When the partners arrived at Zeehan, it certainly appeared to Mr. Blount a place of peculiar and unusual characteristics. The excitement was naturally great; stores, hotels, dwellings, lodging-houses going up in all directions. Timber was plentiful to excess, luckily such as split into slabs and palings easily.
Tents were beginning to be voted hardly equal to so vigorous a climate. No one, however, stayed under cover for that reason. They were wet all day and every day, but the rule was to change into dry things at night. No harm, strange to say, came to anybody. There was less sickness, certainly less typhoid, on that field than any since reported.
Less, certainly, than at Broken Hill and the West Australian Goldfields. The hotels, quickly run up, were rough both in appearance and management. About fifty men slept in the billiard room for the first few nights. Then, as their importance as “capitalists” began to be recognised, beds were allotted. Over these they had to mount guard for an hour or more before bedtime, as a rule, or else to “chuck out” the intruder. Here the personal equation came in. The landlord had no time to support the legal rights of his guests. He merely went so far as to allot each man a bed. He had to keep it and pay for it.
The term “capitalist” on a mining field is understood to apply to people with money of their own, or substantial backers who are prepared to pay down the deposit on mines, sufficiently developed or rich enough to “float”; worth securing the “option” of purchase for a month, so as to give time to raise the necessary funds.
The Tregonwell party had secured the “fancy show” of the field (i.e., the next richest in reputation to the Comstock) by promptness in agreeing to all the owner’s conditions, as he named them, thus giving him no chance to change his mind. Other offers had been made from Hobart and elsewhere. However, they paid a liberal deposit, and, after thoroughly sampling and examining the ore body, agreed to float the mine in a fortnight. Very short terms! Also to place £10,000 to its credit as a working capital, and to give the owner £5,000 cash as well as a certain number of shares.
They knew the market, however, and their business. Tregonwell walked to Strahan in a day and a half, being then in high condition, and got off to Hobart by steamer that night. Had the transfers signed and registered in the Mines Department in his name, subject to the conditions being fulfilled. Wired to their Melbourne brokers, and in twenty-four hours the shares were applied for three times over, and the stock quoted at a premium. It seems easy, but such is not always the case. The boom must be on. The buyers must be well known to the public as having the necessary experience, and being reliable on a cash basis.
A shout from a tall, well-dressed man—comparatively, we may say—greets them at the long-desired camp. He comes forward and shakes hands with Tregonwell, more heartily than even the occasion demands, it would seem.
“By Jove! old fellow. I am so glad to see you. Would have sent a line to Hobart to hurry you up, if I could have found a man to take it. But most of the fellows have gone to Marble Creek, so we’re a small community. But we’re forgetting our manners. Introduce me.”
“Mr. Valentine Blount, permit me to present Mr. Charles Herbert, one of our partners. You mustn’t swear at the place, the roads, the climate, the people, or anything belonging to Tasmania, as it’s his native land, to which he is deeply attached. In all other respects he may be treated as an Englishman.”