Every little newspaper and all the big ones, from one end of the colony to the other, were full of it.The robbery of a bank in broad daylight, almost in the middle of the day, close to a police station, and with people going up and down the streets, seemed too out-and-out cheeky to be believed.What was the country coming to? `It was the fault of the gold that unsettled young fellows' minds,' some said, `and took them away from honest industry.' Our minds had been unsettled long before the gold, worse luck.Some shouted for more police protection;some for vigilance committees; all bush-rangers and horse-thieves to be strung up to the next tree.The whole countryside was in an uproar, except the people at the diggings, who had most of them been in other places, and knew that, compared with them, Australia was one of the safest countries any man could live or travel in.A good deal of fun was made out of our locking up the constable in his own cell.I believe he got blown up, too, and nearly dismissed by his inspector for not having his revolver on him and ready for use.But young men that were any good were hard to get for the police just then, and his fault was passed over.
It's a great wonder to me more banks were not robbed when you think of it.
A couple of young fellows are sent to a country place;there's no decent buildings, or anything reasonable for them to live in, and they're expected to take care of four or five thousand pounds and a lot of gold, as if it was so many bags of potatoes.
If there's police, they're half their time away.The young fellows can't be all their time in the house, and two or three determined men, whether they're bush-rangers or not, that like to black their faces, and walk in at any time that they're not expected, can sack the whole thing, and no trouble to them.I call it putting temptation in people's way, and some of the blame ought to go on the right shoulders.As I said before, the little affair made a great stir, and all the police in the country were round Ballabri for a bit, tracking and tracking till all hours, night and day; but they couldn't find out what had become of the wheel-marks, nor where our horse tracks led to.The man that owned the express waggon drove it into a scrubby bit of country and left it there; he knew too much to take it home.Then he brought away the wheels one by one on horseback, and carted the body in a long time after with a load of wool, just before a heavy rain set in and washed out every track as clean as a whistle.
Nothing in that year could keep people's thoughts long away from the diggings, which was just as well for us.Everything but the gold was forgotten after a week.If the harbour had dried up or Sydney town been buried by an earthquake, nobody would have bothered themselves about such trifles so long as the gold kept turning up hand over hand the way it did.
There seemed no end to it.New diggings jumped up every day, and now another big rush broke out in Port Phillip that sent every one wilder than ever.
Starlight and us two often used to have a quiet talk about Melbourne.
We all liked that side of the country; there seemed an easier chance of getting straight away from there than any part of New South Wales, where so many people knew us and everybody was on the look-out.
All kinds of things passed through our minds, but the notion we liked best was taking one of the gold ships bodily and sailing her away to a foreign port, where her name could be changed, and she never heard of again, if all went well.That would be a big touch and no mistake.
Starlight, who had been at sea, and was always ready for anything out of the way and uncommon, the more dangerous the better, thought it might be done without any great risk or bother.
`A ship in harbour,' he said, `is something like the Ballabri bank.
No one expects anything to happen in harbour, consequently there's no watch kept or any look-out that's worth much.Any sudden dash with a few good men and she'd be off and out to sea before any one could say "knife".'
Father didn't like this kind of talk.He was quite satisfied where we were.
We were safe there, he said; and, as long as we kept our heads, no one need ever be the wiser how it was we always seemed to go through the ground and no one could follow us up.
What did we fret after? Hadn't we everything we wanted in the world --plenty of good grub, the best of liquor, and the pick of the countryside for horses, besides living among our own friends and in the country we were born in, and that had the best right to keep us.
If we once got among strangers and in another colony we should be `given away'
by some one or other, and be sure to come to grief in the long run.
Well, we couldn't go and cut out this ship all at once, but Jim and Ididn't leave go of the notion, and we had many a yarn with Starlight about it when we were by ourselves.
What made us more set upon clearing out of the country was that we were getting a good bit of money together, and of course we hadn't much chance of spending it.Every place where we'd been seen was that well watched there was no getting nigh it, and every now and then a strong mob of police, ordered down by telegraph, would muster at some particular spot where they thought there was a chance of surrounding us.
However, that dodge wouldn't work.They couldn't surround the Hollow.
It was too big, and the gullies between the rocks too deep.You could see across a place sometimes that you had to ride miles round to get over.
Besides, no one knew there was such a place, leastways that we were there, any more than if we had been in New Zealand.