Wimmera Gold

by Peter Corris

  The passengers aboard the vessel were a mixed lot, with only a certain level of affluence in common. There were three sheep farmers with extensive holdings in New South Wales, travelling with their wives and younger children. Two of them appeared to be good fellows, fond of a drink and a smoke after dinner, although one was much under the thumb of his wife. The third 'squatter', as he heard the most congenial of them refer to the group, was Cameron Muir, a Scot. Bracken steered clear of him although Muir seemed keen to discuss theology with someone he took to be of the Roman persuasion. The Reverend John Hazeldene, MA, a sometime Oxford don, en route to take a post at the University of Melbourne, attempted to befriend Bracken when he learned of his profession and heard him turn a neat Latin phrase over dinner. Bracken fended him off by spouting a great deal of Latin, mostly derived from Horace, as well as some he had gleaned from medical texts which referred to his own distressing condition.

  Three weeks out, Bracken had settled on more or less agreeable company—the effusive, sporting squatter, Roger Trace, the insurance underwriter Edward Carter, and Paul Trelawny, an agent who offered advice and employment guidance to prospective immigrants in return for a commission on their passage fares and the first three years of their earnings in the colony. All enjoyed a drink, Trace perhaps being a little too fond of it, and Carter and Trelawny, Bracken decided, were rogues at least as unscrupulous as himself.

  He cultivated their acquaintance, bought them drinks, particularly Trace, whose resources appeared to be slender, and played the ignorant, innocent, immigrant, anxious to learn from men of experience. On being questioned by Trelawny as to why he had given up his law practice, he gave the standard answer the truth of which every Englishman knew.

  'The country's overcrowded and woefully behind the times. The church dominates everything and it's hard for a man to make his mark. I want to go where there are a few risks to be taken, new ways of doing things … '

  'Melbourne's the place for you then. It went ahead famously because of the gold and the progress hasn't stopped. There's a pile of legal work to be done, property changing hands every day and new ventures starting up. Of course, it helps if a man has some capital.'

  Bracken nodded modestly. 'I have a little.'

  He did not fail to see the gleam of interest in Trelawny's eye and it was not long before Carter approached him as he reclined in a chair on the foredeck, fanning himself with his hat. 'Damned hot, Mr Bracken, but you'd best get used to it.'

  'I'm no great one for the heat. I was thinking of Hobart perhaps.'

  Carter shook his head. 'A backwater. Melbourne's the place. Sydney's lively enough, but the climate there would kill you. The humidity is like India, and just between you and me, a lot of the Sydneysiders are no more civilised than the Punjabi. Look here, it's a longish run from Cape Town to Melbourne, what about a few hands of cards to pass the time?'

  At last, Bracken thought. He replaced his hat on his head and followed Carter down to the saloon where Trace and Trelawny were already sitting with drinks and a deck of cards. Bracken accepted a whiskey which he watered heavily and resolved to sit on for as long as he could. His ailment had responded well to treatment, exercise, abstinence and the relaxed life aboard ship, and he did not wish to reverse the process. Trelawney shuffled the cards clumsily. 'Poker?'

  'Damn new-fangled Yankee game,' Trace grumbled, 'but very well, since it's the only thing chaps seem to want to play these days. Let's keep the stakes down though. A man can lose his shirt at poker.'

  'Friendly game,' Carter said. 'Play for matchsticks if you like.'

  'No, no. Half a crown in, sixpence to see, shilling to raise. Agreed?'

  Bracken was not taken in by Trelawney's awkwardness with the cards or Carter's apparent indifference to the stakes. Within a few hands he concluded that the pair were out to fleece him and that Trace would be used as a foil to conceal their collusion. Bracken played cautiously, winning several hands for small sums and retreating strategically as the pots began to build. Trace played badly, won by luck and lost by bad judgment. The larger pots were shared between Trelawney and Carter who both out-drank the other two men by a considerable margin. No mean cardsharp himself formerly, though his skills were rusty, Bracken spotted Trelawney's pack-stacking and fraudulent deal after an hour or so of play.

