Читать книгу The History of Ballarat, from the First Pastoral Settlement to the Present Time - William Bramwell Withers - Страница 5

Table of Contents

FROM THE GOLD DISCOVERY TO THE YEAR OF THE EUREKA STOCKADE.

Great Aggregations of Population.—Opening up of Golden Grounds.—A Digger's Adventures.—Character of the Population.—Dates of Local Discoveries.—Ballarat Township Proclaimed.—First Sales of Land.—Bath's Hotel.—First Public Clock.—Tatham's and Brooksbank's Recollections.—Primitive Stores, Offices, and Conveyances.—Woman a Phenomenon.—First Women at Ballarat.—Curious Monetary Devices.—First Religious Services.—Churches.—Newspapers.—Theatres.—Lawyers.—First Courts.—Capture of Roberts, the Nelson Robber.—Nuggets.—Golden Gutters.—Thirty or Forty Thousand Persons Located.

U R I N G the three years which passed between the December, 1851,—when the license fee was raised from thirty shillings to sixty shillings a month,—and the December, 1854, when a rebel flag was hoisted at the Stockade, the changes here had been vast and various. There had been ebbings and flowings of population between Ballarat and Mount Alexander and other more newly opened gold-fields, and the golden note which Hargreaves had struck in New South Wales and Esmond in Victoria had been heard all over the world. From every country under heaven there flocked to these shores men—young and wifeless men for tin; most part—eager to engage in the hunt for gold and fortune. Thousands upon thousands came from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, a mingled motley host that swarmed upon the greater centres of gold-digging enterprise, prospected for new grounds, or lingered upon the seaside to swell the urban populations. These gathering hosts rapidly pushed forward the work of exploration. Slope and flat and gully and hill-top were successively invested by the army of old-comers and new-comers, before whose resistless march the forest gradually fell, streets of canvas and shingles sprang into being, and thus, where but a little time before the forest was thick, and bird and beast were undisturbed, gold-seeking became a wide-spread and permanent industry. In February, 1853, the White Flat was rushed, and before that time the upper part of Canadian Gully was opened. Sailors' Gully was opened early in 1853, and Mr. James Vallins, one of the oldest of the Ballarat diggers, writes to us as follows, on the part of John Sawyer, who prospected Sailors' Gully:—

About the middle of 1853 myself and seven others commenced prospecting. We were six sailors out of eight, and were called "the sailors". The gully was called Sailors' Gully after us. Swift and party, Americans, commenced prospecting Prince Regent's Gully about the same time. We obtained a double claim, 48 ft. by 24 ft., as a prospecting claim. We were the first I could discover to slab the shaft from surface to the bottom, the practice being to sink a round shaft as far as the ground would stand, then square and slab the rest. Our first shaft was lost in the drift at about 70 feet from the surface. This was the first drift with heavy water touched on Ballarat. The second shaft was lost in the drift at 90 feet from the surface. This caused the whole ground to be rushed both above and below our ground. Our third shaft we succeeded in bottoming at 107 feet—then the deepest hole on Ballarat—dead on the gutter. The water was very heavy, and we were obliged to use two buckets, one up and the other down, for the first time on Ballarat. We had to send to Geelong and get made to order two water-buckets. The first gold got was a nugget weighing 2½ oz. weight, sent up in the water-bucket. The largest piece of gold got from the claim was 100 oz. Hundreds of people came to see us every day, and as we were very hard worked we had to post a notice for them to read, instead of asking questions:—"Notice.—Bottomed at 107 feet. Large quantity of water. Got a nugget."

The Black Hill was, early in 1853, busily occupied, and the ground between that and Rotten Gully—the head of the Eureka Lead—was being taken up, the Eureka, so named by a medical man, being opened in August, 1852. During the next year or two the shallow grounds declined in importance, occasional discoveries of new reaches of such ground not sufficing to keep back the gradually growing importance of the deeper sinking on the Canadian, Gravel Pits, Eureka, and other golden gutters. Creswick was rushed in December, 1852, and ground down the Leigh and at Smythesdale was gradually opened thereafter. In Ballarat the population was located principally, indeed almost entirely, on the ground now traversed by the present streets of the eastern borough and along the lines of leads now built over, covered with gardens and yards, crossed by streets, or still lying outside the clustering houses and on the edges of the mingling boundaries of borough and bush.

Township of Ballaarat from Baths Hotel, showing part of the Camp & the "Logs", 1855.

