Beechworth’s finest hour

02 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Eureka Stockade, Gold commissioners, Gold fields police, Gold mining, Gold rush, Miner's license, Ovens diggings, Spring Creek diggings

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Democracy, Dr John Owens, franchise, George Black, male suffrage, Ovens Petition, right to vote

On 18 February, I gave a short speech at the Beechworth Courthouse at the event ‘The Beechworth Principles — Towards a Federal Integrity Commission’ in which Helen Haines MP outlined what she believes should be the ‘core characteristics by which any model for a federal integrity commission can be measured.’ You can read about the Beechworth Principles on her website.

The speech I gave in support of the Beechworth Principles was illustrative of the fact that, since the earliest days of the gold rush, Beechworth has a long (if little known) history of standing up for principles of integrity and political rights. The text that follows is a slightly modified version of the speech I gave, including a few extra details that I was not able to include in the Court House Speech for reasons of brevity. (Apologies for the fact that this material is as yet un-footnoted, but I can assure you it is drawn from primary source materials.)

Historic_Courthouse,_Beechworth_Victoria

(Image by Thennicke, via wikimedia commons)

In 1853, at the height of the gold rush on the Ovens goldfield, a young gold digger at Reid’s Creek named William Guest was shot by police. Guest was an innocent man – his death the result of a flagrant misuse of police power by an inept Assistant Gold Commissioner, Edwin Meyer. The initial reaction to Guest’s shooting was a riot, in which almost 3000 diggers stormed the Assistant Commissioner’s Camp, during which time the policeman responsible for the shooting, Constable Hallet, was almost beaten to death, and in which Assistant Commissioner Meyer was pelted with rocks, shot at, and very nearly lynched.

At two subsequent death inquests in the the shooting of William Guest, held at the Spring Creek Commissioner’s Camp (near where the Beechworth courthouse stands today), local police and government officials suppressed key evidence to cover-up their own mismanagement and corruption.

In response, the gold diggers of the Ovens called for an independent inquiry into the circumstances of William Guest’s shooting and into the conduct of local officials, specifying that the inquiry should be conducted by parties wholly unconnected with those responsible for the shooting — the Gold Commission and the Police.

When Governor LaTrobe made clear that his government would hold a closed inquiry – from which the press was to be barred, and which would be run by the head of the department (Chief Gold Commissioner William Wright) about which the diggers were complaining – the diggers realised that they would not receive a fair hearing.

Led by Dr John Owens, the diggers resolutely refused to accept that their government — to which they paid taxes in the form of a gold license fee, but for which they were not able to vote — could respond to serious breaches of public trust by conducting closed inquiries into itself. At a public meeting held on Spring Creek, Dr Owens said:

‘We pay our license fee month after month, trusting to the integrity of the Government: bred to respect the law, we expect to be secured the upright and efficient administration of the law.’

Dissatisfied with the government’s conduct, on 2 April 1853 at Spring Creek, the Beechworth diggers then decided to do something which had not yet been done on any other goldfield in Australia: they decided to petition the government for the right to vote.

Today, when we look at their Petition, we can see embodied in it some timeless values.

Its call for a ‘full and fair’ franchise for people of all backgrounds and races: this spoke to the eternal need for equality between all people, and accountability in government to the people it serves.

Its call to replace the gold license tax with a tax which would be applied fairly across the community as a civic duty: this spoke to the call for fairness for all people.

Its call to dismantle the system of ‘Gold Commissioners’— a body of self-interested public officials who misused their power and public funds to benefit and protect themselves and their friends: this spoke to the need for public officials to act with integrity.

In 1853, Dr Owens warned that ‘if the government tenaciously refused to grant the rights of representation, the consequences would be fatal’.

This prophecy was borne out at the Eureka Rebellion, near Ballarat, in December 1854. However, thankfully, by that time, the key tenets of the ‘Beechworth Petition’ — notions of equality, accountability, fairness and integrity — were already coming to underpin what we comprehend today as values fundamental to the Australian democratic process.

Beechworth has a proud history of taking the principles of political representation seriously. In 1853 Dr Owens asked the people of Beechworth and the people of Australia:

‘Do you know what the word representation means? Of course you do! It means that if those who by wealth, or station or authority, are placed over you, do wrong, you have the power of compelling them to do right.’

Today, our heritage precinct in Beechworth – which features magnificent public buildings like the court house and post office beside the far more modest offices built for government officials – stands as a reminder written in stone. That the people do not serve the government; the government serves the people.

***

To this short speech, I would like to add the following contextual comments, explaining why I think the Ovens Petition was Beechworth’s finest hour.

John Owens: Beechworth’s founding father of Australian democracy.

The ‘Ovens Petition’ was finally submitted to the Victorian Legislative Council on 16 September 1853. The initial public meetings (in February, March and April) on the Ovens diggings had been led by Dr John Owens, whom the Ovens diggers had elected the ‘Diggers’ Representative’. In late April, Owens moved to Melbourne where he continued to advocate for the interests of the Ovens diggers, spreading their call for a ‘full and fair franchise’, and advocating not for a mere reduction in the gold license fee, but its compete abolition.

Meanwhile, in what was about to become the newly proclaimed town of Beechworth, the Chartist George Black took charge of the Ovens movement, organising the final public ‘Monster Meeting’ of thousands of diggers, which garnered support for the petition in its final form. George Black was the principal speaker at large public meetings held on the Spring Creek diggings in August 1853. Understanding the influence of both men — John Owens and George Black — is critical to comprehending the influence of the Ovens Petition on the Ballarat Reform League, and its role in the Eureka Rebellion.

John Owens had warned that ‘if the government tenaciously refused to grant the rights of representation, the consequences would be fatal.’ Unfortunately, the politicians and officials of the day did not heed his advice. In fact, political agitations on the goldfields proliferated. George Black moved from the Ovens diggings to Ballarat, where he acquired the reactionary newspaper The Digger’s Advocate, and where he became a founding member of the Ballarat Reform League. The Ballarat Reform League’s Charter fully adopted the stance established by the Ovens petitioners. The Reform League, like the Ovens Petitioners, had initially also held fast to the principle that political issues should be fought through ‘moral force’ and not physical force. However, in the wake of a heavily-armed police license raid on 30 November, 1854, the leadership of Reform League switched to Peter Lalor. Lalor also had been on the Ovens diggings around the time of the riot that took place at the time of the shooting of William Guest, and so he knew of and may have even witnessed the terrifying power of open resistance to the authorities.

The violence of the resulting Eureka Rebellion (December 1854) ran counter to one of the key tenets of the Ovens petitioners: that they ‘approved of “revolutionary principles”, but [were] of the opinion that they should be worked out by moral and not physical force.’ Although the sensational events of Eureka Stockade would become celebrated in history, these events can now be seen as an aberration in the Australian political landscape. It was, in fact, the Ovens Petitioners who gave Australia its preferred mode of grass-roots political activism. In the words of George Black, ‘express your will in the firm and determined manner, [and] you will accomplish your objects and obtain your rights: there is no need of force and of arms, for reason, mind, intelligence, are all-sufficient for the attainment of your rights.’

In the wake of the Eureka Rebellion, the government rapidly convened a Goldfields Commission (which sat for the first time on 14 December 1854). Their recommendations mirrored those put forward in the Ovens Petition of August 1853. On 27 March 1855, the Commission recommended the replacement of the gold license tax with an export duty on gold; the introduction of the Miner’s Right, which gave the holder the right to vote; and the abolition of the system of Gold Commissioners. All measures were quickly adopted by the Government. In two years the Ovens Petitioners had been largely vindicated, and although not all Victorian men would be able to vote until 1856, their efforts had irrevocably changed the political landscape of Australia.

Beechworth might be the first place in Australia in which people actively petitioned for the right to vote. If this could be firmly established, it would surely make Beechworth if not the birthplace of Australian democracy, then most certainly its place of conception.

In addition, the adherence of the Ovens Petitioners to non-violent political activism — the belief that ‘there is no need of force and of arms; for reason, mind, intelligence, are all-sufficient for the attainment of your rights’ — created a legacy of peaceful protest in the Australian political landscape which has since emerged in events such as the Women’s Suffrage Petition (‘Monster Petition’) of 1891, the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam of 1969, and the protests against the Franklin dam in 1982.

The calls of the Ovens Petitions for democratic rights and government accountability, as well as their legacy of peaceful protest conducted within constitutional means; continue to hold cultural currency in Australia. This history deserves to be celebrated with intense pride.

This is original written content that is copyright protected to ©Jacqui Durrant, 2020. You are welcome to share links to this blog, but please do not use the content elsewhere without permission. Thank you!

When did Chinese people come to Beechworth, and why?

07 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Californian gold rush, Chinese, Gold mining, Gold rush, Ovens diggings, Uncategorized

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Buckland Riots, Chinese migration, First Opium War, Louis Ah Mouy, Taiping Rebellion

Chinese people formed a large proportion of the mining population in Beechworth during the 1850s. What’s less well known is that at the peak of the gold rush, there were almost no Chinese on the Ovens diggings. Why?

Loading Tea at Canton (Tinqua [active 1830s–1870s]), circa 1852. (Peabody Essex Museum)

A walk through the Chinese section of the Beechworth cemetery will demonstrate clearly enough that, historically, there were plenty of Chinese people in Beechworth. The Cemetery opened in 1857, and the fact that whoever designed its grounds felt compelled to create a Chinese section within its bounds, should be proof enough that by the mid-1850s, Beechworth had a substantial Chinese populace. That there were also anti-Chinese riots on the Buckland diggings (considered part of the Ovens district) in 1857, will also tell you there were many Chinese people here: enough for racist mobs to warrant persecuting.

China is a big country, but the people who came to the Victorian diggings weren’t from all over China; they were mainly from the Siyi (Sze Yup) or the ‘Four Counties’ in the Pearl River Delta of southern Guangdong province, south-eastern China. The capital of this area is Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton); and the majority language is Cantonese.

It isn’t so surprising that those coming from China to Australia in the 1850s were from Guangdong province, especially when one realises that from the mid-eighteenth century, Canton had been China’s port of international trade (in fact, its sole international port; famous for its tea, silk and porcelain); and that by the time of the Victorian gold rushes, it had been operating for around a decade as one of the ‘treaty ports’ established by the British in the wake of First Opium War under the Treaty of Nanking (1842). More than any other region in China, Guangdong province had the richest history of contact with Britain and her colonies.

However, throughout all of my research concerned with the initial gold rush at Spring and Reid’s Creek (which happened in the summer of 1852-1853), I’ve been surprised by the conspicuous absence of Chinese people. At its high point, there were roughly 8000 diggers on Spring and Reid’s Creeks, and yet it seems that there were not enough Chinese among them as to be remarked upon. The only exception I have found to date is this solitary account in The Argus of what could be the very first arrival of a Chinese person in the area:

The Ovens diggings (from our Special Commissioner), Royal Hotel, Albury, November 28th, 1852:

No little astonishment has been excited at the Ovens by the appearance on Spring Gully of a gentleman of decided Tartar physiognomy. A wide field for speculation has been opened by the proceedings of this individual, who speaks English fluently, and appears tolerably conversant with English habits and manners. In consequence of his having spent a whole week in the erection of his tent, it is surmised that he can hardly have arrived with the view of digging for gold, but that he is commissioned here by the merchants of Canton in some capacity or other. It will be singular if he should turn out to be sent by a private channel to this the youngest colony of the Empire, on a commercial or emigration errand, while the Celestial Government itself still disdains to enter into diplomatic intercourse with the Home Government. [1]

The man in question is described as looking like a Tartar, Tartary being the name used until the late nineteenth century to refer to a vast area from Russia to Mongolia, to Kazakhstan and countries immediately to the south. It is clear that he isn’t a gold seeker, but instead, a trader or merchant of some kind. He is accustomed to speaking in English, which supports the suggestion he may have recently come from Canton (Guangzhou). Alternatively, there is the possibility that he was already established in Australia as a trader, perhaps having arrived here as an indentured labourer (many of whom came from Fujian province and were brought to Australia to replace convict labour in the 1840s).

