Chapter 9

Life in Australia 1854 - 1863

After arriving with Priscilla in Melbourne from England for the second time,they took

a rented house and father tried to get back on the police force but there was nothing

doing. Times were not so good as they had been, so father thought he would try

his hand at gold digging.

He left mother in Melbourne and went up country alone, and mother stayed until her

first baby was born, and father came back and took her with him up country.

It must have been in the spring that they went, because I overheard father saying how

happy mother was with her baby, and picking the flowers and admiring everything as

they went along, but he was not so happy as this money was getting less and less

and he had nothing very good to go to.

They shifted about, from one goldfield to another, and father had different mates,

and they kept sinking holes, nearly all coming up empty. The baby did not thrive, and

someone told them to get a goat and give him goat's milk, and so a nanny was bought

but nobody told them that the milk was too strong without watering down, and

mother did not know, and so the baby died, and mother herself was not very

well for a time.

He was named Edward Oke, and died at 7 weeks old.

There were doing better financially by this time and had a good tent with a fly, and

I've heard mother say that it was all right. I think it was about this time that she

had a good neighbour, Mrs Dickson, wife of a storekeeper, and they stayed in

that place for some time.

Mary was born at the Great Western diggings, but they had shifted again before

Alf was born. On that night father had to go to the doctor, and it was a terrible night,

rainy and stormy. This is was near Stawell, Pleasant Creek, Victoria.

It is quite a long way from Melbourne as seen by the map:

Bess was born there in 1863. It was about this time that father gave up digging on his own

account, and he bought a horse and dray and carted wash dirt etc for the other

diggers, and he found this paid him better. In 1863, he sold a lot of those things

and left mother there, and went to New Zealand.

Mother used to tell us many tales of incidents that happened while they were on

the diggings and here are some:

One evening when they are all sitting outside the tent door, a large black

snake came out of from a heap of dry wood and was making for some diggers holes.

All the boys and men in the camp were soon after it with sticks, stones or whatever

else they could lay their hands on, and everybody was shouting what a noise,

but the snake got away and got down an old digger's hole.

Father and his mate were going to work one morning, and there was no meat for

dinner, so he told mother to go across to the Chinamens' camp where there was a

butcher shop and get some. He had no time to go himself.

Mother did not like going, but she had to have some meat, so bravely went to the

opening of the circle of the tents.

She did not see anyone about, but the butcher shop was straight in front of her,

so in she went looking neither to the left nor to the right. She selected her meat,

paid for it and turned to go away, when I'm looking around, every tent in the place

had one or more Chinamen standing at the door, and looking at her. She did

not know how she walked out past that row of eyes, nobody spoke a word.

When she reached the opening, she felt inclined to run but was able to restrain

herself, but was glad to get inside her own tent and sink into a seat. Father laughed

when she told him that she would never go again. I suppose she was the first

white woman that they had seen for a long time.

On Saturdays, the miners washed up and father would take mother and the

children, farther away to some larger waterholes where there was clean water for

washing and drinking. It was a very dry time of the year, and the stream had stopped

running but these water holes were left, and they contained very good water, and also

there were plenty of crayfish or lobsters in them.

While father filled some casks, mother sat on the bank with a long pole with meat

tied to the end of it and threw the bait out as father had showed her, and by

the time father was ready to go home, she had about a bucket full. Then they went

home and father cooked them. He and the other men ate them, but mother refused

to have anything to do with them, as she did not like them.

During another dry spell, father and mother were shifting camp and the first

night they arrived it was dark, and mother was very tired but it was so pleased to

get a couple of nice billy tea, she thought it was lovely but when she saw the water

in the hole in the morning, she was not quite as happy!

I think it was during this dry time that they camped at an old chimney left by digger

who thought it would save somebody building another one. They could not sleep

for fleas, and the next day someone said that the sand around the chimney was

thick with them. Father thought he would soon fix that, and he put all the things

that they had on the table, and spread three buckets of water all over the

floor. However, this made things worse than ever, as all the fleas had jumped up into

the bedding, so they shifted to a new camp and built a new chimney.

Mother had some anxious times. Fathers mate was away and she had the dinner

cooked, and was waiting for father to come and get it. She kept on looking out for him

at 1, 2, 3 o'clock. Finally she ran across to the hole which happened to be not far from

the tent and looked down.

She called and called. She could see a heap of dirt and his coat at the bottom of the

shaft, but he must have been in in one of the drives. Mother went to where two men

were working and told them her troubles, so one of them came with her and went

down the shaft.

Mother was pleased to see father's head emerge, coming up the bucket rope.

He had struck colour, and had forgotten how time flies. What had made it worse was

was that sometime previous to this, father had struck his forehead with a pick and had

fainted from the heat, but his mate was there at the time and got him out to the

main shaft where there was more air. He and his mate will did well on that occasion.

In one camp there were they were in, there was a number of other women and every

tent had a goat or two. It was the practice to tie the kid to the tent pole, and let the

nannies go and feed all day.

At sundown they all came marching home in a long string, and each nanny would

go straight to her own kid. The women would then milk them and they would stay

about all night, and the kids would get their share of milk then. As the kids got

bigger, they were let loose after the nannys had gone away feeding, and it was pleasing

to watch them.

They were playful and so full of fun. One would run up the branch of a fallen tree to

the highest point and then it would turn around and go up another branch and so on

until all the rest played Follow the Leader all the time. Mother said that she and the

children could watch them for hours. They were all colours. They kept away from the

billys as far as possible, on account of the smell.

Father used to say when later he was in New Zealand, that you could get away from

the cold, but in Australia you could not get away from the flies, fleas and heat.

Mother was afraid of the blacks, they used to come to the tent door, the men

as well as the women, and would try to look in and try to see the baby, and jabber

away to each other. Mother was afraid that they would come inside, so she would take

the baby to the door for them to see.

Mrs Blakie now has her stories of the days in Australia to add to the others:

Has anyone told of how mother used to gather the dead wood for the fire, the time

there on the diggings in the Victoria? How she used to stand by with the poker to kill

any tarantulas will centipedes that might come out of the decayed wood?

Can you see our little mother who are never gone beyond the garden gate without

her gloves on, and white fancy stockings, black slippers and embroidered petticoats?

Mother often told us that the years that she spent on the diggings on the Victoria were

the happiest she had known.

They lived in a tent, and she was the only woman in the camp. On one occasion, she told

us she made friends with a big white dog who guarded the tents of four of the diggers close by,

and so she felt more confident when left alone during the day.

The Australian black men did not scare her so much as did the black women. She

told us about the goats that they kept. Also about a of the bunch of something that they

took from camp to camp, which was the only seasoning for the soup, that soup being

dry bread with a little butter, salt and pepper and the something, boiling water

poured over the lot, and there you were.

Whenever they had to shift, mother would admire the flowers and the trees and the

general look of the scenery.