GOLD-DIGGING
When I first came to the diggings, I pitched my camp on the bank of the
creek about two miles below the reefs. It never was much of a camp at
the best of times. A piece of calico stretched over a pole supported
by two forked saplings formed the roof, and the sides were made of a
few sheets of bark knocked off the nearest trees. It rained incessantly
for weeks after I got there, and, the calico roof being no more use
for turning water than a hair-sieve, everything I had was always wet
through, and the floor of my camp a morass of black mud.
Besides having to walk two miles up a steep rocky path to get to my
work every morning, and the same distance home at night, the increasing
population of the place made my camp a most undesirable one. A rowdy
township was springing up all round it. Two stores, a post-office, a
tobacconist and bookseller’s shop, and no less than five public-houses,
surrounded my peaceful abode.
Besides all these buildings, which were constructed at considerable
trouble and expense out of sheets of box-tree bark and saplings, a
perfect forest of tents grew up like mushrooms all round. One of these
infernal public-houses was put up a few yards from my tent, and sleep
at night became out of the question.
An army of drunken revellers made night hideous with their yells. They
used to start drinking about sundown, and pass successively through the
convivial, uproarious, and quarrelsome stages of drunkenness during
the night, ending with total collapse about five in the morning. No
early-closing interfered with the even tenor of their enjoyment, and
there were no police to damp the geniality of their proceedings. As a
rule, the fun did not begin much before one in the morning, by which
time they had drunk sufficient to make them quarrelsome, and fighting
took the place of singing for the remainder of the night.
This sort of programme was no doubt infinitely entertaining to those
who assisted at it, most of whom slept solidly through the hours of
sunlight, only waking up in time to begin the next night’s orgie; but
to anyone who had to work in the day, and wanted to rest at night,
it was simply maddening. Nearly every night one or more of these
Bacchanalians would stagger into my tent, and either collapse in a
shapeless heap on the floor or begin shouting for liquor in language
that made the whole place smell of sulphur. It was difficult to know
what to do with them. Threatening to shoot them never had the slightest
effect, and one has naturally a great disinclination to hammer a man
when he is drunk, even though he does wake one out of a comfortable
sleep at three o’clock on a cold winter’s morning. If they were very
drunk, I used to drag them out and roll them down the bank of the creek
into the bushes that grew below.
One bitter cold night I was woke up by one of these worthies hammering
at the sheet of bark I had stuck in the doorway of my tent to keep
out intruders. He was demanding a drink in a whining voice of abject
distress that would have done credit to a professional beggar. A happy
thought occurred to me, and instead of replying in the language I was
in the habit of using to my nocturnal visitors, I very civilly begged
him to wait one moment while I got him a drink. A bucket of ice-cold
water from the creek was standing by the doorway of my tent. Rising
softly, I crept to the door and peered over the sheet of bark, which
was barely five feet high, to ascertain his exact whereabouts. He was
crouching close to the foot of it, so I seized the bucket of water and
emptied it gently but firmly all over him. A galvanic shock could not
have cleared him out quicker. He disappeared into the distance, too
much surprised to say anything but “Oh dear! oh dear!” which he kept
on repeating as long as I could hear him. He even forgot to swear. The
night was so cold, and his voice sounded so utterly dreary as he went
off, not even my fury at having been woke up prevented my being sorry
for him, and my heart smote me at the thoughts of the miserable night
he must have passed.
However, I had something better to do than shepherd drunken men all
night, and I settled to shift my camp up the creek. I fixed on a place
about a mile and a half above the township, on the bank of the creek,
about half a mile below the reefs, for my new camp. I had sent a man
out, some time before, to strip me seventy sheets of box-tree bark, on
the plains a few miles away. He made an attempt to draw them right up
to my camp with a bullock-waggon, but the country was too rough and too
heavily timbered. He got his waggon stuck in a short gully, and his
team of sixteen bullocks so beautifully mixed up round the trees on the
opposite bank, it took him a clear half-day to get out again.
