Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (38 page)

Turning at William Street, the procession passes government offices, then St James Cathedral, and finally arrives at the gates of Government House, where it is estimated a crowd of some eight to 10,000 people have gathered.

As Sir Charles enters his new gates and confidently alights from the carriage to walk the last 50 yards, the people cheer and wave their hats and handkerchiefs. The glorious Vice-Regal standard is run up the flagpole to show His Excellency is in residence, just as the cannon from the barracks roars its own notification that Her Majesty’s representative is now on site at Government House.

At the door to the magnificent building await immaculately attired ladies and gentlemen of Victoria’s high society, while a company of 100 men of the mighty 40th Regiment forms up a fine guard of honour. They stand silent and straight-backed sentinel as the Vice-Regal party enters the green grass-plot formed by their obeisance, all of it joyously observed by the people crowded on the roofs opposite.

Presently, all the major players gather in a square of power formed by the ranks of the 40th Regiment as Mr Rusden, the Clerk of the Executive Council, reads the proclamation from the official scroll, and graced with the great seal of England, signed by the Duke of Newcastle, appointing Sir Charles Augustus Hotham, KCB, to be Lieutenant-Governor of the colony of Victoria . . .

‘The following oaths were then administered to Sir Charles
seriatim
[in order], the oath of allegiance, the oath of abjuration, the oath of supremacy, the oath of office, the oath to preserve the laws of trade, and the declaration of Protestantism.’

Sir Charles solemnly takes all the oaths, signs documents to that effect and, now that he is officially the Lieutenant-Governor, he is greeted with enormous cheering, quite equal to the cheering extended to Lady Hotham!

His Excellency then enters Government House, and it looks as though it is all over bar the shouting – and cheering. And yet, feeling it his duty to address the masses, he breaks with protocol, soon re-emerging on the small upper window balcony on the top of the porch. In a clear, loud, ‘quarter-deck’ voice, he addresses the throng:

‘Gentlemen, I know not whether it be according to custom, that I should address you on the present occasion, but this I do know, that it would be most unbecoming in me, to allow you to separate without expressing my hearty thanks for the very cordial welcome which you have this day given me.

‘I come among you, an entire stranger – your welcome is not therefore for me, but for the representative of the Queen, and in Her Majesty’s name I thank you. I shall officially and in my public despatches make this known to Her Majesty’s Government and I have also other means privately to bring the same before Her Majesty.

‘I shall govern you as an honest man; I shall look neither to the right nor the left – I shall do my duty and try to please you – again, I thank you.’

Again, he is cheered to the echo.

Did you hear him? This is a man who personally communicates with the Queen! And we practically
know
him.

His Excellency is off to a wonderful start.

‘It was essentially a popular demonstration of the most enthusiastic kind,’
The Argus
reports the following day, ‘and as a means of building up a kindly sympathy between the ruler and the ruled, its effects cannot but be largely beneficial.’

Hear, hear!

Hear
,
HEAR!

Sunday, 25 June 1854, Ballarat takes an alternative view, not for the last time

This is not quite the way we see it on the diggings. Up here, Melbourne is a faraway place, and the arrival of such a personage as Sir Charles does not occasion enormous excitement, most particularly when there are things of more moment happening on the goldfields. On this day, digger Thomas Pierson carefully writes in his diary:

This morning as is our Sundays wont to do we got the weekly Argus Newspaper price 3/4 we learn from it that our new governor Sir Charles Hotham has arrived -- our Old Governor La Trobe left here for England in the Golden age on 5th of May after filling the office for 15 years -- before the Gold diggings the Governor salary was ₤4000. It now is £15,000 annually and £5,000 for travel expenses. I see from the papers they are giving him a grand reception at Sandridge of Melbourne -- with Arches flags, songs etc etc -- last week a hole caved in on a man and broke his shin -- when they brought him up out of the hole his shin bone protruded 2 inches through his stocking.