The new chum digger of 1852 writes to the author of 1886 as follows:—

I and my mate, whose very name I have forgotten, pitched our tent on the slope near the Black Hill, where Humffray street is now. That was in November, 1852. We had come up from Melbourne with near a score of shipmates just landed from South Africa. One of them, a Londoner, had an umbrella-shaped tent, the rigging of which was a work of dexterity, and was watched with interest. Close by, a party of four or five Scotchmen settled down with more resolute intent, for they built sod walls for their tent cover to sprawl over, and a sod lum, as they called their chimney. Some of our shipmates had no money nor any inclination to hard work, so they accepted billets as policemen at the Camp. They and others of the force then were a ragged ununiformed Falstaffian sort of crowd, with arms to match. I well remember climbing the green mound to the group of tents called the Camp, where I paid for my license, and where Camp street and its close packed neighbourhood is now. There were not many diggers at Golden Point. The Canadian we did not visit, but on a Sunday we explored Rotten Gully, at the head of what became the Eureka, and found the gully well occupied and well deserving its name, for it was very rotten sinking. We dug shallow holes in the Black Hill flat, but got "the color" only, and early in December the rush to Creswick broke out and we went there. Pitched our tent on the sward among the trees not far from a creek, but what creek it was or is I do not now know and could not find again if my life depended upon it. We were again unlucky, fell out, separated, and I returned to Ballarat on my way to Melbourne, disgusted with gold-hunting and bush-life, and determined to rush back to civilisation, as fur as the thing was reachable then in Melbourne. I found and left "Creswicks", as it was called then, a mere collection of tents in the bush, and never saw it again till it had grown into a little town, had been nearly all burnt down and rebuilt. Ballarat was also a mere collection of tents, and a few slightly more substantial dwellings, and all was on the eastern side of the Yarrowee, save a few diggers' tents to the west and the Camp group on the edge of the table land. I found some of our shipmates employed making a dam across the Gnarr Creek, near where the buried culvert now winds round beneath the hill on which the locomotive engine-sheds are. On the slope from what is now Hill street to what is now the artificially raised Mair street, our old ship's "Doctor" had his shed and stoves and what not, where, as Camp cook, he prepared the liberal meals required by the healthy digestions of the people of all grades at the Camp. It was a torrid day towards the end of December when I humped my swag from "Creswicks" to Ballarat, and it was absolute luxury to have a bunk allotted to me in the police quarters amongst my old South African schooner mates. Next morning early I rose to start for Melbourne, the old "doctor" (long since laid in the old cemetery in Ballarat) was making a damper about four feet in circumference, and he had coffee bubbling in a big boiler, and mutton chops sputtering in an enormous fryingpan with a handle some three or four feet long. He hospitably commended to my lips the chalice of boiling coffee and heaps of chops and damper at pleasure. I ate, as a fool eats, who has an appetite and does not know how the midsummer heats of the day before and the day then dawning were to affect him in conjunction with hot coffee, hot chops, hot damper, and the tax of unwonted exertion upon the energies and endurance of the body. Another Melbourne-bound swagsman passed as I bade the Camp cook farewell, and we marched on together. There was a rapid kind of freemasonry extant in those days between some chance acquaintances, and so this passing swagman and I trudged on in company, but I had not reached Warrenheip before I found the pains and prostration of incipient dysentery were upon me. I could only drag along slowly, and never having been ill in my life before—nor since for that matter—I was frightened. Seeing an empty woolshed, or something, before we reached Ballan I said to my companion: "Go on, and leave me here, for I can't go any further now." In sooth I thought I was going to die. Perhaps he did too, and thought also that he had better not be hindered, so, prudent man as he was, he vanished for ever. I never knew his name, nor whence he came, nor whither he went. Crawled on by nightfall to Ballan and got a bed at the hotel there, but the landlord was also a prudent man. I lay in agony all night, and in the morning he came to me and said: "Get out o' this—we don't want any sick men here." There was no answer to so masterful and, indeed, irresistible a command as that, and I got out. Just able to walk, and my light swag a burden, I was glad to see a dray with some diggers, apparently returning to Melbourne, and I asked for a lift. This they refused, but offered to carry my swag for me and leave it at the hotel at Bacchus Marsh. I confidingly, and gladly, and gratefully gave them the swag, and they were soon out of sight round a bend in the road. By the time I had reached round the bend they were invisible, but on the road I found the bag in which I had carried my belongings, a change of clothes, some papers and other trifles. Everything of the least usable value had been stolen, and I sadly gathered up the poor remainder and went on to Bacchus Marsh. But I had by this time got out of the goldfields region by a good distance, and what after that befell me does not belong to this motley history.

Mr. Latrobe, writing to Earl Grey on the 2nd March, 1852, said the population at Golden Point and "the outworks at Brown Hill" had "dwindled rapidly down to 200 steady licensed workers," averaging not more "than eight or ten ounces per man monthly." In the same despatch, however, his Excellency is pleased to express a belief—strengthened by the fact that the population had just then begun to increase and reached "500 and upwards"—that when rain should come more people also would come, "and that it will be found that the 'Ballarat Goldfield' is far from being exhausted." His Excellency was, as we know, a good prophet. He was not always as accurate in his geography, for in a despatch dated 8th July, 1852, he informs Earl Grey that "a new working, called the 'Eureka', nine miles from Ballarat proper, as well as two or three others, were discovered in the month of May." In the Governor's view of the gold-field population there seems to have been not only a spirit of faith in the people, but, as became the son of the old Moravian missioner, of devotion towards God. In the despatch last cited, his Excellency says:—

On all hands it must be considered that the population at the workings, taken as a whole, are as orderly and well disposed as can be met with in any part of the colony. The comparative rarity of instances of grave outrage or of capital crime is a subject of great gratitude to God.

On the same day, in another despatch, the Governor adverts to the state of the Government and the exigencies of the new order of things, and again says his feeling is "that of thankfulness to God that so much has been achieved" in the way of preserving order. His Excellency over and over again bears testimony to the general good order maintained by the mining population, and that, too, "notwithstanding the extraordinary circumstances under which the multitude finds itself brought together, the passions and temptations of the hour, and the acknowledged insufficiency of the police to oppose physical force to any really serious outbreak or general disturbance." And when that which the Governor hinted at as possible had really become a fact, the Argus correspondent, writing from Ballarat on the 13th November, 1854, bears the following testimony to the good manners of the diggers on Sundays even in those exciting times:—

These Ballarat diggers are most extraordinary rebels. It struck nie to remark particularly, and to enquire as to their conduct and observance of the Sabbath. Truly they have few advantages, precious little of the gospel offered to them, little either of education given; no wonder, indeed, if they were vagabonds. But, as far as I could hear or see, the greatest possible order and sobriety, the utmost observance possible, I may say, of the Sabbath, has characterised their proceedings. Clean and neat in their diggers' best costume, they promenade over these vast gold-fields, their wives and children in their best frocks too; but anything more calm or becoming or regardful of the day could hardly be witnessed in the best towns of even Christian Britain. How delightful would it not be to rule such men well?

True, most truly, indeed! But the writer need not have wondered if he had known that the great bulk of the population were of the best men of the "best towns of Christian Britain", men of invincible spirit, as well as of moral and law-abiding principles.

His Excellency's next despatch, dated the 31st July, 1852, enclosed a petition from the Legislative Council to the Queen, praying the establishment of a mint in Victoria, as "one of the richest gold-fields in the world." We have now, but when this history first appeared, had not yet got a mint any more than a law to legalise mining on private property, also petitioned for a year or two after the date last given. The Corporation of Melbourne backed up the Legislative Council's petition for a mint, but the Ballarat petition of 1855, for a private property law, fell then, as through many succeeding years, upon an unsympathising Parliament and a careless metropolis. It is a coincidence worth noting, that the Melbourne corporation's petition for a mint was signed by Mr. J.T. Smith, who had about that time begun his long series of mayorships of Melbourne, and who subsequently became Minister of Mines.

The following table, compiled from various sources, including the compiler's own knowledge of several items, will give, as it were, a bird's-eye view of the opening of the several portions of the Ballarat field during the period ending December, 1854:—

locality.	date.	| | | |	locality.	date.
Clunes	1st July	1851	| |	Dead Horse Gullies	Early in	1853
Hiscock's Gully	August	1851	| |	Prince Regent	February	1853
Golden Point	August	1851	| |	Sailors' Gully	Early in	1853
Canadian Gully	September	1851	| |	White Flat	Early in	1853
Brown Hill	September	1851	| |	Scotchman's Gully	Early in	1853
Black Hill	October	1851	| |	New Chum Gully	End of	1853
Little Bendigo Gullies	End of	1851	| |	Black Hill Lead	Early in	1854
Eureka Lead	August	1852	| |	Gravel Pits Lead	Early in	1854
Red Hill Lead	November	1852	| |	Bakery Hill Lead	Early in	1854
Black Hill Flat	November	1852	| |	Gum Tree Flat	End of	1854
Creswick	End of	1852	| |

Excepting the Dead Horse Gullies all the Ballarat proper leads mentioned in the table above came from the eastern side of the ranges into the Ballarat basin. In the year 1855 the western side gave out the Golden Point, Nightingale, Malakoff, Redan, Whitehorse, Frenchman's, and Cobbler's leads, all of which flowed under the basaltic plateau of western Ballarat and Sebastopol. The Golden Point was the name given to the earlier confluent streams as they issued from Eastern Ballarat in one lead and passed under the plateau, and into that lead all the others flowed that had come down from the western side of the range.

