The Melbourne Argus of January 3 estimates the number of diggers at the Victoria Mines at 100,000, earning on an average an ounce per man per week.
The forebodings of the pastoral proprietors, who saw in the gold discoveries the desertion of all their labourers and the destruction of their flocks, have not been realised. A very large per centage of the armies of emigrants who are daily landing on the shores of Australia either find themselves prevented from taking to the pursuit which led them to emigrate, by the expense and toil of the journey to the interior; or, after having tried gold-digging, are compelled to abandon labour harder than they can endure. These disappointed ones fall back upon the staple employments of the colony, and either turn farmers or accept situations as gardeners, shepherds, agricultural labourers, &c.
We have every reason to believe that while the great prizes of the gold-fields are suffered to attract a steady stream of self-supporting emigration, the overplus, unfit for such a laborious occupation, will be sufficient to maintain the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle which have hitherto supplied in wool and tallow the principal exports of the gold colonies.
The first effect of gold mining has been to give a value, in the shape of beef and mutton, to sheep and cattle, which had previously been only worth money to shear or boil down. Another result will be the establishment of towns and villages, surrounded by agricultural farms, in districts which, under the pastoral system, seemed condemned to perpetual barrenness and solitude. The question of opening the navigation of the Murray, by clearing away shoals, rocks, and snags, will perhaps be successfully solved by the gold-diggings at Albury.
If these anticipations be realised, gold will prove a most valuable agent in stimulating colonisation. Every gold-digger gives occupation to at least three other men, in feeding him, clothing him, and conveying backwards and forwards what he produces, and what he consumes. The profits on meat lately given to the dogs supports many a butcher in a gold district, and land only used by sheep becomes worth the toil of tillage.
It is a most favourable feature of the Australian gold-fields, that they are within reach of settled communities, surrounded by live beef and mutton, and by land of the best quality, which only needs the plough and the hoe, roughly handled, to produce great crops of wheat, maize, and every green vegetable. These lands will not remain untilled.
