A fifth edition of The Big Book of Australian History

A note to file in mid-2026: editing and formatting is done for the dead-tree version: a week should see the e-book version done.

A short sampler of one of the works up in the air, right now. While this is social history, we need to start with the geology, the rocks that shaped our home, and determined what lives here. It started as the 80,000-word Big Book of Australian History, published in for editions by the National Library of Australia, this is my own Director's Cut, more than three times as long.

This is all the hows and whys that lie beneath Australia’s history, like how the geology of Gondwana shaped its plants and animals and so shaped Indigenous lives, farming and land holding. How the convicts got here, what they wore, how gold was discovered long before Hargraves (and the conspiracy he pulled off), why ladies stood on chairs in Melbourne and waved their hankies, etc. etc. for 252,000 words. This is all the news that was fit to print—but wasn’t.

* * *

If the climate is cold enough to produce frost, water soaks into the surface and changes to ice, which may wedge particles of rock off. Any pointed bits and corners get more water, and are more exposed to the cold, so off they go! Any rock hound looking at rock like this can read its story at a glance, but granite has more surprises to offer.

Near Wave Rock in Western Australia, you can see spheroidal granite—and a truly amazing shape in the rocks, the granite ‘wave’ that you can see just before the start of this chapter. Standing 11 to 12 metres high, the flared slope looks just like a giant wave, about to break.

Wave Rock was featured on 28 April 1965 in Women’s Weekly, and the magazine said the wave shape was a result of wind erosion, though adding the suggestion that the shape might also be due to the ‘action of glaciers’. Later reports said the cause was the action of an ancient sea, lapping the foot of the cliff, and as these tales leak into history, we need to consider them. Geologists asked: if the sea had been there, where were the marine deposits When somebody suggested sand blasting as the cause, the spoilsports explained that a noticeable feature of bare rock surfaces like Hyden Rock or Uluru was that a lot of water ran off them, when the rare rains came by.

That wet the soil around the rock and supported more vegetation than in other places. So even if desert winds came rushing in, the plants would absorb the force of the wind, and stop the sand grains that were supposed to have shaped the ‘wave’. Flared slopes are also found around other large bodies of rock, like the cave seen here, one of the ones around the base of Uluru that visitors are allowed to enter. Similar shapes can also be found on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.

A cave at the base of Uluru.

The simple answer is that the same water run-off that knocked out the sand-blasting theory was a central part of the true cause of these concave forms. Australia is an old land, with old soils that have been exposed to dry winds over many years. Features like Wave Rock and Uluru that now rear up out of the flat plains were once hidden underground, within the plains. Over time, the winds uncovered them, but once the stone was exposed, rainfall ran straight off it.

The cleverest early white explorers quickly got the idea of asking the people who lived there, the Aboriginal Australians, where to look for water. Some of them followed “native roads”, knowing the tracks made by countless feet had to lead to water, because people who knew the area would not go to dry places. Invariably, the “native wells”, the soaks, lay at the foot of a rocky slope, and this steady supply of water explains how the wave shape developed.

Weathering on the surface of Uluru.

Water weathers some of the minerals in rocks, whether the rock is the granite of Wave Rock, or the arkose sandstone of Uluru. The minerals break down, and in a sense, the rock just rots away under the influence of the damp soil. The minerals that had been rock became dust, and as the wind blew, or a rare flash flood gurgled across the plain, those minerals were carried away.

About this book

I come to this matter as a science-trained observer who can explain how the geology and biology have determined our past, and will determine our future. I explore what makes us Australian, and why that matters.

When I was a child, history was about learning lists of things, but never about the why questions I wanted to ask. And those lists were of important people and places, not about the stuff of the everyday life of life, or how people got their daily needs. There is still too much of that traditionalism, so when the National Library hired me to tell the story of us to the young ones, I jumped in, and we did four editions of The Big Book of Australian History.

Now the National Library has lost its edge, and I want to deliver the same sort of message to Australian adults in any case, because we seem to be losing our edge. As I explain, early on, I like to sit in an overseas eatery or drinkery and let loose an anonymous “G’day!” just to stir the other Australians up. I am the larrikin trouble-maker our history needs.

Starting with Pangaea and Gondwana, I look at how our geology shaped the soil, the climate, plants and animals: with no beasts of burden or high-efficiency crop plants, I examine what makes Australians different, even as those shared differences bring us together. Lacking suitable animals and plants, Indigenous society and land management had to be different. To survive, the first Australians used people rotation, rather than crop rotation.

The European invaders brought in unsuitable crops and unsuitable animals and dismissed the local solutions as primitive, then tried to impose European practices on a foreign clime. The Australians themselves experimented with assimilating a few white people into their society, but these trials mainly failed. At the same time, indigenous artists took to European art media and conventions.

Then we step back, to examine how the Europeans arrived off Australia’s coasts, saw what was in Australia, and liked it enough to grab it. Once they decided to make a land grab, the British invaded, and this is the only way to describe what happened. Denialists may bray that there were no arms, but even if we ignore the guns and flags at the settlement proclamation, the parallels to the Norman invasion make a mockery of any denial.

The Normans looked around England and said, “This is nice land: it’s ours now. Oh, and those laws of yours: forget about them, because you’ll be using ours from now on, and you’d better start speaking our language, as well.” Social disruption is what invasion is about, and that’s what happened in Australia in 1788, along with land-grabbing.

The early white Australians knew the horrors of a sea trip, and the next generation learned from their elders of the sea sickness, heat in the doldrums, slop buckets and dreadful food, but they started wearing their own sorts of clothes and speak their own language. They mixed together so much that there are no regional; dialects, just a few words that betray your colony or state of origin. By the 1820s, an Australian accent and even dialect began to emerge

Next came expansion, but while the explorers may have believed they were going out into trackless and unpeopled areas, they followed the tracks or native roads, and saw either “natives”, or their traces, everywhere. Spilling over the Blue Mountains, freed convicts and new arrivals grabbed more land, forcing the original owners away. Australian ways of doing things began to emerge: bark and slab huts, new clothes and new foods.