The article also spells out that his presence on the Ovens diggings is ‘singular’, i.e.: somehow unusual or extraordinary. This is probably because Chinese didn’t really start arriving on the Victorian diggings until 1853 (see Melbourne’s Chinatown ); and also because — as the author of the article suggests — the presence of this Chinese man, particularly as some kind of a merchant, runs contrary to the uneasy diplomatic and trade relations which existed at the time between the ‘Celestial’ Chinese Qing dynasty Government and the British ‘Home’ Government. The casual way in which the author refers to the lack of ‘diplomatic intercourse’ between the two governments assumes that readers of The Argus are more or less fully aware of the recent history between China and Britain, in which the Qing dynasty was compelled to sign unequal trade treaties with the British after the British won the First Opium War in 1842.

The exact reason why Chinese people didn’t start arriving on the Victorian diggings en masse until late 1853 remains something of a mystery to me. Recently, I came across the biography of Louis Ah Mouy (1826-1918), a Melbourne-based merchant and Chinese community leader, originally from the Toishan district of Kwangtung province, south of Canton. His arrival in Melbourne in 1851 coincided with the discovery of gold, and he claimed to have written the letter (home to his brother) that prompted the migration of many thousands of Cantonese to the Victorian goldfields. [2] At a guess, it seems that it took a while before news of gold in Australia spread sufficiently for Chinese agents in Canton to develop partnerships with the captains of the foreign ships who would deliver people to Australia. I also wonder how much this timing relates to the fact that by 1852, California had introduced a Foreign Miners Tax to deter Chinese miners; and by 1853, Chinese were actively being driven off the Californian diggings by racial violence.

However, the reason many Chinese left China in the early 1850s is more readily discernible: At the time of gold discovery in Victoria, China was rapidly falling into a state of total civil war between the ruling Qing dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom — an oppositional state based in Tianjing (present-day Nanjing, inland from Shanghai). The fighting broke out in Guangxi province, directly west of Guangdong province, in January 1851. From here, the situation (commonly referred to as the ‘Taiping Rebellion’) devolved into one of the bloodiest wars in human history. Tens of millions of people were killed in the fighting and associated plagues and famine, with millions more displaced. Chinese people coming to Beechworth weren’t coming merely for the sake of personal wealth or adventure; they were escaping a country ravaged by war, as well as sending home remittances of gold and money to help struggling family members who couldn’t join them.

As always, comments and contributions welcome.

References

[1] ‘THE OVENS DIGGINGS. (FROM OUR SPECIAL COMMISSIONER.) ROYAL HOTEL, ALBURY,’ Nov. 28th, The Argus, 3 December, 1852, p.4.

[2] Ching Fatt Yong, ‘Ah Mouy, Louis (1826–1918),’ Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 3, Melbourne University Press, 1969.

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The Commissioner’s Camp and its Discontents

06 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Californian gold rush, Eureka Stockade, Gold commissioners, Gold fields police, Gold mining, Gold rush, Miner's license, Ovens diggings, Spring Creek diggings

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Gold Cadets, Goldfields foot police, Henry Wilson Hutchinson Smythe, James Maxwell Clow

The site of Beechworth’s police station and old gaol has an earlier history as the site of the Commissioner’s Camp: the administrative hub from which representatives of the government attempted to enforce the rule of law on the gold diggings — not always with the greatest success.

As I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve carefully skirted around one fundamental daily aspect of the Spring Creek and Reid’s Creek diggings: its administration by the colonial government. This is because the relationship between the miners and their administrative overlords was complex in ways that, I would argue, haven’t been properly accounted for by any historian to date (at least in the case of Beechworth), but which we know resulted in political agitations that contributed to the common man being granted the right to vote in the colony of Victoria by 1856. However, in mid-November 1852, when the Camp itself was being set up, its occupants had no way of knowing the role they would play in future events.

The Commissioner’s Camp, Spring Creek diggings, May Day Hills, drawn by Edward La Trobe Bateman, December 1852.

For the purposes of this blog post, it is enough just to explain the Commissioner’s Camp itself: what it was, who was there, and what they thought they were up to; and to look at some of their immediate troubles.

First, some background

When the Victorian gold rushes first hit, the colony of Victoria had been only freshly carved-out from New South Wales. Its newly appointed Lieutenant-Governor Charles Joseph La Trobe and his inexperienced government were in complete shock when they suddenly found their quiet and remote colony invaded by thousands of gold seekers from across the globe. Nevertheless, they swiftly developed a system for administering the various goldfields, which was fashioned after the existing administration of the pastoral districts. This administrative system enabled the government to police the various diggings; provide and oversee official armed escorts for gold to Melbourne; provide an official means of registering and settling disputes over mining claims; and to tax the miners through a licensing system (the fee being initially set at 30 shillings per month, later reduced to £1 per month).

The miner’s license was extremely unpopular among the gold seekers. It was a regressive tax in the sense that it had to be paid before mining commenced, and therefore bore no relation to the ability of a miner to pay. Moreover, the tax was imposed on men who, generally lacking in property rights, had no corresponding right to vote under the existing political system. The miners expected, at the very least, to see their licensing fees fund amenities and services for the diggings, but for largely internal political reasons, the government was noticeably slow to fulfil these obligations. And finally, the antagonism over the licensing system was further exacerbated by the fact that it was often enforced by inexperienced, incompetent, sometimes heavy-handed and not infrequently corrupt officials and police; their activities summarised by digger Edward Ridpath:

‘the injustice of this impost [i.e.: the license fee] is great enough but the manner of its enforcement is even more so, at Bendigo men have been shot when running away form the police, others have been chained to logs, in cases where diggers have left their licenses at home they have not been allowed to go and fetch them, but at once marched off to the Commissioners and fined 5 pounds for not having them on their persons, for this service Government employs a body of men called the gold foot Cadets, a kind of nondescript policemen, they are principally young men of overbearing dispositions’ [1]

Licensing tent, Collection of lithographs and sketches, 1853-1874 by Samuel Thomas Gill, State Library Victoria. (Depicting a scene at Ballarat or Bendigo).

The Commissioner’s Camp, Ovens diggings — Who and what was there?

As soon as it became apparent that the Ovens diggings would be a goldfields of some significance, the government followed the procedure already developed to administer earlier-established diggings such as those at Ballarat and Bendigo, which was to establish an official encampment there. Organisation of this camp commenced with official appointments beginning in mid-October 1852. One of the earliest appointments was the man who would be Commissioner, James Maxwell Clow (1820-1894). Clow was charged with raising his own police force for the camp, and as the son of a Scottish Presbyterian Minister he seems to have selected a disproportionate number of Scotsmen for the task. [2] The Camp would be headed by a Resident Commissioner in the form of Henry Wilson Hutchinson Smythe (1815-1854), who left his base in Benalla (where he had already served as Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Murray district for close to a decade), especially to take up this new role. Known as ‘Long Smythe,’ (he was a commanding 198 centimetres tall), Smythe had started in the government service as a surveyor and cartographer, and though still in his mid-30s, he was a man of considerable experience. Worth pointing out is that technically, a ‘Commission’ was a royal appointment, so in a symbolic way, the Commissioners embodied sovereign power.

In terms of personnel, the earliest official appointments for the Commissioner’s Camp — appointments which continued through late October and into early November 1852 — were, in addition to the Resident Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner, their Clerk (J. LaTrobe); an Assistant Colonial Surgeon and Coroner (Dr Henry Greene); Police Magistrate (George Mitchell Harper) and his Clerk of the Bench (William Alexander Abbott); as well as Store-keeper (W. H. Agg). [3] There were also Mounted Police and Foot Police (also known as ‘Cadets’), headed by Lieutenant Templeton and Mr Mackay (rank of ‘Subaltern’) respectively. [4]

Resident Commissioner Smythe arrived on site on the Friday 19 November, 1852, where he found the camp in the process of being ‘judiciously pitched’. [5] Much of this was owed to the efforts of Assistant Commissioner Clow (who previously had been an Assistant Commissioner of Crown Lands, and Assistant Gold Commissioner at Bendigo Creek [6]) and his newly appointed tent-keeper William Murdoch. It seems that Clow had arrived practically in advance of almost every other official, as a letter in the Argus dated 1 November, reported,

Our Commissioner, J. M. Clow, Esq., has arrived without any force that I have yet heard of; but it matters little, they are not, or rather have not been required in our community; a more quiet, orderly, set of diggers are not to be found assembled in Australia. [7]

Having been appointed in mid-October [8], Clow had made some arrangements for the Camp in Melbourne [9]. His tent keeper and personal attendant, William Murdoch, arrived at Spring Creek on Monday 15 November, and immediately erected a large tent for the store. Murdoch then spent the whole of Tuesday pitching tents, setting the Commissioner’s tent to rights the following day, and witnessing ‘Most of the men employed in putting up tents’ on Thursday before Smythe’s arrival on Friday. [10]

The Camp itself was situated on a slight rise above Spring Creek (‘a rising hill covered with flowering shrubs and stringy bark trees’ [10b]) facing onto a track (possibly of indigenous making, and almost certainly used by David Reid’s shepherds, as a shepherd’s hut was located nearby [11]), that would become modern-day High Street. The encampment spanned roughly the frontage from where the current police station is sited, across Williams Street to the frontage of the old Beechworth Gaol. [12] The location in official correspondence was ‘May Day Hills’: the name given to the area by Governor LaTrobe, who had visited the infant diggings on May Day earlier that year. [13]

Author William Howitt described the established May Day Hills Camp when he visited about a month later:

The tents of the Commissioners stood in a row, on a rising ground on the other side of the creek, with a number of other tents for servants and officials behind them. The whole was enclosed with post and rails, and sentinels were on duty as in a military camp. The Commissioners’ tents, lined with blue cloth, and of a capacious size, looked comfortable and, to a degree, imposing. Mr. Smythe, Commissioner of Crown Lands for this district, as well as a gold commissioner, and Mr. Lieutenant Templeton of the mounted police, received us most cordially… They had a good packet of letters for us, which we soon returned to our tent to read. [14]

Other tents erected in the Camp included a Mess tent (where Protestant religious services were also held), and two Hospital Tents (the only tents besides the Commissioners’ tents which were lined). [15] By early December, there was also a flagstaff, where, as Murdoch recorded in his diary, the men ‘got the Union Jack hoisted on the camp which here waved for the first time and I warrant as gaily as ever” on the land of the brave and the free”.’ [16]

Diggers and Commissioners, Order and Disorder

It had been already noted (in the popular press at least) that prior to the arrival of the Commissioners and their police on the Ovens diggings, ‘a more quiet, orderly, set of diggers [were]… not to be found assembled in Australia’. As historian David Goodman leads us to understand, this proclamation of a naturally high degree of ‘order’ on the diggings was not mentioned casually, but rather, the idea of ‘how order could be maintained in a society in which all were rushing, madly, after their own fortunes,’ was one of the major cultural themes of the gold rush era (in both California and Victoria). Funnily enough, this frequently included the assertion that ones’ own countrymen possessed an innate instinct for creating an ordered society when compared to the other: Victorians perceived respect for British law and institutions, and deference to existing social and political hierarchies, as constituting ‘order’, in preference to the Californian tendency towards independent self-organisation and self-governance, which in turn Californians perceived as a more worthy form of ‘order’. [17] Whatever the case, when the Commissioners and their police finally arrived on Ovens diggings in November 1852, their presence would test the supposed natural order of these diggings.

