The Burning Land

by John Fletcher

  ‘And send up a couple of bottles of your best brandy,’ Matthew said to the booking clerk, slipping him a sovereign.

  There was a lift, a discreetly clanking cage of wrought iron that rose majestically from the foyer to the upper levels of the hotel. Seated on a little stool, the livery-clad operator ignored them. Matthew looked at the contraption with interest. ‘First lift I been in,’ he confided.

  The walls of the suite were hung with damask coverings in a dark plum red. Pieces of furniture stood ponderously on the thick carpet. The faces of formally clad men and women glared haughtily from gilded frames. The sitting room and adjoining bedroom were encased in an expensive hush.

  The brandy arrived almost as soon as they did, with crystal goblets and a silver tray for them to stand on.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ Matthew said to the waiter who had brought the brandy. Another sovereign followed the first.

  Matthew opened a bottle and took a healthy swig. ‘We’re rich,’ he announced to Hamish who was lying on the satin coverings of the huge bed hung with drapes. ‘Didn’t mean a thing to me up at Mount Alexander but when I look at this lot I know. We’re rich.’

  ‘And dying of thirst,’ Hamish said. ‘Give me that other bottle.’

  For a time they drank together companionably.

  ‘Can’t breathe in here,’ Matthew said and opened the full-length windows, admitting the light and the roar of the street to the room.

  ‘Do you have to?’ Hamish said. ‘I was just getting used to the idea of being rich. Keeping the peasants out there at bay. Damn it,’ he said, swallowing brandy, ‘I’d almost forgotten the real world existed.’

  In the ornate bathroom the eight-foot bath stood on clawed feet on a black-and-white chequered floor. A row of bottles stood on the shelf behind the bath. Matthew opened them, sniffing, selected one and rubbed its contents liberally all over him.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Hamish said disgustedly.

  They sent for a tailor and ordered frilled shirts, tight-fitting trousers, coats of velvet, boots of soft leather.

  The tailor ran his tape measure over them. ‘Certainly, sir,’ he said, gold pencil jotting notes in a little book. ‘Shall we say the day after tomorrow?’

  Matthew smiled at him. ‘Shall we say three hours?’

  The man looked pained. ‘I’m afraid that would be quite impossible, sir.’

  ‘Pity about that,’ Matthew said. ‘We won’t trouble you any more then.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Perhaps there might be a way,’ the man said.

  For double the price it was arranged.

  ‘Nine o’clock,’ Matthew cautioned. ‘Not a minute later.’

  The man went out, almost running.

  ‘This rate we’ll be broke before we leave Melbourne,’ Hamish grumbled.

  ‘Didn’t notice you try to stop me,’ Matthew replied.

  The clothes arrived on time and they tried them on, strutting like peacocks while the tailor fussed about them.

  ‘Perfect fit,’ Matthew said as he paid him. ‘Couldn’t be better.’ He gave him what was owing plus five sovereigns over.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ bowing, ‘thank you very much.’

  They admired each other in their gorgeous clothes, had another drink and went out and rang for the lift, blasé now. They stood side by side in the narrow cage and the lotions with which they had anointed themselves poisoned the air with the aroma of flowers. They crossed the foyer and went out into the street.

  They went to a grand restaurant, ate off gold-rimmed china and drank wine from crystal goblets before going out to see what the city had to offer.

  They stopped outside a theatre advertising a performance of Hamlet.

  Matthew raised an eyebrow at Hamish. ‘Fancy it?’

  They bought more brandy from a stall in the entrance and went inside.

  The dress circle was full. Tobacco smoke swirled amid the light of the oil lamps. The man in the seat next to Matthew, no longer young and with greying hair, still looked tough enough to give a good account of himself. He wore a dinner suit cut from a tartan cloth with a yellow shirt underneath. Hairy fingers were loaded with rings. Next to him a woman, swarthy, dark-haired, thin almost to emaciation, regarded them with eyes that flashed like brilliants in the light. She wore a muslin dress that came to a point at the waist. Ribbons decorated her neck and the open sleeves were trimmed with lace. Jewelled earrings hung almost to her shoulders.

