Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution

by Peter Fitzsimons

  Even more interesting is that when Bentley is advised that His Honour is ‘in the magistrate’s room’, Bentley simply heads off with the confident swagger of a man who knows these buildings well, even beyond the cells. And, sure enough, Bentley soon reappears with Dewes by his side and, as friendly as you please, the two cross the road to the large tent opposite the court, where His Honour lives.

  Oh, yes, it is noted alright - they make a curious pair. Bentley is to the legal system what a furious welt is to a branding iron - the ugly result of its mismanagement - and Dewes is the legal system in these parts. Bentley had learned his discipline in gaol before being transported to Australia; Dewes learned his in the British Army for many a year before he made his way to Australia and wandered into the judicial system. And yet here the two are, clearly thick as thieves.

  Oh, yes, it is noted alright.

  Just as it is noted when, not long afterwards, Dewes, as Police Magistrate, finds fault with police evidence that links Bentley’s general store to sly-grog selling. He even goes so far as to recommend the dismissal of the police who have charged Mr Bentley - and their prosecution - for perjury. All this from a man who believes that ‘the prevailing failing of the colony [is] “nobblerizing”.’ 59

  And it is certainly noted when Bentley is indeed granted by Magistrate Dewes a highly coveted license to build a huge hotel on the diggings, with weatherboard walls, sash windows and a shingled roof. If you can believe it, this place is going to have no fewer than three bars, 80 rooms, a billiard room, a couple of Waterford crystal chandeliers in its bagatelle room, where they play a kind of billiards, and an actual bowling alley on the side run by an American - and it is all going to cost PS30,000!

  Where would a bloke with a background like Bentley’s have been able to put together that kind of money? Well, they reckon that, despite his lack of education and refinement, he is ruthless in business. After his release from gaol he earned a fortune in Hobart, making and flogging lemonade and ginger beer, before doing much the same with confectionery and gold-trading in Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, which is where they say he met Dewes. Last year, Bentley came to Ballarat to start up that general store, and now - now - he wants to have the biggest hotel in all Ballarat!

  Mid-April 1854, Ballarat receives significant new arrivals

  The only thing worse than living on the gold diggings, scratching dirt for a living? It has taken Raffaello Carboni some time to come up with the answer: not living on the goldfields, scratching dirt for a living. For at least on the goldfields, as opposed to wandering after infernal sheep all day long and into the night, there is a chance - a chance, capisci? - that you will strike it big. It is this hope that keeps you going day after day. And at least there is companionship and camaraderie and occasional revelry in the night, as opposed to being lost and forgotten on an even more lost and forgotten sheep run. So it is that, having spent a few months as a shepherd and a few weeks living with an Aboriginal tribe just for a complete change of scenery, the Italian now makes his way back to Ballarat. On much the same road as Carboni, and at much the same time, comes Peter Lalor.

  Lalor’s path, like that of many diggers, has been a winding one since his arrival in Australia in October of ‘52. After establishing a moderately successful liquor merchant business with his brother Richard, and then working as a civil engineer on the proposed Melbourne-Geelong railway, he wandered a little, including making as many trips as possible to Geelong where Alicia, the woman he fell in love with on Scindian, is now assistant teacher at St Mary’s School. Lalor had then tried his luck first at the Ovens diggings before spending a short time at Buninyong. But he has yet to make a big find or discover the place where his soul could settle … perhaps a place where he and Alicia could make their home, if he could just gather the necessary capital?

  And so he has kept going, now heading to the newly popular Ballarat, where in recent weeks the word is that the finds have been fabulous but deep underground. More men are needed to dig that deep, and more men want to come dig in for the winter.

  Lalor is eager to see the place that he, like everyone in Victoria - if not the world - has heard so much about. As he gets close, the track starts to gently fall away, even as the trees grow taller and thicker before the road bottoms out to a valley. Then he begins to see tents peeking through the trees … until suddenly the trees stop marching with him and he is in the open once more, with the vista of the Ballarat goldfields lying before him.