Having arrived on Friday, by Saturday 20 November 1852, Smythe was writing his first report to the Colonial Secretary (which he would be called upon to do weekly, along with submitting license returns for the same period). Clearly he had been asked to decide upon arrival which buildings should be erected before winter, and he judged that only a ‘lock-up’ or ‘watch house’ was required, along with stables for about 30 horses. Smythe added that Clow estimated the population of diggers to be 1500, adding, ‘The diggers are spreading more over this Country, and a very rich spot has been opened up about one mile above the original Diggings [i.e.: possibly Madman’s Gully or Beeson’s Flat]; which His Excellency visited on the 1st May last and about four miles below the present Diggings [i.e.: Reid’s Creek].’ [18]

Smythe’s first report on that Saturday 20 November also revealed that internally, the administration of the Camp itself was not yet in order: The Police Magistrate had arrived on Wednesday, but in the absence of official paperwork, couldn’t be sworn in; the Doctor had arrived on Friday (the same day as Smythe), but as the medicines he had applied for had not yet arrived from Melbourne, he couldn’t begin to treat anyone. Mackay had also arrived, stating that he was to be Superintendent of the Foot Police, but there was no paperwork to back his claim. (Only upon further investigation by Smythe was he found to hold the lesser post of Subaltern). [19]

However, despite the internal disarray, Smythe was initially satisfied with the external order of the diggings. ‘I am happy to state,’ he wrote, ‘that good order prevails tho’ a number of bad characters are reported recognised as having been known at Bendigo.’ [20]

It all seemed promising enough. However, it only took until Monday (22 November), a mere three days after his arrival, that Smythe’s satisfaction switched to misgivings about the capacity of the Camp to enforce the rule of law. To the Colonial Secretary, he now wrote:

I find the police force at present stationed here quite inadequate for protection of life respectively in the want of their being called upon to act. Men in abundance could be hired here, in fact I am endeavouring to procure some – but they will be of little use with out arms, accoutrements and some sort of uniforms, however simple — The latter should at the same time be of the best quality – under these circumstances I beg to recommend that twenty men should be hired armed, clothed and accoutred in Melbourne and forwarded up on the command of a Sergeant. – These with the nine present on the ground and the additional Gold Police which I understand are on the road will for the present be sufficient. [21]

So what had happened that Monday after Smythe’s arrival to so rapidly change his opinion of the ‘orderliness’ of the diggings? The Reid’s Creek diggings had opened up earlier in the preceding week, so in purely geographical terms, the administrative problem had doubled almost overnight: just as one camp was being established at Spring Creek, a second camp was urgently needed four miles away at Reid’s Creek. [22] More importantly, the population of the diggings was growing at a rate of about hundred and twenty-five new diggers each day. [23] And now that the Commissioner’s camp was operational, the gold cadets had begun patrolling for licenses and had proved diligent in their efforts: the same Monday as Smythe sat down to compose his letter to request more police, ‘Twenty one diggers [had been] fined for want of licence[,] some paying others not. Perhaps for want of money but ultimately paying a £3 fine and taking a licence.’ [24] As many of the newly-arrived miners had slender financial means, the newly-arrived police force, with their increased license patrols, would have been a source of great discontent on the diggings. When Smythe wrote, I find the police force at present stationed here quite inadequate for protection of life, he meant protection of his own life, and the life of anyone attempting to collect license fees from angry and well-armed miners.

The level of discontent quickly came to a head. 12 more diggers were fined the very next day, two of whom were kept in custody, [25] and although we cannot say for certain under what conditions these miners were held, it was rumoured that they were chained to a tree. [26] This constituted too much of an affront to the miners who on Wednesday evening, held meeting attended by ‘nearly 800 diggers’, at which they discussed how to respond to their ill-treatment at the hands of the Commissioners and their police. [27] A reporter, writing for the Argus newspaper from the Royal Hotel in Albury, described the meeting:

The organ of this heterogeneos assembly was either a Yankee importation from California, or an Anglo-Australian, who had visited that part of the world. He recommended, in no measured language, the protection of all persons sought to be taken into custody by the police for an infraction of the law, and the repelling, if necessary, of force by force. [28]

In describing the meeting, the journalist clearly flagged the Californian influence on the diggings, which in the Australian popular press was equated with violence, gun-play and Republicanism. Simultaneously, the author acknowledged that the constituents of the diggings were heterogeneous — that is to say, diverse — presumably not only in their backgrounds but also in this context, political leanings. (However, rather than use the English word, the writer employed the Spanish word heterogeneos, just to further call the Californian influence into view.). [29] While the article was disparaging of Californian attitudes towards challenging authority — attitudes which had little respect for the law or established institutions — neither did this mean that its author sided with the Commissioners. They sided with the heterogeneos — that diverse and politically unrepresented group, the diggers.

The miner’s meeting would set the scene for the events of the following day (which I have recounted in the recently revised post Diggers Rise Up), which would be the first instance of civil unrest on the Ovens diggings, and which in turn helped forge new political expressions that were fundamental to the growth of Australian democracy — a subject matter which will have to be unravelled in future posts.

To read the basic facts of what happened the next day, try reading Diggers Rise Up, a precursor to the Eureka Stockade.

Notes

[1] Edward Ridpath, Journal, transcription of letters to his father, possibly in his own hand, 1850-53? [manuscript MS 8759], State Library of Victoria, Box 1012/4 [Box also includes his gold license from 3 August 1853], p.37

[2] William Murdoch, A Journey to Australia in 1852 and Peregrinations in that Land of Dirt and Gold, unpublished diary manuscript (digital form), held by the Robert O-Hara Burke Memorial Museum. That Clow raised his own police force (18 October, 1852: ‘he was obliged to raise his own men – that is mounted police and foot’), and that there were a lot of Scotch men appointed (15 November 1852).

[3] Appointment listed in: 1853 Victoria, Gold Fields: Return to Address, Mr Fawkner — 10th Dec 1852, Laid upon the Council Table by the Colonial Secretary, by command of his Excellency Lieutenant Governor… printed 27 Sept 1853, Victorian Parliamentary paper; and reported in Geelong Advertiser and Intelligencer, Sat 6 Nov, 1852, p.2 (drawn from The Government Gazette of Thursday (ie: 4th November 1852).

[4] These appointments are obvious from numerous correspondences and reportages.

[5] Public Records Office Victoria, Series VPRS 1189, Consignment P0000, Unit 83, document 52/8477.

[6] Goldfields: Return to Address, December 1852, op. cit.

[7] The Argus, 4 December 1852, p.5, from a letter dated 1 December, 1852.

[8] Goldfields: Return to Address, December 1852, op. cit.

[9] William Murdoch, op. cit., reports seeing Clow in Melbourne on the 23 October.

[10] William Murdoch, ibid., 18 November, 1852. [10b] William Murdoch, ibid., 15 November, 1852.

[11] David Reid, Reminiscences of David Reid : as given to J.C.H. Ogier (in Nov. 1905), who has set them down in the third person, 1906, p.54.

[12] Plan of the township of Beechworth, May Day Hills, Surveyor General’s Office, Melbourne, July 23rd 1855. (Map, held in State Library of Victoria).

[13] Smythe mentions La Trobe’s visit on May Day in official correspondence (Public Records Office Victoria Series VPRS 1189, Consignment P0000 Unit 83, 52/8477), and it is also reported in The Argus, Saturday, 8 May, 1852, p.4.

[14] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, Kilmore, Lowden, 1972, p.93-4 (contained in a letter from the Ovens Diggings, Spring Creek, Dec. 25th 1852).

[15] Letter to the Chief Commissioner of Police, Melbourne, from Inspector Price, Acting Inspector of Police in charge Ovens district, Head Quarters Ovens Police Camp, May Day Hills, 8 April 1853. This is contained in: Beechworth District (May Day Hill) 1853 & 1856, Inward Registered Correspondence, Series VPRS Series 00937/P0000 000028, Public Records Office, Victoria. (Apologies for the lack of precise document number to identify this letter in what is otherwise a very big box of letters.)

[16] William Murdoch, op. cit., 3 December 1852.

[17] David Goodman, Gold Seeking — Victoria and California in the 1850s, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1994, pp.64-65.

[18] Public Records Office Victoria, Series VPRS 1189, Consignment P0000, Unit 83, document 52/8477.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Public Records Office Victoria, Series VPRS 1189 Consignment P0000, Unit 83, document 52/82175.

[22] To give an idea of how fast the diggings were expanding, Edward Ridpath, who arrived on the Spring Creek diggings on 4 November 1852, said of the diggings at Spring Creek, ‘I must confess to be being much surprised at their general appearance on my arrival, that their operations were confined to a spot of ground about one mile in length, and about a hundred yards in breadth’. (Ridpath, op cit., p.8-9).

Within ten days, another digger, Ned Peters (A Gold Digger’s Diary, typed manuscript of his diary, edited by Les Blake, MS 11211, State Library of Victoria, p.26.) recorded in his diary that when he arrived on the Ovens diggings, Reid’s Creek had opened-up only the day before. He’d departed for the Ovens diggings from Bendigo on 1 November 1852, and says he took ‘a fortnight on the road’ to reach the Ovens diggings, which puts his arrival around Sunday 14 or Monday 15 November. This meant that the focus of the diggings began to shift to Reid’s Creek within the exact week as the establishment of the Commissioner’s Camp at Spring Creek. Such was the force of the shift that the party of Thomas Woolner (Diary of Thomas Woolner, National Library of Australia, MS 2939, 25 November, 1852), another gold-seeker, who arrived at the diggings the same day as Smythe (Friday 19 November 1852), went straight to Reid’s Creek rather than stop for the night at Spring Creek.

[23] By 10 December, a mere 21 days after Smythe had arrived, the population of Spring and Reid’s Creeks had grown from 1500 to 4000; 2500 were at Reid’s Creek, four miles from the Commissioner’s Camp. While Clow estimated 1500 people between the two diggings in mid-November, by the first week of December it had swelled to 1500 persons on on Spring Creek (which by then was being referred to as ‘the old diggings’), and a further 2500 at Reid’s Creek. (population figures contained in The Argus, ‘Scraps from the Ovens,’ Friday 10 December, 1852.)

[24] William Murdoch, op cit., 22 November 1852.

[25] William Murdoch, ibid., 24-25 November, 1852.

[26] Edward Ridpath alludes to police chaining people to trees (as cited earlier in this piece, op. cit., p.37), and this is backed up by a ‘rumour’ in The Argus, ‘Disturbances at the Diggings’, 1 December 1852, p.4.

[27] The Argus, ‘The Ovens Diggings. (From our special commissioner.) Royal Hotel, Albury, Nov. 28th,’ 3 December, 1852, p.4.

[28] ibid.

[29] ibid.

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What did the gold miners eat? (A quick follow-up).

05 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Bush Food, Gold rush, Gold rush food, Ovens diggings

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Native Raspberry, Rubus parvifolius, Small-leaf bramble

In an earlier post, What did the gold miners eat? (Part 1. Bush food in Beechworth), I mentioned that one of the wild foods of the area was the Pink-flowered Native Raspberry (aka Small Leaf Bramble) (Rubus parvifolius). I have it on authority that native raspberry still occurs in bush areas around north-east Victoria, including the Chiltern-Mount Pilot National Park — although it is probably often sprayed with herbicide, because it resembles the imported blackberry. Until this weekend, I hadn’t seen it growing anywhere, let alone tasted the berries.

