This Golden Land

by Wood, Barbara

  Neal watched the unsettling display for a moment—the men seemed to have gone out of their minds—when his eye caught on something that made his blood suddenly run cold.

  On the boulders: stick figures painted in black pigment.

  "My God," he whispered. "This is a sacred site. Sir Reginald, you have to get these men out of here."

  Oliphant made a dismissive gesture.

  "If the local tribe gets wind of us—"

  "Then we'll buy this place from them. Give them whatever they want."

  "This is a sacred site, they won't sell it!" Neal looked around nervously. With Sir Reginald's men on their hands and knees, unaware, vulnerable, it would take but a swift, surprise attack and the whole lot would be wiped out.

  He looked back at the camp, a hundred feet away, and saw Fintan hurriedly unpacking Neal's tripod. Rorke was a very able assistant, Neal thought in strange detachment. He had learned when to assemble the photographic equipment, and he knew that this was going to be a historic moment to be captured. Neal also noted that Fintan wasn't interested in digging for gold.

  Neal turned in a slow circle, taking in the red plain, the few trees lining the creek bed, the boulders and hill. How was he going to persuade these gold hungry men to get out of here?

  And then: up above, on the crest of the hill, a silhouette against the sky.

  "Sir Reginald," Neal said softly.

  And in that moment, fat Billy Patton shot to his feet, hand in the air, shouting, "I found a nugget! I found a—" His voice was stilled by a spear shooting through his chest. He looked startled, and then fell over dead.

  Neal spun around. It was not the man on the hill who had thrown the spear. Now he saw them, five Aborigines, arms raised, spears in hand as they came running.

  Neal seized Oliphant by his shirt. "Get these men out of here!"

  Sir Reginald looked at the Aborigines. His color drained. "You know these people, Scott. Talk to them. Show them your tribal tattoo."

  "I don't know them!" Jallara's clan had encountered other groups, some friendly, some hostile, speaking different dialects. Neal knew from the rock paintings that these people were different from Jallara's tribe, they would speak another language. His tattoo might only get him killed.

  The natives were now between the white men and the camp, their unearthly cries rising to the sky. Their spears flew and landed with deadly accuracy. Andy Mason, the horse wrangler, clasped one in his stomach as if to pull it out, before he fell over dead. The other men scrambled for the safety of the boulders—the sacred site of their attackers.

  "No!" Neal shouted as the natives closed in on the trapped men. He turned to Oliphant. "Do something!"

  "I. . . I don't know—"

  "The Khyber Pass! The ambush! You managed to get them all out. How did you do it?"

  "Well, you see, I never—"

  Neal released him with a shove. "You made it up. You made it all up!"

  The ruddy complexion paled. "I'm afraid you've found me out. I never was at the Khyber Pass."

  "You're a fraud! That's why you left me for dead! You knew I had found out your dirty little secret. Have you been anywhere in the world?"

  Sir Reginald was speechless with fear. He blinked in the direction of the Aborigines, where more had suddenly materialized, all running toward his men with spears.

  Neal spun around, thinking of the rifles back at the camp. More were dead now—Colonel Enfield, John Allen—their cries filling the morning air.

  As he started toward the camp, Sir Reginald grabbed his arm and said, "I will pay you a thousand pounds to get me to Perth."

  Pulling the hand from his arm, Neal ran back to the camp.

  Sir Reginald made a dash to where the horses were tied up, seized a chestnut mare and, hauling himself up, riding bareback, galloped off. Neal turned and watched in horror as a boomerang went spinning through the air, catching the Englishman on the neck to send him toppling from his horse. A mob of Aborigines was immediately upon him. Sir Reginald's screams rose to the sky as clubs rained down on him.

  Neal was frantic. More Aborigines had appeared. There were perhaps fifty now. Where were they coming from? It was going to be a slaughter. He knew that fire wouldn't scare them off, and rifles wouldn't be enough. And then he thought: Explosions.

  He searched for young Rorke and found him crouched behind a wagon, firing his rifle, but shaking so badly that he missed his marks.

