Above the Starry Frame

by Helen Townsend

  The town itself had been laid out some distance west of the field, where the government camp was. This part of town had fine wide streets but only a few buildings, most of those being connected with government business. The part of the town frequented by the diggers was the eastern end, down near Yarrowee Creek. Commerce centred on Main Street, a jagged thoroughfare not laid out in any fashion at all, but where a digger could fulfil all his needs. It was subject to floods, mud and dust, depending on the very changeable weather of the place. Here was a glorious mix of all nationalities and races, from all over Britain and Ireland, from the European countries, America and the Pacific. All mingled together, except the Chinese, who were exotically different with their long pigtails and pointed hats. The Chinaman John Alloo ran a fine eating house, but the celestials were generally rumoured to be immoral, on account of being heathens.

  There were Aborigines, but only a few, the remnants of their tribe. Their king, King Billy, had a necklace round his neck with his name on it. It gave him a sad look, William thought, with little of the king left about him. Where his tribe may have camped was now dug up, or pitched with the tents of diggers. Some men felt sorry for the natives of the place, as William did, but overall they were given little thought, for the immediate business of goldfields was the digging of gold, with little consideration given to the past or to the future.

  As at the Turon diggings, there was a considerable amount of wickedness in Ballarat – thefts, fights over claims, drunkenness, profanity and fights over women. There were loose women who tempted men with smiles and raised skirts combined with an everydayness that made them seem ordinary, like cousins and aunts. But in the end, even those things which seemed most wicked, and even the terrible deaths and accidents, simply felt like clouds in a sky that was for the most part blue.

  * * *

  October 1852

  Unto The Right Honorable Lord Claud Hamilton

  Member in Parliament representing The County of Tyrone

  The Memorial of Joseph Irwin Farmer

  Knockaleery Parish of Kildress Country of Tyrone

  Humbly Sheweth

  That your Lordship’s Memorialist has a Son William Irwin at present living in Sydney Australia who is most anxious of obtaining a Government Situation there, and hoping your Lordship would be pleased to use your most powerful Interest with Lord Fitzroy the Governor of that place, in order that the Young Man might be appointed to the Custom House or Elsewhere.

  Memorialist begs leave to state that his Son has had a liberal Share of Education and that upon his arriving in the Colony, was appointed Assistant Teacher at the Kings School Parramatta, but the Salary being so very small was not adequate for his support.

  Memorialist hopes your Lordship will be pleased to forgive him for thus intruding on your Lordship’s most precious time, and begs leave to add (should your Lordship not remember him) that he is well known to Major Richardson Brady of Drum his Landlord – The Reverend Richard Stewart of Drumshambo and likewise Mr Tenner and Doctor Greaves – trusting your Lordship will be pleased to further his Views and in duty bound Memorialist will ever Pray

  (Signed) Joseph Irwin

  Farmer

  * * *

  November, 1852

  Dear Son,

  Intend to pay McCrea on or before November 1853 if posible.

  Your Mother never had better health than she has this winter and all the fameley lives in harmoney and the greatest of pleasure. Your Mother thinks she will live to see you in this woorld and that wood be a great of pleasur to her. I wish the same. I never had better helth in my life than I have this winter. I am as reddy for the road as the youngest child I have from the oldest to the yongest. Dear Son your kindness to us will never be forgoten

  Your memoral will be sent to London on or before the 21 of December to Lord Clod Hamilton and his answer will be sent to you forth with. Donald McBean drew the Memorel in my house and I expect to let Majer Brady have a reeding of it.

  If you could be apointit to the Custom house or the Constablery or for the Exise your bread would be baked.

  I would think it better for you if you wood get a goverment situation and then you wood be at ease. I will have Lord Clod Hamilton’s intrist, do not fear. Be sure to send a letter to himself – that is to Majer Brady – as he is inquiren after your welfare. Write it in the most splended maner and direct it to himself and it will not be long till I get a hearing of it.

  Joseph Irwin to his dear son William.

  * * *

  The post was delivered to Main Street, and a large crowd assembled when it was heard the mail from the latest steamer was coming in. William waited anxiously. He longed to know whether Father had plans to let Robert emigrate. He wanted to have one of Eliza’s little letters and the details of the farm from his father. Sergeant McBean, who wrote most of Father’s letters, often gave him news of politics and sly comments on the neighbours. In Father’s letters he could feel the great love he and Mother felt for him, as well as their gratitude, so he was always much stirred upon receiving a letter, for he had been away almost three years now.

  William read through Father’s proud letter about the petition to Lord Clod, but he felt rising irritation. Did his father not realise he was a man now, that he had sent more than fifty pounds home? Did Father not see he was making his own way in the world? He was a digger, and a trader. He certainly didn’t want a job in customs or the excise, having seen too much of the corruption and disdain of those with braided uniforms and fancy caps as they collected the licence fee from the diggers.

  The police and the troopers were much disliked for their haughtiness towards the diggers. The diggers for their part were averse to paying the monthly licence fee, for it was a great expense and all it seemed to get them were more police and troopers, all provisioned at the diggers’ expense.