When I found him he had been stuck about three hours. He was then
perfectly exhausted with swearing, and as no team of bullocks will
ever move without the incentive of most awful language on the part of
the driver, he was obliged to hire a man to help him swear at them
for the rest of the afternoon. So universal is this habit amongst
bullock-drivers, and so well do their bullocks know the words that
precede the application of the whip, they will not attempt to exert
themselves until they hear them. I knew a man who once bought an
admirable team of bullocks that were perfectly useless to him, from
his disinclination to address them in the language they were used to
hearing.
[Illustration: BULLOCK-TEAM CROSSING A LOG BRIDGE.]
The driver had unloaded my sheets of bark about a mile below my camp,
so I hired a mob of Blacks to carry them the rest of the way. This is
the sort of work at which a Black-fellow shines, and which no white
man I ever saw could do. Each sheet of bark was from six to eight feet
long, and four or five feet wide. Many of them weighed considerably
over a hundredweight each, and it is difficult to imagine more awkward
things to handle. And yet some miserable, half-starved looking “gin,”
whose spindle legs look barely equal to supporting her own weight, will
get under one of these enormous sheets of bark, and, balancing it on
her head, walk off with it up a steep rocky path, for half a mile at a
stretch, with perfect ease.
In a couple of days my new hut was finished. Of all buildings a bark
hut is the quickest and easiest to put up, and the most comfortable to
live in in a climate like Queensland. The framework is made of round
saplings, on which the sheets of bark are laid and secured by strips of
green hide. If the bark is carefully put on, and plenty of lap allowed
for each sheet over the next one, it is perfectly proof against wind
and rain, and in summer the thickness of the bark keeps the heat out
admirably.
One of the chief elements of amusement on the field was an old German
doctor who came and settled there. Although he was one of the cleverest
men in his profession I ever saw, and a wonderful surgeon besides, he
never made any money in Queensland because he was a homœopath.
The Queensland Government, not contented with figuring before the
civilised world as sordid and immoral politicians, never lose an
opportunity of proving themselves benighted barbarians as well.
Accordingly, they refuse to recognise a homœopathic physician’s
diploma; and he is, therefore, not legally able to recover his fees.
The world is not slow to take advantage of this, as the poor old doctor
found to his cost. He was far too kindhearted ever to refuse his
services to those who were really in need of them; but it speaks ill
for humanity that, out of the many patients I knew who called him in,
and were perfectly well able to pay him, very few ever did so. Had he
been paid one half of what he justly earned, he would have made a very
good living on the field.
But I have known him keep sick men for weeks in his own hut, sitting
up with them at night, and feeding them on the best of everything he
could procure for them, only to see them clear out without paying him a
farthing. Often I knew for a fact that the scoundrels who did this had
quantities of gold in their possession, and they generally proved it
by celebrating their recovery at the adjacent “pub.” with a tremendous
spree.
Later on, when the reefs were in full swing, and I had nearly a hundred
men in my employ, I used to help him all I could by threatening to sack
any men working for me who availed themselves of his services without
paying him. But I could not do him much good, and finally he was
starved out and had to leave the field.
I was very sorry when he went. He had a claim in the creek. I do not
think there was ever anything in it, but it was close to his tent, and
it used to amuse him to go and imagine he was working tremendously hard
in it.
One day the doctor was subpœnaed to attend an inquiry on the death of
a man at Nebo, a township about twenty-seven miles off. While he was
away a party of men jumped his claim, and on his return he found them
hard at work in it. They had not the slightest right to do it, as he
was called away on Government work; but what annoyed the doctor more
than anything was, that they absolutely refused to stop working until
the dispute was settled.
The rule is, that, if there is any dispute about a claim, it is to
be referred at once to the Warden of the field. Pending his decision
neither party has any right to work in the claim, and anyone who works
a disputed claim at once forfeits any right in it.
The three men who had jumped the doctor’s claim had done about as much
work in the forty-eight hours he had been away as he had done himself
in the six weeks he had been there; and from the rapidity with which
they progressed, it became perfectly apparent that long before the
Warden could arrive the biggest part of his claim would be worked out.
The doctor’s fury knew no bounds. He stormed and swore, and threatened
and raved, but without the slightest effect in stopping the plundering
of his claim.
Before two days were over, there was not a man in the field who did not
know all about it, and the Doctor’s Claim became the sort of theatre of
the diggings, to which anyone, who had nothing better to do, adjourned
to see what was going on. A more amusing scene than it occasionally
presented it is impossible to imagine.
