Part 12

Instead of rising with the gold, houses and lands in Melbourne actually fell, and considerably too, in the first confusion, when multitudes were selling off or letting at anything they could get, in order to be off to the diggings. There came, however, a rapid recovery a few months after. My friend Mr. Henry Miller, sitting next me in the Legislature, told me one day that two owners of cottages, to whom he had lent 80 pounds each, upon their respective security, had begged him six months ago to take over the said property in payment, and let them be off at once to the common goal of the day; that he had charitably done so, and that he had just resold these houses for 1,000 pounds each.

When the tide began its upward turn, a Mr. O'Farrell, a quiet unpretending house agent and rent collector (one of whose sons afterwards came to so bad an end), made promptly a large fortune by buying up leases or fee-simples, and in an incredibly short time re-disposing of them at a great advance.

EARLY BALLARAT.

"All that glisters is not gold." --Merchant of Venice.

Let me begin upon early Ballarat by stating, what many may now have forgotten, namely, that the original and native name was Balaarat, or Ballaarat, which was the pronunciation then, and for some years after. But our English way is to put the emphasis on the first part of a polysyllabic word. I have long remarked this practice, comparing it with that of races of inferior, or more or less barbarous condition, who, as in countless other examples in Australia, and still more strikingly in New Zealand, and generally, I think, over the world, lay the emphasis on or towards the end of the word. What does it mean? I arrived at my solution. The emphatic ending best preserves the whole word. The barbarous, with few ideas, give surpassing importance to words; while the civilized, under the crowd of ideas, disregard words except as mere vehicles, and traverse them easiest by the early emphasis, to say nothing of dropping the after part entirely when troublesomely long. The Turanian, or lowest class of language, as Professor Max Muller tells us, preserves its root-words for ever, tacking one to another, but never losing the full sound of each; while all sorts of word "jerry mandering" liberties go on in the highest class. I ventured to propound my theory to my linguistic friend, Mr. Hyde Clarke; but he found so many divergencies in Latin and Greek and Hebrew, and what not, that I was driven to a partial reconstruction. It was the busy as well as civilized race that scamped the words. The Greeks and Romans--that portion of them that made society or the public opinion, and that consequently governed the language--abhorred the vulgar hurry of business life, and thus gave their words a better chance of unmutilated life. I have not yet been driven out of this final theory.

With hardly anything else to do, it was as hardly possible to resist a visit, with nearly everybody else, to Ballarat. So I appeared there on the 3rd October, and, as senior member for Melbourne in the colony's first Parliament, and first President of the recently established Chamber of Commerce, I was, of course, "a man in authority." So, mounting a gum-tree stump, as the only available chair or pulpit, I harangued the diggers, first upon the grand fortunes that had overtaken the colony, and next upon their sadly wasteful ways with the little stream that ran through the Ballarat valley. I fear I did not much impress my hearers on the latter point, for everyone did what was most for his immediate needs, whether or not he thus sacrificed his neighbour below him. Next I was conducted to Gold Point, which was just developing its quality in the "blue clay," which had been struck at no great depth below the surface. I was let down into a big hole, the early parent of shaft-sinking, given a spade, and directed to apply it to a place where a digger's quick eye had detected one speck of gold. There was probably, he said, a string of gold behind it. And so it proved, for out of about a pound weight of matrix which I removed on the corner of the spade, I picked out 7 shillings and 6 pence worth of gold.

