Book of the Bush — 13 - Among The Diggers In 1853 Pt 3
One day in passing Philip's school I peeped in at the flap of the tent.
He had already acquired the awe-inspiring look of the schoolmaster.
He was teaching a class of little boys, whose wandering eyes were soon fixed on my face, and then Philip saw me.
He smiled and blushed, and came outside.
He said he was getting along capitally, and did not want to try digging any more.
He had obtained a small treatise called "The Twelve Virtues of a Good Master," and he was studying it daily in order to qualify himself for his new calling.
He had undertaken to demonstrate one of Euclid's propositions every night by way of exercising his reasoning faculties.
He was also making new acquaintances amongst men who were not diggers--doctors, storekeepers, and the useful blacksmiths who pointed our picks with steel.
He had also two or three friends at the Governmnt camp, and I felt inclined to look upon him as a traitor to the diggers' cause but although he had been a member of the party of Young Irelanders, he was the most innocent traitor and the poorest conspirator I ever heard of.
He could keep nothing from me.
If he had been a member of some secret society, he would have burst up the secret, or the secret would have burst him.
He had some friends among the diggers.
The big gum tree in front of the church tent soon became a kind of trysting place on Sundays, at which men could meet with old acquaintances and shipmates, and convicts could find old pals.
Amongst the crowd one Sunday were five men belonging to a party of six from Nyalong; the sixth man was at home guarding the tent.
Four of the six were Irish Catholics, and they came regularly to Mass every Sunday; the other two were Englishmen, both convicts, of no particular religion, but they had married Catholic immigrants, and sometimes went to church, but more out of pastime than piety.
One of these men, known as John Barton-- he had another name in the indents--stood under the gum tree, but not praying; I don't think he ever thought of praying except the need of it was extreme.
He was of medium height, had a broad face, snub nose, stood erect like a soldier, and was strongly built.
His small ferrety eyes were glancing quickly among the faces around him until they were arrested by another pair of eyes at a short distance.
The owner of the second pair of eyes nudged two other men standing by, and then three pairs of eyes were fixed on Barton.
He was not a coward, but something in the expression of the three men cowed him completely.
He turned his head and lowered it, and began to push his way among the crowd to hide himself.
After Mass, Philip found him in his tent, and suspecting that he was a thief put his hand on a medium-sized Colt's revolver, which he had exchanged for his duelling pistols, and said: "Well, my friend, and what are you doing here?"
"For God's sake speak low," whispered Barton.
"I came in here to hide.
There are three men outside who want to kill me."
"Three men who want to kill you, eh?
Do you expect me to believe that anybody among the crowd there would murder you in broad daylight?
My impression is, my friend, that you are a sneaking thief, and that you came here to look for gold.
I'll send a man to the police to come and fetch you, and if you stir a step I'll shoot you."
"For goodness' sake, mate, keep quiet.
I am not a burglar, not now at any rate.
I'll tell you the truth.
I was a Government flagellator, a flogger, you know, on the Sydney side, and I flogged those three men.
Couldn't help it, it was my business to do it.
I know they are looking for me, and they will follow me and take the first chance to murder me.
They are most desperate characters.
One of them was insubordinate when he was assigned servant to a squatter, and the squatter, who was on horseback, gave him a cut with his stockwhip.
Then this man jumped at his master, pulled him off his horse, dragged him to the wood-heap, held his head on the block, seized the axe, and was just going to chop his master's head off, when another man stopped him.
That is what I had to flog him for, and then he was sent back to Sydney.
So you can just think what a man like that would do.
When my time was up I went as a trooper to the Nyalong district under Captain Foster, the Commissioner, and after a while I settled down and married an immigrant woman from Tipperary, a Catholic.
That's the way I happened to be here at Mass with my mates, who are Catholics; but I'll never do it again; it's as much as my life is worth.
I daresay there are lots of men about Bendigo whom I flogged while I was in the business, and every single man-jack of them would kill me if he got the chance.
And so for goodness' sake let me stay here till dark.
I suppose you are an honest man; you look like it anyway, and you would not want to see me murdered, now, would you?"
Barton was, in fact, as great a liar and rogue as you would meet with anywhere, but in extreme cases he would tell the truth, and the present case was an extreme one.
Philip was merciful; he allowed Barton to remain in his tent all day, and gave him his dinner.
When darkness came he escorted him to the tent of the men from Nyalong, and was introduced to them by his new friend.
Their names were Gleeson, Poynton, Lyons, and two brothers McCarthy.
One of these men was brother-in-law to Barton, and had been a fellow-trooper with him under Captain Foster.
Barton had entered into family relations as an honest man; he could give himself any character he chose until he was found out.
He was too frightened to stay another night on Bendigo, and he began at once to bundle up his swag.
Gleeson and Poynton accompanied him for some distance beyond the pillar of white quartz on Specimen Hill, and then he left the track and struck into the bush.
Fear winged his feet' he arrived safely at Nyalong, and never went to another rush.
The other five then stayed on Bendigo for several weeks longer, and when they returned home their gold was sufficient for a dividend of 700 pounds for each man.
