Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution

by Peter Fitzsimons

  And what of the continental Europeans, who are also here in force? Well, to start with, the southern Europeans tend to have slightly olive skin, while the northern Europeans are more often red - the hot Australian sun burns them quickly. True, that skin is not quite as red as the red pants the Dutch always wear for reasons unknown, but it runs them close. Too, with the Europeans there is a certain hardness to their eyes - they have suffered under repressive regimes at home - mixed with an odd sparkle, for they are here to begin again.

  The Irish are the easiest to spot, usually gaunt and with that hollow-eyed look of people escaping from a land of recent starvation. They have a curious mix of general good humour, tempered by an innate anger for what they have been through at the hands of the English occupiers.

  Even the Scots are heading there in force, with one lot marching to the diggings in draughty kilts behind other Scots who at first glance appear to be slowly strangling large, colourful cats, but who are in fact playing bagpipes. Tight behind are their oft stony-faced wives with the wee bairns all on drays. Perhaps what is worrying them and other people on the road is the contemplation of just what they are letting themselves in for in this strange country. For at least an inkling of what awaits them is to be found in the names of some of their destinations: Murdering Flat, Dead Man’s Gully, Dead Horse Gully, One-eye Gully, Rotten Gully, Poverty Gully, Terrible Gully, Grumble-Gut Gully …

  Still they push on, trying to think of places they’ve heard of with much happier names, like Golden Gully, so called because its riches were discovered by a fellow who was taking a rest by lying down and passing the time pulling up grass by the roots - and with one set of roots came ‘a nest of golden nuggets’.10

  And it won’t be long before they will hear about ‘White Horse Gully’, which earned its name when an enraged beast of that description was snorting and cavorting all about, plunging its front and back hooves into the dirt, only to have yet more nuggets appear!

  Dingley Dell? That place, newcomers are told, is a grassy tract by the water, beloved by bullock drivers who camp there at the end of a long day’s haul, listening to the ‘dingle’ made by the bullock’s bells.

  Speaking of which - crack! - push on!

  Descending Great Bourke Street, many of the cavalcade make their last stop opposite the general post office to check if the last ship in to Port Phillip might have included a long-awaited letter from home, then head up past the Horse Bazaar. From there they turn into Queen Street and continue through a veritable forest of huge red gums, white gums and stringybark trees towards the small village of Flemington - which boasts some 40 small houses, an inn and a blacksmith’s shop - all of which lie some three-and-half-miles north-west of the post office.

  Then the exodus continues overland, to Buninyong, Ballarat, Creswick Creek, Forrest Creek, Bendigo and all the rest.

  After passing through Flemington and then by the Benevolent Asylum, some of the former criminals among this cavalcade look nervously at the road to their right, which leads to the recently constructed Pentridge Stockade - those cells, those lashes, that gruel! - before setting their eyes once more resolutely north-west. Not for them anymore, that infernal institution - they are heading to El Dorado itself!

  Pushing on into the deep bush, however, the light dims as it strains through the heavy canopy, and their heavy sense of foreboding rises as all signs of human habitation vanish, when suddenly they hear the most unlikely of sounds.

  ‘Without the slightest warning,’ as William Craig would recount, ‘our whole surroundings appeared to be alive with human revelry. Simultaneously peal after peal of what appeared like mockery of our dispirited frame of mind broke from the throats of a flock of laughing jackasses in the tree against which we were reclining. It was the first time we had heard that most remarkable of all Australian birds, and the human-like way in which they enjoyed their scrimmage for what appeared to be a large iguana was irresistible.’11

  And now they know why kookaburras are called the ‘settler’s alarm clock’. They also see an extraordinary, small, bear-like creature that climbs high into the trees and benignly blinks down upon them as they pass.

  The further you get from Melbourne the more the countryside is crisscrossed by as many tracks as creeks, the tracks guided less by anything so prosaic as a compass and more by paths of least resistance through bush and swamps and around hills and other obstacles.

  Yet it is not the physical rigours of passing through such rough country that presents the greatest danger. No, travellers both to and from the goldfields must be wary of bushrangers, most particularly in the areas around Black Forest, the Jim Crow Ranges and Bullarook Forest. Often working in gangs of up to half a dozen, these common criminals on horseback - frequently prison escapees and ticket-of-leave men turned to highway robbery - congregate in the thickest parts of the bush and frequently fall upon whatever isolated wayfarers they can find. Those heading ‘up’ to the diggings are usually relieved of whatever of their life savings they have left after buying their supplies, while those going ‘down’ to Melbourne are fallen upon and robbed of nuggets, money, cheques and gold receipts. In the case of those receipts, a frequent occurrence is for the bearer to be taken deeper into the bush and tied to a tree while one of the bushrangers gallops off to Melbourne and exchanges the slip of paper for the gold that the said receipt entitles the bearer to.

  And so … what of the police?

  What police?

