Book of the Bush — 11 - Among The Diggers In 1853 Pt 1

I.

I lost a summer in 1853, and had two winters instead, one in England, the other in Australia.

It was cold in the month of May as we neared Bendigo.

We were a mixed party of English, Irish, and Scotch, twelve in number, and accompanied by three horse-teams, carrying tubs, tents, and provisions.

We also had plenty of arms wherewith to fight the bush-rangers, but I did not carry any myself; I left the fighting department to my mate, Philip, and to the others who were fond of war.

Philip was by nature and training as gentle and amiable as a lamb, but he was a Young Irelander, and therefore a fighter on principle.

O'Connell had tried moral suasion on the English Government long enough, and to no purpose, so Philip and his fiery young friends were prepared to have recourse to arms.

The arms he was now carrying consisted of a gleaming bowie knife, and two pistols stuck in his belt.

The pistols were good ones; Philip had tried them on a friend in the Phoenix Park the morning after a ball at the Rotunda, and had pinked his man--shot him in the arm.

It is needless to say that there was a young lady in the case; I don't know what became of her, but during the rest of her life she could boast of having been the fair demoiselle on whose account the very last duel was fought in Ireland.

Then the age of chivalry went out.

The bowie knife was the British article bought in Liverpool.

It would neither kill a man nor cut a beef-steak, as was proved by experience.

We met parties of men from Bendigo--unlucky diggers, who offered to sell their thirty-shilling licenses.

By this time my cash was low;

my twenty-dollar gold pieces were all consumed.

While voyaging to the new Ophir, where gold was growing underfoot, I could not see any sound sense in being niggardly.

But when I saw a regular stream of disappointed men with empty pockets offering their monthly licenses for five shillings each within sight of the goldfield, I had misgivings, and I bought a license that had three weeks to run from William Matthews.

Ten other men bought licenses, but William Patterson, a canny Scotchman, said he would chance it.

It was about midday when we halted near Bendigo Creek, opposite a refreshment tent.

Standing in front of it was a man who had passed us on the road, and lit his pipe at our fire.

When he stooped to pick up a firestick I saw the barrel of a revolver under his coat.

He was accompanied by a lady on horseback, wearing a black riding habit.

Our teamsters called him Captain Sullivan.

He was even then a man well known to the convicts and the police, and was supposed to be doing a thriving business as keeper of a sly grog shop, but in course of time it was discovered that his main source of profit was murder and robbery.

He was afterwards known as "The New Zealand Murderer," who turned Queen's evidence, sent his mates to the gallows, but himself died unhanged.

While we stood in the track, gazing hopelessly over the endless heaps of clay and gravel covering the flat, a little man came up and spoke to Philip, in whom he recognised a fellow countryman.

He said: "You want a place to camp on, don't you?"

"Yes," replied Philip, "we have only just come up from Melbourne."

"Well, come along with me," said the stranger.

He was a civil fellow, and said his name was Jack Moore.

We went with him in the direction of the first White Hill, but before reaching it we turned to the left up a low bluff, and halted in a gully where many men were at work puddling clay in tubs.

After we had put up our tent, Philip went down the gully to study the art of gold digging.

He watched the men at work; some were digging holes, some were dissolving clay in tubs of water by stirring it rapidly with spades, and a few were stooping at the edge of water-holes, washing off the sand mixed with the gold in milk pans.

Philip tried to enter into conversation with the diggers.

He stopped near one man, and said: "Good day, mate.

How are you getting along?"

The man gazed at him steadily, and replied "Go you to hell," so Philip moved on.

The next man he addressed sent him in the same direction, adding a few blessings; the third man was panning off, and there was a little gold visible in his pan.

He was gray, grim, and hairy.

Philip said: "Not very lucky to-day, mate?"

The hairy man stood up, straightened his back, and looked at Philip from head to foot.

"Lucky be blowed.

I wish I'd never seen this blasted place.

Here have I been sinking holes and puddling for five months, and hav'n't made enough to pay my tucker and the Government license, thirty bob a month.

I am a mason, and I threw up twenty-eight bob a day to come to this miserable hole.

Wherever you come from, young man, I advise you to go back there again.

There's twenty thousand men on Bendigo, and I don't believe nineteen thousand of 'em are earning their grub."

"I can't well go back fifteen thousand miles, even if I had money to take me back," answered Philip.

"Well, you might walk as far as Melbourne," said the hairy man, "and then you could get fourteen bob a day as a hodman; or you might take a job at stone breaking; the Government are giving 7s.

6d.

a yard for road metal.

Ain't you got any trade to work at?"

"No, I never learned a trade, I am only a gentleman."

He felt mean enough to cry.

"Well, that's bad.

If you are a scholar, you might keep school, but I don't believe there's half-a-dozen kids on the diggin's. They'd be of no mortal use except to tumble down shafts.

Fact is, if you are really hard up, you can be a peeler.

Up at the camp they'll take on any useless loafer wot's able to carry a carbine, and they'll give you tucker, and you can keep your shirt clean.

