Chapter 1 - Pt 2

BRUNSWICK, VICTORIA, TO DARLINGFORD

Eliza and Samuel Reynolds arrived in Hobson's Bay in the late summer
of 1853. It was hot and smoke from bush fires drifted down the coast.
Eliza, six months pregnant, exhausted after the long, rough voyage had
only one wish – to be on land. As their ship lay at anchor in a forest of
masts and they waited to go ashore small row boats arrived and men
climbed on board, some seeking workmen among the immigrants, some
with gold to sell, all of them with some story about gold discovery.

The Reynolds came into the rough, tough, vital, uncomfortable, noisy
Melbourne of the '50s and were thankful to find accommodation a few
miles out of the town at Brunswick. Brunswick was a small settlement
among orchards, farms and vineyards, the low hills thickly covered with
gum trees and wattles. Much of the land had been subdivided into large
blocks of eighty-nine to one hundred and thirty acres and sold in 1839
to successful business men. There were Collins Street farmers from very
early days. The bluestone quarries and brick works brought many men
seeking work and the place, it was said, was full of rumours of gold
discoveries, bushrangers and robberies. Since it was the natural starting
point of the road to the fabulous gold fields of Bendigo it attracted
hundreds of miners and prospectors. The roads were appalling and
Sydney Road a quagmire until, with the establishment of Pentridge Gaol
in 1850, prisoners were employed to pave the road with bluestone. In
spite of the roads there was a regular mail coach to Sydney.¹

The Reynolds found accommodation with a Mrs McPherson who was a
midwife and she assisted Samuel when Eliza's baby was born on
12 February 1854. The baby was called Minny. The Reynolds stayed in
Brunswick for some months until Eliza recovered her strength and felt
equal to making the trip to the gold fields on which Samuel had set his
heart. Wherever Samuel went he heard talk of gold and particularly of
the wonders of Forest Creek. Gold had been discovered there in 1851
and the procession of men going up to try their luck was endless.
Samuel, thorough in everything, set about preparing himself for mining.
He had his cabbage tree hat, the almost universal wear of the miners
and so called because it was woven from narrow strips of the cabbage
tree palm of coastal Queensland and New South Wales, his Bedford
cord trousers, flannel shirt, neck scarf and heavy coat. It was all an
adventure to them but not to be taken lightly.

In his pocket Reynolds carried a small surgical kit which he kept
throughout his life. On their second last night in London when Eliza and
Samuel dined with their people at Plaistow, Richard Strangman, Eliza's
brother, presented Samuel with this kit. A black morocco leather wallet
lined with plush held scissors and lancets mounted in tortoise-shell.
Miners were advised to have at least £25 with them and to take an iron
shovel with a short handle, a small pick, strong rope, washing dish,
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bucket, tub, tent, axe, fry pan and tin mug. Since the Reynolds had
decided to try their luck first at Forest Creek Samuel took little gear. It
would all be available in the many stores at the settlement. On a spring
morning in 1854 Samuel, Eliza and the baby Minny travelled to the
Melbourne Post Office to join a convoy proceeding to Forest Creek.
Samuel and a friend he had made in Brunswick had bought a light cart
and two horses; they travelled in this with their gear. Eliza and her baby
and the wife of the friend went by coach and waited at staging places
and Inns for the slower cart. For security and companionship gold
seekers moved in convoy. They were going into a tough and un-
predictable world. They had been warned to think every man a rogue
‘until you prove he is honest’. They knew the special dangers of the
Black Forest through which they must pass, notorious for its appalling
tracks and its bushrangers. Gold hunger was stronger than fear and the
convoy moved off.

A wild scene, William Craig² wrote of his convoy. The heavily laden
drays, the struggles of horses and bullocks, the yells and oaths of the
drivers, the numerous parties with handcarts and wheel-barrows, all
their worldly gear, swagmen bending with the weight of seventy or
eighty pounds on their shoulders. . . . Nothing so plainly attested the
heavy traffic over the direct routes to Bendigo and Forest Creek in the
winters of the 'fifties than the skeletons of horses and bullocks that had
succumbed to the strain imposed upon them through bad weather,
overloading and dearth of sustenance.

