digger-hunting

Updated: May 1, 2025

If an attempt was made to take us all to gaol, digger-hunting would have to be suspended, the revenue would dwindle to nothing, and Government would be starved out. It was, in fact, no Government at all; it was a mere assemblage of armed men sent to rob us, not to protect us; each digger had to do that for himself.

George Dunderdale - The Book of the Bush: Containing Many Truthful Sketches Of The Early Colonial: Life Of Squatters, Whalers, Convicts, Diggers, And Others: Who Left Their Native Land And Never Returned

Next day, Sunday, I walked through the diggings, and observed the words "No License Here" pinned or pasted outside every tent, and during the next month only about three hundred licenses were taken out, instead of the fourteen or fifteen thousand previously issued, the digger-hunting was stopped, and a license-fee of forty shillings for three months was substituted for that of thirty shillings per month.

George Dunderdale - The Book of the Bush: Containing Many Truthful Sketches Of The Early Colonial: Life Of Squatters, Whalers, Convicts, Diggers, And Others: Who Left Their Native Land And Never Returned