Golden Australia 137 



worked-out mines have been filled up, the un- 

 sightly "mullock heaps" have been removed, 

 while woollen mills and factories for the manu- 

 facture of agricultural machinery have been 

 erected on the exploited ground. In the outskirts 

 of the city, mines may still be seen, and any one 

 curious and adventurous enough may descend 

 thousands of feet below the surface of the earth to 

 see the miners working the veins of sparkling 

 quartz. Here and there, a vacant area of land, 

 scarred with hundreds of abandoned shafts, re- 

 mains as witness of the thoroughness with which 

 the gold district has been explored. But the 

 golden era of Ballarat is practically at an end, 

 and the city is now the centre of one of the most 

 fertile agricultural districts in all Australia. 



The miners went to Ballarat and stayed there, 

 but auriferous Australia is dotted with deserted 

 mining camps where nothing remains to recall the 

 glories of the past, except the gravel heaps and 

 gaping holes the diggers left behind them. A 

 store, a post-office, a hotel or two, and half a 

 dozen cottages, with perhaps a noisome little 

 Chinese camp to prove that the yellow man can 

 glean a living from the leavings of the white man. 

 And in its palmy days, the ' ' rush ' ' had been a 

 human ant-hill, where forty thousand diggers 

 toiled feverishly all day, and drank, gambled, and 

 sang through the nights in their fire-lit canvas 

 tents! 



These are the dying goldfields and the dead 



