oddie on Eureka Day, 1885.
Ballarat 1.8. Aug 1853. Eugene von Guérard 1811–1901.
3 Alarming Prospect, Single Ladies off to the Diggings, 1853. John Leech 1817–64. Issued as frontispiece to Punch’s ‘Pocket Book’, 1853.
Travelling to the Diggings, the Keilor Plains. Victoria. 1853. John Alexander Gilfillan 1793–1864. Illustrated London News, February 26, 1853. ‘Sketches from the Victoria Gold Diggings’.
4 Lucky Digger that Returned. Victorian Gold Fields 1852–3. S. T. Gill, 1818–80.
detail from The girls the diggers left behind, and what they had to do. 1851. William Strutt, Victoria the Golden, sketchbook. From the Victorian Parliamentary Library via SLV.
Plate section two
1 Zealous Gold Diggers, Bendigo July 1st /52. S. T. Gill.
Sly Grog Shanty. Victorian Gold Fields 1852–3. S. T. Gill.
2 Sarah Hanmer: courtesy Lorraine Brownlie.
3 Interior of Adelphi Theatre, Ballarat 1855, artist unknown.
Store at the Diggings, 1854, Thomas Ham engraver 1821–1870.
4 Subscription Ball (sketch), 1854, S. T. Gill.
‘A Very Just Complaint’: cartoon from Melbourne Punch, 1856.
Plate section three
1 Catherine Bentley’s letter, formerly in the possession of Andrew Crowley (written on the back of the petition to free James Bentley): Sovereign Hill Gold Museum Collection 97.0205.
It reads:
The man Scoby mentioned in the printed form as killed, was hid in the Abbotsford Convent during the riots, under the influence of Peter Lalor late speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly and his cousin or uncle one Father Kennedy who had charge of the Catholics Church at Ballarat at the time of riots in fact they caused the riots. See officials report on Ballarat riots.
I am given to understand that Scoby is living at Dowling Forest near Ballarat his two sons George and James Scoby, keeps (livery stables) at Ballarat.
At the time of the riots Scoby was a young man, unmarried he is about 60 years now.
10 April 18/92
Charles A. Doudiet, Eureka Riot 17th October, 1854, watercolour on paper. Collection: Art Gallery of Ballarat. Purchased by the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery with the assistance of many donors, 1996.
2 Anastasia Hayes: courtesy State of Victoria. Public Record Office Victoria, Hayes Family Photographs, VPRS 12970.
3 Charles A. Doudiet. Swearing allegiance to the ‘Southern Cross’, 1854, watercolour on paper. Collection: Art Gallery of Ballarat. Purchased by the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery with the assistance of many donors, 1996.
Bakery Hill Meeting Poster: courtesy State of Victoria. Public Record Office Victoria, Eureka Stockade Historical Collection, VPRS 5527/P/4.
Katholisch Kapelle aus den Gravel Pit Lunis 3u Ballarat Januav 1854, Eugene von Guérard.
4 Eliza Howard née Darcy, Patrick Howard and family: courtesy Ella Hancock and Adele Howard.
Eureka veterans at the 1904 anniversary: kind permission of Ballarat Heritage Services.
NOTES
PREFACE
1 A copy of Deegan’s lecture, ‘The Mining Camps of the Fifties’, is held by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.
