The great man died in 1882. His legacy remains one of history’s greatest ideas, first germinated in the Australian bush.
MARCH TO NEW GOLD MOUNTAIN
It’s a long walk from Adelaide to central Victoria. But the distance and difficult terrain did not deter thousands of Chinese who made the trek during the 1850s and 1860s. Like many others at that time, the Chinese came to strike it rich on the ‘new gold mountain’, as they called the Victorian goldfields.
Why did they not simply sail to Melbourne and make the relatively short journey from there to the goldfields?
The European view of the Chinese at that time was deeply racist. They were thought of as ‘celestials’, opium addicts and unhygienic. And they were arriving in large numbers, stoking fears of competition for the yellow metal. This potent combination of prejudice and avarice resulted in the Victorian government restricting Chinese entry by levying a heavy tax on each Chinese person entering the colony by sea. The neighbouring colony of South Australia had no such levy and so hopeful Chinese diggers took ship to Adelaide. Then they walked.
Most of the Chinese who came seeking their fortunes came from troubled southern China. They were almost all young men, who had hastily married before they left the village. Often the younger sons were sent abroad in the hope they could send back money to support their families. Most had no desire to settle permanently in Australia. They hoped to find enough gold to return home wealthy, a form of economic migration known as sojourning.
The Chinese soon became the largest groups of travellers on the trail of dreams from Adelaide to the Victorian goldfields. The various routes were set out by the police and helpfully published in the Adelaide newspapers. In the early days, the main trail led from Adelaide to Wellington, then south past various vital watering holes along the coast, east towards the Victorian border, moving from one squatters’ station and source of water to the next, to Horsham, along the Wimmera River to Mount Cole, then east to the River Loddon, ending at Mount Alexander. The distance was estimated at 461 miles, around 800 kilometres.
Larger and richer finds of gold were soon made at Ballarat, Bendigo and other places in Victoria and beyond, attracting ever-larger throngs of diggers to brave the hike. There were a few variations to this route, mostly a little longer, some of them rough and dangerous. Later, ships carrying Chinese to South Australia landed at Robe, around 300 kilometres closer to the Victorian fields.
Whichever way they went, the travellers carved Chinese characters in trees to let those who followed after know where to find water. The travellers were a prominent sight—and sound—in the landscape, as another traveller observed in 1854, ‘between six and seven hundred coming overland from Adelaide’:
They had four wagons carrying their sick, lame and provisions. They were all walking single file, each one with a pole and two baskets. They stretched for over two miles in procession. I was half an hour passing them . . . everyone behind seemed to be yabbering to his mate in front in a sing-song tone.
As the country was completely unknown to them, the sojourners often depended on local guides to get them to the goldfields. Some of these men were unscrupulous, taking their hopeful group some way along the trail and then abandoning them after taking their money. Many were unprepared for the rigours of walking through difficult country. An unknown number died, their graves, or just their bones, marking the dangerous way.
When they did arrive on the goldfields they were greeted with discrimination and sometimes aggression. They camped together for self-protection and comfort, forming the first Chinatowns now such an unremarkable feature of Australian life and cuisine. There was serious anti-Chinese rioting in the late 1850s, notably at Buckland River in 1857. When overlanding Chinese discovered a new field at Ararat there was more trouble, eventually leading to the Chinese being dispossessed of their rightful claims by some legal chicanery trading on the general Chinese ignorance of the English language.
By 1861 over 3 per cent of the Australian population had come from China. These large numbers, together with the fierce competition for wealth and the prejudice of other diggers, made life more than difficult for the Chinese. They were accused of unhealthy practices, opium dealing, gambling and fraternising with European women. Worst of all, despite being relegated to supposedly worked-out areas of the goldfields, they managed to make money by industriousness and hard work. The only answer was a Royal Commission.