This was specially so in the Black Forest; rains turned it into a peat bog.
Teamsters turned in every direction trying to find solid ground; every-
where there were broken and upturned drays and carts and the skeletons
of animals lying as they had dropped from exhaustion. This immense
sacrifice of animal life, before the construction of roads, induced a sharp
business man to start a bone mill in Bendigo. It proved more profitable
than gold mining.

There were coffee shops along the track, usually a tent and log shed
or bark hut where people crowded in at night to escape the cold; sly
grop shops in plenty and inns, some of them surprisingly good. The
Bush Inn in sight of Mt Macedon was well known. Young Mrs Ellen
Clacy came this way in the 'fifties going with her brother and some
friends to try their luck on the Bendigo fields. In the vivacious diary³
which she kept and published as soon as she returned to England in 1853
she describes the journey to Forest Creek. She rode in the back of a dray,
a bag of flour for back rest, a big cheese for foot rest, notebook on her
knee and she noted everything: the cost of meals at Bush Inn, five and six
shillings per meal, seven and sixpence for a bottle of ale, one shilling
for half a glass or nobbler of brandy. She recorded the excitement, the
confusion, the sly grog selling, the fear, the laughter, the beauty of the
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bush. She was thankful she kept such good health since doctors at the
diggings charged ten shillings for a consultation in their own tent and
one to ten pounds for an outside visit. She found the diggings remarkably
orderly. She cooked for her men folk over the open fire, made damper,
put mutton in the camp oven; escaped bushrangers in the Black Forest;
kept her housekeeping accounts as if she were in her pleasant London
home, and with her brother, who had put aside his Euclid and Homer to
come gold seeking in Australia, she shared the work of puddling and
cradling and rightly shared in the bag of nuggets which they took back
to London. She returned a bride, on the arm of her young husband, and
in the highest of good spirits, which delight us to this day, she wrote A
Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852, very properly
adding Written on the spot by Mrs Charles Clacy.

Forest Creek, sprawling, bare, a shanty and canvas town, never for a
moment free of activity and noise, was home to the Reynolds for two
years. It was a rich field and some miners made fortunes:⁴

The surface and shallow workings at Forest Creek were undoubtedly
very rich. Three persons got in 19 days 360 ozs of gold; one party of
five washed 2 ½ lbs in one day; another party of four weighed 11 ozs as
the produce of labour from morning until 3 o'clock in the afternoon
and another set of three got $1000 worth of gold in fourteen days. A
great many, however, were unsuccessful. They knew not where to sink
and as hopefully put down a shaft on the side of the hill as in the
valley, and as carefully washed the slate as if it had been auriferous
earth.

Reynolds did well enough to believe that the better day would come. It
never did. It was soon known that he was a doctor and if a miner were
injured or sick he did what he could. On these crowded gold fields there
were a good many doctors; there were in fact many professional men try-
ing their luck. Life was hard for a doctor on the gold fields. Francis
Myers, who as Telemachus wrote so vividly about the colony in the
seventies and eighties met a Dr Norris when he toured the Upper Goul-
burn gold fields. Dr Norris told him, ‘In the old days on the diggings
they used up a doctor in three months; if he did not break his neck on
the roads he burned up his liver with whisky’. Reynolds, though not an
abstainer, had a horror of excessive drinking; the diggings did not destroy
him and he kept excellent health.

In an article on these digger doctors in the Medical Journal of Aus-
tralia Dr E. Alan Mackay wrote:⁵

With the gold rush squatters and farmers lost their labour. Medical
men in practice were perhaps better able than others to accommodate
themselves to the new conditions. If his patients went to the diggings
the doctor could follow. He would at least have the nucleus of a

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practice and with a horse and tent, a leather case with a few instru-
ments and some straightforward drugs such as laudanum and calomel
he could carry on and in his spare hours do a little prospecting.

Dr Mackay told the story of a pioneer Melbourne doctor who had a
reputation as a great blood-letter. He went off to the gold fields and a
quip spread among his fellow doctors – ‘Dr Blank had gone to the
diggings to open veins with a pick axe.’

