Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  Placed a little more than 270 kilometres north of Melbourne by road, the township had become a busy regional freight centre by the end of the 1930s due to the meeting of the Victorian Melbourne-Shepparton broad gauge railway line extension from the south with the NSW standard gauge Narrandera branch line (via Junee) from the north. The resultant ‘break of gauge’ connection created numerous military and civilian jobs involved in the transferring of loads to-and-fro between freight trains on both the Victorian and New South Wales sides.

  The end of the Thirties had also brought with it the beginning of a new decade, a World War and a massive build up of Australian military forces. Huge expanses of pastoral land to the east of the Tocumwal Township were acquired by the Australian Commonwealth through 1939 and allotted to the RAAF for the construction of one of the largest air bases on the continent; an installation that included four intersecting concrete runways, one of which almost 3,000 metres long.

  Bomber and Fighter squadrons operated out of the base, along with parachute training units and an army barracks for the newly-formed Australian 1st Special Air Service Regiment. Toward the end of 1940, the headquarters of the 1st Aircraft Research and Development Unit was also deployed there and the RAAF base underwent another huge expansion of facilities that continued into early 1941, rivalling the scope of the original construction. In recent months, a training exchange agreement with the United States Army Air Force had also seen numerous American fighter and bomber units arrive at the base accompanied by several army support units and a company of the elite 1st Ranger Battalion.

  Heading east out of town along Hudsons Rd, it was a journey of just a kilometre or so to reach a T-junction where the adjoining Military Rd formed a gigantic, irregular ‘square’ that stretched for many kilometres to the north and east, encircling the outer perimeter of the RAAF base. Two-metre tall chain-link fencing topped with razor wire followed the inside line of the road for its entire length and was then itself bordered by another dirt ‘service’ track within the perimeter.

  With the combination of the air base and the vital rail junction, Tocumwal had become a bustling regional centre of sorts with military personnel and itinerant workers from all over Northern Victoria and Southern New South Wales substantially outnumbering the local population. Business was strong as a result, with a high demand for local produce, goods and services. The fact that the greater majority of Australian men of military enlistment age were already serving elsewhere, either within the country or overseas, had created the enviable situation of more job vacancies than there were eligible applicants, something that was happening all over the country for similar reasons.

  Eliza Morris sometimes felt a lot older than her mere twenty-nine years, particularly after a long day’s hard work as had been the case that Saturday evening. Standing perhaps 175cm tall she might’ve been considered slightly above-average height for a woman of that period. Slim, strong and wiry beneath her plain white cotton dress, she gave a soft grunt of exertion as she manoeuvred a heavy keg of Tooheys New away from a large stack of its colleagues and rolled it slowly across the earthen floor of the pub cellar. With all the speed and efficiency of an expert, she quickly removed the empty keg and pushed it aside before tapping the new one and reseating it into place for the use of the patrons in the main bar above her head.

  With the new keg connected, she was able to roll the empty one across to a far corner of the dark, cool basement and place it with half a dozen others already awaiting collection and replacement when the weekly shipment arrived by rail from the breweries in Sydney. She immediately set about checking the pressure in the lines, then picked up a nearby broom and started to make a perfunctory effort to clean up a little as closing time drew closer for the day. It was unlikely Maude would bother to come down and inspect the cellar anyway, but Eliza had no interest in enduring the snide remarks and none-too-subtle insults of an irate, lazy sister-in-law who’d been forced to actually do the ‘unthinkable’ and clean the place up herself.

  Eliza had lived in Tocumwal now for sixteen years, yet she’d never have claimed to have truly felt like a local… at least, not one particularly welcome within the rest of the community. Her presence was grudgingly recognised – tolerated was perhaps a more appropriate word – but she’d never truly been made to feel accepted during that time. The townsfolk of Tocumwal had nevertheless accorded her relative kindness in comparison to the treatment she’d received in her life prior to her arrival there and she knew better than to complain.

