ALONG A VEIN OF GOLD.

ALONG A VEIN OF GOLD.

The digger may be considered as the pioneer of many of the Australian country settlements. Early squatters figured largely in the exploration and opening up of wild and hither- to unknown regions; but the digger in numerous cases, as in the untrodden wilderness of Western Australia, had led the way, and in some instances had gone days and weeks of travel beyond the stockman's furthest point. We have little or no record of these exploits, but old diggers tell of lonely wanderings far out into mountain gorges, and along hills and creeks and gullies where no white man had ever been. Here and there traces of these prospecting tours remained for years, but mostly they were obliterated or unnoticed when the shepherd pushed out with his flocks. Some of the best goldfields were discovered by those same shepherds, but that is not to say that they were the first to work in the district. In Western Australia a miners' track passed close by a rich quartz outcrop, and though that track went a hundred miles or more further out, and perhaps thousands of miners passed to and fro, and often camped alongside that partly-exposed wealth, nobody noticed it, and it was only discovered accidentally long, long afterwards. Again, how many men had climbed over the bleak and stony ridges of Broken Hill before the world's greatest silver mine was hit upon. They were riding 300 miles further north in the quest of gold in what was often called Death's Corner-the droughty, dust-ridden Mount Browne.
The old diggers were a venturesome lot-- whence came our hardy, gritty, self-reliant bushmen. That irresistible magnet, gold, had drawn the strong and adventurous from all parts of the civilised world, a mixture of many nations that is slowly blending into a race peculiarly Australian. They chanced the blacks and all the perils of an uninhabited bush, of a land unknown. Though many fell to the nulla and spear, that did not block them, nor did the bands of bushrangers that preyed on them in after years. There is little, not excepting fever, blight, thirst, and hunger, that will stop the peregrinating digger in his hurrying, feverish search for gold.
It is a good life, a happy life, though perhaps one of the hardest that can be lived.
He gives little attention to personal comfort, and is hardly ever housed in anything more
substantial than a light tent. Fossickers, who settle on what he terms "played-out fields," build more lasting homes, and of course, the thousands of miners who find employment in the big permanent mines, as Mount Morgan and Bendigo, have all the conveniences of a comfortable town residence. But these are altogether apart from the wandering digger and prospector, the pioneers of the fields, who are often for weeks and months cut off from all intercourse with the rest of their kind, and wholly dependent on themselves for everything; such men as carried pick and shovel over trackless hills and flats where fine towns like Ballarat, Stawell, and Ararat are now standing as a result of, their stoutheartedness and enterprise. These were among the earliest discovered fields. I passed through them about three years ago, and tents still gleamed whitely along flat
and hill around the towns, and the train runs through miles of country that is literally honeycombed with miners' shafts. Pick your tent at random, and smoke an evening pipe there, and you will hear enough yarns of the old days to fill a book-especially from the greybeards, who saw the exciting whirl of early rushes, and who had flitted like rest less butterflies from place to place over nearly all Australia since, and drifted back, poor as crows after handling many fortunes, to make their last home on the old historic fields. They have just about got out of the damper era, and that is all. They walk across to town after tea and buy a loaf of bread at the baker's, and a bit of meat at the butcher's. At many tents the carts call In the mornings. They still sling the billy, and sit round their open fires, and lie on the old-style bunk. Many of them never succeeded In making a rise, though they were In the thick of the gold fever. But they are all happy, and often intermingle reminiscences with scraps of early bush songs that are now almost forgotten.
Bendigo is a mammoth, that has held Its head up since the discovery of gold-a mine probably unequalled in the world's history. In 1903 it yielded seven tons of gold, after being worked continuously for 53 years. The field covers only a few hundred acres of ground, and during its life has produced over £70,000,000 worth of gold. Here, too, we had the deepest shafts 4000 ft; and the miners expect to go yet another thousand feet. The heat is sometimes so great at those depths that the men work almost naked under a spray of water. At times, instead of a spray, blocks of ice are lowered to keep down the temperature.
Nothing attracts like gold, and one lucky swing of a digger's pick may cause a mush- room town to spring up in the wilderness in a night. Progress is then rapid, and if the field peters out, the non-diggers seem to get along well enough. Sometimes the place drops back to the position of a wayside pub and store, but not often. Euriowie, above Broken Hill, is a cluster of mud and stone walls that was once a lively little town- ship. It was my first experience of an abandoned town, and passing through it in the early morning, after being rocked about in a coach all night, I thought it was a melancholy spectacle. In this instance the permanent mines of Broken Hill had drawn the population. On the other hand, the town of Nannine (W. A.) was considered hopeless and impossible as a permanent settlement. Twelve years ago it took three weeks to reach it from Geraldton, across heart-breaking sand-plains, spinifex, and mulga ridges, with only little potholes of water at long intervals. Living was high, carriage being £50 a ton, and flour sold at 9d a lb. Deaths were frequent, and coffins were knocked up roughly out of gin cases. Today the train lands you in Nannine in 24 hours, schools have been established, and other adjuncts of civilisation are there to stay.
A digger nowadays on "striking it lucky," as unearthing a good slug, can rejoice to his heart's content. I struck a "rejoicing camp" one afternoon on the Solferino road. A red shirt, blue blanket, and a used-to-be white sheet were stuck up on poles, proudly representing the old-song tricolour-red, white, and blue. Bottles, pannikins, and the remains of a banquet were strewn about, but the miners were too "happy" to give reliable information. That sort of thing wouldn't do in the old days, nor would it be safe in lonely places now. Experienced miners usually "crack hard up," and the big find is only reported when the responsibility has been passed on to the bank, perhaps not till long after that. Sensations of this sort bring crowds about the workings, and diggers don't like to be watched. In Western Australia it was customary for gold-bearers to plant their pile on the road if they suspected an ambuscade, or had reason to believe they would be followed in the night, or a breakdown happened, or want of water or some other cause made it inconvenient to go right through with the precious metal. A hole resembling a grave would be dug by the roadside and heaped up; perhaps it would be railed it would have a cross and some such inscription as this:-

In Memoriam.
BILL SMITH,
Prospector.
Thirst.
Aged 46.

