“What any man can do, I can do,” she said, and she did, both in Australia and in England, where, for thirty years after, she was a power in financial and social circles.
And what of the original stampeders? Few of the world’s adventurers have been more suitably rewarded than was Edward Hammond Hargraves, officially recognized as the discoverer of gold in Australia. He gained wealth, a good position and a title, wore showy uniforms and became a public functionary, surrounded by an army of satellites. He received the appointment of Commissioner of Crown Lands. The British Government bestowed upon him a gift of fifty thousand dollars. The Government of Victoria a gift of twenty-five thousand dollars. New South Wales gave him a life pension of two thousand five hundred dollars per annum. Hargraves became a great man.
Of the others, Thomas Hiscock, who discovered Ballarat, died before he enjoyed much material reward. Harry Frenchman, discoverer of Golden Gully at Bendigo, became a wealthy woolman. Fortescue, the brilliant emancipist attorney, tossed away a fortune in the cause of his oppressed brethren in Ireland, but died poor. Marshal owned race-horses, envied alike by English peers and South African magnates. Nat Bayley and Charles Ford, the pair who later found gold in Western Australia, retired with great wealth.
The Australian gold rush must be reckoned among the world’s great stampedes, one which yielded huge prizes to the few and good prizes for nearly all who had the high courage and cool foresight to take a chance.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the May, 1926 issue of The Frontier magazine.