The Good Old Days.

Southern Cross, Volume 6, Issue 5, 7 May 1898, Page 3

The Good Old Days.

Old Victoria,

(ALL BIGHTS RESERVED.)

(Bt Pioneer.)

The first thing to he done on ' arriving on a Victorian goldfield was to go to the camp to obtain a license —price 30s a month to search for the metal. The Urquaharts did this, and then proceeded to look out for a claim on their return to the Eureka. As they were thirsty, they went up to a small frame tent, where they saw glasses and a kind of keg on a connter just inside and found that they could get hop beer and other teetotal drinks. Next to this place was a iarge unbrella tent with Dr. Doyle in large letters on it. Charley Urquahart asked the gentlemanly young man in the crimson sash, who bad served them with hop beer at a shilling per glass, what it meant. ‘ It means,’ said he, ‘ that I am Dr. Doyle, duly qualified medical practitioner —that is I would be if I had anybody to practice on —and as I can’t live upon air like a chameleon I make hop beer, lemonade and stuff till the good people think proper to be ill and get hurt.’ Cecil Urquahart laughed and said —‘ I should go the entire animal in your place, and sell something stronger if I turned trader at all. ‘ Perhaps I do. Come inside and try a sample. It’s genuine at all events.’ They did so, and that call led to a friendship that lasted till the death of Dr Doyle, years after he had established a first-rate practice and married. The well-known Dr. Hobson of the Main Road, Ballarat, started just in the same way and made his acquaintance with the diggers through selling teetotal drinks, etc, etc. He became wealthy and was a prominent man in all public matters of business or sports. Dr. Doyle advised the Urquaharts to just peg out a claim anywhere near the workings, as it was all chance, and they were as likely to hit upon gold in one place as another, so they chose a place near, and then shifted their tent to a convenient spot, and the next morning commenced a day’s work for the first time in their lives. They took off their blue shirts —the coat of the period —rolled the sleeves of their singlets above their elbow, thereby exposing four women-like white arms, and then Cecil did as he had been told to do in commencing to sink a hole —that is, stuck his pick in the turf and turned the handle round to make a circle, inside of which to sink the hole. After about half-an-hour Cecil turned down the sleeves of his singlet to the wrist. ‘ You had better do the same, Charley,’ he said, ‘ the sun’s too hot.’ ‘Oh ! I want to get my arms like those other fellows over there. They are as brown as a berry.’ So Charley worked on, taking his turn in the hole and gradually hjs arras turned pink, then rose, then\deep scarlet, and when they knocked off in the evening he was in full holies ot soon looking something like a nayvy. His arms smarted, though, and kept on smarting all night till he ; was in a perfect agony. In the morning he got up at daylight and called to Cecil to look. , ; He had a blister on eachf'arm that reached from wrist to elbowl £ You’ve donejit,’ said Cetpil. ‘ Our hop beer doctor has got anyhow.’

A Doctor without Patients—Pegging out a Claim —“ It’s all a matter of Chance’’—Wanted Arms Like the Other Fellows —A Painful Lesson—Golden Point and its Yields—The Linen Drapers’ Claim—“l want Big Nuggets ” —Red Hill Plat— A Spaniard’s Presentiment —Fatal Resultof “Shepherding” —Jock Winter and his Lovely Daughter—“ Bail up, Mate !” Set upon in Melbourne.

He bad. It was a full week before Charley could go to work, so he learned to cook, and improved the acquaintance of the doctor. Cecil bottomed the hole, which was six feet to the pipeclay, and got some twenty ounces of rough shotty gold off the bottom. Then he put in low drives in three directions, and with the help of Charley and the doctor lending a hand to wash and pan off, about forty ounces more were obtained, which, for a first attempt, they thought pretty well, though Charley continually complained of there being no big nuggets, The claim was of course not half worked out when they abandoned it to sink another hole, but they knew nothing about paddocking then anymore than the first men who worked Golden Point, the richest shallow sinking and the first on Ballarat. When the Point was abandoned it was left like a rabbit warren full of drives, but the pillars were just as much likely to contain rich gold as the ground that had been worked, and so carelessly had that been done that great quantities of gold had been thrown away in the gravel on top of the pipeclay. The boys found this out long after, for on a morning following a night’s rain they bunted the old working all over for small nuggets. One fortunate imp about six years old found a two pound nugget that the rain had exposed. Golden Point was left to the boys until a company was formed in 1857, when a deep shaft was sunk to obtain water, steam employed to pump it and the whole Point taken in a face and everything but the boulders put through the sluice boxes down to the pipeclay. Where that was done is a populous part of Ballarat now. The company got splendid returns. A rush took place to Pennyweight Flat, near Golden Point, and the Urquaharts and Dr. Doyle followed it, hut were a little too late, as all the Flat was pegged out, and they were driven to rising ground. However, Cecil marked out a claim and they commenced to put down a hole. The second morning, they were at work, three young fellows, brand new chums, by their look dripping with lime juice, Charley said—came along, and asked where they had better set in.