There was plenty of work for the doctor on the diggings. Accidents
were frequent; a form of dysentery known as English cholera was
common; bad water, flies, summer heat, dust and primitive sanitary
conditions spread disease. All kinds of home remedies were tried for this
malady. William Craig recalled that the cook of his party made up a
‘potion of raw flour, stewed gum leaves and a little iron rust’. Babies and
young children died far too frequently of gastro-enteritis and when, at
nine months of age, their own little daughter Minny died the Reynolds
decided to leave Forest Creek and go to Mt Blackwood. Blackwood gold
fields, on the upper tributaries of the Lerderderg River were said to
provide easier conditions for alluvial miners.

Samuel had patience, perseverance, and still some small capital so once
again he and Eliza put their goods in a cart and went over the hills to
the pleasant Blackwood country. Gold had been discovered there in Janu-
ary 1853 by Edward Hill.⁶ They stayed two years finding little gold but
gaining two sons. Samuel Francisco, born on 24 July 1856, was always
known as Frank; later generations never did discover why he had been
called Francisco. William, given no teasing second name, was born on
31 June 1858.

Wherever diggers gathered they shared an abiding interest in rumours
of gold fields. No matter how jealously a new find might be guarded
sooner or later someone heard of it; that was enough to start a rush. On
the Blackwood diggings in the sixties stories were coming through of
rich finds on the upper Goulburn. The Reynolds had left Blackwood to
try their luck at the Junction near Yea and Yea was full of rumours.
In July 1860 Mr F. M. Hill, post master, reported that four hundred
men had gone through the town headed for Darlingford and Jamieson.
Their hopes had been fired by a report from Superintendent Cobham of
Benalla who had visited Jamieson early in the year and reported good
gold discoveries on the upper Goulburn, ‘with room for any number of
diggers’. He was severely criticized by the Argus⁷ for raising such hopes
‘just now when the mining population is in such an unsettled state and
ready to rush in numbers from one end of the country to the other on the
mere rumour of such a discovery let alone one bearing the weight of a
semi-official endorsement’. Cobham was a police superintendent. It was a
dreadful winter for those who got into the mountains; the weather was
bitter, supplies ran out but still on the prospectors came . For most it was
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disaster but for the few who were able to hold on, eventually the reward
was rich.

The Reynolds decided to move up to Darlingford. They now had three
small boys for Richard had been born at The Junction, near Yea, on
8 June 1860. Once again they were part of a convoy, the slow familiar
journey, though this time without the dangers and appalling roads of a
Black Forest, rough enough travel all the same. They had heard of the
beauty of Darlingford and above all things Eliza wanted a home, how-
ever small, and some comfort.

Darlingford, now drowned beneath Lake Eildon, was beautifully
placed on the Big River, a mile from the junction with the Goulburn. It
was sheltered in thick bush, fern, musk, blanket wood, hazel, light wood,
black wood, sassafras, gum, messmate and peppermint, Hills and moun-
tains walled in the valley and by the river there was a long wide sweep
of rich land. Here the gardeners and the orchardists were busy, as others
were busy over the hills and up the river at Jamieson. The rapidly
growing mining population of the Upper Goulburn needed supplies and
the Darlingford and Jamieson River flats were already market gardens.
The Reynolds came to Darlingford in the summer of '61 and here, in
a reasonably comfortable timber and shingle house; they made their home
for the next four years. In spite of the difficult track to Jamieson there
was a mail service and Reynolds arranged his medical registration at
Jamieson. He was No. 739 on the Old Register of the Medical Board of
Victoria. He continued with his mixed practice of miner and doctor.
Darlingford was a busy town, a depot and centre for the packers and
carters who took incredible loads over the mountains:⁸

From the Big River at Darlingford Harry Woods and Christie Docken-
dorf despatched horse and mule teams to all the upper streams.
Wherever diggers went storekeepers followed to the remotest parts,
supplying on mules and horses places further and further out until on
every track up river and across hill the sound of bells made music day
and night.

