The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (71 page)

5
It is the conventional wisdom that Hiscock ‘discovered' gold at Ballarat. See, for example, Robyn Annear,
Nothing But Gold: The Diggers of 1852
, (Melbourne, Text Publishing, 1999), 10. Note that in
The Rush That Never Ended,
Geoffrey Blainey attributes the first Buninyong finds in the Ballarat region to John Dunlop and his mate Regan. Geoffrey Serle also gives the guernsey to Hiscock in
The Golden Age.
All authors agree that small deposits had been found in other parts of Victoria prior to this date, but the Ballarat finds of August/September 1851 were the first significant discoveries. Meanwhile, Fred Cahir has documented the preexisting knowledge of Indigenous people with regards to mineral deposits, including gold. Fred Cahir, ‘Finders not Keepers: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria', in
Eureka: Reappraising an Australian Legend
, ed. Alan Mayne (Perth: API Network, 2006).

6
John Capper wrote three guidebooks to Australia, published in 1852, 1853 and 1855. These observations are drawn from his 1855 edition. All three volumes are held by the State Library of Victoria.

7
Sarah Watchwarn's words are preserved in the 1934 collection
Records of Pioneer Women
, produced by the Women's Centennial Council to celebrate one hundred years since the establishment of the first long-term European settlement in Victoria. Note that Ellen Clacy used the phrase ‘grass widows' in her 1853 account of her sojourn in Victoria. She said it was a mining term. Later linguists consider the expression to have a dual etymology. It can refer to the grass that was used to stuff the marital mattress, which has been abandoned by the departed husband. Or it can refer to the phrase ‘the grass is always greener', suggesting the husband has left for more promising pastures. Historian Christina Twomey gives an excellent account of the lives of women left behind by the gold rush in her book
Deserted and Destitute: Motherhood, Wife Desertion and Colonial Welfare
.

8
Wathaurung language terms were collected and recorded by Charles Griffith in the 1830s. Griffith was an early civil servant and politician in the Port Phillip District. His diaries, including extensive vocabulary lists, are preserved in the State Library of Victoria. My thanks to Ballarat-based historian Fred (David) Cahir for pointing me in the direction of Griffith's work. Cahir's own extensive research on the Wathaurung is essential reading for any modern student or scholar of gold rush history. For details about Queen Rose and Caroline, see Dorothy Wickham's invaluable collection of biographical sketches,
Women of the Diggings, Ballarat 1854
.

9
William McLeish wrote his memoirs in 1914, when he was almost seventy years old. The manuscript is held by the State Library of Victoria.

10
Samuel Heape's diary, kept between October 1853 and March 1854, is held by the State Library of Victoria. The observations of J. J. Bond are drawn from his ship diary aboard the
Lady Flora
, departing Gravesend in April 1853. Bond's diary is held in microform in many Australian collections through the Australian Joint Copying Project.

11
Newcastle Courant
, 9 January 1857, 6.

12
Walter Bridges, Travelogue
, The Travels of Walter Bridges
, c. 1856, Ballarat Library.

13
American prospector Charles Ferguson makes it clear that using Aboriginal guides was common practice. See Ferguson's memoir
Experiences of a Forty-Niner
. Fred Cahir also documents many instances of Wathaurung making the most of immigrants' ignorance of the land for their own financial benefit.

14
Cahir, ‘Dallong', 38.

15
The words belong to artist William Strutt, who is most famous for his remarkable painting
Black Thursday, February 6th, 1851
, which hangs in the State Library of Victoria. Strutt is also responsible for the lovely sketch of Victoria's grass widows fending for themselves in the pursuit of daily chores ordinarily performed by men.

16
Wilhelmina (Willie) Davis Train's letters home to America are preserved in the manuscripts collection of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria under the misleading name ‘Miller Davis Train'. George Francis Train's published accounts in the
Boston Globe
are compiled in the book edited by E. Daniel and Annette Potts,
A Yankee Merchant in Goldrush Australia
.

