The Profilist

by Adrian Mitchell

  I had agreed to club together with two or three others I had met on the voyage from Adelaide; we would make our way to the diggings together. I could see the advantage in that, though secretly I would have preferred to go my own way. But perhaps not just yet. We had very little gear with us. We had each independently decided to get closer to the diggings before loading ourselves up with picks and shovels and buckets and sieves and whatever else might prove necessary. We would travel light, with just our blankets and our provisions. In that way we were able to set out ahead of most of our fellow passengers. Of course I had my sketching pads with me, and pencils and brushes and a box of paints, in a leather satchel. We did not waste precious time setting up camp across the river from Melbourne town, as a good many others appeared to be doing—there was quite a canvas village scattered across a green rise behind us where we turned into the main thoroughfare rising through the township.

  Thoroughfare? It was a thorough morass. Because of the fall of the land it was a natural drain for the entire township, a splendid choice for a main street; and the estuary behind us its sump hole. We had to plod through the sticky mud churned up by teams of bullocks or horses. Here and there deep potholes lay in wait under murky puddles to capsize the vehicle of any unwary driver. There was plenty of traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, milling about the post office and the police station and the banks. Everyone was running about, jostling, pushing and knocking into each other. On each side of the street, store after store after store seemed to pull back its feet from the quagmire; but like so many harlots, every one of them had its beady eye fixed on approaching custom.

  For the whole of Melbourne Town is addicted to commerce. Some of the stores are two-storey buildings, but most are makeshift adjustments to what had previously been sheds or huts or stables. At every turn, merchants and traders are looking to push their wares to the unwary. We had of course anticipated that items of interest to gold diggers would be expensive close to where we disembarked. Such is the nature of business. Yet prices did not drop at all significantly as we made our way up the long straggling roadway, and that meant we had several reasons to be glad we had acquired seamen’s boots for ourselves before we left Adelaide. We had them at a good price, and we had need of them right from the outset.

  Our way up to the new Mt Alexander diggings, which everyone has been talking about, took us out past Flemington where the saleyards are, and another abattoirs and boiling-down works by the smell of it—a knacker’s yard, in other words—and where a racecourse was being established. We camped thereabouts the first evening, and I idled away the supper hour with turning over in my mind what ought to have been a matter of some sensitivity, whether the proximity to each other of those interesting venues would encourage the horses to try harder, or make them despair. The dark shapes of other figures lounging by their glimmering fires here and there in the vicinity, and puffing on their pipes, showed where other souls had fixed their thoughts on the same knotty problem.

  In the small hours of the night it became uncomfortably evident that we would need to purchase tents before very long, and certainly as soon as we reached the diggings. The air was decidedly nippy at first light, two more disadvantages of having no tent, one on top of the other. But in any case we wanted to make an early start, for we had several days of walking ahead of us through increasingly hilly country, with a mountain range starting to loom up as we marched on our way. No time for plodding. No time for taking in the view either, though it seemed to me that this was, how shall I say, softer country than in South Australia. It has not been baked.

  We kept up a good pace across rolling hills, and camped that night by a stream; by contrast, our next day took us through a distressingly charred and desolate landscape—the previous year huge bushfires had raced across the land. Then before we well knew it, our way plunged us into dark heavily timbered country, with queer tall fern trees filling in the understorey and jostling for a share of the subdued light, their trunks so soft you wondered that they reached such a height. Now the track was in many places a kind of black ooze, and here we started to see evidence that those who had gone ahead of us had become exasperated with the loads they had started out with, and had begun to discard things like crockery and pots and baskets and so forth, wheelbarrows and tubs. Light rain drifted into our faces and made our jerseys damp, and chilly drips started to hang in our eyebrows. It took very little time for us to learn the local trick of peering out from under our lowered hats.

  We caught up with and passed families who had piled their belongings into carts and drays, and found the disadvantage of a heavy load even with a willing horse. The wheels had bogged down to the axle; and men and boys had had to strain on ropes to assist the poor beasts, until everyone was exhausted. And so we found carts abandoned too, together with their baggage, tipped over on to one side, with a broken wheel or axle telling the story.

  We saw not only here but all along the way the bodies of scraggy bullocks and horses which had, we assumed, died in their traces; worked to death in one way or another. They would not be making the return trip to Flemington. We passed men who carried on their back whatever they thought was going to be necessary, picks and ropes, axes and saws, and washing pans of course, and the big wooden cradles in which to separate out the gold from the dross. Which presented something like my father’s idea of a moral allegory, come to think of it. Younger men walked slightly out of the way of the track if they were accompanied by their wives, but not so far away that they could not call for help if that should be required.

  For this black forest looked sinister, with a sinister reputation to match, as a place where thieves and bushrangers lurked, and where travellers were likely to be assaulted. It was an advantage to keep together in groups. The disadvantage was in having to keep back to the pace of the slowest, usually the smallest, in the party. We were surprised to see the numbers of children trudging along with their parents.

