DR.BLAKE, BALLARAT AND ME

   

    Began watching The Dr. Blake Mysteries, a series presented by Australian television, that may be seen in New York on PBS-Channel 21. While I enjoy the stories, the characters and, certainly, Dr. Blake’s detecting, I’m hooked because it brings back memories of a side-trip to Ballarat, a town-sixty-nine miles northwest of Melbourne—a town where the good doctor practices medicine, acts as coroner and catches the lawless.

     My husband and I took a vacation to Sidney and Melbourne—our third trip to Australia. The first trip to see where my husband’s father grew up. The second and third because we fell in love with the country. On the third trip we boarded a mini-bus that jerked, joggled and bumped along the way to Ballarat’s Sovereign Hill. A historically accurate, living museum, built on the site of the original gold diggings that gave birth to the town in the 1850s during the state of Victoria’s gold rush. I became fascinated by the stories of its rough and tumble goldfields from 1851 until 1916.

     James Regan, stopped at Ballarat, discovered gold at Poverty Point, down the road from Sovereign Hill, and the “rush,” was on. Men left their jobs in Melbourne and Geelong, the Port Phillip District lost eighty percent of its police force. Ex-convicts and military pensionaries filled the void. The government of Victoria tried to discourage the exodus of workers and sent commissioners to collect a fee of 30 shillings for a monthly permit. That led to clashes between the diggers and the government. A digger who refused to pay the fee could be fined L10 and chained to a log—there were no jails. By 1852, over 20,000 hopefuls had arrived to try their luck. Non-British immigrants created anxiety, Americans were thought to be armed desperadoes.

     I decide to try my luck at the Red Hill Gully Diggings but the only gold I saw was the mud-gold stain on my cold, wet hands and learned the only women in Ballarat were “Fallen Angels” or women who could hold their own: women who fought, chopped wood and survived the primitive conditions. Women did not have to purchase a license.

     Ballarat became a township in 1852, businessmen set up shops, wives joined their husbands, religious services were held on Sunday in a tent made of canvas and wood; the tent doubled as a school on weekdays. The Victoria Theatre, on Main Road, attracted stars who performed Shakespeare and performers like Lola Montez who entertained miners with her erotic “Spider Dance.” Many a nugget was thrown on stage. The founding editor of the Ballarat Times criticized Lola. Lola attacked him with a whip. Fortunes were made.

    Today, fossickers regularly pan for alluvial gold on the outskirts of Ballarat. Visitors may explore the remains of old mines. My hubby and I did not strike gold but I did write an article titled Welcome to Ballarat that was published in Gold Prospectors Magazine. That’s a nugget any writer will treasure.

BESTS,

Elise


"Scene Stealer" is available wherever eBooks are sold. My short story titled, "A Mouthful of Murder," will be published as part of a "Cosy" Crime Anthology to be published in hard-cover by Flame Tree Press in January 2019.


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