Never before could I have
imagined that a woman's voice could utter sounds sufficiently
discordant to drive repose far from us, yet so it was.
The gentlemen christened her "the amiable female."
The tent of this "amiable" personage was situated at right angles with
ours and our shipmates, so that the annoyance was equally felt. Whilst
her husband was at work farther down the gully, she kept a sort of sly
grog-shop, and passed the day in selling and drinking spirits,
swearing, and smoking a short tobacco-pipe at the door of her tent. She
was a most repulsive looking object. A dirty gaudy-coloured dress hung
unfastened about her shoulders, coarse black hair unbrushed, uncombed,
dangled about her face, over which her evil habits had spread a
genuine bacchanalian glow, whilst in a loud masculine voice she uttered
the most awful words that ever disgraced the mouth of man ten
thousand times more awful when proceeding from a woman's lips.
But night was the dreadful time; then, if her husband had been unlucky,
or herself made fewer profits during the day, it was misery to be
within earshot; so much so, that we decided to leave so uncomfortable a
neighbourhood without loss of time, and carrying our tents, &c., higher
up the gully we finally pitched them not far from the Portland Stores.
This was done on Thursday, and the same evening two different claims
were marked out ready to commence working the next day. These claims
were the usual size, eight feet square.
FRIDAY, 24. - Early this morning our late travelling companion, Joe, made
his appearance with a sack (full of bran, he said,) on his shoulders.
After a little confidential talk with William, he left the sack in our
tent, as he had no other safe place to stow it away in till the bran
was sold. This gave rise to no suspicion, and in the excitement of
digging was quite forgotten.
About noon I contrived to have a damper and a large joint of baked
mutton ready for the "day labourers," as they styled themselves. The
mutton was baked in a large camp oven suspended from three iron bars,
which were fixed in the ground in the form of a triangle, about a yard
apart, and were joined together at the top, at which part the oven was
hung over a wood fire. This grand cooking machine was, of course,
outside the tent. Sometimes I have seen a joint of meat catch fire in
one of these ovens, and it is difficult to extinguish it before the fat
has burnt itself away, when the meat looks like a cinder.
Our butcher would not let us have less than half a sheep at a time, for
which we paid 8s. I was not good housekeeper enough to know how much it
weighed, but the meat was very good. Flour was then a shilling a pound,
or two hundred pounds weight for nine pounds in money. Sugar was 1s.
6d., and tea 3s. 6d. Fortunately we were Well provided with these three
latter articles.
The hungry diggers did ample justice to the dinner I had provided for
them. They brought home a tin-dish full of surface soil, which in
the course of the afternoon I attempted to wash.
Tin-dish-washing is difflcult to describe. It requires a watchful eye
and a skilful hand; it is the most mysterious department of the
gold-digging business. The tin dish (which, of course, is round) is
generally about eighteen inches across the top, and twelve across the
bottom, with sloping sides of three or four inches deep. The one I used
was rather smaller. Into it I placed about half the "dirt" - digger's
technical term for earth, or soil - that they had brought, filled the
dish up with water, and then with a thick stick commenced making it
into a batter; this was a most necessary commencement, as the soil was
of a very stiff clay. I then let this batter - I know no name more
appropriate for it - settle, and carefully poured off the water at the
top. I now added some clean water, and repeated the operation of mixing
it up; and after doing this several times, the "dirt," of course,
gradually diminishing, I was overjoyed to see a few bright specks, which
I carefully picked out, and with renewed energy continued this by no
means elegant work. Before the party returned to tea I had washed out all
the stuff, and procured from it nearly two pennyweights of gold-dust,
worth about 6s. or 7s.
Tin-dish-washing is generally done beside a stream, and it is
astonishing how large a quantity of "dirt" those who have the knack of
doing it well and quickly can knock off in the course of the day. To do
this, however, requires great manual dexterity, and much gold is lost
by careless washing. A man once extracted ten pounds weight of the
precious metal from a heap of soil which his mate had washed too
hurriedly.
In the evening Joe made his re-appearance, carrying another sack on his
shoulders, which contained a number of empty bottles, and now for the
first time we became initiated into the BRAN mystery which had often
puzzled us on the road - it seemed so strange a thing to carry up to the
diggings. Joe laughed at our innocence, and denied having told us
anything approaching a falsehood; a slight suppression of the truth was
all he would plead guilty to. I verily believe William had put him up
to this dodge, to make us smile when we should have felt annoyed. Being
taxed with deceit, said he:
