Under Full Sail Page 7
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Success stories like that of Cobb & Co greatly enhanced the appeal of Australia in the eyes of potential migrants, but it was still the gold rush that drove the insatiable demand for travel to the Antipodes.
When travellers arrived in Sydney, they were welcomed into a bustling and rapidly changing community of almost 40,000 that was emerging from the shadow of its convict past. The precinct had been declared a city in 1842 and its community, like that of Melbourne, was benefiting considerably from the gold rush . . . but not to the same degree.
In Victoria, the impact of the gold discoveries was far greater than anyone could have anticipated. In just one year the new colony’s populace more than doubled from 77,345 to 171,989. By 1861, the gold rush would result in a sevenfold population increase to more than half a million. By then the colony would be home to 47 per cent of Australia’s entire population.
Because of its proximity to the largest goldfields, and the fact that it was an easy port to achieve, Melbourne was the most popular destination for pioneers travelling from England and Europe. The arrival of hundreds of adults and children on Melbourne’s doorstep at the start of the gold rush heralded the beginning of what would become an overwhelming problem for the town and its 20,000 residents. There was virtually no accommodation, or facilities in general, to cope with such an influx. What public lodgings were available were few and small, while the majority of residences, many roughly hewn from timber, were so tiny they could not take in any visitors.
The colony’s authorities did what they could to assist the homeless horde, but it was nowhere near enough. As a result, most of the migrants were left to fend for themselves. Some of them decided to cross the Princes Bridge leading out of the city to vacant land on the river’s south bank and establish a camp there. Many more followed and became occupants of what would become known as ‘Canvas Town’. Some of the residents were fortunate enough to have tents, while others used what they could find to provide shelter for their families and themselves.
In the rush to get to Melbourne, the majority of migrants had not considered the finer details, such as how far the goldfields were from Melbourne, how they were going to get there, and what equipment would be needed. Because of this, many were forced to remain in Melbourne much longer than anticipated, and having no income, what little money they had quickly evaporated. A significant number were then compelled to ‘set up shop’ in Flinders Street, in the heart of the town, and sell what they could of the possessions they had brought with them.
The population of Canvas Town exploded with the arrival of each ship bringing more migrants, and in little more than six months it was home to nearly 8000 people. Inevitably, the camp established its own identity and became a mini-village, where some of the residents set up stores selling the necessities of life. Eventually, though, the crush of humanity at the site was overwhelming and it degenerated into little more than a slum.
The situation would only get worse. As more ships reached Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne was confronted by its serious lack of facilities and preparedness. While an increase in migration was just what the new colony had hoped for, it was a case of too many people too soon. Over a four-month period in 1852, 619 ships carrying 55,057 passengers came to anchor in Port Phillip. The following year more than 2500 ships arrived!
There was, however, a bright spot for the migrants in these difficult times, and it was evident to them in the streets of Melbourne every day. If they wanted any confirmation that wealth was to be had from the colony’s goldfields, they needed only to stand on one of the main thoroughfares and observe the antics of diggers who had come to town flaunting their newfound wealth. The majority frequented the bars, where plenty of booze was readily available, while others followed a tradition known to have sprung up during the Californian gold rush by hiring a horse-drawn carriage, filling it with as many women as wanted to ride, then parading around town – often at a fair clip – sipping Champagne and making as much attention-grabbing noise as possible.
For most, this flashy, raucous and often illegal behaviour remained beyond the reach of the law, simply because the police force in Melbourne was a grossly undermanned assembly comprising mainly migrants, whose sole symbol of authority was the helmet they wore. They were an inexperienced and ineffective lot who were nothing more than off-the-street replacements for the large number of police officers who had abandoned their duties and beaten a hasty trail to the goldfields.
If anything, the lawlessness on the goldfields themselves was even worse. The emerging settlements of Ballarat and Bendigo, the locations of the two biggest finds, were already under siege from a population explosion.
Almost every form of entertainment in such settlements was well patronised – like the ‘gallant and determined mill [fist fight] between Jim Kelly and Jonathan Smith, for £400’, which was staged on 3 December 1855 at Fiery Creek near Beaufort, 100 miles north-west of Melbourne. Billed as the ‘knights of the knuckle’, Kelly and Smith made history with their bare-knuckle stoush, recognised to this day as the longest fight ever – an astounding six hours and fifteen minutes.
But most popular of all among the diggers was Irish-born dancer and courtesan Lola Montez, whose reputation had preceded her by the time she arrived on the goldfields. She had already achieved international notoriety for her erotic ‘Spider Dance’, in which she either shocked or teased her audience by lifting her skirts so high that it was obvious she was naked underneath.
Such was her fame during her short life – she died in New York aged forty-two – that she was recognised across America, Europe and Australia for her ‘social activities’ as much as her dancing ability. Lola could possibly lay claim to having more husbands and lovers during her life than any other woman of her time. Her paramours included mere military lieutenants, owner of the San Francisco Whig newspaper Patrick Purdy Hull, and King Ludwig I of Bavaria.