‘ Oh ! anywhere. It’s all chance. Next us it you like/ They did so, taking it in turns to work in the hole, which from its appearance shewed what sort of pick and shovel men were torturing the ground. At dinner time the two parties fraternised, and ate their meal together. About three o’clock the linen drapers, as it appeared they were, and who had never done a day’s work in their lives, bottomed the hole, which was only four feet deep and saw the gold in the pipeclay. They worked it out that same evening and took 761bs weight of gold from it, and the Urquaharts helped them to carry it to the camp. They left the diggings and the brothers never saw them after. In their own hole, which was seven feet deep, they never found the colour, but they went into the drapers’ claim and gouged all round, with the result that they obtained about five pounds weight. ‘ Will we never get something good,’ asked Charley. ‘What we fall on is only what they call tucker

ground. I want big nuggets.’ ‘ As long as we can get good tucker ground/ said Cecil, 6 there is always the chance of better, and there is no hurry that I know of. The life is pleasant enough/ So they went on till over the rise from Pennyweight parties commenced deep sinking on the Red Hill Flat, so called because it was opposite the Red Hill—the colour of the clay—on the Main Road. As it was uncertain about the deep sinking proving a success, only a few parties, strong in cash and men, went to the expense of slabs for timbering the shafts. The others waited to see what it would turn out, and only shepherded their claims, throwing out a few shovelfuls every day. The Urqnaharts only did this, taking it by turns to stay in their claim, while the other amused himself in the store of the Eagles Bros., who had put up one on the flat, as also did the firm of Bradshaw and Salmon—the same Ben Bradshaw that afterwards represented Dunedin in Parliament, and obtained the Saturday halfholiday for the sewing machine girls. Good fellow he was when Ballarat and he were both young, and he did not die unlamented in Dunedin. There was a claim on Red Hill Flat called ‘ The Spaniards/ down about 70 feet, and one morning one of the Spaniards went into Eagles Bros.’ store to get a nip before going to work, and remarked that he did not like deep sinking, and hoped they would soon bottom, as he was always

uncomfortable when below. About an hour after the fellows in Eagles’ store beard a great shouting, and saw the Spaniards running from all directions towards the Spaniards’ claim. It appeared afterward that the Spaniard who was below had struck a water drift, and signalled to be drawn up, but before the bucket could be let down to him the water came in so fast that he could only catch hold of the bucket with both hands, and he was hanging to it when they drew him up to within about six feet of the top of the shaft. Then he let go and fell, while the man at the windlass went head over heels. In three hours the water was within ten feet of the surface, and the camp people took the matter in hand to get the body, assisted by any number of volunteers. Several of the other shafts had to be sunk to the water level, and the work went on night and day for nearly a fortnight before the body was got. This was what came of shepherding. If the shafts had all been put down together they would each have had a share of the water—as it was, one drained the lot. The accident cast a gloom over the Flat for a time, but diggers are an elastic section of the community, and nothing saddens them long. The claims turned out well, and both diggers and storekeepers reaped a rich harvest.

The next rushes were Dalton’s —which was good and Winter’s Flat, which was better. The gold was found in a paddock that was part of Mr Winter’s, the squatter’s, pre-emptive right, and which was freehold. Mr Winter let the right to dig for gold, with the understanding that the holes were to be filled up again. 11 was done, and he pocketed £50,000 out of that paddock. Old Jock Winter was about as rough a customer as ever left old Scotland, owning just what he stood upright in, and no more. He was the father of pretty Jock Winter —as the diggers called her —who, when she went to the first ladies’ school at the Ballarat township, objected to the mutton because it was too fat. The vernacular of her father and his station hands was all she knew then, but she knew better afterwards, and would laugh heartily at the times when she used to dash down the main road on her three-parts bred chestnut, pulling up now and then to dip her hand into the pocket of her saddle for the silver to shout with if she saw a man she knew. She was lovely as a dream, and could round up a herd of wild cattle with any stockman on the station. Government house knew

her afterwards, and she was a decided acquisition. Sticking- np was fashionable, and Charlie Urquahart had a most unpleasant adventure, though he nsed to say afterwards that it was the proper sort of thing to go through, and no man could be supposed to have completed his colonial education without it. He was giving his horse a spell as he was riding to Geelong, when he met two men walking. One of them quietly took the horse by the bridle, and the other presented arevolver and said—

‘ Bail up, mate. It’s no use. We only want your money and ticker, and—well, yes, we must have your horse. We will borrow it and turn it loose near Buninyong.’ Charlie submitted quietly. He had only some £4O or so on him, which did not much matter, but he winced when he saw the watch his mother had given him as a birthday present in the felon paws of the bushranger. ‘Now, matey, said one, ‘we must tie you to a tree, because, you see, we must have a fair start, but we won’t be hard on yon. We’ll tie you where you can make any one hear you that comes along the road. We ain’t got no malice, and you don’t seem half a bad sort.’

‘Thanks,’ said Charlie, ‘you are very considerate, and I’m much obliged to you.’ So they tied him to a tree, and as it happened no one came along until it was nearly dark, and he thought he would have to stay tied up all night. But the horseman who released him took him up behind him as far to the half-way house, where he hired a horse and continued his journey to town. He gave information to the police of course, but nothing came of it. And the men quite forgot to let the horse go near Buninyong, as they had promised, or else the animal was appropriated by someone who found him if they did. Little was thought of a sticking up case then, provided there was no violence, but some impudent things were done in Melbourne. One evening a naan came out of the Queen’s Theatre during the performance, when he was seized by three men, turned upside down and inside out, before he knew what was the matter. When he did, the men had vanished, with all belonging to him of value. There is still some impudence left in Melbourne, but it is a different kind of cheek, and much more costly.