Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution

by Peter Fitzsimons

  They would have, as the other colonies would have, their own Constitution, their own Supreme Court! In the Port Phillip District - soon to be renamed ‘Victoria’ under the legislation, in honour of the Queen - they would no longer be subject to Sydney’s capricious whims but would be able to rule themselves, to make laws and gain control over general revenue from taxes and levies on the colony’s subjects (even if the Crown would retain control over the revenue from the sale of land).

  La Trobe - who realises he is about to go from being a mere Superintendent to a Lieutenant-Governor, while the Governor of the senior colony, New South Wales, Sir Charles Augustus FitzRoy, will be installed as the ‘Governor-General’ - is gracious enough to allow that the people may celebrate that night, at which point the Lord Mayor thanks him profusely and immediately heads off to light his private bonfire, the signal the good people of Melbourne have been waiting for that their general jubilation may be unfettered.

  And of course it does not stop there. For not only do those celebrations continue well into the night, but the general joy is so profound that they go on for many days more, too. The Melbourne Morning Herald & General Daily Advertiser sets the tone on its front page with its special-edition headline the next afternoon:

  EXTRAORDINARY

  GLORIOUS NEWS! SEPARATION AT LAST!!6

  7 January 1851, on the approaches to Port Jackson, impatience builds

  He is a huge man, nervously twirling his black moustache and anxiously pacing the deck of the good ship Emma as it blow-bobs its way through the heads of Port Jackson and into Sydney Harbour. When he had left this same harbour two years earlier to try his luck on the Californian goldfields, it had been with the hope that he would return, travelling first class, laden with treasure. Instead, all he truly brings back is an idea - an idea that because the landscape of the Californian goldfields is reminiscent of a valley he had once seen 17 years earlier, up Bathurst way, perhaps that valley might have gold too! True, an American acquaintance in whom he had confided this view had been derisive.

  ‘There’s no gold in the country you’re going to,’ he’d said. ‘And if there is, that darned Queen of yours won’t let you dig it …’7

  Rising to the occasion, 34-year-old Edward Hammond Hargraves had taken off his hat, adopted what he assumed to be a magisterial pose and replied, ‘There’s as much gold in the country I am going to as there is in California; and Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, God bless her, will make me one of her Gold Commissioners.’8

  Hargraves remains so convinced he is right that, shortly after landing on the Sydney docks, he borrows PS105 from a friend to buy a horse and some supplies, and on 5 February 1851 sets off from Sydney heading west.

  Five days later Hargraves and his exhausted nag arrive in the rough region of their destination and pull into the Wellington Inn at Guyong, which he knows to be run by Captain John Lister of the ship Wave, the one that had brought him to Australian shores 18 years earlier.

  Upon entering this rustic establishment, Hargraves learns that only a little more than six months earlier, alas, the good captain was killed when, on a trip to Bathurst, he was thrown from his gig. The establishment, however, is still being run by Lister’s widow (who remembers Hargraves at once after he mentions his name) and her 22-year-old son, John Hardman Australia Lister. Over dinner Hargraves decides to confide in her precisely why he has come, the theory he has nurtured for nearly a year now, that not far from where they are now seated there are riches beyond a man’s imagining!

  Yet, he would later write: ‘It occurred to me that I could not prosecute my plans efficiently without assistance … After dinner, therefore, I disclosed to her the object of my visit, and begged her to procure a black fellow as a guide to the spot I wished to visit first … She entered with a woman’s heartiness into my views, and offered me the assistance of her son … who, she assured me, knew the country well.9

  And so John Lister does - and neither is the young man a stranger to the idea that there is gold in this region. As a matter of fact, upon the mantelpiece of the inn are two chunks of quartz from the Upper Turon that he proudly shows Hargraves. On carefully examining the samples, Hargraves tells Lister that one of them resembles rock found near goldmines.

  Thus acquainted, on the morning of 12 February 1851, the two head off with their two horses and a fresh packhorse. From the relatively open country around Guyong, within a very short time the gullies start to fall away, the trees close in, and the men are soon nudging and trudging their way down the summery, dry creek bed of Lewis Ponds Creek.