  Although the comparative lightness of her skin might well have fooled the casual observer, Eliza was full-blood Aboriginal. What little she knew of her own background suggested she’d originally belonged to the Ngunnawal people – traditional inhabitants of what was now the Australian Capital Territory – with ancestral lands reaching as far and wide as Queanbeyan, Tumut, Boorowa and Goulburn. That was about the sum of her knowledge of her own past. Eliza did know for a fact that at just five years of age she’d been taken from her natural parents by the Aborigines Protection Board and delivered into the custody of the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls.

  There’d been no real reason given for her removal from her biological parents, save for the simple notation ‘for being Aboriginal’ on the original paperwork; state laws of the time made it clear there was no real requirement for any further justification than that in any case. Eliza was just one of many Indigenous Australian children right across Australia to suffer a similar fate during that era… all to be left, at most, with just the barest, fleeting memories of their mothers and fathers.

  She spent seven years at Cootamundra in harsh, boarding-school conditions, allowed no further contact with her family, her people or anything of her culture. New South Wales’ Government policy of that period, almost identical in tone and principle to that of the rest of Australian states, was to assimilate full- and part-Aboriginals into ‘mainstream’ white society – by force if necessary – and as such it was deemed counter-productive for the ‘removed’ children to be permitted any contact with their past or their native culture. Most of the young women taken to Cootamundra were eventually sent to Sydney to work as domestic servants for the ‘well-to-do’. Eliza met a similar fate; although rather than heading west toward Sydney she was instead sent south to become housemaid for a wealthy, farming family in the Tocumwal area.

  A forty-six-year-old farmer with a wife and three young children, Alex Bolton was a wealthy man, a devout Catholic, and owner of several thousand hectares of sheep-filled pastoral lands. One of the richest men in the region and a powerful figure in the community, he was well-respected for his work with the church and his help with the war effort on many levels. He was also a strict disciplinarian and the unequivocal master of his house, and for Eliza, life that had seemed difficult at Cootamundra became doubly-so upon arrival at her new ‘home’. There she was not only required to carry out much of the domestic chores but also to endure difficult physical work around the farm as the need arose, all in a harsh, heartless environment where corporal punishment was the first choice of rebuke for even the slightest mistake or misdemeanour.

  It was around that time that Eliza found God. As part of her life with her Catholic masters, she was expected to accompany them to mass every weekend and it was through the priest’s reading of the scriptures and his sermons about living a righteous, Christian way of life on Earth that Eliza first truly found The Lord. It was fortunate in a sense, as her new-found faith would become her only true comfort or ally in the days to come and the symbolic acceptance of Jesus as her spiritual saviour would eventually lead to her being ‘saved’ in a far more literal and immediate sense.

  Eliza received her first middle-of-the-night ‘visit’ from the ‘man’ of the house at the age of just thirteen… less than a year after her arrival at the farm. Over the next eighteen months she was a regular victim of rape and sexual assault by the same man who demanded her attendance at church: that same man who also
stepped from the confessional box each Sunday, secure in a sense of his own absolution with the smug, self-satisfied air of a true, unflinching hypocrite. She never dared speak up: it was her word against his after all and who’d believe a young black girl with no rights to speak of if she were to denounce such a fine, upstanding pillar of the community?

  Everything changed as she approached her fifteenth birthday however and Eliza discovered she was pregnant. Completely uneducated in biological matters, the revelation was brought about through an innocent question about the sudden absence of her menstrual cycle, asked of one of the cooks working at the farm. An older Aboriginal woman who lived in town but came every day to work in the kitchens, she’d realised the reality of Eliza’s condition in an instant and had eventually drawn the truth out of the young girl regarding Alex Bolton’s nocturnal activities. The news that she was pregnant, at the same time both amazing and terrifying, also produced a resolve and determination that she’d never before experienced and Eliza Morris decided that enough was enough – that she had to do something to get her and her unborn child away from that terrible place.

