Edward Snell, writer and illustrator’s point of view for life on the gold fields.
By Amy Colton
A precious country for robbery and murder Snell was struck early by the lawless disorder of the Victorian gold fields. Surrounded by the demand of thousands of diggers turning the landscape upside down in the search for gold, random gunfire, murder and theft was usual. "This is a precious country for robbery and murder. I wish I had a revolver, its hardly safe to be about even in day time without firearms, and my rifle is rather bulky to me and every body here seems to be provided in that way and about 1500 shots are fired in the Golden Gully every night." "Bob brought down another load at night with the intelligence that Tom had been out at 12 0'clock on Sunday night robbing another person's hole. If he cuts these sort of adventures I hope he'll be caught at it and then his life won't be worth two pence at the diggings."
The disrespectful observations of Snell’s diaries provide an insight in the daily life of not only Snell, a digger also searching for his fortune, but of life on the chaotic gold fields. With the lack of an adequate police presence, the Bendigo diggings were fair game for every desperate and questionable character among the tens of thousands that had flocked there. On many occasions however, Snell is able to unearth beauty in the midst the clamour of anarchy and bedlam. "The Diggins look very pretty at night, thousands of fires in all directions, the flash of a gun or pistol every few seconds, two or more rows always going on, and every here and there the noise of a fiddle playing Nancy Dawson, Jack’s the Lad…make the place quite lively."