. Every night horses were stolen, tents broken into, and
"holes" plundered of gold by the "night fossickers"--miscreants who
watched for the richest "holes" during the day, marked them, and
plundered them at night. In October 1852 at a place called Moonlight
Flat (near Forest Creek), these desperadoes had become so numerous and
shameless, and their outrages so frequent, that the miners rose _en
masse_ against them. A public meeting was convened; blue-shirted diggers
made stirring appeals to their auditory; a deputation was appointed to
proceed instantly to Melbourne to remonstrate with the Government, and
to implore it to adopt energetic measures for extirpating the "hordes of
ruffians" that infested their neighbourhood, and the persons of many of
whom were well known there.

THE BUSHRANGERS

+Source.+--The Golden Colony (G.H. Wathen, 1855), pp. 138, 143-150

The combination of convictism in Tasmania and gold in Victoria and
New South Wales produced bushranging on a large scale. Convicts now
had a chance of living well if they escaped, and many took
advantage of the opportunity.

If the Australian roads in winter may be well likened to those English
roads of 200 years ago, out of which the King's Coach had to be dug by
the rustics, so may the Australian Bushranger be regarded as the
legitimate representative of the traditionary highwayman who levied toll
at Highgate, or stopped the post-boy and captured the mailbags in Epping
Forest. The real, living bushranger is, however, more of a ruffian and
less of a hero than our ideal highwayman; for time, like distance,
softens down the harsh and the coarse, and gives dignity to the ignoble.

Never, perhaps, did a country offer so tempting a field to the public
robber as Victoria did during the first year or two after the gold
discovery. The interior was wild and uninhabited, abounding with lonely
forests. Travellers were numerous, and mostly carried money or gold; for
none were poor. The roadside public-houses were daily the scenes of
drunken revelry. The police were few and untrained; and the mixed and
scattered population at the several diggings offered a ready asylum in
case of pursuit. Add to all this that, separated from Victoria by a mere
strait, was the depot for the most accomplished villains of Great
Britain, and it needed no prophet to foresee that the roads of the new
gold country would very soon be swarming with thieves and desperadoe