A mature society was already there when gold was discovered, and new arrivals enriched our society, Australia, thanks to the inflow of gold, probably had a higher standard of living than any nation in the world, although Australia was not yet a nation. All Australians feared snakes and spiders, they fought drought, floods and fire, but by the 1850s, most people could find their way in the bush and they had laid down roads over the old foot-padded tracks, bringing in engineering to shape Country.

Australians wore the same clothes, ate the same foods, drank the same drinks, sang the same songs, knew the same legends and played the same sports. Becoming a nation in 1901, for a long while, we called ourselves ‘British’, but after gold was officially found (and ever since), people poured in from all over the world, bringing in new ideas and ideals, but all of these people were drawn into speaking and behaving “like Aussies”. In their turn, they warned later foreigners about drop bears and bunyips.

We went off to fight Britain’s wars, though in the 1940s, we changed to regard the USA as a better force to be allied with, and as we approach recent times, from Korea onwards, we joined in the battles of the US. In sport, in science and in the arts, Australia more than held its own on the world stage. We started wearing our own sorts of clothes and speaking our own language. Along the way, women started wearing trousers if they wished: we were forging a new future.

In the end, we started to look at our origins, and sometimes felt less than pleased, but sometimes we thought all was bonzer. Having explored Australia’s troubles, disasters and triumphs, we end with the Voice referendum

Where do you stand? At the end of this warts-and-all book, you will hopefully have moved a bit.

Haycock goes bankrupt

This is a second out-take that didn't fit my upcoming Australia: a Social History.  The work began with The Big Book of Australian History, which went through four editions under the National Library of Australia's imprint. but as they have lost the plot, I am going my own way.

This version is 2.5 times the size of the original version. Soon, I will be seeking a publisher...

* * *

The man identified by Henry Brown as W. W. Haycock, appears to have usually used the name George Washington Haycock. Brown later called Haycock one of those who had been convicted of no crime, but who, nonetheless, “have found themselves in scrapes which have compelled them to leave their own country”. As we will see later, that was not his real name, but “Haycock” began to take a prominent position in local affairs around Bendigo (or Sandhurst, as it was then called) in 1856. He was a trader, and one of the town’s principal merchants. Nothing could be done, Brown said, unless Haycock agreed to it. The American was admired, and he helped many less successful traders, but Brown took an instinctive dislike to him. Brown thought the praise given to Haycock seemed unwarranted, but still the man did well.

Then, one day, Brown found he had been right to trust his instincts:

…we were astonished one day by receiving the following communication by express,—

“Confidential. Melbourne.” “Haycock, we believe, has bolted; we inclose a draft of Two Hundred and Fifty Pounds, payable at his office in Sandhurst, which he gave us a week since, obtain the money if possible, remit to Melbourne, and keep this communication a secret, for we may be mistaken.”
— Henry Brown, Victoria As I Found It, 228 – 9.

The message came from a good friend, so Brown went seeking the money, only to be told Haycock was in Melbourne, there was no money on hand, and that Haycock would return in two or three days.

Brown pushed them, saying the order was made payable on demand, and in the end, Haycock’s credit being so good, his clerk went out and borrowed the money from other firms. A week later, the news was all over Bendigo, and people who had been caught out feared going bankrupt. When Brown told his friends he had no dealings with Haycock, they reminded him that other firms would also “go smash”, but Brown had settled up accounts with all the at-risk houses during the previous week.

One American store and hotel-keeper had made a great deal of money, but having injured himself, placed all of his savings in Haycock’s hands, on the promise that the men would meet in Melbourne, where Haycock would pay over the cash. Then he headed for Melbourne to take a ship home to retirement, but the money never came. He missed his ship, and feared that Haycock and his money were on board. Then another American told the truth about Haycock, and the man realised he had lost everything.

The truth-teller knew Haycock was an assumed name, because the two had grown up in the same small town. He was liked, did well, and when a fire almost ruined him, his friends helped him get going again. Then, one day, Haycock bolted, running off with a large amount of money, and people began wondering if his fire had been suspicious.

He went to the American “Slave States” where he married a lovely girl, the daughter of a planter, but three days later, he deserted her and went to California. His brother-in-law caught up with him there and abused him for deserting his wife, at which point they agreed to duel. Haycock’s first shot pierced his brother-in-law’s heart. People were furious, so he cleared out again, and the narrator came across him, working a neighbouring claim near Bendigo. When he addressed Haycock by his real name, the man asked him to keep his secret and use only his new name.

“Haycock” said he was a reformed character. The narrator saw no use in “outing” him, when he was so poor. Soon after, though, he put up a small tent and began buying old tools, such as broken picks, damaged cradles. He would mend these and sell them, did well, and soon Haycock was well-known as an agent, cattle dealer, and general merchant.

All this time I watched his conduct narrowly, and could see nothing amiss, besides he was a sad man, and in the midst of his success, it seemed to me, that his former crimes weighed heavily upon him; for many of you will remember how rare was his smile, and a laugh proceeding from those lips, I think, you have none of you ever heard.
— Henry Brown, Victoria As I Found It, 234.

Brown said everybody just assumed that Haycock had run off with all the money, but after he was found drowned, it emerged that he had got a barber to shave off his long beard, and pawned a pistol. He must have wandered the countryside, hungry and fearing his creditors, people said.

Later, some gentlemen of Bendigo and elsewhere were summoned to Geelong to confirm that the exhumed corpse of a drowned man was Haycock. The statement below, taken from the pages of The Argus, has been abbreviated by the deletion of some irrelevant legal formalities.

We, Thomas Kirk Newton, of Melbourne, gentleman; Thomas Disher, of the same place, gentleman; James Boone, of Sandhurst, doctor of medicine; Decimus Prothero, of Bathurst, New South Wales, gentleman; Sumner Cummings Fraser, of Sandhurst, drover; and Robert Hadin Smith, of Melbourne, articled clerk, severally and respectively do solemnly and sincerely declare that we have this day exhumed and carefully examined the body said to be that of the late George Washington Haycock, late of Sandhurst aforesaid, and that the said body is that of the said George Washington Haycock, beyond doubt or dispute…

(Signed) Thos. Kirk Newton, Thomas Disher, James Boone M.D., Decimus Prothero, Sumner Cummings Fraser, Robert H. Smith. Declared at Geelong, in the colony of Victoria, this 30th day of September, A.D. 1856, before me (signed) Charles Ibbotson, J.P.
— The Argus, 1 October 1856, 5.

