If only Gus was here, she thought.
The fire, the stories, the songs – these were the things she longed for, had dreamed about. It was as if she was born with a book inside her, a memory of a long time ago on each page. It was as if the animals, the rocks, the trees, the mountains held these stories inside them, too. They had been whispering to her since the time she was born.
Or perhaps when she was in Napu’s womb she had heard them before. Gus would have sat with Napu around a fire just like this one.
Through the tears, Poppy looked up and saw Aunty watching her. Aunty pointed at a tree. There, silhouetted against the full moon, was Napu in the shape of Dangamai. The crow cawed softly then flew into the night.
‘Napu, Dangamai,’ Aunty said.
Poppy nodded, showing Aunty that she understood.
Time to go, Aunty gestured with her hands.
Poppy knew it, too. She didn’t want to leave, but Napu had bidden it. She still had to find Moyhu.
THE next morning Poppy said goodbye to Aunty, Uncle, and the others. She hugged the little one and told her that one day she would bring Moyhu back to meet her.
Then she put on her hat, swung her satchel and bed roll over her shoulder and set off along the banks of a creek. If she followed it, it would take her all the way to Beechworth.
At midday, she climbed onto a large flat rock to eat lunch while Fisher ran into the bush. Aunty had given her some meat from last night’s meal. In a nearby shrub, Poppy watched a tiny blue wren hop from branch to branch, then it took to the air chattering madly. She wondered where Napu was now. She hadn’t seen any sign of Dangamai since the night before. The sound of Fisher’s bark echoed from the canyon down below. Poppy crawled to the edge of the rock and looked over.
She smiled when she saw him looking into a rock pool, one paw lifted, ready to pounce.
Not wanting to disturb Fisher while he was hunting, Poppy picked her way along the bank. Broken shovels and rusted pans lay everywhere – the signs of an abandoned gold-mining camp. Trees and bushes had been cut down or ripped out of the ground for firewood and shelter. No wonder the blue wren sounded angry, she thought. This was his home and it had been ruined.
Poppy found a pan still in good condition hidden in the bushes. During the trip on the bullock train with Jimmy Ah Kew, Tian had told her about alluvial gold and how it was mined. Now all she needed was a shovel, and there were plenty of those lying about.
Kneeling by the stream, Poppy shovelled some silt into the pan, then filled it with water. With a stick she stirred and stirred until it looked like batter for a cake. The mud settled and Poppy slowly poured off the water. Then she added clean water and washed off the mud again and again. Finally the water was clear and there, in the bottom of the pan, were tiny specks of gold.
Excitedly, she picked them out and wrapped them in her kerchief. She was about to give it another try when she heard an excited whine from Fisher coming up behind her. She turned around to look.
In his mouth was a huge Murray Cod. It was so big Fisher had to drag it along the ground. The fish’s tail flapped.
‘Good boy, Fish,’ she said.
The dog dropped the fish and sat down.
Poppy picked up a rock. ‘Thank you, old Grandfather Cod, for giving up your life for us,’ she said respectfully, and with a practised hand she struck the fish on the head. As she slit open the belly with her knife and pulled out the entrails, she felt something hard like a large stone in the fish’s stomach.
‘That’s strange,’ she said to Fisher.
When Poppy opened the stomach up, a slimy rock fell out onto the ground. ‘Poor fish,’ she said. ‘This rock must have been so painful. Did you think it was food?’ She was about to throw the rock into the bushes when she noticed tiny patches of gold showing through the green slime.
Quickly, Poppy washed the rock in water and scrubbed it with leaves. Then she stared in disbelief.
It was a nugget, a shiny gold nugget the size of her palm. Her heart leapt with joy. ‘Fish, look! Look what you’ve found!’
Fisher sniffed the gold and wandered off.
‘But don’t you see? This is going to build us a home, a home of our own! Wait till I show Gus.’ She lay back in the long grass, holding the nugget against the blue sky. It could be the sun it shines so brightly, she thought.
As the fish cooked in the coals, Poppy kept glancing at the gold, just in case she was delirious and had imagined it all. That old Murray Cod was the sweetest fish Poppy had tasted.
With the gold nugget safely hidden in the bottom of her satchel, Poppy and Fisher continued along the creek. They passed an old shack. Creepers had filled every crevice and sprouted out of the roof like a mass of green hair. There was a sign in Chinese lying on the ground. As she walked, Poppy practised the Chinese phrases Lai Lai had taught her.
A few miles downstream, she heard voices. In a clearing on the bank she saw a group of men wearing checkered shirts, breeches and boots with cabbage tree hats on their heads. As she drew closer she knew they were Chinese because of their singsong chatter. The men looked up as she approached, gave her a nod, then went about their business.
Two of the men carried buckets of dirt on a pole balanced across their shoulders while others shovelled dirt and fresh water into a long rectangular box. One of the men rocked it gently. They weren’t using dirt from the creek but from a pile of earth that had come out of one of the many holes that dotted the side of the hill. These must be the abandoned shafts Tian had spoken about, Poppy thought.