The passing traveller, reading that, would mutter, "Poor fellow," and pass on. A good many Bill Smiths died that way on Western Australian tracks.
When Sam Napier dug up the Blanch Barkly nugget at the Kingower diggings in 1857 he and-his brother took it out secretly and buried it at midnight in a deep hole sunk in the middle of the tent. They considered that their lives depended on keeping the matter quiet, and for three months they left it there, working meanwhile, at the claim. It was 28 in long by 10 in wide, weighed 1743 oz 13 dwt, and was valued at £7000. They took it to Melbourne alone in the end in a one-horse cart, and armed with a shotgun and a revolver. Subsequently it was shipped to England and smelted. Napier, after being lionisedl in London, received by the Queen and Prince of Wales, and becoming a member of Parliament in Canada, dropped into the ranks of the backwoodsmen, and died a lonely death at a lumber camp's supply depot in the wilds of Ontario. The body was found days after- wards sitting at a table, and partly eaten by rats. This occurred somewhere about the end of 1902.
It is a lamentable fact that very few of the numerous diggers who discovered big nuggets, or otherwise made sensational finds, were benefited to any extent by their good fortune. A few thrifty ones made good use of their suddenly acquired wealth, but the majority die poor, or are hard up within a very few years after having handled thousands. Rich to-day and poor to-morrow, easily got and easily spent, summed up the devil-may-care diggers when gold was more plentiful than it Is now. I have myself followed the lead with old Bendigonians on a fossickers' field, who had made enough money to last me half a dozen lifetimes, yet found it hard now to pay a £2 bill at the store. But they never worry over it. I have never met one who showed any keen regret that he had not taken care of his pile when be had it. While he still can pan off a few specks he seems contented. But don't take him away from a diggings. Let him live and die on the alluring vein of gold. What does appear to be a bitter memory is the fact of his having narrowly missed a big find. Most miners who have followed the falling for years can look back on some big mine, or recall some lucky hit, that they had been within a pick-thrust of hitting themselves. Many a shaft that had been abandoned as a duffer has turned up trumps after all. A digger told me that he went into a deep shaft on a Victorian field and discovered a nugget nearly as big as his head sticking out of the side where the sinkers had left off work. Rain had washed the dirt off the out- side of it, and left it glittering. Those who sank the shaft had worked there for weeks, and scarcely got a colour for their trouble
The discovery of Mount Morgan is ascribed to the man after whom it Is named but old residents in the locality give the credit to William M'Kinlay. The latter's widow said one day to a local pressman, "We missed being possessors of the mountain, but why should my dead husband not have the credit of being the discoverer of Mount Morgan?" William M'Kinlay was a stockman on Calliungal station from 1861, and frequently prospected along the Dee and on Mundic Creek . He first found gold at Mount Morgan in 1877, but delayed taking it up on account of the ironstone, against which there was then a strong prejudice amongst miners, and the matter was for a long time a family secret. That mine has produced nearly 80 tons of gold, and paid about £6,104, 000 in dividends.
My father worked on the Gympie and Palmer River diggings. They were wild, stirring times when those diggings first broke out. The roads were literally marked with human bones. Scores went under to fever, many got bushed and perished, and many more were killed by the blacks. The fields were rushed by Chinese and the diggers used to say that the blacks wouldn't touch a white man while there was a Chinaman about. They seemed to have a preference for the "pigtail push." One of the pioneers, known as "Shovelling Archie," whom I found on a station on the Boyne River, explained to me that it was because the Chinese were fat, while the general run of the other diggers were a raw-boned, leathery-looking lot. Archie went back to the Palmer River long after the rush. Prospecting in what he took to be new ground, his only sensational finds were the skeletons of two diggers. About 50 yards separated them, and a pick and shovel lay among the bones of one. In the good days Archie had gambled with the rest, when the usual stake at cards was a matchbox full of gold each. When I saw him he was station groom and gardener at 15s a week. If he played cards at all he never staked more than a box of matches at a time-and grumbled much if he lost it.
Speaking of the prodigality of diggers reminds me of the yarn of the golden horse-shoes which has been current all over the country for half a century. The hero was John Johnson, who pegged out for the last time at Kymoola, near Stanthorpe (Q ), about the end of 1902. Briefly, he and other woollshed (Beechworth) miners are said to have shod a horse with gold for the diggers' candidate Cameron, who had just been returned to Parliament, to ride round the town on, the shoes being removed immediately afterwards. A son, however denies the story in so far as it concerns Johnson. Whether any horse was ever shod with gold is not certain. I have met old Victorians who swore to the truth of it, others treated it as only one of the many traditions of the golden era when all manner of wild rumours received credence. It is certainly what many miners would do when plunged into sudden wealth, especially at a time when the country was believed to be almost one vast treasure trove.
Diggers, as a rule are a hopeful lot. Their bank is mother earth, and their cash is a ' fixed deposit" a long while before they are able to put their hands on it. The doors are carefully concealed against burglars, and take a lot of looking for. In the life there is always the buoying chance of striking a fortune in a single blow; and old hands are confident that there are more Bendigoes and Ballarat in Australia awaiting the disclosing point of the diggers pick.

Newspaper Article

The Sydney Morning Herald
1905
http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/