28/ 1/1870
... part of the KellyGang story
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JOTTINGS ABOUT GOBUR BY"OUR NEPHEW"
Sworn to no party, an I of no sect am I;
I can't be silent, and I will not lie."
Dear Uncle - You have repeatedly requested me to keep up that correspondence which my late lamented father enjoyed for such a number of years, but then, my "dad' was a man of sound sense and good ideas, which commodity "unfortunately" his son has not inherited. I promised on your last visit to Gobur to commence to correspond, but as I am not an "AEgles", or a "Peripatetic Philosopher," but only a poor letter writer, you must not expect anything scholarly or classic, for if you do, you will be sadly disappointed.
I may mention that in making my debut in the columns of your valuable journal, it is my intention to be "impartial, but not neutral' in my jottings of every day life. I may often say things that are not always palatable to my friends, but should I do so, I must; ask –
"Have they not love enough to bear with me
When that rash humorous which my mother gave me
Makes me forgetful ?"
Always open to conviction, and thankful for information, I now take this opportunity to ask my friend and the "gentle public" to overlook the errors of my orthography and syntax. Having led, a rural life, for the last 12 years, where Mechanics' institutes and Public Libraries are unknown, I am like Robinson Crusoe, having almost forgotten what little I did known. But, "to live and flourish at Gobur, or not to live and flourish a “Cobur," that" is the questions. Whether there is more “savey" in the man of business who clears out now, or the man of business who stays and chances the future of Gobur, that, is, in a commercial point of view ?
At the present the we are undergoing a crisis, both in the mining and commercial sense of the term, in point of fact, we are in a happy state of transition from dulness of trade to no trade at all. I say 'we,’ but-in using the first person plural, I claim the honor of being a Godfrey's Creckite, Goburite, and ‘Pioneerite,' yet, Uncle, do not start or jump out of your editorial chair, on hearing 'that you have a nephew who is one of the "Pioneers of Godfrey's Creek." Still there are no signs or wonders in the heavens even at this astonishing fact. But I am wandering, but not the Wandering Jew. Inhabitants of Gobur, keep up your spirits by letting some down-No-by the prospect of a bright future. ''Bush," says one reader. That's bad taste.
Hear my explanation, and say ''bosh". afterwards. Look at the gold returns from our town last week. The Golden Gate with its 25 and 10.oz.nuggets, with a dividend of £70 per man for a week. The Never Can Tell, with a washing for the week of 120 oz, and no machinery erected, although on the ground. Boys finding 7 oz nuggets on the surface when playing £3 10s cash refused for Working Miners' paid up, with machinery broken. Sons of Freedom looking splendid, 20 extra men put on to work this week. The Victory, a victory by its splendid yield. The Alliance down 30, feet with their new shaft, having been driven out of their old one by such an amount of foul air that is seldom met with. For three weeks every imaginable contrivance was, used, to clear the shaft of the noxious gases, but, without success. This company deserves every praise for the indomitable pluck they have displayed in sticking to their ground. This is the third shaft that has been sunk, slabbed, and centred to an average depth of 120 feet, and than abandoned.
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6-feb-12
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