  The further they go, the more excited Hargraves becomes as the country starts to resemble more and more the gold-bearing landscape he saw in California.

  Some 14 miles on, Hargraves is beside himself with excitement as the familiar quartz, granite and slate outcrops become more apparent and, the tree-cover aside, the hills and gullies start to look exactly as they did in the Sierra Nevada.

  ‘I felt myself surrounded by gold; and with tremendous anxiety panted for the moment of trial, when my magician’s wand should transform this trackless wilderness into a region of countless wealth.’10

  First things first, however … Not even gold should get between a 20-stone man and his luncheon. Two miles further up the creek bed, in the middle of the day, he and John arrive at a particularly pleasant spot where Lewis Ponds Creek intersects with Radigan’s Gully, where water is easily obtained and the horses can slake their thirst. To this point, Hargraves has not shared his excitement with young Lister, but now is as good a time as any. After they wolf down their cold beef and damper, washed down by billy tea, he tells him straight.

  All around them, right now, Hargraves begins, and right beneath them in the creek that Lister has just been wading through, there is gold - gold!

  Lister stares back with complete astonishment, but Hargraves is quite serious.

  ‘And now,’ the older man announces portentously, ‘I will find some gold.’11

  The young man watches intently as Hargraves takes his pick and digs a small amount of dirt from a rock formation that runs at right angles to the creek before taking his trowel to fill a pan with sodden earth. The tin pan, which he has brought all the way from California, is some 18 inches across the top, 12 inches across the bottom, and its sloping sides run four inches deep. Taking a stick, he mixes the dirt into a fine batter and then begins his careful ‘panning’. Slowly, bit by bit, he sluices the earth out of the pan with the water from the nearby creek. The soil thins and washes away, leaving … leaving … leaving some pebbles and … there! … a very small speck of glittering gold!

  ‘Here it is!’12 he exclaims.

  The effect is instantaneous. This news is not just promising, not just good, not even great. This news, Hargraves knows from the moment he sees the gleam in his pan, is life-changing for him and his companion, and it will lift the entire country. The older man repeats the process five times and pans some specks of gold on four occasions.

  Drawing himself up and puffing himself out, he makes a considered pronouncement to the stupefied John Lister, indeed to all the world, as if he is standing behind a pulpit: ‘This is a memorable day in the history of New South Wales. I shall be a baronet, you will be knighted, and my old horse will be stuffed, put in a glass case, and sent to the British Museum.’13

  Blank-faced, Lister blinks up at this self-proclaimed aristocrat. Hargraves is not joking, at least not totally. At this instant he really does feel himself ‘to be a great man’.14 All that is necessary now, he says, is for them to discover ‘[payable] gold, and it will be the luckiest day that has happened to New South Wales.’15

  Once back at Lister’s Inn, Hargraves is so excited he can barely speak. Already, above and beyond whatever personal fortune he might make at these diggings, he knows that if he can just follow up on this initial discovery by finding gold in greater quantities to prove that it is ‘payable’ - of sufficient quantity and accessibility to ensure economic profit - it
will be of enormous benefit to the colony, and, far more importantly, of enormous benefit to him. Beyond seeking an appropriate reward for founding such an industry, he will surely have his dream realised and be made a commissioner of the goldfields, in the same way the government already has a commissioner of Crown lands. (The prestige! The salary!)

  Oddly, when Hargraves and young John arrive back at Guyong, the rest of the Lister family remains quietly unimpressed with the ‘discovery’ - as a matter of fact, they say they can barely see it.

  ‘There! There! Can you not see it now?‘ No, no … no, they can’t. In the end, it is only with the aid of a glass tumbler placed upside down over the specks that they acknowledge they can see it after all. Just. If you say that really is gold.

  Clearly, it is going to take something more than what the men have already found to impress the government.