The old doctor was very short, very fat, and quite bald. His usual
get-up was the most entirely disreputable one I ever saw, consisting
of a pair of untanned leather slippers, no socks, a pair of flannel
pajamas, a thin jersey with as many holes to the square foot as a
herring net, finished off with a red cotton nightcap balanced on one
ear. Thus attired, he was generally to be found executing a frantic
war-dance on the edge of his claim, hurling the most awful language
at his enemies below, three murderous-looking Italian scoundrels, who
continued grubbing away, perfectly indifferent to everything but their
one object of looking for gold. A fair-sized audience of loafers was
generally seated around, encouraging the doctor, and trying to wind him
up to the point of dropping a stone on his foes’ heads below.
The poor old doctor was far too good-natured ever willingly to hurt a
flea, but to hear him talk when excited would make anyone feel quite
weak who did not know him. He was absolute master of the English
language, and displayed a knowledge of its back premises I had not the
slightest idea a foreigner could ever attain. Under the influence of
passion, he would run down a chromatic scale of declamation, with an
ornamental fluency that never failed to excite admiration, even from
those at whom it was levelled.
I remember one day, after a more than usually severe attack of what he
called “Choleric nervousness,” the old doctor turned suddenly round,
and found he had been overheard by a clergyman. The countenance of this
worthy man, I am grieved to say, indicated more admiration, and less
regret, than the occasion called for.
“My dear doctor,” he observed, “I suppose it is my duty to tell you it
is very wrong to use such language; but I am going to do nothing of the
kind. I am simply going to ask you how, when, and where on earth did
you learn to swear like that?”
“Learn?” said the doctor; “learn! my good sir, you _can’t_ learn it. It
is a gift!”
About this time the Government thought fit to honour the field with
the presence of a policeman. He was a poor miserable crow-bait of an
Irishman, and, like most of his compatriots, an arrant coward when
alone.
I have often noticed that if half-a-dozen Irishmen can manage to set
upon two or three men, they are all as brave as lions. But get one by
himself, and he is a wretched funk.
The specimen sent up to keep the peace on the diggings was no exception
to the rule. He used to creep about under the shade of a pith helmet,
with a huge revolver dangling in front of him, like a Scotchman’s
sporran. He never ventured beyond the most crowded parts of the field,
and, if called upon to act in an official capacity, his face used to
turn the colour of cigar-ash with terror.
The doctor, however, hailed his arrival with delight, as he thought he
saw his way to bringing the arm of the law to bear upon the plunderers
of his claim. Off he started and called upon the constable to interfere
at once, and stop the work. So far from doing this, it was with the
greatest difficulty the constable could be persuaded to visit the claim
at all, and, when there, he absolutely refused to interfere.
The doctor, whose last hope had now departed, became perfectly beside
himself. The foam flew in spray from his lips, but for the first time
in his life language failed him, and he became inarticulate from fury.
Suddenly a horrible sort of spurious calm came over him, and he retired
into his tent. In a minute he reappeared armed with the fossil remains
of an aged pistol. One glance at it was sufficient to show that it was
fearfully dangerous everywhere except at the business end, and that
if it ever did go off, the safest place to stand would be straight in
front of it.
No such reassuring considerations entered the mind of the constable.
He remained rooted to the spot with terror, while the doctor’s shaking
fingers accomplished the task of loading.
An enormous audience had by this time assembled, most of whom were
stretched on the ground in convulsions of laughter. Even the three
ruffians in the claim became interested, and ceased their monotonous
occupation of baling water and cradling to watch the proceedings.
_Stetit urna paullum sicca_, while the doctor delivered his harangue
at the constable, for whom flight had now become impossible. He
was trembling so that he certainly could not have walked, besides
which, the doctor had edged round, and pinned him against a bank from
which there was no escape. Drawing gradually nearer towards him, and
brandishing his weapon all the while, the doctor swore all he knew that
he was going to kill him on the spot.
The wretched man’s terror now almost overcame him. His jaw dropped, he
half-shut his eyes, and threw back his head in a mute appeal, which
ought to have softened the doctor’s heart, but which merely excited him
afresh.