2 Geoffrey Blainey drew the arresting word picture in a discussion with Tony Jones on the ABC’s Lateline on 7 May 2001.
3 Argus, 6 December 1854.
4 The full speech can be downloaded from the Whitlam Institute’s website.
INTRODUCTION: DUST AND RATTLING BONES
1 H. R. Nicholls published his account, ‘Reminiscences of the Eureka Stockade’, in 1890.
2 The number of miners killed during and after the Eureka clash is highly contentious. The conclusion to this book explains why. Twenty-seven men are listed as died from wounds received on 3 December, registered on Ballarat District Death Register on 20 June 1855. At least three bodies are known to have been buried at sites other than Ballarat: Ian MacFarlane, Eureka from the Official Records (Melbourne: Public Records Office Victoria, 1995), 104. Dorothy Wickham has also traced nine other civilians reported as dead of wounds inflicted at Eureka in other sources: Dorothy Wickham, Deaths at Eureka (Ballarat: Ballarat Heritage Services, 1996), 48. Peter Lalor listed twenty dead in his published account of the affray: Age, 7 April 1855. In 1892, this list was inscribed on a Ballarat statue in Lalor’s honour, with the words and others who were killed tacked on the end. For the full text of the statue inscription, see Bob O’Brien, Massacre at Eureka: The Untold Story (Ballarat: The Sovereign Hill Museums Association, 1992), 132. Greg Blake has recently claimed that these ‘others’ may number at least twenty-one unidentified casualties. Blake also concludes that there were many more military casualties than the four military officially reported. See Gregory Blake, To Pierce the Tyrant’s Heart: The Battle for the Eureka Stockade, 3 December 1854 (Loftus, ACT: Australian Army History Unit, 2009), 198–200. Some witnesses later reported up to fifty dead of wounds sustained during the battle. See chapter 12 of this book. The real figure may never be known.
3 The observations of Charles Evans are all drawn from his diary, written between 24 September 1853 and 21 January 1855. Until 2012, this diary was known as the ‘Samuel Lazarus diary’. My research discovered that Charles Evans was the true author of the famous goldfields diary. For an account of the research journey that led to the official change in provenance, see Clare Wright, ‘Desperately Seeking Samuel: A Diary Lost and Found,’ La Trobe Journal 90(2012):6–22.
4 Ballarat Times, 3 December 1856.
5 These population figures are from Public Record Office Victoria (hereinafter PROV), VPRS 1189/95 M55/443, monthly returns of the Gold Fields Commission. Population statistics for Ballarat and the goldfields 1854 are also found in VPRS 1189/95 L55/1734, VPRS 1189/94 and VPRS 1085/09. These figures are sometimes inconsistent with each other, and occasionally change markedly from month to month.
6 This quote is in the Andrew Crowley file in the Montrose Cottage Collection held at the Gold Museum, Ballarat.
7 All observations of Maggie Johnston are drawn from this diary. Ellen Campbell has now lodged a transcript of the diary at the State Library of Victoria. Margaret (Maggie) Johnston. Diary, transcript, 1854 May 18–Oct. 17 1856, 1854. State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection MS 1641288.
8 Ballarat Star, 26 July 1884.
9 Ballarat Star, 28 November 1884.
10 Argus, 4 December 1854, 9. There is no registered
death for Catherine Smith in 1854 or 1855. There is a Moyle family still living in Upwey, but my attempts to contact them have been unproductive.
ONE: A VIRGIN COUNTRY
1 Scottish journalist and politician Thomas McCombie had immigrated to Victoria in 1841. These observations are excerpted from McCombie’s later writings, Australian Sketches, penned after his return to England in 1859. ‘Sketching’ Australia was a popular pastime, akin to today’s travel writing, and there are many published Australian Sketches.
2 Henry Mundy wrote his remarkable 730-page memoirs sometime before his death in 1912.
3 William Howitt’s famous work, Land, Labour and Gold, was published in London in 1855, on his return to England after two years in Victoria. William’s wife, Mary Howitt, with whom he co-authored 180 published works of poetry and prose, did not accompany her husband and two sons to Australia.
4 It was quite common for a ship to have its own in-house newspaper, circulated by an enterprising editor who had brought a small printing press on board. Ship’s newspapers contained news of births, deaths and marriages during the journey, shipboard gossip, notices for entertainments, advertisements for items being bought or sold, as well as editorial comments about what immigrants could expect in their new life in the colonies. The State Library of Victoria holds all ten volumes of the Marco Polo Chronicle, published by Francis Whitfield Robinson and edited by Dr Gillespie.