12 July 1854, on the Eureka, there are wild celebrations

It is a big day on the diggings. For it is the day that, amid much fanfare, James and Catherine Bentley’s Eureka Hotel is opened for business. And what a wonder to behold it is! The whole thing, standing proud on Eureka Street, covers an entire half-acre. Over the front door it has a beautiful lamp to light the way for all who would cross its portals and tread its boards. You can certainly see where the rumoured £30,000 to build it went, though there remains speculation on how Bentley raised such an amount.

One rumour, and there is a fair bit to back it, is that local Magistrate John Dewes, the one who has signed off on the license for Bentley to have this bar, is a silent partner, though in what manner is not obvious. What
is
certain around the diggings is that Dewes is notorious – though nothing has ever been proved – for demanding bribes from sly-grog sellers, hoteliers and victuallers in return for looking the other way while they break the law. And it is in this way, it is presumed, that Dewes may have earned the capital he needs to invest. The most intriguing, and therefore the most popular, rumour is that because of the license he has granted, the money he has put in and the favours he is expected to do, Bentley has given Dewes a quarter share in the Eureka Hotel.

From the beginning the bar is a great favourite of all the Joes, with police, troopers and magistrates all seen to drink there regularly. One constant customer is Magistrate Dewes himself, and he is personally involved enough to later exult in the fact that ‘£350 were received over the bar counter in payment for liquors on the first day of its opening’. Oh, yes, it is noted alright – it is all so out of the ordinary. For the most part, those who are based in the Government Camp up on the hill, well above those of us on the lowly diggings, live in a world unto themselves. They live well, dine well, socialise with each other, receive distinguished visitors such as squatters and government officials, and allow no free access to
their
Camp for such as us. And yet, here
they
are now, frequently venturing out and spending time on the diggings in Bentley’s Eureka Hotel. It is all very strange. And we don’t like it . . .

17 July 1854, Ballarat, teaching’s loss is journalism’s gain

John Manning has just about had enough. For the last six months he has been teaching at the makeshift Catholic school in the chapel that lies at the foot of Bakery Hill, in the company of Anastasia Hayes, who teaches the girls, and in all that time they have had next to no support from the government. When he had taken over in April, there had been just 15 students, and he and the worthy Anastasia now have 89 between them.

It is with all this in mind that the small but ever-feisty Irishman writes to the Secretary of the Denominational Schools Board, pointing out just how dire things are: ‘One very ungainly table of about twelve feet long serves as a writing desk for as many as can crowd around it – all who cannot must kneel on the wet floor along the seats and write thereon. But description is almost impossible – in one word, sir, the school I have the honour of conducting is emphatically more like the [churlish] seminary of a hedge schoolmaster than anything I can compare it to.’

Not only that, but in all the time he has been here, he has had not the slightest correspondence with the Board – not even a school inspector has visited. The result is that many of the students are leaving to go to the National School, and while he would be inclined to try to stop them, that would be ‘tantamount to an assassination of the scholars’ time.’

A nice turn of phrase? Manning rather thinks so himself.

Perhaps he should try another line of work, start writing for one of the many papers now flourishing on the diggings? It is not a bad idea, and Manning does indeed leave shortly afterwards to take up a position with Henry Seekamp’s
Ballarat Times
.

26 July 1854, Government House, Toorac, the spectre of penury looms

It has been something of a long haul, but after carefully going through all the accounts left by his predecessor, Lieutenant-Governor Hotham and his senior staff are getting a clearer idea of the financial situation faced by the newly established colony of Victoria. And it is grim.

As extraordinary as it seems, the deficit is just over £1,000,000, and the colony is teetering on the edge of outright bankruptcy. The police bills alone are staggering, even for such poor police as they have. In 1851, policing had cost Victoria just £25,000. But with the explosion of the goldfields it had blown out to £300,000 in just two years and, with the rising goldfields population and continued agitations, it is ever on the increase.

Of all the problems Lieutenant-Governor Hotham faces, this draining of the government coffers is the most severe as his mandate from London to
balance the budget
has always been paramount.

