CHAPTER XIXTHE GOLDEN CITIES
Twocities of Australia lay claim to the designation of the “Golden City”—Ballarat and Bendigo. Needless to say that the cities are rivals, and needless further to say that I am not so foolish a man as to enter into any dispute as to which is the better city.
Both cities have been very kind to me, and each of them has its own peculiar charm. Ballarat is built upon an eminence many hundreds of feet above the sea level, while Bendigo is built upon a plain, and is, therefore, a much warmer place than Ballarat. In both places gold has been discovered to an enormous extent, and to-day each city calls itself the golden city. And there, from that point of view, my interest in the matter ends.
*****
It was in 1851 that the first gold was found in Bendigo; and, like so many other things, it was discovered by accident. A man named Johnston simply stooped and picked up a nugget of gold, the glitter of which attracted him. Then some shepherds saw gold in the roots of a large tuft of grass which had been washed by the waters of the creek. Andwith that accidental find the fortunes of Bendigo were made. A desolate region, uninhabited, became in an incredibly short space of time a flourishing city. Like lightning the news travelled that gold had been found in Bendigo, and at once there was a rush from all parts of inhabited Australia and from the uttermost ends of the earth. “Claims” were measured off to the new-comers, and the desolate plain became a camp of fever-stricken men, all intent upon securing as much as possible of the yellow metal that was to make their fortunes. Men endured any hardship in order to compass their end. They scarcely lived; theirs was a bare existence. All they cared for was the amassing of gold; and when they were satisfied, or when they had exhausted their “claim,” they went back to the ordinary ways of life—some of them set up for life, others to squander their fortune and to arrive at a last state worse than their first. The Bendigo historian says without exaggeration that gold was dug up almost in bucketfuls. In one morning two young men sank a shallow hole, and extracted from it fifty pounds weight of gold.
The face of the earth was scarred and hacked by pick and shovel until at last it resembled a battlefield, desolate to the last degree. And to-day, on the site of the great struggle at White Hills, there is left a stretch of country filled with sand, and intersected with numerous gullies through which the cleansing water once flowed. And as on battlefields men continually wander in search of relics, so at White Hills the refuse is to-day subjected to a cyaniding processby means of which the last morsel of gold is compelled to yield itself up.
A year later gold was discovered in Ballarat.
Until that year the country as far as Sydney, was a gigantic sheep-walk. Houses were few and far between. The inhabitants of the country around Ballarat could have been counted quite easily by a child had one chanced to light upon them. But in a moment, when the magic word “gold” was pronounced, men sprang, as it were, from the abyss. Hundreds of fragile tents covered the ground; hundreds of tools were busily employed in digging for the enriching ore. A township arose, as by miracle, followed by a city, ever extending its borders, until to-day there is left, as the result of sixty years’ work, one of the most beautiful cities of Australia. “Ballarat the beautiful” they name it, and with justice. It is beautiful. Beautiful for situation! Its altitude is 1,500 feet above sea level. Snow falls in the winter-time when at Melbourne the feathers of the sky never descend. In the summer, when Melbourne is grilling in the heat, Ballarat remains with a temperate atmosphere. In this springtide the great boulevard is a flower-garden entrancing and perfumed. The streets are clean and wide—very wide—and everywhere imposing buildings stand. Temples of prayer, fine piles of commercial houses, schools and colleges, institutes, libraries, hospitals, and, above all, statuary adorn the city. In the mayor’s room of the Town Hall is an old print showing Ballarat in 1852, the year of the gold fever. Not a house was then erected.The countryside is shown dotted with canvas abodes. A decade later, a second print shows a large and flourishing town, laid out after the best models. And the last photograph reveals a modern, busy city, full of life and prosperity. It seems to be a dream, this sudden rise to power. Fifty years leave a city fresh, with the marks of its making still upon it. Ballarat, young in years, has somehow acquired the dignity and solidity of a city twice its age. In the old land I used to imagine these cities to be of the mushroom type—hastily grown, and with the mark of premature decay upon them. They are far from that. Ballarat, type of the gold-made city, is substantial, and it is built to abide. Another illusion cherished in the old days was that cities such as this, having sprung out of filthy lucre, must of