“Call yourself a policeman!” he screamed; “why do you hold your head
back like a fowl drinking water? I kill five better men than you on the
Lachlan before breakfast, for nothing at all! So help me three men and
a boy, I shoot you now like one damn dog!”
The few of us who were not too weak from laughing began to think it was
time to interfere, when suddenly the doctor’s attention was caught by a
parrot seated in a tree over his head.
“Look!” he shouted in a voice that would have frightened anything but a
parrot into the next colony. “Look! you say I can’t shoot! I soon show
you. Watch me knock the stuffing out of that parrot, then you know what
I do to you next time I catch you loafing round my side of the creek!”
A breathless silence ensued, while the doctor levelled his weapon at
the now interested parrot. After aiming for about two minutes and a
half, he pulled the trigger. The cap exploded and the parrot flew
screaming away, leaving one of its tail feathers, in its hurry, to
float gently down at the doctor’s feet.
Nothing could exceed his pride and delight, and none of us were cruel
enough to mar it by suggesting he could not have hit the parrot because
his pistol had never gone off. Brandishing the feather as a trophy, he
scattered a glance of withering contempt at the reviving constable, and
retired to his tent to spend the afternoon in trying to give electric
shocks to a mob of Blacks, by the bait of a shilling placed in a basin
of water connected with a small battery.
The inside of his hut presented the climax of disorder and untidiness.
Rows of medicine-bottles were littered along the shelves, some
with corks, some with none, mixed up with tins of pepper, boxes
of ointment, jars of pickles, old clothes, and carpenter’s tools.
Surgical instruments used for cutting up tobacco or spreading butter,
frying-pans, telescopes, boots, books, photographs, tobacco-pipes,
the remains of a damper, and several packs of cards, were generally
strewed about the floor, in a way suggestive of nothing short of an
earthquake in a curiosity shop. Here he was generally to be found, when
not dancing around his claim, bending over the fire, in the agonies
of concocting some vile stew, which none but a German is capable of
eating. I have seen him put tea, rum, milk, colonial wine, mustard,
lime-juice, vinegar, and ginger into a sauce for some hideous mess
which he afterwards ate.
The capacity of his internal economy was enormous. One Sunday I invited
a party of seven, including the doctor, to dinner. I made two plum
puddings in honour of the occasion, each about the size of my head.
Seven of us ate one, and the doctor ate the other. He had already
stowed away two vast mountains of salt beef, so no one was surprised
when, after attending the funeral of a whole pudding, he patted his
distended waistcoat, and observed that he “felt as if he had one
schnake coiled up there!” After which he became partially torpid for
some hours.
The Little Wanderer reef, at which Gibbard was working, soon began to
show heavy gold. He had three mates in the claim, two of whom drank
themselves out, and I bought their shares at the same figure which I
had paid Gibbard for his.
The third, a young fellow called S----, formerly an officer in the
navy, was killed in a very sad manner. A drunken man came into his tent
one night, and S---- got up and turned him out. The man closed with
him and threw him, and, in falling, a stake of poison-wood entered
S----’s leg, inflicting a shocking wound. His hut was not far from
mine, and after his accident I used to go down and sit with him in
the evenings after work. For a few days he seemed to be going on all
right, and I believe, if it had been possible to have kept him quite
quiet and away from everyone, he might have recovered. But he had been
drinking heavily for some time past, and now he drank more than ever;
for the whole day long, and well into the night, his hut was besieged
by a succession of visitors anxious to show their sympathy for his
misfortune. Unfortunately their invariable method of doing so was to
insist upon his having a drink with them; and his wound, which was a
serious one in any case, soon began to assume a dangerous appearance.
On the fifth night the old doctor came and told me that he thought very
badly of him, so I immediately went round to his hut. A sadder sight
than the interior of it presented I never saw. There was no furniture
of any kind, of course, and the floor was a thick paste of black mud.
Seated on packing-cases or buckets turned upside down, were five or
six of the rowdiest men on the diggings. On the floor was a tin
prospecting-dish half full of rum, and a bucket of water, and each man
helped him with a pannikin when he wanted a drink.
The place was so thick with tobacco smoke that at first I could hardly
see across it, though the hut was not above twelve feet long. By
degrees, as my eyes got accustomed to it, the light of a fat-lamp at
the far end showed me poor S---- lying on a rough sort of bed made of a
sheet of bark laid upon a heap of grass.
