But perhaps the surest way of making money is to sell the thing that nearly all the diggers want: alcohol.
For at this very time, in this month of May, 1853, a further sign that Ballarat is no longer the remote outpost it once was is the first hotel going up, on Lydiard Street, courtesy of one of the first diggers to Golden Point, Thomas Bath, who has now decided to become a publican. Real walls of flat wooden planks! A real iron roof! A real bar! Its own clock-tower!
And they say that within a month it will actually be licensed, making it the only hotel between Buninyong and Lexton. As a legal drinking establishment, Bath’s Hotel will be something that Ballarat has not seen to this point - though there has never been any lack of sly grog tents - and there is a great deal of excitement as it takes form. Soon enough, the word will spread that there are more hotels coming, that former convict James Bentley, the big Vandemonian, is actually - if you can believe it - wanting to build his own hotel over on the Eureka.
The only people desperately unhappy about the advent of hotels are the sly-grog sellers, who have been making a fortune over the last couple of years, all but entirely untroubled by the Joes, many of whom are happy to take bribes to let those grog sellers ply their trade. (At PS50 for a first offence of selling sly grog, it had been a wonderful windfall for the constables taking half the fine, though as the second offence brought six months hard labour and no fine, it had meant that the usual practice was for the constables just to take an ongoing PS5 a pop to simply continue looking the other way week after week. Police Sergeant Major Robert Milne is particularly notorious for this and other corrupt practices, not to mention his high-handed haughtiness and lowdown ways.) While that grog is harmlessly enjoyed by many - if you’ve found a nugget on the day, it helps you to celebrate; if you’ve found nothing, it helps you to forget - there are others for whom it is more problematic …
For while there are those who are immeasurably enriched by the diggings, there are those destroyed on the diggings … and there are those hit by both fates. By this time William Craig is well established on the diggings, and things for him and his mates are going moderately well - apart from having been robbed the week before - without yet having struck the jeweller’s shop that would allow them all to retire. All they can do is keep going, and on this June day in 1853, 20 miles north-east of Ballarat, Craig is interested when three new arrivals announce themselves as deserting sailors from a ship at Port Phillip. Craig likes the cut of their jib and finds them friendly, well behaved and so hard-working that soon enough the creek they are digging becomes known as ‘Sailors Creek’ on the strength of it.
Before long they are on paying ground and earning well. The fellow that Craig notices most is one George Brentford, who had been an officer on the ship and carried himself as such. Though without arrogance, Brentford is clearly just a cut above - well spoken, of sunny disposition, quick to laugh and make friends with all around. All is going well and the three sailors are soon on their way to a small fortune when … one of the Bullarook sly grog carts arrives.
The sailors are doing so well by now that they buy a case of liquor with the wonderful label upon it, claiming it to be ‘Martell’s Pure Cognac’. Whether or not Mr Martell has had anything to do with its production is uncertain, but what is sure is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with cognac, for instead of a sparkling and transparent copper colour, this is a fiery red. And yet it is alcohol and Brentford helps himself to some more. And some more and some more … to the point that he can no longer speak, let alone stand. This is not an uncommon occurrence on the goldfields, as diggers who are doing well frequently go on benders. The difference on this occasion is that when Brentford wakes from his drunken slumber, his first desire is for still more drink. He soon insists on his fair share of the case, which by this time is calculated at three bottles, and he quickly starts imbibing. Gone now is his happy nature, replaced by a surly presence who is interested only in drinking more. And so he does.
The more his companions on the diggings try to sober him up over the next few days, the more he drinks. True, twice he tries himself to stay away from the grog, but just as soon returns to it - the more so when the grog cart returns. As later recounted by William Craig, ‘After consuming some half-dozen bottles of the liquor he appeared to have lost every human instinct beyond the knowledge that he had a mouth and a stomach.’58
All his mates can do is leave him in the tent while they get on with working their claim, a little under half a mile away, and it is on emerging from this claim one morning that they look back to see smoke coming from where their tent is situated. They race back with other diggers to find that in his drunken insanity George Brentford has ignited the dry kangaroo grass that abounds in these parts and - all but nude - then walked through the flames! They can see him burning within the tent, smell his flesh, hear his screams, but they just cannot get to him until the flames have diminished. ‘What was only a week previously a perfect specimen of manhood,’ Craig would report, ‘had become a spectacle divested of human semblance.’59 And that, dear friends, was the end of George Brentford.
Another case in point comes to Craig’s notice while he is visiting Bendigo.
Heading down the main thoroughfare one day, he looks up to see a wild-eyed man divested of most of his clothing and on a horse, galloping towards him at full pace. It is a miracle that he does not fall down one of the many holes that there abound, but somehow he manages and Craig thinks no more about it until that evening when, passing the same way, he sees the man’s dead body in the back of a cart with a crowd of miners all around.
Turns out that, not long after passing Craig, both the horse and the rider had a’tumbled, a’tumbled, a’tumbled down a very deep shaft and been killed on impact. So just what had possessed the rider to take such risks? A temporary bout of insanity it seems. And what has brought this on?
