and a wharf on the river bank, where once a fortnight a steamer from Sydney used to call, an occurrence of the greatest importance to the entire population, which gathered regularly at the waterside to witness it.
Grafton was the receiving place on the Clarence river for produce coming off the stations to the north; and it suddenly sprang into importance through being the nearest point of debarkation for the new gold rush that broke out at Solferino, a point in the Yugilbar ranges, seventy-five miles away. It was on a scorching day in the seventies that I and my mate, a young Scotchman who had passed for the army, and who, while waiting for his commission, had come out to Australia in the same ship with myself, first set eyes on the place.
We landed, and the same evening left for the diggings by the one long, straggling street, which gradually dwindled away into a track, and soon lost itself in the depths of the primeval bush.
We steered northward by the compass. Besides ourselves there was our dog, a shambling, long-legged, yellow kangaroo hound we called "Jack," and one pack-horse, a raw-boned Waler, christened "Rosinante."
Somehow or other we soon lost the blazed-tree line, the only indication of a way to the gold fields; but after many hardships and mishaps we recovered the track, made Solferino at last, pitched camp, and then settled down to the life of the diggings among some hundreds of others attracted there by the more or less exaggerated reports of the rich "finds" on the reefs.
I still possess my miner's right, which I treasure as a relic of past days. It is reproduced on the following page. There was little or no alluvial gold at Solferino, however, the work being nearly all reefing; and we at once started out to prospect, soon stumbling on a blow-up of gold-bearing quartz, and following it down to a reef which we duly registered as the "Don Juan."