A great change had come over him since I had last seen him, not very
many hours before, and I felt certain, directly I looked at him, that
he was dying. His cheery features had a drawn and haggard look, and
already there was that unmistakable far-off look in his eyes that too
surely announces the speedy approach of death. Evidently his companions
had not the slightest idea of the state he was in. To do them justice
they were all half drunk, and doing their best to become quite so; but
when I came in they were all shouting and laughing and blaspheming,
with the most uproarious cheerfulness, and one of them had just called
on S---- to give them a song.
S---- himself was perfectly sober, and, I am certain, knew that he had
only a few hours to live. But he came of the sort that die very hard,
and, calling for a pannikin of rum, he raised himself on his elbow to
comply with his mates’ request. The hardened and reckless countenances
of those revellers, drinking in the presence of death, the unearthly
look upon S----’s face, rendered doubly ghastly by the miserable
flickering light over his head, formed a scene which I shall never
forget. His voice rang out clear in the weird, solemn silence of a
winter’s night, and the words of his last song are indelibly impressed
upon my memory. They contain only too true a history of his own ruined
life, and of hundreds of others who have fallen victims to the terrible
curse of drink.
Who cares for nothing alone is free:
Sit down, good fellow, and drink with me.
With a careless heart and a merry eye
He will laugh at the world as the world goes by.
He laughs at power, and wealth, and fame;
He laughs at virtue, he laughs at shame;
He laughs at hope, and he laughs at fear,
And at memory’s dead leaves, crisp and sear;
He laughs at the future, cold and dim,
Nor earth nor heaven is dear to him:
Oh! that is the comrade fit for me,
He cares for nothing, his soul is free,
Free as the soul of the fragrant wine!
Sit down, good fellow, my heart is thine;
For I heed not custom, creed, nor law,--
I care for nothing that ever I saw.
In every city my cup I quaff,
And over my liquor I riot and laugh.
I laugh like the cruel and turbulent wave,
I laugh at the church, and I laugh at the grave;
I laugh at joy, and right well I know
That I merrily, merrily laugh at woe.
I terribly laugh, with an oath and a sneer,
When I think that the hour of death is near;
For I know that Death is a guest divine
Who will drink my blood as I drink this wine.
Ah! he cares for nothing, a king is he!
Come on, old fellow, and drink with me.
With you I will drink to the solemn past,
Though the cup that I drain should be my last;
I will drink to the Phantoms of Love and Truth,
To ruined manhood and wasted youth.
I will drink to the woman that wrought my woe,
In the diamond morning of long ago;
To a heavenly face in sweet repose,
To the lily’s snow and the blood of the rose.
To the splendour caught from southern skies,
That shone in the depths of her glorious eyes;
Her large eyes wild with the fire of the South,
And the dewy wine of her warm, red mouth.
I will drink to the thought of a better time,
To innocence gone like a death-bell chime;
I will drink to the shadow of coming doom,
To the phantoms that wait in my lonely tomb.
I will drink to my soul in its terrible mood,
Dimly and solemnly understood.
And lastly I drink to the monarch of Sin,
Who has conquered that fortress and reigns within.
My sight is fading, it dies away;
I cannot tell, is it night or day?
My heart is burnt and blackened with pain,
And a horrible darkness crushes my brain;
I cannot see you--the end is nigh,
But we’ll drink together before I die.
Through awful chasms I plunge and fall,
Your hand, good fellow; I die--that’s all.
Exhausted by the exertion, S---- sank down again on the couch, and a
deadly look came over his face. Even the drunkards began to see that
there was something wrong, and obeyed a not very civil recommendation
to clear out of the hut with unexpected readiness. I got the doctor to
come as soon as I could, and he at once pronounced S----’s case to be
hopeless. Mortification set in, and he died not many hours after.
He was a great favourite with all who knew him, and much regretted,
especially by his mates, as he used to do all the work in their claim
in the creek, while they got drunk at the public-houses. His share in
the Wanderer Reef was sold by auction, and knocked down to me at the
reserve price, without a bid.
I and Gibbard were now sole owners of the Wanderer, I holding
seven-eighths and he one-eighth.