Some people had their doubts about the identification, and at least one of them said so, rather forcefully, in this curious letter, signed ‘Vox’. According to ‘Vox’, the report signed by Newton, Disher, Boone, Prothero, Fraser, and R. H. Smith was not only puerile, but childish, not creditable to those gentlemen. The writer was not prepared to accept their identification.

Let six men of only common sense examine the disputed body, take the height and weight, a plaster cast of the face, a few photographic likenesses, some of the hair, and general and particular description of his body; give this to the public, and they will determine for themselves. If this is not enough, seal up the body in a zinc shell, and forward it to Bendigo, where I am disposed to believe there will be found some Bendigonians who can determine the question.
— Bendigo Advertiser, 15 October 1856, 2.

Without some effort, “the majority here will continue to believe that the body in question is not that of G. W. Haycock.” One of those pilloried, Decimus Prothero, was a wealthy grazier from Bathurst, and he had “had dealings” with Haycock. One of these dealings was a mob of 12,000 cattle that crossed the Murray into Victoria in late August 1856, about the time Haycock ran off. In all probability, Prothero had lost money in those dealings.

Prothero did not appreciate the tone of the letter, and having identified ‘Vox’, he took the law into his own hands. Before we look at the ensuing court case, here is a fact that the Bendigo Advertiser added when they reprinted the letter: one of the six gentlemen in the statement was Haycock’s “medical attendant” (in other words, Dr Boone), and he recognised the body by certain scars that it bore.

So Prothero was right to be annoyed, though he may have been just a little robust in his actions, but ‘Vox’, alias Hutchison was hardly a model of rectitude in making his comments! In the following report from the Mount Alexander Mail, one reference may need explanation: “Professor Sands” was a well-known hairdresser and barber. Prothero appeared before Messrs. M’Lachlan, Hunt, and Emmett, at the police office, Sandhurst, to answer a charge of having, the day before, assaulted Dr. Hutchison. He entered a plea of guilty. Hutchison said he was standing on the previous afternoon outside the Shamrock Hotel, when the defendant came up and asked if his name was Acheson, and he said it was not. The defendant went away, then returned to ask if his name was Hutchison. He confirmed this, at which point Prothero pointed to a folded newspaper that he held. Was he the author of a letter in that paper? At this point, we switch to the published account.

Complainant said that if his name was attached to any letter in any paper he certainly was the author of it, but if his name was not appended to it, he should decline to answer any question put by a mere stranger in the public streets. Defendant then seized complainant by the beard and plucked it out, and one of the bystanders then interfered and took the defendant away…

The defendant here explained that he had acted upon strong provocation. He had been in company with some other gentlemen, to Geelong, for the purpose of identifying the body of G. W. Haycock, and had done so, and having stated that he considered the body to be absolutely and truly that of Mr. Haycock, a letter had appeared in the Bendigo Advertiser calling his word into question, and this letter he had ascertained was written by the complainant. He did not deny the assault: he certainly had pulled the Doctor’s beard out, and now begged to return it to him.

(Defendant here drew from his pocket the complainant’s beard, wrapped in paper, and suggested that Professor Sands would stick it on again for eightpence.)

The bench found that a most unwarrantable assault had been committed, that free speech ought to be allowed without risk, and Mr Prothero was to recollect he was not in California. The defendant was to be fined £10, or in default of payment ten days’ imprisonment. The fine was immediately paid. Haycock’s disappearance may well have cost Prothero dearly, because Prothero himself disappeared from the Australian scene rather oddly, the following year, after this announcement in the Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal:

Sir, I write to request you to be good enough to insert in your next publication the fact that I, finding my affairs in a state of hopeless entanglement, have gone to England for the purpose of seeing my friends, who are rich and respectable, and who will, I believe, do anything to avert dishonour from the family. My absence will, I hope, be no more than seven months.

“Your obedient servant, DECIMUS PROTHERO.
— Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 7 October 1857, 3.

He seems to have stayed in Britain.

The talented Mr Stephen

This is an out-take that didn't fit my upcoming The Big(ger) Book of Australian History.  The work began with The Big Book of Australian History, which went through four editions under the National Library of Australia's imprint. but as they have hesitated too long, I am going my own way, though the title will now be Australia: a social history.

The odd original title reflects that this version is 2.5 times the size of the original version. Soon, I will be seeking a publisher...

* * *

The colony of South Australia was 15 years old in 1851, but the population was disappearing as all the young and fit men, rushed off to hunt for gold in Victoria. Adelaide could not afford to lose its most capable workers, and so the saga of Mitchell’s Flat started, following the offer of £1000 in the South Australian Register on 17 December 1851 ‘…for the purpose of rewarding the discoverers of productive gold-fields…’

South Australians knew Australia’s first gold mine had been in their colony, so now they began looking harder, for more gold. George Milner Stephen was a gifted man, a member of a powerful family of lawyers and judges, and probably too clever for his own good, which may explain why and how he became involved in a scandal.

He may have been trapped by others because he was too trusting, but his later history makes it more likely that he was in the original plot, up to his neck. His family was notable for its brilliance and also for its long history of instability and living on the edge.

His brother had a convict mistress in Sydney and helped her to escape to New Zealand. Another member of the family was a judge who became insane during a famous British murder trial, yet another was a suspect in the ‘Jack the Ripper’ case, while Virginia Woolf (née Stephen), filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself.

George Milner Stephen clearly thought he could fool people. This first ‘game’ may not have been a fraud: he was never in a position to make money from it, and somebody else may have been the hoaxer, but he was certainly a fraudulent quack later on. On 29 December, 1851, Charles Bonney and Herschel Babbage, both Government Commissioners, were taken by five men, including Mr Stephen, a sharebroker named Edmund Freeman, and Freeman’s lawyer, to the Mount Lofty Ranges, outside Adelaide.