Then I retired from the crowd and the incessant noise of cradles, and ascending from the valley to the high level plain, I came upon a small lake, whose waters glittered peacefully in the warm sunshine of a bright spring day. A tiny streamlet was still running from the lake, and trickling down the small semi-precipice towards the main rivulet, now sadly muddy, which I had just left. So near was this edge to the lake that I increased the stream by deepening its bed with my foot; but I repented of this waste, and restored the block, because the approaching summer must be thought for, and this natural reservoir was by no means deep. I waded into the pleasantly and invitingly cool water, but had promptly to retreat from swarms of leeches which attacked my feet. The scene was striking. Although the hum of busy humanity arose from beneath, not an object was visible on the higher level, as I glanced around to the far west and north, excepting the country's indigenous features. There was not a human being, not even a sheep in sight. Around this spot has since arisen the city of Ballarat, with fifty thousand people, with streets, buildings, institutions, business (including an extra busy Stock Exchange), equal to those of, at least, twice its population at Home; while the lovely lake of that time has long been fringed with residences and gardens, and its waters been the scene of the regattas and other diversions of the leisure of the prosperous citizens.

As I rode back on my horse to town--for Cobb and Co. had not yet established their leather-hung stage drags, for which, in the impossibility of others upon the unmade roads, we had reason to be thankful--I mused over all I had seen, and long ere reaching home had concluded that 10,000 pounds a day was being taken out of Ballarat. Sundays excepted, that meant a product at the rate of over three millions a year, into which, as one of its export items, the young colony was already "precipitated" from a total export product of only a trifle above a million the year before. No one was prepared to credit such a statement. Indeed, unbelief on the point was prevalent until well on into 1852, when Bendigo had been added to Ballarat, and when Melbourne was seen to be full of gold, which the newly-instituted "gold broker" was already practised, with critical eye as to quality, in weighing out by the hundred or the thousand ounces, and which diggers by hundreds were carrying away in their pockets, in most cases entirely unrecorded, to Tasmania, Sydney, and Adelaide. There was hardly any Customs record at the first, and only a very partial one for a while after, until the diggers ceased thus to carry off the gold, upon finding that the rival brokers gave them fair and full value. The yield of 1852 was estimated at no less than fifteen millions.

How the diggers, utterly inexperienced as they mostly then were, came so suddenly upon such surpassingly rich drifts has never been, to my mind at least, satisfactorily explained, unless the case be summarily affiliated to those possibilities of throwing "sixes" in dozen successions, and such like. In no one year, since 1852, have the Victorian goldfields, although comparatively the most productive, yielded even a near approach to fifteen millions.

MOUNT ALEXANDER AND BENDIGO.

"Our fortune lies upon this jump." --Antony and Cleopatra.

The following year, about the same pleasant spring season, I made out a second goldfields visit, in company with my late friend, Mr. W.M. Bell, senior partner of the early firm of Bells and Buchanan. This time I went further inland, and in the more northerly direction of Mount Alexander and Bendigo, as considerable regions around were then loosely called, and which are now represented respectively by the large municipalities of Castlemaine and Sandhurst. Vast changes had taken place in the colony since my Ballarat visit. There had been, in the first place, arrivals in multitudes, first from the surrounding colonies, and then from Home, and, in a lesser influx, from the Cape, America, and parts of Europe. The tide of such threatening dimensions from China was later on. The roads, such as they were, were crowded with passengers; and with traffic, chiefly in flour, to the starving diggers, the carriage of which to Bendigo ran up to 100 pounds a ton. Indeed, such was the cost of carriage that some of us estimated that a single year's total would equal the cost of making a railway. Of course the railway, draining the labour market, could only itself have been at proportionate cost. Nevertheless, Mr. Trenchard, a Melbourne solicitor, projected "The Melbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway," an enterprise which, after some months' flutter of chequered life, expired for want of support from the over-busy colonists, who had other far more immediately pressing needs and chances for their money.