After examining the many reports he has requested over the past few months on comparative annual payment of license fees, the most obvious problem Sir Charles can see is that only half the diggers (and storekeepers) are actually paying the tax.

The quarter ending 30 June had shown 43,700 licenses issued and £87,800 raised, representing a decrease of 78,000 licenses on the preceding year and £100,000 in revenue, despite the fact that the goldfields’ male adult population had increased by over 20,000. The preceding quarter, ending 31 March 1853, appeared as bad if not worse. Although the male adult population had increased by over 10,000 on 1853 figures, it was down 88,800 licenses and showed a decrease of £104,000. No matter which way Hotham looks at it, the extremely frustrating truth is that goldfields license revenue has fallen away by nearly half even though the goldfields’ population has gone up every month and has never been higher.

Of course, Hotham’s first response is to hold his underlings accountable, and he begins by haranguing his Chief Gold Commissioner endlessly and often over these appalling figures. Despite Wright’s protestations that the license fee is ‘being paid as well as at any other time’, the new Lieutenant-Governor is convinced ‘that the evasion of the license was from right to left throughout the goldfields’, and it could be explained by nothing other than ‘laxity on the part of the commissioners’.

Well, they would just have to see about that. For Sir Charles, the law is the law is the law, and it must be administered by the authorities whether they like it or not and obeyed by the people – double the ditto and the diggers be damned.

Meantime, in an effort to work out just how bad the situation is, on this day he makes a snap decision and charges the Auditor-General to further scrutinise all of the colony’s finances and submit a report.

6 August 1854, Melbourne, the Redcoats gather with intent

It is a move that delights the Melbourne establishment, every bit as much as it horrifies Sydney. Steaming through the heads of Port Phillip Bay comes the Commander-in-Chief of the military forces of the colonies, Sir Robert Nickle, a highly decorated and gloriously bewhiskered 67-year-old career army officer of enormous distinction, who has served his Sovereigns for the last 55 years in uprisings and wars everywhere from the Irish Rebellion to the Peninsular War, from South America to America, the West Indies, the Canadian Rebellion and, since July 1853, here in Australia.

Given the growing unrest in Victoria and the increasing demand for soldiers on Victoria’s goldfields, the decision had been taken in London that the proper place for Her Majesty’s military headquarters in the colonies is Melbourne, not Sydney – and today Sir Robert arrives with 20 of his senior officers, ready to join the 611 soldiers of the 40th Regiment who are already here in Victoria.

‘We denounce it as unjust,’
The Sydney Morning Herald
had growled, ‘because it is not only giving to Melbourne what she has no claim to, but taking from Sydney that which is her own inherent right.’

Yes, there are those who think the reasons are justified, but in reality those reasons ‘are of little weight, and derive what shallow plausibility they possess from bugbears which exist only in ignorant minds or distempered imaginations’. In short, those living in Melbourne . . .

For where might it end? There had even been talk in
The Sydney Morning Herald
that Victoria’s Lieutenant-General, Sir Charles Hotham, would replace New South Wales’s Sir Charles FitzRoy as Governor-General, ‘a step which there is every reason to believe has been for some time contemplated’.

And it really has. Shortly after Sir Charles FitzRoy had arrived in Australia with his wife, Lady Mary, and one of their two adult sons, she was killed when a carriage the Governor was driving overturned in the grounds of Government House at Parramatta. As a widower, he seemed to have lost his way soon thereafter. For Sir Charles’s problems had grown in tandem with the belly of the young woman he had lain with in Berrima one night in early 1849, and his illegitimate son was born later in the year. Not that Sir Charles was alone at Government House in his wild ways, for all that. When the young Berrima woman’s outraged father had presented himself to the Governor’s secretary – who was also one of His Excellency’s sons – that gentleman had begun his reply by saying, ‘How can you be sure it was the Governor, for we all . . .’ That son is even more active than his father with ladies of the night and, among people in the know, Government House is oft referred to as the ‘FitzRoy stud’.