necessity possess the mark of vulgarity. Ballarat shatters that illusion, for with all its material prosperity it possesses an air of refinement that cannot be mistaken. A high standard of education is sought. There is a School of Mines, there are fine colleges, there are scientific and literary societies, and there is an Eisteddfod. And this last thing is self-revealing. It means that in some way or other Welsh influence has been at work. And the number of Welshmen in Ballarat is explanatory of the Eisteddfod. With pride, Ballarat people call their city the Athens of Australia. All that is beautiful and artistic is encouraged. Annual competitions are held for the youth of both sexes, and at these there is wholesome rivalry in song, music, dramatic representations, literature, art, on the mental side, whileupon the physical side the games are held after the manner of the ancient city which Ballarat would fain copy. To the golden city come, annually, musicians, singers, reciters, and wrestlers from all parts of the Commonwealth. Trophies, prizes, and money are awarded to the winners. The judges are brought from England at enormous fees to adjudicate in the competitions. To quote the words of a municipal enthusiast, who is speaking sober truth, “a prize won at Ballarat is the antipodean equivalent in actual distinction to a trophy won at the Olympian games at Athens, with the difference that in our festival the athlete gives pride of place to the young artist in music and elocution.” From all of which it may justly be inferred that a city built upon gold mines is not necessarily a vulgar and a bloated city, having a population whose one ambition is the worship of the golden calf. It is a happy task to bear this witness.
But the crowning taste of Ballarat is in its statuary. There is no other city in the Southern Hemisphere that can boast of so many beautiful carved figures as Ballarat. The main street of the city is adorned with statues, amongst which is one of Moore and another of Burns. The most imposing of all is the statue of Queen Victoria crowned as Queen and Empress. Burns and Moore, Scotsman and Irishman, are not to monopolise the honours of the poets. Place is to be made for a statue of Shakespeare. Then happiness will reign, unless the Welshmen demand a place. But they have the livingEisteddfod. In the Botanical Gardens there are a number of figures, the most beautiful of which is the group by Benzoni, “The Flight from Pompeii.” It is a wonderful conception. Life-like are the mother, the father and the child, seeking escape from the terrible rain of dust which falls upon them. The husband shields the mother with a mantle, while she, in turn, protects the face of her infant from the pitiless fire flakes which threaten her little one. It is a group of which any city in the world might be proud.
Ballarat is thus the destruction of an illusion—the contradiction of the doctrine that a golden city must be vulgar and self-assertive. The people respect all who in any way contribute to the good of the community. I went up to lecture there, and lo! before I was aware of what had happened, I found myself “received” by the mayor, the town clerk, some of the councillors, and most of the clergy. It was embarrassing—and they honoured their visitor simply because it is their way to show respect to any man who, in their judgment, has a word of helpfulness to speak to the community. And that function over, behold, at the door of the Town Hall was a motor-car in which I was whisked round to be shown the sights. And all that for a Free Church minister who had come to lecture to one congregation!
In the matter of appreciative open-mindedness Australia has much to teach the mother country. Her sons listen heartily to any man who brings a living message to them, independently of his creed or hispolitical opinions. A land without a State Church does lend itself to liberty.
This, then, is the golden city of to-day. But the making of the city is a veritable romance. All Ballarat knows its history, yet there is but one solitary man alive who hasseenit all from the beginning. The sole survivor of the pioneers of 1851 is Mr. James Oddie. Each year, on September 1, it has been the custom of the survivors to have a banquet in commemoration of the discovery of gold in Ballarat. As the years have advanced the number of attendants at the banquet have declined, until on September 1, 1910, Mr. Oddie alone remained. But he had the banquet just the same. It was a one-man affair. In a room at the hotel dinner was served in great state forone. The guest and host in one was very cheerful. Not a soul save himself touched the meal. Waiters thoughtfully and longingly looked on while the veteran ate. Afterwards he gave a speech to the Pressmen intended for the world beyond, and in that he recalled the story of the founding of Ballarat. Melancholy meal! Mr. Oddie, it goes without saying, is an old man, and it cannot be long before the annual banquet will end for ever.
