At the time the police were too busy harrying the diggers for the exorbitant licence to attend to the roads, but later in the year, when the Melbourne papers backed up the demand for better police protection, police stations were established at the larger camping places where villages or, as they are called in Australia, townships had grown up. In the meantime numbers of murders were committed without the perpetrators of the crimes being discovered. Thus Mr. and Mrs. Skinner were travelling from Bendigo to the new rush at McIvor and camped for the night on the banks of Eve Creek. In the morning Skinner went to look for his horse while his wife prepared breakfast. When she went to the lagoon to fill the billy to make the tea, she saw the half-immersed body of a man. When her husband returned he drew the body out of the water, and saw that the head had been fearfully battered. A pocket-knife, pipe, tobacco, and a silk handkerchief were found in the pockets, but no gold or money. An enquiry was held in this case, and a verdict of murder was pronounced against some person or persons unknown, and that was all; but there were hundreds of such cases in which no enquiry was held. John Shannon was travelling from Ballarat to Geelong, and stopped for the night at an inn at Batesford. He called on Mr. White, a butcher, and had tea and was about to return to his inn, when three men stopped him at the door. One of these men asked, "Is this the butcher's shop?" "Yes," replied Shannon. "Ah! you're just the bloke we want," exclaimed the man. The three men then hustled Shannon back into the shop and compelled him to stand with his back to the wall and his arms stretched out. White was placed in a similar position, and made to stand while the robbers emptied the till. They then searched Shannon's pockets, and took out a parcel of gold and some money. He objected, and one of the men who had been standing on guard at the door drew a pistol, put the muzzle close to Shannon's breast, and pulled the trigger. Shannon fell. The man who had been searching him turned the body over, and then said, "Barry, it's finished; we'll be off." The three men then left, no attempt being made to detain them. An inquest was held on the body, and a verdict of wilful murder was returned against three men whose names were unknown. The jury added: "We cannot separate without expressing a strong feeling with regard to the unprotected state of the road between Geelong and Ballarat, which is overrun with bad characters. We would respectfully but firmly urge on the Executive the immediate necessity of erecting intermediate police stations between the two places, with patrols to traverse the road from station to station, and we would also point out the necessity for strenuously enforcing the Vagrant Act." Three men were arrested and charged with this cold-blooded murder, but were acquitted.