At length we were ready to start, thirty-eight of the party duly armed with gun and pistols. I had my walking-stick, and our solitary lady her parasol. She had been married the day before to a lucky digger, and they were now starting on their marriage trip. We were a motley group, but there were many such, and everybody's motto seemed to be “Mind your own business.” We got safely to Elizabeth-street, at least to the last house in it then, when we encountered rut the first, and over went the horse-dray. Oh! What a row! What a rumpus! But there was no use grumbling. I knew my medicine chest was end on in the mud, but so was a digger’s fat wife, who had just been capsized into a deeper ditch in the act of laughing at us in our difficulty. “Serves her right,” said the lady in our party. Our men set their shoulders to the wheel, and the dray was soon righted, no damage being done. The master of the teams was the driver of the horse-dray on which our property was deposited. He seemed to be a quiet inoffensive fellow, but the driver of the bullock team was an old man, with a face that had not seen water for many a month, and although almost everybody had a beard of some sort, his was enough to terrify any new chum. The poor bullocks, seeing the capsize, stood still as if by instinct; but woe to their weary hides, for they had a foretaste of what was in store for them during the journey, and we had an example of the driver’s style in the shape of oaths and imprecations on Browny and Strawberry, and for what I could not tell.
As it was well on in the afternoon before we started, nightfall found us only five miles from Melbourne, and here we were to encamp for the first time. A cord was fixed between two suitable trees, and on this we slung our tent—8 ft. by 10. “All hands to the pumps”—one cutting wood, another gathering leaves to spread our beds on, a third trying to light a fire at the bottom of a gum-tree. We had no bellows, so we sent one of the party to a store close by to buy a pair. He was laughed at for his pains, and told to use his “wideawake.” I tried my bonnet, and it answered admirably, and saved a few shillings to boot. By this time the water was boiling, the pannikins distributed, and everyone had chops and bread to his heart’s content, and, according to arrangements, each had, at his option, a tablespoonful of rum in the last half of his pannikin of tea as a specific against the dangers of damp. It was now time to retire to rest. We almost left our little bush fire with regret, and indeed it was a very pretty sight to see so many fires (for our company had divided into eight or ten parties); some were singing, some laughing, and the bullock-driver was busy fixing the dray, so that the newly-married couple might sleep below it, considering it, no doubt, the best bedroom. He threw a large tarpaulin over the dray, and fixed the pole on a rest. The old man went to look after his horses, and we retired to “pack.”