5 It is the conventional wisdom that Hiscock ‘discovered’ gold at Ballarat. See, for example, Robyn Annear, Nothing But Gold: The Diggers of 1852, (Melbourne, Text Publishing, 1999), 10. Note that in The Rush That Never Ended, Geoffrey Blainey attributes the first Buninyong finds in the Ballarat region to John Dunlop and his mate Regan. Geoffrey Serle also gives the guernsey to Hiscock in The Golden Age. All authors agree that small deposits had been found in other parts of Victoria prior to this date, but the Ballarat finds of August/September 1851 were the first significant discoveries. Meanwhile, Fred Cahir has documented the preexisting knowledge of Indigenous people with regards to mineral deposits, including gold. Fred Cahir, ‘Finders not Keepers: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria’, in Eureka: Reappraising an Australian Legend, ed. Alan Mayne (Perth: API Network, 2006).
6 John Capper wrote three guidebooks to Australia, published in 1852, 1853 and 1855. These observations are drawn from his 1855 edition. All three volumes are held by the State Library of Victoria.
7 Sarah Watchwarn’s words are preserved in the 1934 collection Records of Pioneer Women, produced by the Women’s Centennial Council to celebrate one hundred years since the establishment of the first long-term European settlement in Victoria. Note that Ellen Clacy used the phrase ‘grass widows’ in her 1853 account of her sojourn in Victoria. She said it was a mining term. Later linguists consider the expression to have a dual etymology. It can refer to the grass that was used to stuff the marital mattress, which has been abandoned by the departed husband. Or it can refer to the phrase ‘the grass is always greener’, suggesting the husband has left for more promising pastures. Historian Christina Twomey gives an excellent account of the lives of women left behind by the gold rush in her book Deserted and Destitute: Motherhood, Wife Desertion and Colonial Welfare.
8 Wathaurung language terms were collected and recorded by Charles Griffith in the 1830s. Griffith was an early civil servant and politician in the Port Phillip District. His diaries, including extensive vocabulary lists, are preserved in the State Library of Victoria. My thanks to Ballarat-based historian Fred (David) Cahir for pointing me in the direction of Griffith’s work. Cahir’s own extensive research on the Wathaurung is essential reading for any modern student or scholar of gold rush history. For details about Queen Rose and Caroline, see Dorothy Wickham’s invaluable collection of biographical sketches, Women of the Diggings, Ballarat 1854.
9 William McLeish wrote his memoirs in 1914, when he was almost seventy years old. The manuscript is held by the State Library of Victoria.
10 Samuel Heape’s diary, kept between October 1853 and March 1854, is held by the State Library of Victoria. The observations of J. J. Bond are drawn from his ship diary aboard the Lady Flora, departing Gravesend in April 1853. Bond’s diary is held in microform in many Australian collections through the Australian Joint Copying Project.
11 Newcastle Courant, 9 January 1857, 6.
12 Walter Bridges, Travelogue, The Travels of Walter Bridges, c. 1856, Ballarat Library.
13 American prospector Charles Ferguson makes it clear that using Aboriginal guides was common practice. See Ferguson’s memoir Experiences of a Forty-Niner. Fred Cahir also documents many instances of Wathaurung making the most of immigrants’ ignorance of the land for their own financial benefit.
14 Cahir, ‘Dallong’, 38.
15 The words belong to artist William Strutt, who is most famous for his remarkable painting Black Thursday, February 6th, 1851, which hangs in the State Library of Victoria. Strutt is also responsible for the lovely sketch of Victoria’s grass widows fending for themselves in the pursuit of daily chores ordinarily performed by men.
16 Wilhelmina (Willie) Davis Train’s letters home to America are preserved in the manuscripts collection of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria under the misleading name ‘Miller Davis Train’. George Francis Train’s published accounts in the Boston Globe are compiled in the book edited by E. Daniel and Annette Potts, A Yankee Merchant in Goldrush Australia.
17 Weston Bate, ‘Gold: Social Energiser and Definer’, 7.
18 Or mistress! Mining magnate Alice Cornwell, who owned and operated lucrative gold mines in Ballarat in the 1880s, was known as Madame Midas. Her life is fictionalised in the novel of that name by Fergus Hume, who is credited as the author of the first Australian crime novel, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. Both novels were extremely popular with Australian and British audiences of the day.
