October 19 Saturday – Sam hated the town tours he was forced to take everywhere. In Stawell, Australia he took another tour, but this one over countryside with Mayor Menzies and Harry Foster, to Great Western Vineyards, some eight miles from Stawell. Mr. and Mrs. Hans Irvine owned the winery. His notebook entry claims he met the richest woman in Australia in Stawell [NB 34 TS 17].

Stawell is in the gold-mining country. In the bank-safe was half a peck of surface-gold — gold dust, grain gold; rich; pure in fact, and pleasant to sift through one’s fingers; and it would be pleasanter if it would stick. And there were a couple of gold bricks, very heavy to handle, and worth $7,500 a piece. They were from a very valuable quartz mine; a lady owns two-thirds of it; she has an income of $75,000 a month from it, and is able to keep house.

The Stawell region is not productive of gold only; it has great vineyards, and produces exceptionally fine wines. One of these vineyards — the Great Western, owned by Mr. Irving — is regarded as a model. Its product has reputation abroad. It yields a choice champagne and a fine claret…the champagne is kept in a maze of passages under ground, cut in the rock….In those vaults I saw 120,000 bottles of champagne [FE Ch. XXIII 227-8].

The Clemenses left Stawell on the afternoon train and arrived in Ballarat (40,000 population) at 7 p.m., where the Ballarat Pioneers of California and Pioneers of Ballarat had planned a welcome the day before. After the welcome the family took rooms at Craig’s Hotel in Ballarat. Sam received a telegram from Carlyle G. Smythe that he was bringing a “portmanteau of letters for Mrs. Clemens,” their first news from home since they left North America in mid-August [Shillingsburg: “Down Under” 17; At Home 99].