A Boy's Voyage Round the World

by Samuel Smiles

MY NEIGHBOURHOOD AND NEIGHBOURS.

"Dining out"—Diggers' Sunday Dinner—The Old Workings—The Chinamen's Gardens—Chinamen's Dwellings—The Cemetery—The High Plains—The Bush—A Ride through the Bush—The Savoyard Woodcutter—Visit to a Squatter.

There is no difficulty in making friends in Victoria. New chums from home are always made welcome. They are invited out and hospitably entertained by people of all classes. But for the many kind friends I made in Majorca and its neighbourhood I should doubtless have spent a very dull time there. As it was, the eighteen months I lived up country passed pleasantly and happily.

The very first Sunday I spent in Majorca I "dined out." I had no letters of introduction, and therefore did not owe my dinner to influence, but to mere free-and-easy hospitality. Nor did the party with which I dined belong to the first circles, where letters of introduction are of any use; for they were only a party of diggers. I will explain how it happened.

After church my manager invited me to a short walk in the neighbourhood. We went in the direction of M'Cullum's Creek, about a mile distant. This was the village at the creek which I passed on the evening of my first drive from Maryborough. Crossing the creek, we went up into the range of high ground beyond; and from the top of the hill we had a fine view of the surrounding country. Majorca lay below, glistening amidst its hillocks of pipeclay. The atmosphere was clear, and the sky blue and cloudless. Though the town was two miles distant, I could read some of the names on the large canvas sign-boards over the hotel doors; and with the help of an opera-glass, I easily distinguished the windows of a house six miles off. The day was fine and warm, though it was mid-winter in June; for it must be borne in mind that the seasons are reversed in this southern hemisphere.

Descending the farther side of the hill, we dropped into a gully, where we shortly came upon a little collection of huts roofed with shingle. The residents were outside, some amusing themselves with a cricket-ball, while others were superintending the cooking of their dinners at open fires outside the huts. One of the men having recognized my companion, a conversation took place, which was followed by an invitation to join them at dinner. As we were getting rather peckish after our walk, we readily accepted their offered hospitality. The mates took turn and turn about at the cooking, and when dinner was pronounced to be ready, we went into the hut.

The place was partitioned off into two rooms, one of which was a sleeping apartment, and the other the dining-room. It was papered with a gay-coloured paper, and photographs of friends were stuck up against the wall. We were asked to be seated. To accommodate the strangers, an empty box and a billet of wood were introduced from the outside. I could not say the table was laid, for it was guiltless of a table-cloth; indeed all the appointments were rather rough. When we were seated, one of the mates, who acted as waiter, brought in the smoking dishes from the fire outside, and set them before us. The dinner consisted of roast beef and cauliflower, and a capital dinner it was, for our appetites were keen, and hunger is the best of sauces. We were told that on Sundays the men usually had pudding; but "Bill," who was the cook that week, was pronounced to be "no hand at a plum duff." We contrived, however, to do very well without it.

I afterwards found that the men were very steady fellows—three of them English and one a German. They worked at an adjoining claim; and often afterwards I saw them at our bank, selling their gold, or depositing their savings.

After dinner we had a ramble through the bush with our hosts, and then, towards dusk, we wended our way back to the township. Such was my first experience of diggers' hospitality in Australia, and it was by no means the last.

Another afternoon we made an excursion to the Chinamen's gardens, which lie up the creek, under the rocky point of Gibraltar, about a mile and a half distant from the township. We went through the lead—that is, the course which the gold takes underground, and which can be traced by the old workings. Where the gold lies from five to seven feet beneath the surface, the whole ground is turned over to get at it. But where the gold-bearing stratum lies from fifty to two hundred feet deep, and shafts have to be sunk, the remains of the old workings present a very different appearance. Then mounds of white clay and gravel, from twenty to forty feet high, lie close together—sometimes not more than fifteen feet apart. Climb up to the top of one of these mounds, and you can see down the deserted shaft which formerly led to the working ground below. Look round; see the immense quantity of heaps, and the extent of ground they cover, almost as far as the eye can reach up the lead, and imagine the busy scene which the place must have presented in the earlier days of the rush, when each of these shafts was fitted with its windlass, and each mound was covered with toiling men. In one place a couple of engine-sheds still remain, a gaunt erection supporting the water-tanks; the poppet-heads towering above all, still fitted with the wheels that helped to bring the gold to the surface. How deserted and desolate the place looks! An abandoned rush must be as melancholy a sight to a miner as a deserted city to a townsman. But all is not dead yet. Not far off you can see jets of white steam coming up from behind the high white mounds on the new lead, showing that miners are still actually at work in the neighbourhood; nor are they working without hope.