The "gold escort" had been established by this time, with an armed guard, which at times included "native police," a force which had been the best, if not the only, success as yet in our "civilizing" efforts with the aborigines. The art of digging had greatly advanced since my Ballarat visit. At Bendigo I inspected the "White Hills," where there was already regular shaft-sinking to depths approaching 100 feet. The White Hills were so-called from a large ejection, piled up in white mounds of a light-coloured thick bed of the auriferous drifts, in which unprecedented quantities of gold had been found. Descending one of the shafts, I was shown the chief source of this gold, namely, a thin seam of small quartz grit, hardly two inches in thickness, and of the white quartz hue, excepting the lowest half inch, which was browned with iron. This lowest half inch had almost all the gold, and the very lowest part of it, where the iron-brown darkened almost to black, was literally crowded with gold particles. The diggers now always looked for the most gold where the quartz drift showed most of iron browning. Mr. Selwyn had not yet explained to us our Australian gold features and those gold "constants" of Murchison, which had to sustain so severe a shaking in Australia. I scraped out gold grains with my nails, and a good many with a knife within a minute. When I told the claim owners, that here was unlimited gold, and asked what they intended to do with it all, they pointed to the superincumbent mass of white stuff, which was either absolutely sterile, or, what was practically the same, had insufficient gold to pay even a run through the wash when ejected. The case seemed not unlike that of the thin seams of flint nodules (say nuggets) which characterize the thick chalk strata of South England, within which most or all the silicious matter of the entire bed has been somehow brought together. I understood that this remarkable gold seam gave out not long after, and that, thereupon, the marvellous yield of Bendigo was seriously diminished.

As we approached this already great and busy goldfield, when the hum of its business life was just breaking upon our ears, but without any other disturbing intrusion to interfere with the universally indigenous scene, a large kangaroo--the "old man," or largest species--started up amongst the gum-tree underwood a little ahead of us, and bounded away in magnificent style. But a day or two afterwards, as we were leaving Bendigo, another feature of the colony, not indigenous and by no means so pleasant was brought up to our minds to their considerable discomfort for the moment. We were just clear of goldfields sounds and company, and involved in the utter solitude of the primeval bush, when we espied a party approaching us on the road. They numbered five, all on horseback. Somehow, the circumstances considered, we had all, independently, concluded that there was no small chance of their being bushrangers; for already the towns and goldfields--the latter, of course, mostly--swarmed with these unmitigated ruffians, arrived chiefly from Tasmania. We discussed the chances--three, four, possibly even five to one in our favour--and considered what we should do in case even five to one failed us in the lot. What we COULD do was the practical question. We had also, I think, five of a party, and Bell was a huge, strong fellow, able for a couple of ordinary mortals; but what availed all that against desperadoes each doubly armed with revolver and rifle. We calmed ourselves as best we could as we mutually approached; our salute was cordially returned, and then we found that we owed an ample apology for having for once so grievously mistaken honest men.

Another goldfields feature was of the most pleasing and inspiring character. In no goldfield we had then visited did we ever meet with so much as one drunken person. With most laudable prescience, our authorities had prohibited the ingress of and the dealing in any intoxicating drink on all proclaimed goldfields. The good order in consequence was quite marvellous, and we seemed as if in some earthly paradise, where mankind had, as with one consent, dropped the worst of human vices and passions. But this was only so far as drink and drunkenness were concerned; for rude circumstances made rude men, to say no more of the pervading convict element. Nor were the goldfields free from "sly grog selling," as it is called. Still, the difficulties put in the way kept them thus sober. Of course, outside the goldfields' limits there was drunken riot enough, intensified, no doubt, by the enforced sobriety within. Troops of diggers, or their employees, with their pockets full of gold, would start for town, or for the nearest "public," there to run up a score till the whole "pile" had vanished. We were told of one country hotel called "The Porcupine," whose keeper was making 40,000 pounds a year of net profit. These riotous crowds, at each public-house, indulged in such shocking excesses of language and conduct as to make mere drunkenness the very innocence of the case. But withal I confess to a greatly disappointed feeling when, having left the colony on a Home visit early in 1853, and returned late in 1854, I found that the influence of the great "spirit interest" had succeeded in removing all restriction from the goldfields. By this time, however, the police and other authority were better organized, so that there was a very considerable mitigation of bad effects.

EARLY VICTORIAN LEGISLATION.

"They that stand high have many blasts to shake them." --Richard III.

"Hear ye not the hum of mighty workings." --Keats.