  "Fintan!" Neal called, and the young man came running, his face the color of clay.

  "We'll drive them off with chemical explosions. Help me get the wagon rolling."

  "But Mr. Scott, the plates, all the pictures you've taken."

  There was no time to empty the wagon. As the attack continued at the boulders, with a few of the white men firing pistols, killing Aborigines, Neal and Fintan pushed the wagon loaded with photographic supplies along the creek until it rolled on its own. As it neared the Aborigines, Neal lifted a fire brand from the campfire and threw it onto the crates. It took but seconds. Huge fireballs erupted. The deafening chemical explosions spewed dense black clouds into the air, and sent the Aborigines scattering in all directions. As the nearby trees burst into flame, Fintan stared in horror, thinking of the shattered glass plates—the astounding rock formations, the lone tree, the rainbow—all gone.

  The survivors came running back to the camp, bleeding and hurt. Seven lay dead with spears in their chests.

  "Brilliant!" Professor Williams said to Neal. Blood trickled down his forehead. "Where is Sir Reginald?" And then he saw the broken body next to the horse.

  Neal scanned the area. The natives had vanished. But he knew it wasn't over. He had to muster the men, get them and the horses away from here. He squinted through the smoke at the boulders. Was there time to bury the dead?

  Another man came staggering out of the smoke just then with a dazed grin on his face. Despite a blood stain on his shirt that was spreading, he waved his fist, showing off the large gold nugget he had found. "There's more! Just lying on the ground to be picked up."

  As the men ran back to the site of the slaughter, Neal tried to stop them. "Wait! The explosions aren't over! Those trees are on fire. There are more chemicals to be ignited."

  But the greed for gold was too much. The men rushed in. Neal watched as the trees caught fire, branches dripping with flame, about to drop on the remaining unexploded crates.

  While the men scrambled on their knees in the red earth.

  He hesitated for only a second, then plunged through the smoke, reaching for arms and legs. Fintan followed, delivering himself into the intense heat and black cloud. A large mulga bush burst into flame. It shot sparks at the wagon, igniting the last of the chemicals—a lethal formula of highly toxic potassium cyanide that was used as a fixing agent in photography.

  It exploded in fire and poisonous gas, engulfing Neal and Fintan, their cries rising to the smoke-filled sky.

  38

  T

  HERE! HOW DOES IT LOOK?"

  As Hannah stepped back to admire her handiwork, she dabbed her forehead with a handkerchief. It seemed strange to be decorating a Christmas tree on such a hot day.

  "The candles will look lovely," Alice said, "once they are all lit."

  Hannah had moved back into town not only because the Australia Hotel was closed, but also because, during her absence, a new doctor had arrived in the district and was receiving calls from people who had once been Hannah's patients. So she had chosen a small two-story house in a newer part of Adelaide, away from where the established doctors had their offices, and had created a private residence upstairs, with the ground floor made into an office, waiting room, and small laboratory and dispensary.

  She had been here for four weeks, with her brass shingle hanging on a post by the sidewalk—Miss Hannah Conroy, Health Practitioner Trained in London, Specializing in Women & Children & Midwifery—but she had yet to attract a single patient. Hannah was not discouraged. She had placed ads in newspa
pers, had put up notices all around town, and had even gone around to establishments, as "Dr." Gladstone the barber-dentist had done, handing out her calling card and informing local merchants of her new practice. She knew that people just needed to time adjust to a new specialty, and to accept her.

  Just as she knew that Neal would be knocking at her door any day now.

  Six weeks ago she had said farewell to Jamie O'Brien on the old logging road. He was on his way to California, and she would cherish his memory forever. Hannah had left a letter at the post office, should Neal go there after discovering that the Australia Hotel was closed. She had also posted a notice for him on Mr. Day's public message board. He had said he would be back by Christmas, which was just two days away.

  "I have to get back to the Elysium and rehearse for tonight's Christmas show. You will be there?" Alice was drawing bigger crowds than ever, now that she had toured the colonies and drawn rave reviews.

