Gold
One of the familiar ways in which Australia is described is it is ‘a farm, a hotel and a quarry’. The farm part is easy: after convicts, the next arrivals in the country were farmers, and sheep became, and still are, a major export, along with beef and various crops. Some claim Australia grew on the back of its sheep. The hotel? Well, that’s easy, too. Most Australians live on the edge of the country, and many towns and cities have beautiful beaches, good for swimming (though you do have to be careful of sharks and the like), as well as rainforests and astonishing desert landscapes. Something of a tourist paradise. However, it’s the quarry that has been the major component of the country’s economy, selling coal, natural gas, iron ore, bauxite, and other minerals, even uranium for some of the time. However, it was the discovery of alluvial gold in the 1850s and 1860s that made the greatest contribution to the Victorian state economy.
19th Century gold fever first broke out on the west coast of the USA, with stories of immense wealth to be obtained during the 1849 Californian gold rush. After speculators and prospectors had run through the first and best phase of that opportunity, Victoria was next, in 1851. There had been early gold finds in rural Victoria, especially around Ballarat over the previous 40 years, but the 1851 rush began with the discovery of the Mount Alexander goldfield some 40 miles north-east of Ballarat. Mt Alexander, which includes the goldfields of Castlemaine and Bendigo, proved to be one of the world’s largest shallow alluvial goldfields, yielding around four million ounces of gold, most of which was found between 1851 and 1853, and almost all of it within five metres of the surface. Excited contemporary press coverage of gold arriving from Australia provoked the Times of London into describing the Victorian gold rush as like that in California, but on a larger scale. Between 1850 and 1900, Bendigo was all about gold.
Many accounts suggest gold was first found in Bendigo in September 1851 by Mrs. Margaret Kennedy in the Bendigo Creek. True or not, rumors spread quickly. During Christmas 1851 there were 800 people on the Bendigo field, but by the following June 20,000 diggers had arrived, travelling from all over the world, (though many had moved on from the USA), risking everything to make a living, and, if they were lucky, a fortune from Victorian prospecting. That gold rush ensured Bendigo’s lasting fame as one of the richest producers of gold in the world, yielding over 700,000kg between 1851-1954 (some sources suggest this would be worth about $30 billion in today’s prices). Bendigo was literally built on gold and is still known today as ‘Dai Gum San’ or ‘Big Gold Mountain’ by the Chinese. While the rich alluvial finds made finding gold easy to begin with, it took less than three years before declining amounts led prospectors to follow the quartz reefs down below the surface. The Bendigo Goldfield contains 37 distinct gold-bearing quartz reefs that extend across an area 10 miles by 3 miles, and more than 5,000 registered gold mines were established. An estimated 140 shafts exceeded 1,100 feet in depth, 67 exceeded 2,200 and 11 were over 3,300 deep, all in a huge concentration of deep diggings.
Did this really begin with Mrs. Kennedy? Among many others, there are four groups considered to be the serious contenders for first finding gold on the Bendigo goldfield. They include Stewart Gibson and Frederick Fenton, who found gold in what later became known as Golden Gully in September 1851; a group of shepherds living in a hut at Golden Gully; Mrs. Margaret Kennedy, together with Mrs. Julia Farrell, and possibly Margaret Kennedy’s 9-year-old son John Drane; and, finally, one or both of the husbands of the two women.
According to the Bendigo Historical Society, it has become ‘generally agreed’ or ‘acknowledged’ that gold was found at Bendigo Creek by two married women, Margaret Kennedy and Julia Farrell as mentioned above, and a monument to this effect was erected by the City of Greater Bendigo in front of the Senior Citizens Centre at High Street, Golden Square in September 2001.
