Charlie watched the activity, her hands clasped together, hanging on every word, and when Eliza asked if the child would care to be part of the wedding party, Charlie burst into tears.
‘I’ve never been to a wedding,’ she said between gulps. ‘I don’t have nothing to wear.’
‘Anything to wear,’ Eliza corrected and folded Charlie in her arms. ‘You shall have a new dress, the prettiest Mrs Burrell can make for you.’
Netty’s eyes widened but she bit back whatever retort she was going to make when Eliza added hurriedly, ‘At my cost. After all, when the legalities are sorted, thanks to my brother, I am now a shareholder in one of the richest mines on this goldfield.’
She left the shop, mind racing with arrangements that had to be made, but first someone important had to be told.
She climbed the hill to the cemetery and stood looking down at Will’s grave. The monumental mason had yet to deliver the headstone but the local blacksmith had erected a neat wrought iron fence.
‘I hope you approve, Will’ she said. ‘I know he was your friend …’ And you should be here to stand beside him, she thought, tears catching at the back of her throat.
‘Seems we always have to meet over Will’s grave.’
Eliza looked up. A woman in a dark cloak clutching a bunch of golden wattle stood on the far side of the grave.
‘Sissy!’ Eliza scrambled to her feet. ‘I didn’t expect to see you back here.’
‘After you visited, I knew I had to come and say goodbye.’
Eliza moved aside and let the woman lay the wattle at the base the wooden cross. Eliza found the other woman’s hand and they stood with fingers entwined in silence for a long few moments before Sissy eased back the hood of her cloak. Without the paint and the trappings of her trade, her deterioration was apparent, her face grey and gaunt and her eyes sunken.
‘I’ve come back to die,’ Sissy said, nodding as if in agreement with something Eliza had said. ‘It’s right.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘Lil found a little cottage for me, out of the way so I won’t be a bother to the town. The girls will see to everything but I want to be buried here, beside him.’ She started to cough, pressing a handkerchief, already bright with blood, to her lips. Eliza slid an arm around her shoulders and eased her onto the slab of a nearby grave and the two women sat side by side.
‘You need to be somewhere warm, not out here in the cold.’
Sissy shook her head ‘It won’t make any difference to me now, but there’s one last thing I must do. I have to make my peace with you, Miss Penrose.’
‘Me?’
Sissy nodded. ‘It’s the other reason I’ve come back. I thought long and hard about what you said when you came to see me and I haven’t told you the whole truth about what happened that night.’ She held up a hand before Eliza could respond. ‘Let me say my bit and then you can speak.’ The breath rattled in her chest and she swallowed. ‘Will was in a right state … said Cowper was stealing the gold from Shenandoah and he had to find proof.’ She coughed again. ‘I know how to open locks so I went with him to the mine office. We got into the office but I couldn’t open the safe. He was cross. I called him a few names and we argued. I—I was that vexed with him that I ran out into the night but he followed me … He tripped and lost his footing just by the head of the tailings. He didn’t even have a chance to cry out as the rocks gave way. He couldn’t hold on and he fell. I swear it was an accident, Miss Penrose.’ Tears shone in her eyes. ‘I loved him. I’d never have hurt him. Can you ever forgive me?’ Sissy reached for Eliza’s hand, her fingers tightening on hers.
Eliza stared at her brother’s grave, not knowing how she should feel. Relieved that it really had been an accident? Anger that this woman had caused her brother to fall and not come forward?
After all the weeks of wondering, grieving, seething, she felt nothing, just a deep emptiness. It no longer mattered how Will had died—nothing could touch him now—but this dying woman needed her forgiveness.
‘There is nothing to forgive,’ Eliza said. ‘It was an accident. Will should have known better than to go so close to the tailings.’ She paused. ‘I think he loved you very much.’
‘I like to think he did. I loved him and that was enough,’ Sissy whispered. ‘I’m going to see him soon, I know he’ll be waiting for me.’
Eliza swallowed her own tears. ‘Tell him—tell him I came. Tell him I miss him … Tell him I am to marry Alec McLeod and that I am happy.’
Thirty-Five
14 December 1873
Melbourne, Victoria
The large crowd filling the auditorium of the Melbourne Athenaeum fanned themselves as the heat in the space rose with the noise. In the wings of the theatre, Alec had gone ashen, his face sheened with sweat.