The Ballarat township, now the City of Ballarat, was proclaimed towards the middle of the year 1852, the first sales of land being held in Geelong, Thomas Bath, now of Ceres Farm, Learmonth, being the first purchaser for business occupation. This was in November, 1852. The land obtained by Mr. Bath was bought at the second sale, and consisted of portions of sections 1 and 2. Cobb's corner and the present town-hall site were sold at the same time, and were bought by Robt. Reeves, on which, subsequently, he forfeited his deposit. In the following year the land was put up again, and the corner was bought by Mr. Bath for £250. The next lot, that now occupied by the Town-hall and District Court, was bought on the same day by P.W. Welsh, for £202, and the deposit on that lot was again forfeited. In the Appendix A will be found reports of the first land sales in Ballarat West and East.

Mr. Bath built the first hotel in Ballarat, when all the Government dwellings were of canvas, or of slabs with bark roofs. It was erected in May, 1853, and licensed in the following month. At that time there was no other hotel between Buninyong and Lexton. But near the corner of Dana and Lydiard streets, now occupied by Holmes and Salter's law offices, a tent or hut was kept by one Meek, who wrote pen-and-ink sketches of "Victoria. Meek, as became his name, did not make his business very prominent from a licensing point of view, and his establishment, by way of irony upon it or the police, used to be called "The Trooper's Arms". The hotel built by Mr. Bath in May, 1853, was of wood, in one storey, and is now a private dwelling on Soldiers' Hill, the site of the original hotel being now occupied by the permanent portion of the hotel now known as Craig's Royal hotel. The wood for the first hotel was all brought from Geelong. The two-storey portion yet remaining was begun at the end of 1853, and finished in 1854. The clock now (1870) in the wooden tower was then placed there, and was the first public clock in Ballarat. Mr. Biddle, of Biddle's Saw-mills, supplied the hardwood for the building, the longer timbers having been cut in the hollow called the Crater on the western slope of Mount Buninyong. He says he also suggested the placing of the public clock in the tower. Mr Bath tells us that the cost of both buildings was enormous, for prices alike of material and transit were then excessive. He paid £80 per ton carriage from Geelong, 40s. to 45s. per hundred feet at the pit for hardwood, as the indigenous forest timber is called, and £1 per hundred feet cartage from the saw-pits to Ballarat. Mr. Bath, in a letter to us, gives the following additional recollections:—

The roads in those days were frightful. I have had goods on the road from Geelong above five weeks. Mrs. Bath came from Geelong by, I suppose, the first coach, and was three days and two nights on the road. Watt ran a conveyance from Ballarat to Melbourne via Bacchus Marsh, stopping there one night, fare £7. When I built in Ballarat there were not many hotels between Geelong and this—two at Batesford, then the Separation Inn, then Watson's, at Meredith, and Jamieson's and Sellick's, at Buninyong. I have often ridden from Ballarat to Geelong without seeing a fence or meeting any person, but at those times I kept off the track. I purchased a stack of hay in 1853 from Mr. Darlot at the station at Sebastopol at £60 per ton, and I had to truss and cart it in the bargain, and this was hay of a self-sown crop and about half of it silver grass [While we copy this, (1870) oaten hay in truss is sold in the Ballarat market at £2 10s. per ton.] I purchased oats in Geelong in 1850 at 2s. per bushel, and at Bendigo in 1852 at £3 per bushel. Some of the farming land in this district was sold in June, 1854, and I then commenced farming, cropping about fifty acres the first season.

On the 8th December, 1856, the first sale of frontages in Ballarat East commenced. The sale had been preceded by much excitement relative to an absurd proclamation prohibiting the issue of licenses, or the carrying on of business within one mile of sold lands. After some agitation that ukase was withdrawn by the Government. The sales of the Main road frontages were continued for four consecutive days, and land now of little value then realised enormous prices. To return to 1852, we note that Mr. Adams, late of Buninyong, had a store at the head of Golden Point, and he used to act as postmaster and convey letters from the diggings to the township of Buninyong, his store giving the name to the hill now known as Old Post-office Hill, where also the first Government Camp was situated, whence it was removed to the present locality. Mr. Alfred Clarke, late of the Geelong Advertiser, acted as letter-carrier between Geelong and Buninyong in 1851. The first supply of stores to the early diggers was afforded by one Stirling's hawking dray, in October, 1851, and the first regular store was shortly after that opened by Mr. Robinson, subsequently a member of the first town council of Geelong. Stirling and Sons' drays were the only conveyances at that time for either passengers or goods between Ballarat and Geelong. Stores, like dwellings, were rude, and often the storekeeper, like the digger, was surly. From his tent of calico or canvas, with its furniture of blankets, frying-pan, cradle, puddling-tub, pick and shovel, the digger went to the store where mutton, flour, boots, serge-shirts, moleskin trousers, tobacco, sardines, sugar, picks, shovels, billies, and other things were all found in one grand miscellany. Coin was rare, and the digger generally bartered his gold-dust for goods. Change there was none, and reckonings partook of the largeness of view which ignored minute calculations. Paper was scarce, and often the digger had to carry his groceries to his tent in box, billy, handkerchief, or shirt. The life was rough but eventful, not to say jolly, and as long as gold was got the digger was generally happy. If his pocket grew light and the authorities demanded license fees, he had to wash dirt enough to supply the required gold; but if he failed in his search, or, worst of all, if health failed, he was of all men most miserable. There were no hospitals or asylums in that early day, and a woman was an absolute phenomenon; so the sick man often died with nothing civilised about him but the awkward, if gentle, tending of his digging partners in the gold-hunting wilderness. And some fell in utter loneliness, their bones when found being buried beneath some drooping spray of peppermint about the slopes or gullies of the gold-field.

