Explore "All That Swagger" by Miles Franklin on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Gold! Gold!
Delirium set in and prevailed. From Van Diemen's Land to Moreton Bay the population skedaddled. Free workers set off as one man. Others absconded. Sailors deserted. Ships lay empty in port. Squatters, professional men, clerks, ploughmen, shepherds, stockmen--masters and men alike--forsook employment and tamily. The wise and the silly, the strong and the weak, the old and the young, the comfortably placed and the destitute, the good and the bad, the rough and the gentle scurried in the direction of Bathurst where it was rumoured that gold, man's most permanent god, his ablest and least changeable friend, was to be picked up from the surface of the earth.