When the commission reported on its investigations into ‘the conditions and prospects of the goldfields of Victoria’ in 1863, it found that most of allegations were inaccurate and that the Chinese were cleaner in their habits than the Europeans. This only made matters worse for the Chinese and prejudice and violence against them continued until the easily won gold faltered and opportunities for small-scale fossicking gave way to industrialised mining techniques.
The sojourners gradually returned home as they had planned, most better off than when they had arrived. But some stayed. They joined more than three thousand Chinese who had been resident in Australia even before the gold rushes. When the gold rush was all over the population of Australia had trebled, ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ had been established and the economy placed on a prosperous footing from which it has only occasionally faltered ever since.
SPIDER WOMAN
She was beautiful, talented and naughty. Men loved Lola Montez, the Irish-born entertainer, and she loved some of them in return. Back in 1837, at the age of nineteen and under her proper name of Maria Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, she had been promised as a bride to an elderly judge. Instead, the spirited Lola eloped with a dashing young army lieutenant. Their marriage survived only a few years and Lola went to Spain where she learned to dance. After an unhappy debut at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London in June 1843, Lola embarked on a European career of what were then considered provocative performances.
Lola became the mistress of a number of prominent men, including the composer Franz Liszt, the writer Alexandre Dumas and a newspaper proprietor named Alexandre Dujarier. After Dujarier’s death in a duel in 1845, she posed as a Spanish aristocrat and went to Munich where the elderly King Ludwig I of Bavaria fell under her spell. She became an influential figure in the politics of the time, also taking lovers behind Ludwig’s back. As well as showering her with riches and a house, Ludwig made Lola a countess. This move was deeply unpopular with the Bavarian aristocracy and middle classes. Serious rioting led to Lola’s expulsion and the king’s abdication. Lola was on the road once more.
She turned up in London the following year where she apparently married a guards officer but was then arrested for bigamy. Out on bail, Lola and her new paramour went to Spain. When he died in 1850, Lola resurrected her colourful career in Europe and America, becoming notorious for carrying a whip and a pistol, and invariably appearing at the centre of scandals and leaving a trail of court cases in various jurisdictions.
The best place for an entertainer like Lola to make real money was a gold rush. It was in gold-crazy San Francisco that she first performed the routine for which she will be forever associated: the daring ‘spider dance’ that involved her searching for an imaginary insect through the folds of her dress.
The full perfection of her frame was revealed as she swung gracefully to the centre of the stage, and paused for a moment. She made it appear evident that she was entangled in the filaments of a spider’s web. In a dance step, she portrayed that she was more and more confused as the fibres wrapped themselves about her ankles. The music slowed as she discovered a spider in her petticoat, which she attempted to shake loose; then she discovered other spiders, and examining her skirts, she shook them to reveal even more spiders. The fight against the spiders became more and more hectic, as she danced with abandon and fire, and at the conclusion she had succeeded in shaking them out upon the floor, where she stamped them to death . . . the audience was held spellbound, and somewhat horror struck, but when the dance ended, the applause was thunderous; and as Lola Montes [sic]
addressed her audience after numerous curtain calls, bouquets were showered at her feet.
She also found time to get married and divorced again, later taking up with an actor named Noel Fallin (later Folland) who was also her manager. Together they arrived in Sydney in August 1855.
Lola Montez’s tour of Australia was the stuff of legend. She opened in Sydney with a performance titled ‘Lola Montez in Bavaria’. It was a short season. A couple of weeks later she and Folland boarded a ship for Melbourne, with the law close behind for unpaid debts. According to folklore, when the officer confronted her in her cabin she stripped naked and dared him to lay hands on her. He didn’t and the ship sailed.
Melbourne audiences did not care much for Lola’s Bavarian routine so she began to perform the Spider Dance again. They loved it but the press was outraged and demanded her arrest. She fled and performed to packed houses in Adelaide until the end of 1855. Then it was back to Sydney in January and on to Ballarat in February.