  Most of the people making their way towards the diggings were eager, even if they were unused to making such an expedition, but then we began to notice rugged-looking individuals with great long untidy beards and dirty boots and worn and faded clothing, and grim strained faces under their battered hats. Their trousers were discoloured with clay and mud. It was clear to us all that they were the experienced diggers. Though you wondered why they were tramping and not digging.

  What was not clear was whether, as we nervously imagined, they were originally from Van Diemen’s Land. If so, then we reasoned that, with their fearsome reputation, there would be little point for them to attack those on the way to the diggings; a better prospect, from their perspective, would be to rob those returning from the diggings. Such common sense failed to reassure us altogether, however, and on the whole we were inclined to give them a wide berth. Already we were beginning to sense the importance of keeping our eyes and our wits about us. And to check our guns and pistols, and to keep the dogs on a tight leash.

  Gyp was disgusted at the indignity.

  On the fourth day we saw through the trees the first signs of the diggings, tents here and there, all higgledy-piggledy, tarpaulins slung over a frame, tents on hooped saplings such as the gypsies make, even a bark mia mia or two like the natives throw together, and everywhere swarms of men in their different coloured shirts, swinging picks or throwing earth out of squared areas in the turf, and sometimes all you could see was a head popping up out of the ground, with a stocking cap and a clay pipe jutting out from the middle of wild whiskers. Red woollen shirts, or jumpers as they are called, are favoured by those who think of themselves as ruggedly independent, stalwart supporters of the ideals of Signor Garibaldi. Others have striped blue-and-white jerseys, like French sailors. Perhaps they were French sailors. We heard stories aplenty of seamen who jumped over the starboard side of their ships at twilight, swam around beneath the stern and so made their landfall. Captains sometimes lost the best part of their crew that way, and their idle ships were left to rock gently in th
e swell because the numbers could not be made up. Everyone had hastened to the interior.

  The true enticement of the gold rushes is the thought that here men might free themselves, free themselves from a subordinate role in whatever kind of employment they have been used to. Here they might take responsibility for their own fate, make their own decisions. Here is the spirit of that agitation that flourished in Europe a year or so ago, just as it has shown itself in the recent California gold rushes. A cynic might wonder at the fortunate timing of those discoveries, or more to the point the announcement of them, for they have most usefully relieved Europe of its restive masses. The seething masses.

  And now here, those great hordes of men are determined to work for themselves. They acknowledge no man as their master; and in order to assert that independence they first try their fortune on the goldfields. So that two kinds of excitement are at work, the lure of the gold itself, and the thrill of taking one’s destiny into one’s own hands.

  We arrived at last: but where to pitch our camp? All was a hustle and a bustle, men pushing roughly past those who stopped to consider. At one of the store tents, marked as they commonly are by a flag on a pole, we heard that numbers of South Australians, hundreds and hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, had converged on a particular gully just out of Forest Creek, so many that it was already known as Adelaide Gully. Other concentrations are similarly identified: American Gully, California Gully, Sailors Gully and so on, all branching off the main creek.

  It seems that almost the whole male population of Adelaide has made or is making its way to the diggings. In particular, the too many who felt they had been left behind, if not left out altogether, in the copper craze, and are now determined to be in at the start of the new opportunity, and not to miss out a second time. This exodus is another turn of the ongoing cycle of boom and bust which bedevils that colony. So much for Mr Wakefield’s plan of settlement. The goldfields are the very opposite of Adelaide, with its focus on regularity—nobody here wants to put any permanent structure in place, because they might need to relocate at any moment, on the back of the latest rumour, or the next shout that gold is found. Most of the gold diggers, newcomers at the game, don’t have the brawn, or the sinews, of the Cornish miners we see here, absconders from the Burra Burra mines who have made their way to this new field of dreams.

  Who should I find here, already well set up with his own store and flag, but my old friend Mr Hailes. Ethan, dear boy!, he hallooed, or as one might say hailed me, in a perfect parody of Coppin that made me smile; how agreeable to see you. You must let me take care of you. On the diggings, that means a courtesy nobbler to encourage new custom, and I was very ready to oblige. If you were clever about it, and made a wide enough circuit of the store tents in the district, you could be treated quite handsomely.

  He too had made the journey from Adelaide, more promptly than I had; and his tent held pride of place in what was beginning to form as a main roadway. Even in such a new location as this one, there are already several store tents and a post office built of thick slabs of bark, gold assayers, strong stone banks, a bullion escort, a smithy in a lean-to. In the roadway bullocks were taking a moment’s ease under their heavy yolks. A pair of young fops went prancing past on their fancy horses, just the thing for the goldfields. A baker’s boy scuttled across balancing a tray of bread rolls on his head, above the reach of little yapping dogs. Mr Hailes has posted an advertisement that the South Australian police, under Commissioner Tolmer, will shortly provide an escort to carry gold bullion back to Adelaide. Better that than having the men spend their earnings in the grog shops and knocking shops, where another kind of gold digger stakes their claims.

