[The Miner's Right] is one of the most realistic accounts of the exciting life of a gold digger of the fifties . . . It does not pretend to any analysis of character, but goes straight on with a bright and breezy account of the courage and endurance which were the general characteristics of the parti-coloured crowd of all sorts and conditions of men who toiled at the most exciting occupation the world has ever known.
The site of the principal action in the novel—clearly Gulgong in real life—is called ‘Yatala’ and the original of ‘The Liberator Lead’ is Home Rule. There are suspicious resemblances between various characters in the novel and real figures of the day.Source: H G Turner quoted in Australasian photo-review. Vol. 61 No. 2 (1 February 1954)
- Inspector Medley becomes Inspector ‘Merlin’
- Mrs. Angove, storekeeper and spirit merchant, becomes ‘Mrs. Mangrove’
- Joe Scully, the honest ex-baker, could be ‘Isaac Poynter’, the ex-butcher who was so adept at evading all the mining laws.
"...for has not the author of ‘The Miner’s Right’ revealed the fact in his treatment of certain characters who are thinly disguised by fictitious names? Thus Donaldson, DeCourcy Browne, J. F. Plunkett, J. P. Sweeney, Byrne, Thompson, Coghlan, 'Bill' Self, John Scully, and others were all, more or less, held up to ridicule...”
What follows is a mash-up of Beaufoy Merlin's photos and text passages from "Rolf Boldrewood" as published in the Australian photo-review.
Source: Australasian photo-review. Vol. 61 No. 2 (1 February 1954
SCENE 1
From the left is Harry Williams, telegram delivery boy, John Tierney Telegraph Station Master, Leslie Donaldson CPS, George Murray Dunn and Edward Clarke solicitors.
“I see him now. How many years have rolled by? Yet I stand up and feel inclined to lift my hat, as if it were yesterday. An erect, stalwart, middle-aged man, sitting his wiry thoroughbred with careless ease, bold-visaged, eagle-eyed, with the stamp ‘of ours ’ writ large, like our mate, the Major, on every movement of his body, on every expression of his face, on every trick of speech, as he calls to the half-dozen grey hounds that follow him through the camp, as if his thoughts dwelt more with them than with the crowding miners who press and throng to get a word of audience, a passing nod, or even a look of recognition from the autocrat of the goldfields.
And, in good sooth, Captain Blake, formerly of Her Majesty’s 11th Hussars, was an autocrat by instinct, habit, education, and circumstance, if ever there was one upon God’s earth. He it was, certainly, who more inexorably than the Roman Centurion, was wont to say, ‘Go here, or go there,’ and to this man, ‘Do this, and he doeth it.’ For, from his decision, there was, at that time, no appeal. The Medes and Persians had apparently drawn up the scanty Goldfields’ Regulations of that day. Crude and inapplicable to the multiform elaborate complications of the mining industry, the largest discretionary power was implied. And William Devereux Blake, well known at many a mess-table in England and Ireland as the Devil’s Own Billy Blake, was precisely the man to accept all the responsibility of the position. It would have crushed a weaker man. But with a clear head, an utterly fearless, perhaps aggressive, organisation, and a natural turn for acting as a leader and ruler of men, he had hitherto avoided misadventure in his consulship. Large were the issues with which he had to deal, and puzzling were the mining laws which he had to administer. A bold, ready, decisive manner sufficed to carry him through everything; and though occasional dissentients might object to his decisions as illogical, he was both highly popular and legally successful.
To him were daily submitted the numberless questions of mineral ownership which arose in such a community as ours; a gathering of men from every country under Heaven, where each, by chance or choice, had come to occupy under certain written and unwritten laws, so limited a portion of the earth’s surface that it was measured by feet. Under it might be the hidden treasure, the reward of a lost youth—a ruined life—the mere rumour of which had brought the greater number of us so far over the main, across so many a weary mile of wood and wold.