On the goldfields the diggers tossed gold nuggets onto the stage as Lola swayed through her famous dance but the editor of the local paper, Henry Seekamp, ran articles railing against her immorality. Seekamp subsequently encountered Lola in the bar of her hotel where she attacked him with a riding whip. He fought back with another whip and then they took to tearing out each others’ hair. Lola sued Seekamp for libel over his articles and he counter-sued. But public sympathy was with the feisty Lola. As well as titillating audiences, Lola impressed by heckling her critics, and with stunts like being lowered down a mineshaft with one foot in a rope sling and a glass of champagne in her hand.
Lola briefly met her match when the wife of one of her promoters beat her so badly that she had to take a month’s break. But she was soon back again with her outrageous dance and even more outrageous lifestyle. After more touring and more trouble, Lola and Folland sailed for San Francisco. Somewhere near Fiji, Folland was mysteriously lost overboard.
Unfazed by this inconvenience, Lola attempted to revive her American career. But her moment had passed and her novelty had palled. By 1857, she was delivering moral lectures and apparently repenting of her wicked ways, though the title of a book published under her name in 1858 suggests otherwise: The Arts of Beauty or Secrets of a Lady’s Toilet: With Hints to Gentlemen on the Art of Fascinating. As well as 50 tips on how to intrigue men, this handy manual included chapters on ‘How to Obtain a Handsome Form’, ‘A Beautiful Foot and Ankle’ and, vitally, ‘How to Prevent the Hair Falling Off’.
Perhaps Lola had some personal experience with this problem. By now the consequences of her wild life were catching up with her. She began to display the symptoms of advanced syphilis and died on 17 January 1861. The New York Times published a generous obituary:
There are few leaders of the newspaper literature of the day who are not familiar with the name of that eccentric, brilliant, impulsive woman known as LOLA MONTEZ. As a danseuse, an actress, a politician, a courtezan, a lecturer, a devotee, she has occupied a large space of the public attention for many years, both in this country and in Europe. Her career, so strangely erratic, so wonderfully checquered, [sic] came to its end on Thursday last. After a lengthened period of suffering, during which the knowledge of her approaching end quickened her to renewed preparations to meet it . . .
The cigarette-smoking entertainer and woman of fortune was buried in Brooklyn under the name Mrs Eliza Gilbert. Surprisingly, her passing was barely noticed in the Australian press of the day. But Lola and her spider dance are still remembered in legend, in popular culture, and even on the internet, where she has her own Facebook page.
BLACK LORDS OF SUMMER
On Boxing Day in 1866, the Melbourne Cricket Club predictably thrashed a green team of Aboriginal cricketers. But around eight thousand people turned up to watch the match, which marked the beginning of a sporting journey considered to be one of the hundred defining events in modern Australian history.
Cricket was a favourite game in Victoria, played wherever and whenever conditions allowed. Many stations employed Aboriginal stockmen who began to take an interest in the game too. When William Hayman, owner of Lake Wallace Station, observed this he gathered together a team from the local Jardwadjali, Gunditjmara and Wotjobaluk people. Tom Wills coached the group, and also played with them. It was Hayman who arranged for the Boxing Day match. But this match, watched by so many, then led to a series of matches in Sydney arranged by an entrepreneur known as Captain Gurnett, who also wanted the team to tour England.
When Gurnett disappeared with the proceeds of the Sydney tour they were coached by a former all-England player named Charles Lawrence, who was able to obtain financial backing for the England tour. In February 1868, the thirteen-strong team left for England on the clipper Parramatta.
The Aboriginal cricket team arrived in May, and while they lost their first match to Surrey, 20,000 people came to see them play and they impressed their hosts:
Mullagh is a remarkably good bowler; and though some few blunders occurred to mar the general merit of the fielding it is but fair to say that Twopenny is a first-rate long-stop; that King Cole is an energetic and indefatigable point; and that Dick-a-Dick is one of the best of long-legmen, his running and his throwing being alike admirable. With the ground, and also—which is no slight matter—with the atmosphere quite new to them, the Australians allowed themselves, by their fielding, worthy opponents to the best English cricketers.
