The following short narrative was written specially for a small circle of intimate acquaintances, who varied the dulness of village life by meeting once a week to read manuscript essays and selections from favourite authors. The time allowed for reading being limited, and the audience being partly composed of young people, I confined myself mainly to personal experience. As many of the company had previously heard me relate in an off-hand way, the leading incidents, detection would have been sur

Early in the month of September, 1852, I landed at Cole’s Wharf in Melbourne, one of four hundred passengers newly arrived from Liverpool by the “Lady Head” sailing ship. While yet at sea I had agreed to join a party of young men who intended starting for the diggings without delay. We found the lodging-houses overcrowded, with table-tops, chests, and chairs in use for bedsteads, and we were made acquainted with a considerable portion of the town before we found accommodation. Our capital being

In the morning, having provided ourselves with tools, we made a beginning in a small gulley near our camping place. There did not seem to be much business doing in it, but it was nice and dry and quiet, and we had been informed that great hits were occasionally made in very unlikely spots. We had agreed to work in pairs, my lot falling in company with a decent man, a hand-loom weaver to trade, from the North of Scotland. We took spell about at the digging, short spells being in favour, as my mat

After walking about a mile, I came upon a sheep station at Bullock creek, and got engaged to assist in sheep shearing. The station being only about ten miles from Bendigo where I had been digging, it was plain I had not come as the crow flies, nor by the beaten road. A portion of the building was in use as a tavern called “The Albert,” appropriately fronting which, at a distance of two or three hundred yards, was a small police station, where the few who would not suffer the many to get drunk qu

Having earned a few pounds, I left Bullock creek, and returned to Bendigo, but found my old comrades gone. Meeting however with an acquaintance whose mate was about to leave for town, we agreed to go together, and hearing Tarrangower well spoken of, we proceeded thither. We met with varying success, that barely covered our expenditure. My companion became anxious, his wife, left behind in Melbourne, being in great measure dependent on what he might send from time to time. One day, in speaking gr

I never had given much of my attention to the art of cooking, and was rather alarmed on finding I would have some seven or eight experienced bushmen to deal with. The first day’s bread we had brought with us in the cart, the frying-pan and kettle were to do the rest. The men seemed satisfied with plain things, and the superintendent appearing favourably disposed towards me, I felt less anxious than I had expected on commencing breadmaking on the second morning. I had never baked anything bigger

Melbourne consists of two portions, older and newer. The former, which grew much slower than the latter, lies between two low, irregular, broad-browed ridges. These are of no great length, and flatten out their south ends on the Yarra-Yarra river which here flows westward in front of them. Elizabeth Street, the main thoroughfare of Melbourne, runs along the bottom of the valley between these ridges, and in line with it is now the highway to the Diggings in the north. The streets, unlike those of

I had not been long in town before I experienced the feverish discomfort of a sand-storm, known by the familiar name of “a brickfielder,” and happily not more frequent than great storms in England. The weather had been extremely hot for two or three days, with a thirsty breeze coming from the parched plains of the interior, the sky became of a dirty light drab colour, and the dust, heat-dried and light, began to be whirled about in columns taller than the house tops. Woe to the wayfarer when the

As some may be interested in a fuller account of gold-digging than the limited scope of the personal narrative allowed, the following particulars are added. In the Bendigo district, the shafts are generally 10 to 15 feet deep, through loose gravel, and sometimes through sandy earth that requires only the spade in digging. For raising the stuff from the bottom, rudely constructed winches are employed in the deeper holes, and, for the shallower, simple swing bars, which are merely one stout pole b

In a portion of the impression, page 8, line 4, read:—“In the case of gutters, only the holes that struck upon the line were profitable, but the line was generally so uncertain,” &c. Transcriber’s Note: This has been changed as the author wished. The original text as printed was:—“In the case of gutters, only the holes that struck upon the line was generally so uncertain” i.e. the words “were profitable, but the line” had been omitted. In addition some minor printing errors have been cor