A Romance of Canvas Town And Other Stories

What, then, was to be done? Filled with auriferous fancies and fables, it was yet impossible for all of these inexperienced, untravelled innocents to march at once for the diggings. Many had imagined that they could 'step over,' on arrival, to the golden fields, and commence the colonial industry of nugget gathering without loss of time.
To fathers of families--some of near kin to Mr. Micawber--to raw lads, to the feeble, the sick, the penniless--there were many of these last--it may easily be imagined how terrible was the first experience of the strange, inhospitable, and apparently savage land in which they found themselves.
Landed at Sandridge or on the wharves of Melbourne, in the midst of rude, jostling crowds, what misery must many of them have undergone! I fear me that the complacent colonists, thriving and experienced, fully aware of the fact that all property, whether of stock, land, stations, or houses, had become enormously enhanced in value, must have seemed to the forlorn emigrants hard and unfeeling. There was a savour of selfishness, surely, about the way in which the herd of helpless strangers--gentle and simple, good, bad, or indifferent--was permitted to go its own road, to sink or swim, with but little aid or counsel from their countrymen in Victoria.
The deadly wharf-struggle over, it became a vital question with the houseless horde where to go and how to shelter themselves. There, indeed, was the rub! Melbourne, as before stated, was crammed full. They could not camp in the streets. They were unprepared for the bush. They knew not which way to turn. Whether, in some semi-official way, directed to locate themselves upon the site, long famous and memorable, or, whether as being within reach of the Yarra, of the town, and apparently unoccupied, and unowned, the bright idea of "pegging out" struck some smart pilgrim, and the rest followed suit, cannot be known. But almost in a night Canvas Town arose, and became a localised, tangible fact.