Mr GUTHRIDGE wrote in The Courier last Wednesday that he was surprised there was a connection between author Charles Dickens and Ballarat, and wondered whether many other community members knew of it.
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At the risk of causing disappointment to some, Dickens' only connection to Ballarat is that one of his children, Alfred ( nicknamed ''Pickles'') had a speaking circuit talking about his father's life and spoke at a venue in Ballarat. Dickens himself never came to Australia ... he was mostly too ill from injuries suffered in a train accident to travel much out of England.
Dickens had a very large family and encouraged ( or sent) two of his sons to Australia.
The other son was Edward (nicknamed ''Plorn''). This was pretty well the custom in those days ... send sons to make their own way in the new lands.
In this instance, the two sons had a very difficult time, never saw their father again, encountered great poverty and always lived in their father's shadow even though Plorn became a member of the NSW Parliament.
Dickens had a huge following as a writer and enjoyed the company of many people who had returned from Australia. One such person was Caroline Chisholm.
These people and the sons wrote often to their father, who was skilled enough to take the information obtained and use it in some of his stories. (Think Great Expectations and David Copperfield.)
I have little doubt that Ballarat would have been mentioned to his father by Pickles after the time of Eureka and Charles, the storyteller, simply introduced it retrospectively.
Pickles was a grazier at Hamilton for a time, so would have heard of Eureka only a few decades earlier.