A Search for Gold: the Beginning
of a Community
When the Emerald Historical
Society suggested that a piece of drama be written to celebrate the 150th
anniversary of gold discovery in the area, it meant a search for historical facts
and anecdotes to create, at least a dramatic impression of how it might have
been. The digging for facts, because of time constraints, had to be alluvial or
surface digging; even so the result was a rich collection of information.
The beginning: the
conception
In 1860 the Victorian
government offered ₤100 rewards to those people who could prove to be the
discoverers of auriferous or payable goldfields. The official discovery of the diggings
at the junction of the Worri Yallock and Emerald
creeks in the
When, as historians, we
fossick for facts, we expect to discover what will sometimes be contradictory,
confusing and inaccurate; and what we find will not always be facts but hearsay,
folklore, or just good yarns. It’s part of the fascination of the search for an
image of a time past. And so it was when we began to look for facts and information
about the discovery of gold in the
It is a fact that gold
diggings were established on the Emerald and Worri
Yallock creeks and also the Menzies and Sassafras creeks; but exactly when,
even those who were there couldn’t accurately recall. It is a fact that the gold
seekers were encouraged to prospect the area by Peter Henry Smith, a Victorian
inspector of police and Arthur Selwyn, a gifted Victorian geologist. It is also
a fact that in September1859 one square mile of land was marked out on a
surveyor’s map as the site for a township and given the name
So where
from its name?
It was reported in the Herald
newspaper on 14 October 1851 that Germans first came to the junction of the
Menzies and Woori Yallock creeks and found gold, then
cashed it in to the tune of ₤2000 before going back to Germany; thanks
very much! And it is said that the German fortunes inspired a couple of
Irishmen to come a specking and a fossicking in the Menzies Creek, which they
called Monkey Dung Creek. What they named the creek after, were, in fact,
wombat droppings. And it is said that the place reminded these Irishmen of
home, so for the want of a name to register the place of their claims, they
called it Emerald.
Yet another tale tells of
the Reverend Dr John Bleasdale of St Francis’
Cathedral in
And the favourite yarn, it
seems, says Emerald was named after Jack Emerald, a prospector who lived in Monbulk,
and who named the Emerald creek. They found him dead in his hut with a bullet
though his heart, murdered, it is said, for his gold; but, there are no
official records of Jack or of his murder.
It’s a good yarn, all the same!
However, it was in 1858-9 that
people came in numbers to look for gold, encouraged by Selwyn and Smith. In his
testimony at the Select Committee hearings Peter Henry Smith Inspector of
Police says:
In the beginning of 1858 I went out to
The records of those Select
Committee hearings in 1861-63 are an excellent primary resource but in those
documents we found many contradictions. One thing that was never contradicted,
however, was the claim that the diggings were named the Emerald diggings by the
miners. Could it be then, that the town simply got its name by association? Did
the community that established itself on the Emerald diggings become known or
referred to as those on the Emerald and to follow,
A town’s people
A town, of course, is not
a town without its people; its community. It’s the people that give a place its
distinctive character. Even though the gold diggers came to the area for
selfish reasons, a community did develop from their presence, and apart from
the six diggers recognised as those who came first, others such as George Hunt,
William Watson, William Stuart, and William Kilpatrick are just some of the
names of men who are known to have come to try their luck. Others came too, to
trade with those who were digging. According to John Walsh, one of those first
miners; “The next party that arrived and put up stores was a man of the name of
Gardiner, Mr Davis who keeps the Dandenong pound, and Mr Rogers. He’s not
living.” It’s also known that the Kirkpatrick’s ran a store, William was a
butcher and a blacksmith; and their store was used as a police station for
first year of the diggings. And the bullockies came to supply those traders. On
tracks that could take no more than a dray, the bullock teams of Tom Charman and Dan Kennedy carried supplies to the diggings
when the terrain was almost impenetrable.
The women and children
came too and children were born on the diggings. Some secondary sources say the
first white baby born at the Emerald diggings was a girl named Emerald to the Watsons’ and she was born in 1861; and the first boy was
James, born to William and Mary Stuart, also in 1861. Yet other secondary
sources say that upon checking burial records there were at least three babies
recorded to have been born on the diggings in 1859 and they were: Anna, Sarah
Tyrell and her sister Susannah, Jane, and Bridget Canney.
Who were the miners?
But who were those first miners
who came and caused the community to be born? Why did they come to the
When we read the
testimonies in the Select Committee Hearings we can here the voices of some of
those who were the first to come to the area to discover gold and subsequently
to name the goldfields. The miners told us where they went, down to the exact
spot, the junction of Emerald and Worri Yallock
Creeks and the surrounding district. They told us what they went for, to find
gold, finding it first on that part of the Emerald Diggings known as
Macclesfield; and why they went there was because it was what they chose to do
for a living; they were seekers of gold. But things are never as clear and neat
as that. Faces to names are formed from the motivations for what they said and
did and the deeper reasons why. The best clues for us were in what they said in
the Select committee hearings.