She walked up the embankment and looked over the edge into one of the holes. It was so black inside she couldn’t see the bottom. Picking up a stone, she let it fall. There was a splash. Being down one of these mines would be much worse than being locked in the Darkling Cellar, she thought with a shiver. She had heard of sides caving in and killing the miners, and about children falling in and drowning.
She was about to walk on, then changed her mind. Maybe they had seen Gus? She went up to one of the men and said in halting Chinese, ‘Dui m ji, dai buk. Excuse me, Uncle.’
He looked at her in surprise. Lai Lai had taught her that Chinese was like singing. You had to use the right notes otherwise you might not be understood. This was the first time Poppy had a chance to try it out.
‘Ngo gor gor … ni gin … gor quoi mo ah? Have you seen my brother?’ she said, taking off her hat so that he could see her face.
The man tilted his head and looked at her carefully, then he shook his head. ‘I no see your brother.’ He called out to the other men and they also shook their heads
‘Beechworth?’ she asked. ‘How far?’
‘Follow Woolshed Creek to road,’ he said, his hands dripping mud. ‘Beechworth three mile.’
‘Is that all?’ Poppy could hardly believe it. After months of running and hiding and searching for Gus, she had finally come to Beechworth. Only three more miles to go. That was nothing compared to the hundreds she had travelled.
‘‘M’goi sai. Joy gin. Thank you, goodbye,’ she called to the men.
They laughed and waved at her and said, Joy gin, joy gin.’
Walking along the bank following the creek, Poppy chattered. ‘Fisher darling,’ she said. ‘Have I told you how much you’ll like Moyhu? And he will love you. We have the gold nugget from Grandfather Cod and we can build a home. And you will have a warm fire to sit in front of just like the dogs in The Book of Knowledge. And Moyhu will make two chairs … no, three – one for him, one for me and one for a visitor because we will have lots. We’ll invite Tian and Dr Lin and Uncle Jimmy Ah Kew and Aunty and her two dogs and Tom and Noni …’
Fisher looked up at her, his head cocked to one side.
‘Oh, don’t worry, Fish. I won’t let that horrible Joe anywhere near our place. We’ll only invite the people we like. And Johnny the Chinese peddler will come by with his lovely things and I’ll …’ Poppy thought a moment. ‘No, wait! I forgot. Moyhu will have to make a whole l
ot of chairs because all the orphans from Bird Creek are going to live with us. Did I tell you that before? I did, didn’t I? You’ll meet them all, Blossom and Daisy and everyone … and you’ll be spoilt and have plenty of pats, just as you like. We are almost there, Fisher darling … almost home.’
I am a fourth generation Chinese Australian and was born in Melbourne. My mother’s grandfather, Chen Ah Kew, came from China to the Victorian goldfields in 1853 when he was seventeen years old. The character of Jimmy Ah Kew that you have met in Poppy and the Thief is based on him. My great grandmother’s name was Lum Gum. She was twenty when she arrived in Australia in 1885.
My father was born in Shanghai, China, and met my mother when he was sent to Australia by the Chinese government during World War Two.
The Poppy books could not have been written without the advice of Koorie elder, Uncle John Sandy Atkinson; Koorie Liaison officer at the State Library of Victoria, Maxine Briggs; and Koorie Heritage Trust Librarian Judy Williams.
I was born and grew up in Italy, a beautiful country to visit, but also a difficult country to live in for new generations.
In 2006, I packed my suitcase and I left Italy with the man I love. We bet on Australia. I didn’t know much about Australia before coming – I was just looking for new opportunities, I guess.
And I liked it right from the beginning! Australian people are resourceful, open-minded and always with a smile on their faces. I think all Australians keep in their blood a bit of the pioneer heritage, regardless of their own birthplace.
Here I began a new life and now I’m doing what I always dreamed of: I illustrate stories. Here is the place where I’d like to live and to raise my children in a country that doesn’t fear the future.
Trouble on the Goldfields
Chinese people first began arriving in Victoria from 1854. They lived in separate camps and worked in large groups, slowly and patiently going through the rock and earth from mines already dug out by the Europeans. The Europeans didn’t like this because they wanted to save these mullock heaps and use them to fall back on in hard times. They also didn’t like the way the Chinese muddied water that was needed for washing gold. And Europeans were suspicious of Chinese customs, dress and religion, just because they were different. These attitudes by the Europeans led to riots on the Buckland goldfields in Victoria in 1857, at Lambing Flat in New South Wales in 1861, and the Palmer goldfields in Queensland in 1877.
The Welcome Stranger
The Welcome Stranger was the name given to the largest gold nugget found in the world. On February 5, 1869, in Moliagul, Victoria, a man called John Deason was digging around a tree when he struck something solid. He looked down and saw a huge nugget of gold measuring sixty-one centimetres by thirty-one centimetres. It was almost too heavy to lift, so Deason and his friend, Richard Oates, took it by dray to Deason’s house. It weighed seventy-two kilograms! It took Archie Walls, the local blacksmith, five hours to reduce the huge lump into smaller pieces. Its value in 1869 was the equivalent of three million dollars today!