Therein lies the story. Just two days earlier - working as a ‘hatter’, which is to say on his own, the young Englishman who had arrived in the colonies a few months earlier had discovered a 27-pound nugget! Somehow, by hook or by crook, by heaving and straining, he had managed to get the nugget to the surface and, once gazing upon it, his mind had become unhinged. He talked to it, shouted at it, embraced it. He loved it to the point of such distraction that it soon became apparent to other kindly diggers that he and the nugget had to be taken in hand to the Government Camp, where they had ensured that both were safely looked after.
‘Reason,’ Craig recounted, ‘was to some extent restored when he realised that his treasure was in safe keeping; but later on he was induced to visit a sly-grog shanty, and was there plied with drink - burning, adulterated drink - and became the maniac I had seen in the morning.’60
It is, of course, a very sad case, and while the goldfield authorities do the best they can to get to the bottom of what happened, so as to try to prevent it happening again, the truth is that there are far too many sly-grog sellers and diggers, and far too few officials on the ground to really have much effect on the welfare of those who fall by the wayside.
One official who manages to stand out at this time, however, for his generally efficient manner and proficiency is none other than the one-time ‘little doctor’ of the Bendigo diggings, Robert William Rede, who in October of ‘52 had thrown down his tools and taken up a roving commission on the staff of Mr. J. A. Panton, the Resident Commissioner on Bendigo, as Assistant-Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Gold District. The position sees Rede constantly shift camp according to the ebb and flow of the goldfields to the east and north of Bendigo.
Late May 1853, the Ovens goldfields, 230 miles north-east of Ballarat, the word spreads
Roll up! Roll up! For Row’s Circus is in town. Of the many circuses that circulate around the towns and goldfields, allowing the diggers and sometimes their families respite from the endless tedium of their tough lives, this particular circus has a great attraction. Yes, it has a horse trained to lie on its back and ‘flouris
h his heels in the air’.61 What is more, though his shoes are of gilded iron, to the audience it looks like they are forged of gold, and the word soon spreads uphill, down dale and even further along the diggings. Have you heard? A horse with shoes of gold! At a local election, the owner of the circus rents out the horse so that it can lead the procession that takes the candidate to the polls, and as thousands pour into the streets to see those marvellous shoes glinting in the sunlight, the word spreads still further! A gold-shod horse! ‘Shoes of gold at the Ovens!’62 run the headlines. There is something so pleasing about the yarn that it travels on to Melbourne, Sydney, London and beyond! It is nonsense, of course, but it is too good a tale not to repeat, and in short order crowds of diggers head to the Ovens. Just as people in far off countries eschew their visions of finding a land of milk and honey - no, they want to go to a place where the horses are shod with gold!
1 June 1853, at ‘The Chalet’, it’s about the Americans …
It has been a very grim, very lonely few months for Charles La Trobe since his family left. In their absence, his time has been spent doing two principal things: waiting for news that his resignation has not only been accepted but that a suitable replacement has been found; and engaging in the endless business of running the colony. On this evening he addresses himself to writing to the Duke of Newcastle - the new Secretary of State - to keep his superior up to date. Though there have been no more recent large-scale protest meetings, which is a relief, there is no doubt that the problems with the licensing system, the question of its adequate policing and general unrest have not disappeared.
One issue that he is particularly concerned about is the Americans and the danger they might present, as republicans, to the security of the colony remaining a part of Her Majesty’s domain.
For this fear is not just in Victoria itself. In Washington, before long, the British Ambassador to the US would be frank in an official report to his masters at the Colonial Office: ‘There can be no doubt that a revolution in Australia by which its connections with Great Britain should be severed would be an event highly acceptable to the great mass of the American people.’63
La Trobe does not see it quite like that.
While acknowledging that ‘some danger might be apprehended’64 from the Americans, his strong view is that they are not the primary danger.
No, the real problem in these parts is the newspapers, most particularly The Argus, which is committed to promoting ‘the idea of a substitution of republican institutions for the present monarchical form of Government’.65
What makes this doubly dangerous is that The Argus is so cheap to purchase, at just threepence, that it means even a ‘day labourer’ can buy a copy. Worse still, as it is ‘diligently and widely distributed through agencies established at the several goldfields’, those ideas are in danger of spreading.66 And it really is a danger that must be watched very carefully indeed. ‘I would neither deceive myself or others,’ La Trobe writes, ‘as to the power which republican and democratic tendencies … possess when fairly roused and found to be supported by the masses within, and by sympathy if not by actual aid from without’.67
Yes, it is not the Americans that worry him, but those people who most support The Argus, the ‘chartists, socialists, and others … who have recently come amongst us, [all of them influenced by] the growing sense of importance and independence arising from unexampled prosperity, emancipation from old ties and obligations, and powers of self-support, and self-government, which should not influence the multitude’.68
All up, heading into this southern winter, La Trobe feels a growing foreboding, and he is more glad than ever that he has tendered his resignation and should be heading home before another year has passed. The only thing he is looking forward to now, more than news that his family has arrived safely in Europe, is news that his replacement, whoever he is, has been selected and is on his way …
CHAPTER SIX
TROUBLE BREWS
Hardly a man is to be found contented to remain where he is … You hear endless stories of ladies who have been used to large establishments and giving parties, now obliged to give up all thoughts of appearance, and open the doors even themselves … No servants are to be had, and many of the best and pleasant families [are] literally driven out of the country by it … Almost all the best families there … are going home to England, and taking this opportunity of getting out of the country; most of them hoping to return when things have returned into something like better order.1
Charlotte Godley, wife of John Robert Godley, the founder of Christchurch, New Zealand, was most unimpressed when she arrived in Sydney in 1853 to discover the only available domestic servant was the ‘unsuccessful digger, whose health has suffered, or who has no luck at all’.