Ripe native raspberries (Rubus parvifolius). Note that the leaf is much finer than the imported blackberry.

However, I’ve just returned from a weekend away in a remote hut on the Big River at Glen Wills, where I was finally able to taste ripe native raspberries, and I can report: Unlike the introduced raspberry, the berries are shiny, and quite bright red when ripe. They are smaller than the imported raspberries, but also sweeter, and with a more delicate flavour. As I was not in the Alpine National Park, I took some rootlings to cultivate at home in a tub.

A gold digger’s guide to attire from top to bottom

02 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Gold mining, Gold rush, Gold rush clothes, Gold rush firearms, Ovens diggings, Pre-Raphaelites

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In terms of dress, the gold diggers weren’t merely practical. Especially in the early days of the gold rushes of 1852-3, many diggers consciously cultivated a certain style, which was a reflection of the new society in which they lived.

Eugene von Guerard, I Have Got It! (1854) (State Library of Victoria)

Reader’s note: This blog post is divided into three sections. 1. What the diggers wore. 2. The deeper social meaning of their clothing and general appearance. 3. Some side-reflections on the consumption and ecological sustainability of clothing then compared to now.

Basic Digger’s Wardrobe

When I say ‘the digger’s wardrobe’, I mean ‘clothing’; for as Seweryn Korzelinski, who came to the Ovens diggings in January 1853, wrote, ‘There are no spare clothes, hence no need for a wardrobe.’ [1] I’m also referring specifically to men of non-Chinese background. [2]

It’s a relatively easy matter to learn about how gold diggers dressed. Artists S.T. Gill and Eugene von Guerard made detailed paintings, and you can see from their illustrations that the typical gold digger wore:
– a hat (usually a felt or ‘cabbage tree’ hat with a smallish brim, worn with a black ribbon for a hat band), or sometimes a soft cap;
– an under-shirt;
– an over-shirt or ‘smock’, commonly of ‘alpaca’ or serge fabric, with a closure on the front of 2 or 3 buttons at the neck;
– a coat (sometimes waterproof);
– a neck-kerchief (tied either around the neck or under the collar);
– heavy cotton ‘moleskin’ trousers, light canvas trousers, or woollen trousers (either with a straight button-up fly or button-up drop-down front; no external pockets or belt loops);
– a belt (leather or a piece of rope), or sometimes a waist sash;
– ankle-length lace-up leather boots, often worn with button-up gaiters held in place with ‘bowyangs’ (a string or cord tied around the calf over the trousers), or less commonly Indian rubber boots, or calf-length leather boots; and
– to complete the look — a clay pipe, some guns or a bowie knife.

Eugene von Guerard, sketch at ‘Blackhill, 21 February, 1854’. (State Library of Victoria)

There is only one item that is rarely illustrated, perhaps because the artists didn’t like to hide the faces of their subjects: a veil of gauzy material worn from the hat (nota bene historical reenactment people!). Visiting Beechworth in 1854, Mary Spencer wrote of the Ovens diggings, ‘We met many diggers, curiously attired; many wear veils, some brown or green, to protect their eyes from the glare of the sun and the dust and flies.’ [3]

Thomas Woolner — the Pre-Raphaelite artist who came to the Ovens diggings in November 1852 — further explained, ‘The day has been very warm and of course choking dusty: this is bad, but the greatest pest we have to withstand is the common domestic fly: these pernicious wretches torment the day from dawn to sundown and make it essential to wear a veil, but that afflicts me more than the pest brutes themselves, rending the senses smothered in closeness…’ [4]

A few other points worth noting:

Over-shirts were often in bright colours of blue, red, laterally striped, or sometimes checked. Under-shirts seem to have been horizontally striped. Wrote Mary Spencer of the miners at Spring Creek: ‘They wear a loose ‘blouse’ or ‘frock’; some blue, some red, as fancy dictates. The gentlemen seldom wear cloth, but a kind of alpaca.’ [5] ‘A kind of alpaca’ could have been a reference to woollen serge, or an actual alpaca or alpaca-blend fabric. Alpaca was very popular on the Californian gold diggings, probably because it is hardwearing, and is warmer and has greater wicking ability (i.e.: to evaporate moisture) compared to sheeps’ wool.

The ‘cabbage tree hat’ was a kind of finely woven straw-coloured hat made from the boiled, dried and bleached leaves of the Livistona australis, also known as the Cabbage-tree Palm. It is known as the first distinctively Australian headwear.

WashingOutAGoodProspect_Antoine_Fauchery

This image of diggers by Antoine Fauchery shows the basic clothing worn by gold diggers. Taken in 1858, the diggers here are probably less theatrical in their attire than those of the 1852 gold rush, when ‘new chums’ conspicuously dressed as ‘gold seekers’. (State Library of Victoria)

The social meaning of a digger’s attire

Simply listing what the gold diggers wore is really only half the story. As I mentioned in an earlier post ‘Loose air and swagger’ — Beards of the Beechworth Gold Rush, in the first flush of the Victorian gold rushes, diggers crafted their personal appearance in ways that went beyond the merely practical. Their clothing — at least by my conjecture — expressed a set of values that were particular to gold rush society: a robust social equality, independence, and freedom.

Seweryn Korzelinski, who came to Spring Creek in January 1853, paints an extraordinary picture of his experience of the Victorian gold diggings thus far: one in which everyone dressed in essentially the same manner, so that previous social status could not be readily discerned:

…this very large society comprises men from all parts of the world, all countries and religions, varying dispositions and education, all types of artisans, artists, literary men, priests, pastors and soldiers, sailors, wild tribesman with tattoo markings, and those deported for crimes — all mixed into one society, all dressed similarly, all forced to forget their previous habits, leanings, customs, manners and occupations. All forced to follow their new occupation and to live the monotonous lives of the miners.

As they dig shafts next to one another, their outward appearance does not signify their previous importance, worth or mental attainments. A colonel pulls up earth for a sailor; a lawyer wields not a pen but a spade; a priest lends a match to a Negro’s pipe; a doctor rests on the same heap of earth with a Chinaman; a man of letters is carries a bag of earth; many a baron or count has a drink with a Hindu, and all of them hirsute [i.e.: hairy], dusty and muddy, so that their own mothers would not be able to recognize them. Many a one would not, a short while before, bother to look at a fellow with whom he now works. He we are all joined by a common designation: “DIGGER”. Only various shades of skin colour and speech denote nationality and origin, but it is impossible to guess previous station in life or background. [6]

The socially-levelling effect of life on the diggings was notable, especially to British-born immigrants who had come from a society in which the social stratification was pronounced. Clearly, many diggers were self-aware of the physical ‘metamorphosis’ that they undertook on the diggings, and revelled in the sense of being ‘incognito’ rather than being seen as fitting into some predetermined social order.

A clay pipe of the type many gold diggers used, which was subsequently dug up beside the Stanley Athenaeum [shown to me by Friends of the Stanley Athenaeum]. ‘…if I walked into your house,’ wrote Englishman Edward Ridpath from the Ovens diggings, probably sometime in 1853, ’till I spoke, you would not know me, my hair, beard, and moustache are of eleven months growth, I wear a broad brimmed … hat, blue serge shirt, moleskin trousers, a pair of Indian rubber knee boots, and a belt with a bowie knife attached thereto, the incognito would be further aided by seeing a short black clay pipe in my mouth.’ [7]

The gold rushes usurped the social order in a number of ways, one being that if you were successful, it was neither because you were ‘born to rule’ nor because you were self-made (in the sense of having built a business or career); and equally, if you were unsuccessful, no one could say it was because you were lazy, feckless or irresponsible. Whether a digger was rich or poor could not be attributed either to social status nor personal merit; it was simply a matter of luck. This release from the bondage of crushing social stratification on one hand, and the overwhelming personal responsibility for one’s situation on the other, must have come as a great relief to many. That no one could readily discern where you stood on the social ladder by immediate appearances was a part of this liberation.

However, not everyone interpreted the outward appearance of the diggers as simply representing a new-found social equality (perhaps burgeoning, perhaps temporary — at the time, no one could be certain). Thomas Woolner wrote:

the people … mostly wear beards, carry firearms and are immensely independent: they dress something like the prints you have seen of the red French Republicans, much of that loose air and swagger. [8]

When Woolner described the diggers at the Spring and Reid’s Creek diggings as dressing something like the ‘red French Republicans’, he was referring to recent events: the French revolutionaries of 1848 who had overthrown King Louis Philippe to create the second French Republic. These were the kind of people who insisted on liberté, égalité, fraternité by the application of force.

As Woolner alludes, a part of the ‘loose air and swagger’ of the gold seekers came not merely from their clothes, or that they had broken free of the daily ritual of shaving, but from the fact that they were well-armed. Wrote William Howitt upon leaving Melbourne for the Spring Creek diggings, ‘On Wednesday, about noon, we got under way; and with such a show of big dogs, rifles, pistols, and bowie-knives as must have daunted the most heroic bushrangers.’ Although such weaponry had a practical side — Howitt felt it necessary to qualify, the ‘daunting’ of bushrangers — when people encountered the diggers en masse, their appearance smacked of revolutionary spirit. Even the beards were symbolic of a new social order, for they were worn by the type of men who no longer deigned to let the upper classes presume to be their betters: these men constituted their own ‘hairystocracy’. [9]

In their red and blue shirts, with their neck-kerchiefs and jaunty hats; firing guns into the night sky and lighting their pipes from whichever fire they pleased, the diggers were dusty and dirty… but the one thing they were not, was drab.

A side note on clothing and ecological sustainability

In 1852, clothing was probably cheaper than ever before, due largely to the Industrial Revolution. Since the turn of the century, more and more fabrics were being made on ‘power looms’, rather than being hand woven. These new looms could be used by unskilled labourers, so the wages for skilled weavers plummeted. By the 1850s there were 3/4 million power looms in Britain.

Two quick historical asides:

At the time when power looms were being introduced, a group of English textile workers, aggrieved at the destruction of their livelihoods, protested the fact by smashing these looms and burning textiles factories. They became known as the ‘Luddites’ (a term we still use today — mistakenly — to refer to someone who rejects new technologies, rather than someone protesting their job being automated). The Luddite rebellion (which lasted from 1811 to 1816) was eventually quelled, especially after a show trial saw the instigators sentenced to either execution, or transportation to Australia.
These troubles of the Industrial Revolution never reached the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, where on the island of Harris and Lewis (two names; one island), the crofters continued to weave a woollen fabric called ‘tweed’ on pedal-powered looms in their own homes, as they continue to do today. Yes — Harris tweed costs a bit more than other fabrics, but it is still handmade in someone’s house!

Back to the 1850s. Despite the increasingly industrial nature of its production, clothing on the gold diggings was far more sustainable than today. All the materials used were natural plant fibres and gums (linen, cotton, rubber), animal fibres (sheeps’ wool, alpaca, silk), fur (mainly possum skin) and leather. Some fabrics were especially long-lasting and hardwearing, because of their long fibres; in particular fabric made from hemp or flax (linseed), such as canvas. All were readily biodegradable when discarded. Obviously, there were no synthetic polyesters, nylons or polar fleeces manufactured from non-renewable petroleum derivatives.

Quite unlike today’s throw-away fashion, people on the gold diggings mended their clothes. Although there were women on the diggings who charged men for the privilege of having their clothes washed and mended for them (‘a great many bring their wives and children with them, as the former are very useful in washing and cooking, they wash other men’s clothes for which they demand 12/- per doz’ [10]), some men mended clothes themselves. American digger Gordon Tucker was not alone when he wrote in his diary on Sunday 12 February, 1854, ‘Mending shirts all day’ [11]; for miners weren’t permitted to dig on a Sunday and aside from religious observance there was little else to do but cook, chop wood, and clean and mend clothes [12]. Washing clothing by hand was, of course, the only option, but the act of hand-washing and air-drying gave those clothes greater longevity that what our commonly machine-washed and dried clothes have today. We could all learn a little, and waste less, from their example.