Bonney and Babbage reported to the Colonial Secretary on 30 December, and the South Australian Register had the news the next day, New Year’s Eve. They had just one spade and one pan, but after ten washings, they had found gold in the pan, every time—but that was not necessarily the same thing as finding gold on the site.

If there had been several pans, it would have been far harder for one person to add gold to each pan, and without any doubt, some sort of addition took place. Babbage and Bonney advised the government against selling any of the land in the area, hinting that somebody had played a few tricks.

Still, the South Australian Register mentioned that the locality was on a tributary of the Onkaparinga River, where gold had been found some years earlier, and that ‘…those who make Mitchell’s Flat their destination will not be very far out.’

Then, as now, New Year’s Day was a holiday, and the Register said on 3 January 1852, that 400 to 500 people headed for Mitchell’s Flat. They found no gold, and before long, some of them must have been wishing that Mr Stephen or the Commissioner of Crown Lands was there to show them where to look.

One of the men in the original party, Galbraith by name, had recently returned from Mount Alexander so he could have supplied the planted gold. He may have been a part of the fraud, but he may also have been innocent. Galbraith was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald as saying a friend had said that the find was Mount Alexander gold,

…which belief was confirmed through the course of the day by the man himself confessing, that one of Mr. Stephen’s party placed the gold in the pan for him.
— Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February 1852, 3.

The Herald quoted the editor of the Morning Chronicle as saying Stephen had:

…addressed a note to him in which he, Mr. G. M. Stephen says, ‘that this man, Buckland, put the piece of gold in the pan to play off a practical joke.’

Already, people had their suspicions, but Stephen was said to be out looking for gold and could not be found to be questioned. On his return on 8 January, he said he was personally convinced, or else why had he been out seeking for more gold? He had spent money on the search, and even tried to buy blocks of land there.

In passing, he mentioned Freeman’s former business partner, a Mr Galbraith, who had recently returned from Mount Alexander. Babbage said that Stephen had gone back to prospect in a hole from which Charles Bonney had apparently taken gold on 29 December—and failed to find any. Either Stephen genuinely expected to find gold there, or he was cunningly covering his tracks.

Then the Sydney Morning Herald picked up the tale, and a new name appeared, that of a man called Buckland. Soon after, Stephen and Galbraith claimed to have learned that Buckland had played a practical joke, which is probably true, at least in part. The angry Adelaideans who had sweated on New Year’s Day were not amused.

But was Buckland alone in the hoax (or fraud)? Somebody arranged to take just one spade and one pan. That person wanted to control things, and was a guilty party, probably the guilty party. Sadly, we will never know who it was. Another piece of evidence for the innocence of Mr Stephen comes from a comment passed by Herschel Babbage in his report, written on 8 January 1852.

Babbage was no fool: he was the son of Charles Babbage, the 19th century pioneer of mechanical computers, and he assisted his father in that work. He bore the name of his father’s good friend, the astronomer Sir John Herschel. The son had worked with the famous engineer of Victorian Britain, Isambard Kingdom Brunel on planning railways in Italy, and Babbage’s report on sanitation in the town of Haworth, written at the request of Patrick Brontë, the father of those Brontës, led to massive changes there. He was, as they say, connected—and bright.

So naturally, Babbage was chosen in 1851 as just the person to undertake a mineralogical and geological survey of South Australia. This was just at the start of scientific specialisation, and any scientist was still expected to be able to do all sorts of things—even though the word ‘scientist’, coined in 1841, was not widely used. Babbage, the man of science, did not mince his words, and they were of sufficient interest for them to be reprinted in Sydney, several weeks later on 28 January 1852.

It rests then between Mr. George Milner Stephen and his constituents to point out the parties who have, by the introduction of pieces of gold into the soil washed upon the previous occasion, attempted to mislead the Government and the public.
— The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 January 1852, 2.

Babbage seems to be saying, by implication, that Stephen was not the guilty party. The same Sydney Morning Herald article went on to quote a statement made by Freeman, generally protesting his innocence, but mentioning two key names: Buckland and Galbraith.

…I have since the day above-mentioned seen gold washed and dug out of the soil at Mitchell’s Flat, by one Buckland, on two occasions—one being in the presence of one T. N. Mitchell, and one in the presence of a working man belonging to a party fitted out by Mr. Milner Stephen; and I have also seen two pieces of gold there dug and washed out of the soil, in the presence of Messrs. Penman and Davie, by one Mr. Galbraith…

The guilty party was lucky, and the affair was dismissed as just a hoax, and it may indeed have been no more than a prank that got out of hand. A few years later, Stephen claimed that his find had been real, and was an outlying part of the Echunga field, but nobody took very much notice.

In early 1870, Stephen invented a ‘Gold and Diamond Cradle Amalgamator’. Later in the year, he followed that up with a ‘cheap and portable hammer quartz-crushing battery’. These were praised by others, but the clever Mr Stephen, also an accomplished artist and musician, may not have been quite the innocent he pretended to be. From 1880 until his death in 1894, George Milner Stephen had a flourishing practice as a mesmeric or spiritualist healer, using what he called the “red flannel cure”, because he used red flannel in his treatments.

Here the author must emerge briefly as a player. I have experience both as a perpetrator of hoaxes (for non-fraudulent purposes), and also in fraud investigation, catching genuine crooks. I gave up that trade for the safer alternative of teaching teenage boys, but catching frauds and keeping a lid on bright young minds are both professions that require confidence and the ability to make the “marks” believe what you need them to believe.

On one occasion, I only survived a fraud investigation unscathed because I played the part of Mr Bean so hard that the malefactors, who had broken the arm of one colleague and threatened another with a pistol, ignored me as harmless, when I turned up to ask questions. We knew there was fraud going on, but not how it was being worked. I needed data that I could feed to a computer, and once we had that in a spreadsheet, we knew who was behind it. Dismissing me as a numpty, they gave me the evidence we needed, confident that I was an idiot, and we nailed them. My point is this: I know when something has the wrong smell, and the tale that follows reeks of deception, as I will show in my comments.

