The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [135]
With so few women in mining territory, weddings brought more deliriously lavish celebrations. The bride wore a white veil over a gown sewn from satin or velvet and held a silk parasol high over her head. The groom presented his new wife with orange blossoms, exorbitantly expensive and precious for their short supply. He then rented a gaudy carriage that careened through the streets, while the thoroughly inebriated wedding party poured glass after glass of sparkling champagne from a shiny black bottle. Many brides were, in fact, roaming hustlers, willing to create elaborate deception until their husband’s money ran out and the next prospect arrived.16
The shortage of women among the miners did not go unnoticed by London philanthropist Caroline Chisholm, who journeyed to Australia with her ship captain husband. Devout Christian that she was, Chisholm envisioned that the colony’s wild outback could best be tamed by the gentler influence of women, or, as she called them, “God’s police.”17 Her work started small, rescuing destitute women from Sydney’s streets and driving them in a wagon to farms where they might find employment. So successful was her mission placing “Mrs. Chisholm’s Chickens” that she started the Family Colonization Loan Society. It funded passage of fallen women she’d met in London and brought them to the goldfields, where they found work or a husband. Though some reverted to their sinful past, many others married diggers or set up small shops scattered wherever miners set up camp. Some mended clothing or washed laundry for a nugget or two. Others set up “coffee shops,” selling unlicensed grog from a washtub.
Amid the mayhem of unlikely unions, drunken men falling over the tents, and new babies crying in the night, the determined William Roberts rose early, walked into the city, and worked every day. Soon a fat sack of coins furnished tools, supplies, and a tent for the newest prospector and his family. In the spring of 1854, the Roberts clan was ready to follow the path of Ludlow’s family and head down the trail to try their luck.
Beyond the Black Forest
Nobody but a fool traveled to the goldfields alone. William was a good shot, and his hunting rifle saw plenty of use in Franklin. It hung protectively over his shoulder as he pushed a wheelbarrow piled high with tents, blankets, dishes, pots, and pans. Around his waist, he kept handy a large knife under a leather belt that holstered a revolver, the preferred firearm of the day.
Agnes, youngest child on her hip and leading four-year-old George Henry by the hand, marshaled the other children forward. Though peaceful in many ways, Huon Valley life had strengthened mother Roberts. She’d given birth in the wild, skinned a roo, and learned how to fire a gun. Still, she worried about the latest journey ahead. The safest way for family travel was in a larger group, so William found some new mates to split the expense of bullocks and a dray that would carry their children and their goods. They wouldn’t all fit in the wagon, so eight-year-old William walked next to his father for most of the trip. Ten-year-old Lavinia Louisa rode with her younger siblings, now two, four, and six.
Carrying everything they owned, swag bundles strapped to their backs, most parties began the hundred-mile journey from Melbourne to the goldfields well armed and alert. The trail to the diggings was lined in grave danger. Bushrangers routinely preyed on those entering and exiting, some stripping men naked and leaving them tied to a tree to be discovered by another traveler.
Both feared and glorified, daring bushrangers fed folklore and ruled the road. Jack Donahue, among the most famous, was not the typical violent plunderer but a well-dressed rakish Robin Hood. His exploits, robbing the rich to feed the poor, were immortalized in the trail song “The Wild Colonial Boy,