Four of them bought farms, one kept a store, and Barton rented some land.
Philip met them again when he was promoted to the school at Nyalong, and they were his firm friends as long as he lived there.
I went to various rushes to improve my circumstances.
Once I was nearly shot.
A bullet whizzed past my head, and lodged in the trunk of a stringy bark a little further on.
That was the only time in my life I was under fire, and I got from under it as quickly as possible.
Once I went to a rush of Maoris, near Job's Gully, and Scott came along with his portfolio, a small pick, pan, and shovel.
He did not dig any, but got the ugliest Maori he could find to sit on a pile of dirt while he took his portrait and sketched the tattoos.
That spoiled the rush; every man, black and white, crowded around Scott while he was at work with his pencil, and then every single savage shook hands with him, and made signs to have his tattoos taken, they were so proud of their ugliness.
They were all naked to the waist.
Near the head of Sheep's Head Gully, Jack Moore and I found the cap of a quartz reef with visible gold in it.
We broke up some of it, but could not make it pay, having no quartz-crushing machinery.
Golden Gully was already nearly worked out, but I got a little gold in it which was flaky, and sticking on edge in the pipeclay bottom.
I found some gold also in Sheep's Head, and then we heard of a rush on the Goulburn River.
Next day we offered our spare mining plant for sale on the roadside opposite Specimen Hill, placing the tubs, cradles, picks and spades all in a row.
Bez was the auctioneer.
He called out aloud, and soon gathered a crowd, which he fascinated by his eloquence.
The bidding was spirited, and every article was sold, even Bez's own two-man pick, which would break the heart of a Samson to wield it.
When we left Bendigo, Bez, Birnie, Dan, Scott, and Moses were of the party, and a one-horse cart carried our baggage.
When we came to a swamp we carried the baggage over it on our backs, and then helped the horse to draw the empty cart along.
Our party increased in number by the way, especially after we met with a dray carrying kegs of rum.
Before reaching the new rush, afterwards known as Waranga, we prospected some country about twenty miles from the Goulburn river.
Here Scott left us.
Before starting he called me aside, and told me he was going to the Melbourne Hospital to undergo an operation.
He had a tumour on one leg above the knee, for which he had been treated in Dublin, and had been advised to come to Australia, in the hope that a change of climate and occupation might be of benefit, but he had already walked once from Bendigo to Melbourne, and now he was obliged to go again.
He did not like to start without letting someone know his reason for leaving us.
I felt full of pity for Scott, for I thought he was going to his death alone in the bush, and I asked him if he felt sure that he could find his way.
He showed me his pocket compass and a map, and said he could make a straight course for Melbourne.
He had always lived and worked alone, but whenever we moved he accompanied us not wishing to be quite lost amongst strangers.
He arrived at the hospital, but he never came out of it alive.
Dan gave me his money to take care of while he and Bez were living on rum from the dray, and I gave out as little cash as possible in order to promote peace and sobriety.
One night Dan set fire to my tent in order to rouse his banker.
I dragged Bez outside the tent and extinguished the fire.
There was bloodshed afterwards--from Dan's nose--and his account was closed.
After a while some policemen in plain clothes came along and examined the dray.
They found fourteen kegs of rum in it, which they seized, together with four horses and the dray.
I worked for seven months in various parts of the Ovens district until I had acquired the value in gold of my vanished twenty-dollar pieces; that was all my luck.
During this time some of us paid the £2 license fee for three months.
We were not hunted by the military.
Four or five troopers and officials rode slowly about the diggings and the cry of "Joey" was never raised, while a single unarmed constable on foot went amongst the claims to inspect licenses.
He stayed with us awhile, talking about digging matters.
He said the police were not allowed to carry carbines now, because a digger had been accidentally shot.
He was a very civil fellow, and his price, if I remember rightly was half-a-crown.
Yet the digger hunting was continued at Ballarat until it ended in the massacre of December 3rd 1854. At that time I was at Colac, and while Dr. Ignatius was absent, I had the charge of his household, which consisted of one old convict known as "Specs," who acted in the capacity of generally useless, received orders most respectfully, but forgot them as much as possible.
He was a man of education who had gone astray in London, and had fallen on evil days in Queensland and Sydney.
When alone in the kitchen he consoled himself with curses.
I could hear his voice from the other side of the slabs.
He cursed me, he cursed the Doctor, he cursed the horses, the cat, the dog, and the whole world and everything in it.
It was impossible to feel anything but pity for the man, for his life was ruined, and he had ruined it himself.
I had also under my care a vegetable garden, a paddock of Cape barley, two horses, some guinea fowls, and a potato patch.
One night the potatoes had been bandicooted.
To all the early settlers in the bush the bandicoot is well known.
It is a marsupial quadruped which lives on bulbs, and ravages potato patches.
It is about eighteen inches in length from the origin of its tail to the point of its nose.
It has the habits of a pickpocket.
It inserts its delicate fore paws under the stalks of the potato, and pulls out the tubers.
That morning I had endeavoured to dig some potatoes; the stalks were there, but the potatoes were gone.