The story of the golden city is one of the romances of the world. A deserted vale, flanked by beautiful hills, was in a day converted into a camp of fever-stricken people—“yellow fever,” as it is sarcastically styled. From all parts of Australia, from New Zealand, from Tasmania, and from Europe thousands of adventurous spirits found their way to Ballarat. Thefirst comers marked out their “claims,” and forthwith entered into them to dig up the precious metal. Thirty ounces of gold per day was the capture of that earliest party. Like the lepers of Samaria, these fortunate men desired to keep to themselves the news of the great find. But the inevitable newspaper man came on the spot, and within a few hours a Geelong newspaper had given the secret to the whole world, much to the chagrin of certain of the explorers, who foresaw a distribution amongst many of a treasure they would fain keep for themselves. In less than a fortnight after the news had been made public “three men were left in Geelong and half Melbourne was on the gold-field.” Within three weeks guns were brought up by a small band of soldiers, and the scramble for gold was converted into commercial “prospecting” on licence issued by the Commissioners. The Church followed the Commissioners, and in a month’s time a Methodist church was erected. For walls there were the trunks of trees, for roof a piece of tarpaulin.
The springtide was in full beauty; the weather was settled, hence the primitive church was sufficient for the needs of the people. Great nuggets of gold were unearthed, some of them weighing 134 and 126 ounces. Fortunes were made in a day. Curious stories are told of the effect of digging. The Wesleyan church sank bodily into the ground as the result of undermining. The court house also suffered wreckage. It was a mad rush by men unpractised in mining, hence accidents and submergences were frequent.The amount of gold found in Ballarat in fifty years was 19,375,000 ounces. The surface gold has been worked out long ago, and now deep shafts are sunk, at the bottom of which men work while water is sprayed upon them. It is said that fabulous wealth still remains to be discovered in Ballarat, which for long enough will retain the title of the Golden City. The one and only battle Australia has ever known between white men was fought at Ballarat in connection with the gold-finding. The raising of the price of the gold-tax incensed some of the diggers, who became riotous, and the Government sent up from Melbourne detachments of two British regiments. On Sunday morning, December 3, 1854, soldiers and diggers fought. Life was lost on both sides, the diggers suffering more heavily than the soldiers. On the outskirts of Ballarat a monument is erected to the memory of the fighters. Blood and gold: they have always gone together, and although little blood was shed at Ballarat, there was enough of it to keep unbroken the tradition that the lust of gold means the loss of something human. Many a man made a rapid fortune in the early days of Ballarat. Those halcyon times have passed away. Never again can the old conditions and the old fever be repeated.
Governments are wiser to-day than formerly. They do not throw away their gold or their land to adventurers. The law of honest work is beginning to apply. Our youth can no longer wander into the world and pick up nuggets of gold at will. Some of them try and do this in a modern way by prospectingat gambling. That folly must also pass. The world will only be happy and fraternal when its gold fever has passed, and when honest work of brain or hand shall have taken its place.
*****
It was at Bendigo that I had the new experience of descending a gold mine. In almost any part of the world one may descend a coal mine, but a gold mine is much rarer, and when the opportunity was offered of seeing the conditions under which the most precious of all metals is extracted from the earth, I naturally embraced it immediately.
Once upon a time, within living memory, fifty years ago, there was no need to penetrate deeply into the bowels of the earth to discover gold. It lay upon the surface and just beneath it.
Rarely are surface nuggets found to-day; the country has been so thoroughly scoured. But exceptions occur, and as I write there is a note in the daily papers to the effect that a man picked up a nugget of gold last week worth £500. There may be yet another rush to that neighbourhood.
Deeper and deeper the mines have been sunk. When the surface and the sub-surface had yielded all their precious secrets, men went ever farther down in search of the yellow metal. Sometimes the mines were a failure and the owners of shares were glad enough to give away their shares, or to sell them at ridiculous prices, rather than pay the continual “calls” made upon them. One man, whose name to-day is intimately associated with Bendigo, found afortune in this way. He was entreated by a disappointed shareholder to buy shares at sixpence each. It seemed like throwing money away to buy even at that price, for the mine was exhausted. Yet he bought them, and then, in a moment, the tide turned and gold was discovered in the exhausted mine, and the almost penniless man who had bought shares for which he could scarcely pay, became a semi-millionaire. Such are the fortunes of the gold-field. The mine we descended was 2,100 feet deep. The shaft, top gear and cage resembled those of a coal mine, save that the wheels over the shaft were less than half the size of those of an English coal-pit. And, of course, there was an absence of the grime associated with a coal mine. We had to divest ourselves of all our ordinary garments and to don a costume which for the time gave us rank amongst tramps. Armed with a candle, we entered the cage, and descended. The journey seemed interminable. For more than two minutes we were slowly dropping through the shaft, enveloped in a profound darkness, and subjected to a perpetual baptism of water which rained upon us. There are times when seconds seem like minutes, and minutes like hours. And the two minutes and a half we were in that cage, suspended by a slender steel rope, seemed a small eternity.
