to seek the new adventures offered by the
goldfields. There was safety in numbers, and as the travellers—male and female—reached
the end of the road, liberation was finally in sight.
BALLARAT
You could hear Ballarat before seeing it.
When journalist Thomas McCombie arrived in 1853, A confused sound like the noise
of a mighty multitude broke upon our ears and a sudden turn of the road brought us
in full view of Ballarat. I freely confess, he wrote, that no scene have I ever witnessed
made so deep and lasting an impression on my mind.
Horse bells jingled, whips cracked, people shouted and parrots screeched. Thousands
of dogs chained outside tents and mine shafts barked constantly. One newcomer, schoolboy
John Deegan, described the uproarious blasphemy of bullock driv ers as their swearing
echoed across the basin. Years later he wrote of that vague, indescribably murmurous
sound, which seems to pervade the air where a crowd is in active motion . The feeling would never leave
him. It was like a genuine fairy tale .
Ballarat, 1854
The bewitching effect was particularly astonishing for travellers who arrived at
night. Henry Mundy, then a 20-year-old shepherd, walked from Geelong to Ballarat
to find his fortune. Standing on the ridge, he could see only the twinkle of a thousand
campfires, like a mirror image of the night sky. Yet the noise, he later recalled,
was indescribable .
During the evening meal the talking and yelling was incessant . Later, there were
guns and pistols firing, a release of the day’s pent-up emotion, and everywhere the
continuous yowling and barking of the dogs. After the ritual gunfire stopped, accordions,
concertinas, fiddles, flutes, clarionettes, cornets, bugles, all were set going each
with his own tune . The effect, said Mundy, was deafening .
In late 1853 Ballarat was a sprawling tent city. As the travellers arrived they saw
before them the vast diggings of East Ballarat, where a creek wound through a valley
of low mounds and hills. Bakery Hill rose in the distance. Perched above the diggings
was the Camp, home to the officers of the Gold Fields Commission: the police and
public servants who ran the place. Thomas McCombie called them the aristocracy of
the canvas city of Ballarat . Nestled beside the Camp on a neat grid of streets was
a tiny new township of stores and homes. Some of them were even built from timber.
Encircling all this was a ring of green, the last remains of the thick scrub that
had once covered the entire basin. The diggers , observed English journalist William
Howitt, seem to have two especial propensities, those of firing guns and felling
trees .
Most of the timber was used for tent poles and mineshaft supports, but in late 1853
Ballarat was also ferociously burning timber for heat, light and fuel. The blue smoke
of ten thousand campfires curled slowly upward , observed John Deegan, and blended
with the haze of the summer evening .
DEEP LEAD MINING
An upturned, unsightly mass…every bit had been turned topsy-turvy. This is how newcomers
described the Ballarat diggings in 1854.
In the early days of the gold rush, mining was done with picks and pans at the edge
of flowing riverbeds. But in Ballarat, this shallow ‘alluvial’ gold was quickly exhausted.
By late 1853 there was a shift in mining technology. Riches were now to be found
far below the surface, beneath deep basalt veins that followed the ancient riverbeds.
In fact, these deep lead deposits were larger and richer than any found anywhere
else in the world, but new methods were needed to extract the gold.
Deep sinking was the answer: but it was a long and gruelling process. Deep shafts
had to be laboriously dug, then shored up with timber, which had to be cut by hand.
The rewards could be magnificent, or non-existent. It could take up to a year to
‘bottom out’ on a hole. The whole undertaking was costly in every way—not least to
the physical environment, which was left scarred and stripped of
goldfields. There was safety in numbers, and as the travellers—male and female—reached
the end of the road, liberation was finally in sight.
BALLARAT
You could hear Ballarat before seeing it.
When journalist Thomas McCombie arrived in 1853, A confused sound like the noise
of a mighty multitude broke upon our ears and a sudden turn of the road brought us
in full view of Ballarat. I freely confess, he wrote, that no scene have I ever witnessed
made so deep and lasting an impression on my mind.
Horse bells jingled, whips cracked, people shouted and parrots screeched. Thousands
of dogs chained outside tents and mine shafts barked constantly. One newcomer, schoolboy
John Deegan, described the uproarious blasphemy of bullock driv ers as their swearing
echoed across the basin. Years later he wrote of that vague, indescribably murmurous
sound, which seems to pervade the air where a crowd is in active motion . The feeling would never leave
him. It was like a genuine fairy tale .
Ballarat, 1854
The bewitching effect was particularly astonishing for travellers who arrived at
night. Henry Mundy, then a 20-year-old shepherd, walked from Geelong to Ballarat
to find his fortune. Standing on the ridge, he could see only the twinkle of a thousand
campfires, like a mirror image of the night sky. Yet the noise, he later recalled,
was indescribable .
During the evening meal the talking and yelling was incessant . Later, there were
guns and pistols firing, a release of the day’s pent-up emotion, and everywhere the
continuous yowling and barking of the dogs. After the ritual gunfire stopped, accordions,
concertinas, fiddles, flutes, clarionettes, cornets, bugles, all were set going each
with his own tune . The effect, said Mundy, was deafening .
In late 1853 Ballarat was a sprawling tent city. As the travellers arrived they saw
before them the vast diggings of East Ballarat, where a creek wound through a valley
of low mounds and hills. Bakery Hill rose in the distance. Perched above the diggings
was the Camp, home to the officers of the Gold Fields Commission: the police and
public servants who ran the place. Thomas McCombie called them the aristocracy of
the canvas city of Ballarat . Nestled beside the Camp on a neat grid of streets was
a tiny new township of stores and homes. Some of them were even built from timber.
Encircling all this was a ring of green, the last remains of the thick scrub that
had once covered the entire basin. The diggers , observed English journalist William
Howitt, seem to have two especial propensities, those of firing guns and felling
trees .
Most of the timber was used for tent poles and mineshaft supports, but in late 1853
Ballarat was also ferociously burning timber for heat, light and fuel. The blue smoke
of ten thousand campfires curled slowly upward , observed John Deegan, and blended
with the haze of the summer evening .
DEEP LEAD MINING
An upturned, unsightly mass…every bit had been turned topsy-turvy. This is how newcomers
described the Ballarat diggings in 1854.
In the early days of the gold rush, mining was done with picks and pans at the edge
of flowing riverbeds. But in Ballarat, this shallow ‘alluvial’ gold was quickly exhausted.
By late 1853 there was a shift in mining technology. Riches were now to be found
far below the surface, beneath deep basalt veins that followed the ancient riverbeds.
In fact, these deep lead deposits were larger and richer than any found anywhere
else in the world, but new methods were needed to extract the gold.
Deep sinking was the answer: but it was a long and gruelling process. Deep shafts
had to be laboriously dug, then shored up with timber, which had to be cut by hand.
The rewards could be magnificent, or non-existent. It could take up to a year to
‘bottom out’ on a hole. The whole undertaking was costly in every way—not least to
the physical environment, which was left scarred and stripped of
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