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Updated: June 2, 2025
Three of us hired a one-horse buggy to take us on to Clunes, which lay in our way. The load was rather too much for the horse, but we took turn and turn about at walking, and made it as light for the animal as possible. At Clunes I parted with my companions, who determined to take the buggy on to Ballarat.
With these wild freebooters he continued for three weeks, during which time he made himself extremely popular by his freedom of intercourse with them. The wanderer left these dwellings of comparative luxury that he might join hands with other fugitive Jacobites, Macdonald of Lochgarry and Cameron of Clunes, and took up his quarters in the wood-surrounded huts near Loch Arkaig and Auchnacarry.
The performers did their best, but I cannot say they are very strong in opera yet at the Antipodes. After thoroughly doing Ballarat, I set out on my return to Majorca. There was the same jolting as before, but this time the coach did not stick in the mud. On reaching Clunes, I resolved to walk straight to Majorca across the plain, instead of going the roundabout way by the road.
Strike old dray tracks. An outlying sheep-station. The first white man seen. Dinner of mutton. Exploring at an end. Civilisation once more. Tootra. All sorts and conditions come to interview us. A monastery. A feu-de-joie. The first telegraph station. Congratulatory messages. Intimations of receptions. A triumphal march. Messrs. Clunes Brothers. An address. Culham. White ladies. Newcastle.
In their frantic eagerness to share in the golden harvests being reaped at Buninyong, Clunes, Bendigo, and Ballarat, the people wasted no thought on the hardships of the journey; there was not a ship too crazy or a doghole too dark to carry the desperate adventurers. Jim Done's bunk was in a third story.
This region, however, did not realise the expectations that had been formed of it, and many of the diggers began to move northwards, in the direction of Clunes.
"Got anything new in the way of clothes?" asked Lilith Gordon as she and Laura undressed for bed a night or two after their return. "Yes, one," said Laura shortly. For she thought Lilith winked at the third girl, a publican's daughter from Clunes. "Another like the last? Or have you gone in for yellow ochre this time?" Laura flamed in silence. "Great Scott, what a colour that was!
Clunes is a rather important place, the centre of a considerable gold-mining district. Like most new up-country towns, it consists of one long street; and this one long street is situated in a deep hollow, close to a creek. The creek was now all but dry, like the other creeks or rivers in the neighbourhood.
I thought it preferable to wait for the afternoon coach; and after being hospitably entertained at dinner by the manager of our Branch Bank at Clunes, I took my place in the coach for Ballarat. We had not gone more than about a mile when the metalled road ended, and the Slough of Despond began, the road so called, though it was little more than a deep mud-track, winding up a steepish ascent.
Towards the end of August, news having come to Benalder that the Prince was living near Auchnacarry under the protection of Cameron of Clunes, the two Cameron brothers set off secretly for that country. The Prince with a son of Clunes and the faithful outlaw Patrick Grant were at this time living in a hut in a wood close to Loch Arkaig.
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