The Romance of Gold

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 27, Issue 21, 27 May 1909, Page 809

The Romance of Gold

Last week's daily papers contained the following cable message from Melbourne : ' Francis Webster, the discoverer of the famous Welcome nugget, has died at the Ballarat Benevolent Asylum; aged 74 years. He returned to Ballarat three years ago poof and in ill-health, and was compelled to seek the shelter of the asylum.' « We turn to the second edition of Withers' History of Ballarat (p.. 236), and there we find the familiar tale of the ' Welcome Nugget.' It was discovered on Bakery Hill (Ballarat East) on July 9, 1858 ; it weighed 1841 b 9oz 16dwt; and (as we learn from another source) was valued at £8376 10s lOd. This was, it appears,, the world's ' record ' nugget. The next largest nugget found 'on ' Ballarat (as the miners put it) weighed 1341 b lloz. It was unearthed in the rich ground of Canadian Gully in 1853, while the early gold-fever was still in men's brains, and they were rocking with the excitement of the big discoveries that, during that and the two previous years had turned the eyes of the world towards. Victoria and made it, at a bound, the Transylvania of modern times. Many a man on those rich, shallow alluvial Ballarat claims ' struck it ' as did the Canadians and the ' Hell-fire Mob ' — or like Hannington, who remarked to our old friend James Oddie : ' Found a few specks in the grass, and put down a hole five feet deep. The gold was all over the bottom like a jeweller's shop.' And again: 'Cleared off a large heap of earth, and sunk twelve feet, and it seemed to be a little gutter. It was like looking into a gingerbread basket, it looked so yellow with gold.' And then there was the lucky miner who had his horse shod with gold in Melbourne, and the other who took his morning ' tub ' in the Moet- et Chandon (champagne) of the day, and the third who warmed his shins with a pile of bank-notes set blating in a grate — and lived to see poverty and have it for their bedfellow till the curtain fell. And now the discoverer of the historic ' Welcome Nugget ' — no doubt, through no fault of his own — passes out in the shelter of a poor-house in sight of the spot where he saw sudden fortune one-and-fifty years ago. And, we suppose, a pauper's tumbril has ' Rattled his bones , • ". Over the atones- _ X

to sleep in a nameless grave beside his mates of other days under the dark pines of the cemetery on the Creswick Road. With pick and spade they played the wild game of life in those strenuous days of the fifties. But with them, as with the rest of us, ' No matter how much each one wins, Or how much each one saves, The spade will finish up the game, And dig the players' graves.'