‘I can’t do this,’ he said.
Eliza straightened his cravat. ‘You can. You know everything there is to know about the boiler.’
‘Aye, but I’m not a salesman.’
‘And that’s why you’ll do well.’ Eliza turned to Ian. ‘Am I not right?’
Ian nodded.
A man’s voice tinged with an American accent reached them from backstage. ‘We are friends. Let us through, my good man.’
Alec and Eliza exchanged a puzzled look as a fashionably dressed couple picked their way over the stage ropes toward them. He wore a bright gold and green brocade waistcoat, and the elegant gown of the tall woman beside him betrayed the roundness of a woman carrying an advanced pregnancy. A lad of about twelve, as fair as both his parents were dark, trailed behind them.
The gentleman shifted the brass-handled cane he carried to his left hand and held out his right to Eliza. ‘Miss Penrose?’
Eliza glanced at Alec as she took the man’s hand. ‘Eliza McLeod,’ she said. ‘William Penrose was my brother.’
‘Please accept our deepest condolences,’ the woman said. ‘He was a good friend to my husband and me. We didn’t get Netty’s letter until we reached San Francisco, so it came late. Ill news to receive when we were so far away.’
Eliza looked from one to the other, realisation dawning on her. ‘You are the Hunts,’ she said, resisting an urge to throw her arms around them.
The man smiled. ‘Caleb Hunt. My wife, Adelaide, and our son Daniel.’
‘You’re here! You’re home.’ Eliza took a breath. ‘Excuse me, it is just so wonderful to finally meet you. Are you back to stay?’
‘We are,’ Caleb Hunt replied. ‘We’ve been travelling a long time. Pretty much seen the world but—’ he glanced at his wife, ‘—Australia is home and we wanted our child born here. We’ve purchased a property up near Mansfield and young Danny is going to start school at Melbourne Grammar after Christmas. But we will have plenty of time to discuss our plans. You will dine with us tonight at the Menzies.?’ Caleb Hunt turned to Alec. ‘You must be McLeod.’
Alec shook the man’s hand and ran a finger around his high, tight collar. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, Hunt, but you have caught us at a bad time.’
‘Ah yes, that is why we have come,’ Adelaide Hunt said. ‘We only docked yesterday and I read it in the paper this morning. Caleb and I could not believe we had the opportunity to meet you today. We are, of course, coming to visit everyone at Maiden’s Creek and I believe you are now the manager of Maiden’s Creek Mine, Mr McLeod.’
Alec glanced at Eliza. ‘And I have been managing the Shenandoah until such time as you arrived and a decision made about its future.’
Caleb Hunt glanced at his wife. ‘Of course, but all of that can wait. We want to know all about Will’s wonderful invention.’
He nodded toward the stage. ‘I think you’d better get going. The crowd is becoming restless. Who’d have thought a boiler would excite such interest?’
‘Not just any boiler,’ Eliza said. ‘This one will revolutionise all industry, not just mining.’
‘Really? Do you think we should invest in it, Adelaide?’ Caleb Hu
nt turned to his wife.
‘Let’s hear what Mr McLeod has to say first,’ Adelaide replied.
Eliza looked up at her husband. ‘Ready?’
Alec nodded and took her hand. He squeezed it tightly as he managed a smile. ‘Ready.’
Side by side, they walked onto the stage in front of the drawn curtain. The restless crowd grew silent as Alec cleared his throat.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance today. My wife and I are delighted to see such an interest in the Penrose boiler.’
On cue, the curtain was raised to reveal the neat prototype of the boiler that they had fought so hard to make real. With the confidence of someone who truly knew his subject, Alec spoke of the boiler’s virtues, demonstrating its capabilities as Eliza stood to the side.
Her brother had written to her: I feel confident in saying we can make a good life for ourselves here …
‘Thank you, Will,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for bringing us together and for making this happen. We will make a good life here.’
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading The Goldminer’s Sister, which, like The Postmistress, is set in the fictional town of Maiden’s Creek.
Maiden’s Creek is based on the town of Walhalla in Gippsland, Victoria, which in its heyday was one of the most successful gold mines in Australia. The Maiden’s Creek Mine is loosely based on the Long Tunnel Mine, which tourists can still visit today. The goldfield spread well out from Walhalla and there were many satellite settlements like the fictional Pretty Sally, now lost to the bush. If you are feeling intrepid you can still find a water wheel in a deep gully that once belonged to the Morning Star Mine. But the countryside is a warren of abandoned gold mines and snakes, so watch your step.
