Colonial Born: A Tale of the Queensland bush

by G. Firth Scott

"Here, that's our claim. You'll have to clear out of that," Gleeson shouted as he rushed up.

"That's our shaft," Walker yelled as he rushed up to the man sitting over the hole.

A shout of derision came from the two men, and was echoed up and down the creek as each fossicker turned round to enjoy the spectacle of a "jump" at the outset of the field. Most of the men having stuck their picks in their claims, sat on them, and adorned them with various bits of rag to serve as banners of occupation. Being all neighbours from Boulder Creek, they could trust one another, and were satisfied to leave their patches under the protection of their "pegs," more especially as things were becoming decidedly lively round what was already referred to as the "reward" claim.

From shouting at one another, one side threatening and the other defying, Walker had made a feint at the man by the hole. He, having lived for many a year in the hope of one day pegging out his own patch of alluvial on a new rush, would have defied dynamite to move him now that he had his pick in the ground, now that he had performed all that the unwritten but eternal laws of the mining fraternity needed to give him sole and absolute rights over the few square yards of earth and all the precious mineral he could win from it. He took the feint seriously, and, being at a disadvantage in his sitting position, he threw up one leg to guard himself and equalize matters. The heavy boot he was wearing carried his foot farther than he intended, or Walker was nearer than he intended, for the boot came into violent contact with the pit of his stomach, and he rolled over on the other man's ground, gurgling and gasping.

Gleeson, only seeing him fall, thought an attack was imminent, and flashed out a revolver from his pocket. In a moment the attack was imminent, and in full swing. The Boulder Creekers had had many a quarrel and many a row amongst themselves, but never had a man drawn a revolver or a knife. Gleeson's action decided his chances.

"A darned dirty I-talyan," Palmer Billy shouted; "and on a white man's claim. Roll in, diggers."

A dozen outraged and indignant diggers responded. The revolver was knocked up and out of Gleeson's hand, and went spinning high into the air through a well-aimed blow from a spare pick-handle. It went off as it struck the ground, and the bullet whizzed over the heads of the men in the mêlée; but they were too busy to notice it. A couple of fists hit one another in their haste to reach Gleeson's eyes; several more went home on different parts of his body at the same moment; and thereafter, for the space of a few minutes, the first arrivals on the new field, with the exception of Walker, who was knocked out, were a perspiring, swearing, struggling pile of humanity.

When they managed to extricate themselves, Palmer Billy was the last to rise from the ground. He had suffered somewhat in the scrimmage, and his nose was bleeding freely, but he looked round without malice upon his panting comrades as he said, slowly and savagely—

"A darned dirty I-talyan; and on a white man's claim."

Then it was that they had time to observe what had escaped their notice in the rough-and-tumble of the mêlée. As the men crowded round Gleeson, like bees round a sugar-bag, thirsting to wreak their vengeance upon him for introducing into the community weapons which were not possessed by all, they forgot the prostrate Walker, as well as Peters and Tony. That there were neither revolvers nor knives among the Creekers was more due to lack of means to purchase them than to moral superiority, or any religious qualms as to the shedding of another man's blood. Revolvers were useless without ammunition, and ammunition cost money; knives which were useful in a fight, were also eligible for trading purposes as a medium of exchange for flour and tobacco: consequently both were absent from the movable property of the average fossicker of Boulder Creek. That they were in the possession of the men who had stumbled on payable gold within a day's march of the creek was a further incentive to envy on the part of the Creekers; hence the haste of each man to vent his anger on Gleeson.