Australia Felix | Page 7

though, the ear made out, in the
conglomerate of noise, a host of separate noises infinitely multiplied:
the sharp tick-tick of surface-picks, the dull thud of shovels, their
muffled echoes from the depths below. There was also the continuous
squeak and groan of windlasses; the bump of the mullock emptied from
the bucket; the trundle of wheelbarrows, pushed along a plank from the
shaft's mouth to the nearest pool; the dump of the dart on the heap for
washing. Along the banks of a creek, hundreds of cradles rattled and
grated; the noise of the spades, chopping the gravel into the
puddling-tubs or the Long Toms, was like the scrunch of shingle under
waves. The fierce yelping of the dogs chained to the flag-posts of stores,
mongrels which yapped at friend and foe alike, supplied a note of
earsplitting discord.
But except for this it was a wholly mechanical din. Human brains
directed operations, human hands carried them out, but the sound of the
human voice was, for the most part, lacking. The diggers were a
sombre, preoccupied race, little given to lip-work. Even the
"shepherds," who, in waiting to see if their neighbours struck the lead,
beguiled the time with euchre and "lambskinnet," played moodily, their
mouths glued to their pipe-stems; they were tail-on-end to fling down
the cards for pick and shovel. The great majority, ant-like in their
indefatigable busyness, neither turned a head nor looked up: backs were
bent, eyes fixed, in a hard scrutiny of cradle or tin-dish: it was the earth
that held them, the familiar, homely earth, whose common fate it is to
be trodden heedlessly underfoot. Here, it was the loadstone that drew
all men's thoughts. And it took toll of their bodies in odd, exhausting
forms of labour, which were swift to weed out the unfit.
The men at the windlasses spat into their horny palms and bent to the
crank: they paused only to pass the back of a hand over a sweaty
forehead, or to drain a nose between two fingers. The barrow-drivers
shoved their loads, the bones of their forearms standing out like ribs.
Beside the pools, the puddlers chopped with their shovels; some even
stood in the tubs, and worked the earth with their feet, as wine-pressers
trample grapes. The cradlers, eternally rocking with one hand, held a
long stick in the other with which to break up any clods a careless

puddler might have deposited in the hopper. Behind these came the
great army of fossickers, washers of surface-dirt, equipped with knives
and tin-dishes, and content if they could wash out half-a-pennyweight
to the dish. At their heels still others, who treated the tailings they
threw away. And among these last was a sprinkling of women, more
than one with an infant sucking at her breast. Withdrawn into a group
for themselves worked a body of Chinese, in loose blue blouses, flappy
blue leg-bags and huge conical straw hats. They, too, fossicked and
re-washed, using extravagant quantities of water.
Thus the pale-eyed multitude worried the surface, and, at the risk and
cost of their lives, probed the depths. Now that deep sinking was in
vogue, gold-digging no longer served as a play-game for the gentleman
and the amateur; the greater number of those who toiled at it were
work-tried, seasoned men. And yet, although it had now sunk to the
level of any other arduous and uncertain occupation, and the magic
prizes of the early days were seldom found, something of the old,
romantic glamour still clung to this most famous gold-field, dazzling
the eyes and confounding the judgment. Elsewhere, the horse was in
use at the puddling-trough, and machines for crushing quartz were
under discussion. But the Ballarat digger resisted the introduction of
machinery, fearing the capitalist machinery would bring in its train. He
remained the dreamer, the jealous individualist; he hovered for ever on
the brink of a stupendous discovery.
This dream it was, of vast wealth got without exertion, which had
decoyed the strange, motley crowd, in which peers and churchmen
rubbed shoulders with the scum of Norfolk Island, to exile in this
outlandish region. And the intention of all alike had been: to snatch a
golden fortune from the earth and then, hey, presto! for the old world
again. But they were reckoning without their host: only too many of
those who entered the country went out no more. They became
prisoners to the soil. The fabulous riches of which they had heard tell
amounted, at best, to a few thousands of pounds: what folly to depart
with so little, when mother earth still teemed! Those who drew blanks
nursed an unquenchable hope, and laboured all their days like navvies,
for a navvy's wage. Others again, broken in health or disheartened,

could only turn to