"BENDIGO MAC."

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1174, 26 August 1885, Page 4

"BENDIGO MAC."

("Daily Times" Melbourne correspondent.) The obituary of the week (11th instant) iucludes Mr Peter Manifold, of Parrambite, near Camperdown, a well-known Western district squatter, who settled on his large holding in 1810 ; and Mr Lachlan M'Lachlan, who was police magistrate at Sandhurst for more than a quarter of a century, dating from 1854. " Bendigo Mac " was a terror to the unruly in the old turbulent days of the diggings, and he did good service to the State in his time. Mr M'Lachlan was born in Argyleshire, Scotland, in 1810, and was trained to the law. Having obtained an appointment as an agent for a company which had taken up large tracts of laud in New Zealand, he left Glasgow in the ship Brilliant in December, 1840, and arrived in Melbourne in the beginning of the following July. After remaining here for a short time he went to Hobart. where he was a frequent guest of the Governor, Sir John Franklin. He also visited the penal establishments, and with Mb well-known faculty of never forgetting a face he had once seen, he obtained a store of knowledge which he turned to good account in his subsequent career on our goldfields. On arriving in Auckland in September, he learned that the newlyestablished Government would not recognize the claims of the company. He remained, however, in New Zealand till near the end of 1852, when he came to Melbourne, and took up his quarters at the old Shakespeare hotel, near the Western Market, where he was nearly suffocated by the fire that occurred there early in January 1853. He soon after received an appointment as police magistrate at Caatlemaine, then the great goldfields centre. He had not long been there when he was surprised one evening by a visit from Mr (now Sir W.) Stawell, then Attorney-general, who came to tell him that there was a district about 30 miles away where the diggers were very turbulent, and that he wished him te proceed there at once to restore order. After a hurried preparation he set out, accompanied by a trooper to show him the way, and soon found himself at hid destination, the Bendigo goldfield. There be set vigorously to work, and having first got rid of the black sheep among the police, many of whom had been Tasmanian convicts, whose high-handed proceedings had causei most of the diggers' discontent, then by his stern but even-handed justice he soon made old Bendigo the most orderly of the diggings. At the time of the troubles in Ballarat near the end of 1854, assisted by the resident commissioner, Mr Panton, and with the promised support of the Surveyor-general, Mr (now Sir) Andrew Clarke, he declined to enforce the rigid and impolitic instructions of Sir Charles Hotham, and thus saved Bendigo from a similar crisis to that of the Eureka riots and bloodshed. This sharp decision had something of the manner of a martinet, and his conduct was often severely criticised. He soon, however, gained the confidence of the people, and when he retired on his pension it was universally regretted.