  Still, before turning in for the night at Mrs Lister’s inn, Hargraves writes a ‘memorandum of the discovery’:16

  Wednesday 12th February, 1851

  Discovered gold this day at - - -; named the Diggings Hargraves, who was the first Discoverer in New South Wales of the metal in the earth in a similar manner as found in California. This is a memorable day.17

  The most obvious place to continue the search is towards the Macquarie River, in the area first penetrated by Europeans in the person of the great explorer Charles Sturt a little over two decades earlier. The following morning, young Lister suggests that his great friend James Tom, who lives over yonder at the Cornish Settlement, Byng, is the man who knows the land best.

  Why not take him as their guide, John suggests, in the same way that John had been the guide along Lewis Ponds Creek? Hargraves is agreeable and makes what the other two would ever after swear is a firm commitment: ‘Whatever arises from the discovery, we will share in it. It will be a very handsome thing if we find payable gold.’18

  The trio search over the next eight days down Lewis Pond Creek towards its junction with Summer Hill Creek, itself a tributary of the Macquarie River in the area known as Yorkey’s Corner. Although they find small particles of gold everywhere, they do not manage to find it in the greater, payable quantities they need. More than a little disappointed, they return to Guyong, where they come to another agreement: they will now split up. Lister and James Tom will continue searching in the area around the Upper Turon River, while Hargraves will set off19 for the gullies around Dubbo.

  When Hargraves returns to Guyong a month later, not only is his horse stuffed, but so is he - and he has found no more traces of significant gold. For their part, Tom and Lister have found small traces of gold in several locations, though still nothing truly payable.

  It is decided that the best thing now would be to construct a Californian gold cradle, called a ‘rocker’, designed to do the same job as panning, albeit on a much larger scale. With the assistance of Tom’s younger brother, William, a skilled carpenter, the cradle is constructed in the front room of the Tom family residence.

  A little like a sturdy version of a baby’s cradle, the Californian cradle is a wooden box, about a yard long, inside of which is a series of ever longer trays. Above the top tray is a hopper, a box with one vertical side composed of bars that allow all but solid pieces to pass through.

  By putting, hopefully, ‘paydirt’ into the hopper, pouring water upon it and using a lever to rock the cradle from side to side, the water rushes down and breaks up the dirt before cascading over the lower trays. The muddy paydirt becomes muddy water, becomes a tiny muddy waterfall and, because there is a small rim or ‘riffle’ at the end of each tray, whatever gold is in that muddy waterfall collects at the bottom riffle. Of course, one needs a ready water supply and a lot of labour, but this technique had been proven in California to be the most efficient way of extracting the gold. If the dirt is of the thick clay variety, sometimes it needs to undergo a process of ‘puddling’, whereby it is put into a large tub of water and broken up with a spade, or even the feet of a miner, before being fed into the cradle.

  By this time Hargraves is quietly eager to report (and of course claim any reward and receive all accolades) to the New South Wales Government in Sydney unquestionable evidence of the existence of what will be the first payable goldfield in New South Wales. And he certainly feels that he personally has found it.

  John Lister accompanies him for part of the way, and they stop to prospect on Campbells River and at Mutton Falls, south of Bathurst on the Fish River. When they again meet with no success, the two decide to part company. Before separating, however, they confirm their agreement once more - whoever finds payable gold will write the other, for they are all equal partners.

  Lister then returns to Guyong to find that the Tom brothers have taken the cradle out for a trial run, and the machine works! Over three days they have found 17 grains of gold between them. No, it is not necessarily something to write home about, but it is certainly enough to write to Edward Hargraves about, as per their agreement.

  20 March - 1 April 1851, a rough-looking character arrives in Macquarie Street, Sydney

  Someone to see you, Mr Thomson. An enormous chap by the name of Edward Hargraves. Says he has something of the greatest importance to the colony to show you.

