132 Personal Recollections of

The goldfields came upon us with almost the sud-
denness of the changes of dreamland. We had had a
slight graduation by the news, in the May preceding^
from the sister colony, of a shepherd on Dr. Kerr'a
station, near Bathurst, having come upon a round
hundredweight of nearly pure gold. This luck, I pre-
sume, was mainly the result of the habit most of
us had begun to acquire of keeping our eyes upon the
ground beneath us, in consequence of Hargreaves, on
his return from California about this time, having pre-
dicted gold, and subsequently fulfilled his prophecy by
washing out some of the precious metal in the Bathurst
vicinities. Passing over trifling intermediate finds of
gold, as at Anderson's Creek in August, Ballarat came
suddenly upon us.
The news reached town, I think, on 21st September*
A week later a small knot of us merchants, who had
offices on the east side of the Market-square — includ-
ing our next door neighbours, Messrs. Watson and
Wight — were discussing what was to come of it all ;,
for while part of our employes were off to visit the
diggings on leave, the rest threatened to follow — leave
or no leave. The situation had a certain convenience
in the fact that almost all business was for the time
at an end, excepting that of buying up spades and
shovels, pitchers and pannikins, and anything to-
answer for a cradle.
