CHAPTER XIBALLARAT
Nobodyhas seen Australia who has not seen a goldfield, and though with a certain reluctance, for the way was long and the trains unprovided with restaurant cars, we decided to visit one from Melbourne, whence, as one counts distance in Australia, they were easily accessible. The choice seemed to lie between Bendigo and Ballarat; they were equal as far as we were concerned, but there was something about the name of Bendigo that expressed a smug prosperity, while Ballarat suggested something of the unbridled spirit of adventure and undisciplined audacity of the pioneer. We elected in favour of Ballarat. We started very early in the morning, as you have to do in Australia if you want to get anywhere, feeling full of enterprise and prepared for any hardship. There had been a riot in Ballarat, they told us, quite a serious affair, with military intervention. The line to Ballarat runs at first through the flat country that we had already traversed, covered with the odd littleyellow boulders, which a well-informed passenger now assured us were formed of lava. There had been a lava flow all over the plain in some former geological period, he said, and the lava had gradually broken up into these little yellow boulders. The line then crosses the Bacchus Marsh Valley; this neighbourhood is the centre of the milk and butter trade, and china clay is also found in the district. Farther on we passed through the beautiful Werribee Gorge, remarkable for having been “eroded through glacial conglomerate into the underlying Ordovician sediment,” a well-informed passenger hastened to explain to us. While we listened respectfully an immense bird appeared hovering, lonely, majestic, above the gorge. “Aquila audax,” cried the too well-informed passenger eagerly; the largest known eagle. “How do you spell “Hordax?” inquired a lady. This tacit reflection on his pronunciation so discomfited him that he retired to another carriage, and we proceeded on our way unenlightened.
No sooner were we within sight of Ballarat than all our hopes of adventure were dashed; instead of the mining town that we had expected with little rows of corrugated iron huts, and miners in wideawakes and shirt-sleeves, what we did see was a cloud of white dust drivingalong a road, and behind it a town like any other town, containing, as a guide-book informed us, a “Hospital, Orphan and Benevolent Asylums, Women’s Homes, Mechanics’ Institute, with Library, Fine Art Gallery, Banks, Commercial Houses, two Town Halls, three theatres, forty churches, School of Mines and Museum, Agricultural High School, State schools, six iron-founderies, a brewery, a flour and two woollen mills, boot and other factories...!”
We were fifty years too late. We had come to see Ballarat, and we were shown it by a kind and hospitable stranger to whose care we had been consigned for the purpose. There is a tremendous fund of local patriotism in Australia. Everybody is very proud of their own town, for the simple reason that they have seen it grow and helped to make it. They have a paternal or proprietary interest in it. In Ballarat they are most proud, and justly so, of their principal street, Sturt Street, called presumably after the pioneer who named that wonderful hanging scarlet and black flower “Sturt’s desert pea.” Ballarat lies on the side of a hill, and Sturt Street, very wide and planted with trees in the centre, slopes sharply away through and out of the city towards a green hill that rises abruptly, and is framed, as it were, by the street.
Ballarat, we found, was gradually relapsing into what it had originally been, an agricultural centre. It was in the year of Queen Victoria’s accession that six prospectors, seeking good pastures for their flocks, reached Mount Buninyong, and looking westward saw a rich expanse of well-watered country that was soon settled as sheep runs, with its centre at Buninyong. It was not till 1851 that gold was first discovered in New South Wales, and the Melbourne authorities, alarmed at the consequent exodus of population, offered a reward of two hundred guineas for the discovery of gold in the state of Victoria. In July a man accidentally discovered gold in felling a tree at Buninyong, and a further search revealed the presence of gold in immense quantities on the site of what is now Ballarat. In those early days, “The Roaring Fifties,” as they were called, diggers hastened to Ballarat from all parts of the world, including New South Wales itself, for gold in such quantities had never been seen before. The whole neighbourhood became a vast encampment of tents and huts, and the peaceful sheep-farmers were forced to migrate.
The Government sought to enforce order among the cosmopolitan riotous crew of diggers. Licences were issued for a fee permitting them to work within certain specified limits, and theviolence used in enforcing this rule in 1854 produced a riot among the diggers, who opposed armed resistance to the police and Government soldiers at what was known as the “Eureka Stockade.” Order was restored after some bloodshed, but the ringleaders went unpunished, for public opinion was on the side of the diggers. The gold licences were withdrawn and the grant of parliamentary representation soon brought about more civilised conditions, or, in the words of the local guide, “Thus these early years of revelry and devilry have faded and dissolved into the far-famed golden city of the south, the garden city of Ballarat.”