Picture a train in April, 1880, travelling from Melbourne to Sandhurst (Bendigo, today). Captain and Mrs Organ, of Prahran are in the saloon carriage, clearly respectable people. A man, apparently an invalid, is carried in by two men, one dressed as a clergyman, and they lay him out on a seat.

A third man is present, Max Kreitmayer, and I will say something of his profession later, because it was he who wrote to The Argus to tell of the events that unfolded. He said the invalid explained that he had been thrown out of a buggy some two months earlier, that a week previously he took a Turkish bath, and in walking afterwards in Collins street staggered and fell, and had lost the use of his legs. Notice all the irrelevant detail, designed to distract the reader? The key point came next: the man was going to Castlemaine to get buried or cured, as his friends lived there. Kreitmayer purported to test this claim:

I gave one of his legs a good pinch, and he assured me that he did not feel it, and consequently I put his case down as a decided case of paralysis. I noticed that when he wished to raise himself a little he had to hold on to the rack above, and on several occasions I lifted the legs off and on the couch, to change his position…
— Argus, 8 May 1880, 8.

So we have an amateur diagnosis, stated as fact, and now the scene is set. The innocents (the Organs) are in place to act as witnesses: cue the miracle worker!

At Gisborne station, Mr George Milner Stephen (whom I knew by sight many years ago) entered the carriage, and had to sit close to the sick man for want of room. He offered his rug, to insure more comfort, and naturally asked what was the matter. The man repeated his story, and Mr Stephen, in a decided tone said, “I can cure you.”

Kreitmayer described how Milner Stephen began his treatment, and notice how the allegedly sick man is now “the patient”—like subliminal advertising, this slips beneath your guard, unless you are looking for it.

My curiosity was aroused to fever heat, and I watched events. Mr Stephen asked the patient to lie on his face, and after making a few passes and breathing on the supposed injured spot, he told him “to rise,” which summons he obeyed with slight success, and he dropped on the seat again, saying that the pain seemed considerably less. He then rose and walked…

Amazing! Hallelujah! Hosanna! (and any other cry that will get the innocent “marks” excited!). Stephen repeated the process and told the man “rise and walk across the carriage.” The man did so and returned to his place without any support.

In 34 minutes after leaving Gisborne, at Kyneton, I left the carriage for a few minutes, and on returning, to my astonishment the patient had gone. Looking out, I found him on the platform, walking about very carefully, and on arrival at Castlemaine, he took his luggage and walked away. Altogether the affair has been so vividly impressed upon my mind, that I can recall the most trifling conversation or incident on this ever memorable journey.

The writer signed himself this way: “MAX. L. KREITMAYER, Waxworks, Bourke-street, May 1”. A cynic might say: how curious that nobody seems to have noticed that Kreitmayer was a good showman himself!

With that spectacular launch, Stephen was off and running. His “cure” was effected by breathing on people through a piece of red flannel, and while a few believed in him, others knew him of old and had their doubts about the aging faith-healer. But was Stephen genuinely convinced he had “the power”? He was no goose, but he may have had delusions of gander.

Others had no doubts at all: two years after Stephens’ death, a coroner was summing up in the case of Honora Judd who died in Melbourne after being attended by a “Professor” Davis, another fraud. The coroner railed against ignorant people who went to quacks, and cited the case of an intelligent journalist whose arm had been hurt by lightning. He had consulted Milner Stephen and his red flannel, and imagined an improvement, “…but soon found his mistake out.”

Flannel was always a favourite folk and quack remedy, long before Milner Stephen. Even John Wesley recommended flannel, though as usual, he offered a whole range of other remedies, in this case, his treatments for chilblains included flannel socks, chamois leather socks and a poultice of onions. Colin Mackenzie, on the other hand, thought flannel good to deal with consumption: the flannel might even prevent the disease altogether!

A complete suit of flannel, worn next the skin, is an indispensable article for every one who is even inclined to this most fatal disorder.
— Colin Mackenzie, Mackenzie’s Ten Thousand Receipts in all the useful and domestic arts, 127.

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I wish to announce a rather crazy scheme on my part: a package of 22 of the best books I have written this century, all curated and presented as DRM-free PDF files. Librarians just need to email me at petermacinnis44@gmail.com.

Note that all of the books are available as Kindle e-books and Amazon Print-on-demand books as well (but I can do mates rates).

The main aim of this PDF scheme is to set my intellectual property loose in schools. Teacher-librarians will be allowed to make class sets of any book (or books), for one term, once they have paid a one-off fee of AUD$50 for the collection, on either a CD-ROM or a USB stick. That includes postage and GST, but you need to order, get an invoice and pay first.

At the end of the term, I ask that TLs delete the files from devices, but if they wish, they can immediately copy them again. I rely on the ethics of TLs, and won't be checking. I also have no plan to check the credentials of purchasers, and will declare all such to be honorary teacher-librarians. My aim is to influence minds, not to make money, so if you fulfil any TL-like role, that's good enough for me. Ordinary librarians count as well, and friends are welcome.

Some of the books in this scheme came out through mainstream publishers and some of them won awards, but were allowed to lapse by lazy publishers, others were excellent ideas that nervous publishers shied away from. All have been seized back, meticulously curated and brought up to date. It has to be conceded that small portions of text (and some illustrations) may appear in more than one volume, because there are certain themes I harp on.

Any good educator does exactly that, repeating the key points.

As you can read on a link that I will post by the end of the month, this century, my work has been awarded:

• Seven CBCA long listings (notables), two CBCA short listings, one Honour Book and one Book of the Year;
• One Short Listing in the NSW Premier's History Awards, Young People's History Prize ;
• Two Australian Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing;
• One WA Premier's Book Award for Children's Literature;
• One international White Ravens List entry (Germany);
• One Wilderness Society Short List entry, and
• Two Whitley awards.

In other words, there's some serious intellectual merit here.