Notes

[1] Seweryn Korzelinski, Memoirs of gold-digging in Australia, translated and edited by Stanley Robe, foreword and notes by Lloyd Robson, University of Queensland Press, 1979, p.59.
[2] Chinese miners wore quite different attire, but I am yet to find any reference to a Chinese gold seeker on the Ovens diggings during the actual ‘rush’ of 1852-3. It seems they came later, and in considerable numbers, once the rush had subsided. I’m also consciously not addressing the issue of what women wore.
[3] Mary Spencer, Aunt Spencer’s Diary (1854): A Visit to Bontharambo and the North-east Victorian Goldfields, Neptune Press, Newtown, 1981, p.58.
[4] Thomas Woolner, in Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner: His Life in Letters, Chapman and Hall, London, 1917, p.21.
[5] Mary Spencer, op cit.
[6] Seweryn Korzelinski, op cit., p.55-6.
[7] Edward Ridpath, Journal of Edward Ridpath, and transcription of letters to his father, possibly in his own hand, 1850-53, MS 8759 State Library of Victoria, Box 1012/4. Also includes his gold license from 3 August 1853, signed by commissioner Hood. (Hood arrived between the 22 and 26 February 1853, [see Argus 1 March]). Second volume of two, p.49.
[8] Thomas Woolner, op cit., p.18.
[9] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, 1855, opening paragraph of Chapter V.
[10] Ridpath, op. cit., p.28
[11] Gordon Tucker, Journal, 1853 Apr. 12-1857 June 6. Manuscript 10649, State Library of Victoria. This entry: Sunday, 12 February, 1854.
[12] Edward Ridpath, op cit. p.48.

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A gold rush swag

12 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Californian gold rush, Gold rush, Gold rush clothes, Gold rush food, Gold rush swag, Ovens diggings, Spring Creek diggings, Uncategorized

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You’ve heard the term ‘swag’ — the minimalist belongings that a gold seeker carried with him to the diggings. But what was in it, how much did it weigh, and what indigenous kit was included?

Eugene von Guérard, Aborigines met on the road to the diggings, 1854 (image/collection: Geelong Art Gallery). Aboriginal people trading possum skin cloaks with a gold seeker, who has laid down his swag — comprising a bed-roll, billy and tools.

Numerous guides of the time — the Lonely Planets of their day — advised prospective gold seekers as to what to take to the diggings in their ‘swag’ or ‘traps’ (trappings). The most basic advice reflected the experience of the tens of thousands of ‘miner ’49s’ who had travelled overland from the East coast of America to the Californian goldrush only a couple of years before, where the trail became littered with unnecessary cast-offs. The key advice was this: travel light.

James Bonwick (in Notes of a gold digger and gold diggers’ guide, 1852) recommended diggers only to take what they could carry:

• hard-wearing clothes
• strong boots
• waterproof coat and trousers of oilskin
• a roll of canvas ‘for your future home’
• good jacket for Sundays
• pick, shovel and panning dish
• a cradle ‘may be carried in parts without much trouble’. (You can read about the cradle in this earlier post, Cradling for Gold in the Woolshed Valley).

William Williams, a gold digger who came to the Ovens diggings, gives us an idea of how much this kit actually weighed: ‘We started from the McIvor [i.e.: Heathcote, central Victoria] … carrying about sixty pounds weight including Grub, Blankets, Tin Dishes, Pick and Shovels, etc, this being our first attempt at carrying a ‘swag’ as it is termed in the colonies…’ [1] In metric measure, this was roughly 27 kilograms.

Unlike Bonwick, Williams also mentioned ‘grub’, the key components of which were sugar, tea, flour and salt (fresh food was generally picked up en route), which of course necessitated equipment for cooking and eating. Mrs Campbell, who lived at the Commissioner’s camp on the Spring Creek diggings (May Day Hills) in 1853, offered an overview of what a gold seeker might carry with them, including cooking implements: ‘As the digger is a migratory animal, he contents himself with few of the comforts or even necessaries of life. A small unlined tent, or rough bark hut, serves for his dwelling, while his furniture consists of a couple of blankets, which he spreads on the ground, a kettle, an iron pot, a pannikin [i.e.: tin mug] and tin plate, and knife and fork.’ [2]

William Williams, however, had no need of an iron pot or kettle, because he had a piece of equipment that would become synonymous with the swag — the ‘billy’. ‘[G]ot up before sunrise’ he wrote, ‘— boiled the “Billy” (a small tin pail that is used for boiling water for tea, or boiling a bit of mutton, or boiling a shirt, etc. The “billy” is an indispensable companion on a journey (it is preferred to a kettle or pot because it is so much lighter) boiled the “billy”, ate our bit of Damper, etc and started…’

Just as the billy had a multitude of uses, the gold panning dish did double-duty as a bowl in which to mix dough for bread or damper, and the neck-kerchief may have even doubled as a pudding cloth (not to mention arm sling or wound dressing). However, those travelling and working as a team often had a camp oven between them — the workhorse of the goldfield’s kitchen. Some were designed to hang above a fire, but many had three legs so that they could sit in a fire with coals placed underneath. Many also had a flat top with a lip, which could hold coals on top to create all-round heat.

A camp oven, also known as a dutch oven. (Image: Digrpat, via wikimedia commons).

Another essential bit of kit — so essential as to be taken for granted and therefore was never mentioned except in advertisements, was the means to light a fire. Diggers routinely lit their pipes and cooking fires from other peoples’ fires, but when that opportunity didn’t present itself they had to resort to their tinderbox, or use some congreve lucifers — early friction matches tipped with phosphorous, which were only just beginning to replace tinderboxes during the 1850s.

As for accommodation, many gold seekers en route to the diggings expected to sleep out under the trees, or under a wagon if they were travelling alongside one. On the diggings, those who did not have tents adopted an indigenous solution: the mia mia.

En route to the diggings, gold seekers passed through several indigenous countries, and were able to glimpse the ways of life of various Aboriginal clans. This included their use of temporary shelters made of bark, branches, leaves and grass.

While visiting relatives at Bontharambo near Wangaratta, English woman Mary Spencer explained as best she could: ‘I cannot describe the bush. It means such an extent of country covered with trees; some large, some small, no sign of human habitation except here and there a few camps or tents; some inhabited by blacks, who construct their huts by placing poles in position and covering them with the outer bark of the trees.’ [3]

Unknown photographer, circa 1907-1915 (Image: Art Gallery of NSW, accession #520.2014)

The gold seekers quickly adopted the term ‘mia mia’ for such shelters — the word coming from the Wathaurong (Wadawurrung) people who lived near present day Geelong. Some diggers favoured mia mias over tents, no doubt as they were free, and could be easily rearranged depending on wind direction.

Thus William Howitt noted the adoption of indigenous dwellings by miners on the Spring Creek diggings in early 1853: ‘…there are huts of mingled boughs and sheets of bark; and here and there simple mimies, in imitation of the mimi of the natives; that is — just a few boughs leaned against a pole, supported on a couple of forked sticks, and a quantity of gum-tree leaves for a bed.’ [4]

And then there was the bedding. Assembling his items of bedding was one of the final tasks artist Thomas Woolner undertook before heading off to the Spring Creek diggings in the Spring of 1852: ‘After breakfast I went into the cottage to arrange my traps: my bed will consist of a piece of green baize [a coarse wooden fabric], one blanket and a waterproof coat to place on the ground as protection against the damp….’ [5] Some miners even carried Indian rubber blankets against the damp, particularly as exposure to damp ground was thought to bring about rheumatism.

In the height of summer, it wasn’t necessary to carry more than one or two blankets, but the gold seekers quickly opted for something superior to wool blankets — in fact, an option so superior that they immediately became a feature of gold fields life: the possum skin cloak.

Possum skin cloaks (the above is a reproduction of one that came from Echuca in 1850). [Photo: National Museum of Australia]. Thankfully many talented artists are making these again.

Often referred to as a ‘rug’ by gold seekers, possum skin cloaks were traditionally worn by Aboriginal peoples throughout south-eastern of Australia. They were (and continue to be) made from brush-tailed possum pelts (as many as 60 or 80), trimmed and sewn together with kangaroo sinew. Traditionally, a person would be given one as a child, and the cloak would be added to as a person grew. [6] They were decorated with patterns imbued with significant cultural and spiritual meaning, and there was much importance around the making of the cloaks and their wearing. Some were handed down through generations as heirlooms.

From the perspective of a gold seeker, a really top-notch ‘opossum rug’ rubbed with a protective and decorative layer of fat and ochre, was a significant bit of kit because it was waterproof, said to be as warm as a half dozen blankets, and exceptionally light to carry (in fact, it is difficult to describe how surprisingly light and soft they are). Therefore, the indigenous art of making possum skin cloaks was widely recognised among the gold diggers, and the cloaks themselves were a highly valued inter-cultural trade item. [7]

The comfort that possum skin cloaks offered travellers in the bush can be felt in this vignette written by Phillip Johnson as he was travelling to the Ovens diggings:

‘In the course of a few hours I fell across a couple of bullock drivers who were quietly reposing on their opossum cloaks, and enjoying that cheapest and at the same time the most consoling luxury in the bush, their pipes; in the midst of a wilderness they were at ease & evidently at home..’ [8]

And again, the splendid luxury of a possum skin cloak is almost palpable, when reading this description by George Wathen:

‘I was soon asleep on the ground, by the fire, under an overbowering banksia, wrapped in the warm folds of my opossum rug. For a night bivouac, there is nothing comparable to the opossum-rug.…’ [9]

Many of us are still familiar with, if not users of a few of the items in a gold rush era-swag: the billy and the camp oven especially. But sadly too few of us are familiar with the possum skin cloak. You can see them in on display in Albury Library Museum encased in a glass vitrine, and yet you will still not gain a real sense of why this is a truly magnificent and luxurious a piece of kit. However, there is one on display in the Falls Creek Museum that you can actually touch (as I did last Friday), and I encourage you to seek it out.

Notes

[1] William Williams, ‘Notes of a Journey from the McIvor to the Ovens River’, MS8436, State Library of Victoria, no date, p.1.
[2] Mrs A. Campbell, Rough and smooth, or, Ho! for an Australian gold field, Hunter, Rose & Co., Quebec, 1865, p.97.
And as an aside, for those unfamiliar with the term, a ‘pannikin’ is a tin camping mug — the word being derived from the Flemish ‘cannikin’ being the diminutive of ‘can’. So just as a small can was a ‘cannikin’, a small pan became a ‘pannikin’.
[3] Mary Spencer, Aunt Spencer’s Diary (1854): A Visit to Bontharambo and the North-east Victorian Goldfields, Neptune Press, Newtown, 1981, p.40.
[4] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, Sydney University Press facsimile edition of an 1855 imprint, 1972, p.252.
[5] Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner: His Life in Letters, Chapman and Hall, London, 1917, p.19.
[6] This piece of information I recently learned from Wiradjuri woman Tammy Campbell.
[7] Fred Cahir, ‘Dallong – Possum Skin Rugs, A Study of an Inter-Cultural Trade Item in Victoria,’ The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria, issue no. 4, 2005.
[8] Phillip Johnson, Journal 3, Document 5, 1852, National Library of Australia, MS.7627, p.4.
[9] Wathen, The Golden Colony, or Victoria in 1854: With Remarks on the Geology of the Australian Gold Fields, p.131

Exile on High Street

06 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Beechworth, Gold rush, Ovens diggings

≈ 3 Comments

High Street in Beechworth has been a lot of things, but was it really ever Beechworth’s ‘main street’?