However, many historians disagree. When Margaret Kennedy gave evidence to a Select Committee of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, trying to decide who was the first to discover gold at Bendigo, she claimed to have found gold by herself near ‘The Rocks’ in early September 1851. She told the committee she had taken her 9-year-old son, John Drane with her to search the area after her husband had told her that he had seen gravel there that might bear gold. She also gave evidence that after finding gold she ‘engaged’ Julia Farrell and went back with her to pan for more gold at the same spot, and it was while there that they were seen by a Mr. Frencham. She made it clear she and Julia Farrell had been secretly panning for gold before Henry Frencham arrived. Others at the inquiry confirmed this part of her story, and Henry Frencham’s claim to be the discoverer of gold at Bendigo wasn’t supported. However, with many contradictory views and counter claims, the committee found it impossible to conclude. who was first. Representations from forty years earlier were, and still are, impossible to resolve.
While Frencham may not have been the first person to find gold at Bendigo, he was the first to announce the existence of the gold-field to the authorities (on 28 November 1851) and then in print (in the Melbourne Argus on 13 December 1851). He was also the first person to deliver a quantity of payable gold from the Bendigo gold-field to the authorities when, on 28 December 1851, Frencham and his partner Robert Atkinson, with Trooper Synott as an escort, delivered 30 lbs. of gold that they had mined to Assistant Commissioner Charles J.P. Lydiard at Forest Creek, Castlemaine, the first gold received from Bendigo. Enough details for you?
Once gold mining became a business, and the source was quartz veins rather than river beds, the town changed. In the second half of the 19th Century, prosperity led to magnificent homes and even more impressive buildings for banks and the City Council. Bendigo has broad boulevards, the result of an ambitious town plan prepared in 1854. For some, the city’s public buildings and gardens are overly grand for a small town, as are the many richly decorated private homes; for others they’re testimony to the flamboyance and wealth of the era,. There’s another inheritance from that time: while almost all the mines have since been capped or filled in, there are still regular instances of the ground collapsing in unlikely places, even in driveways and backyards.
By the middle of the 20th Century Bendigo had moved on from being a ‘great city’. The opportunity to become wealthy had almost disappeared, and the streets around Bendigo, reaching out to the mines at Mount Alexander, were all dirt tracks. Children could be seen panning for gold in the gutters, enough to buy drinks, sweets and comic books. There was dirt everywhere, and with operating gold mines in the city as well as outside, stamping batteries were used to process the ore, “the soundtrack to Bendigo”. Tour guides to the closed-down Central Deborah Mine tell visitors the batteries pounded away day and night, six days a week. “You just got so used to the noise. It reverberated all over town – there was nowhere in Bendigo you couldn’t hear them.” At the beginning of the 21st Century, however, the biggest business in town was tourism!
Why do we care? Gold has a strange capacity to fire emotions. Thieves love stealing gold, and gold has been one of the preferred way for the rich (and the poor) to demonstrate their wealth, or at least their tiny share. The lure of gold inspires secrecy, lies, and fantastic tales about hidden seams or huge nuggets just below the surface, with searchers desperately seeking glory through finding that one big nugget. Today, they’re still searching: modern prospectors wander around alluvial areas with metal detectors, each carefully hiding information about areas of interest, preferring to listen to their device with headphones, rather than alert anyone to a possible find.
In tiny quantities, gold isn’t hard to find. As I have done with children, you can go to a small stream in the area and start panning. You will find a few smudges. Indeed, at Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, a recreated gold-era town, there is a small stream running through the ‘village’ where you can pan and find little dots of gold. And yes, there is a thrill, silly given the tiny amount of gold you find, to see a tiny, tiny nugget glistening among the sand in your pan: all that work in cold water seems repaid. You put your find in a test tube, and years later can’t even find it!