  William put the letter and the petition in his pocket and walked back along Main Street, trying to collect his thoughts. His father was so proud of this petition, and he could never doubt his father’s concern for him, but the petition read like a begging letter. He did not wish to beg or have his father beg for him.

  As he stood outside the draper’s and read through the letter again, it pained him more, because his father’s ambitions no longer coincided with his own. But once Father started something, he would not let it be. And so it was that Father wrote of Lord Clod in each letter. He warned William of the dangers of the goldfields and told him of safe positions in government service. It put William badly out of sorts to get his father’s letters and see his pride in the sad petition to Lord Clod.

  What made it smart a little more was that his trading, being a more complicated business than he had calculated, was not quite as profitable as he had first dreamed. Constant rumours and stories of other gold discoveries swept the field, so there were frequent rushes from Ballarat to rich new fields like Bendigo and Mount Alexander. In addition, there were many like himself who had goods to sell, so the prices were cut to the bone.

  However, there remained a considerable number of Irish at the Little Bendigo flat, who gradually bought up his biscuits and steadily worked through his tins of tea and bags of sweets, although it was the ants which did a fine job finishing the sugar. William became aware that flour sold below cost might be offset by coffee sold at a greater profit. Although the profit from his first lot of supplies was next to nothing, he bought some sides of bacon from a carrier, which did well in winter, but spoiled in the summer heat. He kept all his reckonings in a black notebook that Michael referred to sarcastically as his Bible, but he now saw the art of the thing was in understanding the figures, and he was glad of the education his father had given him, for it allowed him to see why he failed and what was needed to succeed. At first he had only calculated the great profit he might make, which was pleasing to think of, but from bitter experience he had learned to think of the loss he might suffer, the risks of spoilage, robbery and the like, as well as the possibility of other fellows
having the same clever ideas as himself. He paid a fellow to stencil ‘Irwin’ on a blue flag, which turned out not quite as grand as he had hoped, but which he flew with great satisfaction above his tent.

  Gradually, the numbers swelled in Ballarat again as the richness of its fields became appreciated. There were many new leads, which the diggers followed.

  ‘I think we should be moving from Little Bendigo,’ said William after they had been on the field six months. ‘I’ve been poking round the new lead called Eureka, and it looks most promising.’

  ‘Danny Phelan, that big Irishman, he’s moving there,’ said Michael. ‘And some others too.’ To move to another lead on the field was a simple matter of unpegging the tent and loading supplies onto the horse. In less than half a day, William and Michael had themselves set up on the Eureka lead. The new camp was snug, and secure from flooding and high winds. Over the next few months they were joined by many others, mainly Irish, but still with a great mix of other nationalities.

  When they first began working the Eureka lead William and Michael washed the surface dirt. But the deeper they dug, the richer the dirt was. William wanted to go down further and further, as other parties had found substantial riches at a greater depth. However, digging deeper was risky.

  ‘Two men was killed up on the east of the field,’ he told Michael. ‘They was doing well, but got impatient, and didn’t look to the safety of the shaft. They was flooded from below and the shaft fell in on them.’

  ‘’Tis a horrible way to die,’ said Michael. ‘I’d rather stick to washing the dirt on the top.’

  Like most diggers, they had attended the funerals of those they knew who died on the field. These were often elaborate affairs, for if a man died with gold dust or nuggets in his possession, the undertakers offered every finery. But mourning was brief. For to dwell on death, which some men did, often led to a considerable degree of melancholy, which when combined with an increased intake of grog might stop a man digging entirely. And while men sometimes spoke also of the suffering and death they had seen in Ireland in the days of the famine, that was carefully done between friends. Michael had told William how each of his family died, which was a deep thing indeed, not easily shared. And William had felt the great sadness of it, and also the luck of his own family, for while they had had misfortune at times, none had died in the famine.

  Despite Michael’s fears, William was determined to dig deeper. He studied the question of the safety with Danny Phelan, a farmer’s son from Kilkenny who had been in the colonies for ten years and had worked in Sydney digging cellars. Danny knew how to brace timber and what to do when a shaft started flooding. Over the campfire at night, he and William made drawings and small models to test how a shaft might hold.

  William made it his business to study the dirt and clay and gravel and rock, not only for the dangers, but because certain formations might indicate gold. But it was a bigger thing, for there was a whole, wondrous world underground. He felt it the deeper they dug through different layers to underground streams and gravel beds, or impenetrable rock. By the dim light of the candle, he was sometimes stopped in his work by the imprint of some creature on the rock, and he took to chiselling these out, for he wondered what creatures they were and how they were formed. The world underground was full of mystery and he longed to know more about it.

  One day when he had his blue flag flying, an old doctor, Doctor Anderson, from London, came to purchase supplies. William felt sorry for the doctor, for he was a man not suited to the diggings.

  ‘I should have known better,’ he told William. ‘For it is not a healthy life, this digging, and I was never a strong man. Still, I hope for a lucky strike.’ He handed over his coins for a tin of tea, and picked up the small fossil William had on the table. ‘This,’ he said, looking at it carefully, ‘is a most ancient sea creature.’ He rubbed it with his forefinger.