Meanwhile the Absolons and I had got down with our shaft on the Erratic
Star to a depth of sixty feet, and the prospects on both reefs were
so good that I determined to put up machinery for crushing the stone.
For this purpose I went down to Gympie, one of the chief goldfields
of Queensland, and got the estimate of a first-rate engineer for the
cost and erection of a battery of ten head of stampers, and a seventeen
horse-power stationary engine. His estimate was £1500 for the cost of
the machinery in Melbourne, and £1000 for the cost of erection on the
field.
I mentally doubled his estimate on the spot; but, for the benefit of
anyone who is ever tempted to go in for putting up a quartz-mill on a
new field, I may here observe that before I had completed the work it
cost £9000. It is almost impossible to estimate beforehand the cost
of such an undertaking in new country, a hundred miles from anywhere
where you can buy a nail or a piece of string. The natural difficulties
incidental to the work are great enough, but in my case the unnatural
ones I had to contend against were greater still.
As a rule, anyone who starts putting up machinery on a new gold field,
or who does anything towards developing any sort of mining, is hailed
as a public benefactor by the neighbouring towns. The inhabitants,
especially of the nearest seaport towns, hasten to display their
appreciation of the good gifts of Providence by putting the roads
between themselves and the new diggings in good order, and vie with
each other in offering every assistance to the prospectors and
promoters of the mines.
The reason of this is not far to seek. Nothing gives such an impulse to
the trade of a seaport as the vicinity of a diggings. Many large towns
have been called into existence by nothing else. The town of Melbourne
itself, one of the greatest wonders of the world, with its 300,000
inhabitants, its broad streets, its magnificent public buildings, and
its almost unlimited wealth, owes its rise, its very existence, to the
Ballarat diggings.
It is a very common thing for the storekeepers of a town to supply
parties of men with tools and rations gratis, for months at a time, to
prospect the adjacent country in hopes of discovering a gold field.
The Mount Britten diggings, upon which I was at work, was most
unfortunately situated. The only possible means of communication with
the coast was through the port of Mackay, from which it was distant 100
miles by road. Now the distance was nothing, and the road, fairly good
at all times, might easily have been made an excellent one. But the
township of Mackay is a very peculiar one. It is the saccharopolis of
Queensland, and in point of intelligence may safely be described as the
Bœotia of Australia.
The planters of the district have long been a byword for meanness and
stupidity. Entirely absorbed in the process of growing and making
sugar, they absolutely refuse to acknowledge the importance of any
other industry, and have always entertained an unreasoning aversion to
any kind of mining in the neighbourhood, only to be accounted for by
the supposition that a prolonged course of sugar-boiling has turned
their heads into vacuum-pans, and raised the density of their wits to
the level of that of their most prolific cane-juice.
Nothing is of more vital importance to the prosperity of a coast town
in Australia than to keep open its communication with the interior. If
the outside roads are allowed to fall into bad repair, the wool and
other traffic is rapidly diverted to some other port; and, once lost,
it is extremely difficult to regain.
The difference of fifty or sixty miles more or less is nothing to a
carrier, compared with the difference between a bad and a good road.
When in the interior he will infallibly choose the best road to the
coast, though it may be very much the longest.
And yet I have heard one of the leading planters, at a meeting of the
Mackay Road Board, openly declare that Mackay had nothing to do with
the interior, that she did not want the wool, or the copper, or the
gold, or the squatters; and that there was no necessity to spend a
shilling in keeping up the road to the interior.
Now I should be the last person to under-rate the value of the sugar
industry to Mackay. It has raised a population of 7000 people, where
formerly there were not thirty, and brought some millions of capital
into the district. But I cannot conceive why Mackay, because it is
blessed with one most prosperous industry, should close its doors to
every other.
The dislike of the planters to any sort of mining being started in the
district I can, to a certain extent, understand. They are ignorant and
shortsighted, and no doubt imagine that the proximity of a diggings
would raise the price of labour on their plantations. It would do
nothing of the kind. The class of men who follow mining as a profession
are quite distinct from the sort of hands required on a plantation.
Besides this, a diggings always attracts a large number of men who go
there with a vague idea they are going to get gold, but are destitute
of either the knowledge or the means to set about it. They dig for a
while, and, finding the work very hard and gold very scarce, they clear
out, and are glad to find employment elsewhere.