  The players were alone in the saloon and all had removed their coats. Bracken ordered another drink and loosened his necktie. 'Time to take a bit of a plunge,' he said. 'Australia's no place for the faint-hearted, eh, Mr Carter?

  'That's so, Mr Bracken. Deal, Paul.'

  Bracken made a show of taking a long pull on his drink. 'Think we should all be on first-name terms, surely. So it's Daniel … '

  'Roger,' Trace said stiffly.

  Carter nodded. 'Ted … Edward.'

  'And Paul,' Bracken said. 'Deal the cards, Paul.'

  Bracken found his old aptitude coming back to him with an exhilarating rush. He played aggressively and nullified the Carter-Trelawney combination. Trace was soon completely out of his depth and played dead on most hands. Bracken was astounded at how accurately he could judge the fall of the cards and read the faces and physical movements of his opponents. Deliberately, he reined himself in, took several large pots before fumbling. He retreated for a hand or two, lost most of his winnings and proposed a raising of the stakes in a brogue apparently thickened by alcohol.

  Trace shook his head. 'Not for me, I've lost enough.'

  The stakes were quadrupled. Bracken resumed his previous playing style, deliberating and discarding quickly, raising briskly and confidently and pushing the other two men hard. When Trelawney blatantly cheated on the deal, Bracken pulled back and let Carter take the pot. Without a word being said the other two knew that their cheating had been noticed. They played honestly for the next few hands and Bracken bullied them with his aggressive, almost contemptuous play. Carter and Trelawney had both drunk a good deal and were sweating freely in the hot saloon. Bracken employed several of the tricks he had learned in the Dublin gambling dens and savaged them, taking the solid pots and forcing first Trelawney and then Carter to declare themselves out of funds.

  Bracken was careful not to show triumph or to handle the cards flashily. 'I'd gladly take a marker.'

  Trelawney shook his head glumly. Trace, somewhat comforted by seeing that the sums the other two men had squandered had dwarfed his own losses, chuckled. 'Have pity, Bracken. Daniel, I should say. The poor fellers are cleaned out.'

  The money was on the table and for a moment Bracken thought Carter was going to sweep it towards him. The insurance man stared at him with eyes red-rimmed from drink and the smoke from his frequent cigars. Bracken's large hands, unroughened as a professional man's should be, but strong-looking, were steady on the green cloth. The Irishman was tanned from his sittings out on the deck and burly. Carter shrugged and got up from the table. 'Things … things are not always what they seem,' he muttered.

  'True,' Bracken said, raking in his winnings.

  Trelawney removed his coat from his chair and wandered away. Carter, still coatless, followed him.

  'Now, Roger,' Bracken said. 'I propose to buy you a drink and pump you for all the information you can give me about the colony of Victoria.'

  'Those two fellows … '

  'Cheats, Roger. Downright cheats, scallywags, as my dear departed mother would say. They were out to take us both down and half of this money is yours, sir.'

  'I say, that's a serious accusation.'

  Bracken pushed money across the table and the squatter did not resist. 'All in fun perhaps. Probably just wanting to show an ignorant Paddy a thing or two. No harm done. Now, tell me all about Victoria. Splendid name.'

  Trace, it transpired, had a large leasehold 100 miles to the north-west of the city in what he called the Bendigo district.

  'Named after Bendigo the prize fighter, you know. Damn fine country. Railway to Melbourne finished last year. Busybodies in offices want to call it Castleton or S
andhurst or some such thing, but it's Bendigo to those of us who count in the district.'

  'Good,' Bracken said. 'Not enough respect paid to the old bruisers. Any gold thereabouts?'

  'Lord, yes, but I hope you're not going to the colony to look for gold. You're far too late, old fellow. The surface gold ran out years ago, it's all deep mines now. Beastly work.'

  Bracken laughed and held up his hands. 'I don't see myself at the end of a shovel. No, I was wondering about investments.'

  'Land and livestock. Only thing.'

  'Not city property?'

  'Huh, don't know much about that, I must say. But you'll set up as a legal man, surely? There's money in that I'm told.'

  'Any openings in … Bendigo?'