The titles involved are: 

Australia's Hidden Heroes; sample here

Australia's Pioneers Heroes and Fools; a sort of sample here

Australian Backyard Explorer; sample here

Australian Backyard Naturalist; sample here

Curious Minds; sort of sample here

Kokoda Track: 101 Days; sample here

Looking at Small Things; sample here

Mistaken for Granite; sample here

The Monster Maintenance Manual; sample here

Mr Darwin's Incredible Shrinking World; sample here

Nature of North Head; sample here

Not Your Usual Bushrangers; sample here

Not Your Usual Clever Ideas; sample here

Not Your Usual Gold Stories; sample here

Not Your Usual Treatments; sample here

Not Your Usual Villains; sample here

Old Grandpa's Book of Practical Poems; sort of sample here

Playwiths; sample here

The Lawn a Social History; sample here

The Speed of Nearly Everything; sample here

They Saw The Difference;  (sample) and 

You Missed a Bit. Typical example

I already have a marketing operation in place, and dead-tree versions of all of these books (and also individual e-books with DRM) are available from Polymoth Books, and you can find out about the contents of each title through that link.

I will, in the near future, be providing sample chapters or excerpts through this blog, each bearing the title of the book they come from.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some files to sort.

I Aten't Dead Yet

That title is for the people who know who Granny Weatherwax is, who know that STP is not necessarily Standard Temperature and Pressure.  If you aren't one of that elect band, just treat it literally.

I have been somewhat distracted by the need to get some product out the door:

The first is Going Micro: Foundation to Stage 5, which is free gratis and for nothing. The constant reader will have been aware that this has been taking up my time since January.

These are teaching ideas that can also be used by hobbyists, but once I have drawn breath, I plan to convert them into a straight-out guide for hobbyists and naturalists.

If you scroll back a few entries, you can find out what all of this is about in the Microscopist's Mate series. If you didn't come in through the front door of the blog, use this link to see #7, with links to the previous six. Or go back and find the front door...

The main point to take on board: Go Micro is FREE! Just grab it.

Next, one of my less successful publishing deals was with Five Mile Press, who published two of my books in a slip case: these were Not Your Usual Bushrangers and Not Your Usual Gold Stories.

e-book cover

paperback cover

They released Bushrangers as a single title, but having failed to release Gold, I was getting ready to treat them roughly and seize back the rights to the work on the legitimate ground that they had failed to publish the work, when they told me they were folding, going under, turning into dead parrots, and the rights were mine.

So in the past week, I have prepared and published Not Your Usual Gold Stories as both an ebook and a Print on Demand paperback through Amazon.

Here is the link for the paperback version, US$12 plus postage, rather less than Five Mile charged: https://www.amazon.com/dp/198309207X

And here is the link for the ebook version, US$5, no postage, and with 236 hot links to the key sources: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07DK4MZVZ

Draft cover, A Shore
Companion

In between, I have reverted to another of the jobs that has been on the drawing board for a while.

Originally called A Shore Thing or Shore Things, as you can see, I have changed the name, but it may well change again. Specifically for Australian readers, this is a book to dabble in while you are around rocky shores, sandy shores and any other wet-and-dry places: estuaries, mangroves and all that stuff.

Cover, Australian Backyard
Earth Scientist

It covers biology, geology, hydrology and all their interactions. There will be some familial overlap with the book on the right, one of two books that are with the publisher.

Australian Backyard Earth Scientist is now fully edited, designed and indexed, and a professional proof reader will be let loose on it: it will show up on the bookshelves in January next. Targeting ages 8 to 14, it is suitable for ages 8 to 94: most of my kids' books go down well with grandparents, possibly because I am one of them myself.

After that, there's only one title I have to do before I cark it. As things panned out, that work was half-written several years ago, so I have the structure and all of the illustrations sorted.

I put it on hold and drew on a few bits of it for Australian Backyard Earth Scientist. Just bits, mark you: Not Your Usual Rocks is for adults, and it looks at weird rocks all over the world, in a rather more technical way.

Note to file, January 2020: Not Your Usual Rocks is now Mistaken for Granite, and fast approaching completion

The drinking of gold

I am knee deep in work, the like of which I will reveal in the near future, but something described on an old-fashioned email list reminded me of a discarded story. Neek spoke of not being able to eat gold, I addressed the question of drinking gold, as follows:

A Roman named Crassus went to what is now southern Turkey to capture Parthian gold, and lost the battle of Carrhae. According to some accounts, Crassus survived, and the Parthian king, Orodes, executed him by pouring molten gold down his throat. Another version has Orodes filling the skull of the dead Roman general with molten gold. Agricola certainly believed this story in the 1540s and published it:

… his enemies … poured liquid gold into the gaping mouth of the slain Crassus, saying: “Thou hast thirsted for gold, therefore drink gold”.

Then there was Manius Aquillius, a Roman consul who had waged war on Mithridates VI of Pontus (also in modern Turkey) without getting approval from the Senate. The consul was captured and ridiculed by being paraded on an ass. Then according to Appian, King Mithridates poured molten gold down his throat at Pergamon, as a rebuke against the Romans for their bribe-taking.

This was probably just propaganda, but the theme remained popular. In 1599, a Spanish governor in Ecuador supposedly suffered the same fate. Members of the Jivaro tribe, objecting to Spanish taxation on their gold trade, attacked his town and executed the greedy governor by pouring molten gold down his throat.

The same tale surfaces, again and again. Alleged users include the Spanish Inquisition (accused of using molten lead and pitch), and Mongol invaders who were supposed to have killed Inalchuk, the Muslim governor of Otrar, a town in central Asia when they poured molten silver into his ears, eyes and throat. In most cases, the story includes the victim’s intestines exploding from the steam pressure.

Some critics (including me) wonder if nomadic tribesmen would be carrying the necessary furnace and crucibles to melt gold or silver. And would it really kill—and would the victim really explode? We have some evidence on that from a human case study.

In 1755, Henry Hall, then aged 94, was hurt during the burning of the Eddystone Light. He staggered home and reported in a hoarse voice that melted lead had fallen down and entered his throat. Edward Spry, a surgeon, reported on this in the Universal Magazine for July 1757. According to Spry, after three or four days, Hall was on the mend before he took a turn for the worse, and died.