  Across the muddy flat he can make out what he knows must be the curiously elongated form of Black Hill in the near distance, with Yarrowee Creek running immediately in front of it, lined with cradles being worked by what appears to be a whole army of workers, an army fed by the hundreds of workers trekking back and forth from the myriad mine-shafts, which are marked in turn by the huge piles of dirt that lie beside them. This, this before him now, dear friends, is the famous diggings of Ballarat that so many visitors to these shores had started dreaming of after seeing it in the likes of The Illustrated London News.

  A short climb up one rise, down into a small valley, and up and over another rise, and there is the staggering sight. What had once been a pristine creek running through the wilderness is now no more. All that is left of the trees that used to line it are hundreds of bleeding stumps; all that had been undergrowth is now only dirt. And that sound? The one like ‘distant thunder’? 60 It is the sound of hundreds of cradles, rhythmically rocking, endlessly, back and forth, forth and back …

  And everywhere there are diggers! Diggers working, swearing, scolding, carrying dirt, carrying on - the occasional cry of exultation when something is found sounds out against a background of low rumbling and grumbling that the yield is not what had been hoped for. There appears to be not one bit of ground that has not been torn asunder, squatted upon or despoiled. Everywhere there are tents, many of which have brightly coloured flags gaily flying from their peaks. And yes, too, there is a strong smell, a kind of eau de unwashed bodies, piled rubbish and human waste, but he will get used to that soon enough.

  Along both sides of the banks of the creek, the men are so furiously working their tubs and cradles that the once-green water now runs yellow as the paydirt is sluiced through and the muddy water flows away. All over the banks are small piles of red, yellow and white dirt showing the remains of that paydirt, while the freshly shorn slopes ‘where the prospectors found the gold of Golden Point, changed from their aboriginal condition to the appearance of a fresh and rudely made burial ground’.61

  Of course, with so much mud in the creek, the water is now undrinkable. This means that the diggers must either make a major trek upstream when they want fresh water, or drink from stagnant pools that they need to boil to purify - frequently adding brandy beforehand to give it that extra bite. If they’re lucky, they can get water from other pools that are not so stagnant, with ‘the surest sign that the water is ok is if frogs are swimming in it’.62 And if no pools are apparent, then the old hands know that the best chance is to dig beneath tea-trees, as they only grow where fresh water is near the surface. (Failing all that, just drink grog, because for all its sins you can at least be sure you won’t get dysentery.)

  After some exploring across the diggings, Lalor decides to stake his claim on the Eureka, not far from a spot where a hotel is soon to be built, next to a Scot by the name of James Scobie.

  This proves to be fortunate, as Scobie is greatly liked by those on the goldfields. Very quietly spoken and unassuming - at least when he doesn’t have grog in him, at which point he can be very merry indeed - he’s a young man in his mid-20s who had only been allowed by his parents to leave Scotland on the reckoning that he would stick close to his older brother by several years, George. As well as the diggings, where the brothers are regarded as ‘pioneers’ in an environment two or three years in development, George and James Scobie run something of a carting business between Geelong and Ballarat, meaning that despite that parental promise they are often separa
ted, as one or the other is on the road.

  Lalor likes James a great deal from the first and always keeps an almost fraternal eye on him when George is away. Another digger that Lalor falls in with shortly afterwards is none other than the jovial and portly Timothy Hayes - once an activist in the Young Ireland movement, father of five children and husband of the heavily pregnant Anastasia. Hayes had arrived in Melbourne at much the same time as Lalor and comes from the adjoining county to his in Ireland. But this is the first time they have met.63

  They quickly become ‘mates’ with some other diggers and work on their claim together under the traditional arrangement: all gold is to be divided equally and accounts settled every Saturday night. (The usual way is to store the gold in a carefully secreted German matchbox, which are notable for their four-by-three-by-one inch size and the fact that they hold an average of eight ounces of gold.)

