| Title: | Beale, Joseph Jr to Beale, Sarah, 1853 |
|---|---|
| ID | 4470 |
| Collection | The Earth between them: Joseph Beale's letters home to Ireland from Victoria (1852-1853) [E.Beale] |
| File | beale/4 |
| Year | 1853 |
| Sender | Beale, Joseph Jr |
| Sender Gender | male |
| Sender Occupation | labourer |
| Sender Religion | unknown |
| Origin | near Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Destination | Mountmellick, Co. Laois, Ireland |
| Recipient | Beale, Sarah |
| Recipient Gender | female |
| Relationship | siblings |
| Source | |
| Archive | |
| Doc. No. | |
| Date | |
| Partial Date | |
| Doc. Type | |
| Log | unknown |
| Word Count | 2410 |
| Genre | arrival, reality shock, working at the diggings, general hardship, prospects |
| Note | |
| Transcript | A government tent Dan's Box 5/22nd 1853. [22 May 1853.] My very dear Sal Here goes to throw down the bullock whip and take up the pen. You must read this without looking at it to see how it is written or how it is speled how many blots, scratches or mistakes of any kind are in it, nether is it to be shown to any person. If you do not promise all this I'll write no more. I wd rather walk 10 miles than write a letter. You heard enough abt the voyage out though there was one thing they ail left out. I am going to begin at where we left the Sarah. The Capt hired a small steamer to take the passengers and there luggage ashore, We landed on the wharf without one penny in the world except 28/- I had saved out of £2 George Bcale of Cork gave me. My father asked a man might he put our luggage in his store for an hour or two the man said of course so we put them in and went to inquire where we cd pitch our tent a man said if we wd go with him he wd show us; so we got a dray for ten shillings to take our things there (about as far as from the mill down to Dan's) the man made us pay 8/- before he wd let us have our luggage out of his store. Well we got to the camping ground with only 10/- among five of us rather a blew look out we thought. We had no fire, no wood to make one, no tent poles nothing but a pile of boxes our beds and canvas parcel whitch they told me aboard was our tent and that it must be a very large one when we opened it there were five tents this was the first thing we met to cheer us. We made up for the want of poles by putting four boxes on the ground and four standing on them and spred a tent over them and made our beds on the ground we got some bread and tea for 1/- apiece next morning we set off for wood about a mile across a swamp we also got tent poles for our tent. We sold one of the tents for £8. another for £7 and two for £13.10.0 we sold the Irons for £15 we sold 3 boxes of clothes for about £7.10. We saw an advertisement for men to work on the roads at from 8/- to 10/- a day. my father and Dan and I got 10/- each Fan [Francis] 8/- and Jim [Kennedy] was Tent keeper. We worked for about 3 weeks when my father got the lone of £30 and bought a horse and cart for £60 for which we received 30/- a day from government Jim drove the horse. We are about 10 miles from Melbourne. About this time Fan got the dissen tery and was very bad for 2 or 3 weeks then Jim got it then I got it and when we were recovered Dan got it he had it for 4 or 5 weeks very bad indeed so bad that we thought he wd have died we had then two horses @ 30/- a day each I had 10/- a day and Dan 12/- my father used to sleep almost day and night. We bought some sugar, tea, tobacco, oatmeal, Hour 8cc and made an agreement with a baker to deliver us bread and then we opened a store to sell [merchandise to] the men which my father was to mind but he soon hired a man @ 10/- a day to mind it. We were now about 3 mos @ this work when the [price of] carriage [of goods] to the diggins began to rise my father reckoned he made clear by the horses £10 a week so Francis and I agreed to pay my father £10 p. week if he would give us the horses and dray and we wd find the horses in everything as well as ourselves and let us carry goods to the digging so my father said he wd. Francis and I went into Melbourne and got a ton of Hour to take to the bakery on Murdering flat. Frier's Creek diggins for which we were to receive £30. The distance is reckoned 80 eighty miles the first night we stopped at home at Spring Gully next morning we tied up a bed a blanket and two of the red quilts a lb 1 ½ of tea lb 4 sugar and with £2 we started. We had a tin can to make tea in. a frying pan two bags of corn for the horses and a bucket to carry water in. We made the paddock that night about 3 miles, drew our dray close to another mans and I made a fire while Francis went 1 ½ miles for water I fed the horses spread a blanket we brought for die purpose over the shafts and made our bed under it; the shafts in this country are kept up with 2 stiks when the horse is out the same bight as when the horse is drawing. We boiled some tea and drank it with dry bread hobbeled (fettered) the horses and turned them loose undressed and crept into bed slept well all night got up just as the clay dawned and went to look for our horses which Fan found about £ of a mile off I looked for about an hour when I saw them standind [sic] by the dray. We fed the horses, got our breakfast tied up our beds etc yoked up and started. It was now about 7 oclock. we traveled 10 miles across the Keilor plains and stopped at a water hole for dinner made a fire of some bowes [boughs] fed the horses and turned them loose for an hour got our dinner and lay down to rest for the remainder of the hour as near as we cd guess it we then turned up the horses and yoked up tied our dog to the axil and made the Gap inn public house in an hour; this is the end of the plains which are 14 miles across and about 100 miles long without a tree we then crossed a sandy range covered with trees then across a deep gully the far side of which is very steep and it made the poor horses snore [sore?] in the collars before they got to the top we then crossed a small plain and creek and entered another forrest of pepperment trees and camped for the night. Next morning we made the famous bush