19 Edward Bell, ‘Blue Book’ Report on Immigration, tabled 27 September 1854, Government Printer.
20 Dan and Davis Calwell were the great-great-uncles of Arthur Calwell, who as Minister for Immigration in the post-World War II era, was a staunch defender of the White Australian Policy while advocating the strategy of ‘populate or perish’. Dan and Davis Calwell’s letters are held by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.
21 These statistics are gleaned from my own number-crunching of the Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriage registers, 1851–7.
22 The observations of Thomas Pierson are gleaned from his diaries (1852–64), held by the State Library of Victoria.
23 There is widespread confusion about the authorship of the anonymous book Social Life and Manners in Australia by a Resident, published in London in 1861. It is generally attributed to Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye, a writer and women’s rights campaigner who wrote two novels about her time in New South Wales, as well as Memories of Social Life in Australia Thirty Years Ago, published in London in 1914. The authors of Australian Autobiographical Narratives: 1850-1900, Kay Walsh and Joy Hooten, conclude that Social Life and Manners was not written by Ramsay-Laye, as the anonymous author came to Australia ‘in 1851 or 1852’ with her husband and never went to New South Wales. Walsh and Hooten do not propose an alternative to Ramsay-Laye as the author of Social Life and Manners, but adding weight to their theory is the fact that the State Library of Victoria’s rare copy of Social Life and Manners is inscribed as being authored by ‘J. Massey or Massary’. My research shows that a James Massey and Mrs James Massey arrived in Victoria in October 1852 aboard the Julia. However, there is no record of a Mr and Mrs Laye (or Ramsay-Laye) arriving in either Victoria or NSW in the 1850s. On the basis of this evidence, I am inclined to agree that Social Life and Manners was not penned by Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye, but rather by Mrs Elizabeth Massey.
24 The observations of Alexander Dick are drawn from his exceptional three-volume reminiscences of his life in Victoria between 1852 and 1907. Dick died in 1913. The original manuscripts are held at the State Library of Victoria.
25 This traveller’s account was published in Murray’s Guide to the Gold Diggings, the Lonely Planet of its day.
26 The technology of mineral extraction at Ballarat is ably covered by Weston Bate in Lucky City and Geoffrey Blainey in The Rush That Never Ended. However, my deepest debt of gratitude for understanding the geology of gold mining goes to Tim Sullivan, deputy CEO of Sovereign Hill.
27 Weston Bate calls the Ballarat Circus Jones’ Circus. John Wilson, a Eureka descendant, names the circus’s proprietors as Messrs Jones and Noble in his 1885 account. However, Raffaello Carboni refers to it at Rowe’s Circus in his infamous 1855 eyewitness account. Rowe’s American Circus was certainly in Melbourne in August 1853; Thomas and Frances Pierson rented a house opposite it. Pierson says Rowe made £20,000 with his circus and always played to packed audiences. Joseph Rowe and his wife, an ‘equestrienne’, are known to have cleared $100,000 on their Australian tour. They charged 50c per adult and half price for children and servants. See John Culhane, The American Circus, 80. Joseph Rowe and his family left Victoria in 1854 to return to San Francisco.
28 These vignettes are all drawn from Robert Whitworth’s Australian Stories Round the Campfire, published in the Australian International Monthly in 1872.
TWO: DELIVERANCE
1 Genealogical research on the Nolan, Hynes and Gittens families was supplied by Bill Hanlon. Hanlon was raised by his grandmother, Bridget Hynes, Bridget Nolan’s daughter. Additional information was provided by John Wilson, also a descendant of the Nolan/Hynes family.
2 There is a substantial literature about women and Chartism. Jutta Schwarzkopf’s book Women in the Chartist Movement is the most comprehensive. Paul Pickering and Alex Tyrell’s The People’s Bread also gives an excellent account of women’s political activism in this period.
3 A remarkable collection of letters between William and Caroline Dexter is held by the State Library of Victoria. See also Patrick Morgan’s excellent dual biography of the Dexters, Folie à Deux.