In those first days of digging life, when womanless crowds wrestled with the earth and the forest amid much weariness and solitude of heart, the arrival of a woman was the signal for a cry and a gathering. The shout, "There's a woman!" emptied many a tent of besoiled and hardy diggers, for the strange sight evoked instant memories of far-away homes: of mothers, wives, and sweethearts, and all the sweet affections and courtesies they represented, and never with such eloquent emphasis as then. There was no man, having the heart of a man, who did not bless the vision, while many an eye was moistened with the sudden tear as love, hope, disappointment, fear, struggled all at once in the homeless digger's bosom. But recklessness often marked the life of the time, and the brandy bottle of the grog-shanty killed some victims then as it does in this later day. Unlicensed at first, the grog-sellers got licensed afterwards, and did heavy trade with the heavy drinker, the more moderate drinkers helping to swell the business to a large and highly profitable aggregate. Prices of all kinds of goods and all kinds of labor were enormously high. One publican in 1853, when cartage from Geelong was £80 per ton, paid £1500 a week for cartage for seven months running. This one man had at one time no fewer than 122 public-houses or shanties either mortgaged to him or in his own actual possession.

Mr. F.W. Tatham, manager of the Prince of Wales Company from 1862 to its winding up in 1875, gives an episode or two illustrative of the times and the men of the fifties. He says, referring to the mad, early, womanless days, that

Brandy was the great panacea for too many. But civilisation gradually dawned, and some congenial spirits now and then met to discuss politics, theology, or other serious matters in the tent on Sundays or evenings. There was one party consisting of three doctors, a captain in the army, some sea captains, and some American colonels and majors. Some of them are dead, others scattered over the world, but some of them became victims of alcohol. Joe N———, our next tent neighbour, a merry, bibulous sawmaker from Sheffield, had a young wife. About a year after marriage she had to prepare for a serious emergency, but had no means, for Joe swallowed everything. My wife and other women promised to help her, and I tried to get hold of Joe, but there was no getting him then into a serious mood. At last, one Sunday morning, as the wife's time uas drawing near, and things were dear and scarce, I got Joe to look at the position. As soon as he realised it, he said he knew where he could get some gold, and would soon set things right. Next day he brought home a few pennyweights—enough to make a start with. The next day he got several ounces, too late for the intended service, as the young stranger had made an appearance; but the ladies had cut up some of their own clothes, and so the exigency was met. That was a year before the Eureka affair. At another time Joe came to my tent one Sunday morning, and we went exploring up by Black Hill, Dead Horse, and Rotten Gully, afterwards called Little Bendigo. He was hard up, as usual, and I had no money, for I did not expect to want any. After an hour's travelling, Joe wanted to drink; I said we could get a drink of tea at some tent. "Tea be blowed", said Joe. "But we have no money, and the shanties don't give grog on credit." "Oh, if you'll help," replied Joe, "that's all right." We looked round among the shallow holes for some likely looking headings, found a tin dish planted among some rubbish, scooped up half a dish of dirt, and washed it off, getting a few grains. After repeating the experiment three or four times, he succeeded in getting nearly a pennyweight of gold, and, tying it up in a bit of rag, he persuaded a German grog seller to let him have about a quarter pint of brandy. That was in the mad times when men would not wash dirt for less than an ounce to the tub, and nobody took much notice of a man washing a bit of headings, even on a Sunday. Poor Joe is long since dead. Some of the other and better educated mob of professionals and naval and military men thought of little else than where they could got brandy. They knew something of chemistry, and I have heard them boast how, when all their money and credit was gone, and, living far into the night in a drug store, they, with the help of some pain-killer, manufactured a palatable drink. One of the ladies who helped Joe's wife was Mrs. Pincott, whose husband subsequently gave his name to Pincott's dam. They lived close by our tent, and Mrs. Pincott gave birth to a son, the first born on these diggings. This was close to Brown Hill, and Pincott's mates were so pleased that they took the hat round, and collected bits of gold from some of the wash-dirt paddocks; some gave them small nuggets, some gave wash-dirt, some money, altogether amounting to about £80, and the lad was named Eureka. He lived and throve three or four years, and then fell into a water hole. His mother found him before he was dead, but, though she made frantic efforts to get him out of the shallow hole, she could not reach him. Digging her toes into the sides of the shaft, she kept the boy for a time out of the water, but could not make her cries for help heard until too late to save her child's life.

John Alloo's Chinese Restaurant, Main Road, Ballaarat, 1853.

Mr. John Brooksbank, a hardworking Yorkshireman from Bradford, who landed in Melbourne on the 20th June, 1848, and came to Ballarat in September, 1851, favors the author with some autobiographical notes—simple, graphic, almost reminiscent of old Pepys in quaintness. He says:—

After a long and severe passage, and my money being a little scarce, I had to be pretty smart and get work as soon as possible. Got work in (Government employ, and soon after was taking contracts, and during this time I bought a farm of the Hon. John Pascoe Fawkner, near Melbourne. Went to Geelong in right good times, everything going on first rate until the news of the discovery of the gold. Then everything was upside down, men would not work at any price, contracts broke, men and masters going to the diggings. Jack was as good as his master. Never got a penny for my work in Geelong, so I had to make my way to Ballarat, which was in the month of September. Pitched my tent on the Brown Hill road, now called Humffray street, and started to sink; got a little, and at the end of November we left for Mount Alexander, and was not long before we got gold. So I was there on Xmas day and had a jolly fine plum pudding. My mate's wife used to cook for us and rock the cradle, and got half share, and the two seemed to keep their own purses separate***On our way to Melbourne I was gathering sticks to boil the billy and picked up a roll of notes tied with a string. Not near our dray at all, so I put them in my pocket and said nothing about them, thinking they would say "we will divide them"; as I intended to advertise them in Melbourne. But when we were on our way the woman, to my surprise, said she had lost a roll of notes, so I asked what the parcel was like. She said it was rolled up tight and tied with a string so I knew at once it was the one I had found, so I took it out of my pocket and showed it to her. The husband said she ought to give me half. She got the notes and we went on our way rejoicing. Got to Melbourne on Sunday, next day started for Geelong, and at night was in the bosom of my family. So I soon looked out and bought a horse and dray and took my family to Ballarat, where we arrived after seven days with a good horse, and we fixed our tent about the same place where I first fixed when first I came up. Built one of the first restaurants on Ballarat near where the Red Bull now stands. Meals were 4s. and Sunday dinners 5s. and regular boarders £2 2s. per week. Was obliged to keep a little grog, and soon after that a man came up from Geelong, a friend of one of the boarders, so he asked him to have a feed at his expense. So after having this feed he asked my wife to let him have drink, as he was a friend of his it was all right. So accordingly he got the drink, but to my horror and surprise this noble Geelong friend of our boarder went straight to the police camp and joined the force and came down and stuck me up for grog selling, and I was fined £50. He was soon hooted from pillow to post, and his effigy was burnt, and he was soon banished from Ballarat***The little gingerbeer man shot at the stockade was a boarder of mine. He was supposed to have shot Captain Wise on that memorable occasion.***About 7 o'clock on next evening a boy came running to tell me the bushrangers were in their store, and were tieing the master and mistress down. So myself and Mr. Smith and one or two others were fully prepared with our shooting irons in good order, so over we went and divided ourselves, some to the back and some to the front. I took the back, and Cane, an old man-o'-war's man, was with me, a wild sort of a man. So we got to the door pretty quietly, and could see over the door how all things stood inside; the pistols and the carving knives and cash box on the table, and the ringleader was putting the money in his pockets while the others were helping him. I had my horse pistol in my hand, and my mate came with his revolver keeping them covered, and by this time there was a double-barrelled gun there. So I dragged open the door and took charge of the fire arms, and the other men coming in at the front the bushrangers were secured without the slightest show of escape. So we released the missus and master and tied the would-be robbers in their place. When they were tried they pleaded guilty and had 14 years on the roads, the first three in irons. They were escapees from Pentridge. I had a great trouble at this time, as one of my children died very suddenly, and these trials were trials in those times. No one to make a coffin, as one man volunteered to make one but when I looked for the coffin he said he had clean forgot it; and two men went to dig the grave and got bushed, so I had to go and dig it myself. This is not very pleasant jobs lo do for your own children. The ground was not fenced in at this time, as this was amongst the first that was buried in the old burying ground (cemetery by the Creswick road).