A prettier site for a town could hardly have been chosen, wrote a man
from the Wood's Point Times and Mountaineer.⁹

The hills descend with a long and gradual slope leaving low table and
flat lands along the river for buildings and gardens. The township
must be looked upon at the present time as a goods depot but it has the
appearance of going ahead. It has six streets, Gaffney, Christy, Coutts,
Goulburn, Chenery and Peppin Streets. There are nine stores, four
hotels, a school house, a post office and a number of private dwellings
occupied mostly by persons engaged in packing goods into the Big
River, Raspberry Creek and Matlock ranges. The streets are on
opposite sides of the river and are connected by a foot bridge put up by
private subscription.

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Darlingford people had a grievance. They had paid £500 for the land
on which they built their homes and they wanted the government to
build two bridges; one over the Big River so that they could go to Yea,
and another at Peppins on the Goulburn so that they could go to Jamie-
son. Peppin kept a boat at his farm and foot passengers to Jamieson –
hardy folk – were ferried at one shilling a head but a traffic bridge was
badly wanted. Darlingford lacked not only a bridge; it had not even ‘got
the protection of a common policeman’.

Their troubles, the people thought, came about because they were in
a very odd situation indeed. They had never been placed on an electoral
roll, nor was the town marked on any known electoral district. ‘Darling-
ford is neither in Dalhousie nor in the Murray boroughs’ the reporter
from The Mountaineer wrote. ‘Sands, the member for Dalhousie, doesn't
know them and Orr, the member for Murray won't. In the words of
Aunty Smith, nobody seems to care “whar they come from, whar they're
going to or who they belong to”. So,’ said the young reporter looking
round at this picturesque but lost no-man's land, ‘The people themselves
must improve their position.’

Ultimately that was just what happened. Take the example of Kelly.¹⁰
In the early days of Darlingford a boy named Kelly who had left school
as a very young lad earned enough money to join with a friend and buy
a team of pack horses. He persuaded his partner, Dunn, that to pack
butter up the mountains would be the most paying proposition. They
hawked butter to Wood's Point and sold it at high prices. With their
profits they set up a general store in Darlingford and then extended their
business as butchers, bakers and hotel keepers. Kelly bought land and
began breeding live stock; he became one of the chief and most respected
land owners of the district, and finally it was he who persuaded the
government to build a bridge over the Big River, to erect a police camp
and to build a handsome school house.

The streets of Darlingford recalled pioneers. Gaffney Street was named
after Terence T. Gaffney who had a ‘station and store’ at Darlingford
before gold was discovered. Terence Gaffney crossed over Flourbag
Creek and worked his way up the Goulburn to the junction of the creek
which subsequently bore his name and where so much gold was to be
mined. To get to the Creek at all was incredible enough:¹¹

The track from the Big River to Gaffney's Creek was so precipitous on
both faces that horses could not even be led, let alone ridden. They had
to be left to pick their own way up or down. At the top of the range
3700 feet above sea level a shanty known as the Mia Mia was built and
gave its name to the track. Of this place of rest and refreshment for the
thousands who passed by during the succeeding years only the ruins of
its stone chimney now remain. . . Cutting the first track to Gaffney's
Creek was an epic of engineering. It was impossible to follow the river
itself. The valley was choked with jungle growth and fallen trees and

17

the perpendicular bluffs overhanging the numerous bends of the river
would have meant too many crossings. They walked, crawled, climbed
twelve miles from Jamieson Camp, crossed the river at Ten Mile and
camped for the night at the flat at the mouth of Flourbag Creek. Here
two shanties and a butcher's shop were erected. The long steep climb
up the Flourbag Hill followed to the top of the range and then the
steep descent to Wright’s Crossing; here another shack provided rest
and refreshment. They then followed a track along steep hill sides
above Gaffney's Creek to Drummond's Point and three miles on to
Raspberry Creek.

Terence Gafiney was not the only claimant to the reward for discover-
ing gold at Gaffney's Creek. There were some who considered William
Jones as the real discoverer:¹²

Another important actor on the scene, other than Dempsey and
Gaffney, led his tilted cart on to the Jamieson flat on 11 January 1860.
He had a large powerful chestnut horse and he looked like an anti-
quated goat. This was William Jones, or Bill the Welshman. True it
was that Gaffney had taken a race of water from Gaffneys Creek but
Jones was the true discoverer of its gold in payable amount. Since that
time Gaffneys Creek diggings have been steadily advancing until
Dempsey and party discovered an incredibly rich reef there. They
are good hearted fellows and deserve success. The reward for the
discovery went to Terence Gaffney. Though for some years little news
reached the outside world of the gold in these remote mountains, miners
and prospectors working in the upper Goulburn heard quickly. They
humped their swags and tramped off; it had to be by foot.

