THE GOLDFIELDS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 3 



a publican in Swanston Street, who had left his business for a few 

 weeks to prospect on the upper Yarra, arrived in town with a few 

 grains which he had washed out on the banks of the Deep Creek, 

 a tributary of that river, about sixteen miles from Melbourne. He 

 claimed to have discovered, and was ready to point out for a con- 

 sideration, the first profitable goldfield in the colony. The evidence 

 he could submit, and the immediate results attained, were certainly 

 very trivial. Continuous working in the midwinter season was made 

 impossible by floods and other difficulties ; while the phenomenal 

 finds reported soon afterwards from other districts induced the 

 withdrawal of the majority of the two hundred diggers who had 

 promptly followed up the footsteps of Michel's party. Yet it re- 

 mains a fact that the comparatively insignificant find of Michel's 

 has vindicated his claim for its permanence, by having been worked 

 with fairly profitable results for half a century, under the name 

 of the Anderson's Creek diggings. Its value as a discovery was 

 recognised by the committee which had the invidious task of allot- 

 ting the gold-finders' rewards subsequently voted by the Legislative 

 Council, for that body granted 1,000 to Michel, being the same 

 sum as they voted to the claimants for the opening of the Bunin- 

 yong and Clunes fields respectively. While the initiatory stages of 

 Anderson's Creek were receiving the attention of the Government, 

 the stragglers who were ransacking the gullies of the Plenty Eanges 

 found the " colour " in many places, and though they were gradually 

 attracted away by the rumours of successes elsewhere, the district 

 was afterwards, under more systematic prospecting, developed into 

 a permanent field, and, known as the Caledonian diggings, worked 

 with fairly profitable results until to-day. 



On the same day that Michel disclosed his find at Anderson's 

 Creek, a coach driver of Buninyong, named James Esmond, who 

 had varied the monotony of his occupation by a resultless visit to 

 California, made public in Geelong his discovery of rich quartz and 

 alluvial gold in the district which came to be known as Clunes. 

 The locality of his find was on Creswick's Creek, adjoining the site 

 afterwards acquired by an English proprietary, "The Port Phillip 

 Mining Company," out of which that company, during the next 

 thirty years, took gold to the value of over 2,000,000 sterling. This 



1* 