Mr. Brooksbank tells other of his experiences, such as building tins old Bank of Victoria—referred to further on, diddling a party who had obtained a "wrongful" order for restitution of wash dirt, erecting a pump on Yuille's Creek between Webster street and Creswick road at which to sell water, going two or three times to New Zealand, building a public house at the corner of Lyons and Urquhart streets, then going mining again with no luck and "the results of foul air and old age creeping on I have determined as far as possible to leave the mining on one side."

From Mr. Irwin's contributions to the Ballarat Star, more expressly referred to in a subsequent chapter, we take the following as confirmatory of some foregoing remarks:—

During the earlier days of the rush to Golden Point a monetary arrangement existed which would scarcely be long tolerated now-a-days. It was this, when the purchaser went to a store for supplies he got as change either a Burnbank, Colac or other "note". These notes were simply rudely lithographed promises "to pay one day after sight", in Melbourne or Geelong, where the principal store of issuer was, the amounts specified in the "notes," which were of various amounts, from 5s. upwards. Suppose a purchaser of goods had got some of the notes from the Burnbank store and on the next occasion for purchasing went to the Colac or Robinson's store, the persons in charge of the latter would not accept of the notes of the rival establishment, to which the holder of them must go unless he was willing to lose their value. The system was an intolerable nuisance while it lasted, but it had soon to be abolished, change for purchases being reduced to a minimum by the sale of so many ounces or pennyweights of gold to the storekeeper, the balance, if any, being made good by boxes of matches and the like, to the satisfaction generally of both parties to the transaction. It is on record that very small potatoes, reckoned at the rate of threepence each, served as small change to a storekeeper who is now one of the wealthiest of Victorian colonists.

The first woman who arrived among the diggers was a bullock-driver's wife, whose husband had left his bullocks and turned to gold seeking. Next came Mrs. Thomas Bath, who was in fact, either the first woman, or among the first half dozen or so of women, who settled on the gold-field. After her others came at wide and dreary intervals in angelic similitude; but when the first two years had passed, and the gold-field had acquired some elements of permanency women joined their husbands, sons, and brothers already here, or came with newcomers, and thus gradually the diggers' social life assumed a greater similarity to that of older settlements.

The first meetings for the celebration of divine worship in public were held by a few Wesleyans, who assembled in a mia-mia, or tent of boughs, as for a Christian feast of Tabernacles, in the White Flat, where the smithie belonging to Mr. John James, late M.L.A., then stood, near the intersection of Grant street and the Yarrowee. For greater privacy these Wesleyans used to go from the tent of boughs to the denser bush then adjacent, and, seated on fallen logs, hold there the "class-meeting",—that private service which is peculiar to the Wesleyan family of Christians. They were after that held in a hut on Winter's Flat, and in a tent at the White Flat, when the Golden Point rush was at its height. One of those early "Wesleyan worshippers" writes as follows:—

The first service was held on Sunday morning, the 28th Sept., 1851, on the flat, preacher (local) Mr. J. Sanderson, about one hundred present, text Corinthians II, "Ye are bought with a price." Class meeting at two o'clock in Sanderson's tent on Golden Point. Mr. Hastie came, attracted by the singing, and requested the aid of the singers, and waited half-an-hour, and took them to his service at the Commissioners' Camp. Sunday following, 5th October, Rev. Mr. Lewis, Wesleyan minister, from Geelong, preached on the flat at eleven o'clock and at the Black Hill in the evening. Subscriptions for a chapel rolled in and on the 12th November, in the afternoon, Mr. Sanderson opened the new chapel; text 12th Chap. Isaiah, "Behold, God is my salvation." The chapel was of saplins and boughs with tarpaulin over it, no pulpit. James Oddie was at the opening service. The day was a very stormy one. Mr. William Howell was the treasurer. A Mr. Jones of Tasmania, gave the first pound, and nuggets rolled in fast and furious. No other service was held in the building. The rush to Forest Creek took away the population the next week.

The social, if not aggressive, missionary spirit of Wesleyanism had earlier proof in Victoria than even in those services at Golden Point. M'Combie, in his "History of Victoria", has the following passage:—

In April, 1836, before the city of Melbourne existed, the Rev. Mr. Orton, a Wesleyan minister of Van Diemen's Land, who had accompanied Mr. Batman when that gentleman brought his family across Bass' Straits, celebrated divine service beneath the beautiful casuarina trees which adored the crest of Batman's Hill. Those who assembled to worship upon this interesting occasion belonged to many races and countries; they were a pretty fair average from the adjoining colonies and the islands of Great Britain. Mr. Batman's Sydney blacks also attended, while not a few of the aborigines, who had been attracted by the preparations, had crowded in. The Church of England service was read, and an excellent discourse preached from the text, "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God;" and we have heard from one who was present that the first sermon delivered by a regularly ordained clergyman on the site of the great metropolis was striking and orthodox.

The Wesleyans discovered similar activity when, in 1852, the crowding hosts of gold-seeking immigrants could not find houses to enter in Melbourne, not even at the enormous rents then demanded. The Government was at its wits' end and did its slow and cumbrous best to procure shelter for the crowd, but Mr. Latrobe thus refers to the Wesleyans in a despatch on 28th October, 1852, to Earl Grey:—

The Wesleyan body have the credit of taking the lead, by a very large collection, amounting, as I am informed, to near £2000, and the immediate commencement of a "Refuge for the Houseless", primarily for those in connection with their particular community, but in effect as far as their means will allow, for any who might be found to require it.