  Hailes confided to me that he thought to make a more certain fortune by selling picks, than by using them. And while his store sold much the same range of goods as most others—even he was discreetly selling spirits in the back of his tent—he had in mind an interesting speculation, to bring huts in pre-existing sections to the goldfields, for a more comfortable dwelling than the stained canvas tents we could see everywhere sagging over their frames beneath the trees. The latest arrivals could be easily spotted—their tents were so new you could read the maker’s brand. Others were well worn, patched in places, discoloured. You can tell that it will be very cold here in winter, perhaps unpleasantly so. He himself intended to benefit from such an improvement of his premises, as both more snug and more secure.

  He gave us directions to a likely spot alongside a creek, where traces of colour were beginning to be reported, and we made our way there with our newly purchased equipment, purchased of course and at a fair price from this unforgotten old acquaintance. And he showed us where to buy our miner’s licence, though that was easy to see because of the long line of applicants smoking their little clay pipes and waiting outside the commissioner’s tent.

  There is a fine art in choosing where to set up camp. To begin with, you do not want to be too close to where others might start digging. Also, you cannot expect the creek to run with good water once the diggers start puddling in it. And you need to be close enough to your own claim to keep a watchful eye on it. If it can be managed, you want to be in the lee of some rise or ridge to keep the winds at bay, and on a sufficient slope for the rains to drain away, and better still to face the morning sun if possible. But such ideal sites are of course the first to be taken. Some of the diggers cut a little way into a rise, and back their tent into it for additional protection against the several sorts of undesirable elements you may expect out here.

  Best of course is a large fierce dog on a chain. There are dogs everywhere, very protective of their patch. Guns too, which are discharged and then fresh charged every evening, so that it may be known at large that this tent is defended. Or maybe it was just about making a noise.

  What tends to happen, more often than not, is that wherever a digger has put up his tent, a newcomer will suppose that that has been found to be a better place than where there is no camp, and so he nestles up alongside. Neighbourliness has nothing to do with it. In very little time a whole community has formed, whether you like it or not. It is much like when you watch a parrot in a tree—others will come and stand near to you and look in the same direction. They cannot find a bird to stare at on their own account. If you decide to relocate, the assumption is that you will have found some gold nearby—otherwise why would you move? And so they all follow close on your heels, and you are no further ahead. It would be quite comical if it were not so irritating.

  In the evenings, the smell of frying chops curls through the trees together with the smoke of fires, sending Gyp for one into a trembling fit of anticipatory ecstasy. After the artillery barrage, as everyone settles down for the evening, you see their silhouettes flitting about in front of their fires, or thrown against the walls of their tents as the women move about putting their children to bed. These figures make a kind of jerky dance, something like I saw down in the mines at Burra Burra, and with the same hint of another world from this one to become acquainted with. The discomforts of the present return later in the darkness. Chief among them, drunken miners staggering back from the nearest pot-house, who come crashing through your campsite and set all the dogs barking. That is if they don’t fall down into an abandoned shaft and start calling for help—a frequent enough occurrence, and contributing an alternative kind of disturbance.

  Diggers speak of sinking a shaft, and driving a tunnel. But it is they who are driven and, I am afraid, they who all too often sink. I do not mean the unfortunate fellows drown, or have walls of mud collapse on them, though that can happen too. The papers, and Governor Bathrobe in his turn, only tell of marvellous successes, of huge nuggets found close to the surface, or big as potatoes and glittering in amongst the grass like so many Easter eggs, or gold pellets to be picked like peas from the river gravel. Maybe such splendid fortunes can be made, but you only read about them. The more common prospect is hard unceasing work for days on end, up to your knees in wat
er at the bottom of the shaft, or just as wet at the sluices, and very little to pay for it at the end.

  It is hard monotonous work, frequently in the freezing rain; or solitary, down in the shafts, with no warning of imminent danger. For unlike the mines at Burra Burra, the earth here does not talk. Down at the bottom of the shafts, and in the little side tunnels, a digger hears nothing, knows nothing, until suddenly a few lumps of mud begin to tumble down around him, and the shoring timbers begin to move and, if he is not quick, a great sudden fall of dead earth all but buries him. This is not a life for the faint-hearted. For some, it is no life at all. Indeed, you might imagine these fields as something like a vast cemetery, where men are digging their own graves.

  But, the diggers have convinced themselves, there must be gold somewhere—and at the first rumour of a lucky strike in another gully, they all pull down their tents, bundle up their tools and decamp instanter. You can see how the diggers are faring by the vast numbers who abandon their current claim at the faintest whisper that someone has found gold over the hills and far away. Miners keep a jealous eye on the activity of their neighbours. If someone seems to be washing a lot of gold then there is a furious jostling to get up close, and tunnelling from adjacent shafts, and claim jumping by gangs of bullies like the Tipperary Boys, and furious oaths and blows are exchanged.

  Those who have found gold are in a quandary about what to do with it. You cannot leave it in your tent, for you will be robbed; you cannot carry it on your person, for you will be attacked and then robbed. More often than not, having dug their little hoard of gold out of the ground they find it safest to bury it again in some secret spot, which seems a comical if desperate solution. All this activity is much like Dean Swift’s telling satire of the Yahoos in his Gulliver’s Travels, with their biting and scratching and grubbing in the dirt and hiding their little wealth from each other, and surreptitiously stealing from each other if they can, such a commotion for a precious little.