  ‘I thought it to be a sea creature,’ said William. ‘It seems a most curious thing, being sixty miles from the sea.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the doctor. ‘The secret is in the formation of the earth, and the name of that science is geology.’

  And William made a billy of tea and they sat for a pleasant hour, speaking of fossils and geology, of which the old doctor had made a close study. ‘Lyell is the fellow to get,’ he told William. ‘Three volumes called Principles of Geology. A man such as yourself who is curious about things would enjoy it immensely.’

  William ordered the volumes from Melbourne, and when next the old doctor came in, he got him tea again and gave him a good discount on a side of bacon, so they might sit and talk more.

  The doctor lent him a pamphlet on the supposed age of the world, and told him of fossilised creatures that no longer existed, giant lizards and monsters, as well as tiny creatures. And this of course led William to thinking of the Biblical stories of creation with which he had been raised.

  Many of the preachers and priests on the field spoke out against this new science. William did not wish to be in conflict with his religion, but he began to think that God had taken a longer and more complex route to creation than that written down in Genesis. He could not imagine how these ideas might be taken in Knockaleery, so close was the God of the Bible woven into their lives. Such things separated him from his family a little, but he felt great wonder at the science of geology, which made sense of what he saw deep in the earth.

  William had been in Ballarat almost a year when Bridget Byrne arrived there, with her mother and father and sister. The family set up a tea stall near the Eureka lead. It was past the time when women had ceased to be a rarity on the field but, nevertheless, Bridget, who was a dark-haired Irish beauty with rosy skin and a flirtatious smile, caused some comment. William often found himself buying tea and buns. Bridget looked at William sideways and would say something aside to her sister which William could not catch. He found he could never get past thanking her and into more general conversation.

  He had taken to entering Apollo in horse races, for while there were faster horses on the field, Apollo was a stayer, and William liked to practise his skill at riding, as he loved the speed and thrill of racing. And it was racing Apollo, over a mile, that he first caught the attention of Bridget Byrne, for while he did not win, he came second in a thrilling finish that left him elated, especially when he saw Bridget near the finishing post, smiling up at him. He did not know which was best – the thrill of the finish or her smile.

  William lay in his tent in the early morning, the light still golden, thinking of that smile, as he did every day. He ran a fancy through his mind of what he might say once he was past tea and buns, for the smile at the racecourse had not been bestowed on him again. He lay listening to the kookaburras laughing and the crows cawing as they circled in the pale morning sky, thinking that today might be the day when he would have something like a conversation with Bridget. But the heat and desperation of his longing, which drove his passion, made any conversation hard. Bridget was light on her feet, and he imagined dancing with her, holding her close. He thought he’d send himself mad with such thoughts, they made him so heated.

  He reminded himself that if he was ever to dance with her and hold her close, he would have to ask her to dance, which he could not imagine himself doing, for he had heard invitations made by other young men deflected. Even straight requests for tea and buns were often met with ‘Well, I’ll be seeing if there’s anything we might be able to do for you.’ It seemed that it was in her nature to prevaricate, not from a want of tea or buns, or from a lack of desire to dance, but from something else. And when she served the tea and bun, she’d lay her lashes against her cheek and say, ‘And I don’t wish to be hearing no complaints of how Mrs Anderson might make a cheaper bun or a sweeter tea, because if that’s what you wanted, you might have thought to go there first. She, Mrs Anderson, she can bear such criticism and comparison. Me and my sister cannot abide it at all.’ But the more tea and buns William had, the more tongue-tied he seemed. He had
had so much tea and so many buns that he was thoroughly sick of them.

  William raced Apollo every week now and, although he never won, he often came in second or third. He supposed that the chance of a thrilling finish and Bridget being there was somewhat remote.

  Bridget was, William thought, a woman his own mother would say to be a flirt, which was a great sin in his mother’s book, one she had often warned Ann Jane of. But he felt that whereas Ann Jane might have decided to be a flirt, against their mother’s wishes, with Bridget, there was no decision – it was just the way her lashes touched her cheek, the way her apron was pinned just so across her bosom, that was artless and so beautiful.

  * * *

  April 16, 1853

  Knockaleery

  My dear brother,

  I return you my sincere and hartfelt thanks to you for your kindess to me. The too peices of gold was quite safe. We got 13/6 for them. You please mother very well, the way you write. Now just write every month. I hope the lord will prosper you in a strange land. Put your trust in the lord and he will not decive you.

  Mother has been middling good this winter. I am very lonesome since Ann Jane and Mary went away. Mary had a young daghter in August last. Its name is Ann. You never told us what way the gold is dug – whether it is sore work or not. Mother is still counting the time that you said you wood return, if God spares you.

  Dear William, when you meet with the triels and troubels of this world, cast your care on Jesus and dont forget to pray. Ann Jane has write for Robert to go to her, but we wood rather he wood go to you. So I dont know how it will be, but if I was going it wood be to you. James Walker has come home again out of America and bought his old farm again. It grieves Mother and us all – you alone in a strange country