"Stay, you imperfect speakers." --Macbeth.

We commenced with an unpretending budget, although memorable 1853, with all its gold and its progress, in what Wentworth happily called the precipitation into a nation, had dawned upon us. The Speaker of our then single Chamber system--one-third nominees--had but 400 pounds a year, which is guide sufficient to indicate the scale and style of other things. Our first choice for Speaker fell upon Dr. Palmer, an early colonist of the medical profession, and of good culture and bearing, but who had not previously taken any prominent social position. His ambition was probably stimulated by the fact that amongst the busy colonists, who perhaps foresaw more work than either honour or pay, there was no candidate but himself. The rest of us speculated, not without expected amusement, as to the official attire our new dignitary would appear in. Probably any other of the elected members, as Speaker, would have decided on simple evening dress, as most consistent with the modern tendency to make a gentleman plain, and the waiter and footman dressily conspicuous; and this would perhaps have decided as to "the Chair" in that respect for all the future. But Palmer we all knew to be too much of the old Tory for any surrender of that kind, and there was, besides, just a trace of the oddly positive in him, although otherwise a genial good fellow, which held out promise of sport. We were only half gratified. He appeared in a plain quaker-like but much braided coat, which was understood to have gone for dress in the good old times of Charles II.--a time when kings were really kings.

Three prominent subjects came before us for legislation. First, that fundamental topic of interminable difference, the Land Question. Second, the Goldfields Question, which was even more important then, seeing that the Government, under pretence of old English law, to the effect that all "treasure trove" was the Crown's, claimed the whole goldfields as Crown territory, whose population had thus no rights, political or fiscal, except the Crown chose to give such. Third, the Transportation Question, which, under the startling emergencies of the moment, was perhaps second to no other before us.

It was rather amusing to see how business went at first, for nearly all of us were quite inexperienced in public life. But Mr. Barker, our first Clerk of the Council, took bravely to his duties, and soon became a useful referee. There was much looking up for authority, and O'Shanassy indulged in many a profane joke at "May" having taken definitive possession of Speaker Palmer's brain. One most decided obstacle to our legislative progress was the fact that the vast incessant tide of business thrust upon the colony made it hardly possible to spare any time for other than each one's own private concerns. In my own case, the only "leisure" I ever had then in the six days was half-an-hour for a walk and a thought in the early morn. The entire remainder of the day, and great part of the night also, were one succession of private business, public meetings, and deputations, Council Committees and Council sittings.

The unprepared speeches were in due accordance. Dr. (now Sir Charles) Nicholson, the Sydney Speaker, happened to pay us a visit during these early legislative throes of baby Victoria; and as I sat by him in the privileged place near the Speaker's chair, he remarked that, prepared as he was to find a crude spectacle, he had never imagined an assemblage of such helpless incompetency. But, in defence, I took Bulwer Lytton's view, that genius being mainly labour, and labour mainly time, the want of the last might be merely preventing the first. And so it has turned out long ago; so that if Sir Charles, who, I am glad to say, is still to the fore, were to pay another visit, and try conclusions with Mr. Service, and possibly a hundred others besides, he might reach a different verdict.

We were all, confessedly, terribly raw in all matters of Parliamentary form. One day, while we were more than usually puzzled in that respect, Town Clerk Kerr, who happened to be present, was continually sending to myself and others written slips, suggesting the proper or common-sense course. I could not help thinking that, if he had been but a trifle less of a party man, there was no one in the colony who would have made a better Speaker, with his sufficiently portly person and commanding presence, his imperturbable gravity, and his well-filled head in everything required from that quarter for the position. But this was an utter non possimus with the nominees and squatting members, most of whom, with Ebden at their head, would almost rather have endured a presentable Vandemonian expiree in the chair than the ultra-democratic Town Clerk and caustic ex-editor of the anti-squatter and anti-government "Argus". Some of the officials, however, were fairly up to their mark, notably our Attorney-General Stawell (now Sir William, the ex-Chief Justice), who, both then and since, has ever held the first position in ability. At an interval came Auditor-General Ebden, and one or two others, official or unofficial. My worthy friend Cassell, Collector of Customs (or Commissioner thereof, as I think he was then called), was brimful of information for us all, but not much of a speaker.