The Procession of the Chinese
This engraving is of a Chinese procession in Beechworth in 1874. Perhaps this is what Jimmy Ah Kew’s wedding procession would have looked like, too.
DID YOU KNOW THAT DURING THE GOLD RUSH …
The population of Australia trebled to 1.7 million people.
* * *
The John Foord bridge linked the towns of Corowa and Wahgunyah across the Murray River, transporting goods to the diggers.
* * *
Forty thousand Chinese made their way to the goldfields.
* * *
Miners rebelled at Eureka in Victoria against the ‘Miner’s Licence’.
* * *
Australia’s first Royal Mint was established in Sydney.
* * *
Diamonds had been discovered in some parts of NSW.
* * *
Agnes Butine became one of Victoria’s first female bullock drivers.
* * *
Lola Montez was a popular female singer and dancer.
* * *
The first railroads and telegraphs were built.
* * *
POPPY walked the last few miles to the gold-mining township of Beechworth. Two and a half months of travelling, and she had finally reached her destination. Will Gus be here? she wondered. And will the gold nugget in her satchel, the one that old Murray Cod gave her, be worth enough to build a home? But what of the two men who took Gus away? What did they want of him? These thoughts were playing across her mind when the wonderful aroma of roasting meat came drifting towards her.
Fisher took off in the direction of the smell along a narrow track.
‘Come here, Fish!’ Poppy called. But it was no use. Whenever he smelt food, he would go back to his wild ways.
Poppy ran after him. Rounding a bend in the track, she saw a colourful wooden wagon, covered all over with words like ‘Holloways Pills and Ointments’, ‘Your Future Read’ and ‘Teeth Extracted’. From the wagon, a tarpaulin was stretched out, with ropes tied between two trees, to form a covered area. Poppy saw an empty chair and a low table made of a thin plank set on two logs. A horse grazed nearby, craning its neck to munch the top of a tall weed.
Just then, a tall man with a thick moustache and long shoulder-length hair came around the corner of the carriage, carrying a tin plate.
‘Well, what do we have here?’ he said, his moustache curling up at the ends. ‘What’s yer name, my boy?’
He had a strange accent, Poppy thought. Not quite Irish, but definitely not English. ‘My name is Kal. And this …’ Poppy turned around, ‘… is my dog, Fisher.’
Fisher, eh? Nice to meet you, Fisher.’ The man walked towards Fisher extending his hand slowly. The Dog backed away, baring his teeth and growling some more.
Fisher, don’t be rude,’ Poppy hissed. ‘Sorry, Mister, he’s usually fine with strangers.’
‘Don’t bother me none,’ the man said. ‘Like as not he’s pickin’ up the scent of this here patent medicine I been brewin’.’ He reached into the wagon and showed her a bottle with a hand-drawn label. ‘Cutpurse’s Cure-all. Fixes everything from snakebite to bankruptcy,’ the man said with a wide grin.
Meet the other Australian girls and authors
GRACE AND GLORY 1808
It’s 1808 and Grace has arrived at a bark hut on the edge of a river to start her life as a servant. But even though she tries hard, nothing she does for her new master ever seems right – especially if it involves Glory, his beloved horse. When her master goes away and leaves her in charge, will Grace know how to save her mistress from danger?
Join Grace again on her adventure in the third of four exciting stories about a convict girl who is given a second chance.
Sofie Laguna, author of the Grace books, is a highly regarded and award-winning writer of several books for children. Bird and Sugar Boy was shortlisted for the 2007 CBCA Book of the Year Award, Younger Readers, and Sofie’s adult book, One Foot Wrong, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2009.
LETTY ON THE LAND 1841
It’s 1841 and if Letty wants to keep her job she must travel with her mistress to a sheep farm in the Blue Mountains, leaving her sister Lavinia behind in Sydney. Letty has heard that the bush is a wild place, full of strange beasts and dangers, not to mention the bushrangers that hide out in it. And as Letty soon learns, life on the land has plenty of challenges …
Join Letty again on her adventure in the third of four exciting stories about a free-settler girl and her new life in a far-off land.
Alison Lloyd, author of the Letty books, is the popular and highly regarded author of several books for children, including Year of the Tiger and Wicked Warriors and Evil Emperors, a fantastic and fact-filled book about Ancient China.
Rose’s Challenge 1900
It’s 1900 and Rose’s world is changing. At last she can go to a proper school where she makes a best friend, learns more than just embro
idery and even gets to play in a proper cricket match. But at home, Mother is dangerously ill, Father is worried about Federation, and Aunt Alice is getting in more trouble than ever …
Join Rose again on her adventure in the third of four stories about a Federation girl who’s determined to do things her way!
Sherryl Clark, author of the Rose books, is a prolific and popular writer for children. Sherryl’s most recent Puffin book is Motormouth, a companion volume to Sixth Grade Style Queen (Not!), which was an Honour Book in the 2008 CBC Book of the Year Award, Younger Readers.
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Follow the story of your favourite Australian girls and you will see that there is a special charm on the cover of each book that tells you something about the story.
Here they all are. You can tick them off as you read each one.
A girl like me in a time gone by
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