Gold, Gold, Gold
Read himself was not one of them though, after striking it rich, he packed up and was on his way as the others arrived to work in his footsteps.
And similar story was repeated a year after Read’s find. Dan Ellison was a miner down on his luck, when in the summer of 1862 everything changed. He'd heard that a strike had been made in a bend in a canyon not far from Queenstown, called Arthur's Point. He'd spotted a likely looking bend on the far side of the river, but the waters were in flood. Ellison must have been a man of exceptional determination, for putting pack and pick on his back, he swam across, while people watched from the far side, no doubt wishing they could do the same. After Ellison and his partners had panned an ounce in that first day, they definitely must have thought that.
The next day Ellison's dog was washed away by the river, landing on a ledge a bit down stream. When his master went to rescue him, there was gold all around, even on the dog's back. Ellison had struck it rich, that day he and his partners had panned 300 ounces from the river.
But like all canny miners he worked his claim out, and then retired to civilisation- almost the same as Read. Both miners had, unlike some, their fill of mining and chasing after gold- at least for a while.But plenty of others came in his wake, four thousand in the months following that first find. And like mines all over the world, a temporary town sprung up to service the miners; stores to sell them supplies, a police station to keep an eye on them, a court house to take care of them when they erred, and of course pubs- lots and lots of pubs. But it was a tough land to make a living from, the river was prone to flood, drowning miners, or crushing them beneath avalanches of mud. And then there was the scurvy, the dysentery, caused by terrible diets, and the above all the weather. Miners often worked in the snow. The river was so dangerous, that even getting supplies into the area was perilous, horses and mules often had to slide down mud tracks.
But like all gold rushes that came before and after, there was a limit to what the earth could be persuaded to give up. Soon the
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