We Are the Rebels by Clare Wright Page B

the body. But in 1854 doctors and midwives didn’t understand the concept of sepsis—inflammation
caused by infection—and antisepsis—preventing infection by keeping hands and surgical
instruments scrupulously clean and free of bacteria.
    People therefore died gruesome deaths, suffering from both the symptoms of infection,
such as fever, and the pain of treatments that today sound more like tortures than
medicine.

RAW COLD AND UNFATHOMABLE MUD
    It was to be a winter of untold discontent. By June, plummeting temperatures amplified
the cruelty of weeks of driving rain. With the benefit of modern meteorology, we
now know that it gets colder in Ballarat than just about anywhere else in Victoria
outside the Alpine regions. It is only 115 kilometres from metropolitan Melbourne,
only 435 metres above sea level, yet it has a mean (very mean) winter maximum temperature
of 10.7 degrees Celsius. And then there’s the cunning wind chill factor: a biting
southwesterly that blows down off the escarpment.
    No one was immune from the surly blast. Those perched up in the Camp and those nestled
down on the Flat all shivered in their tents, imagining what family and friends
at home were doing in the northern summer sunshine.
    Many diggers slept on the bare ground, noted Thomas McCombie, with a canvas fly for
protection from the rain and wind. According to McCombie, a great number of single
men lived under the eucalypt branches they made into miams or wigwams . Frances Pierson,
on the other hand, had made a cosy tent home for herself, Thomas and their son Mason.
She had transported feather beds, bedsteads and a mountain of covers to the diggings.
The Piersons had been warned that you needed as many blankets in Ballarat on a spring
or autumn night as you would in a frozen American winter. Thomas was thankful for
the advice, and felt nothing but sympathy for the 99 out of 100 people who had but
two blankets to sleep on under and over . Those who were lucky enough to find a little
gold that winter went straight to the waiting Wathaurung and bought a possum-skin
cloak.
    Charles Evans, never one to whinge, was compelled to note the frigid conditions.
He woke each morning half perished with cold and was amazed to find ice crusting
the drinking water in his buckets. Thomas Pierson, who seemed never to stop whingeing,
recorded in his diary that 25 June 1854 was the grimmest day since he and Frances
had arrived eighteen months ago. A strong, damp wind and cold as could be without
freezing , wrote Thomas.
    He had just cause for his crabbiness. Incessant rains , Police Magistrate John D’Ewes
later recalled. A raw cold atmosphere and unfathomable mud . The fair-weather campers
left.
    But 44-year-old Englishwoman Ellen Young was in it for the long haul. She’d first
pitched her tent on Golden Point in the spring of 1852. Now, burrowed in for another
cold season, she burned as much wood as she and her husband Frederick could cut and
carry back from Black Hill.
    Woodcutting was an entitlement of Frederick’s mining licence. This, thought Ellen,
was an enlightened idea. It was just a shame the monthly renewal fee was so high,
and the penalty for non-compliance so harsh. Ellen could see the frightened, dejected
look in the eyes of the men who had to choose between paying 30 shillings for a valid
licence (and lawful timber collection) and buying a loaf for their hungry children.
    This winter the whole town seemed out of joint , as one journalist put it. Even Mother
Nature appeared to have turned the tables. The rainy season was supposed to be the harvest of dig gers , providing plenty of the water you needed for puddling and washing
gold.
    ELLEN YOUNG (NEE WARBOYS)
    THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
----
    THE PROTEST POET OF THE GOLDFIELDS, DISSING THE GOVERNMENT AND SUMMONING THE PEOPLE
TO ACTION

    BORN Hampshire, England, 1810
    DIED Ballarat, 1872
    ARRIVED 1851
    AGE AT EUREKA 44
    CHILDREN One son, already deceased.
    FAQ Educated, middle-class English Chartist.