They hewed their way and other men followed their rough tracks. A
party of men working their way up the Yarra track in winter snow only
survived, it as said, by catching and eating a wombat. They were making
for Jericho. It took them three weeks and at the end of that time only
one of them felt decently enough clothed – he wrapped a piece of blanket
round himself – to stagger into the town for food and clothing for his
mates. Prospectors were explorers.

These men were distinctive. So thought a writer to the Cyclopedia of
Victoria.¹³ Isolation, privation, hardship and years of depression he said
had made it essential for them to cultivate if not cheerfulness at least
stoical patience or calm resignation to evil fortune. They learned to take
life as easily as they could; they ignored inequalities of class and distinc-
tion. Remote from law courts they preferred to settle their arguments by
fisticuffs. On the whole the sheer instinct of self preservation made these
men law abiding. Richard Mackay who knew the mountains and the
miners thought there was more to it than self preservation. The majority
of alluvial miners and quartz reefers were fine men.

Inevitably, of course, there were crimes and drunkenness, violence and
dishonesty, ruthlessness and jealousy but these men of the '60s and '70s
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working their way up the impossible mountains to Gaffneys Creek,
Raspberry Creek, Ten Mile, Drummond's Point, Enochs point, Woods
Point, Matlock, Jericho, overcoming the most challenging difficulties
emerge as strong men of character and courage.

Darlingford was the centre for the packers, the men who shifted goods
not by horse and cart but by horse and mule alone. Everything, food,
produce, mining machinery, clothes, furniture, all had to be taken in by
the pack train. Every morning the street was filled with mules and horses,
bells jingling, as they were loaded. P. H. Smith, reporting to the Mining
Board in August 1861 described the scene:

The little township about ten o'clock every morning presents a most
busy and animated appearance for then the packers are preparing to
start. The horses are generally accoutred with old military or troopers’
saddles loaded each with about two hundredweight and each with a
bell round its neck which jingles whenever it moves.

It was a hazardous life for packers and horses and sometimes for the
goods they carried though it was amazing how much arrived in good
order. But not always. There was the luggage, for instance, of the
unfortunate Mr and Mrs Harkings. The Harkings, prospecting in Gipps-
land, set out from the springs near Grant to take their family and
possessions to the Evening Star Reef on the Upper Dargo.¹⁴ Their
packer supplied a train of horses and when half way over the Dargo
plains, just at sundown, two of the horses took fright and bolted into the
bush. Mr Harkings and the packer rode after them but the bush was
thick and darkness came down. They returned to the track to wait for
daylight. They found Mrs Harkings sitting by the road in great alarm
for she had discovered that one of the horses was loaded with her
travelling bag containing clothes, her jewellery, family portraits and about
£15 in money. The other horse was ‘freighted with brandy and wine
sufficient to open a new house of business’. The next morning the two
horses were found but the only article attached to them was the hoops of
a crinoline.

In Darlingford at evening the sound of bells grew louder as the pack
horse trains came down the hills and along the river. The packers were a
particular breed of men. Men like the Perkin brothers had a saying,
‘Where the diggers can go we packers can go’. In the early '60s when the
miners were pouring in it was estimated that five hundred pack horses
were carrying supplies to the upper Goulburn. The packers were strong,
tough, resolute and they had a sixth sense; they were great news
gatherers. The beginning of many a rush lay with a chance word they
had overheard or a piece of interesting activity they had seen as they made
their way up and down. When they came in at night, if it was not too
late, they were surrounded by people anxious for news of what was going
on up the mountains. They brought messages down for wives and
families and they took messages back.