  Oh yes, there is still some kind of police force per se, but the truth of it is that just about every able-bodied man who was in the police when the gold rush began has long ago departed for the goldfields, leaving behind only a curious combination of the absolutely most loyal … and the dregs. And not all the men who had been recruited to replace those deserters are really police, as heavily represented among them are many drunkards, wastrels and ne’er-do-wells merely wearing police uniforms. This is the only certain job they can get, when even having the wherewithal to get themselves to the diggings like everyone else is beyond them.

  Still, that bad patch on Mt Alexander Road? That is the result of gold fever run amok when some small nuggets had no sooner been discovered along the track than hopeful miners started tearing it apart. (The nuggets had actually fallen off a bullion wagon but, as there is little public money available, the road has remained in poor condition.)

  The cavalcade pushes on with little respite, though those heading to Ballarat can at least take brief pause in the wilderness of Warrenheip, which lies at the base of a small pyramidal mountain just under three miles from the diggings, and refresh themselves with cool, fresh water at a well-frequented spring. And then they must push on again.

  15 December 1852, Melbourne receives amazing news

  There is always an excitement among the clerks when official communiques come from Whitehall. For these are not like regular letters, simply unloaded from the ships at much the same time as the other things. These missives are given directly by the captain to a high official of the Lieutenant-Governor’s staff and, under guard, that official takes them directly to His Excellency in Government House. Then, and only then, are the seals on the waterproof wrapping around the parchment broken, always by His Excellency, and he is ever and always the first to read Whitehall’s ruminations, news and instructions.

  This time the news is extraordinary. On a tightly rolled piece of official parchment, Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe, along with the heads of all the other colonies, is informed by Britain’s Secretary of State, Sir John Pakington - in his last despatch before this role is assumed by the Duke of Newcastle - that because ‘the extraordinary discoveries of Gold’ had created ‘new and unforseen features to the political and social conditions’ things must radically change for the colonies, and it is now a matter of urgency that the colonies of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales move towards independence. It is the decision of Her Majesty’s Government ‘to place full powers of self-government in the hands of a people so ad
vanced in wealth and prosperity’.12

  While New South Wales rather than Victoria has been the originator of the proposal for self-government, Pakington writes that there is ‘no hesitation in offering to the colony of Victoria the same concessions on the same terms’.13

  It is true! Only eighteen months earlier, when the Separation14 Act came into effect, Victoria had broken away from New South Wales to be a separate entity under the rule of its own Lieutenant-Governor. Now the Secretary of State is writing to each colony encouraging it to draft a constitutional act, suggesting this include the creation of a bicameral legislature with an elected Lower House and a Legislative Council nominated by the Crown, and legislation that includes allowance for payment of the principal officers of government and control over their colonial wastelands. Revenue raised from the goldfields, such as license fees, will now be in the hands of the Legislature. (Previously this was controlled by the Executive Council branch.) Van Diemen’s Land will be granted its wish to end the transportation of convicts.

  In effect, the colonies will control all their own local affairs, raise their own revenue and no longer be as tightly tied to the legal framework and purse strings of Mother England.

  And so it begins …

  In short order, across all those colonies, the issue among the good and the great becomes exactly what kind of Constitution they should have, what kind of set-up for their bicameral parliaments, who should be allowed to vote, who to serve in those parliaments and what their structure should be.

  In New South Wales, no less than the famously irascible explorer/journalist/politician/ squatter William Charles Wentworth - a long-time passionate advocate of self-rule of the colonies - is installed as the head of the committee to draft the New South Wales Constitution, in the company of Colonial Secretary Edward Deas Thomson and that scion of the squatting class, James Macarthur.

  In Victoria, Wentworth’s equivalent on the issue of heading the committee to come up with a draft Constitution is the man with surely the greatest mutton-chop whiskers in all of Victoria, Colonial Secretary John Foster, and he is quick to place at his right hand his cousin and the colony’s first Attorney-General, William Foster Stawell. (This legal luminary has many points of distinction beyond his prowess administering Her Majesty’s law, though perhaps the greatest has been his passionate advocacy - within the confines of the Anti-Transportation League - of stopping the flow of British convicts into the colony. He is not, however, a believer in changing the current limits of those who may stand for the Legislative Council: those over 30 owning freehold property worth more than PS5000, or in possession of an annual valuation of at least PS500. That means power remains with squatters and men such as himself and John Foster - for though their primary profession is based in Melbourne, the two share title to leases on a large property, Rathscar, on the Avoca River, as well as a 43,000-acre property Natte Yallock, with 18 miles of frontage of that same river. It is for the same reason that he has no desire to change the limits on those who may vote for the Legislative Council: persons over 21 years of age, owning property worth in excess of PS1000 or being from an appropriate professional background or the armed services.)

  The cousins are joined by the Auditor-General, Hugh Culling Eardley Childers, who is shortly to become the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne. All three are members nominated by the Lieutenant-Governor to sit on the Legislative Council - making them rolled gold members of the Victorian establishment - and they form the nucleus of the twelve-man committee that sets out to draft the Victorian Constitution.15

  Christmas, December 1852, Ballarat, ti amo

  At long last, Raffaello Carboni has arrived in Ballarat, to find it amazingly sparsely populated. Though there had been many thousands here only a few months before, by this time many diggers have abandoned these goldfields to pursue what are said to be much richer fields around Mt Alexander.

