THE AUSTRALIAN RUSH TO OTAGO.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVI, Issue 1620, 24 September 1861, Page 4

THE AUSTRALIAN RUSH TO OTAGO.

[From the Sydney . Morning Herald.) • The migratory character of gold-diggers is an established fact— which may be lamented, or excused, or justified according to the fancy of the expositor, but which cannot be denied. When gold digging first became a vocation in Australia, the tented life and wandering habits it caused were looked upon as a great misfortune, but on© which it was hoped would be only temporary. When townships were laid out, and farms were surveyed, it was thought that miners i would attach themselves more or less to the soil and lead a less unsettled life. But the expectation has been disappointed. Townships and gold-fields settlements have been formed, yet those who have bought land and erected homesteads have not been the miners so muoh as those who cater for the miners. The storekeepers, the publicans, the farmers, the market gardeners, el hoc genus home, these have fixed themselves in the neighbourhood of the diggers to supply their wants and live on the fruit of their good fortune. But the diggers themselves are not leg tired, They could strike their tent pegs and move off in a body, leaving behind them no more valuable fixed investments than an occasional cabbage garden, a few sod huts, or some stone chimneys, and here and there a rickety windlass. Those members of mining companies, both here and in Victoria, who have gone energetically into quartz crushing, and who at considerable expense have fitted up machinery, are of course exceptions to this statement. They have given hostages for their permanence, and as they could not move without great loss, they are less inclined to fly off. But they form a slight minority; The majority of gold-miners are still as they were nine years ago, alluvial dig* gers, passing from hole to hole, from gully to gully, from colony to colony. Bedouins are not more nomadic.

The latest rush is all the way to the southern end of the middle islaud of New Zealand. Gold has lately been found there. We are almost destitute, at present, of any minute knowledge of the character of the new Eldorado, We know nothing of the geological struoture of the country, of its resemblance to any of our older gold fields, or of the probability of its being a rich and permanent one. But all the settlers in the little province have gone mad about it. All the phenomena which were seen in Sydney when gold was first found on the Turon, and in Melbourne when Forest Creek revealed its treasures, are being repeated at Dunedin. Employes of all sorts have taken leave of their senses, and have bolted precipitately into the ranges.

Of course such uews has produced a " profound impression " upon the gold diggers ot Victoria and New South Wales. How is it possible for a digger to hear of distant nuggets and not be deeply moved ? In scores of tents, Tuapeka is all the talk, and hundreds have already taken ship for Otago^ resolved to be there in time to° secure good claims.

It used to be confidently asserted by the " people's friends," that the reason why the gold-digger was a wanderer was because he had no alternative. His instincts were all towards fixed settlements, and a freehold homestead would bind him securely to the spot of his choice. But the fallacy of this assertion is now apparent. Free selection, with its tempting accompaniment of deferred payments, has been in operation in Victoria for some months, and available by all who choose to turn fixed settlers. Yet free selection has been no more potent to hold the diggers than packthread could hold a Sampson. They break away from all attractions of that kind, and rush after nuggets to a settlement where no such " liberal " land law exists. Still further to increase the seductions of farming, the Government of Victoria has issued occupation licenses before survey, up to three hundred and sixty acres, on very easy terms, and yet the diggers turn their backs upon these pressing invitations, and shake their heads at the temptation, and are off to the little out-of-the-way settlement of Otago.

[f it were possible to make a calculation of the total amount of money that diggers have wasted in ohasing fortune from gold-field to gold-field, it would certainly take the gilt off the attractions of new diggings. It is difficult to meet with a woiking man who has not at some time or other tried his fortune at the goldfields, and it is rare to find the man who h£s retired on the competency he achieved, while the number of those who have swamped their previous savings is legion. We have seen rushes to Rockhampton, to Kiandra, and to Lambing Plat, and we have seen the reaction of distress and impoverishment that has befallen many who sold their little properties to raise funds to get to the diggings.

Whether the Otago rash is to grow to similar dimensions, we cannot venture to predict. To argae that it would be unreasonable would be no safe guide, for minors rush about on the most insufficient inducements, and seem always ready to " leave the ills they have, to fly to others that they know not of." Golddiggiug is essentially a lottery, and the man who has not drawn his prize is confident that it is lying in wait for him at the bottom of some hole. He is aroused to a pitch of unrestrainable excitement when he hears that al some other place comrades have dropped upon their luck, and he is off at full speed to sink his bole beside them, in the confident persuasion

that he cannot fail to be successful there. Imagination pictures the glittering treasure, and all the intervening troubles in tbe foreground are overlooked. Long tramps by land, long voyages by water do not deter him. He is ready for any) climate. Alpine snows and tropical heats are alike disregarded. The digger is of no country, he calls no place his home. XJbi bene ibi patria. Nuggets beckon him from land to laud, and he follows without power to resist the spell. The sudden advent of so large and so peculiar a population will severely test the administrative agencies of the little province of Otago. But the authorities have all the benefit of Australian experience to guide them, and they will doubtless avail themselves of it. A stimulus given to New -Zealand colonisation will just now be very convenient for it, and help it to assume a more prominent position in the Australian group.