I have a ‘thing’ about High Street. For one, I live on it. For another, it’s the most historically significant street in Beechworth, seconded only by Buckland Gap Road. Some joke it has a ‘Paris end’ and a ‘Bohemian end’. A lot of people will wax lyrical about it having been ‘Beechworth’s original main street’ — but for a nit-picking historian such as myself, this is a vast oversimplification.

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Survey of Beechworth, lithographed from the original 1853 map in 1855. (State Library Victoria)

High Street runs along the high side of Spring Creek, and it was the main thoroughfare for the gold diggings during the gold rush. I suspect that High Street was a originally a shepherd’s track, as there was a shepherd’s hut on the Creek at the time gold was first discovered there in the Autumn of 1852. [1] More over, that shepherd’s track might well have overlain a well-trodden indigenous track. It wasn’t unusual for roads that were created before formal surveys to follow ancient Aboriginal pathways; it’s well-known, for example, that major thoroughfares like George and Pitt Streets in Sydney follow the footpaths created by the First Australians. [2]

In any case, High Street was a track along the high bank of the creek which lead to the Commissioner’s Camp: a make-shift government administrative centre which was erected in late October 1852. At the time, it was not a street so much as an ill-defined path: ‘and so close were the [miners’] holes to each other,’ explained Mrs Campbell who arrived in mid-1853, ‘that there was hardly room for our cart to pass between them, obliging us to make a constantly zig-zag track.’ [3]

The Commissioner’s Camp at Beechworth, by Edward LaTrobe Bateman (drawn around late December 1852). The path that became High Street can be seen just in front of the tents. The vantage-point for this view is best imagined as being from the Creek between current day Tanswell and Billson Streets, looking north.

In January 1853, at the peak of the gold rush, The Argus reported that ‘The site of a new township has been decided on in this neighbourhood, it will occupy the space on the side of Spring Creek between the upper waterfall and the Commissioner’s Camp.’ [4] In March, a deputation of storekeepers (Messrs C. Williams, C. Haskell, A. Palmer, and R. Mellish), who were keen to erect ‘winter stores’ on marked allotments before the cold weather set in, were assured by Chief Commissioner Smythe that they could do so as soon as allotments were marked out, and that the value of their improvements when the land was sold would be secure. [5]

When the town was finally surveyed in June, High Street appeared as just an idea of a street modelled on the reality of the existing path that followed the Creek (see illustration above). The path divided up at the north-east end, to head north to the Reid’s Creek diggings (and Albury), and south to Stanley, with a four-way junction roughly where Junction Road is today (see illustration below). Of course, you can try taking this same path to Stanley today (by heading down Peach Drive), but these days you’d have to swim the first leg across Lake Sambell, where on the opposite bank you will find what is likely a continuation of the original track in the form of Lower Stanley Road.

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A section of a map of Beechworth in 1856. There’s a bit of a mess of pathways splitting around where Junction Road runs across High Street into Peach Drive today.

In any case, from the outset, Ford Street was the street clearly laid out with allotments on both sides, and made wide enough for a horse and cart to make a ‘U-turn’. In comparison, High Street was left as a track and only had allotments on the northern side, with the creek-side left unsurveyed. It could be argued that of those first ten allotments on High Street, Williams, Palmer and Mellish bought one each, suggesting that they may have actually erected their first stores along High Street. If this was the case, they would have quickly found themselves in exile at what was essentially a grubby part pf town — overlooking a conglomerate of make-shift tents and the diggings themselves. Williams and Palmer had the foresight to hedge their bets by buying land in Ford Street, which presented a more formal aspect. So if ever High Street took precedence as a business district, it was an incredibly short-lived phenomena.

The Ovens Directory of 1857 [6] tells us that by this time, High Street had two pubs, two general merchants (of which Richard Mellish remained one), two wholesale wine and spirit merchants, a tinware shop, a blacksmith, butcher, bootmaker, surgeon, chemist, a solicitor (Henry Elmes), a restaurant, Catherine Hughes’ ‘refreshments’ (no, that is not a euphemism), and even something for the hipsters of yesteryear — local coffee roasters, which all makes it sound as if High Street could have been the main street…. until you compare it with Ford Street at the same time.

In 1857, Ford Street had at least twice as many pubs, nine general merchants, three restaurants, Ackley and Rochlitz: Daguerrean Artists (photographers), at least two drapers, five grocers, a butcher, bookseller and stationer, medical doctor, chemist, tobacconist, bootmaker, two watchmakers, three barbers, and assorted builders, saddliers, ironmongers, blacksmiths, a coach agent, tent maker, and three wholesale wine & spirit merchants! And if one needed any more proof that Ford Street was the big end of town, it was also the location of the Bank of Victoria and Bank NSW. [7]

I’d argue that Ford Street is and always has been the main street of Beechworth — the street designated as the centre of commerce, right from the moment that the town of Beechworth came into existence. By comparison, High Street is merely a path — but what a path! Not only does it pre-date the town of Beechworth, it may even pre-date European settlement. Either way, it is the only true landscape relic of the gold rush of 1852-3 that we have left; a path made by the people, for the people.

Notes

[1] David Reid, Reminiscences of David Reid : as given to J.C.H. Ogier (in Nov. 1905), who has set them down in the third person, 1906, p.54.
[2] Shannon Foster, D’harawal Saltwater Knowledge Keeper, ‘The Aboriginal science behind Sydney’s nightmare traffic’, http://sydney.edu.au/news/science/397.html?newsstoryid=15394
[3] Mrs Campbell, Rough and smooth, or, Ho! for an Australian gold field, Hunter, Rose & Co., Quebec, 1865, [78]
[4] The Argus, 18 January 1853 [from a letter dated 1 January]
[5] The Argus, 22 March, 1853.
[6] The Ovens directory for the year 1857 : the constitution, and general gold fields acts of the colony : the local court rules for the Beechworth and Yachandandah districts : and a sketch of the Ovens gold fields, Printed and published by Warren and Company, Beechworth, 1857.
[7] ibid.

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How to write a letter, gold rush style

28 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Cross-writing letters, Gold rush, Ovens diggings, Postal services, Spring Creek diggings, Wangaratta post office, Wax seals and wafers for letters

≈ 7 Comments

It was the forerunner of the internet we have today: The postal network that started in Britain in 1840 with the issue of a uniform stamp known as the ‘Penny Black’ made communicating over great distances affordable for ordinary people.

Although education was not yet compulsory or free in Britain, it seems that many of the gold seekers who came to the Victorian gold fields could read and write. As the letter was the only means of communication with anyone at a distance, the art of being able to write a good letter held considerable importance.

This rather long post concerns how a letter was created, written and posted in 1852. It is broken down into sections.

Step 1: Choose your paper

Anyone who was keen on writing or drawing would carry with them a portfolio or portefeuille (a leather wallet with writing paper); and some people even had a ‘laptop’ — the original ‘laptop’ being a laptop desk (otherwise known as a ‘writing slope’), which would contain ink wells, writing implements and stationary.

Interior view of antique wooden lap-top desk. The small compartments would have held pens, an inkwell, and other writing equipment, while a compartment under the desk top held paper.

The 1850s was a period in which paper production was only just switching from using pulped linen or cotton rags (which is long-lasting and highly stable), and ‘Manila’ type materials (hemp, jute, flax), to wood pulp. Paper was finally being machine-made, and as such was becoming more affordable.

There were two types of paper commonly available: the ribbed laid paper, which was made using a centuries-old process; which was being supplanted by the more uniform wove paper that came in ‘fine’ and ‘superfine’ grades. Vellum — a parchment made from calf skin — was also still readily available in the mid-1850s.

A lot of paper was Foolscap folio size (commonly contracted to ‘foolscap’ or ‘folio’) — roughly 8×13 inches. This was the traditional paper size used in Europe and the British Commonwealth before the adoption of the shorter A4 as the international standard. However, there was also writing paper and note paper of smaller sizes.

There was an etiquette surrounding the selection of paper: its quality had to be in keeping with the person, the age, the gender, and the circumstances of the correspondents. In particular, messages of mourning were written on paper with a black border, and the width of the border had to correspond somewhat to the nearness of the relationship and the recentness of the bereavement; hence you would see advertised: ‘Mourning envelopes, of the best cream laid and satin papers, of all widths of border’.

Step 2: Assemble your writing implements

The writing was commonly done using a dip pen with a steel nib (which had been mass produced since 1822), which was dipped into an ink well. (Quill pens [made from feathers], which had been in decline since the 1820s, were still available, although these had to be constantly sharpened with a quill knife [the process was known as ‘dressing’].) The ink was usually black, although dark brown and navy blue were also used. The writing was ‘running’ (cursive), because this style resulted in less ink blots. To prevent smudges, excess ink was blotted (soaked-up) using blotting paper — absorbent paper used to soak up excess ink, which only became common place in the 1840s or 1850s replacing a powder (which did the same job by way of scattering it on the writing and blowing it off), known as ‘pounce’.

Grey lead pencils were also in use, but seem not to have been used for formal correspondence. Erasers, made from natural ‘Indian rubber’, had only become commonplace in the mid-1840s. Pencil sharpeners were invented in 1847, and being such a new device were not yet commonplace in 1852.

Step 3: Fold writing paper into its own envelope

In the 1850s, envelopes were in use, particularly among the upper classes. However, many people simply folded their writing paper to make its own envelope.

One way to make the letter into its own envelope (note: these measurements are designed for a modern A4 sized sheet of paper):
1. Holding the page length-ways (ie: landscape), and fold the two side edges vertically inwards so that the two edges just touch each other.  2. Fold the letter horizontally upwards about 7.5cm from the bottom of the page.  3. Fold the top of the letter horizontally downwards about 3.5cm from the top of the page. 4. Flip over and address the letter on the front. Unfold the paper and write your letter.  5. Refold, tucking the top fold into the bottom fold of the letter to form a self-made envelope measuring around 14.5cm by 9.5cm.  5. Seal the join with wax (red, or black for mourning condolences) or a wafer.

Letter to Gold Fields Commissioner Smythe on the Spring Creek diggings, 1853. Note the wax seal and how the paper has been folded to make its own envelope.

Step 4: Write your letter

Letters were written in cursive script, often with the lines very close together to conserve paper. Sometimes, people also wrote crossways across the initial writing, but only in limited circumstances (see note below).

What to write about, and how to write it

If you want to write like a gold digger, don’t worry too much about punctuation, and misspell the occasional word. Do not ever say anything vulgar, and if you must refer to bodily functions, excreta, or sexual matters, these can be only alluded to in an oblique fashion.

Address — Start by writing the date and location (ie: the name of your town or diggings) — in the upper right hand corner.

The salutation — Letters usually started with ‘My dear such-and-such’ and used the person’s relationship (as in ‘My dear father’) or their surname (as in ‘My dear Brown’). First names were rarely used in a salutation; and only then, when the relationship was a close one. When using a first name, it was still often used often in conjunction with the addressee’s relationship to the addressor, e.g.: ‘My dear brother Joseph,’

Subject matter — In gold fields letters and journals, common underlying themes included:
Opposites — the sense that things in Australia were backwards, upturned or inverted (for example, the swans in Australia were black instead of white, and trees shed their bark instead of their leaves; Australia was a place where working class people became suddenly rich while rich people struggled for lack of servants);
Personal transformations — particularly in terms of personal appearance;
Descriptions of wildlife and scenery — the scenery was quite often described in Arcadian terms; describing Australia’s weird animals and dangerous snakes and insects was popular;
Descriptions of the goldfields, which by contrast with the scenery was described in quite dystopian terms (for example, as looking like ‘a graveyard where all the graves had been dug up’);
The trials and tribulations of travelling on the road by wagon, on horseback, or on foot; and finally,
How little gold you are winning (which was far more usual than talking about how well you are doing — although this was also a subject if it was indeed the case).