The surgeon dissected the body and removed a “great piece of lead” which weighed seven ounces, five drachms and 18 grains. Spry explained that Hall had been helping fight the lighthouse fire when a large amount of lead fell from the roof, some of it covering his face and clothes, and some entering his mouth, “then lifted up and open”, and so it flowed into his stomach. There was no mention of Hall exploding, but molten lead is some 600°C cooler than molten gold.

In 2003, some Dutch pathologists wondered if the various accounts, which all stressed the bursting of internal organs, could be relied on, and they decided to test the situation. They made it clear that “no animal was harmed or killed specifically for this purpose”, explaining that they bought bovine innards from a local slaughter house.

They set up some cow parts on a board and closed the lower end of the oesophagus with a wad of tissue paper before pouring 750 grams of molten lead (at around 450°C) into the throat. The results were spectacular, with steam coming out of both ends and the tissue paper being blasted out of the lower end. Within ten seconds, the lead was solid, blocking the throat, which would have meant a tremendous build-up of steam pressure in a live animal. We must conclude that an explosion is possible.

Understandably, people who are being robbed of gold do not take kindly to the theft, because winning gold is hard work. It follows that rough justice may sometimes have been applied. Leaving aside the practical problems of getting enough gold in one place and then finding a furnace to melt it, the punishment would work, but the tales of its use must be regarded with some doubt.

* Reference: F R W van de Goot, R L ten Berge, R Vos, ‘Molten gold was poured down his throat until his bowels burst’, Journal of Clinical Pathology, 2003. https://jcp.bmj.com/content/56/2/157

The gold mine that never was

James Daly ended his life on the gallows, but for a while, he probably hoped that he had a chance of leaving Botany Bay, one way or another. Like a lot of history, there are different versions. This might be because Daly told different stories at different times. 

Then again, maybe the people who wrote about it were more interested in telling a good yarn. Whoever really wrote George Barrington’s A Voyage to Botany Bay was a good story-teller, but it probably wasn't the alleged author.

Barrington was a pickpocket who could pass as a gentleman. He spoke well, and probably got away with a lot because he had good manners when he robbed you. That said, most of what we know about him is fantasy, created by him or somebody else. [1] For example, Barrington almost certainly did not write the prologue to a play, first heard in 1796, and referring to the convicts: —

True patriots all, for be it understood,
We left our native country for our native country’s good.

That was probably the work of Henry Carter, but it gets worse when we look at what Barrington tells us about Daly (he called him Dailey).

First, Daly was hanged at the end of 1788, and Barrington only arrived in Sydney in 1791. The book in which the story appears was published in 1803, but after about 1800, Barrington was probably either mentally ill or an alcoholic.

Perhaps somebody else wrote the book and put Barrington’s name on it because he was a celebrity. (Yes, they had celebs right back then!) So the book might have been written by Barrington, but taking into account the probabilities, most probably it wasn’t.

There are better accounts, written by people who were in Sydney at the time, so here are the most likely facts. To begin with, while Daly is the most common spelling used today, he was also known as Daley and Dealey.

He was tried at the Old Bailey as James Dealey on May 26, 1784. [2] The charge was stealing clothing and a small wooden trunk, the property of Joseph Shilling. He was sentenced to be transported for seven years. No place was specified, but after almost three years in a prison or a hulk, he left Portsmouth in Scarborough in May, 1787.

He landed safely in Sydney, but apparently had no wish to stay there, and so in August of 1788, he hatched a plan to get away. Some of the transport ships had remained in Sydney, providing accommodation for some of the First Fleeters until there were houses, huts or other shelters.

More importantly, the ships provided safe storage for the food, the tools and other essentials that the First Fleet had brought. By August, the ships were almost unloaded, and ready to sail away, and Daly and a lady friend hoped to sail with them.

We don’t know exactly how they hoped to do it. Daly later asked to be pardoned and sent away as a reward for “finding a gold mine”, but some people thought he really planned to use the “gold dust” he made to either buy his way onto a ship or maybe he just wanted to buy things from the ships’ crews before they left, using the fake gold.

The source of the gold varies: George Barrington said the gold came from a broken ring, other and miore reliable accounts said it came from a sovereign that Daly had got hold of. We do know for sure that he made some stuff up that looked like gold, and when it was tested with acid by one of the two convict silversmiths, the gold seemed genuine.

Having announced his find, Daly showed samples of his “gold”, and tried to drive a hard bargain. He offered the secret of his gold mine’s location in exchange for pardons for himself and the woman he was living with, a passage back to England on one of the transports, and a sum of money, according to John Hunter—though Hunter couldn’t later remember how much Daly wanted. [3]

Daly was only in his mid-twenties, and not very bright, if you look at the evidence from his Old Bailey trial. He was in no position to bargain with the tough officers who were the colony’s authorities. The governor was away exploring and they refused to deal. Rather, they ordered Daly to show them the mine right away. Nervously, Daly went down to South Head in a boat with the adjutant, Captain Campbell, a corporal and several marine privates.

They landed, probably at Watson’s Bay, though it might have been some other beach near South Head. Daly persuaded Campbell to send the boat away, arguing that the smaller the number who knew the secret, the better. Then he led the party inland, before, as Hunter puts it, seeking “permission to go to one side for a minute upon some necessary occasion”.

Back then, a common English term for what later Australians would call “the dunny” was “the necessary”. In other words, Daly went off to relieve himself, and knowing the tracks through the coastal scrub, he headed back to the settlement at Sydney Cove. Once there, he said he had left Campbell and his men happily in charge of the gold mine. He quickly headed for his tent, grabbed up a few possessions, and went bush.

In the evening, Governor Phillip returned to Sydney Cove, and the man William Bradley called “the Goldfinder” [4] surrendered later, saying he would only tell the governor about his mine. Alas, the governor was unimpressed and ordered that Daly get fifty lashes for “his conduct respecting Captain Campbell”.