She and a young actor, Noel Follin, sailed for Sydney from San Francisco in May 1855, and immediately after their arrival she performed at the Royal Victoria Theatre. However, within two weeks of being in Sydney, she and Follin found themselves on the wrong side of the law, accused of committing fraud. The pair decided to escape to Melbourne aboard the coastal steamer Waratah – a plan that looked set to go awry when the sheriff boarded the ship prior to departure with a warrant for Lola’s arrest. On being confronted in her cabin, Lola simply removed all her clothes and dared the officer to arrest her. It was a successful manoeuvre: the sheriff was last seen being rowed away from Waratah without his quarry.
Lola was greeted by packed houses when she performed her show for the first time in Ballarat on 16 February 1856. Her reception was such that miners are said to have tossed nuggets at her feet in recognition of her dancing prowess. However, she did not impress the editor of the Ballarat Times, Henry Seekamp, who published an article questioning her fame. But this only helped her achieve even greater notoriety: she publicly horsewhipped him after having him restrained at the United States Hotel.
There was, however, at least one time when she was on the receiving end of a ‘flogging’ while in the goldfields: the wife of her manager at the time took a distinct dislike to her, and assaulted her to the degree that it took her a month to recover. Undeterred, Lola went on to tour Bendigo, Castlemaine and other diggings.
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The gold rush also spawned a colloquialism that we still recognise: the digger. The commonly used reference to Australian and New Zealand soldiers as ‘diggers’ during World War I originated from the mateship and shoulder-to-shoulder toil of the miners on the goldfields. It is easy to understand how the ANZACs who dug trenches during the bloody confrontations at Gallipoli and on the Western Front became identified by the same name.
And on the goldfields of Ballarat towards the end of 1854, a group of miners would fight their own battle: the only occasion when men have taken up arms on Australian soil to protest against unfair laws.
As had happened in California
, the Colony of Victoria sought to profit from the gold rush through hefty miners’ licences, which many were unable to pay. The system was enforced by regular ‘licence hunts’ in which any man who could not produce his licence was arrested on the spot. Miners could not vote in elections and could not own their own land, and the Gold Commission police who administered law and order on the goldfields were frequently brutal and corrupt.
The miners’ discontent with these restrictions escalated to the point where they decided to take matters into their own hands. On 11 November, 10,000 diggers met to form the Ballarat Reform League, and on 2 December 1854, a group of them manned an enclosure they named the Eureka Stockade and prepared to take a stand against the oppressive colonial forces. The ensuing battle in the early hours of Sunday 3 December – the Eureka Rebellion – is seen by many as the birth of Australian democracy. It lasted less than thirty minutes, but when the bullets stopped flying and the dust settled, twenty-seven men had been killed, the majority being miners.
Although around 120 diggers were arrested and thirteen eventually committed for trial, there was a huge groundswell of public support for them, and in the end just one man – Ballarat Times editor Henry Seekamp – was charged in relation to the incident. Eventually, a Royal Commission that had been set up by Governor Charles Hotham before the rebellion recommended almost all of the reforms the diggers had asked for. Their leader, Peter Lalor, was even elected to the Victorian Parliament in 1855 and rose to become Speaker of the House.
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However, there was a dark side to the ‘victory’ at the Eureka Stockade. There was one group of miners who did not take part in the fight for better rights at Eureka: the Chinese.
The Victorian gold rush, in particular, spawned the largest pre-Federation Chinese migration to Australia. It was estimated that between 1853 and 1860, some 40,000 made the three-month journey from Canton to what was being recognised in China as ‘the New Gold Mountain’, a second land of opportunity after ‘the Old Gold Mountain’ in California.
This large volume of Chinese passengers caused the route from Asia to Melbourne to become one of the most profitable in the world. Ship owners and captains literally jammed as many Chinese fortune-hunters on board as humanly possible, almost always ignoring reasonable standards of hygiene, safety and comfort. Many of these travellers did not have the money needed for the fare, so they offered their wives and children as virtual slaves to business owners in China in return for the funds needed to get them to Australia. Others borrowed money on the understanding that a greater amount would be repaid when the hopefully successful miner returned home. Virtually no women made the journey: for example, in 1861 it was calculated that there were 5367 Chinese men at the goldfields in Bendigo and only one Chinese woman.
Local politicians in Melbourne quickly realised that this great influx of Chinese workers was destined to cause great problems within the community, especially at the diggings, where the Chinese had demonstrated that they were prepared to toil almost around the clock in an effort to find gold. The Royal Commission into the goldfields reported that:
A most serious social question with reference to the gold-fields, and one that has lately crept on with rapid but almost unobserved steps, is with reference to the great number of the Chinese . . . The question of the influx of such large numbers of a pagan and inferior race is a very serious one . . . a comparative handful of colonists may be buried in a countless throng of Chinamen . . . some step is here necessary, if not to prohibit, at least to check and diminish this influx.
