A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53Clacy, Charles, Mrs.
History
A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53
Clacy, Charles, Mrs.
Australia -- Description and travel; Gold mines and mining -- Australia
THURSDAY, 9.--This morning we were up betimes, some of our party being
so sanguine as to anticipate making the "Bush Inn" before evening. As
we proceeded, this hope quickly faded away. The Keilor plains seemed
almost impassable, and what with pieces of rock here, and a water-hole
there, crossing them was more dangerous than agreeable. Now one passed
a broken-down dray; then one's ears were horrified at the oaths an
unhappy wight was venting at a mud-hole into which he had stumbled. A
comical object he looked, as, half-seas-over, he attempted to pull on a
mud-covered boot, which he had just extricated from the hole where it
and his leg had parted company. A piece of wood, which his imagination
transformed into a shoe-horn, was in his hand. "Put it into the
larboard side," (suiting the action to the word), "there it goes--damn
her, she won't come on! Put it into the starboard side there it
goes--well done, old girl," and he triumphantly rose from the ground,
and reeled away.
With a hearty laugh, we proceeded on our road, and after passing
two or three coffee-tents, we arrived at Gregory's Inn. The landlord is
considered the best on the road, and is a practical example of what
honesty and industry may achieve. He commenced some nine months before
without a shilling--his tarpaulin tent and small stock of tea, sugar,
coffee, &c., being a loan. He has now a large weather-board house,
capable of making up one hundred beds, and even then unable to
accommodate all his visitors, so numerous are they, from the good name
he bears. Here we got a capital cold dinner of meat, bread, cheese,
coffee, tea, &c., for three shillings a-piece, and, somewhat refreshed,
went forwards in better spirits, though the accounts we heard there of
the bad roads in the Black Forest would have disheartened many.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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