He lay down famishing and weary on the top of the
hill near Flagstaff, and surveyed the city, the bay, and the
shipping. He had hoped by this time to have been ready to take a
passage in one of those ships to Liverpool, and to return home a
lucky digger. But he had only eighteen pence, so he said, "I am
afraid, Bez, you will never see Manchester again."
There was at that time a small frame building at the west end of
Flinders Street, with a hill behind it, on which goats were browsing;
the railway viaduct runs now over the exact spot. Many parties of
hopeful diggers from England and California had slept there on the
floor the night before they started for Ballarat, Mount Alexander, or
Bendigo. We called it a house of refuge, and Bez now looked for
refuge in it. There he met Dan and Moran, who had both found
employment in the city, and they fed the hungry Bez. Dan was
labouring at his trade in the building business, and he set Bez to
work roofing houses with corrugated iron. They soon earned more
money than they had ever earned by digging for gold, but on Saturday
nights and Sundays they took their pleasure in the old style, and so
they went to the dogs. I don't know how Dan's life ended (his real
name was Donald Fraser), but Bez died suddenly in the bar of a
public-house, and he was honoured with an inquest and a short
paragraph in the papers.
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