The Book of the Bush by George Dunderdale (christmas read aloud .TXT) 📕

black night, and staggered away into it again with his two friends.

One forenoon, about ten o'clock, while we were busy, peacefully digging and puddling, we heard a sound like the rumbling of distant thunder from the direction of Bendigo flat. The thunder grew louder until it became like the bellowing of ten thousand bulls. It was the welcome accorded by the diggers to our "trusty and well-beloved" Government when it came forth on a digger hunt. It was swelled by the roars, and cooeys, and curses of every man above ground and below, in the shafts and drives on the flats, and in the tunnels of the White Hills, from Golden Gully and Sheep's Head, to Job's Gully and Eaglehawk, until the warning that "Joey's out" had reached to the utmost bounds of the goldfield.

There was a strong feeling amongst the diggers that the license fee of thirty shillings per month was excessive, and this feeling was intensified by the report that it was the intention of the Government to double the amount. As a matter of fact, by far the larger number of claims yielded no gold at all, or not enough to pay the fee. The hatred of the hunted diggers made it quite unsafe to send out a small number of police and soldiers, so there came forth at irregular intervals a formidable body of horse and foot, armed with carbines, swords, and pistols.

This morning they marched rapidly along the track towards the White Hills, but wheeling to the left up the bluff they suddenly appeared at the head of Picaninny Gully. Mounted men rode down each side of the gully as fast as the nature of the ground would permit, for it was then honeycombed with holes, and encumbered with the trunks and stumps of trees, especially on the eastern side. They thus managed to hem us in like prisoners of war, and they also overtook some stragglers hurrying away to right and left. Some of these had licenses in their pockets, and refused to stop or show them until they were actually arrested. It was a ruse of war. They ran away as far as possible among the holes and logs, in order to draw off the cavalry, make them break their ranks, and thus to give a chance to the unlicensed to escape or to hide themselves. The police on foot, armed with carbines and accompanied by officers, next came down the centre of the gully, and every digger was asked to show his license. I showed that of William Matthews.

It was not that the policy of William Patterson was tried and found wanting. He was at work on his claim a little below mine, and knowing he had no license, I looked at him to see how he would behave in the face of the enemy. He had stopped working, and was walking in the direction of his tent, with head bowed down as ifin search of something he had lost. He disappeared in his tent, which was a large one, and had, near the opening, a chimney built up with ironstone boulders and clay. But the police had seen him; he was followed, found hiding in the corner of his chimney, arrested, and placed among the prisoners who were then halted near my tub. Immediately behind Patterson, and carrying a carbine on his shoulder, stood a well-known shipmate named Joynt, whom poverty had compelled to join the enemy. He would willingly have allowed his friend and prisoner to escape, but no chance of doing so occurred, and long after dark Patterson approached our camp fire, a free man, but hungry, tired, and full of bitterness. He had been forced to march along the whole day like a convicted felon, with an ever-increasing crowd of prisoners, had been taken to the camp at nightfall and made to pay 6 pounds 10s.-viz., a fine of 5 pounds and 1 pound 10s. for a license.

The feelings of William Patterson, and of thousands of other diggers, were outraged, and they burned for revenge. A roll-up was called, and three public meetings were held on three successive Saturday afternoons, on a slight eminence near the Government camp. The speakers addressed the diggers from a wagon. Some advocated armed resistance. It was well known that many men, French, German, and even English, were on the diggings who had taken part in the revolutionary outbreak of '48, and that they were eager to have recourse to arms once more in the cause of liberty. But the majority advocated the trial of a policy of peace, at least to begin with. A final resolution was passed by acclamation that a fee of ten shillings a month should be offered, and if not accepted, no fee whatever was to be paid.

It was argued that if the diggers stood firm, it would be impossible for the few hundreds of soldiers and police to arrest and keep in custody nearly twenty thousand men. If an attempt was made to take us all to gaol, digger-hunting would have to be suspended, the revenue would dwindle to nothing, and Government would be starved out. It was, in fact, no Government at all; it was a mere assemblage of armed men sent to rob us, not to protect us; each digger had to do that for himself.

Next day, Sunday, I walked through the diggings, and observed the words "No License Here" pinned or pasted outside every tent, and during the next month only about three hundred licenses were taken out, instead of the fourteen or fifteen thousand previously issued, the digger-hunting was stopped, and a license-fee of forty shillings for three months was substituted for that of thirty shillings per month.