  Well, Edward Deas Thomson, the Colonial Secretary of New South Wales, is far too busy and important to see him now. Hargraves will just have to wait until he has finished his duties with the Legislative Council of Parliament. And so wait Hargraves does. On the morning of their first of three meetings, a terrible downpour bursts upon Sydney Town in general and Hargraves in particular. No matter, in the vest of his pocket Hargraves has something that helps to keep him warm: a German matchbox containing the specks of gold he has gathered. True, the specks are not so numerous nor so weighty that they couldn’t altogether be held ‘on a threepenny bit’,20 but it is gold, alright. When at last Hargraves is granted his audience with the Colonial Secretary in his splendid office at Macquarie Place just off Bridge Street - all plush carpets, mahogany furniture, landscape paintings and portraits on the wall staring down on them - this time the discoverer is not told to put his scant gold samples away for fear of having their throats cut.

  Rather, Thomson immediately if reluctantly recognises the significance of the find, if indeed that find is verified.

  ‘If this is gold country, Mr Hargraves,’ says he in tones of one whose utterances are mostly commands but is now moved to a rare moment of reflection, ‘it will stop the Home Government from sending us any more convicts, and prevent emigration to California; but it comes on us like a clap of thunder, and we are scarcely prepared to credit it.’21

  Once apprised of the news, Governor FitzRoy writes to the Secretary of State22 in London, Lord Earl Grey, that he suspects the gold sample presented has come from California.

  7-14 April 1851, at the junction of Summer Hill and Lewis Pond creeks, 30 miles due north of Guyong, the hand that rocks the cradle

  After setting off on this morning of 7 April, John Lister and now William Tom Jnr decide to try their luck once more around Yorkey’s Corner at the junction of the Summer Hill and Lewis Ponds creeks. It takes a day and a half to get to the site, guiding their horses along the bank of the creek bed, and not long after midday they arrive. Just as with Hargraves, they secure the horses and have a quick spot of lunch before beginning their search.

  And … sure enough, just minutes after beginning their exploration of the creek bed a mile or so below its junction, William Tom suddenly stops and stares.

  ‘I have found a bit of gold!’ he calls excitedly to his companion.

  ‘You are only joking …’23 Lister replies, disbelieving that it could be this easy.

  But no - there, indeed, sitting on the creek bed, is a small nugget that weighs 3/5 of an ounce. Success!

  The following day they set up their cradle by the creek bed and as one man loads the hopper with what they hope is paydirt, another ladles water upon the top of the soil.

  The
re! And there! And there!

  Small specks of gold are shining back at them in the dappled light.

  On 12 April the two young men set off for the Wellington Inn with no less than four ounces of gold carefully secured - enough to confirm beyond any doubt that, and this is the key, there is ‘payable’ gold here. As per their agreement with Hargraves, John Lister writes to the older man, bearing glad tidings of the success of the cradle and the location where they have found their four ounces of gold. Upon receipt of the letter, Hargraves immediately races back - here is the evidence he has been waiting for!

  2 May 1851, Sydney Town stops with a start

  Typically, beneath a banner headline, The Sydney Morning Herald is the first to confirm the rumours that have been swirling: ‘THE GOLD DISCOVERY. It is no longer any secret that gold has been found in the earth in several places in the western country. The fact was first established on the 12th February, 1851, by Mr. E. H. Hargraves, a resident of Brisbane Water, who returned from California a few months since …

  ‘Mr. Stutchbury, the Government Geologist, is now in the district, and Mr. Hargraves has proceeded there to communicate with him, and in a few weeks we may expect definite information. At present all that is known is that there is gold over a considerable district; whether it is in sufficient quantities to pay for the trouble of obtaining it remains to be ascertained. Should it be found in large quantities a strict system of licensing diggers will be immediately necessary.’24

  5-6 May 1851, ‘Springfield’, a deal is done in the home of the Toms

  In the scheme of things, it is an extremely important meeting. After arriving breathless back in Guyong, Edward Hargraves meets his partners in the home of the family Tom. By the end of the meeting Hargraves has bought all of the gold the other men have. He does so with a gleam in his eye, for with the gold in his possession he can be the one who presents the proof that the government seeks - that a serious find has been made.