With hardly anything else to do, it was as hardly possible to resist a visit, with nearly everybody else, to Ballarat.  So I appeared there on the 3rd October, and, as senior member for Melbourne in the colony’s first Parliament, and first President of the recently established Chamber of Commerce, I was, of course, “a man in authority.”  So, mounting a gum-tree stump, as the only available chair or pulpit, I harangued the diggers, first upon the grand fortunes that had overtaken the colony, and next upon their sadly wasteful ways with the little stream that ran through the Ballarat valley.  I fear I did not much impress my hearers on the latter point, for everyone did what was most for his immediate needs, whether or not he thus sacrificed his neighbour below him.  Next I was conducted to Gold Point, which was just developing its quality in the “blue clay,” which had been struck at no great depth below the surface.  I was let down into a big hole, the early parent of shaft-sinking, given a spade, and directed to apply it to a place where a digger’s quick eye had detected one speck of gold.  There was probably, he said, a string of gold behind it.  And so it proved, for out of about a pound weight of matrix which I removed on the corner of the spade, I picked out 7 shillings and 6 pence worth of gold.

Then I retired from the crowd and the incessant noise of cradles, and ascending from the valley to the high level plain, I came upon a small lake, whose waters glittered peacefully in the warm sunshine of a bright spring day.  A tiny streamlet was still running from the lake, and trickling down the small semi-precipice towards the main rivulet, now sadly muddy, which I had just left.  So near was this edge to the lake that I increased the stream by deepening its bed with my foot; but I repented of this waste, and restored the block, because the approaching summer must be thought for, and this natural reservoir was by no means deep.  I waded into the pleasantly and invitingly cool water, but had promptly to retreat from swarms of leeches which attacked my feet.  The scene was striking.  Although the hum of busy humanity arose from beneath, not an object was visible on the higher level, as I glanced around to the far west and north, excepting the country’s indigenous features.  There was not a human being, not even a sheep in sight.  Around this spot has since arisen the city of Ballarat, with fifty thousand people, with streets, buildings, institutions, business (including an extra busy Stock Exchange), equal to those of, at least, twice its population at Home; while the lovely lake of that time has long been fringed with residences and gardens, and its waters been the scene of the regattas and other diversions of the leisure of the prosperous citizens.