  The man’s eyes moved over Matthew and Hamish, marking their clothing, the bottles of brandy clutched in their hands. ‘Where you from, mates?’

  ‘Mount Alexander. You?’

  ‘Bendigo.’

  ‘Come good, did you?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Want a mouthful?’ Proffering the brandy.

  The man took the bottle and swallowed, Adam’s apple moving in his powerful throat. He handed it back, wiping his mouth. ‘Ta.’

  The curtain rose but in the auditorium the din of conversation continued unabated.

  ‘’Ear they be goin’ deep at Ballarat,’ the man said.

  Matthew was interested. ‘I thought it was all played out there.’

  ‘That’s what they said. But now some seem to think the real gold’s further down.’

  ‘How much further?’

  ‘’Undred, ’undred-fifty feet to the gutter, they d’say.’

  Matthew whistled.

  ‘Take months,’ the man agreed.

  Someone sitting beyond the woman leant an angry face towards them. ‘Do you mind keeping quiet?’

  ‘Shut yore mouth,’ Matthew’s neighbour said.

  ‘How did they know to find gold there?’ Matthew wondered.

  ‘When they first found gold it were in gravel beds, a few feet under the surface. When that were worked out most thought twere the end of it. But one or two folks was smarter’n that, see? They followed the gravel down. ’Bout the fifty foot mark they found more gold and then more again, still deeper. There be a ’ole series o’ deep leads down there, so they d’say.’

  He scrabbled in the pockets of his tartan jacket and pulled out a scrap of paper and a pencil.

  ‘I’ll show ee. Long ’go, who knows ’ow long, the ’ole area were covered in volcanoes, see? The riverbeds was all filled wi’ gold but the lava from the volcanoes covered ’em up. The first gold they found were layin’ on top o’ that. But the real treasure’s in they riverbeds.’ The pencil worked a rough sketch. ‘Now, when the rivers flowed over level ground the gold were all spread out, even like. But where there were a pool or a bar o’ rock the gold collected in pockets. Like so,’ the pencil flew as he sketched, ‘an’ so.’

  Matthew was peering over his shoulder. ‘So if the shaft strikes one of those pockets …’

  ‘You’re rich,’ the man said. ‘Remember, they rivers bin flowin’ for millions o’ years, some on ’em. They be full o’ gold, or so people d’say.’

  ‘But if you miss the pockets after going down hundred, maybe two hundred feet—’

  ‘Then you got problems.’

  ‘More than a problem. You’d be wiped out. The cost of going so deep and finding nothing.’

  ‘Tesn’t just cost, neither.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘They rivers got more’n gold in ’em. They got water. They say tes wet as the sea down there. Shuttering from fifty feet in some shafts. And still the water d’come in.’

  Matthew looked at him, finger tapping the sheet. ‘If it comes in when you’re down the bottom—’

  ‘You drown. Gold or no gold.’

  ‘Risky.’

  The man laughed. ‘That’s mining, i’n’ it? If there weren’t no risk we wouldn’t be doin’ it.’

  Their neighbour turned his head again. ‘I told you before. Keep quiet.’

  ‘I got a fist jes lookin’ fer a face to fit into,’ Matthew’s new friend said. ‘Volunteering be you?’

  ‘If you don’t keep quiet I’ll hav
e you thrown out.’

  ‘An’ if you don’ keep quiet I’ll flatten yer.’ He turned to Matthew. ‘Any more o’ that brandy to spare, ’ave ee?’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘Thank ee kindly.’ He took the bottle in his left hand, thrust out his right. ‘Luke Bryant,’ he introduced himself. ‘An’ this ere’s my friend Nance.’

  ‘Nance Radin. Good to know yer.’ Her smile was mechanical and the dark eyes gave nothing away.

  ‘Matthew Curtis,’ Matthew said. ‘My partner Hamish Fairchild from America.’

  ‘’Ow do.’

  They chatted and drank, one eye on the stage that was almost directly beneath them. They went out at the interval to renew supplies. Half way through the second act Luke Bryant said, ‘That poor ole bugger d’sound proper parched to me.’

