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| A FORTY-NINER PANNING FOR GOLD. |
‘I came here a free man, under Hugh Glass.’
Those are the distant words of my great, great
grandfather, Patrick Bell who arrived in Melbourne after a tragic sea voyage from Ireland.
Unlike many people coming to this
country at the time, he was not a convict but a free settler. He had arrived here
under what was called the assisted migration scheme. All you had to do was work
off your passage for seven years for an Australian sponsor. In Patrick’s case,
that sponsor was Hugh Glass.
Hugh was an interesting character. He had arrived from Ireland as a
poor immigrant in 1840. By the time Patrick stepped ashore, Hugh was one of the largest
landowners and best political manipulators in Australia. As a monument to his wealth, Hugh built
Flemington House in Melbourne in the 1850's for 60,000 pounds (now about ten million dollars).
It boasted its own artificial lake, stocked with white swans imported from Ireland. Sadly, he died later, aged only
fifty-five and flat broke.
Patrick had left Ireland with his pregnant wife and one
child. Just days out from arriving in
Australia his wife went into labor and had a baby boy. The celebration was
short lived. Patrick’s wife died from dysentery soon afterwards.
So Patrick was now a widower with two children in a strange
land working for Hugh Glass. He wasn’t alone for long. He soon met an Irish servant girl named
Anastasia Grace, got her pregnant and married her. But Patrick couldn’t settle
and when he heard of the gold rush in California in 1848, he deserted his expanding family and headed to California. California here I come.
Patrick had an interesting time in California. One night
in a saloon, he was playing cards when he noticed that one of the players was
cheating. In true Wild West style, he drew his pistol and shot the man in the
leg. Violence and death were common on the goldfield. So common, that one in
five miners would die from violence, disease and accidents within six months of
arrival.
He didn’t get rich but I guess he didn’t die there. He
returned to Melbourne and reunited with his wife and family. It didn’t end well
as you would have wanted it to. Once, in a drunken rage, he tried to kill
Anastasia. The judge ordered him to stay away from Anastasia permanently. Not long after that, he died from the effects
of alcoholism and was buried in an unmarked grave. Patrick was aged only
thirty-eight.
His grave is next to the Elvis Presley Memorial; a
fitting place to rest for a man who tried to make the big time in America.
