Page:Banking Under Difficulties- Or Life On The Goldfields Of Victoria, New South Wales And New Zealand (1888).pdf/42

Rh then again for £1 10s. per month. In this we have the symbol of grievances that roused the goldfields population. There was a heavy tax levied monthly by a non-representative executive. That tax was often oppressive in itself, and unequal in its incidence, and it was often collected in so insolent a manner that its unpopularity became a thousandfold greater. Here—illustrative of the sport of license or digger hunting—is an episode from a lecture by Mr. William Benson, once an escort-trooper in South Australia, then a reporter of the Ballarat Times. The lecture was delivered at a working men’s temperance meeting, in the Alfred Hall, on Saturday, 19th February, 1870:— “I had been for some short time, in 1853, occupied at the store of Messrs. Hilfling (?) and Greig, on the township where the drapery establishment of David Jones and Company now stands; not very well liking my employment I was on my way to the labour office, on Bakery Hill, to offer for a stock-rider’s billet. Being dressed in somewhat digger costume, and walking near where the Yarrow bridge now is, I heard behind me a stentorian voice, ‘Hallo! you fellow!’ I turned round, in speechless horror! There, at full gallop, at the head of fifteen or twenty mounted troopers—with scabbards clattering and stirrups jingling—rode a stalwart black-looking chief of the digger-hunters. ‘Hallo! I say you, sir!’ thundered forth he, with a mighty flourish of his sword, glittering in the beautiful sunlight, ‘Have you got a license?’ Worse luck to me I never was a digger, even when gold could be got by pounds weight. ‘Well?’ there flourished the sword of the mighty hunter, and I stammered forth, ‘No.’ At that moment up came the mounted and foot police. ‘Take this man into custody,’ shouts the leader of the troop, and off he galloped. I, in my simplicity, saw the mighty hunter did not recognise me; he was a sergeant of police at Adelaide when I was Government escort trooper there. ‘Well,’ says my custodian, ‘all I know is that I am going to take you to quod.’ (This was the ‘logs.’) But all this time I was being taken away from the ‘logs’ (or camp lock-up), and near where the corner of Barkly-street now is we found another guardian of the spoil of the hunters, holding in terror of his formidable weapon, a real digger, whose clothes bespoke him to be a sojourner amongst the holes of the Red Hill. We were marched up the slope of Golden Point, the troopers and foot-police far in advance; but I refused to go further and sat down. One of the diggers near, espying my bespattered comrade in distress, called out, ‘Hullo mate, what’s the row?’ ‘Got license,’ grumbles out the Red Hill digger. ‘Can’t you get bail,’ sings out the charitable minded questioner. ‘Not I,’ returns the other, ‘or I shouldn’t be without a license.’ No more ado, but into his tent walks he of the charitable mind, and out he shortly comes and walking straight up to my fellow captive, thrusts into his brawny