That night they were all secured and marched off to the lock-up, brought up before the resident magistrate next morning under the Vagrant Act, and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment in the Cooma gaol. This was my first escape from “sticking up.”
What made our stay in the tent so wearisome was that we had so little to do, and doing nothing in such places as I have described was anything but easy work. Our bank hours were pretty long, too—from 9.30 or 10 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.
extracts from my diary.
Sunday, 3rd June.—This afternoon a digger got on a rock and commenced to preach. A crowd soon gathered. As he was preaching a funeral passed about fifty yards further up the hill. At the time the funeral was passing a fight was got up, and in less time than I can write it, the preacher was left alone; not one stayed, all went to see the fight.
4th June.—Swain and I amused ourselves to-day, for want of anything better to do, by sinking a hole in the bank; got down 3 ft., when our pick-handle broke, so gave it up for a bad job. The next day washed some stuff and got a few colours. Eighty Chinamen arrived; I was talking to their head man, who told me he expected there would be 20,000 (twenty thousand) of his countrymen here in less than six months.
17th July.—A meeting was held at the Empire Hotel (Carmichael’s) this afternoon for the purpose of establishing a hospital. About eighty persons were present; £80 was collected in the room. “It is a thing very much wanted, and I have no doubt the diggers will respond handsomely to the call.” Such was my impression at the time the above extract was written. However, the “bone and sinew” did not respond to the call. Experience has taught me that the more you do for them in that way the more you may. These institutions are got up for their special benefit, and yet are not supported, as a rule, by them. I have known cases where men have gone into the hospital pleading poverty, when at the same time they have had hundreds of pounds to their credit in a bank.
23rd July.—Swain went over to the camp alone this morning, and had great difficulty in returning, the snow in some places being 3 to 4 feet deep. Did not take the cash over to the camp in the evening, but down to the hotel, and put it in a safe which we have just got up from Sydney. Most of the miners are unable to work owing to the heavy fall of snow; a great many of them have taken to bringing in firewood as a means of livelihood. A new scheme proposed to day, viz., to engage all the Chinamen in the district to pack up goods from Russell’s, it being impossible to get them up by pack-horse.
