Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/71

 CHAPTER IV.

A BIRTHPLACE OF FREEDOM.

at a height of 1,437 feet above the level of the sea, and at a distance of 70 miles from Melbourne, is Ballarat, the centre of the richest gold-field in the world. Ballarat is a compound native word, meaning in our language a camping or resting-place, "balla" being the aboriginal equivalent for elbow, or, in a figurative sense, reclining at one's ease with the hand supporting the head. No name could have been more suitable or appropriate during the decade that the locality remained a pastoral solitude, but it completely lost its significance when the mineral wealth of Ballarat became known to the world, and thousands of gold-seekers from every civilised country came rushing southwards like a mighty human avalanche. In every infant settlement it is only natural that adventurous spirits should be found