  A contemporary would say of Hayes, ‘His outward appearance is that of a noble fellow - a tall, stout, healthy-looking man, giving himself the airs of a high-born gentleman, fit to rule, direct, superintend, not to work; that’s quite another thing. Of a liberal mind, however, and, above all, of a kind heart, and that covers a multitude of sins.’64

  As to Hayes’s wife, the fiery Anastasia, she quickly realises that getting her children educated in these parts will not be easy, but solves the problem by taking a job teaching at the local Catholic school conducted in the rough chapel in the area of Bakery Hill, the low bump that lies just to the south-east of Government Camp. That way she can not only teach her own children but also others, and draw a steady wage. (No small thing, when your husband is a digger and there are no guarantees.) While she teaches the girls, a bald-headed, 30-year-old Irishman by the name of John Manning teaches the boys. And to further ensure an income for the family beyond the uncertain finding of gold, Timothy Hayes leavens the hard physical work of digging for gold by penning elegant articles for The Ballarat Times, for which Seekamp pays him a small sum. That is alright with Lalor as he, too, regularly takes time off to walk the 100 miles there and 100 miles back to see Alicia in Geelong, becoming a familiar figure on those roads.

  Raffaello Carboni, meantime, has arrived in town and is ‘delighted to see the old spot once more’.65 He runs into one of his old mates from these very diggings, and the two soon agree to work together once more. In short order, Carboni pitches his tent in the bush, prophesying that from his tent flap he will see ‘the golden hole in the gully below’.66

  And yet, the two need to decide where to stake their claim. They are both reluctant to try the Gravel Pits, where many of the English, German and Scottish are now thickly congregated, ‘famous for its strong muster of golden holes and blasting shicers’,67 as it now requires shafts way too deep for them to contemplate. (Besides which, as the spot on the diggings closest to Government Camp, it tends to have more license-hunts than anywhere else.) Perhaps then, Canadian Gully, so-called as it was started by a Canadian named Swift, is still going well, with plenty of ‘jeweller’s shops’ being the talk of the day. But, no, it is Eureka that most excites the Italian’s interest. Notwithstanding that it is here where Young Ireland clearly holds sway, it is also the place where there seems to be the most discoveries of serious gold, and Carboni and his partner decide to plant their claim here.

  By now all of the easy surface nuggets have long gone across all of the Ballarat area surrounding that first spot discovered by Dunlop and Regan. Still, there are no fewer than 25,000 diggers across the local goldfields, all busily trying to reach the magical, ancient creek beds that lie far beneath the surface, twisting and turning in unpredictable fashion.

  Sometimes the call goes up that ‘the gutter has gammoned’, meaning the bottom of the lead has been reached and there is no gold there, while at other times a roar of joy from the bowels of the earth means that there is a wild rush to plant claims right next to it. This inevitably leads to disputes as to who was there first, resulting in cries of ‘Ring! Ring! Ring!’

  Raffaello would later recount, ‘By this time, two covies - one of them generally an Irishman - had stripped to their middle, and were “shaping” for a round or two. A broken nose, with the desired accomplishment of a pair of black eyes, and in all cases, when manageable, a good smash in the regions either of the teeth, or of the ribs - both, if possible, preferred - was supposed to improve the transaction so much, that, what with the tooth dropping, or the rib cracking, or both, as aforesaid, it was considered “settled”. Thus originated the special title of “rowdy mob,” or Tipperary [mob], in reference to the Irish.’68

  Sometimes of a night, if you’re lucky, an Irishman might pull out his harp to pluck or an American his fiddle to play, and if you’re unlucky a Scotsman might bring out his bagpipes, but somehow there is usually some kind of music to be heard.

  The Frenchman Antoine Fauchery is there one evening when a band of wandering musicians performs, and among those who gather is a group of Aborigines - men, women and children all - ‘laughing, foaming, twisting in a general fit of epilepsy’.69

