The immediate result of the rush to the Bathurst gold-fields was to supply the district with labour at reasonable rates. A traveller observes:—"We were much struck by the difference between their ideas of the mines and those of men at a greater distance. To the latter the gold country is a place with pieces of gold ready to be picked up without trouble, and they start off, trusting to find food somehow, and quarters somewhere, as they have done hitherto in the bush; but to these men here it is an open box forest, with severe frosts every night, sleet and snow for weeks at a time, without any accommodations whatever, or rations, unless paid for in hard money, at three times the usual price: if they turn out, they exchange their comfortable warm hut and regular meals for cold and hunger at once, so that there is no room for the imagination to work. And though they all intend to give it a trial when they get their discharge, and their wages to fit them out, they expressed the greatest astonishment at the folly of the men they saw passing every day, totally unprovided: they looked upon them as literally mad."
It would fill a volume, which we may at some future time be tempted to write, to follow the history of the New South Wales Gold Fields, with all the curious attendant anecdotes. At present we cannot do better than avail ourselves of the report made to a Sydney paper by an eye-witness in the autumn of 1852:—
The time which has elapsed since Mr. Hargreaves announced that extensive auriferous regions existed in the colony has done much less towards the development of the hidden golden treasures of this province of the island than was at first anticipated. In fact, during the last twelve months, since the attractions of Mount Alexander began to tell on the mining population engaged at our diggings, we have made but little progress. With one or two exceptions, our present supplies of gold are derived from the very same localities whence they were received last year, the only difference being, that they are in diminished quantity. The only diggings opened up since that time which have materially affected the increase in our production of gold are those of Tambaroura and the Hanging Rock. Even these were known before that period, although their richness was not established. In July, 1851, parties were at work in the vicinity of the Bald Hill, and a short time after at the Dirt Holes; and about the same time gold had been found, although in small quantities, near the present diggings on the Peel. During the last twelve months, the Turon and the Braidwood diggings have retrogressed, partly in consequence of the incessant rains impeding as they do mining operations in the beds of creeks and rivers, but chiefly on account of the migration of the population to the Victoria gold-fields.
The attractions of other gold-fields have drawn away the great body of adventurers—those who had no other motive to attach them to the gold-fields here than desire of gain. The large proportion of gold-diggers left are persons who have got a permanent interest in the country—inhabitants of the small inland towns—