But, mind, if you do join the Joeys, I hope you'll be shot.

I'd shoot the hull blessed lot of 'em if I had my way.

They are nothin' but a pack of robbers."

The hairy man knew something of current history and statistics, but he had not a pleasant way of imparting his knowledge.

Picaninny Gully ended in a flat, thinly timbered, where there were only a few diggers.

Turning to the left, Philip found two men near a waterhole hard at work puddling.

When he bade them good-day, they did not swear at him, which was some comfort.

They were brothers, and were willing to talk, but they did not stop work for a minute.

They had a large pile of dirt, and were making hay while the sun shone--that is, washing their dirt as fast as they could while the water lasted.

During the preceding summer they had carted their wash-dirt from the gully until rain came and filled the waterhole.

They said they had not found any rich ground, but they could now make at least a pound a day each by constant work.

Philip thought they were making more, as they seemed inclined to sing small; in those days to brag of your good luck might be the death of you.

While Philip was away interviewing the diggers, Jack showed me where he had worked his first claim, and had made 400 pounds in a few days.

"You might mark off a claim here and try it," he said.

"I think I took out the best gold, but there may be a little left still hereabout."

I pegged off two claims, one for Philip, and one for myself, and stuck a pick in the centre of each.

Then we sat down on a log.

Six men came up the gully carrying their swags, one of them was unusually tall.

Jack said: "Do you see that big fellow there?

His name is McKean.

He comes from my part of Ireland.

He is a lawyer; the last time I saw him he was in a court defending a prisoner, and now the whole six feet seven of him is nothing but a dirty digger."

"What made you leave Ireland, Jack?"

I asked.

"I left it, I guess, same as you did, because I couldn't live in it.

My father was a fisherman, and he was drowned.

Mother was left with eight children, and we were as poor as church mice.

I was the oldest, so I went to Belfast and got a billet on board ship as cabin boy.

I made three voyages from Liverpool to America, and was boxed about pretty badly, but I learned to handle the ropes.

My last port there was Boston, and I ran away and lived with a Yankee farmer named Small.

He was a nigger driver, he was, working the soul out of him early and late.

He had a boat, and I used to take farm produce in it across the bay to Boston, where the old man's eldest son kept a boarding-house.

There was a daughter at home, a regular high-flier.

She used to talk to me as if I was a nigger.

One day when we were having dinner, she was asking me questions about Ireland, and about my mother, sisters, and brothers.

Then I got mad, thinking how poor they were, and I could not help them.

'Miss Small,' I said, 'my mother is forty years old, and she has eight children, and she looks younger than you do, and has not lost a tooth.'

"Miss Small, although quite young, was nearly toothless, so she was mad enough to kill me; but her brother Jonathan was at table, and he took my part, saying, 'Sarves you right, Sue;' why can't you leave Jack alone?'

"But Sue made things most unpleasant, and I told Jonathan I couldn't stay on the farm, and would rather go to sea again.

Jonathan said he, too, was tired of farming, and he would go with me.

He could manage a boat across Boston Harbour, but he had never been to sea.

Next time there was farm stuff to go to Boston he went with me; we left the boat with his brother, and shipped in a whaler bound for the South Seas.

I used to show him how to handle the ropes, to knot and splice, and he soon became a pretty good hand, though he was not smart aloft when reefing.

His name was Small, but he was not a small man; he was six feet two, and the strongest man on board, and he didn't allow any man to thrash me, because I was little.

After eighteen months' whaling he persuaded me to run away from the ship at Hobarton; he said he was tired of the greasy old tub; so one night we bundled up our swags, dropped into a boat, and took the road to Launceston, where we expected to find a vessel going to Melbourne.

When we were half-way across the island, we called just before sundown at a farmhouse to see if we could get something to eat, and lodging for the night.

We found two women cooking supper in the kitchen, and Jonathan said to the younger one, 'Is the old man at home?'

She replied quite pertly: "'Captain Massey is at home, if that's what you mean by 'old man.'

"'Well, my dear,' said Jonathan, 'will you just tell him that we are two seamen on our way to Launceston, and we'd like to have a word with him.'

"'I am not your dear,' she replied, tossing her head, and went out.

After a while she returned, and said: 'Captain Massey wanted to speak to the little man first.'

That was me.

"I went into the house, and was shown into the parlour, where the captain was standing behind a table.

There was a gun close to his hand in a corner, two horse pistols on a shelf, and a sword hanging over them.

He said: 'Who are you, where from, and whither bound?'

to which I replied: "'My name is John Moore; me and my mate have left our ship, a whaler, at Hobarton, and we are bound for Launceston.'

"'Oh, you are a runaway foremast hand are you?

Then you know something about work on board ship.'

He then put questions to me about the work of a seaman, making sail, and reefing, about masts, yards, and rigging, and finished by telling me to box a compass.

I

passed my examination pretty well, and he told me to send in the other fellow.

He put Jonathan through his sea-catechism in the same way, and then said we could have supper and a shake-down for the night.

"After supper the young lady sat near the kitchen fire sewing, and Jonathan took a chair near her and began a conversation.

