Land of Golden Wattle

by J. H. Fletcher

  He kissed her. ‘I stand corrected. Righteous it is.’

  There was also a bottle of wine, still moderately cold, with a corkscrew and two glasses.

  Jonathan drew the cork and poured; Bec examined the contents of her glass, pale yellow in the sunlight.

  ‘I never drank anything like this before,’ she said. ‘What do you call it?’

  ‘It’s called Riesling. It comes from Watervale in South Australia. The family has an interest.’

  Again the casual assumption of normality. One or other of us has a lot of learning to do, Bec thought, if we’re ever to be comfortable together.

  She sipped cautiously and made a face.

  ‘It’s sour!’ Then tried again. ‘But I think it could become quite pleasing. With practice.’

  ‘It does, I assure you.’

  ‘It makes my head feel funny,’ she said.

  ‘I know the treatment for that,’ he said.

  He kissed her so long and so hard that soon her head was spinning for reasons other than the wine.

  ‘You’ll spill it,’ she said.

  ‘Tip it down,’ he said. ‘Then it won’t be a problem.’

  She thought that sounded like good advice, so she took it. And later had no more thoughts about the Riesling wine at all.

  Later Bec lay at Jonathan’s side on the ragged blanket she had begged from Mrs Painter, who had been wise enough not to ask what she wanted it for. The breeze was cool on her skin; the autumn gales would soon be here and making love in the open would be out of the question.

  ‘Make my titties wrinkle like lemons,’ Bec said.

  Jonathan had been half asleep. ‘What?’

  ‘I was thinking what it would be like to do this in the snow.’

  ‘Heaven forbid.’

  ‘Might be all right with a few rugs,’ she said.

  For the moment, though, Bec was content to lie there and listen to the voices of the bush about her.

  The teacher at her local school had sensed Bec’s potential and lent her lots of books. She’d read how trees lived for many years, which had made her think about all the things they must have seen in their time. In her imagination she had identified with the movement of the black bands through the high country, sunlight shining on the quartz tips of their long spears.

  ‘What happened to them?’ she asked Mrs Roberts.

  ‘Mostly they died.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Disease for the most part. But also fighting each other and the settlers.’

  ‘Are there any left?’

  ‘Some, not many.’

  ‘That is sad,’ Bec said.

  ‘Yes, but it’s how the world is,’ Mrs Roberts said.

  Lying on the threadbare earth, Bec sensed shadows parting to reveal the shy movement of wallaby and quoll, the menace of snakes, the wide-awake eyes of possums.

  All these things were part of the land.

  We have our place too, Bec thought. We are as much part of the rhythm of things as those others. It was more feeling than thought but it made her proud and humble at the same time. In the voice of the wind she could hear the distant resonance of didgeridoo, of vanished voices singing the dawn. Everything that had ever happened was there in the trees and the dusty scrub, the orange sweep of Blackman’s Head soaring into the sky above them, every day turning blood-red in the morning sun. The kookaburra greeting the dawn.

  We are part of it, she thought, part of the footprints criss-crossing the land.

  She would have shared her feelings with the man, had it been possible, but she did not have the words. Instead she lay silently, eyes wide and senses alert, knowing herself to be a part of the whole.

  Later, when for the second time that day they made love, it was for Bec not merely a celebration of the flesh but an offering to the spirits of the land.

  Just before lunch the next day Mrs Harris looked out of Derwent’s drawing room window and saw what looked like a black beetle crawling slowly up the track that connected the big house with the north–south road, trailing smoke as it came.

  ‘What on earth is it?’

  Walter, the assistant gardener and a bit of a know-all, provided the answer.

  ‘It’s a motor car, Mrs Harris.’

  Mrs Harris’s hand was on her palpitating breast. ‘Why’s it coming here?’

  ‘I reckon you’ll find Mrs Penrose has gone and bought it,’ Walter said.

  Most of the staff were staring now.

  ‘I’ve seen pictures,’ Gladys said, ‘But that’s the first real one I’ve seen.’

  ‘I wonder what type of motor it is?’ Walter said.

  ‘You’re saying there is more than one type?’ said Mrs Harris.