II.

As no man who had a good claim would be willing to run the risk of losing it, the number of licenses taken out after the last meeting would probably represent the number of really lucky diggers then at work on Bendigo, viz., three hundred more or less, and of the three hundred I don't think our gully could boast of one. All were finding a little gold, but even the most fortunate were not making more than "tucker." By puddling eight tubs of washdirt I found that we could obtain about one pound's worth of gold each per day; but this was hardly enough to keep hope alive. The golden hours flew over us, but they did not send down any golden showers. I put the little that fell to my share into a wooden match-box, which I carried in my pocket. I knew it would hold twelve ounces-if I could get so much -and looked into it daily and shook the gold about to see if I were growing rich.

It was impossible to feel jolly, and I could see that Philip was discontented. He had never been accustomed to manual labour; he did not like being exposed to the cold winds, to the frost or rain, with no shelter except that afforded by our small tent. While at work we were always dirty, and often wet; and after we had passed a miserable night, daylight found us shivering, until warmth came with hard work. One morning Philip lost his temper; his only hat was soaked with rain, and his trousers, shirt, and boots were stiff with clay. He put a woollen comforter on his head in lieu of the hat. The comforter was of gaudy colours, and soon attracted public attention. A man down the gully said:

"I obsarved yesterday we had young Ireland puddling up here, and I persave this morning we have an Italian bandit or a Sallee rover at work among us."

Every digger looked at Philip, and he fell into a sudden fury; you might have heard him at the first White Hill.

"Yesterday I heard a donkey braying down the gully, and this morning he is braying again."

"Oh! I see," replied the Donkey. "We are in a bad temper this morning."

Father Backhaus was often seen walking with long strides among the holes and hillocks on Bendigo Flat or up and down the gullies, on a visit to some dying digger, for Death would not wait until we had all made our pile. His messengers were going around all the time; dysentery, scurvy, or fever; and the priest hurried after them. Sometimes he was too late; Death had entered the tent before him.

He celebrated Mass every Sunday in a tent made of drugget, and covered with a calico fly. His presbytery, sacristy, confessional, and school were all of similar materials, and of small dimensions. There was not room in the church for more than thirty or forty persons; there were no pews, benches, or chairs. Part of the congregation consisted of soldiers from the camp, who had come up from Melbourne to shoot us if occasion required. Six days of the week we hated them and called "Joey" after them, but on the seventh day we merely glared at them, and let them pass in silence. They were sleek and clean, and we were gaunt as wolves, with scarcely a clean shirt among us. Philip, especially hated them as enemies of his country, and the more so because they were his countrymen, all but one, who was a black man.

The people in and around the church were not all Catholics. I saw a man kneeling near me reading the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England; there was also a strict Presbyterian, to whom I spoke after Mass. He said the priest did not preach with as much energy as the ministers in Scotland. And yet I thought Father Backhaus' sermon had that day been "powerful," as the Yankees would say. He preached from the top of a packing case in front of the tent. The audience was very numerous, standing in close order to the distance of twenty-five or thirty yards under a large gum tree.

The preacher spoke with a German accent, but his meaning was plain.

He said:

"My dear brethren' 'Beatus ille qui post aurum non abiit'. Blessed is the man who has not gone after gold, nor put his trust in money or treasures. You will never earn that blessing, my dear brethren. Why are you here? You have come from every corner of the world to look for gold. You think it is a blessing, but when you get it, it is often a curse. You go what you call 'on the spree'; you find the 'sly grog'; you get drunk and are robbed of your gold; sometimes you are murdered; or you fall into a hole and are killed, and you go to hell dead drunk. Patrick Doyle was here at Mass last Sunday; he was then a poor digger. Next day he found gold, 'struck it rich,' as you say; then he found the grog also and brought it to his tent. Yesterday he was found dead at the bottom of his golden shaft, and he was buried in the graveyard over there near the Government camp."

My conscience was quite easy when the sermon was finished. It would be time enough for me to take warning from the fate of Paddy Doyle when I had made my pile. Let the lucky diggers beware! I was not one of them.

After we had been at work a few weeks, Father Backhaus, before stepping down from the packing-case,