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From: "Tom Listerman" <>
Subject: Hello Roy, re:Donnellys Creek
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2003 21:04:51 +1000


Hello Roy,
Your travelogue in the Gippsland goldfield had me scurrying for a map and my
battered (and incomplete) copy of Fletts History of Gold Discovery in
Victoria. My first visit to that beautiful, mountainous, historic area was
exactly 40 years ago, driving as a learner in a Morris Minor from Moe
through Walhalla to Matlock, Jamieson, and beyond. I was a month off my
eighteenth birthday, and my mate, the instructor, was a month beyond his.
We camped at Walhalla, almost a ghost town in those days, and between there
and Matlock the road was just a track along the ridges and across the steep
hillsides. We met only one vehicle on that part of the trip, the mail van,
and in order for it to pass, I had to reverse a considerable distance in the
fog down the track between the rocks and the drop, no guard rail, not even a
gutter or white post! That was a challenge for someone brought up on the
gentle slopes of the Central Goldfields!

What must it have been like for the Gippsland miners in the 1860s! The
Central Goldfields must have been tough enough (as I was thinking during
this afternoons hail and wind), but in Gippsland, the terrain and climate
were that much worse, and therefore the fields were much less law abiding,
with lots more claim jumping, without fear of the law being fetched from so
far. I know that miners came from the Central and Ovens Goldfields to those
in Gippsland, and apart from the better water supplies for gold getting, it
must have been quite a challenge!

Flett writes that the Jordan/Jericho field, high up on the Dividing Range,
was discovered by prospectors who couldnt find decent ground further north,
and who first found gold at sixteen feet. What faith in their ability to
read the landscape to dig down for sixteen feet in that remote corner of the
world without giving up. Its alleged they called it the Jordan because of
it being such a hard road to travel (Flett, p125). Donnellys was
discovered by a Sailor Jack Middleton, who found not only the first reef,
but also most of the others, and gave them away. What characters there must
have been on those fields!

I see from the Pioneer Index that children were born in these places from
the year they were founded*, so it wasnt just goods which came in on horse
and mule backs. Compare it with Ballarat, and Bendigo, which had their own
double track rail lines to the coast by 1862, and to Echuca in 1864, where
the Melbourne rail met the Murray-Darling Lachlan river steamer routes.
They must have seemed very sophisticated compared with the Gippsland
mountain fields.

Roy, Ive had several days out of action with a crook back, which has given
me time to read (above my head) some local histories, of Ararat, Stawell and
St. Arnaud. What I wanted to ask you about was goats, yes goats!
I know that there were a few goats around on the goldfields commons
whenever Clunes was mentioned for instance, someone would usually say Town
of Goats, Geese and Girls, and certainly they were there! But I didnt
realize how many goats were on the goldfields. Yvonne Palmer writes about
the value of goats as a staple to large, poor families, and the difficulties
of protecting new trees from them in the St. Arnaud area. Murray and White
refer to 3,600 goats in the Stawell town area. I suppose they were popular
because they were tougher and more versatile than cows.

No wonder those early photos of goldfields towns show so many strong picket
fences, all hand split and possibly hand sawn. (Mind you, I can remember
wandering cows in the centre of Maryborough eating newly planted street
trees in the 1950s!) So Roy, were there still lots of goats around when you
were a youngster, or had the cow taken over because people were more settled
and pasture was better established? I know that in Bendigo in the 1920s,
some people living on two acre blocks inside the city boundary were able to
tap the water races to irrigate improved pastures on which fed their cows
and buggy horse. How times change!

Regards, Tom

* I see children were registered at "Jericho" from 1859, but the Gippsland
field wasn't discovered until 1861. Wehla on the Central Goldfields, first
rushed in April 1857, was called Jericho, on a Jordan field, until around
1866.

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