Some who joined in those tent or hut services, in the midst of the hot fever of the first rush to the marvellous riches of Golden Point, became active honorable men in our public life, and some are at this day filling positions more or less prominent in both ecclesiastical and secular life. The Rev. Thomas Hastie, of Buninyong, and the Roman Catholic Father Dunne, of Geelong, used to visit the diggings also and minister to their several flocks at irregular intervals. Father Dunne's first church was a tent near Brown Hill where the worshippers, or some of them, had to kneel upon quartz gravel as the mysteries of the mass were celebrated. The Wesleyans built the first place of worship, the site being on a knoll near Sinclair's Hill, and named by them Wesley Hill. They then built a weatherboard church where the Eastern Town-hall now stands. The Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Presbyterians, were close upon the heels of the Wesleyans, and other denominations followed, the first church building in permanent materials being erected by the Wesleyans where their present school-house now (1870) stands at the corner of Lydiard and Dana streets. The first church there was built towards the end of the year 1854, some stray bullets from the insurgent diggers on the flat falling among the workmen while the building was being built. The Rev. Theophilus Taylor was then superintendent minister of the Wesleyan Church here. After holding services in what was then the police-court, in Ballarat West, the Church of England people built a small wooden church in Armstrong street, where worship was held till Christ Church was built in Lydiard street. The wooden church was afterwards a billiard saloon, and then it became Pinkerton and Co.'s printing office. The first Anglican Church in Eastern Ballarat was a tent on the site of St. Paul's reserve. It was improved into a weatherboard building and after that came the brick edifice of to-day. When the diggings first commenced, Mr. Hastie, of Buninyong, was accustomed to go to Ballarat and hold service in the afternoon, when the greatest number of hearers could be obtained. The service for some time was held in the open air, and at different localities. Other ministers subsequently came, and each chose the situation which seemed most suitable. When the Eureka rush took place, a tent for worship was erected by the Presbyterians on the Eureka Flat, and then a wooden church was erected on Specimen Hill. The congregation became settled, Mr. Hastie urged them to call a minister, and in 1855 the Rev. James Baird was called and ordained. A service in Gaelic was Iftld every Sunday afternoon for some time there. During the time Mr. Baird was minister Ballarat West was gradually rising into importance, and for a time, service was held between both places, but ultimately, it was entirely removed to the West and held in the council chamber, near the corner of Sturt and Lydiard streets. During this period the Soldier's' Hill site was obtained, and a church built; the union, however, now took place, and as the Sturt street site, was reckoned most convenient, a church was erected there and the Soldiers' Hill church was converted into a school. In 1858 Mr. Baird resigned and returned to Britain, when the Rev. Wm. Henderson was called and inducted.

Schools and newspapers sprang up, too, during these first three years, and the population increased from Governor Latrobe's hypothetical census of 6000 to over four times that number. The bills of newspaper mortality showed a strong tendency in the early papers to early death. Mr. Alfred Clarke, as the representative of Mr. Harrison (then proprietor of the Geelong Advertiser), attempted to bring a printing press here in October, 1851, for the purpose of bringing out a paper to be called the Boninyong Gazette and Mining Journal—for it must be remembered that Buninyong was then the only recognised settlement. It was a township of some antiquity, and Ballarat was but an aboriginal name in the aboriginal bush, or in the hardly less barbarous diggings. Clarke's dray with the press got bogged on the way up from Geelong, and in the meantime Clarke had a little feud with the commissioner of the day about the site selected on Old Post-office Hill, the press was packed off to Geelong again, and thus ended the first essay in the direction of newspaper literature here. The Ballarat Times and Southern Cross was the first paper actually published in Ballarat, the first number being published on the 4th March, 1854, at an office in Mair street, opposite the Market Square. Subsequently the Times office was removed to Bakery Hill, near the intersection of the present Victoria and Humffray streets, by the proprietor and editor, Henry Seekamp, The paper lived for several years, and died on the 5th of October, 1861. The Leader was the next adventure. It was a joint-stock affair, and only made six appearances. The Creswick Chronicle was next brought out by Mr. J.J. Ham, an old colonist and experienced journalist. It died in the bloom of early youth, after two or three issues only. In July, 1855, appeared the Ballarat Trumpeter, a gratuitous sheet, which in 1856 was published as a tri-weekly, under the joint ownership of Messrs. Wheeler, Fletcher, and Evans. It lived about twelve months, and was the nucleus of the Ballarat Standard. Then came the Star. It appeared as a tri-weekly journal on the 22nd September, 1855, under a joint-stock proprietary, with Messrs. Samuel Irwin and J.J. Ham as editors. After some four months it was discontinued for a week, and then it re-appeared, having passed into private hands in the interval, and in December, 1856, appeared daily as at present. On the 10th November, 1856, the Ballarat Standard appeared, and some time previously the Nation. The Standard, owned by Messrs. D.D. Wheeler and W. Cooper, was a tri-weekly, edited by Mr. W. Cooper (subsequently of the Portland Guardian). It made its last appearance on the 26th of the month in which it was born. Mr. Denovan, afterwards M.L.A. for Sandhurst, edited the Nation, which peacefully expired after less than a dozen issues. In 1857 an attempt at the facetious was made, and a Ballarat Punch appeared, and laughed at some of our follies, and chided some of our sins. Mr. Hasleham, then correspondent of the Melbourne Herald, conducted the new comer through a portion of its short and merry career, and Mr. C.E. Moore designed a capital title page for it that never appeared for want of the necessary wood or stone gravers. The comic little paper had several owners and editors, but none of them could make it live. In August, 1857, appeared the Corn Stalk, a monthly quarto of 4 pages, "printed and published for the proprietors, J. and T. Oddie." It was edited by Mr. J.N. Wilson, now the chairman of the Ballarat Water Commission; and it is noticeable that the ninth number now before us (April, 1858) has for its leading article an essay declaring that "a plentiful supply of good water for domestic and commercial purposes is, above all things, what Ballarat wants." The article is backed up by extracts from letters from Messrs. J. Learmonth and T. Waldie, showing that not only Burrumbeet and Yuille's, but even the rivers Moorabool, Leigh, and Barwon had, within their memory, been dry. Newspaper enterprise then flagged for a while, until, on the 24th March, 1859, a little company of adventurers brought out the North Grenville Mercury, Mr. M.G. Byrne, afterwards a barrister, being editor. It was pluckily maintained, first as a tri-weekly and then as a daily, in all for some twenty weeks, when, after a hundred appearances, it was also welcomed by the journalistic Capulets to their tomb. The Tribune came next, appearing on the 21st of November, 1861, and ending on the 11th July, 1863, Mr. Harrison, previously of the Ballarat Times, being the manager and editor, and at last sole proprietor. The Ballarat Sun arose on the 26th September 1864, and appeared daily under the auspices of a joint-stock proprietary. After a troublous lift; and change of ownership, it sank below the horizon during the following year. Advertising sheets, distributed gratuitously, appeared and disappeared at intervals all the years after 1854, and on some Saturday in August, 1856—the date missing from the copy before us—appeared The Chinese Advertiser, a medley of Chinese and English, but mostly Chinese, which was to be a "pioneer of Christianity and Christian civilisation among the Chinese in Australia," and was printed from stone, by Robert Bell, Main Road, Ballarat. Mr. Bell remains, and so do a good many of the Chinese, but the Advertiser has long since disappeared. On the 25th of May, 1863, appeared the Evening Post, at once our first evening and first penny paper. It has had several changes of ownership. The Ballarat Courier, Messrs. Bateman and Clark, proprietors, first appeared on the 10th of June, 1867, and the Evening Mail, the last-born of the newspapers, on the 6th of April, 1869. It was started by a band of printers, then, in the hands of the same company, was registered with an increased capital under the Trading Companies Statute, and, eventually, was incorporated with the Evening Post. Ballarat Punch revived also, and struggled against fate till February, 1870, when it disappeared. It was started by the late C.A. Abbot, who was both artist and editor, as well as proprietor. Buninyong, Creswick, Clunes, and Smythesdale all had papers of their own; and even Sebastopol, the most juvenile of boroughs, has had its local newspaper. In recording this list of publications, we have travelled beyond the period set down at the head of the chapter, but have done so as being more convenient than otherwise. The physical difficulties in the way of printing were great in the early days of the gold-fields, as in the beginning of all new settlements. Some of these difficulties have been referred to in the text. Mr. D.D. Wheeler, who was one of the founders of the Standard and Trumpeter and a shareholder in the first Star co-partnership, writes of the latter journal:—"Its first number was printed and published in the middle of a hurricane and inundation, with the printers nearly up to their middle in water." This was in what is now Bridge street before the levels were raised there. Mr. Wheeler hazards the opinion that the Nation appeared more times than is stated in the text. He may be literally correct, but the facts are not materially different. As to the Trumpeter, Mr. Wheeler says:—"It was revived by its original proprietor early in January, 1856, and continued for about twelve months, when it lost its ground in competition with the Star and Times." The competitive fates fell afterwards upon the Times, which succumbed to the Star; and the Star, though still alive and holding a high position, has had to see the Courier outstrip it in the race and take the place of local journalistic leadership. The Star had many owners. From the original proprietary it passed to Messrs. Wanliss and Belford; then to Wanliss alone; then to J. Noble Wilson; then to H.R. Nicholls and Co.; then to a joint stock proprietary; then to the Courier proprietors; then to the present owners, Messrs. Martin and Grose, who are also proprietors of the Creswick Advertiser. The Commonwealth, a monthly publication, appeared for the first time in March, 1870. It was edited by Mr. W. Clarke, Grand Master of the Orange Lodges in Victoria, but it has long since vanished.

