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--including our next door neighbours, Messrs. Watson and
Wight--were discussing what was to come of it all; for while part of our
employees 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.
Instead of rising with the gold, houses and lands in Melbourne actually
fell, and considerably too, in the first confusion, when multitudes were
selling off or letting at anything they could get, in order to be off to
the diggings. There came, however, a rapid recovery a few months after.
My friend Mr. Henry Miller, sitting next me in the Legislature, told me
one day that two owners of cottages, to whom he had lent 80 pounds each,
upon their respective security, had begged him six months ago to take
over the said property in payment, and let them be off at once to the
common goal of the day; that he had charitably done so, and that he had
just resold these houses for 1,000 pounds each.
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