To decide equitably and rapidly,
to maintain unswervingly, and to enforce rigidly, the decisions arrived at after
the hearing of such evidence as was forthcoming, required natural gifts which few
men possessed. But ‘Billy’ Blake had been cast by Nature at his birth for the ‘role’
of a chieftain, and most eminently qualified was he for the part which he was called
upon to play."
Source: Rolf Boldrewood, from Ch III, “The Miner’s Right”, quoted
in Australasian
photo-review. Vol. 61 No. 2
(1 February 1954
SCENE 3
- Timothy Bursill (far right check shirt) identified by relative June Braby of Albany, WA. The family (including 15 children) lived at Home Rule
- Third man from the right on the ground is Lester Stuart Donaldson [aka Mr Bagstock]
“On the first Saturday afternoon, after having heard that the new Clerk of the Bench had arrived, we went to call upon him. He was also Mining Registrar, Agent for the Curator of Intestate Estates, Registrar of the Small Debts Court, Coroner, Commissioner for Affidavits, and the holder of several other minor offices, which are generally appendages to the appointment.
We found him in the large tent which did duty as a court house, of one corner of which he had possessed himself. Evidently not a man of method, he was surrounded with books and papers relating to his office, all in such a state of inextricable confusion, that an average licensed surveyor (of all men. perhaps, most experienced in making a tent habitable and officially effective) would have swooned on the spot, ‘Now then, w-w-what’s your name,’ he called out in a loud voice, without looking up, ‘don’t keep me w-w-waiting all d-d-day.’
The Major smiled. He looked up angrily. ‘How d-d-dare you presume to l-l-laugh, sir, in Her M-m-m-ajesty’s t-t-tent, sir, taking up the G-g-government time? D-d-don’t you know every minute of my t-t-time’s worth a g-g-guinea?’
The Major having by this time extracted his card, presented it, at the same time saying, ‘Mr. Bagstock, I believe, permit me to introduce my friend Mr. Pole.’
Mr. Bagstock gave one hurried glance at the card, stared wildly at us, then with a rapid alteration of manner, got up and shook hands warmly with us.
'D-d-delighted to see you, I’m sure. Charlie Grant —b-b-best f-f-fellow in the world—s-s-said you were out here. W-w-wrote, I believe. Live near this p-p-pandemonium?’
‘We live in it,’ said the Major: ‘we’re familiar demons.’
‘But wh-wh-what do you d-d-ao, then?’
‘Dig,’ I said, ‘and are not badly paid for it just at present.’
'Regular
miners?’ said our new acquaintance, still wonderingly. ‘Good God! you don’t say
so. Got one of th-these and all?’ Here he pointed to a book of Miners’ Rights.”
Source: Rolf Boldrewood, from Ch XIV, “The Miner’s Right”,
quoted in Australasian
photo-review. Vol. 61 No. 2
(1 February 1954
Click here to see zoomable image
“A modern community is incomplete without its newspaper. At Yatala there were two, diametrically opposed, of course, in law, religion, and politics. One journal was strictly conservative, upholding the Government, with the administration' of justice, and all things and persons pertaining thereto. The other, the Watchman, was democratic, not to say destructive, scoffing at the constituted authorities, sneering at the police, badgering the magistrates, impeaching the Commissioner himself, and continually calling on the great body of miners ‘to assemble in the night and sweep away all tyrants and goldfields officials, together with the absurd contradictory regulations which hampered their honest efforts and trammelled their virtuous industry.’ The editor of this exciting, not to say inflammatory journal, was named Fitzgerald Keene.
Clever, fairly educated, and morally unprejudiced, he, like another historical scribe, was quite capable of raising a wale upon that epidermis which it suited him to thong, whenever such to him seemed necessary for the purpose of the hour. Ingenious in discovering the weak point of an adversary, he would concentrate and exaggerate until the uninitiated were almost fain to believe that there must be some ground for this furious invective, this wholesale denunciation.
When once he had singled out an official for attack, no part of the whole moral surface seemed to escape him. Caution was cowardice and irresolution, pitiful indecision, conscious incompetence; firmness was obstinacy; decision was tyranny; coolness was contempt of the toiling masses; silence was dumb idiocy; speech in explanation was drivelling insanity or ludicrous display of ignorance. There was no pleasing him.