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In 1857 this kind of bush telegraph spread word of the discoveries of
John Nolan, John Dempsey and Jim Armstrong at Enoch's Point. Nolan,
a short, strongly built man nicknamed Codbanger because he came from
Newfoundland, Dempsey and Armstrong had set out to find five men
missing in mountain country who in their turn had set out to find two
miners, Harry Monk and Dick the Liar known to have set out to prospect
the unknown Buckland Valley. The five found Harry and Dick at the
foot of Mt Buller and were told they had discovered good gold in the
Jamieson valley. This was enough for the five; they set off to explore.
Nolan, Armstrong and Dempsey heard what was happening and they
promptly set off to Jamieson Flat too. It proved disappointing so these
three pushed on up through the wild mountain country above Darling-
ford and came upon rich alluvial gold at Enoch's Point. The place got
its name from Enoch Hall who discovered the first gold. Enoch could not
read or write and so never saw the Mining Gazette announcing rewards
for gold discovery. When finally friends applied for him it was too late;
the reward had been made earlier.¹⁵ In 1857 the reward for the
discovery was awarded to Dempsey, Nolan, Burns and Cregan.¹⁶

Enoch's Point was later to attract Samuel Reynolds but in the mean-
while he worked round about the nearer hills and creeks. He spent some
time exploring and working a creek running into the Goulburn between
Jamieson and Kevington which was subsequently named Doctor's Creek.
He had become something of a loner preferring to leave ‘rushes’ to others
and to find his own way. He never stayed long away from home and
mid-1862 he gave up mining for some months to be near his Liz who
was expecting her fourth child. This gave him time to know his Darling-
ford friends. He particularly enjoyed his friendship with Ralf Todd. Ralf
and his wife Elizabeth Mary had come from the county of Armagh
in Northern Ireland and taken up a selection at Darlingford on the
junction of the Howqua and Goulburn Rivers. Todd, expert in garden-
ing, grew produce and fruit on his river flat. Deeply interested in horti-
culture, he had succeeded in grafting five different kinds of apples on to
the one tree and had been successful with grafts on rose trees. Reynolds
was most interested in Todd's experiments. He was not alone in his love
of gardens. No matter how remote miners might be some of them tried
to establish a ‘bit of a garden’ round tent or shanty. John and William
Jones from Wales had gone up into the hills as far as Raspberry Creek and
there had opened up a rich run of alluvial gold. Subsequently it was to
become famous as the A.1 Consolidated Gold Mine. The Jones brothers
built their house high on a spur and Bill Jones followed his hobby of
propagating gooseberries and apple trees. The bushes flourished for years.

In October 1862 to their great delight a daughter, Mary Frances, was
born to Eliza and Samuel. Under the much better conditions of Darling-
ford life Eliza recovered quickly and when Samuel expressed a wish to
try his luck up at Enoch's Point she agreed. By now both Frank and
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Willy were attending school so that by day she had only the care of
Richard, aged two, and her baby daughter.

Samuel had continued his practice of mixing mining and medicine.
He became well known for his skill in setting broken bones, frequent in
mining accidents, and often enough a call went our for him. The grand-
son of an early settler in the Darlingford district recalls being told of a
man riding up to a group of men working a small mine and shouting,
‘Where's that doctor miner?’ A miner jerked his thumb towards a
mound of earth. ‘Try that hole!’ The man called down. No doctor there.
‘Try  the top of the hill,’ he was told. Here was better luck. Reynolds
climbed up the rope ladder, mounted the horse brought for him and the
two men rode away.

Reynolds joined a group of men making their way to Enoch's point,
following the Big River ail the way through steep, thickly timbered
country. Though only fifteen miles from Darlingford it was rough travel.
They never went far without meeting some miner working a lonely
claim or tramping back down the mountains. There always seemed time
for a yarn and a smoke-oh and this companionship meant a great deal to
Reynolds. Between Railway Creek – the very height of optimism in that
name – and Enoch's Point he joined a small group of miners, two of them
old friends from earlier days, and they began working. Reynolds was
troubled by the appearance of one of these men who was clearly sick.
He suspected a heart condition and began discussing with his mates what
they could do. Hospital and rest was essential if he was to live, Reynolds
said. The nearest hospital they knew was at Wood's Point, an impossible
journey for a sick man. Some of them thought it likely that Mansfield
now fifteen years old and the centre of big land holdings would have a
doctor and hospital and it was decided to try to get the sick man there.
They put the patient on horseback and with Reynolds, still in his miner's
garb, walking one side, and another miner on the other side, they set off
on the rough road to Mansfield. Here again the distance was not great,
approximately forty miles. It was the kind of country that made it a slow
hazardous trip. They proposed to come down the Big River to the
Goulburn, to follow it up to the ford where later Fry’s Bridge was built
and to go on to Mansfield by way of Howes Creek. It so happened that
just at this time a man working on Robert Forsyth’s property at Mainton-
goon was badly injured; his leg appeared to be broken. It was known that
a miner doctor was working somewhere between Darlingford and
Enoch's Point and Forsyth sent one of his men on horseback, leading
another horse, to try to find this doctor and bring him back.