It was a digger’s life. Hard work by day, blazing fire in the evening, and sound sleep by night at the music of drunken quarrels all around, far and near.2
Raffaello Carboni
Although our property has nearly doubled in value since the discovery of gold, I would myself rather have back the olden times when labour was plentiful and everything went on regularly and steady. We were then at least tranquil and easy in our minds, whereas we are now nearly worried to death with cares for the present and anxiety for the future.3
Alfred Joyce, a squatter who had a run west of Castlemaine, writing in 1853
Winter 1853, into the swing on the Victorian gold diggings
Across all the diggings of Victoria, the sun rises, the sun falls, the gold comes up from the ground and is soon on its way to Melbourne under escort, followed closely by the diggers who found it. They cannot wait to spend the proceeds - usually like mad things - and return a few weeks or months later with the glazed look in their eyes of men who have lived and loved hard and fast, and want to do some more of it, if only they can strike another vein.
Ballarat itself is continuing to grow to the point that the Government Camp now moves from a bushy outpost to a mound situated on a small rise about a mile to the west of Ballarat Flat, on the edge of the township - exactly where Government Surveyor Urquhart designated its proper position. It is bound by Camp, Sturt and Field streets, with the large gully that contains Yarrowee Creek providing the other boundary. Yes, this Camp will remain rustic in the extreme, based as it is around rough wooden barracks for the soldiers and police, some storerooms, doctor’s quarters, the officers’ mess house, the Camp hospital, the Commissioner’s residence, together with a few administrative buildings. The whole thing is enclosed by a high picket fence, with the Police Magistrates’ Court just outside. But it is at least a vast improvement on the previous tent outpost, and it also has an extremely primitive wooden cell for a lockup, which is certainly better than chaining offenders to a log, like a dog.4 From the point of view of those down in the gully on the wet diggings, the Camp is always up on high, removed and infuriatingly aloof.
Meanwhile, things have also consolidated to the point that by now some 15 of the 40 original land lots marked out by the surveyor and his men have been sold, mostly to businesses and shop owners. True, there remains some agitation from diggers who want to buy property outside the township, perhaps for farming and homestead purposes, but the administration of Charles La Trobe has for the most part resisted to this point. The government’s hope, however, that such agitation on this and other issues - like the license fees - will remain within manageable bounds proves misplaced.
The ongoing slew of new gold discoveries in the first half of the year in Ballarat and elsewhere caused such a daily rush of frantic diggers to newly popular hills and gullies that there was little time for organised protest - and they were all flush with cash anyway - but now the situation changes.
The autumn had been particularly dry and many of the small creeks had ceased to run, meaning that ‘in every quarter of the goldfields thousands of cartloads of the auriferous soil are seen heaped up at the edges of the workings awaiting the change of the season and the ready means of w
ashing the ore’.5 With the coming of the wintry rains and the sudden availability of water, the population swells again with the creeks as thousands of men return from the cities to work the waiting heaps of soil. And yet, as most of them arrive with entirely unrealistic expectations of what they might earn, so does agitation increase for the total abolition of the gold license fee, which many of them now struggle to pay. And if the New South Wales Legislative Council is considering it, why not Victoria?
It is worth reflecting upon.
La Trobe himself describes the unifying effect of resistance to the license across the Victorian goldfields in a despatch to the Secretary of State, the grand old Duke of Newcastle: ‘It was one [subject] which touched every man’s private interest and feelings, through his pocket; it at once furnished a main thread with which all other minor subjects of discontent or agitation, or grievance, real or supposed, could be linked; and engaged the co-operation to a greater or lesser extent, of a large mass of the population of all classes, otherwise little disposed to complain and hitherto unaffected by the ordinary subjects of agitation. As usual in such cases, it brought into immediate notoriety, and to the aid of the agents, fresh force in the persons of certain individuals hitherto unheard of; but, however worthless, evidently adepts in the science of popular agitation. Public meetings were held in all quarters.’ 6
But is any one of these ‘certain individuals’ made of the right stuff to lead the diggers in a sustained struggle for justice?
Since the monster meeting by the Old Shepherd’s Hut seven months earlier, Captain Harrison has been in Melbourne, acting as the gold diggers’ delegate and making regular appeals through the pages of The Argus for the diggers to contribute their promised one shilling per man, per month, so that he may continue his agitation with the authorities on their behalf - not that it is obvious exactly what he does or what progress he is making.
Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution Page 21