John Hunter said one of the two silversmiths tested the sample and confirmed the presence of some gold, while Watkin Tench [5] said later that the assay detected the presence of brass. One way or another, Daly confessed all, and gained another hundred lashes, and had to wear a canvas frock with the letter R (for ‘rogue’) on it. In December, burglar Daly stole clothes worth eight shillings and three pence. He was sentenced to hang, and the following day, December 3, he did just that.

To put Daly’s theft in perspective, 8/3 was about a week’s pay for an agricultural labourer in England at that time, and Hogarth’s 1751 painting Gin Lane features the slogan “drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tuppence”, so that much would keep somebody dead drunk for seven weeks.

Daly’s original sentence of seven years had also been for taking clothes worth 54 shillings, but in an isolated colony, the offence of lesser value was far more serious.

It was a sad end for Australia’s first goldfinder. Later, even when most people had forgotten Daly’s name, they remembered his “gold mine”, and a number of early real finds were dismissed as similar fakes.

Perhaps rational people assumed all gold finds were fakes, but conspiracy theories happened even then, and some of the other convicts believed the find was real, and that the authorities had forced him to offer a false confession—and then silenced him for good.

---

[1] ‘Barrington, George (1755–1804)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barrington-george-1746/text1935, accessed 14 May 2012.

[2] JAMES DEALEY, Theft: grand larceny, 26th May 1784 (Reference Number: t17840526-89), http://www.oldbaileyonline.org

[3] Hunter, John, An Historical Journal, 57-58. Online at http://adc.library.usyd.edu.au/data-2/hunhist.pdf

[4] William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales, December 1786 - May 1792, 122.

[5] Watkin Tench Sydney’s First Four Years, 137, note on p. 303.

Gold for free

Well, this is post 250, it seems, so it's time to revert to something a bit more closely related to my day job, which is writing. That, after all, is what I started my blog for.

As it happens, I have the signed contract for Not Your Usual Gold Stories from Five Mile Press, and I am doing last-minute intensive revision at the moment. These snippets won't be in the book, so I thought I might post them here. So they are bits of the gold book for free, but they happen to be about people who claimed they had a sure-fire way of getting free gold.

The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute.

Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, (5th edition) #59.

There are three effective ways of winning gold. You can find it, you can trade for it, or you can steal it. All of these are either hard or risky in some degree. There is another method which has attracted people: the use of alchemy to transmute base metals into gold. Over the years there has been a great deal of talk and perhaps even some hard work to this end, but if any alchemist ever succeeded in "making gold", there is no historical record of any success.

Some of the alchemists seem to have really believed that gold could be "made" by treating some cheaper metal in the right way. Modern chemistry tells us this is impossible, but they knew nothing of that. The honest men among the alchemists may have been thin upon the ground—but while they found victims, there were others who saw right through them

An Italian poet named Augurelli presented a work in hexameter to Pope Leo X in 1518. It was in hexameter and dealt with "Chrysopoeia," the true art of making gold. The canny pope is said to have made the poet a gift of an empty purse, as the possessor of the secret of the Philosopher's Stone lacked nothing but a purse, in which to store his artificially prepared metal.

Georgius Agricola knew all about the alchemists' tricks as well, and believed the crooks should be executed. More to the point, he described their methods, something like 470 years ago.

… these throw into a crucible a small piece of gold or silver hidden in a coal, and after mixing therewith fluxes which have the power of extracting it, pretend to be making gold from orpiment, or silver from tin and like substances.

— Agricola, De Re Metallica, preface xxix

Their game might have been easier than digging or stealing gold, but it could also carry risks. After he died, there were those who maintained that Alexander Seton had really succeeded in making gold, which probably just means he was cleverer at sleight-of-hand than his audience, though his history suggests that he wasn't all that clever.

His yarn was that a Dutch vessel was wrecked near his Scottish home in 1601, and he rescued the crew, put them up, and paid their passages back to the Netherlands. What follows is not trustworthy, but it is a widely believed popular myth.

In 1602, he visited one of the Dutchmen, and demonstrated his new-found skill of making gold. The Dutchmen told his neighbours, showing off the piece of gold that Seton had "made" for him, and the offers and enquiries came flowing in from scholars, and more to the point, from noblemen and monarchs.

Seton travelled around Europe, putting on a show where others under his instructions, placed lead in a crucible, with a powder, and found a mass of gold, equal to the lead. The gold was tested by assayers in Zurich, and declared to be the real thing.

The young Elector of Saxony, Christian II, invited Seton to call, but Seton dispatched another Scot, William Hamilton, who performed the same demonstration, with the same success. Christian issued an invitation that amounted to a command, so Seton presented himself.

This was a bad move, because when he did not reveal his secret, he was imprisoned and tortured with rack, fire and scourge, but still he refused to deliver the secret, claiming that such secrets were not for the profane. He was finally rescued by a Moravian chemist named Michael Sendivogius, who spirited the now weakened Scotsman to Cracow.

Realising that Seton was dying, Sendivogius also tried to get his secret, but the man died. Unabashed, Sendivogius married Seton's widow, in the hope that she knew the secret, but she did not. Still, he had Seton's treatise, which he published in his own name, and a supply of the wonderful powder, but when that ran out, that was the end of him.

Another (and more likely) version has him dying in a prison in Dresden in 1604. At least neither of them perished on golden or gilded gallows like Georg Honauer (Württemburg, c. 1597) or Count Ruggiero (Berlin, 1709).

James Price was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1777. He had a fortune from relatives, and gave his life over to chemical experiments. Then, in 1783, he repeatedly demonstrated the transmutation of mercury to silver and gold, using white and red powers. Assayers tested the gold, and declared it genuine.

The Royal Society expected Price to publish his method, but he refused. He also declined their invitation to repeat his experiments before the Society. The labour had weakened him, he said, but the President of the Society insisted that he perform, "for the honour of the society". He agreed, and so he came undone.

Even back then, the Royal Society had more than it share of subtle minds, and one of them spotted the false bottoms in Price's crucibles, which hid pellets of silver and gold. Caught out, Price drank "laurel water" (prussic or hydrocyanic acid) and died.

See also: More modern gold makers, and Jernegan's wheeze.