That was sixty years ago. The greatest output of gold for any one year in Victoria occurred in 1856, and amounted to nearly £12,000,000 in value; for many years afterwards the mines yielded annually more than five millions sterling. It can be easily seen that the discovery of gold had a very great influence on the prosperity and development of the State and the disposition of its cities. Ballarat and Bendigo, for instance, are respectively the second and third cities in Victoria. As the extraordinarily rich surface alluvial deposits of gold were exhausted, mining was carried on at lower depths, involving greater expenditure of plant and machinery, and producing smaller profits.But in Ballarat, both east and west, there is a profitable field for further development. After having been well fortified with lunch, our host of the day took us off to see a gold mine.
We motored through the handsome main street of Ballarat, noting with surprise the number of very large and important drapers’ shops, with their impressive expanse of plate glass. They were all having what they called “clean up sales,” and we wondered how a population of about 42,000 could possibly support them, till our chauffeur, who was also the owner of the car, explained that Ballarat was the metropolis for the whole surrounding agricultural neighbourhood of the mines. On the way we passed through old Ballarat, the driver jumping a gutter with surprising skill. Old Ballarat is a wonderful, ramshackle-looking place, run up anyhow in the early days of the gold rush, when fortunes were made in other ways besides digging, and a “pannikin of rum” fetched an ounce of gold. It had the air of Earl’s Court after the season, when the exhibition is shut; the houses were of all shapes and sizes, and the arcades over the pavement were the only concession to convenience.
Gold-mining, like all other forms of mining, is an untidy process, and we presently came to rough, shapeless patches of irregular yellowground, all holes and hillocks, and now partly overgrown, where mining had formerly been carried on. Our destination was a hill of grey heaps and smoking chimneys. Even an Australian motor-car looked askance at the approach to it, so we walked up, for this was the mine we were asked to visit. We were shown into an office out of which opened two dressing-rooms. A litter of old boots was on the floor, the walls were hung with derelict felt hats and clean suits of butchers’ blue overalls. Here we were asked to attire ourselves suitably for the occasion. It is an odd feeling that of walking out into the light of day for the first time untrammelled by skirts, but this agreeable sensation was detracted from by carrying several pounds’ weight on either foot and by the difficulty of keeping on a large alien hat. Some other visitors were going down the mine, and one of the ladies’ hats blew off. Retrieving it from the mud, a man politely offered her his own, a quite clean one, in exchange. It belonged to somebody else, but he had had the foresight to select it in the dressing-room in preference to those provided for visitors. We were each furnished with a tallow candle.
Going down a gold mine feels exactly like being one of a new box of Bryant and May’s matches. A little two-storied platform takesdown eight adventurous souls at a time. There is a bar across to hold on to; two people stand on either side squeezed close together. Then the platform is lowered so that four more can get on to its upper story. With stringent warnings to inexperienced passengers to keep their free arm pressed close to their side, the platform descends the shaft just like a box of matches being pushed into its case. It is quite dark in the shaft. A sound of running water accompanied us, and we could hear it swishing far below. As we got lower it got hotter and hotter, till it felt as if we were suspended above the steam of some immense kettle, producing a curious feeling of suffocation, which, however, wears off. We had a general impression that the bottom of a gold mine would be a beautiful, glittering thing, with shining white walls of quartz and glimmering threads and patches of gold shining in it like the small samples given as mementoes to visitors. Nothing of the kind. It might as well have been a coal mine. On scrambling rather breathless out of the little cage, we found ourselves in a low, small, open space, with walls of some dun-coloured reddish stone, and narrow tunnels running off it with wooden supports for the roof. That was the gold mine, and except that in this Turkish bath of grotto and passage men were “picking”walls like rock-salt or alabaster, nothing more is to be said.
Coming up the shaft we were on the top of the platform, and the water we had heard going down now splashed on to us, as if somebody with a primitive sense of humour was watering us from above with a large watering-can. Altogether, we were very grateful for the blue overalls and the hats. Apropos of these, when we had recovered our own clothes and were waiting to inspect the machinery above ground, a distraught gentleman was passionately inquiring for his hat. The lady who had exchanged hats observed innocently that there was quite a nice hat hanging up in her dressing-room. He hurried off to look, and emerged ruefully with the hat in which she had been down the mine. It had been well watered with muddy water, and was now almost indistinguishable from the hats provided for the purpose.
The machinery was to the uninitiated much like other machinery. There were enormous pumps, fascinating like all such powerful, ruthless looking things. We saw the slim-looking cable that draws the cage up the shaft—(“Looks thin, don’t it?” said the workman in charge of it)—and the stamper for breaking up the quartz, and the sifters, which sift the mineral when it is crushed.
But there was much more to see. We weretaken to see the Agricultural High School. These schools are an interesting feature in the Australian system of education, and play an important part in it. The Ballarat Agricultural High School is a large, well-lighted building standing in its own grounds, where students can learn the practical arts of agriculture, at the same time that they attend classes, they learn to test milk and to understand the properties of soils. As it was Saturday we were unfortunately unable to see any classes at work. The art room had a south light, which is the aspect corresponding here to our north. The afternoon was now far advanced, so we paid a rapid visit to the Botanical Gardens, very large and handsome ones, adorned by statuary that is the great pride of Ballarat, the work of a local artist.
