Page:Banking Under Difficulties- Or Life On The Goldfields Of Victoria, New South Wales And New Zealand (1888).pdf/28

Rh Castlemaine then was not a township. Its site was not surveyed; the gum trees and wattle grew where tents and houses have since sprung up, but by the creek sides where the diggers congregated the Revs. Gregory and Cheyne held occasional outdoor services, not but that there were other ministers similarly occupied. These jottings, however, refer more to the rise and progress of the Church of England. By-and-bye a wooden store was obtained on the camp reserve as a temporary church. Four round saplings were cut into lengths and fixed in the ground at one end of the edifice; three sides were closed in with pieces of empty pickle and brandy cases, and all played their parts in the construction of the first Episcopalian pulpit in Castlemaine. There were not yet any table, communion rails, or kneeling boards, yet the rude place afforded shelter for the people who gathered for worship, conducted at one time by the Episcopalian clergyman, and at another hour by the Rev. Mr. Low, of the Scotch Kirk. A bell that had been obtained by Mr. G, whilst yet there was no place for it, was lent to Mr. Currie, the Wesleyan minister, and was for a time fixed in his chapel at Forest Creek, and its merry sound proclaimed the Sabbath morn. At length a rude belfry, surmounted by a wooden cross, ornamented the gable end of the wooden church, and after no little difficulty the bell was removed from Forest Creek. It rang for awhile in the new belfry, and now rings in the Church of England school. Not a few members of the Roman Catholic Church were attracted by the rude emblem of a Saviour’s passion, but, finding the prayers offered in the English tongue, found out the mistake and turned away. The camp officials, with their wives and families, occupied a considerable portion of the rude church, yet a few belted diggers, with blue jumpers and clay-stained trousers, filled the lower benches. Soon after the want of education was much felt, and Mr. Gee was for a time the very acceptable schoolmaster. The clergyman (Mr. Cheyne) had to ride from Burnbank, a distance of forty miles, to do duty on each alternate Sunday—a duty in which he never failed, although he had to endure trials and hardships but little known nowadays, and by all new chums but little understood. At length a large tent was converted into a dwelling-place for the minister and his family, in which they roughed it for a time. In the centre of this domicile stood an old camp oven, which had seen some service, and this filled with charcoal was all the hearth in this primitive parsonage. It was not an easy matter to build chimneys in those days, for an ordinary one would cost £20, and parsons, even in those golden days, were not overpaid. I have heard Father Barrett say from his place in church that he once went all the way to Sawpit Gully for a dirty half-crown, and somewhere else he declared with disgust that he did not get a ha’porth. One Lord’s day a small table was placed by the pulpit and covered