  He produced a stockwhip from beside his seat and tied it securely around the neck of the brandy bottle. Leaning wildly over the railing he lowered the bottle slowly to the stage.

  Hamlet hesitated in midspeech as the bottle bobbed in front of him.

  ‘’Ave a swig,’ Luke’s giant voice encouraged him from above. ‘Do ee a power o’ good, that will.’

  The actor tried to ignore the offering but Luke Bryant was not to be stopped. ‘Take it. Or I’ll come down there and stick it down yore neck.’

  The actor had obviously learned something about humouring his audience so he seized the bottle and had a good swig before recorking it.

  ‘I di’n’ say take all of it,’ Luke said and wound the bottle back again. ‘Look at that,’ he said, showing Matthew the half-empty bottle. ‘Musta had damn near half a pint.’

  ‘I have had enough of this,’ said the man from down the row.

  He got up and made a swipe at Luke’s head. Luke batted him once and he fell away somewhere and the next thing there was pandemonium all over the theatre.

  There were screams, shouts, a few good blows struck and a crush by the exits as people tried to get out for fear of fighting and the police, if they should come. All the while the play on the stage went on disregarded.

  Matthew was wedged but Luke came through the crowd like a ship in a rough sea with Nance Radin in his wake and the three of them shoved their way into the street.

  Hamish was there, too, and the four of them went off to have supper and a few drinks to round off the evening. By the end of the night, lurching boozily through the jostling streets under a sky bright with reeling stars, they had agreed they would remain in Melbourne for another few days and then head for the deep diggings of Ballarat.

  TWENTY-TWO

  When Nance Radin was little she had seen a picture of a brick cottage with a thatched roof and flowers outside. The door of the cottage stood open to reveal a round table with chairs about it, a lady in a high-necked dress with frills serving tea and what looked to be crumpets in a silver platter. On the table there was a fine lace cloth with delicate cups and saucers patterned with blush-pink roses. It was the perfect image of what Nance wanted out of life.

  So far she had not done very well in achieving it. She had never seen a cottage like it and could not have afforded it if she had. The buildings she knew had mostly been of wooden slabs with an earth floor and not a fine lace cloth or rose-covered teacup in sight.

  She had been born in a humpy and would quite likely die in one. She had been in a big town twice in her life, once when she was little and her dad had taken her to Sydney and now to Melbourne on the arm and in the bed of Luke Bryant.

  She had been sixteen when her father, part-time shearer and full-time drunk, had died, crushed beneath the wheels of a dray in an accident that would not have happened had he been sober. He left a wife, Nance and three brothers older than herself. Between them the boys brought in just enough to keep them all alive but, as the mother said, there was no room for idle mouths. When the youngest brother decided to try his luck on the goldfields and Nance said she would go with him, her mother made no attempt to dissuade her. The two of them had never got along.

  They had gone first to Ophir and then to Sofala in the Turon Valley where the brother died in a disagreement with another digger over the boundaries of a claim. Sofala was known as a law-abiding town. Deaths or even violence were rare but the Radins had never had much luck. Now her brother was dead Nance had no way of supporting herself. In theory she could have worked her brother’s claim but for a woman alone that was impossible.

  Sofala’s main street was a mud track churned up by the passing traffic and lined by rows of tents and drays with a few wooden stores here and there. Peaceful town or not it had forty ale houses full of men with money to spend. Nance reasoned that no girl need starve in such a situation. She had a word with Billy Hourigan, owner of the Shamrock Inn, and set up for business in his back room.

  Nance never thought of whoring as more than a temporary job to tide her over until something better came along. One day it did. Luke Bryant visited her three times and then asked her to team up with him. He wasn’t young but was a big, tough man, well able to look after both of them, and she did not hesitate.

  Since then they had wandered all over the goldfields. It had not been a bad time. Luke neither beat her nor hired her out nor expected her to service his friends. When he had money he spent it lavishly, on her as well as himself, and when he hadn’t they got by somehow. He wasn’t a softy—she’d seen what those big fists could do—but even drunk he had never harmed her. Not many women could say as much.