I took the inspiration for the mine collapse from the terrible Creswick Mine Disaster, one of Australia’s worst mining tragedies. In December 1882, a mine shaft at the Australasian No. 2 Mine flooded. It took over three days to break through to the trapped miners. They were too late. Twenty-two miners died.
One minor character worthy of her own story is the woman I named Marcelline Guichard. She is based on Pauline Bonfond, who died in Blackwood in 1867. Pauline is described in a contemporary newspaper report:
Madame Pauline Bonfond, a French woman, made an excellent living contracting to cut races for the diggers. She built the water races for sluicing gold around the hills on the opposite side of the gully from Golden Point, Blackwood. The story states that many a thievish miner carried the marks of her shovel to their grave, when they thought they could get the better of her.
Many Cornish tin and copper miners came to Australia in the nineteenth century, my husband’s ancestors among them. We have visited the mine at Geevor on the rugged north coast of Cornwall where they worked in appalling, cramped conditions. They really were a tough breed.
The danger of research is it becomes a rabbit warren down which the unsuspecting author can spend many interesting hours in researching matters that are just touched on in the text:
•The term ‘Mongolian Idiocy’ or Mongoloid, is, thankfully, the now obsolete term coined by Dr John Down in the early 1860s to describe what we now call Down syndrome. The descriptions persisted well into the 1960s but are thankfully long gone now!
•I mention briefly the work of Josephine Butler (1828–1906) one of the great social reformers and campaigners for the rights of women (particularly underage prostitutes) of the nineteenth century and commend anyone with an interest in this area to explore her achievements further.
•And the work of Frederick Rose, the founder of the Victorian College for the Deaf (the Victorian Deaf and Dumb Institution) as early as 1860 and the origin of Auslan (the Australian version of sign language). Rose was a well-educated deaf man who saw a desperate need to assist those people, described in the language of the day as ‘deaf mutes’. If you are interested in what happens to characters after you close the book … Ian goes to work for Mr Rose as a teacher (and marries Susan Mackie)!
•The Education Act 1872. In 1872 a new, government funded, secular, compulsory education system was introduced in Victoria under the control of the first Education Department. From the legislation itself, I gleaned the structure, pay and curriculum that the Maiden’s Creek School would have been forced to adopt under the guidance of its Board of Advice.
And finally an embarrassing disclaimer. I failed maths in Form 3 and I cannot, for the life of me, explain why Eliza informed me she was a mathematical whizz kid, but characters tend to take on a life of their own and if there are any glaring errors or inconsistencies in Eliza (or Alec’s) mathematical forays, the errors are mine, not theirs.
It was great fun writing The Goldminer’s Sister. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed reimagining our mining past!
Alison Stuart
Acknowledgements
I dedicated this book to my hero and husband of many, many years, David. As a mechanical engineer himself, he asked me to write a story with an engineer for a hero. I have to admit Alec provided me with some interesting challenges, but I hope I have succeeded in bringing him to life and making him a worthy match for my heroine, Eliza. David is my technical consultant, beta reader and sounding board, sharer of the highs and lows—I couldn’t imagine writing a book without him. Best of all we share a love of the Australian bush and the area around Walhalla, which we first visited as a newly engaged couple.
I would also like to acknowledge the wonderful guides at Sovereign Hill in Ballarat who, finding a willing subject, were delighted to spend time explaining the process of hard rock gold mining to me. It makes a difference to see the machinery in action from the boilers to the battery stampers. I also enjoyed visiting the goldfields schools and seeing the teachers in action. Living history is worth a thousand words!
Another essential element in my support crew is my wonderful writing group, the Saturday Ladies Bridge Club, who are always there to cheer, commiserate, make endless cups of tea (or ply me with alcohol), brainstorm and just be the best friends ever.
And finally, of course, I am enormously grateful to my team at Harlequin Mira (HarperCollins Australia): Jo Mackay, Nicola Robinson, Chrysoula and Kylie, Sarana and all the back room staff. Thank you for your faith in me!
ISBN: 9781489256492
TITLE: THE GOLDMINER’S SISTER
First Australian Publication 2020
Copyright © 2020 by Alison Stuart
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