  That very next Sunday, Eliza gathered all the courage she could muster and spoke to the only person she could think of who might possibly have some compassion for her plight: Father O’Donnell, the kind old priest at Tocumwal’s St Peter’s Catholic Church. In the privacy of the confessional box, Eliza set about revealing the sins of another rather than any minor indiscretions of her own, and O’Donnell was filled with disgust and righteous fury as he listened carefully to her terrible tale. With her reluctant permission to waive the sanctity of the confessional, and with the support of a curate recently arrived from Rome, he’d reported Bolton to the police while she waited within the safety of the church.

  Of course, the local constable had taken everything directly to the very man who’d been abusing her; the very same man who was a ‘pillar of the community’ and who’d made huge contributions to both the town and the church over so many years. Bolton had barged into the Church that evening decrying his own innocence and railing over such slights against his reputation. He’d also demanded Eliza to be turned over to him immediately, the entire tirade interspersed with foul oaths and streams of invective.

  He was too strong for O’Donnell – an older man of almost sixty years – and had pushed past him easily as he began to search the building for her. The newly-arrived curate was younger however – closer to Bolton’s own age – and was also made of sterner stuff. He quickly barred the man’s path, defiantly staring him down as the police were called, and watching from her hiding place in a small closet at the rear of the church it was the first time in her entire life that Eliza had ever seen one white man stand against another in her defence – or the defence of any Indigenous Australian for that matter. Its effect upon her was profound indeed, as was the gratitude for her care and continued safety.

  The police arrived quickly enough in the end and the stand-off was soon defused. In spite of their own prejudices or their discomfort over possibly raising Bolton’s ire, neither of the officers present were willing to countermand the will of a priest within his own church, be it Catholic or otherwise. Bolton was escorted out and sent home (although no formal charges would ever be laid), and for the first time in many years, Eliza slept that night with a feeling of calm and security as a guest of the curate, in his quarters behind the church. In the days that followed, official protests were sent to the State Police Minister via the NSW Archdiocese regarding Bolton’s assaults upon Eliza and Father O’Donnell and the indiscretion of the local police regarding the situation.

  It seemed too that the curate had some powerful friends both in Australia and back in Rome, and it wasn’t long before Eliza was officially made a ward of the local church and was permitted from thereon in to live at St Peters as her pregnancy progressed. She was given work there assisting O’Donnell’s housekeeper, and around that time she first met a young railway worker by the name of Arthur Morris, another devout catholic who talked of plans to join the army and whom she would eventually come to marry, much to the dismay of the rest of Arthur’s family. For the first time in her life, Eliza found herself having to adjust to the strange new concept of living in a safe and caring environment.

  “Lizzie…!” The harsh, nasal cry broke Eliza from her memories as she stood in the middle of the cellar, leaning against her broom. “For Gawd’s sake, they’re runnin’ me ragged up ‘ere…! You got that bloomin’ keg on yet, girl…?” Her sister-in-law might not want to set foot down in the cellar that evening – it was a known fact she was afraid of the dark – but Maude could still shout out orders from the top of the stairs all the same and the sudden sound of her voice galvanised Eliza into action.

  “She’s on, Maude… she’s all ready to go…!” She called back, trying to keep the disdain out of her voice. “…Just sweeping’ up a bit down ‘ere before we close up.”

  “Never mind that rubbish! You can do that in the morning! Right now I need you up here!”

  Eliza sighed and trudged across to the bottom of the steps that were set into the far wall of the cellar, placing the broom upright against the stone as she stared up at the exasperated face of Maude Mildred Morris. Short, stocky and perhaps just a little overweight for her height (even by the standards of the time), Maude was a woman who very much liked to wear snug dresses that showed off her full-figure to the best of her ability. Long red hair was tied behind her in a loose bun, while a brace of freckles covered the cheeks of a face that couldn’t be called particularly unattractive but was perhaps just a little better than ‘average’ at best.