The temperature at the bottom was nearly 80 deg. Fahrenheit, and we were compelled to remove all clothing, save our trousers. In a few minutes we had entered upon the experience of a Turkish bath; streams of perspiration ran down our bodies. Wheneverwe lighted upon a group of miners we saw that they also were living in a perpetual bath. Nearly stripped, great beads of perspiration stood out on their flesh. “We are used to it, sir,” said one of them cheerfully, but I learned that for some of them this “use” meant disease and death—largely through want of care when they brought their overheated bodies to the surface. Along well-built corridors we tramped, holding our lighted candles ahead of us. No danger in the gold mine of that terrible fire-damp which is so fatal to coal miners. But in the gold mine there is another danger like that which threatens colliers; that of falling masses of mineral. We came to one place where on the previous day, without warning, a hundred tons of rock and quartz had fallen. Happily, no man was injured; but it is not always so. When our turn came to crawl along on hands and knees, surrounded by angry-looking rock possessing sinister-looking gaps, the perspiration did not decrease in volume. It seemed as if a single touch would suffice to bring down a hundred tons weight upon our fragile backs. The danger is always present despite every precaution taken to ensure safety. Blasting continually goes on, and then the danger is at its height.
Let me confess to a feeling of disappointment. In a coal mine the black diamonds glisten under one’s eyes. There is no faith required to believe in the presence of coal. The seams are there, and all that is necessary is to dislodge the coal, load it in trucks and convey it to the surface. It is otherwise in the goldmine. In my simplicity I was looking out for nuggets, as men used to do on the surface. Alas! we saw not so much as the ghost of a nugget. To our untrained eyes there was not the suspicion of gold anywhere. Everywhere we caught the glitter of a yellow substance, which at first we mistook for gold, but which is in reality worthless. The gold is hidden in these vast seams of quartz, which have to be dislodged, brought to the surface, sent to the battery, crushed and washed. And then at last, when the water has ceased flowing over the pulverised mass of sand, the gold is discovered. It is all faith at first. These men justify their business by faith, and then, in the final analysis, justify it by verification. The layman would pass by all this quartz as so much rock or stone. The expert knows that hidden within it is the most desired of all metals. Yet they never know what may be found below. Hence, every man is searched when he reaches the surface. A year or two ago there was a scandal at Bendigo over gold-stealing, and there were found many defenders of the men. Formerly the most ingenious devices were employed by the miners to conceal any gold they had abstracted in the mine. One of the favourite methods was to swallow the metal and to take means later to disgorge it.
It is easy to moralise in a gold mine. Perspiration, discomfort, danger, deprivation of the light of day, an invitation held out to pneumonia, and all for a bit of yellow metal which men have accepted as the basis of exchange! And to-morrow, if a fresh Bendigowere discovered, there would be the same rush and the same risks taken. It is civilisation. And is the worldverymuch happier than when men exchanged one useful article for another and when gold was unknown?
After science, Nature once more. Those desolate surfaces at White Hills, plundered of their golden treasure and bequeathed as an eyesore, have been converted. For years they lay despised of all men. The soil was said to be unfruitful. Men resigned themselves to the spectacle of a wilderness. And then came one or two Spaniards who saw visions of gardens in that belated spot. They planted tomatoes, and, lo! the love apple flourished where the desert had reigned. And more, led by the foreigner, whose intrusion was at first resented, the inhabitants of the district are cultivating tomatoes, which grow beautifully on the alluvial soil. Thus the gash made upon the face of Nature by man’s spade and pick is slowly healing, and a red growth is obliterating the ugly work of fifty years ago. And so it is ever: the artificial thing goes ever deeper into the darkness, while the beauty of Nature remains a perpetual enchantment. The gashes disappear under our mother’s healing touch.