In the testimonies of
McCrea, Geraghty, Walsh, McEvoy, and O’Hannagan there is no one view of that time past; of what
was to become Emerald history. The accounts of those men have been coloured to
suit their individual aims and objectives; that much is clear. When one
testimony is compared to another and then put alongside the testimonies of
those government administrators they dealt with, relationships and motivations
become evident; and whilst it soon becomes obvious that the truth was being
shaped to favour each claim to the committee, much is also revealed about the
personalities. Of the six men there are three stand-out characters; William
McCrea, Patrick O’Hannigan, and Patrick Geraghty;
although, that is not to say that the other three weren’t stand-out characters
only that they were less revealing in their testimonies.
William McCrea
Peter Henry Smith
introduced us to William McCrea when he referred to the reasons why he told him
about the possibilities of gold in the
… and I may mention the reason why I told him to go: at
the time that I was in charge of the Ballarat district, after the Ballarat
riots, those men and a number of others, Mr Frazer, Mr. Gillies, and John Yates
and others, rendered me a great deal of assistance in those days in putting
down crime, and McCrea among them; I felt grateful to the Ballarat people for
their assistance, and any of them that I could assist in giving them
information about gold-fields, in going through the colony, I used to do so; I
mentioned it to him and suggested he should take a party and prospect those
gold-fields, never looking at any reward; I do not know that there was anything
about in the way of reward at that time.
In that paragraph of
evidence we can deduce that William McCrea had been on the Ballarat goldfields
around the time of the Eureka riots and that he was not only respected by the
police but had earned the loyalty of this inspector who also went on to
describe McCrea as the best bushman in the place. To add to McCrea’s apparent
respectability in the eyes of the police, his mining mates testified that at
the public meeting held to name the diggings, he, being a magistrate, was
elected chairman of that meeting; and so we can reasonably assume he was
respected, in a similar sense, by them too.
District warden, Warburton
Carr said that he knew McCrea from a number of other goldfields whilst McCrea,
himself, told of his bushman’s association with the gifted geologist Arthur
Selwyn. So it is reasonable to assume that he was not just someone who had
bought a pick and shovel to go and look for gold on a whim. Warburton Carr said
of McCrea that at that time when he was obliged to put O’Hannigan
in irons it was McCrea who “…offered to assist me to preserve order…”
McCrea then, comes across to
us as a well respected citizen with qualities of forthrightness and leadership.
Patrick O’Hannigan
Any good story has its bad
guy and Patrick O’Hannigan quickly put his hand up
for that role. The testimonies tell us he was a big man and a bully. Walsh described
him as; “…a very wicked man, and he would have
everything his own way, there was no living with him anyways…” P. H. Smith, the
Inspector of Police, testified that O’Hannigan had
many miners in fear of him, saying;
…I may say this man Pat was a very demonstrative character
and seemed to rule everybody then, physically, he was a very quarrelsome man
and we had a great deal to do to keep him in order, and many people, I believe,
gave way to him because they were afraid of him.
O’Hannigan got in dispute with Geraghty over a quartz reef
claim, both claiming ownership; and in dispute with everyone when he set up a
claim below the others and dammed the creek.
There is much said about Big
Pat O’Hannigan in Select Committee hearings from all
who gave evidence. Consistently, they all describe him as big, volatile,
selfish and manipulative. In contrast to McCrea and others, O’Hannigan
gave evidence to the committee that he was the sole discoverer of gold on the
Emerald Diggings claiming he was in the district long before any of the others
came near.
So, to us it became clear
that Big Pat O’Hannigan was by no means a socialite.
He struggled to maintain close friendships because it was his way or no way.
Patrick Geraghty
Warburton Carr said in his
testimony that: “Geraghty was well known to me. He lived at
William McCrea does not
display any kind of mateship or affection for Geraghty as highlighted when Mr
McCann of the Select Committee put it to him that: You said just now you had
nothing to do with Geraghty because he was dishonest? McCrea replied; “We never
had any gold dealings except sending the prospect to town by him.” When asked
if Geraghty was one of his mates, McCrea answered; “Only as one of the
prospecting party.”
Walsh told the committee
that he had met Geraghty coming down from the ranges and that he had arranged
to meet up with him later to go looking for gold, So could it have been that
Geraghty and McCrea were rivals for leadership of the group that came together
in the splitters hut in Dandenong on their way to the ranges? We can only speculate
about the picture it portrays with the added complication of Big Pat O’Hannigan demanding his own way in the middle.
Mining in the district was
not easy and sometimes took a toll on those prospecting; and Patrick Geraghty
told us how hard mining was in the Ranges. When asked by the committee if he
was still mining he said; “No. I laid the foundations of my ill health in the
mountains and I have not been there in the last two and a half years.” After
his gold mining days were over Patrick Geraghty went to
Who were the others?
We gathered our
information about the discoverers of gold from that one primary source, and it
is not possible to form detailed or accurate conclusions about their characters,
merely cameos. Even so they are cameos derived from the voices of the people
themselves. The images of other people who came to the diggings around the time
of 1859, such as those who follow, were taken from secondary sources; that is,
other historians who have, maybe, dug deep to find information and form
opinions from a variety of sources.