‘Selfies’ — If you had any artistic ability at all, you might include a sketch of yourself or your current living arrangements in a letter.

The ‘complimentary close’ — This was used to finish the letter before signing it. It is the phrase of courtesy, respect, or endearment used at the end of a letter. As in the salutation, the particular words used varied according to circumstance. Examples include:

We remain
Your affectionate sons,

I have the honor to be
Sir
your obedient servant,

Yours affectionately,

Your affectionate friend,

Yours faithfully,

Notes on expectations about readership

While we tend these days to equate letters with being a private message, goldfields letters were often intended as a broadcast social media (ie: to be read aloud to family and friends). Some letters even became the basis for travel narratives (most famously, in William Howitt’s Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria).

Many Victorian-era letter writing guides cautioned that once they were written, anyone could read your letters and thereby make inferences about you; so that even if those with whom you corresponded assured you that they burnt your letters, this may not in fact be the case. Therefore, when you sit to write your letter, consider the fact that its eventual readership is ultimately beyond your control. This is quite good advice for today.

A common convention when writing of other people with whom one was not closely acquainted was to identify them only by an initial (e.g.: ‘I was talking with Mr G.’) to preserve their anonymity.

A note on cross-writing letters

Back in the early 19th century when postage charges were ridiculously expensive, and were charged per sheet, letter-writers saved money with a simple technique called cross-hatching. The process went something like this: the correspondent composed the letter using closely written text to fit as much in as possible, then turned the paper 90 degrees and continued writing across the page perpendicularly. This method produced what was called a ‘crossed letter’.

Crossed writing only came into use when paper was dear and postage was high, but as the prices of both dropped, cross-writing was considered to be disrespectful: it was hard to read, and showed you didn’t care enough about the person to whom you were writing to use a second sheet of paper. During the gold rushes, only the last paragraph was crossed, and even then, only if you had just a little more to write, if at all.

A cross-written letter from the early 19th century.

Step 5: Seal the envelope

Envelopes were sealed using either sealing wax or wafers. Sealing wax was used especially in cases of formal correspondence and came in common red, black and fancy colours. At this point in time, the etiquette surrounding sealing wax was quite simple: Red was for daily use. Black was usually reserved for letters of mourning, and only ladies could use fancy colours. Large wax seals were considered to be in poor taste. Wafers were also used; particularly in cases of less formal correspondence. Wafers were a precursor of the ‘sticker’. They were composed of wheat flour made into a thin paste, which was dried and stamped into shapes. Like the wax seal, they came in a variety of colours, and it was also possible to emboss a pattern onto them. Wafers had to be moistened to make them adhere.

When you began to melt your wax, rest your elbow on the table in order to keep your hand steady. Take the stick of wax between your thumb and finger, and hold it above the flame so that it barely touches. Turn the stick around until softened on all sides. Next, insert a little of the melted wax under the turn-over part of the letter, just where the seal is to come. This would give more stability to your seal than if it was entirely depended on the outside seal.

For the outside seal, begin at the outer edge of the area where the seal is supposed to go. Move the wax in a circle which must gradually diminish until it terminates at the centre. Using the end of the wax stick (the non-wicked side if you’re using a wicked stick), stir and shape the wax puddle to bring out any air bubbles, give it a uniform thickness, and mould it into the shape and size you desire.

If you have a seal to press into the wax, create a moisture barrier on it first. If you don’t create a moisture barrier on the seal before you press it into the wax, the hot wax can get stuck on the seal. So breathe, lick, or dab the seal on a moistened sponge, before plunging it into the wax. Put the seal exactly to the middle of the soft wax. Press it down hard, but do not move it in a circle, then lift it straight up.

Step 6: Post your letter

The recent history of postage in 1852

In the nineteenth century, letter writing was the only way to communicate with those living at a distance (until the advent of the development of the international telegraph network). Early in the century, postage in the United Kingdom had been expensive, being charged on the basis of how many sheets of paper were being sent (estimated by holding the letter up to candlelight), with the postage being incumbent on the receiver to pay.

After public agitation for reform, the ‘Uniform Penny Post’ was introduced in 1840. The Penny Post mandated a uniform, affordable rate for postage: a letter weighing up to half an ounce could travel anywhere in the United Kingdom for only a penny. The first stamp, with Queen Victoria’s profile — known as the ‘Penny Black’ — was released. A postal ‘network’ was established, becoming the forerunner of modern communication technologies.

These changes transformed the post into a civic service which was affordable to all social classes, and letters grew in popularity as a means of communication for both business and personal communication. The stamp grew in popularity and quickly became a model for other nations including the United States, which issued its first postage stamps in 1847.

On the gold fields, letters assumed huge importance as they were the sole means of communicating with family and loved-ones who were generally half a world away. Due to advances in the postal system elsewhere, most diggers arrived on the Spring and Reid’s Creek diggings with an expectation of access to an affordable and efficient postal service. In reality, they were met with a notoriously unreliable post service, and this became a great source of ‘annoyance’.

Posting a letter during the Ovens gold rush, 1852-53

Initially, the nearest Post Office to the Spring and Reid’s Creek diggings was in Wangaratta, 22 miles (36 km) away. Letters were carried from the diggings by The Argus Express newspaper couriers to Wangaratta to be dealt with by its much-despised post-master, Mr Peacock. Wrote The Argus in January 1853,

‘Another nuisance, that of the Post Office, is at present attracting attention. Loud, repeated, and unanimous are the complaints of the residents on the gold fields against the inefficiency, incivility, and negligence of the Wangaratta postmaster.’

The Argus continued, ‘yesterday morning a memorial on the subject signed by 324 of the storekeepers, gold buyers, and diggers of the Ovens, was presented to Mr Resident Commissioner Smythe, complaining of the conduct of Mr Peacock, the postmaster. … letters received from that Post office were not stamped; and that, consequently, there is no means of ascertaining how long they have been in the Wangaratta office. Mr Smythe in reply, informed them, that he had already had occasion to report the Postmaster to the Posmaster-General… He also assured them, that he would forward the memorial with his endorsement, thereon, and that he expected their complaints would be immediately addressed.’  [1]

A part of Commissioner Smythe’s response to the ‘eccentricities of the Wangaratta Post Office’, was to open ‘A Government Post Office… at the head quarters camp, May Day Hills; [with] one of the Commissioners’ clerks … acting as Postmaster till that functionary arrives.’ [2]

A new mail contractor was organised to come up from Melbourne and commenced carrying the mail between Wangaratta and the Camp, at which point the Argus Express discontinued carrying letters. However, within two weeks ‘no mail came in; and a message, brought, by the Argus Express informed the crowd assembled for their letters, that, by orders from Melbourne, all letters for the diggings were detained at Wangaratta, and that the mail had ceased running for the present.’ [3]

The Argus correspondent on the digging, who wrote under the banner ‘Scraps from the Ovens’, captured the outrage of the diggers: ‘A nice state of things this! A Government Post Office opened here, then closed, after an existence of a fortnight, and 8000 diggers told to go to Wangaratta (twenty-eight miles), if they want their letters!’ [4]

The Argus Express resumed carrying letters to and from Wangaratta, although with limited success as the post-master there processed and handed letters over in limited number. The post-master was fined £10 in a public police court, under the Postage Act, for neglect of duty as a post-master. Not only did he not pay his fine but continued to serve as post master, and in the face of mounting complaints which were received without response, the Post-Master General continued to do nothing. [5]

‘Surely the newly-appointed Inspector of Country Post Offices might deign to visit the Ovens… As for the Postmaster-General I despair of his ever being brought to a correct sense of his duty, or of his ever paying proper attention to complaints unless proceeding from official sources. The complaints of the public, and especially of dirty diggers, are far beneath his notice,’ wrote the correspondent. [6]

On 1 March, The Argus correspondent lamented that, ‘The Post-office nuisance is still felt in full force, no Inspector of Nuisances has yet visited the Ovens. Every post-day here witnesses a crowd of applicants around the Argus offices for letters, for which their written orders have been sent by the driver of the Argus Express to Wangaratta. Occasionally, a digger or storekeeper receives three or four letters together, which have lain as many weeks at Wangaratta; but, in general, nine-tenths of the applicants go away unsuccessful, the only consolation they receive being the assurance of their messenger that there is a cupboard full of letters, and two or three heaps of newspapers for the diggings, lying at Wangaratta. [7]

It took until the end of March before the diggers would see a proper Post Office at the Commissioner’s Camp on the Ovens diggings nearing competition, so that their reliance on the notorious Wangaratta Post Office could come to an end. [8] In defence of Mr Peacock, when he signed on as post-master of Wangaratta before the gold rush, Wangaratta had been nothing more than a tiny village around a river crossing, serving only a handful of local squatters, their families and staff, as well as the odd traveller on the Port Phillip route between Sydney and Melbourne. To be snowed under a deluge of mail sent from around the world was probably more grief than Peacock’s organisational skills would allow… and so it was probably not only the residents of the Ovens gold fields who ‘gladly hailed’ the opening of the new post office, but Mr Peacock himself. [9]

Notes

‘Scraps from the Ovens’, The Argus, 21 January, 1853.
‘Scraps from the Ovens’, The Argus, 4 February, 1853.
‘Scraps from the Ovens’, The Argus, 18 February, 1853.
ibid.
‘Scraps from the Ovens’, The Argus, 25 February, 1853.
ibid.
‘Scraps from the Ovens’, The Argus, 1 March, 1853.
‘Scraps from the Ovens’, The Argus, 29 March, 1853.
ibid.

How the gold was won: mining on Spring Creek, 1852.

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Californian gold rush, Gold mining, Gold rush, Ovens diggings, Spring Creek diggings, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Californian sluice, gold cradle, Long Tom, Whip, Windlass

This blog post presents an eye-witness account of how gold was mined on Spring Creek (Beechworth) in the rush of 1852. If you want to know why the image of the solitary miner gently panning for gold by the side of the creek is a fallacy… read on.

WARNING: This is a monumentally long post. It is broken into headings, to facilitate skim reading and promote a modicum of sanity.

Note: this post is about mining on Spring Creek, which is now referred to on some maps as ‘Silver Creek’, and runs through the modern town of Beechworth.

As I said in my last post, one of the most exciting things about the gold rushes of the 1850s was that anyone with a small amount of capital and a few friends or acquaintances, could stake a claim and mine gold using basic equipment — the design of which had been refined on the Californian goldfields only a few year previous.

By far the best eye-witness account I’ve read of the activity of gold mining during the Beechworth gold rush was written by Edward Ridpath [1], who arrived on the Spring Creek diggings on 4 November 1852. At this point, the diggings were still quite fresh: Ridpath says he was ‘much surprised at their general appearance… that their operations were confined to a spot of ground about one mile in length, and about a hundred yards in breadth…’

An early drawing of the Spring Creek diggings around December 1852, by Edward LaTrobe Bateman. This view is taken from southern side of the Creek looking towards the Commissioner’s Camp, which was situated where the Police Station and Gaol are today (Image: State Library of NSW).

Alluvial mining

The mining on Spring Creek was ‘alluvial’ — meaning that gold was found in deposits of sand, gravel and soil that had been washed and transported by water. ‘[T]here are two sources whence gold is derived,’ Ridpath tells us, ‘one from the bed of running creeks, the other from the earth’.