  'Lord, yes. But most of the educated chaps seem to get swallowed up by the government, of which there is far too much in my opinion.'

  'No danger of that in my case,' Bracken said fervently.

  'I'm glad to hear it. Well, a lawyer in Bendigo could do very nicely for himself and take up some land as well. Only life for a man, let me tell you.'

  Bracken observed the slightly frayed cuffs on Trace's shirt and his much-mended, though well-polished boots, and reserved his judgment.

  Notoriously, the iron clippers, being less buoyant than wooden ships, suffered on the long beat east from the Cape of Good Hope to Australia. The Maid of Firth struck average weather, which meant she was lashed by gales and pounded by heavy seas for days on end. Most passengers kept to their berths, even their bunks, venturing out only for irregular meals, and Daniel Bracken was no exception. The books included in his hasty packing had been Stevenson's Laws of Britain and the novel he had happened to be reading at the time, Collins' The Woman in White. He eked out the enjoyable novel by dutiful reading of the legal text, but eventually finished it and considered himself lucky to be able to exchange it with Mrs Trace for George Eliot's Adam Bede which he found much less to his taste.

  The queasy passengers read and swapped their books and magazines, nursed their uneasy digestions and wondered if they would ever see the sun again. Bracken practised with cards until his hands had regained their old dexterity. He continued to dose and anoint himself and the Spartan diet, together with the enforced rest, speeded his recovery. Nevertheless, it was a boring period which gave him too much time to brood darkly on the possibility of the reach of the Home Government Association. Before the worst of the 'blow' began, he had inquired of Trace about the influence of the Irish in the colony.

  'Are you of the Catholic persuasion?' Trace had asked tentatively.

  Bracken countered with, 'Alas, I am a rare bird, with one parent of that faith and one from the Protestant side. Myself, I am somewhat confused on the religious question. I was asking more in a … political sense.'

  'Growing,' Trace pronounced darkly. 'The Catholic Irish political interest is growing.'

  This judgment occupied much of Bracken's mind in the time of enforced inactivity, and he began to form plans to move to New Zealand where, his reading of periodicals such as Black-wood's gave him to understand, the Scottish influence was paramount. Having dealt professionally with Scots in Dublin, Bracken's view was that they divided neatly into two classes—Calvinist penny-pinchers and drunken wastrels—from neither of which had he anything to fear. But still, New Zealand felt like a second choice and he could not shake off the memory of all the people he had seen at home, close to starvation, scraping together the fare to go to Australia—the land of gold.

  Mercifully, when the reading matter had got down to a copy of the New Testament provided by the Reverend John Hazeldene, the weather cleared and the passengers were able to move again around the decks and recreation areas. Bracken made a point of singling out Carter and Trelawney for his attentions. He broke the ice by showing them a card trick and joking about the game they had played, giving them to understand that all was understood and forgiven. The two unbent, not sufficiently to admit to their collusion, but they were responsive to the Irishman's easy charm and readiness to buy drinks. They also noticed that he indulged a trifle more himself than hitherto.

  'Know anything about New Zealand, Paul?' Bracken asked one morning as they shared a patch of pale sunlight on the after deck.

  'Been there,' Trelawney acknowledged. 'Not your speed I shouldn't think. Melbourne's the place for you.'

  Between ourselves,' Bracken said, 'I had a spot of bother back home. Political, you understand. With the radicals, and I was worried that they might pursue me … '

  'I shouldn't worry,' the immigration agent said. 'There was a lot of trouble from the Irish and other hotheads a few years back at Ballarat. Declared a republic, raised a flag and all that sort of nonsense. But the military put it down pretty damn quick. Leader was a chap named Peter Lalor … '

  'I knew some Lalors back in Queens County.'

  'Same family I dare say, and that could be a useful connection for you. Lalor's in the Legislative Assembly now and quite the proper parliamentary man. That's an odd thing about the colonies, hotheads tend to run out of steam, if you follow me.'