inn hill at the foot of which is the Township of Gisbourne you may talk about hills at home but this is as steep as the bank in the mill yard at the steepest place. I have seen 26 bullocks to one dray with 4 drivers with theese long bullock whips in there hands they are used with both hands the handle is about 10 feet long and the lash S or 9 feet the crack of one of these is like the report of a gun, to hear these 4 men at work on the 26 bullocks was like the police on parade in Mt. Melick. I am very tired writing. We made the diggins in four days and delivered the flour and got our 30£ and 5 passengers and there swags (bed clothes) @ 30/- each. The diggins are just what I thought they were. Great long rowes of tents and square miles of holes from 3 to 80 feet deep. It is very hard work and very wet work I have seen men up to their wastes in liquid mud. I have seen them washing cradeling and panning gold at all of which they are wet. The holes are either round or oblong the round holes are generally about 2 feet or 2£ across they are often 20, 30 or even 80, or 100 feet deep so that a person is astonished often when he goes over to a hole 2 ft across to see a man driving 40 or 50 feet deep. The oblong holes are generally from 2 ½ to 3 feet long and 2 feet wide and the same depth as the round holes. The Gold is generally found on the top of pipeclay which is nearly as hard as rock and slopes [stops] the Gold from going through. The gold is always mixed with quartz gravel. The earth the gold is in is called washing stuff. When the diggers Chink they are near the bottom of the hole they try a panfull if there is gold in it from that down to the pipeclay is washing stuff if there is none in it they go lower clown untill they find either washing stuff or the bottom it the latter it is called a blanck. The washing stuff is generally from 6 inches to 3 feet deep, it is sometimes black clay sometimes white and sometimes sand or coarse gravel. If the washing stuff proves rich when they have the size of the hole taken down to the pipeclay they begin to drive (tunnel) if the stuff proves richest on the north side they drive on that side until they are afraid to drive any farther or until they come into another claim and send the pick all of a sudden into another mans hole to the surprise of both; this often leads to serious fights becaus the man they have driven into gets vexed at finding they have been takeing gold out of his clame; every man is allowed 8 feet of ground which is called' his clame you can mark out a clame any where and If you stay away from your clame 48 hours another man may lake possession of it and then you must mark out another; well when a man findes another driving in his clame he calls his mates and the other man calls his and to it they go with picks and shovels and sometimes they are joined on both sides until there are often 2 or three hundred lighting when diey have to be stopped by the commissioner or a troop of mounted police. There were 5 men on the bendigo put down one hold and got one thousand five hundred pounds each. I have known a man to make £150 on the diggins and come down to Melbourne and sepend it all which he called k[n]ocking it down then he went up again and made 200 and knocked that down then he went up again and made 290 and knocked that down and now he is gone up again. We saw kangaroo rats about our camp fire one night near friers creek. We got to Melbourne in 7 days from the time we left it. We then got a ton for Bond brothers [at the] junction of the Lodden [River and] Friers Creek. We delivered it in 4 days and came back across the ranges and down by Orr's stachon [station] on the Colombine through the handsomest country I have ever seen. We saw cockatoos for the first time wiid this journey and parrois in thousands green, red, blue parrots, green parrots with red heads, green parrots with blue wings, paroquets, macaws, laughing Jackasses, and O'possums in hundreds, but we killed none yet. We came back in 7 days. I then bought a load of flour 1 case of gin and 5 lbs of tobacco on our own a/c and took it 120 miles to the bendigo diggins Jim came with me this time we were out only 1 day when it began to rain and rained a week almost without stopping our bed clothes got wet and we had to wait 3 days before we cd dry them it was very pleasant [sic] no doubt to be wet all day undress and get into a wet bed and put wet clothes on in the morning we camped two whole days and made a fire before which we used to stand drying each side of us by turns. We had to walk through creeks and afong roads up to our knees and over in mud the horses ploughing up the land as we went along but all this did not do, our provisions began to fail, we had no bread no meat and only a little tea and sugar all of which we use 3 times a day here; We made some damper which did us until we got some bread' We made the bendigo diggins in a fortnight whereas we should have made it in a week. The flour cost £3.8.0 and I sold it at £8 a bag and 7/10/- a bag. At the time I got to Bendigo there was a great rush to the new diggins called the Mclvor so I took the rest of my flour and the remainder of a ton of cradles tubs and dishes and bedclothes belonging to 3 or 4 parties of diggers to McIvor for which I received £19 I sold the flour for £9 and £10 p. bag of 200 lbs each. I stowed all the money except 5 or 6 pounds in the middle of a hair matrass as we had a long and lonely road to come down. It is very bad to carry too much or too little money about a person for If you carry to much you loose too much if you are robbed and if you have only a little they will beat you, often to death so a man must carry just enough to save his back and no more. We came down through Kilmore and by the Sydney road. We were 3 weeks @ this trip, we had only 3 fine days the whole time. Up to this we have cleared £25 and have bought a horse and my father will lend us the price of a cart and we are goin to work my father 2 horses and our 1 horse on the government again; no more diggins for me. We are to get £2 a day for each horse. Great wages and great hardship. . . . |