Thus, at Spring Creek in early November, Ridpath noted, ‘the first parties that arrived here worked a bed of the creek which had proved uncommonly rich and well rewarded the adventurous discoverers, [and] the soil adjoining was now being tried…’ [2] By the time another Englishman, William Howitt, arrived in mid-December, ‘The creek, that is, a considerable brook, was diverted from its course; and all the bed of the old course was dug up.’

Staking a claim, sinking a shaft

To dig for gold along Spring Creek, Ridpath explained,

the preliminary step is to sink a shaft, which in these diggings varies from 6 feet to 46 feet in depth [i.e.: 1.8-14 metres] according to the nature of the surface, the shape of the shaft is according to the fancy of the digger, whether round, oval, square or oblong, the first is the most used, before sinking, he first marks out by a trench his claim, or ground he is entitled to, consisting of 12 ft square every way, then commences working with a pick and shovel, throwing the dirt up to the surface after picking it, till he obtains a depth of 7 or 8 feet.

Miners had to work their 12 ft square claim constantly, or else their claim was forfeited.

Using a windlass or whip

Once a depth of 7 or 8 feet was reached, ‘a wooden windlass is fixed, [and] the dirt is then pulled into buckets and hauled up.’ A windlass was a structure mounted over the shaft, fitted with a hand-cranked winch, which Howitt explained, was ‘rudely constructed out of the wood that grows about.’ Some miners preferred instead a structure containing a pulley mounted over a shaft, or even more simply, a pole centrally counter-balanced on a forked stick set into the ground, with the bucket attached by rope to one end, known as a ‘whip’.

Illustration of a windlass: ‘Edmond Armand, Chinaman’s gully, 23 November 1853’, which appears in A pioneer of the fifties: leaves from the journal of an Australian Digger, 18 August 1852-16 March 1854, drawn by Eugen von Guerard (Image: State Library NSW).

Finding the ‘washing stuff’

The shaft was dug until the miners hit the layer of wash dirt containing the gold, which Ridpath explains, was found just above

…the rock or pipe clay, the former consists of granite, sandstone, and slate, either rotten or hard, the stratum of earth that lies on this contains (if there is any at all) the gold, the depth of this stratum varies from 6 inches to 7 feet, the latter very rarely, sometimes a stiff clay extends down to the rock, in which no gold is ever found, the technical term for this stratum is washing stuff, its chief colours are red and white, it is strange that although the dirt above this should be free from any hard substance, this is mixed up with pebbles from the size of pin heads to that of a bullock’s, they are of all shapes…

Working the claim

Once the layer of wash dirt was found

…on coming to the rock the digger takes a tin dish full of the washing stuff to try and see if it will pay for his labours in working the whole claim… if, as I said before, there is any encouraging promise, he begins to make a tunnel with a small sharp pointed pick, from the shaft to the boundary of his claim, about four feet wide and three feet in height necessitating him of course to sit like a tailor all the time, this is continued all round the claim in order to secure it from encroachments of his neighbours who will always take advantage of less able work-men than themselves, after this is completed, the rest of the ground is picked away and supported by wooden pillars so that there is a complete excavation, as this is the case with all the claims on the diggings where the ground is good, you might crawl under it for several hundred yards with few interruptions, very much like a rabbit warren, candles are always used in the tunnelling; as the stuff is picked, it is shovelled forward to the shaft, put into buckets, and hauled up…

In deep claims being worked by candle-light, the air would be foul, so ventilation was provided by ‘a windsail, like those aboard emigrant ships, to carry down fresh air.’ This device was simply a sail terminating in a long canvas pipe, rigged to catch and direct breezes.

Howitt tells us that ‘The diggers themselves generally ascended and descended by a rope fastened to a post above, and by holes for their feet in the side of the pit.’

Washing the wash dirt

Once the claim had been worked out, with all the wash dirt containing gold brought to the surface and put aside, this was

either carted down to the creek or washed near the shaft, from a water hole, by the latter method, although the expense of carting is saved, yet the thickness of the water carries away the fine gold; before being washed in the cradle it is first thoroughly puddled or moistened in a long trough or common washing tub!

Ridpath also notes that the gold mined from the creek bed was ‘very easily sought, requiring only to be shovelled once into the cradle, to be washed,’ (i.e.: no puddling was required.)

Once the earth had been ‘puddled’, and the hard lumps had been dissolved, the gold was roughly separated from the wash dirt using one of three devices:

Gold Cradle, aka Rocker.

The gold cradle was both cheap and portable, making it the most common gross method of separating the gold from wash dirt in the early days of the gold rush. As Ridpath offers, ‘perhaps you are already acquainted with this machine, one could have no clear notion of it, unless it is seen illustrated’.

I detail the use of this ‘machine’ with photos in an earlier post, Cradling for Gold in the Woolshed Valley.

Cradling by S. T. Gill (Image: State Library of Victoria)

Long Tom

The second most common piece of equipment was the ‘Long Tom’, often shortened to ‘Tom’:

…there are two other machines on a more expensive scale used for washing gold, both Californian in origin, one is called a Long Tom, averaging 5 feet in length, /2 feet in breadth and half that in height, this is always fixed in a creek, so that there is always a stream of water running through it, the washing stuff is put into this, then shovelled backwards and forwards till it is thoroughly moistened, when the gold is carried down by the force of the stream to the other end through perforated sheet iron (to prevent the stones mixing with the finer dirt) into ripple box whence it is taken out and cleaned in a tin dish…

The ‘ripple box’ was a false bottom on the Long Tom, which was fitted with riffles — bars or cleats which would catch the heavier gold while the flowing water washed the lighter material away. (‘Ripples’ was the Australian term for ‘riffles’.)

Californian Sluice

Whereas Long Toms were essentially portable sluice boxes,

the other machine is a sluice, shaped like a Long Tom, but considerably longer, unlike the latter, the water is conveyed from a distance by means of a hose, the length of the sluice is about sixty feet sometimes less, it is usual for about two or three parties to own them, and to employ men to work them at the rate of one pound per day, their being able to wash so much stuff during the day enables them to make the rejected stuff of others profitable, who cannot get through so much in the same time, there was no sluice erected on this creek, until it was abandoned by everyone else’.

there was no sluice erected on this creek, until it was abandoned by everyone else

Washing the gold in a tin dish (gold pan)

The final step in the process was to take whatever remained in the the bottom of the Cradle, or caught in the ripples of the Long Tom or Californian sluice, and wash this in a tin dish, gently removing any heavier material that wasn’t gold (commonly tin dioxide, aka ‘black sand’). Then all that remained was to weigh the gold and divide the proceeds between the party.

The process of mining gold on Spring Creek was relatively simple compared to that on diggings known as Reid’s Creek — downstream from the Spring Creek diggings, about 4 miles distant. The Reid’s Creek diggings presented more arduous and complicated prospects for miners (which arguably also made them a grumpy and rebellious lot), for reasons I will detail in the next post. I promise it will be shorter.

Notes

1. All the quotes in this article come from between pages 9-16 of Edward Ridpath’s journal: Edward Ridpath, Journal, transcription of letters to his father, possibly in his own hand, 1850-53? [manuscript MS 8759], State Library of Victoria, Box 1012/4 [Box also includes his gold license from 3 August 1853], except where I have noted that they come from William Howitt, in which case they have been drawn from Chapter 10 of Land, Labour and Gold (1855).

A useful document when considering nineteenth century gold mining technologies is:
NEVILLE A. RITCHIE AND RAY HOOKER, ‘An Archaeologist’s Guide to Mining Terminology‘, AUSTRALASIAN HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, Vol 15, 1997, pp:3-29.

Stuff that has nothing to do with the gold rush (which you might think does).

26 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Eldorado, Gold mining, Gold rush, Uncategorized, Woolshed Valley, Yackandandah

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Cock's Pioneer Dredge, Eldorado gold dredge, Lake Sambell, Rocky Mountain Gold Sluicing Company, Stamp Battery, Wallaby Mine

When most of us think of how gold was mined ‘in the olden days’, we think of a solitary miner washing dirt in his gold pan by the side of a creek. After that, the confusion and mythology sets in. In order to help simplify matters, this week’s post presents a list of mining methods and equipment NOT used during the Spring Creek and Reid’s Creek (Beechworth) gold rushes.

12 Head Stamp Battery at the Wallaby Mine (Image: Heritage Victoria)

Yes, I’m a grumpy historian. I get really annoyed when people ‘conflate’ (combine) different historical periods into one. The Victorian gold rushes are often conflated with later periods of gold mining, but the reality is that the major gold rushes of the era (which took place in Ballarat, Bendigo and Beechworth districts) belonged to a short period of time (1851-53), in which people used particular equipment and had a particular mind-set.

One of the most exciting and attractive things about the gold rushes of the 1850s was that anyone with a small amount of capital and a few friends or acquaintances, could stake a claim and mine gold using basic equipment. Contrary to popular belief at the time, gold wasn’t easily-won (it involved hard labour), but the great virtue of the gold rushes was that anyone with a reasonably strong physical constitution could become a ‘gold seeker’. At the height of the Spring Creek and Reid’s Creek gold rushes, which took place over a few months in the late Spring and Summer of 1852-53, no large scale mining equipment was used.

So here are some mining techniques and equipment that had nothing to do with the gold rushes:

Hard Rock Mining / Stamp Batteries — Hard rock mining did not begin in the Beechworth/Yackandandah area until all the (comparatively) easily-won alluvial gold was exhausted. The gold bearing quartz was crushed using stamp batteries. There’s a massive stamp battery at the Wallaby Mine, restored after the 2003 bushfires by Parks Victoria. There are other stamp batteries to be seen at Myrtleford and Bright. (Picture above.)

Gold Dredging — Gold dredges were used to dredge gold-bearing sands from creek and river beds, and process them. There’s a spectacular ‘bucket’ dredge at Eldorado. If you haven’t done so already, I suggest you go see it; and remember, this machine began operating in 1936, long after the gold rush had finished.

Cock’s Pioneer Dredge at Eldorado, commenced 1936 (Image: Peterdownunder)

Open-cut sluicing — Some large open-cut mines existed in the Beechworth and Eldorado areas, in which gold bearing soils were broken down for processing, using high-powered hoses. The ‘clay banks’ on the side of Lake Sambell in Beechworth are the visible remains of one such open-cut mine, run by the Rocky Mountain Gold Sluicing Co, which formed in 1867. The pit which became Lake Sambell was the result of large-scale company mining, which started (in this case) 15 years after the gold rush.

Pine trees growing on the exposed ‘clay banks’ left by gold sluicing operations, on the side of Lake Sambell, Beechworth (Image: Jacqui Durrant)

Other forms of mining and gold processing that came much later than the initial gold rushes include Deep Lead Mining (which happened at Chiltern, and at Rutherglen where there was no hard rock mining, but mining of alluvial material found deep underground), and gold processing using cyanide (which happened at Chiltern).

In the next post, I will return to the 1850s and talk about how gold was mined during in the gold rushes, considering the different conditions on the Spring Creek and Reid’s Creek diggings. And I will be less grumpy.

Life on Spring Creek

~ A blog by Jacqui Durrant

Category Archives: Gold rush

Beechworth’s finest hour

This is original written content that is copyright protected to ©Jacqui Durrant, 2020. You are welcome to share links to this blog, but please do not use the content elsewhere without permission. Thank you!

When did Chinese people come to Beechworth, and why?

The Commissioner’s Camp and its Discontents

What did the gold miners eat? (A quick follow-up).

A gold digger’s guide to attire from top to bottom

A gold rush swag

Exile on High Street

How to write a letter, gold rush style

How the gold was won: mining on Spring Creek, 1852.

Stuff that has nothing to do with the gold rush (which you might think does).