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Updated: July 1, 2025
They had passed Black Hill and its multicoloured clay and gravel heaps, and the train was puffing uphill. The last scattered huts and weatherboards fell behind, the worked-out holes grew fewer, wooded rises appeared. Gradually, too, the white roads round Mount Buninyong came into view, and the trees became denser.
But at Clunes, also, there had been disappointment, for the gold was mostly embedded in quartz rock, and these early miners were not prepared to extract it; parties from Clunes were therefore moving southwards to Buninyong, and the two currents met on the slopes of the Yarrowee, a streamlet whose banks were afterwards famous as the Ballarat diggings.
At length, during the last session, their representative managed to get 35 others to vote for it, and the line is now to be made. Each of these 35 may in their turn require the vote of the member for Buninyong on some similar occasion.
The former route leads over the Keilor Plains, and through Bacchus Marsh, crossing the Werribee River in two places. Mount Buninyong then appears in sight of the well-pleased traveller, and Ballarat is soon reached. The route VIA Geelong is much quicker, as part of the way is generally performed by steam at the rate of one pound a-piece. Those who wish to save their money go to Geelong by land.
About six weeks later I went to stay with some friends in the neighbourhood of Ballarat, between that town and Buninyong. I have previously referred to Ballarat as the next largest town to Melbourne. By rail it is 100 miles from Melbourne, though not more than 60 in a direct line. At present the rail goes round by Geelong.
In the meantime, why complain? He had much to be thankful for. To take only a small point: was this not Saturday night? To-morrow the store was closed, and a string of congenial occupations offered: from chopping the week's wood a clean and wholesome task, which he gladly performed through the pages of an engrossing book to a botanical ramble round old Buninyong. The thought of it cheered him.
In the month of May, 1852, there must have been close upon seventy thousand men in the country between Buninyong and Bendigo, all engaged in the same occupation.
Beyond, the bush shimmered palely grey in his younger years he had been used, on a night like this when the moon sailed full and free, to take his gun and go opossuming. Those two old woody gods, Warrenheip and Buninyong, stood out more imposingly than by day; but the ranges seemed to have retreated.
On arrival at Sydney I made no stay, but returned to Melbourne the next day by steamer. However, I paid my visit of five weeks to Sydney a short time afterwards. This time I left Melbourne by the very fine steamer Buninyong, of 3000 tons, belonging to Howard, Smith & Co., I believe the largest of the Inter-Colonial Steamers.
In her mind's eye Polly had a vision of him going his rounds mounted on a chestnut horse, dressed in surtout and choker, and hand and glove with the bigwigs of society the gentlemen at the Camp, the Police Magistrate and Archdeacon Long, the rich squatters who lived at the foot of Mount Buninyong. It brought the colour to her cheeks merely to think of it.
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