As a consequence of this particular objection, in 1855 the Victorian Parliament introduced the Chinese Immigration Act, a direct attempt to limit Chinese immigration to the colony. The Act placed a bounty of £10 – to be paid by shipping lines – on the head of every Chinese migrant who arrived in Melbourne. Ship owners were also limited to a specified number of Chinese travellers relative to the amount of cargo being carried.
This law was a major blow to the ship owners operating on the China run, but within a very short space of time almost every one of them had adopted a tactic to circumvent the legislation. Instead of sailing into Melbourne, they sailed to either Adelaide or, more often, Robe, near the South Australian–Victorian border. There, the Chinese passengers were put ashore and told that they would have to walk between 200 and 250 miles to the gold diggings at Ballarat.
Robe’s population more than doubled overnight, and entrepreneurial locals saw the influx as an outstanding business opportunity: they would become guides and lead the Chinese cross-country to the diggings. However, not all guides were ethical in their approach. After being paid in advance for their services, some were known to lead the unsuspecting visitors into the bush, point in the general direction of Ballarat, then abandon them before returning to Robe, to gather another group wanting to follow the same route.
The exceedingly high number of Chinese continuing to migrate to Australia was marked by controversy and community disquiet for many decades. This sentiment was reflected in a ditty sung by Charles Thatcher, a popular music hall entertainer who provided light relief for the diggers in the Victorian goldfields:
You doubtless read the paper
And, as men of observation,
Of course you watch the progress of
Chinese immigration.
A thousand of these pig-tailed chaps
In Adelaide are landing,
And why they let such numbers come
Exceeds my understanding!
Eventually, the South Australian Government became aware of the extent of the problem, and in 1858 passed legislation almost identical to the Act in Victoria.
The new laws might have stopped the flow of new Chinese miners onto the goldfields, but it did little to stop the other diggers from regarding the Chinese with suspicion and resentment. These strong emotions boiled over into a series of anti-Chinese riots, including an attack by around 120 diggers in the Buckland Valley in July 1857 that led to the deaths of at least three Chinese miners. Far worse were the evictions of Chinese diggers that took place during a later gold rush at what is now Young in New South Wales – culminating in a riot on 30 June 1861, in which up to 2000 men looted and destroyed a Chinese camp at Lambing Flat. The New South Wales Chinese Immigration Regulation and Restriction Act was rushed into being.
After Australian Federation in 1901, one of the first pieces of legislation passed was the Immigration Restriction Act, which marked the beginning of the so-called White Australia Policy, the last traces of which would remain in place until 1973.
Fortunately, though, that was not the end of the story. The spirit of the gold rush and the massive migration it inspired had an impact that remains with us to this day. During the five years when the gold rush was at its peak, it is estimated that 100,000 English, 60,000 Irish, 50,000 Scots, 25,000 Chinese, 8000 Germans, 4000 Welsh, 3000 Americans and 1500 French arrived seeking their fortune. And as the White Australia Policy was dismantled and Australia began to open its doors once more, the influx of thousands more migrants of widely varying nationalities became the catalyst for the unique multicultural melting pot that Australia is today.
CHAPTER 3
Not a Place for Everyone
Populating Australia
By 1852, the swift-sailing clipper ships were playing a pivotal role in meeting the demands of the gold rushes – so much so that they were riding the crest of a wave as the most popular form of transport for passengers and cargo to and from Australia and across the world. It was estimated that during that year that clippers rounded Cape Horn on near 200 occasions, some voyaging between New York and San Francisco, but the majority sailing from England to Australia and New Zealand then home again. Australia’s gold rush was creating a demand for bigger, faster and more comfortable ships.
For the British and Europeans especially, arriving in Australia as a migrant brought an abrupt and often unanticipated change of lifestyle. Those who had come from more established locations wo
uld find it impossible to contemplate – despite the newspaper stories of excitement and riches – what they would have to endure. This strange experience caused many migrants to pen their interesting first impressions of the new land. Others went to greater lengths, writing books that told of their unique experiences in an alien environment.
It was when a ship was closing on the Australian coast, after an often harrowing and arduous non-stop passage of more than 100 days from England, that passengers received the first of many lasting impressions. Such was the case for prolific English author and traveller William Howitt, who arrived in Melbourne in September 1852 and spent two years in Victoria:
Tomorrow, if the wind is favourable, I trust we shall cast anchor off Melbourne, after a voyage of 102 days! This morning, at ninety miles from land, on opening the scuttle in my cabin, I perceived an aromatic odour, as of spicy flowers, blown from the land . . . The wind is blowing strong off the shore; and the fragrance continues, something like the scent of a hayfield, but more spicy. I expect it is the yellow mimosa [wattle], which my brother Richard said we should now find in flower all over the valleys.
Englishwoman Ellen Clacy, whose diarised writing was as colourful as her character, garnered a very different first impression of Australia when she arrived in Melbourne the same year as Howitt. The twenty-year-old later converted her notes into a book, A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852–1853, a highly readable publication that told of her remarkable experiences in great detail: leaving England, shipboard life, her arrival in Melbourne, her cross-country travels and the time she spent in the goldfields.