William Stuart
William Stuart was a
champion buck-jump rider and had been a member of the police force, engaged in breaking
in police horses before he joined the trek to the Emerald Diggings. He married Mary Kirkpatrick and for about ten
years after the gold rush William Stuart was engaged in transporting horses to
Mary Stuart nee
Kirkpatrick
Mary Stuart was borne in
The Kirkpatrick Family
William Kirkpatrick came
to the diggings in 1859 with his wife and children, he conducted a store at the
emerald diggings, in addition to which he was a blacksmith and a butcher.
The Watson Family
The Watson family came to
the diggings with seven daughters and two sons. Emerald
Watson being said to be the first white baby to be born on the diggings.
Actual
or folklore?
Then there are other people
unearthed in our digging who appear somewhere between truth and folklore. They left
us wondering had we found fool’s gold, the clarity of their stories falling
somewhere between exact and exaggeration.
Our initial research
revealed, in an anecdote, the sad circumstances of young Dick Hinton who died on
the Emerald when his mine shaft collapsed on him on the day he was to be
married. But further research revealed nothing more about Dick. Then exactly
the same story but of Andrew and Amy was unearthed in the writings of Mary
Skinner recounting life on the Ovens goldfields. Miners on every field died
when their shafts collapsed on them. So, was Dick’s story a romantic tragedy
that did happen once, somewhere, and then drifted from place to place, carried
on the backs of the story tellers? Maybe, maybe not, maybe he did die on the
Emerald as it was said; but it reminded us how things seeded in truth can
become the truth with the telling and retelling over time and in different
places.
Contradictions
When a number of people
recall a particular time or event they see it through their eyes and with their
own biases and beliefs attached. So, in historical research, it is not unusual
to have contradictory accounts of the same happening from those who were there.
Added to that, when it is expedient to shape the truth for personal, political
or economic gain, very different pictures of the same event can be and are
often created with absolute certainty.
McCrea told the Select Committee
that the first gold discoveries were made by Walsh and McEvoy
as members of the group of mates. Warburton Carr, gave
evidence that O’Hannigan was the first to come to him
with the claim that he alone had found the gold. Smith, the Inspector of Police
testified that he encouraged McCrea to go to the district at a time when no
gold was being sought and McCrea said he and Selwyn the geologist crawled on
hands and knees to penetrate the area before it had been opened up to
prospecting. Yet in a letter to the committee from Richard Ireland, the
Victorian Attorney General, it is said that O’Hannigan
was in the district long before the others. When asked at his hearing
appearance, O’Hannigan claimed that he went to the
283. 1859? – No, the year previous; but I discovered the
Emerald Diggings in the year following on the month of January.”
284. What year? – The year following 1860,
285. The year 1860? – Yes.
286. Are you sure? – I’m not exactly sure exactly when I
got into the ranges first I was several months before I found the Emerald
Diggings.
Even though he was
indecisive, even confused, at times, it seems, O’Hannigan
had played the politics well and had the Attorney General, no less, speaking up
for him. This is not to say the Attorney General was lying; O’Hannigan
had given him information and a petition, to back up his claims, which
Each of the miners, in
turn, told the committee that they were there together as a group of mates, yet
gave different dates or varied accounts of life on the diggings. Geraghty testified
that at the time of a public meeting on the dray; “…O’Hannigan
was not at the meeting at all, he was sick in bed, and I put a mustard poultice
to his side when I was coming down to the meeting.” Here emerges
important differences of opinion, a shaping of the truth. O’Hannigan said that the meeting was called to recognise
him as the discoverer of the goldfields at which the petition was signed, to
name him as such. Others testified that the meeting was called to name the
diggings, except for Walsh who said he knew of no meeting taking place.
Consider the petition,
with 2000 signatures, submitted to the Attorney General by O’Hannigan.
The estimates of people on the Emerald diggings, at that time, were never
beyond 600 people and that number waxed and waned as the diggings flourished,
became deserted, and then flourished again over that three year period. There
were never, it is said, ever 2000 people on the Emerald diggings. Warburton
Carr testified that he believed O’Hannigan got his
petition up at
As we fossicked for facts
we also began to see how closely connected the goldmining Victorians were. The Inspector
of Police, as has already been said, had been at Ballarat at the time of the
One last nugget
Whilst our fact finding
has been alluvial or surface digging, things continue to be revealed and the
urge is to go deeper. It takes some discipline to stop and put down the pick
and shovel. Yet as we came to the end of our shallow digging and sluicing for
facts, one last nugget was revealed in the first edition of the Yarra Valley
Historical. A page is dedicated to ‘
References
Books Emerald specific:
Flett, James, The
History of Gold Discovery in Victoria Poppet Head Press,
Miller, Jan, &
Buckland, Isobel, Miner Details: A collection of facts pertaining to the
mining history of
Coulson, Helen, Story of the Dandenongs1838-
Newspapers:
Victorian Government
documents:
Victorian Parliamentary
Papers, Select Committee minutes of evidence 1861 -63
Books general:
Skinner, Emily, Woman
on the Goldfields,
McDougall, Cora, (editor),
Gold! Gold! Diary of Claus Gronn A Dane on the
Diggings, Hill of Content Publishing,