17
Weston Bate, ‘Gold: Social Energiser and Definer', 7.

18
Or mistress! Mining magnate Alice Cornwell, who owned and operated lucrative gold mines in Ballarat in the 1880s, was known as Madame Midas. Her life is fictionalised in the novel of that name by Fergus Hume, who is credited as the author of the first Australian crime novel,
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
. Both novels were extremely popular with Australian and British audiences of the day.

19
Edward Bell, ‘Blue Book' Report on Immigration, tabled 27 September 1854, Government Printer.

20
Dan and Davis Calwell were the great-great-uncles of Arthur Calwell, who as Minister for Immigration in the post-World War II era, was a staunch defender of the White Australian Policy while advocating the strategy of ‘populate or perish'. Dan and Davis Calwell's letters are held by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.

21
These statistics are gleaned from my own number-crunching of the Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriage registers, 1851–7.

22
The observations of Thomas Pierson are gleaned from his diaries (1852–64), held by the State Library of Victoria.

23
There is widespread confusion about the authorship of the anonymous book
Social Life and Manners in Australia by a Resident
, published in London in 1861. It is generally attributed to Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye, a writer and women's rights campaigner who wrote two novels about her time in New South Wales, as well as
Memories of Social Life in Australia Thirty Years Ago
, published in London in 1914. The authors of
Australian Autobiographical Narratives: 1850-1900
, Kay Walsh and Joy Hooten, conclude that
Social Life and Manners
was
not
written by Ramsay-Laye, as the anonymous author came to Australia ‘in 1851 or 1852' with her husband and never went to New South Wales. Walsh and Hooten do not propose an alternative to Ramsay-Laye as the author of
Social Life and Manners
, but adding weight to their theory is the fact that the State Library of Victoria's rare copy of
Social Life and Manners
is inscribed as being authored by ‘J. Massey or Massary'. My research shows that a James Massey and Mrs James Massey arrived in Victoria in October 1852 aboard the
Julia
. However, there is no record of a Mr and Mrs Laye (or Ramsay-Laye) arriving in either Victoria or NSW in the 1850s. On the basis of this evidence, I am inclined to agree that
Social Life and Manners
was not penned by Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye, but rather by Mrs Elizabeth Massey.

24
The observations of Alexander Dick are drawn from his exceptional three-volume reminiscences of his life in Victoria between 1852 and 1907. Dick died in 1913. The original manuscripts are held at the State Library of Victoria.

25
This traveller's account was published in
Murray's Guide to the Gold Diggings
, the Lonely Planet of its day.

26
The technology of mineral extraction at Ballarat is ably covered by Weston Bate in
Lucky City
and Geoffrey Blainey in
The Rush That Never Ended
. However, my deepest debt of gratitude for understanding the geology of gold mining goes to Tim Sullivan, deputy CEO of Sovereign Hill.

27
Weston Bate calls the Ballarat Circus Jones' Circus. John Wilson, a Eureka descendant, names the circus's proprietors as Messrs Jones and Noble in his 1885 account. However, Raffaello Carboni refers to it at Rowe's Circus in his infamous 1855 eyewitness account. Rowe's American Circus was certainly in Melbourne in August 1853; Thomas and Frances Pierson rented a house opposite it. Pierson says Rowe made £20,000 with his circus and always played to packed audiences. Joseph Rowe and his wife, an ‘equestrienne', are known to have cleared $100,000 on their Australian tour. They charged 50c per adult and half price for children and servants. See John Culhane,
The American Circus
, 80. Joseph Rowe and his family left Victoria in 1854 to return to San Francisco.

28
These vignettes are all drawn from Robert Whitworth's
Australian Stories Round the Campfire
, published in the Australian International Monthly in 1872.

TWO: DELIVERANCE

1
Genealogical research on the Nolan, Hynes and Gittens families was supplied by Bill Hanlon. Hanlon was raised by his grandmother, Bridget Hynes, Bridget Nolan's daughter. Additional information was provided by John Wilson, also a descendant of the Nolan/Hynes family.

2
There is a substantial literature about women and Chartism. Jutta Schwarzkopf's book
Women in the Chartist Movement
is the most comprehensive. Paul Pickering and Alex Tyrell's
The People's Bread
also gives an excellent account of women's political activism in this period.

3
A remarkable collection of letters between William and Caroline Dexter is held by the State Library of Victoria. See also Patrick Morgan's excellent dual biography of the Dexters,
Folie à Deux
.

4
A file of cuttings from the
Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard
is held by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.

5
The observations of Fanny Davis are drawn from her ship diary, written upon the
Conway
, 3 June 1858–10 September 1858. The diary is held at the State Library of Victoria.

6
The best analysis of the nineteenth-century concept of ‘manliness', which is quite different from today's notion of ‘masculinity', is provided by Gail Bederman in her book
Manliness and Civilization
. My thanks to Marilyn Lake for pointing me in the direction of Bederman's work.

7
This fellow's words are recorded in Mrs May Howell's book.

8
These lines are all drawn from the
Marco Polo Chronicle
, 23 November 1853–21 January 1854. Thomas Evans, brother of Charles and George Evans, was on this ship.

9
For these letters and diaries to be found in Australia, either copies or original items need to have been repatriated to Australian collections. Copies of Lucy's letters are now held at the Gold Museum, Ballarat.

10
Graeme Davison discusses the English pastoral idyll, transplanted onto Victoria's rural hinterland, in
The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne
. Historian Helen Doyle has also written eloquently on this subject in her unpublished doctoral thesis.

11
This statistic is not derived from immigration agent Bell's reports. It is gleaned from the research of Pauline Rule. See her article ‘Irish Women and the Problem of Ex-Nuptial Conception'.

12
In 1857, popular goldfields balladeer Charles Thatcher penned a song touching on the cultural anxiety about the sexual homogeneity of Chinese immigrants. Called ‘The Fine Fat Saucy Chinaman', it included these lyrics:
Now John, with all his many faults/Leads an industrious life/The greatest drawback that he has/Is that he has no wife …Now as he's getting lots of gold/I've not the slightest doubt/That ultimately Chinese girls/By thousands will come out
. For the full song, see
Thatcher's Colonial Songster,
79.

13
On the Chinese regarding Europeans as inferior, see Keir Reeves and Andrew Mountford's work on the Chinese during the gold rush.

14
PROV, original papers tabled in the Legislative Assembly, VPRS 3253/53.

THREE: CROSSING THE LINE

1
The life of Louisa Timewell, including her first-hand accounts of the ship journey to Victoria, is honoured in the 1934
Records of Pioneer Women
. I've supplemented the 1934 entry with basic birth, death and marriage research.

2
The Marco Polo Chronicle
.

3
Céleste de Chabrillan was a French courtesan prior to her marriage to Lionel de Chabrillan, the French consul. She had written a scandalous memoir of her highly colourful life prior to her voyage to Australia. Her second book was her memoir of her journey to and time in Victoria, based on diary entries and published as
Un Deuil au bout du mond (Death at the End of the World)
some twenty years later
.
Shunned by Melbourne society due to her self-publicised shady past, the melodramatic but remarkably modern Céleste came to see her time in the antipodes as a sort of bereavement. An English translation of
Un Deuil
has been written by Patricia Clancy and Jeanne Allen as
The French Consul's Wife
.

4
Charlotte Spence's experiences aboard the
John and Lucy
in June 1854 are captured in her husband John Spence's diary. Agnes Paterson's observations are drawn from her ship journal aboard the
Lord Clyde
in 1859, held by the State Library of Victoria. Henry Nicholls' observations are drawn from his 1852 ship diary. Henry and his wife Marian lost their baby daughter, Marian, eight days into this ill-fated journey. Marian was their fourth child. The Nicholls had five more children in Victoria. State Library of Victoria holds all of the these manuscripts.

5
The observations of Bethuel Adams are drawn from his ship diary, written aboard the
Van Marnix
, departing Gravesend in October 1853. The diary is held by the State Library of Victoria.

6
Quoted in Don Charlwood's
The Long Farewell
, 88.

7
The observations of Jane Swan are drawn from her Diary of a Voyage from Gravesend to Port Phillip on the
William and Jane
, 12 August 1853–2 December 1853, held by the State Library of Victoria.