  Fauchery would report that just one old man, a little removed from the rest, kept his dignity with all of his attention focused on just one thing: the trombone. He is fascinated as this ‘yellow, shining creature’70 goes back and forth from being four feet long to just two feet, and then back out again. On and on: ‘A mystery! The full extension of the instrument did not over-astonish the black man; but when he saw it, drawn back by the instrumentalist’s hand, go up again, diminish and reduce itself to its simplest proportions, he completely lost his head; he touched the brass with his black quivering hands then he came back to the Alsatian, on whose person he devoted himself to the most minute researches, opening his coat, his waistcoat, feeling in his pockets, pulling aside the pleats of his shirt, thrusting his hands everywhere, but finding nothing, nothing at all that might tell him where half of the instrument disappeared. Suddenly he stopped, enveloped in a fiery gaze the musician and the trombone now all of one piece, then struck his forehead and cried, “He is swallowing it.” And he ran away, waving his arms in the air, and showing signs of the most dreadful despair.’71

  Music is part of the gold digger’s life, its scenes played out across the Victorian goldfields. For look there now at the four black men from America! Likely, they are former slaves from the Deep South - who have made good their escape and have got clear out of the whole country - and, oh Lord, how they can sing! See now as the saddest looking one of the lot starts singing the saddest of all dirges about slave life, even as he ‘is accompanying himself on a banjo’.72 The haunting quality of his singing brings all of us in close, as he wails of his girl from faraway and long ago …

  O poor Lucy Neal! O dear Lucy Neal!

  If I had you by my side how happy I would feel!

  As all the other black Americans join in, the beat lifts …

  Come, gals, let us sing,

  Don’t you hear the banjo ring, ring, ring?

  And now, as William Craig describes it, ‘banjo, bones, and tambourine assist in the amusement, the clouds that hung over the lamentable position of Lucy Neal are dispelled; the springs of hilarity are loosened; the quartette yell, and laugh, and romp with an abandon that can be only badly imitated by other races’.73

  Finally, though, the music stops, and there is a return to the usual sounds of the diggings at night, as described by Ellen Clacy: ‘Revolvers cracking - blunderbusses bombing - rifles going off - balls whistling - one man groaning with a broken leg - another shouting because he couldn’t find the way to his hole, and a third equally vociferous because he has tumbled into one - this man swearing - another praying - a party of bacchanals chanting various ditties to different time and tune, or rather minus both. Here is one man grumbling because he has brought his wife with him, another ditto because he has left his behind, or sold her for an ounce of gold or a bottle of rum. Donny-brook Fair is not to be compared to an evening [on the diggings].’74

  But you must be
careful. For if ever things get too out of hand, you risk being arrested by the Joes, to be dragged off to the lockup in the Government Camp.

  It is from here that the newly promoted Resident Gold Commissioner, Robert Rede - who arrives on the Ballarat goldfields just a few weeks after Carboni and Lalor - rules his domain. With a backing of 100 or so police, who are in turn supported by a military garrison of equal number, they are a little like an occupying army. And a well-heeled army they are, at that. A new official who had arrived before Rede to become one of the Gold Commissioner’s staff was frank in his subsequent description: ‘Everything was upon the grandest scale: commissioners, inspectors, captains, sub-inspectors, lieutenants, cadets in silver-lace and embroidery, capering about on splendid horses, and new diggings continually being discovered in the vicinity.’75

  Though living grandly himself, Rede is not without sympathy for the gold-diggers, having originally come to Australia himself for that very purpose. Despite his position in officialdom, even Raffaello Carboni has some regard for him, in part because he is one of the few officials who can speak a European language, in his case, French. A quite cosmopolitan fellow, Rede had also lived in Greece, where, replete with the symbol of a silver greyhound on his dress, he had worked as a ‘Queen’s Messenger’, a courier engaged by the British Foreign Office.

  6 May 1854, Port Phillip Bay, outbound on Golden Age

  Farewell to Australia forever.

  Charles La Trobe knows he will be unlikely to miss it. As he sails out of Port Phillip Bay on this suddenly wintry day, the outgoing Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria is beset by sadness, mixed with heavy nostalgia for some good times gone.

  The source of his devastating sadness is that just a week earlier he had picked up a London paper and seen his wife’s death notice. His beloved wife of 18 years, Sophie de Montmollin, had died at her mother’s house in Neuchatel, Switzerland, on 30 January 1854. (The only good news was that, before she died, she had succeeded in being reunited with their now 17-year-old daughter, Agnes.)