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extent that would be incredible to ears which have not become somewhat gradually accustomed
to the sound. On all sides the sole topic of conversation is Gold, Gold, Gold. The most absurd
reports are bandied about on all sides, and tidings of ounces become pounds as they travel from
one street corner to the other. Men of all sorts, sizes, countries and callings, are either going, or
are already gone... Melbourne threatens to be fairly depopulated.'
By the end of the year, news of the bonanza had spread around the world. Thousands of gold-
seekers emigrated from England and elsewhere, invading the infant colony of Victoria,
populating it more immediately than assisted emigration or transportation had ever done.
The Rev JD Mereweather had something to say about this, not in a diary, but in a letter to an
unknown friend written on 12 December 1851.
By this time he was in the back of beyond, at Moulamein in New South Wales, having spent
about six months (until March 1851) in Tasmania, where he found 'such a numerous and well-
organised body of clergy that I thought it would be much more in accordance with the motives
which I had for leaving England, to devote my services to a diocese in which there should be a
greater lack of labourers in Christ's vineyard.'
It was a move he would regret. The Bishop of Sydney sent John Mereweather, as a government
chaplain, to Moulamein, to cover a vast tract of sheep country between the Murray and
Murrumbidgee Rivers. He hated it - his duties were 'accompanied by a very considerable
amount of physical labour, and by no little personal danger1, and the population were 'reckless
and very depraved.'
In September he wrote: 'I have a very immoral set of people to deal with. For many have lived
terrible lives in utter defiance of God and man, and at last have retreated into the far bush either
to elude justice, or because they are
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satiated with vice and crime. I am happy to say that many of these denizens of the bush are now
married, and consequently partially reclaimed. The heats of summer in these parts are
inexpressibly oppressive; and as the hot winds preclude from us the possibility of growing any
vegetable, the mode of living is totally inconsistent with our requirements. The dwellings are so ill
arranged also, that it is cooler to be in the full heat of the sun than to remain in doors. The soil is
a light coloured heavy clay, which bears rank herbs rather than grass during two months of the
year. For the other ten months all would be an arid desert, if it were not for innumerable bushes
which are studded over the plains. They are called salt bushes, because the leaf is of a strong
salty flavour. These shrubs have a perennial verdure during the hottest summer, and the sheep
thrive upon it amazingly, indeed, the stock in the salt bush country, as ours is called, throve
perfectly well during the last disastrous summer, when in other parts of Australia it was
decimated. You may imagine, my dear Sir, that nothing but a stern sense of duty could induce
me to remain in such a country as this. I look forward with great pleasure to returning home in a
year or two, and settling down quietly in England.'
Generalising, he added, in that same September letter: 'It is impossible to conceive a more
restless, fickle, selfish, cunning, noisy, untractable, democratic set of people than are gathered
together into this great Refuge of the Destitute, Australia - this Workhouse of England. My
opinion is that if convicts are to be the pioneers of colonization, they should be withdrawn as
soon as their services are no longer required, for they undoubtedly exercise a very deleterious
influence on surrounding society.'
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