7. Ballarat.—On the 10th of August the Geelong newspapers announced that deposits of auriferous earth had been discovered at Buninyong, and very soon the sunny slopes of that peaceful and pastoral district were swarming with prospecting parties; the quietly browsing sheep were startled from their favourite solitudes by crowds of men, who hastened with pick and spade to break up the soil in every direction, each eager to out-strip the other in the race for wealth. This region, however, did not realise the expectations that had been formed of it, and many of the diggers began to move northwards, in the direction of Clunes. But at Clunes, also, there had been disappointment, for the gold was mostly embedded in quartz rock, and these early miners were not prepared to extract it; parties from Clunes were therefore moving southwards to Buninyong, and the two currents met on the slopes of the Yarrowee, a streamlet whose banks were afterwards famous as the Ballarat diggings. The first comers began to work at a bend in the creek, which they called Golden Point. Here, for a time, each man could easily earn from £20 to £40 a day, and crowds of people hurried to the scene. Every one selected a piece of ground, which he called his claim, and set to work to dig a hole in it; but when the bottom of the sandy layer was reached, and there seemed to be nothing but pipe-clay below, the claim was supposed to be worked out, and was straightway abandoned. However, a miner named Cavanagh determined to try an experiment, and, having entered one of these deserted claims, he dug through the layer of pipe-clay, when he had the good fortune to come suddenly upon several large deposits of grain gold. He had reached what had been in long past ages the bed of the creek, where, in every little hollow, for century after century, the flowing waters had gently deposited the gold which they had washed out of the rocks in the mountains. In many cases these “pockets,” as they were called, were found to contain gold to the value of thousands of pounds, so that very soon all the claims were carried down a few feet further, and with such success that, before a month had passed, Ballarat took rank as the richest goldfield in the world. In October there were ten thousand men at work on the Yarrowee; acre after acre was covered with circular heaps of red and yellow sand, each with its shaft in the middle, in which men were toiling beneath the ground to excavate the soil and pass it to their companions above, who quickly hurried with it to the banks of the creek, where twelve hundred “cradles,” rocked by brawny arms, were washing the sand from the gold.
8. Mount Alexander.—In the month of September a party, who had gone about forty miles north-east of Clunes to Mount Alexander, discovered near the present site of Castlemaine a valuable seam of gold-bearing earth. The fame of this place soon spread through all the colony; many left Ballarat to seek it, and crowds of people hastened from Melbourne and Geelong to share in the glittering prizes. In October, eight thousand men had gathered in the district; in November, there were not less than twenty-five thousand diggers at work, and three tons of gold were waiting in the tent of the commissioner to be carried to Melbourne. The road to Mount Alexander was crowded with men of all ranks and conditions, pressing eagerly onward to be in time.
9. Sandhurst.—A few weeks later the glories both of Ballarat and of Mount Alexander were dimmed for a time by the discovery of gold on the Bendigo Creek, which seemed at first to be the richest of all the goldfields. In the course of a few months nearly forty thousand persons were scattered along the banks of the streamlet where the handsome streets of Bendigo now stand.
In the month of May, 1852, there must have been close upon seventy thousand men in the country between Buninyong and Bendigo, all engaged in the same occupation. Melbourne and Geelong were silent and deserted; for all classes were alike infected with the same excitement—lawyers, doctors, clerks, merchants, labourers, mechanics, all were to be found struggling through the miry ruts that served for a highway to Bendigo. The sailors left the ships in the bay with scarcely a man to take care of them; even the very policemen deserted, and the warders in the gaols resigned in a body. The price of labour now became excessive, for no man was willing to stay away from the diggings unless tempted by the offer of four or five times the ordinary wage.
10. Immigration.—Meanwhile the news of these great discoveries had travelled to Europe, so that, after the middle of 1852, ships began to arrive freighted with thousands of men of all nations, who no sooner landed in Melbourne than they started for the diggings. During this year nearly one hundred thousand persons were thus brought into the country, and the population was doubled at a bound. Next year ninety-two thousand fresh arrivals landed, and Victoria thus became the most populous of the colonies. During the two following years it received a further accession of a hundred and fifty thousand; so that, in 1856, it contained four hundred thousand inhabitants, or about five times the number it possessed in 1850. The staple industry was, of course, the mining for gold, of which, in 1852, one hundred and seventy-four tons were raised, valued at £14,000,000. During the next ten years £100,000,000 worth of gold was exported from Victoria.
Some of the nuggets that were found are of historic note. The “Sarah Sands,” discovered in 1853, was worth about £6,500. In 1857 the “Blanche Barkly,” worth £7,000, was discovered; and the following year produced the “Welcome Nugget,” which was sold for £10,500, and was the greatest on record, until, in 1869, the “Welcome Stranger” was dug out, which proved to be slightly larger.
CHAPTER XIII.
VICTORIA, 1851-1855.
1. Effects of Gold Excitement.—For the first few months after the discovery of gold in Victoria, many shrewd persons believed that the colony would be ruined by its seeming good fortune. None of the ordinary industries could be carried on whilst workmen were so scarce and wages so high. But, happily, these expectations proved fallacious; for, in 1852, when the great stream of people from Europe began to flow into the colony, every profession and every trade sprang into new and vigorous life. The vast crowds on the goldfields required to be fed, so the farmers found ample market for their corn, and the squatters for their beef and mutton. The miners required to be clothed, and the tailor and shoemaker must be had, whatever might be the prices they charged. Mechanics and artisans of every class found their labours in demand, and handsomely paid for. The merchants, also, found trade both brisk and lucrative; while the imports in 1850 were worth only three-quarters of a million, those of three years later were worth about twenty times that amount. After this enormous increase in population and business, it was found that there was quite as great an opportunity of gaining riches by remaining quietly engaged in one’s own occupation as by joining the restless throng upon the goldfields. The public revenue of the colony was in 1852 six times, and in 1853 twelve times as great as it had been before the discovery of gold; so that, both as individuals and as a nation, the people of Victoria had reason to be satisfied with the change.