  "I wouldn't miss it," Hannah said, giving her exuberant friend a hug. "Thanks for the help with the tree."

  She saw Alice to the door, and as she closed it, spotted the newspaper her housekeeper had purchased during the morning shopping, folded neatly on the entry table.

  Hannah picked it up and opened it out. The front page headline read: OLIPHANT EXPEDITION PERISHES IN DESERT. Underneath, the report began: There are No Survivors of the Noble but ill-fated Expedition.

  The floor tilted. Hannah reached for the wall to steady herself. She suddenly couldn't breathe.

  Services were held at St. George's Church in Perth with Lieutenant Governor McNair delivering the eulogy for the thirty-two Brave Men who departed from Adelaide nine months ago under the leadership of Sir Reginald. . .

  It was a moment before Hannah realized she was hearing a knock at the front door. Mrs. Sparrow, the housekeeper, appeared from the back, in her tidy dress and white apron, and went to answer it.

  A woman with two children stood on the threshold. Behind her, in the street, the carriage of a wealthy family waited at the curb. "Is this the house of the lady practitioner?" the woman asked.

  Mrs. Sparrow stepped aside and the visitor came in. When Mrs. Sparrow introduced Hannah as the practitioner, the woman said, "Timothy can't stop coughing and Lucy has an awful rash." The finely dressed woman lowered her voice and, unaware of Miss Conroy's unusual paleness, said, "And I have a private problem myself. To tell the truth, it's nice to have a lady to go to about these things. Doctors don't understand, do they?"

  MELBOURNE

  NOVEMBER 1852

  39

  S

  HE WAS HERE AGAIN, THE INTRIGUING YOUNG WOMAN WHO had caught his eye.

  Sir Marcus had finally learned her name, Miss Hannah Conroy, and as he conferred with Dr. Soames, he watched the young lady's progress across the hospital lobby and up the stairs to the floor above. He was intensely curious about her.

  She had been here before, each time looking very much out of place. After all, a hospital was, by definition, an institution for the destitute—for people who could neither afford to pay a doctor to come to their home nor to pay someone to take care of them. As a result, visitors to Melbourne's Victoria Hospital were generally of the lower class, usually ragged, a few even drunk and rowdy. Which was what made the attractive young lady—always well dressed with gloves and a bonnet, and a dainty parasol hooked over her arm, clearly a woman of breeding and gentility—appear so out of place. Surely she was not here to visit a family member. Sir Marcus Iverson, distinguished director of the hospital with a private practice of his own in the better part of town, could only surmise that the young lady in the pale yellow gown and looking not a bit wilted in the November heat, was here out of Christian charity.

  But she carried a leather satchel, which intrigued him all the more.

  As she reached the top of the stairs, Hannah paused to press a handkerchief to her throat. Summer seemed to have arrived before its time. Or perhaps the perspiration was due to her excitement at having found her dream home in the country at last.

  Hannah currently had a residence off busy Collins Street, living upstairs with an office downstairs, where patients visited five mornings a week. She had brought Mrs. Sparrow, her housekeeper in Adelaide, with her, and had hired two maids. Now she was thinking of hiring an assistant to help her with patients, as she had once assisted Dr. Davenport. From the moment Hannah had decided, that miraculous dawn at Coober Pedy, that she would refer to herself as a health practitioner, her road had taken an upward turn. Not only were women crowding into her waiting room, they were inviting her into a popular social circle as well. Many of her patients were wealthy, many had become her friends.

  But many were also poor, as Hannah did not discriminate, and Nellie Turner was one such, presenting herself at Hannah's office a month ago, asking Hannah to be her midwife when the time came. But when Hannah returned home this morning from a visit to patients in the countryside, she had been told that Nellie had gone into premature labor and had been taken by friends to Victoria Hospital.