  'Interesting,' Bracken said. That's one of the troubles with politics, he thought. You can't get any straight information. One thing was for certain, he would have nothing to do with Peter Lalor. The Lalors of Queens County were red-hot Home Rulers. His mind turned to thoughts of changing his name to Black and adopting a different accent, Scots perhaps, which he thought he could manage.

  'Er, Daniel, you mentioned that you had a bit of capital. I wonder if you'd be interested in a business proposition?'

  'Try me.'

  'There's money to be made in helping respectable people move to and settle in this land of opportunity. Some want to buy land or set up in business. A legal man could find himself very gainfully employed.'

  Or very quickly stripped of his capital, Bracken thought. He gazed out over the heaving grey waves and found it hard to imagine that he was heading to a land of opportunity. Exile is more what it felt like. 'I need a drink,' he said. 'Let's talk about it over a dram.'

  14

  The sight of the bristling masts and fluttering flags in the port of Melbourne cheered Bracken immensely. After the weeks at sea with no landfall after Cape Town and scarcely sighting another sail, he had begun to feel that the Maid of Firth was the whole of human society. It was a cool, bright April morning when the vessel entered the busy port and Bracken experienced something like the thrill he had felt on first arriving in Dublin. Here was a place where things were going on. He was sufficiently encouraged to slip away from Trelawney, who seemed determined to keep him under his wing, and make his way, lightly laden as he was, into Melbourne by railway on his own.

  Not having given the matter much thought, he vaguely expected the town to resemble London, of which he had only ever seen illustrations, or Liverpool, which had not made a good impression on his hasty passage through it. He was interested, on taking a cab from the station, to find a resemblance to Dublin—in the style of the buildings, especially the churches, and the regular street pattern. Wider streets of course, taller trees, a broader river and more of the sky visible in every direction. He booked into the Carlton Hotel, one not mentioned by Trelawney or Trace, and took himself for a stroll, partly to rid his legs and brain of the movement of the ship and partly to size up the place.

  After a couple of hours, Bracken's impressions were decidedly favourable. Rough the place certainly was, with a mixture of solid, imposing buildings and flimsy shacks that looked as if they would be blown down in a stiff breeze. The centre of the town boasted paved roads and was obviously gas-lit at night, but this order quickly gave way to dusty dirty streets where scant attention was paid to cleaning away the droppings of horses and bullocks. Bracken's walk took him along the banks of the muddy river out to where there were some big houses set in passable parkland.

  This would do very nicely, Bracken thought, standing at the wide gate of an imposing residence. The house was set on top of a slight rise, scarcely
worth calling a hill, although the name carved on the gate post was HILLVIEW. Several acres of ordered garden were surrounded by a stout picket fence and a broad, gravel driveway took an unnecessary but stylish turn on its sweep up to the house. As he wandered back to his hotel, Bracken was conscious of feelings he had never had before—that anything was possible in this place, that intelligence and energy could carry a man to any heights. Capital and luck, he recognised, were also important and he congratulated himself on having a little of the one and a great deal of the other. He stopped at a public house near the main bridge across the river and had a very acceptable tankard of ale.

  Over the next few days he explored the town, investigating the commercial and legal quarters. He thought the new House of Parliament admirable and was gratified to find a number of theatres. His hotel was comfortable, if expensive, and he was encouraged by the substantial blue-stone police station and gaol in Bourke Street—Melbourne was evidently a place prepared to invest in law and order. The weather was balmy and he found the local populace cheerful and obliging. All in all, Daniel Bracken decided that, whatever the misfortunes that had prompted it, his transference to the colony of Victoria was a wise move.

  When it came to establishing himself as a working member of the colonial society, however, Bracken was given pause and became intensely cautious. He had, he believed, very good reason. The Irish were everywhere—in the legislature, the judiciary, the professions and the commercial world. Names like Duffy, O'Connell, Mahony and Kearny jumped out at him from hoardings, business cards and the pages of The Argus. He read the newspaper assiduously, discounting much of its boastfulness, but judging it to be a fair guide to the functioning of the colony, or at least of the metropolis. According to its shipping pages, Irish immigration continued strongly, although the influx was not nearly as great as during the days of the gold rush.