Our station, which lay half-way between Mackay and the diggings, was
inundated with men returning from the field in search of work. So
that it is probable that the immediate effect of a diggings in the
neighbourhood would be to lower, rather than to raise, the price of
labour on the plantations; while the indirect benefit that the planters
would derive from the increased trade of the town would be considerable.
Whatever the planters’ views might be, I should have thought that
the storekeepers in Mackay would have held but one opinion as to the
advantages they would be likely to derive from a diggings. And yet so
saturated were they with the prevailing sugar mania, and so servilely
dependent upon the planters had they become, I soon found out that any
exertions upon their part would be directed more towards retarding than
assisting the progress of the diggings.
The whole district unanimously refused to spend a penny on repairing
the road to the Mount Britten field. My orders for goods were
persistently unattended to or delayed. The manager of one of the
principal banks took the trouble to ride up to the field for the sole
purpose of returning to spread false reports as to the poverty of the
reefs which I was engaged in working. My own agents left my machinery
lying for weeks on the wharf, and sent empty away the carriers
whom I myself had taken the trouble to hunt up and send down for
loading. The inconvenience and loss which I suffered in consequence
was incalculable. After hanging about Mackay for some days, vainly
endeavouring to induce my agents to give them my machinery, the
carriers loaded up for elsewhere, and went off up the country.
It was months before I could get hold of them again. Meantime the
wet season set in, and the roads became perfectly impassable. I had
soon a vast army of men at work on the diggings--sawyers, carpenters,
boiler-makers, brickmakers, and others--whom I was very unwilling to
leave to themselves for any length of time.
But after I discovered that the whole district of Mackay had
deliberately laid themselves out to block my endeavours to develop the
Mount Britten diggings, and were prepared to resort to foul means to
accomplish their object, I resolved not to trust to any agents, but
always to personally superintend the loading of any of my machinery or
stores that might arrive in Mackay.
Many a hundred miles of travelling it cost me. It was eighty-six miles
to ride from the diggings to Mackay, and sometimes I had to ride up and
down twice in a week. I soon found that this kind of business, combined
with superintending the working of the two reefs, was more than could
be done effectually by one man.
But the engineer I had engaged in Gympie to put up the mill turned out
an invaluable acquisition. His name was William Holliman; and a smarter
man at his trade never existed. From morning till night he worked as I
never saw a man work for wages before. The erection of a quartz-mill,
at any time, is an undertaking that involves very heavy work, and no
little engineering skill. But in an out-of-the-way place like Mount
Britten the difficulties are increased a hundredfold, and can only be
overcome by infinite patience and skill. Holliman, however, proved
himself equal to any emergency, and finally accomplished the work
in a way that has earned for the obscure field of Mount Britten the
reputation of possessing the most perfectly erected mill in Queensland.
It is impossible to do justice to the admirable qualities he displayed
during the time he was with me. Machinery stuck in the mud, broken
castings, drunken contractors going on the spree with their contract
uncompleted, thunderstorms sweeping away work half finished, the wrong
goods sent up by a mistake which takes months to rectify; these and
many other annoyances await the enthusiastic individual who is rash
enough to start putting up a mill on a new field.
Holliman was equal to them all; and, though his professional reputation
was at stake, and I believe he felt any hindrance to the work far more
than I did, I never saw him discouraged for a minute, or otherwise than
cheerful.
For anyone who lives in the midst of civilisation, and who has nothing
to do but walk into a shop and buy what he wants, it is impossible to
realise the situation. What words can depict the helpless fury of a
man in the mountains of Northern Queensland, who has ordered a keg of
a peculiar kind of nails from Sydney, and who, after an interval of
four months, receives a barrel of rock-sulphur instead? This actually
happened--without, however, in the least disturbing the equanimity of
Holliman. He merely remarked, with an expression of countenance it is
impossible to describe, that “he hoped my dog was not going to have
the distemper.” Though not a teetotaller, he was strictly sober, and a
keen sense of humour, combined with an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes,
made him an exceedingly pleasant companion. He was with me for eighteen
months and when at last I handed over the concern to a company, who
sent up their own manager, I parted with him greatly to my regret.