Finally, skirting Lake Wendouree, a piece of ornamental water on which pleasure steamers run in the summer, our host took us to his house, where we had a high tea, with one of those sumptuous cakes that only Australian housewives can produce. The journey back seemed very long, and we were very tired. There were innumerable stations, all quite dark, so someone ran along the train, inquiring at each carriage, “Anyone for ...?” whatever the name of the place happened to be. Therenever seemed to be anyone, and he then said in disappointed tones, “Right Oh! Jerry,” and we slowly creaked under way again.
We were very glad when we at last steamed into the brightly lighted Melbourne station, and found our kind host and hostess waiting there for us with their car, in spite of the lateness of the hour. Afterwards, in talking over the development of Australia with the people who lived there, we learned how great a part had been played by the discoveries of gold in populating the state. The first permanent settlement in Victoria, the smallest of the five states of Australia, was made by some immigrants from Van Diemen’s Land, as Tasmania was then called, in Portland Bay in 1834. This is an open bay which lies at some distance from Melbourne to the south-west; it was found to be unsafe for shipping, and there was a lack of good land in its immediate neighbourhood. Melbourne was founded the next year at the head of the deep inlet called Port Phillip Bay by parties of settlers from Van Diemen’s Land. Other settlers came from Sydney, and beginning to explore the interior were struck with its great capabilities. Immigration rapidly progressed, regular government was established under Captain William Lonsdale in 1836, and the capital was named Melbourne.
THE AUSTRALIAN ALPS, NORTH-EAST VICTORIA. MOUNT FEATHERTOP 6,300 FEET.
THE AUSTRALIAN ALPS, NORTH-EAST VICTORIA. MOUNT FEATHERTOP 6,300 FEET.
THE AUSTRALIAN ALPS, NORTH-EAST VICTORIA. MOUNT FEATHERTOP 6,300 FEET.
By the end of 1850 the population already numbered more than 76,000 people. The next year gold was discovered, and in 1851 the population had risen to over 400,000, and was six times that it had been before. The gold boom brought in its train cultivators, and pastoral settlers, for the staple of Australia is still wool. The state has an area of 56 million acres, less than 6 millions of which are under cultivation. The climate varies greatly according to rainfall and elevation, and there are even snow-bound districts during the winter months. Part of the country with a low rainfall is excellent for the cultivation of wheat, and one of the principal problems in Victoria is to guard against an uncertain rainfall by the conservation of water. For the north-east and north extensive irrigation works have already been undertaken, but the whole question awaits further investigation.
At present it is not known whether drought cycles can be predicted; how far the large quantities of water which flow through the Murray River and its tributaries could be utilised for irrigation; how far improved methods of farming will increase the extent to which the rainfall can be utilised. “No country in the world,” says Dr. T. W. Barrett, whom we have already quoted, “is more dependent thanAustralia on such knowledge as can be afforded by meteorology; and perhaps no country in the world is more disadvantageously placed, since at present there is no means of obtaining information from the waste of ocean which lies to the south.”
This brings us to a problem of very great interest in the land question in Victoria, a tendency to convert agricultural into grazing land. Returns show that the very large holdings of 10,000 acres are decreasing in number, and that an aggregation of holdings of from 500 to 800 acres constitutes the present problem. The successful farmer tries to increase his holding, but when he begins to grow old, and is confronted with the disorganisation and high wages of agricultural labour, he relinquishes cultivation and resorts to grazing stock on his larger area, which will provide him with a comfortable living. Consequently less labour is employed, the local schools decline, the trade of the neighbourhood languishes. So it comes about that many of the richest districts of the state are the least progressive. “The land around these centres,” says Professor Cherry of Melbourne University, “is probably as rich as that in any part of the world. But instead of the farm areas being reduced by subdivision they are steadily growing larger by aggregation.... The evil is intensified,because as the land goes out of cultivation, the workmen leave the district and general stagnation ensues.... Not one-tenth of the available land is under cultivation.”15And it must be borne in mind that agriculture is the basis of existence in Victoria.
The Government realise this. There are the Agricultural High Schools, an Agricultural College, a School of Agriculture at the University, and every primary school has its experimental plot of ground for gardening. Australia has its own peculiar problems to solve here as in other districts, especially that of breeding wheat which will be “drought-resistant and capable of growing outside the existing rainfall margin of profitable cultivation.” It is believed that vast areas of pastoral country in the interior of the continent, which now support a few sheep, might be successfully brought under cultivation, if a kind of wheat could be evolved that would grow, as many native grasses grow, under a low rainfall. As yet the average of wheat grown per acre is very low, only amounting in ten seasons up to 1911–12 to 10·58 bushels an acre, due, it is believed, partly to imperfect methods of cultivation, as well as to the growth of wheats that are not well adapted to local conditions.