"Deep Sinking" Bakery Hill, Ballaarat—1853.

The caterers for the amusement of the early diggers had ample patronage in those days. The first theatrical venture was in December, 1853, when a canvas house was set up in the Gravel Pits, the leading actress afterwards becoming the wife of the editor and proprietor of the Ballarat Times. A person named Clarke opened a similar theatre on the Eureka in February, 1854, and soon after that Mrs. Hanmer opened a weatherboard theatre called the Adelphi, where the Tontine, and more recently called the Windsor hotel, afterwards stood in Esmond, now Durham, street east. The Charlie Napier, Montezuma, and Victoria theatres in Main street, all long since burnt down, speedily followed with larger accommodations and better performances. There came afterwards, drawn by the fame of the golden colony, some of the most accomplished histrionic artistes of the time. Catherine Hayes, Anna Bishop, Lola Montes, Brooke, Kean, Ellen Tree, Sir William and Lady Don, Jefferson, Celeste, Montgomery, were among the brighter stars that have risen upon our auriferous horizon. Lucy Chambers, an Australian by birth and a singer of European fame, appeared in opera; Charles Mathews, the comedian, Madame Ristori, and nearly every artist of high rank who came to Victoria also appeared in this city. Further details of dramatic business will be found in a future chapter.

The first magistrate sat of course at Buninyong. Mr. Eyre was the officer, and he used to visit the diggings at intervals. The finding of the first monster nugget at Canadian Gully in February, 1853, caused a new rush thither, and in that rush came Mr. Adam Loftus Lynn, who was the first attorney that practised here. After spending the months of February, March, and April in digging, he began to practise his profession on the 1st of May, his office being then opposite to the Ballarat Times office of that day. About six months after Mr. Lynn had commenced practice, he was joined by Mr. Ocock. After them came, in time, a forensic deluge. The first local County Court and Court of General Sessions were opened by the late Judge Wrixon, with Mr. Francis Greene as clerk of the peace, in January, 1853, at Buninyong, the original style of the County Court being "The County Court of Buninyong and Ballarat." It retained this style till the sixties. The court style, the judge, the clerk, all are dead and buried, but Mr. W. Tweedie, the first bailiff is still (1887) bailiff; and as County Courts in Victoria may soon be merged in some other court, the first bailiff may also be the last of the old order. The courts presided over by Judge Wrixon first sat at Ballarat near the end of the year 1853. Mr. Justice Williams opened the first Circuit Court in Ballarat on the 12th December, 1856, in what was then the police court-house, the county court-house, and the place where the English Church service was performed. The building stood in what is now Camp street, on the western side, where the street bends round near the Freemasons Hall. In respect of the courts of law we have gone beyond the period set down at the head of this chapter, but we have done so by way of convenience to the reader.