A most absurd accident happened one day at a shaft on the “Star” line
of reef. The shaft was down about thirty feet, and, as usual, one man
was working below, and his mate on top, winding up the stuff in an
old oil-drum instead of a bucket. Somehow or other the man on top let
fall the drum right on his mate’s head below. Fortunately, though made
entirely of iron, the bottom was very nearly worn out, and the man’s
head went fair through it. He was naturally very angry, but his rage
redoubled when he discovered that all attempts to get his head out
again were perfectly useless. Though bashed in, none of the bottom was
actually knocked out, and the jagged edges had closed round his neck
again, like a spring trap, causing him excruciating pain.
He was wound up the shaft, perfectly helpless and swearing fearfully,
and led down the hill to the blacksmith’s, to get his helmet knocked
off.
Anything more ridiculous than he looked I never saw in my life. He kept
up a perfect hurricane of blasphemy, rendered absolutely awesome by the
unearthly metallic ring which the oil-drum gave to his voice.
We were, most of us, too weak from laughing to be of the slightest
assistance to him. Had the rim of the drum caught him, instead of the
bottom, of course it would have killed him on the spot. Accidents of
this kind are very frequent.
The greatest care is required on the part of those working at the mouth
of a shaft to see that nothing, however small, is allowed to fall down
below. A very small stone, falling from a great height on to a man’s
head, is sufficient to cause instant death.
It is extraordinary what escapes some men have, and what a slight
thing will kill sometimes. I remember a man being killed on the spot
by a pound of candles being dropped from a height of sixty feet on
to his head. On the other hand, Jack Absolon was once working at the
bottom of a shaft seventy feet deep, when the whole windlass up above
carried bodily away. It came right down the shaft, together with a
hundredweight of copper ore that was being wound up. He heard it
coming, squeezed himself into a corner of the shaft, and never got a
scratch.
No one on a diggings ever seems to possess a surname. But there is
generally some epithet attached to their Christian names, whereby they
may be distinguished. “Red Pat,” “Maori Bob,” “Little Dave,” “Ironstone
George,” “Long Mick,” and “Deaf Harry,”--a host of them rises before
me. Their faces were better known to me than my own, seeing that the
back of a sardine-box was the only looking-glass I had for months; but
if they ever had any surname it was known only to themselves.
“Deaf Harry” had certainly the best right to his name of any man I
ever knew. The immoderate use of quinine had made him so deaf that no
combination of sounds, however appalling, could attract his attention.
I used to work with him for a long while, sinking a shaft, and soon
gave up attempting to make him hear. If he was below and I wanted him,
I used to carefully drop a small pebble on his head.
One day Deaf Harry was at the windlass, and another man working below.
They had arranged a series of signals between themselves. Two jerks on
the rope meant “heave up,” one meant “steady,” and three meant “lower
away.”
I was working a little higher up the hill, when all of a sudden I heard
most awful noises echoing out of the shaft. Looking down the hill I
saw Harry peacefully winding away at the windlass, quite unconscious
of the yells and oaths that were flying up the shaft past his ear.
I knew something must be wrong, so I ran down the hill, and arrived
just in time to see Harry’s mate being wound slowly up to the mouth
of the shaft head-downwards, with his foot noosed in the rope. He
was struggling fearfully, and still trying to swear, but was rapidly
becoming speechless from having been wound up a distance of seventy
feet in that position.
For once in his life Harry’s rugged countenance relaxed into an
expression of delighted surprise. Instead of making the slightest
attempt to extricate the unfortunate man, he remained looking
critically at him for several seconds, with the windlass handle in his
hand. Then turning towards me, he said, quite quietly:
“Well! I’ve been twenty-two years digging, and I never saw a man come
up the shaft like that before!”
I made a dive at the wretched man’s leg, dragged him out of the shaft,
and laid him out to dry. He was perfectly exhausted, and purple in
the face, but, having been revived by a bucket of water poured over
his head, he explained that he had been standing in the bottom of the
shaft, and, he supposed, had unintentionally jerked the rope twice with
his foot. Harry, of course, began to wind up, and knew no more about it
till his mate appeared at the top. He lost all interest in him as soon
as he found he had not come up head-downwards on purpose.