In the meanwhile, since news travelled fast in the bush, it was learned
that this doctor was actually walking down through the hills with a sick
man and it was believed they were making for Mansfield. Two of Mans-
field's pioneers, James Walker of Ratho, Scotland who had come out with
the Scottish Company, and Alfred Chenery of Delatite, decided to ride
21

out to meet him and as a small deputation try to persuade him to give up
mining and settle in Mansfieid. They needed a doctor very badly. When
Forsyth heard of this he decided to join them and the three men set out.
They had agreed with several other land owners to each make a donation
so that they could guarantee this doctor a living for his first year.

The station hand from Maintongoon met up with Reynolds and his
little party and the doctor agreed to go to Maintongoon to see the injured
man provided the miner was taken on to Mansfield. Reynolds learned
that there was no doctor and no hospital in Mansfield but even so he felt
they must take the sick man on. The little procession moved on and
twelve miles from Mansfield they were met by Forsyth, Walker and
Chenery who explained they had come to beg him to settle in Mansfield
as their doctor. They knew nothing about him as a doctor except for
stories told from one to another in the bush of his skill in mending
broken limbs. They asked nothing about his qualifications and probably
would have been more than surprised to find what qualifications this man,
standing there in his dusty miner's clothes, really had. They wanted a
doctor on any terms. Walker and Chenery accompanied the sick man to
Mansfield. They explained to Reynolds that while there was no hospital
there was a Mrs Leticq who from time to time looked after sick people
and they were sure she would look after his friend, and they themselves
would pay her to do so. Reynolds and Forsyth rode on to Maintongoon.
It was the beginning of a long friendship. The doctor set the man's broken
leg and next morning, again accompanied by Forsyth, rode to Mansfield
where a warm welcome awaited him. He agreed to come to Mansfield and
later that day began the journey back to Darlingford to tell Eliza of still
another change in their lives. They would live in Mansfield.

1.           R. K. Cole. The New Sydney Road, What's Brewing, June, 1954.

2.           William Craig, My Adventures on the Australian Goldfields, Melbourne, 1913,
p. 207.

3.           Mrs. Charles Clacy, A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia 1852-1853, first
published London 1853, Melbourne, 1963. p. 63.

4.           R. Brough Smyth, The Goldfields and Mineral Districts of Victoria, Melbourne,
1869, p. 63.

5.           Dr E. Alan Mackay, ‘Medical Practice during the Goldfields Era in Victoria’,
Medical Journal of Australia, 26 September 1936, pp. 422, 423.

6.           Vic. P.P., Mining Surveyor Reports, vol III, 1869, p. 483.

7.           The Argus, 15 June 1860.

8.           Richard MacKay, Recollections of Early Gippsland Gold Fields, Traralgon, 1916;
reprinted Gippsland 1971, p. 21.

9.           The Woods Point Times and Mountaineer, 15 July 1865.

10.       Delatite Free Press, 11 August 1883.

11.       H. J. Stacpoole, ‘Discovery of the Woods Point Goldfields', Victorian Historical
Magazine, February 1966, p. 50.

12.       The Ovens Constitution, 6 February 1861.

13.       The Cyclopedia of Victoria, vol. 3, Melbourne, 1903-5, p. 471.

14.       The Gippsland Times, 9 February 1867.

15.       Letter in The Age, 9 February 1867.

16.       Vic. P.P., vol. 3, 1864, p. 65.  (Board appointed to consider applications for rewards
for the discovery of gold fields.)

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