"So it was not so surprising, Jim, that one of the first big gold finds was made by a black-fellow, a husky tattooed chap who owned no property except a small apron of matting for his middle, a bunch of feathers for his hair, a long-handled stone hatchet, and a boomerang.
"This Cl'ck, as he was called, was employed as a shepherd by Dr. Kerr, a large sheep-owner in New South Wales. Cl'ck was a fairly intelligent fellow and had learned to talk a few words of English. He knew gold when he saw it. Just at the time I'm speaking of, the whole world was excited over gold, for it was just after the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and the great gold rush of '49."
"My father was one of the 'forty-niners,'" put in Jim, eagerly.
"So you're of the real Argonaut breed, then!" exclaimed Owens, but he did not push the enquiry, preferring to allow Jim to tell his story in his own way and in his own time. In order, however, to keep the subject of gold present in Jim's mind, he continued:
"For some time there had been vague hints that there might be gold in Australia, but, before the time of the 'forty-niners' no attention had been paid to it.
"For example! Once, in 1834, a ticket-of-leave man (convict out on parole), working in New South Wales, found a small nugget of pure gold in the earth and brought it to the nearest town to sell. Being a convict, he was at once arrested for having possession of the gold, and not being able to explain how he had got it. His story that he had found it in the earth was laughed at, for never—so far as the Australians knew, then—had gold been found in nuggets. As it happened, a white settler had lost a gold watch a little time before. The weight of the nugget was just about that of the weight of the case of a gold watch. The ticket-of-leave man was accused of having stolen the watch, thrown away the works and melted down the case. He was found guilty and punished with a hundred and thirty lashes."
"Whew, that was pilin' it on heavy!" commented Jim.
"They had to be severe in those days," Owens explained. "Botany Bay and Port Jackson were penal stations. In those days there were about fifty thousand white folks in New South Wales and three-quarters of them were convicts. That meant ruling with an iron hand, if mutiny was to be prevented.
"Twice, after that, white settlers found signs of gold, but in such small quantities that the deposits were not worth working by the primitive means employed at that time. In 1841, signs of gold were found not far from Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, but the Governor personally asked the finder to keep the matter a secret for there were 45,000 convicts in the colony by that time, and he was afraid that news of a gold-find might start a revolt that the military would not be able to quell.
"Two years later an even more curious discovery was made. Mr. H. Anderson, who owned a sheep-station where now are found the great gold-fields of Ballarat—in the province of Victoria, south of New South Wales—threw away the finest chance to become a multi-millionaire that ever came to any man.