  Just three years older that Eliza, Maude was married to the senior of the two Morris brothers, both of whom controlled an equal share in the ownership of the hotel. With both husbands away in the military, the two women were equals – in theory – but of course, Maude was white and had therefore automatically assumed a self-appointed position of authority that Eliza detested but generally tolerated in the interests of getting along peacefully. Just as her sister-in-law’s fair skin gave the woman an inbred certainty of her own worth and superiority, Eliza’s background ensured she was utterly accustomed to resigning herself to being ordered around.

  “I’m comin’… I’m comin’…” She placated, making her way back up toward ground level and the main bar.

  “Wouldn’t be a problem if Briony was here to help out as well,” Maude remonstrated sourly as the pair met at the top of the stairs. “You know how hard Saturday nights are, especially when all the bloody Yanks are in!”

  “Well I’m not havin’ her miss her tutoring or her scripture lessons, so never mind about that,” Eliza replied evenly without any hint of malice. “Now… what do you need me to do?”

  “Cleanin’ the bloomin’ glasses would be a start – we’re runnin’ out. Then we need some more wood for the fire: looks like it’s gonna be a cold one tonight and no mistake…!”

  Eliza simply nodded and headed off toward the bar, stifling the shudder that rippled through her. She knew what it meant when Maude made a comment about ‘cold nights’: that it usually resulted in Eliza and Briony laying in their bedroom, blocking their ears as her sister-in-law ‘entertained’ a visiting American servicemen in the room across the hall.

  Eliza’s husband, Arthur was serving with the 2/28th in North Africa. He’d not seen his family in many months and his wife and stepchild both missed him terribly. Maude, on the other hand had certainly managed to ‘make the best’ of her situation. Bruce Morris, Maude’s husband of twelve years, was currently serving with the CMF 53rd/55th Battalion in New Guinea and had been away now for over twelve months. During that time, Maude had managed to find ‘consolation’ in the company of several different men, all of them military of some type. The latest, an American private posted to the nearby RAAF airbase as part of a joint Australian-American training exercise, had been a regular visitor over the last few weeks… much to the displeasure of Eliza and Briony, bot
h of whom loved and respected Arthur’s older brother greatly.

  “Lazy bloody Abos…!” Maude hissed under her breath in quiet exasperation, annoyed that she’d been dragged away from the company of her current beau by the unpleasant necessity of doing actual work. …I swear, she added silently as she straightened her far-too-tight blouse over her ample bust and turned back toward the crowded bar that night, if you weren’t Arthur’s wife, the pair of yous’d be out on the street in a flash! It never for a moment occurred to her as she stalked off that without Eliza’s presence she’d have been forced to do a substantially greater amount of that same work she worked so hard at avoiding.

  Her demeanour changed dramatically the moment she was back among the drinking crowd, a huge smile spreading instantly across her face as Maude made a direct line for the opposite end of a main bar predominantly filled with American soldiers and airmen. The US Army Air Force’s 3rd Bombardment Group had arrived at Tocumwal airbase several weeks before, joining the Ranger Special Forces units already present, and the airfield and town itself were now often teeming with off-duty American servicemen as a result. Singling out a particular group of men seated at a table in the far corner, Maude drew up next to one of them and happily placed herself directly on the fellow’s welcoming lap.

  “Sorry to keep you, Eddie love,” she apologised playfully as she slid an arm across his shoulders. “Had to give the bloody ‘help’ a bit of a rev up… lazy bloody cow would forget her own bloomin’ head if it weren’t glued on.”

  “That’s okay, Maudie-baby…” Eddie replied, instantly sliding his own arm slyly about her waist and giving the side of her breast a surreptitious squeeze, eliciting a soft giggle from her in the process. “Got ya back with us now and that’s all that matters…!” As two of the fellow enlisted men within his group were African-Americans, he knew better than to voice the silent remark he was also tempted to make about ‘lazy niggers’, particularly as both were huge men who could easily have put him in hospital for weeks for such a comment.