4 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



discovery caused a rush to set in towards Clunes with so much 

 vigour that by the 1st of August between 300 and 400 diggers were 

 encamped upon the ground, notwithstanding that it was an excep- 

 tionally wet and stormy month. But there were no great individual 

 successes to keep up enthusiasm, there were no stores, and the diffi- 

 culty of carting provisions over the miry bush tracks told heavily 

 upon them. The gains did not seem to warrant the hardships, with 

 the added risk of starvation, and the numbers were speedily reduced 

 by one-half. The temporary desertion of the field was accelerated 

 by the announcement on the 8th of August that a man named Thomas 

 Hiscock had lighted upon another treasure-house in a gully on Mount 

 Buninyong, and had sent some rich specimens to Geelong for assay. 

 No doubt the value and extent of the initial find was exaggerated, 

 for Hiscock's Gully, as the place was called, was soon exhausted. 

 But the report of the Geelong assayer was very encouraging, and it 

 was declared that the quality of the gold and the richness of the 

 stone were far before anything yet seen from Clunes. It was suffi- 

 cient to stir up a fresh burst of excitement in the community, and 

 the Geelong Advertiser complacently annexed the new field as be- 

 longing to that district. In 1851 Buninyong was probably the only 

 centre of settlement in the interior deserving the name of a township. 

 It had the only church away from the sea-board ; a rather popular 

 elementary school, conducted by the pastor, the Rev. Wm. Hastie, at 

 which the children of the numerous station employees received board 

 and education for a very trifling fee ; a respectable inn, two or three 

 stores, and about a dozen cottages. Its site was high and healthful, 

 and the rich volcanic soil produced the finest fruit in the colony, and 

 furnished the pastoral tenants, far and wide, with hay and grain. 

 All the places hitherto rushed had been in the unknown wilderness, 

 but when the news of Hiscock's discovery was flaunted in the Gee- 

 long Advertiser, the people knew where they were bound for, and 

 within a few weeks the bright little town on Corio Bay was almost 

 denuded of its adult male population. 



When this hurrying crowd, supplemented by an exodus from 

 Clunes, converged on the little hamlet of Buninyong, it was soon 

 evident that the area was too limited to find profitable employment 

 for a tithe of the invaders. Nor were the immediate results at all 