I stopped to think, and examined the ground.
I
soon discovered tracks of the bandicoot, but they had taken the shape of a small human foot.
We had no small human feet about our premises, but at the other side of the fence there was a bark hut full of them.
I turned toward the hut suspiciously, and saw the bandicoot sitting on a top-rail, watching me, and dangling her feet to and fro.
She wore towzled red hair, a short print frock, and a look of defiance.
I went nearer to inspect her bandicoot feet.
Then she openly defied me, and said: "You need not look so fierce, mister.
I have as much right to sit on this rail as you have."
"Lilias," I replied, "you won't sit there long.
You bandicooted my potatoes last night, and you've left the marks of your dirty feet on the ground.
The police are coming to measure your feet, and then they will take you to the lock-up."
I gazed across the barley paddock for the police, and Lilias looked as well.
There was a strange man approaching rapidly, and the bandicoot's courage collapsed.
She slid from the fence, took to flight, and disappeared among the tussocks near the creek.
The stranger did not go to the garden gate, but stood looking over the fence.
He said: "Is Dr. Ignatius at home?"
"No, he is away somewhere about Fiery Creek, and I don't think he'll return until Saturday."
The stranger hung down his head and was silent.
He was a young man of small frame, well dressed for those days, but he had o luggage.
He looked so miserable that I pitied him.
He was like a hunted animal.
I said: "Are you a friend of Dr. Ignatius?"
"Yes, he knows me well.
My name is Carr; I have come from Ballarat."
"I knew various men had left Ballarat.
One had arrived in Geelong on December 4th, and had consulted Dr. Walshe about a bullet between his knuckles, another was hiding in a house at Chilwell.
* He had lost one arm, and the Government were offering 400 pounds for him, so he took outdoor exercise only by night, disguised in an Inverness cape.
"There was a chance for me to hear exciting news from the lips of a warrior fresh from the field of battle, so I said: "If you would like to stay here until the doctor returns you will be welcome."
*[Footnote] Peter Lalor.
He was my guest for four days.
He said that he went out with the military on the morning of December 3rd, and was the first surgeon who entered the Eureka Stockade after the fight was over.
He found twelve men dead in it, and twelve more mortally wounded.
This was about all the information he vouchsafed to give me.
I was anxious for particulars.
I wanted to know what arms he carried to the fray, whether he touched up his sword on the grind-stone before sallying forth, how many men or women he had called upon to stand in the name of her gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, how many skulls he had cloven, how many diggers he had "slewed," and how many peaceful prisoners he had brought back to the Government camp.
On all these points he was silent, and during his stay with me he spoke as little as possible, neither reading, writing, nor walking about.
But there was something to be learned from the papers.
He had been a witness at the inquest on Scobie, killed by Bentley and two others, and principally on his evidence Bentley was discharged, but was afterwards re-arrested and condemned to three years' imprisonment.
Dr. Carr was regarded as a "colluding associate" with Bentley and Dewes, the magistrate, and the official condemnation of Dewes confirmed the popular denunciation of them.
At a dinner given to Mr. Tarleton, the American Consul, Dr. Otway, the Chairman said: "While I and my fellow-colonists are thoroughly loyal to our Sovereign Lady, the Queen, we do not, and will not, respect her men servants, her maid servants, her oxen, or her asses."
A Commission was coming to Ballarat to report on wrong doings there, and they were looking for witnesses.
On Friday, December 8th, the camp surgeon and Dr. Carr had a narrow escape from being shot.
While the former gentleman was entering the hospital he was fired at by one of the sentries.
The ball passed close to the shoulder of Dr. Carr, who was reading inside, went through the lid of the open medicine chest, and some splinters struck him on the side.
There were in the hospital at that time seven diggers seriously wounded and six soldiers, including the drummer boy.
Troubles were coming in crowds, and the bullet, the splinters, and the Commission put the little doctor to flight.
He left the seven diggers, the five soldiers, and the drummer boy in the hospital, and made straight for Colac.
Fear dogged his footsteps wherever he went, and the mere sight of him had sent the impudent thief Lilias to hide behind the tussocks.
I always hate a man who won't talk to me and tell me things, and the doctor was so silent and unsociable, that, by way of revenge, I left him to the care and curses of old "Specs."
After four days he departed, and he appeared again at Ballarat on January 15th, giving evidence at an inquest on one Hardy, killed by a gunshot wound.
In the meantime a total change had taken place among the occupants of the Government camp.
Commissioner Rede had retired, Dr. Williams, the coroner, and the district surgeons had received notice to quit in twenty-four hours, and they left behind them twenty-four patients in and around the camp hospital.
Dr. Carr left the colony, and the next report about him was from Manchester, where he made a wild and incoherent speech to the crowd at the Exchange.
His last public appearance was in a police-court on a charge of lunacy.
He was taken away by his friends, and what became of him afterwards is not recorded.
Doctors, when there is a dearth of patients, sometimes take to war, and thus succeed in creating a "practice."
Occasionally they meet with disaster, of which we can easily call to mind instances, both ancient and modern.