  Nance wasn’t sure she liked the idea of Luke throwing in with the two blokes they’d met at the theatre. She’d got used to Luke. She didn’t want anyone else. But like it or not, to Ballarat they all went.

  It was different there. For a start, the claims were bigger, or seemed so because they covered more ground. It was only later they discovered that, because more people were needed to work the deep diggings, the amount of claim per miner was in fact less. Over each shaft a windlass hoisted the buckets of water to enable the men to dig. Some men invested in a horse and chaff. The first thing they noticed about the field was the horses walking round and round a central whim, hauling from the depths a never-ending succession of bullock-hide buckets brimming with water. In one or two places enterprising diggers had installed steam engines to pump the water mechanically, adding the wheeze and clank of machinery to the clatter and cries to which they were accustomed.

  At the gold commissioner’s tent they were shown a map of the workings.

  ‘The claims that have produced best so far are the Canadian Lead and the Blacksmith Hole,’ the commissioner told them. ‘Had to go down a long way, mind.’ He looked at the three of them. ‘Is this the lot of you?’

  Luke grinned ferociously. ‘Reckon we’re not big enough to manage by ourselves?’

  ‘Not a question of size,’ the man said. ‘The syndicates all find they need a dozen men at least before they reach the gutter. To deal with the water, you understand, and to keep the shaft well shored. You’ll have to do that,’ he cautioned them. ‘You don’t, there’ll be a cave-in before you’re past fifty feet.’

  They spent two days prowling around the area, meeting the same shut faces they remembered from their first arrival on the diggings two years earlier.

  ‘That’s what I like about the goldfields,’ Hamish said. ‘Everyone greets you like a long-lost brother.’

  For no particular reason they picked a site at one end of a line of workings. On one side the racket and dirt of the diggings extended across the valley, on the other the gum trees hung their leaves in windless silence.

  ‘Get sick of work, we can go for a walk in the bush,’ Matthew said.

  The other men looked at each other.

  ‘Got a poet ’ere,’ Luke said. ‘Jest ’ope ’e d’know ’ow to dig, tha’s all.’

  ‘He knows that,’ Hamish said. ‘Unless he’s forgotten since we left Mount Alexander.’

  They went back to the gold commissioner’s tent, paid their licence and were in business.
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br />   ‘It must have a name,’ the commissioner said. ‘For our records, you understand.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘California Deep,’ Hamish said. ‘That’ll bring us luck.’ So California Deep it was.

  Next morning they stood on the unbroken ground and stared at each other.

  ‘A hundred feet,’ Hamish said. ‘We got to be mad.’

  ‘Mebbe more,’ Luke corrected him.

  ‘Probably more,’ Matthew said.

  It meant months of work. Clay, rock, mud, water. Danger, darkness and heat. Burrowing like moles deep in the choking earth. With no guarantee of success at the end of it.

  ‘Something out of a nightmare,’ Hamish said for them all, and repeated, ‘Got to be mad, I reckon.’

  The first twenty feet were clay, soft and not too wet, easily removed. They took it in turns. One man broke the ground with his pick and shovelled it into a bucket; the next man stood by the windlass at the head of the shaft, hauled up the bucket and emptied it before sending it down again; the third went into the bush to fell and split timber to shutter the sides of the shaft as they went down.

  At thirty feet the water started to come in.

  First it was in dribbles, beading the walls of the shaft with moisture, creating runnels in the soft clay, puddles forming across the floor of the shaft. Three feet deeper it became more persistent—constant rivulets carrying greasy crumbs of clay with them—and the water was over their boots as they worked. Five feet more and the rivulets became streams, the water in the shaft over their ankles. The back-breaking task of shoring the shaft began.

  ‘My God,’ Hamish said at the end of a shift. ‘I reckon we got the Mississippi River down there and we ain’t even fifty feet down yet. As it is the buckets are bringing up five times as much water as ground.’

  Sometimes it seemed they spent more time shoring the shaft than digging, laying six feet slabs of stringybark lengthwise down the shaft to retain the loose ground, securing them with cross-pieces driven by brute strength into the walls, ramming clay behind the shuttering to hold back the water. Days and weeks of toil but it had to be done.