The Eureka Stockade | Page 6

search for licences, or "the traps are out to-day"--their name at the
time--happened once a month. The strong population now on this
gold-field had perhaps rendered it necessary twice a month. Only in
October, I recollect they had come out three times. Yet, "the traps are
out" was annoying, but not exasperating. Not exasperating, because
John Bull, 'ab initio et ante secula', was born for law, order, and safe
money-making on land and sea. They were annoying, because, said
John, not that he likes his money more than his belly, but he hates the
bayonet: I mean, of course, he does not want to be bullied with the
bayonet. To this honest grumbling of John, the drunkard, that is the
lazy, which make the incapables, joined their cant, and the
Vandemonians pulled up with wonted audacity. In a word, the thirty
shillings a month for the gold licence became a nuisance.
A public meeting was announced on Bakery-hill. It was in November,
1853. Four hundred diggers were present. I recollect I heard a "Doctor
Carr" poking about among the heaps of empty bottles all round the
Camp, and asked who paid for the good stuff that was in them, and
whither was it gone. Of course, Doctor Carr did not mention, that one

of those bottles, corked and sealed with the "Crown," was forced open
with Mr. Hetherington's corkscrew; and that said Dr. Carr had then to
confess that the bottle aforesaid contained a nobbler some 250 pounds
worth for himself. Great works already at Toorak. 'Tout cela soit dit en
passant.' Mr. Hetherington, then a storekeeper on the Ballaarat Flat, and
now of the Cladendon Hotel, Ballaarat Township, is a living witness.
For the fun of the thing, I spoke a few words which merited me a
compliment from the practitioner, who also honoured me with a private
precious piece of information--"'Nous allons bientot avoir la
Republique Australienne! Signore.'" "'Quelle farce! repondis je.'" The
specimen of man before me impressed me with such a decided opinion
of his ability for destroying sugarsticks, that at once I gave him credit
as the founder of a republic for babies to suck their thumbs.
In short, here dates the Victorian system of 'memorialising.' The
diggers of Ballaarat sympathised with those of Bendigo in their
common grievances, and prayed the governor that the gold licence be
reduced to thirty shillings a month. There was further a great waste of
yabber-yabber about the diggers not being represented in the
Legislative Council, and a deal of fustian was spun against the squatters.
I understood very little of those matters at the time: the shoe had not
pinched my toe yet.
Every one returned to his work; some perhaps not very peacefully, on
account of a nobbler or two over the usual allowance.

Chapter V
.

Risum Teneatis Amici.
I recollect towards this time I followed the mob to Magpie Gully. It
was a digger's life. Hard work by day, blazing fire in the evening, and
sound sleep by night at the music of drunken quarrels all around, far
and near. I had marked my claim in accordance with the run of the
ranges, and safe as the Bank of England I bottomed on gold. No search
for licence ever took place. What's the matter? Oh, the diggers of
Bendigo, by sheer moral force, in the shape of some ten thousand in a
mob, had inspired with better sense the red-tape there and somewhere

else, so I took out my licence at the reasonable rate of two pounds for
three months, my contribution for the support of gold-lace. So far so
good. I had no fault to find with our governor Joseph Latrobe, Esquire;
nor do I believe that the diggers cared about anything else from him.
Was it then his being an esquire that brought his administration into
contempt? The fact is, a clap of "The Thunder" from Printing
House-square boomed on the tympanum of my ear. We diggers got the
gracious title of "vagabonds," and our massa "Joe," for his pains to
keep friends with us, was put down "an incapable;" all for the honour
of British rule, of course.
"Wanted a Governor," was now no longer a dummy in 'The Argus'; but,
unhappily, no application was made to the people of Victoria.
Give a dog a bad name--and the old proverb holds good even at the
antipodes. My trampings are now transcribed from my diary.
With the hot winds whirled in the Vandemonian rush to the Ballaarat
Flat. My hole was next to the one which was jumped by the Eureka
mob, and where one man was murdered in the row. At sixty-five feet
we got on a blasted log of a gum-tree that had been mouldering there
under a curse, since the