Our new house is on Bendigo’s Quarry Hill, and you might think I have bought a detector, pan and started marking out the garden! No need, the quarry at Quarry Hill wasn’t for gold, and most of Bendigo’s gold mining remained well outside the town. But, clearing weeds, I will keep my eyes peeled, just in case! It’s an old part of Bendigo. The area was initially known as Charcoal Gully, and an Anglican school was built there in 1857. Quarry Hill’s name is said to come from a building stone quarry in the area, filled in long ago, its location now unknown. However, evidence of past wealth is to be found in a number of notable buildings in Quarry Hill that showcase the very best in Victorian and Edwardian architecture. These include such fine homes as The Eyrie (1874) in Reginald Street (on the Victorian Heritage register), Edelweiss (1890) in Hamlet Street, and Penwinnick (1895) in Harkness Street. Penwinnick was built by William Vahland for a timber merchant and two-time mayor, John Robert Hoskins, with elaborate timber detail inside and out which remains today. Edelweiss was built for Sir John Quick, a constitutional lawyer and Bendigo parliamentarian. Perhaps today’s owners represent the nouveau riche, stock market traders and digital entrepreneurs, or merely representatives of the old money coming from banking, medicine and the legal profession: should I ask?
The ‘magnetic’ allure of gold. In large part this was why Francisco Pizarro obtained permission from the Spanish Monarchy to conquer the land they called Peru in 1529. It is an appalling story of exploitation and murder by the Europeans in South America. In a pattern to be repeated in many places and at many times, the locals thought Pizarro and his men were “gods”. Their leader, Atahualpa was uncertain: if they were murders, then he should flee; if they gods, he should welcome them. His advisers said they were men, not gods, and recommended they should be killed, trapped inside of their sleeping quarters and burnt to death. It all came to a head in November 1532,. Pizarro set up an ambush, with just 168 men Atahualpa arrived with 6,000 unarmed followers; Pizarro attacked, and the Battle of Cajamarca began with a cannon shot. The Spaniards started shooting, alongside several cavalry charges, and the result was devastating massacre. 2,000 Inca were killed, while just one Spanish soldier was wounded
Atahualpa was captured at the massacre at Cajamarca. A high status captive, his wives joined him, and the Spanish soldiers taught him chess. The Spanish, using threats to kill him, forced Atahualpa to order his generals to cease hostilities. Under pressure, he offered to fill a large room with gold, the so-called ‘Ransom Room’, and promised double the amount in silver. Following the time-honoured practice of duplicity, Pizarro accepted this offer, allowed the gold to pile up, but had no intention to release Atahualpa. Over six months all the gold and silver had been delivered. Ignoring the craftmanship, it was melted, refined, and made into bars. The looting continued. Gold and silver was seized from temples, and later when Pizzaro was in Cuzco, he collected gold plates from the Temple of the Sun.
That left the decision as to what to do with Atahualpa. Told of secret plots and planned attacks, the Spanish tried to find out what was happening. Pizarro was against killing him, but the other Spaniards wanted his death. Those against Atahualpa’s conviction and murder argued that he should be judged by King Charles since he was the sovereign prince. Atahualpa agreed to accept baptism to avoid being burned at the stake and in the hopes of one day rejoining his army and killing the Spanish; he was baptized as Francisco. It made no difference. In August 1533 Atahualpa was garroted and died a Christian, buried with Christian rites in the San Francisco church in Cajamarca. His body was quickly disinterred and taken, probably as he had requested, to its final resting place in Quito. The Spaniards didn’t care: they had the gold.
Rebellions and savage conquests continued, and the Inca empire was completed destroyed in forty years. Many later attempts to restore the empire were attempted, none were successful. The Spanish conquest was achieved through relentless force, deception, all aided by smallpox! The Spaniards destroyed much of Incan civilisation, melting precious gold and silver objects, while imposing Spanish culture on the native population. There’s much more to this terrible history, but the overall story is clear. Men will lie, murder, and deceive anyone and everyone on their way to gain gold, on the small scale in Bendigo, and at a national level in South America.
The fascination with gold has never disappeared. What is it about this largely inert, soft yellow metal that creates such violent emotions? Bob Marley’s words are surely right: “don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver and gold”.