‘The only cure (of course) for all this miserable official
muddling and disgraceful apathy on the part of an effete and corrupt government
that stood tamely by while a great interest was being plundered and blundered through
daily, was that the hardy and intelligent miners of Yatala should “roll up,” and
take the law, the government, the land, and the gold into their own hands.’
Source: Rolf Boldrewood, from Ch VII, “The Miner’s Right”, quoted
in Australasian
photo-review. Vol. 61 No. 2
(1 February 1954
SCENE 5
Lester Stuart Donaldson, Clerk of Petty sessions, on right. The miner (second right) holds a pan of gold ore and the red flag to indicate a new claim is ready to be raised (left).
“Taking the general nature of ‘leads’ or dead rivers, it chiefly obtained, that if gold were found on one portion of them, it extended to all the claims within a considerable distance. Sometimes, of course, it was not so. All the gold in the locality appeared to have been shovelled by malignant gnomes into one crevice, in the familiar phrase of the miners, ‘a pot hole,’ leaving the rest of the lead non-auriferous and disappointing.
This we knew to be possible, but did not think probable. We accordingly worked away, stimulated daily by the pile of wash-dirt rising high on the side of the prospecting claim’s brace—a pile in which the gold could be seen with the naked eye. At length we bottomed. Our shaft was down amid huge gray boulders of limestone which formed the bed rock of the locale. The drift was reached. With what anxious eagerness did the Major and I carry out our first dish of wash-dirt to ‘try a prospect.’ Inch by inch the sand and gravel lowered in the dish, the clay-stained water flowed and flowed, till at length, in the full view of a hundred men, the last streak of sand and minute gravel was left. In vain we looked, with practised eye, for the faint red rim which had comforted us in the prospecting claim. I shook the dish, and with the action dispersed and reunited the remnant sand. It was of no avail. No trace—even the faintest—of ‘the colour’ could be descried. With a half angry, half humorous roar, the crowd parted right and left, while the verdict was proclaimed, expressively if not elegantly, by Cyrus Yorke himself, who cried aloud, plain for all men to hear.
‘Bottomed a duffer, by gum, not the colour itself, no rnor’n on the palm o’ my hand.’ “
Hardware, grocery, and wine store of Richard and Mary Angove in Mayne Street, between the Bank of New South Wales and the Newmarket Sale Yards. The small room under the verandah on the eastern end was where Mrs Angove conducted Gulgong's first Post Office. In February 1871 she gave the job of Postmistress away and Robert Robinson took over as Postmaster. In December 1872 the store was turned into Angove's Hotel. In July 1875 Richard Angove died and his wife Mary took over as licensee. The Hotel site remained in her name at least until 1880.
Source: Information supplied by Baldwin & Davis, Research Gulgong (July 2006)
We became unhappy and despondent, more especially Cyrus Yorke, whose ‘I told you so from the beginning,’ was daily more aggressive and hard to bear. Our storekeeper friend, John Mangrove, did not seem to care so much. He had ‘followed the diggings’ for many a year. He and his smart, bustling, business-like wife were quite used to giving fabulous amounts of credit, to what they termed ‘an honest crowd,’ meaning a party of men who might be relied upon to pay when their luck turned. Mrs. Mangrove, indeed, laughed at our undiggerlike despondency when we came up one Saturday night and vowed we would not take some beef and flour for our married mate, having no money, and having that morning decided to ‘jack up’ or thoroughly abandon work at our present claim.
'We must go and fossick for a bit now,’ I said, ‘just for enough to make the pot boil; but we won’t take any more of your “tucker,” Mrs. Mangrove, without paying.’ ‘Bother the paying!’ said the buxom, cheery woman, ‘we shall get our money some time or other; but how are you and the Major to fossick, or anything else, without a scrap to eat. You must and shall take your rations till times mend. Luck always turns if you stick to your fight like men. Don’t tell me you're down in the mouth. You’ve got to work till you make a ‘rise,’ for my sake, and how can you work without tucker?’”