He said: "I must beg pardon for having ventured to address you as 'my dear,' on so short an acquaintance, but I hope you will forgive my boldness.

Fact is, I felt quite attached to you at first sight.'

And so on.

If there was one thing that Jonathan could do better than another it was talking.

The lady was at first very prim and reserved; but she soon began to listen, smiled, and even tittered.

A little boy about two years old came in and stood near the fire.

Having nothing else to do, I took him on my knee, and set him prattling until we were very good friends.

Then an idea came into my head.

I said: "'I guess, Jonathan, this little kid is about the same age as your youngest boy in Boston, ain't he?'

"Of course, Jonathan had no boy and was not married, but the sudden change that came over that young lady was remarkable.

She gave Jonathan a look of fury, jumped up from her seat, snatched up her sewing, and bounced out of the kitchen.

The old man came in, and told us to come along, and he would show us our bunks.

We thought he was a little queer, but he seemed uncommonly kind and anxious to make us comfortable for the night.

He took us to a hut very strongly built with heavy slabs, left us a lighted candle, and bade us good-night.

After he closed the door we heard him put a padlock on it; he was a kindly old chap, and did not want anybody to disturb us during the night, and we soon fell fast asleep.

Next morning he came early and called us to breakfast.

He stayed with us all the time, and when we had eaten, said: "'Well, have you had a good breakfast?'

"Jonathan spoke: "'Yes, old man, we have.

You are a gentleman; you have done yourself proud, and we are thankful, ain't we, Jack?

You are the best and kindest old man we've met since we sailed from Boston.

And now I think it's time we made tracks for Launceston.

By-bye, Captain.

Come along, Jack.'

"'No you won't, my fine coves,' replied the captain.

'You'll go back to Hobarton, and join your ship if you have one, which I don't believe.

You can't humbug an old salt like me.

You are a pair of runaway convicts, and I'll give you in charge as sich.

Here, constables, put the darbies on 'em, and take 'em back to Hobarton.'

"Two men who had been awaiting orders outside the door now entered, armed with carbines, produced each a pair of handcuffs, and came towards us.

But Jonathan drew back a step or two, clenched his big fists, and said: "'No, you don't. If this is your little game, captain, all I have to say is, you are the darndest double-faced old cuss on this side of perdition.

You can shoot me if you like, but neither you nor the four best men in Van Diemen's Land can put them irons on me.

I am a free citizen of the Great United States, and a free man I'll be or die.

I'll walk back to Hobarton, if you like, with these men, for I guess that greasy old whaler has gone to sea again by this time, and we'll get another ship there as well as at Launceston.'

"Captain Massey did not like to venture on shooting us off-hand, so at last he told the constables to put up their handcuffs and start with us for Hobarton.

"After we had travelled awhile Jonathan cooled down and began to talk to the constables.

He asked them how they liked the island, how long they had been in it, if it was a good country for farming, how they were getting along, and what pay they got for being constables.

One of them said: 'The island is pretty good in parts, but it's too mountaynyus; we ain't getting along at all, and we won't have much chance to do any good until our time is out.'

"'What on airth do you mean by saying "until you time is out?"

Ain't your time your own?'

asked Jonathan.

"'No, indeed.

I see you don't understand.

We are Government men, and we ain't done our time.

We were sent out from England.'

"'Oh!

you were sent out, were you?

Now, I see, that means you are penitentiary men, and ought to be in gaol.

Jack, look here.

This kind of thing will never do.

You and me are two honest citizens of the United States, and here we are, piloted through Van Diemen's Land by two convicts, and Britishers at that.

This team has got to be changed right away.'

"He seized both carbines and handed them to me; then he handcuffed the constables, who were so taken aback they never said a word.

Then Jonathan said, 'This is training day.

Now, march.'

"The constables walked in front, me and Jonathan behind, shouldering the guns.

In this way we marched until we sighted Hobarton, but the two convicts were terribly afraid to enter the city as prisoners;

they said they were sure to be punished, would most likely be sent into a chain gang, and would soon be strangled in the barracks at night for having been policemen.

We could see they were really afraid, so we took off the handcuffs and gave them back the carbines.

"Before entering the city we found that the whaler had left the harbour, and felt sure we would not be detained long, as nothing could be proved against us.

When we were brought before the beak Jonathan told our story, and showed several letters he had received from Boston, so he was discharged.

But I had nothing to show; they knew I was an Irishman, and the police asked for a remand to prove that I was a runaway convict.

I was kept three weeks in gaol, and every time I was brought to court Jonathan was there.

He said he would not go away without me.

The police could find out nothing against me, so, at last, they let me go.

We went aboard the first vessel bound for Melbourne, and, when sail was made, I went up to the cross-trees and cursed Van Diemen's Land as long as I could see it.

Jonathan took ship for the States, but I went shepherding, and grew so lazy that if my stick dropped to the ground I wouldn't bend my back to pick it up.

But when I heard of the diggings, I woke up, humped my swag, and ran away--I was always man enough for that-- and I don't intend to shepherd again."