“On Monday night—having left the farm on the previous Thursday—we camped about two miles from the diggings; and making a very early start, we got in sight of them a little after sunrise.
“It certainly was the most extraordinary sight I ever beheld. Imagine a valley, varying in width from one hundred to five hundred yards, inclosed on either side by high ranges of hills, thickly timbered. Through the middle of this valley there winds a rapid little stream, or ‘creek,’ as it is termed here. On the banks of the creek, and among the trees of the surrounding ranges, were clustered tents, bark-huts formed after the native fashion with boughs of trees, and every kind of temporary habitation which could be put up in the course of an hour or two.
“Some idea may be formed of the number of tents and other habitations, when I say that there were then at least five thousand men at work within a space of about half-a-mile up the creek. All these had collected together in a few weeks; for it was only in the latter end of August that gold was first found in this out-of-the-way forest valley—now the site of the ‘City of Ballarat,’ as it was nicknamed by the diggers.
“We chose a place for our tent on a rather retired spot, not far from the creek; in a couple of hours our ‘house’ was put up, the stores stowed away inside it, and Tom and his team were off on the home journey to Geelong. Leaving the others to ‘set our house in order,’ get in a stock of firewood, bake a damper, and perform various other odd jobs attendant upon taking up one’s residence in the Bush—Fred and I set out to reconnoitre the scene of our future operations.
“The place where there was the richest deposit of gold was on the face of a hill, which sloped gradually down from the edges on the right-hand (or east) side of the creek, going towards the source. I mention these particulars, because it is worthy of note that almost all the principal diggings have been discovered in places similarly situated. The whole of the hill was what geologists call an ‘alluvial deposit:’ consisting of various strata of sand, gravel, large quartz boulders, and white clay, in the order I have named them. It is in this white clay, immediately beneath the quartz, that the gold is found. In one part of the hill, where the discovery was first made, this layer of quartz was visible at the surface, or ‘cropped out:’ in other parts it is to be met with at various depths, of from five to thirty feet.