Source: Rolf Boldrewood, from Ch IV, “The Miner’s Right”, quoted
in Australasian
photo-review. Vol. 61 No. 2
(1 February 1954
SCENE 7
“I was never done wondering at what struck me first as the chief characteristic of this great army of adventurers suddenly gathered together from all lands and seas viz. its outward propriety and submission to the law. ...
And, indeed, swarthy, grizzled Californians, red sashed and high booted, with great felt sombreros that took all kinds of fantastic shapes—jostled stalwart ‘Geordies’ and Cousin Jacks, whose fresh faces told that they had never before left the shores of old England. Frenchmen and Spaniards, Germans and Italians, Hungarians and Poles, Greeks and—Trojans? Well, I may not swear that any unit of that richly variegated crowd had quitted the windy plains of Ilium, or the banks of Simois for Yatala Creek —but if that once-famous nationality was unrepresented at the great Yatala rush, it stood alone in disfranchisement.
The compatriots of Achilles and Ajax, though not of Hector and Paris, were sufficiently numerous, proving, as one marked their stately forms, their flashing eyes and chiselled features, that the modern inhabitants of Hellas have not relinquished the birthright of godlike strength and beauty, which witched the world, when ‘the fearless old fashion held sway.’
Yet, though the narrow streets actually trembled under the feet of the surging crowd of grand-looking athletes that thronged the well-lighted thoroughfares, and filled the shops and tavern bars after working hours, there was no lawless act, no wearing of deadly weapons, no foul language, no open drunkenness or offensive parade of immorality; far more decorous of demeanour and easy to thread than the ordinary crowd of a manufacturing town or a metropolis. What was the reason of this strange reserve, this almost unnatural decorum? It was apparently a triumph of moral control! It was not wholly the spontaneous propriety of a highly intelligent, travelled, experienced community. Human nature, in the mass, though often unduly maligned, scarcely attains such results unaided or unrestrained. [continues after image]
SCENE 8
[continued ]... A patent fact was, that the vast crowd was under the sway of a very smart officer of police, who, with two sergeants, a couple of detectives, and about a score of constables of the rank and file, about one man to each thousand, kept the whole of the great band of adventurers in perfect and admirable order. Such, in other colonies, had not (vide Mick Hord, barkeeper, ex-miner, storekeeper, pugilist, etc.) always been the successful result under such circumstances. ‘Perleece, Mr. Merlin' he said one day to that officer, ‘talk about perleece, and call this a “rush” I’ve known a rush of forty thousand men, and seen ’em kickin’ the perleece from one end of the town to the other.’ ‘
I was not at the Red Hills, my dear boy, nor Sergeant M‘Mahon either,’ said Mr. Merlin, smiling with that way of his that somehow did not tend to reassure people, ‘I should not advise any one to commence that kind of thing here.’
Whatever the reason, no one did apparently care to take the initiative in any kind of disturbance, though such was often threatened.
The
inspector, Mr. Merlin, was always extremely keen at knowing everybody and everything
which it concerned him to know very thoroughly. Patient and calculating, too, always
averse to use force when diplomacy would suffice. Yet utterly impartial and pitiless
in the execution of his duty when need was. He was, therefore, respected by the
miners generally, as a man of capacity, liked for his bonhomie, superficial as they
knew it to be, and secretly feared by all those who recalled ‘sins unwhipt of justice,’
which were the precise traits of character needed by a man in his position.”
Source: Rolf Boldrewood, from Ch VII, “The Miner’s Right”, quoted
in Australasian
photo-review. Vol. 61 No. 2
(1 February 1954
SCENE 9
Source: Rolf Boldrewood, from Ch VII, “The Miner’s Right”, quoted
in Australasian
photo-review. Vol. 61 No. 2
(1 February 1954
BONUS SCENES!
1898 - Gulgong Gold Field. IV. HAPPY VALLEY AND SHELLBACK QUARTZ VEIN.
(By "Nugget.")
Source unknown