The other side of the House, that of the two-thirds elected, was, in my memory, raw throughout. O'Shanassy's strong brogue, and ungainly delivery and manner, had not yet been overbalanced by the solidity of his arguments. Johnson, our third metropolitan, had early descended, or else condescended, to pungent snapping at the heels of the nominees, as though these sacred persons had been ordinary mortals like the ruck of membership on his own side of the table. By far our most vivacious member was William Rutledge, of Port Fairy, who, with an earnestness of manner, contrasting with a merry twinkle of the eye, and with a ready but utterly negligent tongue, gave us many a laugh. He was highly indignant on one occasion, as I remember, on hearing that a bet had been taken that, on a particular Committee day, he would rise and speak more than thirty different times; and he was still more angry when his informant went on to tell him that the bet had been won. One of the country members, whose name I am now not quite sure of, set us all in a roar, on one occasion, by taking as a personal affront, and very tartly too, as though quite intended, the interruption to his speech by the arrival of a "royal" message from the Governor.

Another curiosity was the way in which the House adjusted itself for legislative action. Almost as matter of course, under the instincts of the position, the elected members were, in fact and in principle alike, opposed to the nominated; and that, by consequent instincts, ever meant simply the Government. The press, with similar unanimity, was on the elected side, for both were in the fight for the full "constitutional" concession, which came a few years later. In anything that touched squatting, however, the squatting representatives, led by another old friend, W.F. Splatt, of the Wimmera, went over bodily, thus giving the Government a small majority, which, as I have shown in my sketch of Mr. La Trobe, blocked us seriously in dealing with the waste or Crown lands for the benefit of the inpouring tens of thousands of people. Sometimes, by the force of our case, we stole a vote from the Ministerial side, as when Mr. (afterwards Judge) Pohlman defected upon my anti-transportation motion for transmission to the Home Government. There was one sole exception on our elective side (another old personal friend), William Campbell, of the Loddon, who, uncongenial towards the disturbing democratic prospect, voted steadily for the Government. On this account, Edward Wilson, then editing "The Argus", found for him the designation of "the lost sheep of the Loddon," which, as from the enemy's side, was no bad piece of humour; and it took its place in the colony's category accordingly; alongside of Ebden's "disgustingly rich," and possibly other like humour which I have forgotten.

One of the nominee members, Mr. Dunlop, took me roundly to task for asserting that, through a mere "accident of law" about "treasure trove" being, as of old, the property of the Crown, the Government claimed to confiscate the constitutional rights of one-half of the colonists. I "explained." But the situation really explained itself. The common-sense, as well as the political attainment of the day, could not possibly tolerate such an application of "Old Black Letter" to the entirely novel and unanticipated circumstances of these great and populous goldfields. The elected members were compelled to threaten the only course which appeared legally open to them--namely, that of not voting the supplies, if the goldfields regulations, and receipts and expenditure, all of which the Government had claimed as entirely their own independent matter, were not of reasonable and suitable character, and in accordance with the colonial representatives' views. At the last, however, there was happily mutual agreement.

The "Protection Question" was early brought on, of course from Geelong, by my worthy old friend J.F. Strachan, its member, and both its income and, for that time, its exit, were amusing. "Why lose so much revenue in order to set up colonial brandy-making?" he was asked; "was the domestic article we were to make such sacrifice for to be superior to the imported?" "On the contrary," he replied; "it was because it would be inferior, and must therefore be thus bonused against the superiority of the rival import." So then we were to lose revenue, and pay a higher price, in order to substitute bad liquor for good. Let us still keep to the better quality at the lower price. So the proposal was laughed out, Strachan himself, with his usual good humour, joining in the laugh.