Amos Cheale, a mining manager formerly of Maldon and later overseeing the Silver Mines Company at St Arnaud, was ambushed and shot in the scrub near the mine in broad daylight. His killer, Andrew Vair (also reported as Vere), a Scottish miner aged around 34, had harboured a grudge rooted in a dispute over mining shares at the Friburg reef, which Vair himself had discovered. He stepped out of the scrub, levelled a double-barrelled pistol at Cheale, and fired both barrels at close range. Cheale died shortly after.
Vair fled into the scrub and was hunted across the colony before his arrest. He was tried, convicted, and hanged at Ararat. Before his execution, he wrote a final letter to his mother and a poem:-
Not in my innocence I trust, I bow before Thee in the dust, And through my Saviour’s blood alone, I look for mercy at Thy throne. What is life? ’tis all a vapor, Soon it vanishes away; Life is like a dying taper – Oh, my soul, why wish to stay? Why not spread thy wings and fly Straight to yonder world of joy? I come, I come, at Thy command, I give my spirit to Thy hand. Stretch forth Thine everlasting arms, And shield me in the last alarms. The hour of my departure’s come – I hear the voice that calls me home. Now, O my God, let trouble cease. Now let Thy servant die in peace.