  But what cares the Italian? He is just glad to have arrived after the difficult and exhausting journey. He has joined up with a party of other hopefuls, and they soon set up their tent at a place called Canadian Flat before going to wait in a line at the Government Camp, where for the not inconsiderable sum of PS1 and ten shillings per person in their group, they are able to purchase a license entitling each to ‘dig, search for, and remove gold’ on a 64-square-foot area for the next month.

  Thus equipped, they head off to get their bearings on the goldfields, which is not easy - everywhere they look, there appears to be a whole slew of massive rabbit burrows. While some go as deep as 50 feet, many others are just small holes in the ground, measuring some three feet in diameter and about the height of a man or a bit over in depth, the most a man could safely dig on his own without risking the walls collapsing in on him. But the best thing of all is that the vast majority of these holes have been abandoned. Certainly whatever has been easy pickings here has long gone, but that does not mean that there is not still gold - GOLD! - there.

  Carboni jumps down into one hole with his shovel and pick, and no more than five minutes later spots something that is gleaming back at him. It is gold, and he can barely breathe.

  The Italian stops, holds it up in the sunshine where it sparkles even more, almost as much as his own eyes are sparkling to see it. He turns it over and over, and he feels a sensation identical to one he had first felt many years before. It is love.

  Yes, he feels exactly the way he did the first time he fervently told someone in his hometown of Urbino, Ti amo, I love you, and he knows instinctively that this new affair will last considerably longer than the first one did.

  True, this first particular pellet of gold is tiny - no bigger than the head of a bull ant - but it is valuable for all that. Back in London, working as an interpreter to whichever foreigner needed his services, Carboni had to take his hat off at least half a dozen times by way of introduction and go from one side of the city to the other to earn just a pound. And here he is, fossicking for no more than five minutes in a spot abandoned by other diggers as unworthy of their attention, and he has something worth twice that amount! All ‘without crouching or crawling to Jew or Christian’.16

  His small hazel eyes simply won’t stop twinkling. It is intoxicating.

  But why continue pursuing this abandoned hole when, clearly, those who had dug it felt there were even richer, easier pickings elsewhere? And is there not still plenty of virgin land left for Carboni and his companions to try on their own account? There is. Returning to their camp at Canadian Gully, they choose a bit of ground on the right-hand slope and begin digging. Gold. More gold! Still more gold.

  They are in luck - going no deeper than ten feet they manage to pounce on no less than 17 and a half ounces of the glorious metal. They are off to a wonderful start …

  31 December 1852 - 1 January 1853, The Chalet provides no rest

  His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor Charles Joseph La Trobe is tired. And worried …

  When he had first ventured to Victorian shores fifteen years earlier, his energy for the task at hand - essentially founding or lending support to the establishment17 of institutions for a colony from the ground up - had been indefatigable. These include the Melbourne Hospital, the University of Melbourne and the Melbourne Public Library (co-founder along with the leading judicial figure and prominent man about town Judge Redmond Barry), the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum, the Melbourne Mechanics’ Institute18 and the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic.19 Additionally, he pushed through the plans and oversaw the building of the Royal Botanic Gardens, as well as turning the first sod for the artificial lake, Yan Yean Reservoir, that was to become the centrepiece of the nascent city’s growing water supply. For all this and more, including twice refusing to allow convicts to land at Port Phillip, he has mostly enjoyed the respect of the people he has overseen and generally enjoyed his role.

  But now, all that has changed. Not only is he older and less able to cope, but the pressures placed upon him by this infernal gold rush are getting wors
e by the month and even by the week. The exploding population is now making demands of his administration - both unstated and shrilly expressed - that either because of lack of resources, lack of authority from his masters in England or simply his own inexperience in such a responsible role he is unable to meet. Between the goldfields and the Colonial Office in Whitehall, he is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and an inevitable result is that in recent years he has lost the respect of the people and the press.

  On top of it all, his beloved wife and mother of his now four children, Sophie, has been ailing for several years, and he is insisting she and the remaining three children precede him in returning to Europe. The lot of his beloved, a 43-year-old aristocrat, has not been easy. She was from a fine Swiss family, the eighth of 13 children in a tight and very well-heeled family, and she had, she thought, married well to a fast-rising Englishman, only to spend 14 of her 18 years of married life here on the edge of the unknown. Her recent illness has compounded her general dissatisfaction, and she, too, has had enough. Neither of them has seen their beloved daughter Agnes for seven years, since they sent her back to Switzerland for her education, and the family continues to miss her desperately.

  All put together, after long consideration, La Trobe puts pen to paper and writes with some feeling. It is his resignation letter. He no longer wants this post and wishes for the Colonial Office to send a replacement as soon as possible.

  Letter to Sir John Pakington, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 31st of December 1852

  … ‘I must at length acknowledge that I feel the necessity of seeking to secure, as soon as may be, some breathing time and some degree of complete relaxation from that constant strain upon the mind more than the body, which the weight and character of my public duty, particularly of late, have brought with them.