| Life on the road was not always simple. Like many other first time prospectors Thomas Arnot and his colleagues set out with too much equipment and soon learned to do without. | |
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'Almost every one of us brought too much on our back and at every
stage we lightened ourselves. At one camping place three pairs of trousers
were thrown away, one of which were mine, and at our last camp in the
valley, innumerable articles were left. Our company left four table cloths
or oil cloths, two axes, 1 counterpane, prospecting pan, camp kettles,
pannikin etc. Some left everything they had, determining never to camp out
again: flannel drawers, shirts, blankets, kettles, rugs, etc. were all
scattered about.' Text: Thomas Arnot diaries, 7 August 1852 Author Thomas Arnot |
| However arrival on the goldfields did not solve all problems, for many it was just the start. Expectations and ignorance bonded the friendships of many new chums. | |
| 'It soon became apparent that we were not the only new-comers. Others
were pouring into the creek, big with expectation, and bent on ferreting
out, by all the means in their power, the spots which were likely to yield
most readily the darling object of their desires. Did they really think
that they would be ... informed correctly? Would not the man who possesed
the knowledge of where the treasure lay be more likely to keep it to
himself than to tell it to another? Would he who, mayhap, had voyaged
sixteen thousand miles ..., abandoned home and risked life, be likely to
reward the toil of another in preference to his own? ... Yet there seemed
to be parties whose simplicity expected nothing less, and who went about
their inquiries as they would have done after the residence of a doctor of
a country town in England.' | |
 Image: The new chum's arrival on a gold diggings Description: Sketches of Australian life and scenery. Text: The gold-finder of Australia: how he went, how he fared,
and how he made his fortune | |
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