One of the Victorian sensations of 1852 was the robbery of several thousand ounces of gold from the ship Nelson in Hobson's Bay, on 2nd April, by a band, of whom one Roberts was a conspicuous confederate. He was sentenced with others but proved an alibi and was released. He then fell into the hands of the police in the Ballarat district and early in 1853 was in custody for horse stealing. He and others were at the Separation inn, at Leigh Road, on the way to the seaboard for trial, examination, or sentence. Handcuffed as he was, Roberts managed to slip them off, and he then jumped clean through one of the hotel windows, and bolted. He was at large for some time, but still in the first half of the same year he was known to be hiding somewhere near Beaufort. Mr. G.G. Morton, of Labona, who had landed in the colony in October, 1852, and obtained from Mr. Latrobe a cadetship in the police force, was sent with the cadets to Ballarat, where they arrived on the 29th September of that year, Morton being subsequently appointed to the charge of the Wimmera district. When Roberts was known to be lurking about Beaufort, Morton, accompanied by a stalwart trooper named Worsley, and an aboriginal who was supposed to know where Roberts was, set forth to attempt the capture of the horse stealer. The aboriginal pointed out as the robber's lair a bark hut in the ranges, known on the run as the Waterloo hut, the site being that afterwards opened up as the Waterloo diggings. Morton arranged with Worsley the modus belli [5] whereby Morton was to burst in the hut door and fall down in the hut, Worsley to be close at his heels and cover the robber with firearms. This was done to the letter, Roberts being there with another man, a vagrant unconnected with the horse stealing. The police had only to do with Roberts, the other man being harmless, and being told to take no part if he valued his own life or liberty. Roberts, being covered by Worsley, began to show fight; Morton sprang to his feet and felled the robber with the butt end of a pistol as the ruffian was exclaiming: "Yes, I'm Roberts, you ———, and you shan't take me alive." The officers soon had the handcuffs upon him, and strapped him to Worsley's stirrup, Morton being ready to prod him with a sabre if he did not march peaceably to his fate. Roberts used much emphatic but unrecordable language, and still made show of resistance at first, but soon submitted to the march, and was safely lodged in gaol, and eventually sentenced.

This Roberts was an old convict who had come out in 1844, and when he obtained his freedom he took to the roads and was for a time associated with the notorious Captain Melville, who strangled himself in the Melbourne gaol. He was only 37 when arrested at Waterloo, and by the time he was sentenced thereafter he had a total of 32 years imprisonment imposed for three charges of highway robbery and assault, including five years in irons. The ruffian began a life of crime very early, and his frequent imprisonments had afforded leisure, as does the sequestered life of the sailor, for the indulgence of that strange fancy for tattooing which seems to fascinate convict and sailor alike. Here is the gaol record of "particular marks":—

Sun, heart, and dart; foul anchor, soldier and woman R.D.A.B.; launch, cross flags and crown on left arm. Crucifix, maltese cross, flags, skull and bones, sword and pistol on right arm.

By the end of the year 1852 the diggers on the gutters had begun to reach what was then called deep ground, and their vocation soon after that began, though rudely and tentatively, to assume more of the character of regular mining. The year 1853 was rich in new discoveries, and a large number of gullies were then opened. The Canadian, opened early in 1851, was named from a man called Canadian Swift. The gully and issuing gutter were very rich, the first large nugget ever found being unearthed there about February, 1853. It weighed 1620 oz., and has never been surpassed in weight by any discoveries since, except by the Welcome nugget, found on the reef in some old ground on Bakery Hill on the 9th of June, 1858 (weight, 2217 oz.), and the Welcome Stranger, found at Mount Moliagul on the 5th of February, 1869 (weight, 2280 oz). A rich bend in the gutter known as the Jewellers' Shops, was about two hundred yards from where the nugget was found. The ground there was prodigiously rich in gold, heavy, lumpy, bright gold in profusion, and hence the name given to the spot. The gutter ran down the valley, and mingled with the other golden streams that met in the area formerly known as the Gum Tree Flat, into which also the Red Hill, Red Streak, Eureka, Bakery Hill, Gravel Pits, and their tributaries poured their golden wealth. Dr. Gibson, Muir, and others of the Gravel Pits gutter near the Prince Albert hotel (afterwards St. John's Presbyterian Church), opposite to the present Hebrew Synagogue, and Rowland and Party in Sailor's Gully, appear to have been among the earlier miners who slabbed their shafts throughout. Gibson's first essay was with frame and piles; but before that, in 1852, Mr. Beilby and others used saplings to secure unsafe shafts, and others lined the shafts with slabs of bark placed vertically and fastened with sapling frames. The claims known as the Italians', where the Gravel Pits entered the Gum Tree Flat, were famous for their heavy deposits of gold. The Eureka, the Canadian, and the Gravel Pits leads, all opened just after the first rush to Golden Point, were the famous golden trinity that made Ballarat world-renowned. The Eureka ran from Little Bendigo southwards beneath the Yarrowee and the present Railway, Humffray, Victoria and Eureka streets, into Pennyweight Flat, where it was joined, near the old Charlie Napier, or a hundred yards or so south-east from the intersection of Main and Eureka streets, by the Canadian, both flowing with other leads into the Gum Tree Flat, where they were joined by the Gravel Pits and Bakery Hill, which ran from the foot of Black Hill across the present Humffray street and Victoria street to the general place of confluence in the Gum Tree Flat—that area of ground the eastern edge of which Main street now traverses. The combined lead, which was in fact the main ancient stream flowing over the primeval bed rocks, ran westward, and entered beneath the basaltic plateau of Ballarat West, just below the intersection of Sturt and Lydiard streets, where it took a southern bend, and received a tributary from Golden Point. This tributary, being the first registered gutter, gave the name to the main stream which flowed on westward and southward, receiving many tributaries in its course. This is, however, anticipatory in point of time. The year 1853 was marked by a vigorous prospecting. In that year, the whole range north and south of the Ballarat Flat was opened up. Prince Regent's, Sailor's, Scotchman's, and New Chum Gullies on the eastern slope of the Golden Point range, and Terrible, White Horse, Frenchman's, Chinamen's, and Cobbler's Gullies on the western slope, were in that year entered upon in their shallower portions. On the Black Hill side, besides that hill and the adjacent gullies and Little Bendigo, Dead Horse, Sulky, and other gullies on the way to Creswick were opened. Apropos of Frenchman's Gully, it may here be noted that Esmond, the Clunes gold discoverer, found a 70-oz. nugget in the shallow ground in 1853. In the following year, while Sir Charles and Lady Hotham were on a visit here, a nugget weighing 98½ lbs. was found in Dalton's Flat, and called the Lady Hotham after the wife of the Governor. By that time the quartz lodes at the Black Hill had been tested. Dr. Otway, with whom was Mr. Osborne, was the first adventurer there, and he erected a windmill as a motive power for reducing the stone. After that he procured Chilian mills, but neither process was successful. Mr. George Milner Stephen followed Dr. Otway, and with similar results. The Port Phillip Company then came upon the scene, operating both at Black Hill and on the ranges at Dead Horse, but with small success. That company soon found better fortune at the Clunes reefs, from which it drew for many years a large annual revenue.

Thus the three first years after the gold discovery saw some of the richest of the Ballarat gutters, opened up, most of the rich shallow grounds once or twice dug over, a population of from 30,000 to 40,000 assembled, lines of streets thickly inhabited by dwellers in canvas or wood, churches, theatres, hotels, bowling alleys, dancing saloons, stores in plenty and all the elements present of a rough, prosperous, young gold-fields settlement; while enterprising prospectors were still pushing out on every side, and adding fresh discoveries to those that had already made Ballarat famous in every part of the civilised world.