  That was why she was here today, to make sure Nellie was all right after giving birth. And as she made her way down the rows of patient beds in the female ward, Hannah thought of the beautiful property she had encountered on the road to Bendigo—a clover farm that also ran a few sheep and cattle, with a handsome homestead that compared with Seven Oaks. Hannah had stopped her carriage and looked out over the paddocks and green fields and had known at once she must have it. The name of the farm, carved in wood over the gate, was Brookdale, and a "For Sale" sign was tacked to a pole. From a neighbor Hannah had learned that the owner's name was Charlie Swanswick and that he was eager to sell. The only problem was, Charlie was up in the goldfields, with thousands of other men, and no way to find him. There had already been two other parties making inquiries, the neighbor said, so if she was interested, Hannah had better hurry up and find Charlie.

  As soon as she finished checking on Nellie Turner, Hannah was going to find an agent to go north, locate Charlie Swanswick, and make an offer on the property.

  As she passed between two rows of beds, twenty to each side of the room, occupied by patients suffering from dysentery, pneumonia, influenza, and broken bones, she smiled at the visitors who had come to take care of their loved ones. Since it was the responsibility of family and friends to see that a patient was fed, bathed, and nursed back to health, the ward was a noisy place, with children running about while husbands fretted over wives and mothers fussed over daughters. The only hired person on the ward was a plump woman in a long gray dress with a white mob cap covering her hair as she swished a wet mop over the floor. Hospital attendants had little to do with the patients other than emptying chamber pots and cleaning the floor.

  As Hannah neared the bed at the end of the row, she was surprised that Nellie's baby wasn't tucked into the bed with her. "Hello, Nellie," Hannah said quietly and she slipped off her gloves and rested her hand on the young woman's forehead. The patient, with eyes closed, did not respond. To Hannah's shock, the forehead burned with fever.

  She counted Nellie's racing pulse, and then drew the blankets down to gently palpate Nellie's abdomen, causing the girl to moan.

  Hannah froze. Nellie was exhibiting the classic symptoms of childbed fever. How was that possible? Hannah was suddenly thrown back to the night her mother, Louisa, lay burning with fever, two days after giving birth to Hannah's baby brother. John Conroy had worked night and day to save them, only to lose them both to a disease that had no known cause, no cure, and that was fatal in every case.

  She turned to the attendant and said, "Please fetch Dr. Iverson. He's downstairs, in the main lobby."

  Hannah reached into her bag for her stethoscope, saying, "There there," as she placed the bell to Nellie's chest and listened. The labored breathing was another unmistakable sign of childbed fever.

  "My dear madam, what do you think you are doing?"

  Hannah straightened and saw that Marcus Iverson had arrived at the
bedside, a dignified gentleman of around fifty, tall, imposing. He was the director of the two-story, eighty-bed hospital and despite his sometimes severe bearing and aloof manner, was known for his kindness and compassion. Hannah had noticed that he always took the time to reassure the patient with a gentle touch, a word of comfort. In London, she had seen doctors make rounds and not even acknowledge the person in the bed.

  Hannah also liked the fact that Dr. Iverson always wore a clean frock coat, trousers and white shirt when he made rounds, and insisted his medical staff do the same, even though it was contrary to popular practice. Marcus Iverson's other revolutionary ideas included emptying bedpans more than once a day, feeding patients who had no family and friends to bring meals, and changing the sheets between bed occupancies.

  Hannah removed her stethoscope and said, "Mrs. Turner has a high fever and severe abdominal pain."

  Sir Marcus gave Hannah an arch look. "And what is your authority here?"

  "I am a midwife. I was to deliver Mrs. Turner's child, but I was away in the country."

  Sir Marcus pursed his lips as he absorbed this unexpected information—Miss Conroy resembled no midwife he had ever seen—then he addressed the patient. As Dr. Iverson laid a gentle hand on Nellie's forehead, keeping his expression impassive, her eyes snapped open, wide with terror. "Am I going to die, sir?" Nellie asked in a tremulous voice.

  "Not at all," he said, patting her shoulder and turning away. He addressed Hannah. "You believe this is a case of childbed fever?"

  Hannah folded her stethoscope into her bag. When she had re-defined her profession from midwife to health practitioner, she had retired the blue carpet bag and replaced it with a handsome leather satchel. "I believe that is what we have here, doctor, and as you know it is highly contagious."