I 3 66 



A US TRALASIA ILL US TRA TED. 



THE 



PRECIOUS NUGGET. 

 Valued at 6,868. 



1,127 ounces of pure gold, and its value at the Mint was ,4,389 i8s. lod. There \vas 

 something very fascinating in the search for gold in the two colonies which had been 

 proved to be auriferous, and where prizes of such enormous value often fell into the 



hands of men who, in some instances at least, 

 where subsisting on the credit afforded to them 

 by a good-natured store-keeper. Sailors who had 

 deserted their ships, Cornish miners, graduates from 

 the British Universities, mechanics, clerks, younger 

 sons of good families, political refugees from Poland, 

 Germany and Austria, and the " landless resolutes " 

 from all parts of the world, thrown together upon 

 ship-board, would form partnerships, throw their 

 limited' means into a common fund, provide them- 

 selves with a digger's outfit on reaching Sydney or 

 Melbourne, and would start off on foot to a gold-field already opened up, or would 

 explore the country in search of a new one. If a particularly rich alluvial lead was 

 struck, the intelligence seemed to be disseminated far and wide by some magical method. 

 Thousands of men came trooping in from all points of the compass. That which a 

 month ago had been a tranquil valley, with a stream flowing through it, and green 

 trees dotting its grassy slopes, was suddenly transformed into a populous encampment, 

 with its stores, its taverns, its lodging-houses, all composed of canvas. Then followed 

 the local newspaper, the tented place of worship, and the theatre and concert-room hastily 

 constructed of planks, and occupied by a travelling company of players. Thus would be 

 formed an impromptu community 

 of twenty or thirty thousand souls 

 a fortuitous concourse of human 

 atoms busy as bees all day, and 

 devoting their evenings to such 

 recreations as the place afforded ; 

 Sunday being set apart for rest, for 

 religious worship in some cases, 

 and for ablutions and a rough kind 

 of laundry work in all. Some of 

 the richest deposits of alluvial gold 

 were very shallow, and were almost, 

 if not altogether, exhausted in a 

 few months. In that event, the 

 encampment was eventually broken 

 up and dispersed. Newer fields allured the nomadic population to other districts, 

 and, after they had left, nothing remained of the tented town but the superficial 

 indications of its principal thoroughfares, and a few Chinese "fossicking" for gold in the 

 abandoned holes, or in the heaps of gravel left by the side of them. In two or three 

 mining regions the Asiatics established a quarter of their own ; with its brightly decorated 

 Joss-house ; its theatre, in which the performance of a single drama would extend over 



THE 



WELCOME NUGGET. 

 Valued at 9,534. 