Over the next six months, the team played a strenuous series of 46 matches, of which they lost fourteen, won fourteen and drew the remaining nineteen contests. Their performance surprised the English. Despite this more than creditable record, The Times newspaper described the tour as ‘a travestie upon cricket at Lords’.
Regardless, the Aboriginal team was popular with the public and complemented their cricketing prowess by demonstrating traditional ‘games’ of their own, including boomerang throwing. One team member Jungunjinuke (also called Dick-a-Dick) impressed everyone with his ability to wield a spear and club:
After a game played at the Oval, Dick-a-Dick showed his skill in cleverly evading cricket balls thrown at him, and so amused the spectators that they broke through the ring at the finish, and carried him shoulder high to the dressing-tent.
The team was away for eight months and returned to Sydney in February 1869. One member, Bripumyarrumin (also known as King Cole), died in England and was buried in London.
Upon returning to Australia, most of the team members went back to their old lives and work. Legislation enacted in Victoria to prevent Aboriginal people moving around without official permission meant that it was difficult to continue playing. A few team members did play on though. Yellanach, otherwise know as Johnny Cuzens, played for Melbourne before returning to the bush and reportedly dying in 1870. Murrumgunarrimin, or Twopenny, played for New South Wales against Victoria in the same year. Unaarrimin, also known as Johnny Mullagh, played on for at least another decade. There is a Johnny Mullagh memorial trophy and a cricket centre named after him in Harrow, Victoria.
In 2015, a number of artefacts from the tour were discovered in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. As well as a boomerang and two spears, there were spear throwers, clubs and firesticks. How the objects came to be in the museum remains a mystery.
STEAMSHIP TO MELBOURNE
Before the era of air travel, migrants travelled to Australia by sea. Some came in steerage, the cheapest fare; some came in the moderate comfort of second class. A lucky few came first class. Whatever their circumstances, the long voyage from home was a rite of passage during which they changed from citizens of a familiar home country to newcomers in a strange land.
In September 1874, at Gravesend docks in London, young Ally Heathcote and her family were bound—travelling first class—for new lives aboard the 2215-tonne steamship Northumberland.
We went below to see our future home for the following two months, the first look at our berths was not so favourable as we would hav
e liked but we must put up with inconvenience on board a vessel like the one we had chosen for the means of transport to our adopted country.
Friends and relations from their home town had gathered to send them off. ‘I am sure no one left their country with more prayers than did my parents, brother and sister and I. We are leaving one home to make another in the opposite extreme of Her Majesty’s dominions.’ As the crowd waved from the docks, the bell was rung, the anchor weighed, a gun was fired and the Northumberland ‘glided elegantly out of the harbour’ and down the Thames.
The Northumberland carried migrants as well as returning Australians. Among those accompanying the Heathcotes in first class were a judge, a squatter, a member of the Legislative Assembly, a businessman and a duo of returning theatrical performers. A Rabbi was also among the company; he would make himself popular by giving music lessons and ‘illustrative lectures’. In the cargo was a ‘little army of songsters’, 1500 canaries selected for the quality of their plumage and song. These were a rare and precious cargo, particularly in this era long before TV and radio was readily and cheaply available, where a songbird would be a valuable and melodious possession.
Ally was entertained to see porpoises during their unusually smooth passage through the Bay of Biscay. But like most passengers on these two-month voyages, she began to find it hard to fill in her spare time. Ally and her people were god-fearing folk and spent much time singing hymns and worshipping. But as they steamed south, the temperature increased along with the monotony. Even the crew found things unusually slow: ‘The second mate said he wished somebody would enliven them up for the sailors say they have never had such a dull lot of passengers on board before.’ In contrast, Ally thought the crew were ‘a jolly lot . . . every evening on the deck they have music amongst themselves’. She imagined that ‘when they cross the line they often play some tricks on the passengers. I wish they would, it would just be the thing and make us laugh.’
Great Australian Journeys Page 12