  ‘There are lots of different types,’ Walter said. ‘It’s the coming thing, Mrs Harris.’

  Mrs Harris was not happy with coming things. ‘Oh dear.’

  They watched the motor creeping up the hill.

  ‘It’s going very slowly,’ Mrs Harris said. ‘You think it’ll manage to get up here?’

  ‘Won’t the old lady be mad if it doesn’t?’ Walter said.

  ‘Best get on,’ Mrs Harris said. ‘Don’t want her to catch us idling.’

  When she arrived Bessie was more the lady of the manor than ever: an achievement that most would have thought impossible. She sailed into the house like a liner entering harbour, berthed herself in her favourite chair and sent for Mrs Harris. Whom she favoured with her best chatelaine smile.

  ‘Any excitements while I’ve been away?’

  ‘Nothing, Mrs Penrose.’

  ‘No births, marriages or deaths?’

  ‘None that I’m aware of.’

  ‘I saw the staff all agog as I came up the hill.’

  ‘Many of them have never seen a motor car before, Mrs Penrose.’

  ‘They’d better get used to them. There’ll be plenty about before long. I understand they are quite the rage in England. I believe the king has one.’

  ‘Is that so, Mrs Penrose?’ Mrs Harris knew better than get into technicalities. ‘Did it come from England?’ Because surely it could not have been manufactured locally.

  ‘From America. It was made by a man called Ford. I ordered it some time ago. It is called a Model T Ford and as far as I know is the first one in the country.’

  ‘That is very impressive, Mrs Penrose.’

  Mrs Harris’s success in her career had been aided by her ability to say the right thing when the right thing needed to be said.

  ‘I daresay my grandson will be interested,’ Bessie said. ‘These days young people seem to like mechanical things. Is he somewhere about?’

  ‘I believe he is out, Mrs Penrose.’

  ‘Do we know where he is?’

  Mrs Harris, who knew almost to the inch where Jonathan was, shook her head. ‘He didn’t say, Mrs Penrose.’

  It took Jonathan two hours to get back to Derwent House.

  After dropping Bec at the Painters’ place his emotions were in such a state that he decided to go back to Blackman’s Head. He went there because it had become important to him and because he had things to work out.

  He sat listening to the peaceful sounds of the horse grazing and thinking of everything that had happened there. Bec’s sighs of fulfilment as they made love echoed in the silently watching trees and he knew it had been then, lying in each other’s arms beneath the towering mass of the Head, the wind-rustled leaves of the overarching trees, that the bond between them had been forged.

  This was the place.

  He spoke aloud to the scrubby bush. ‘I shall not let her down.’

  Easily said, but the challenge facing them was immense. Grandma Bessie had never tolerated opposition. He knew she would do whatever she could to make sure her legacy remained true to the image she was determined it should have. And one thing was sure: no way did Bec Hampton fit into that image. Money, power and prestige were what Grandma Bessie valued and Bec had none of them. Jonathan doubted there was a
woman in Tasmania who in Grandma Bessie’s opinion would be less suitable to becoming the wife of Derwent’s owner than Bec Hampton, the blacksmith’s daughter.

  Would she really disown him if the marriage went ahead?

  He supposed she might. He would just have to talk her round.

  God knew how.

  He mounted Hector and set off for home.

  Mrs Painter gave Bec a questioning look when she came into the house. ‘Gone, has he?’

  Bec gave her a nod and a quick smile but did not speak. Her heart was in turmoil and she was afraid if she said anything it would show. She went into her room and closed the door behind her. She lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  This new Bec.

  She thought: You’ve done it now.

  Love was a foreign country, lying somewhere between the marsh and the twin hillocks where passion lived, but it was not alone; there was also fear. Bessie Penrose had always been a tyrant; if she felt herself or her plans threatened she would be merciless.

  Bec had read of people who had sacrificed everything for love; she had the uneasy feeling she might be close to doing exactly that.

  Then she thought, No. She was strong; she was determined; she was in love. She would not let an old woman ruin her life. She would fight. God knew how, but she would fight.

  1854

  In the end Barnsley Tregellas had proved more difficult than they’d expected, saying too many workers had left already and he was sick of it.

  ‘Leave me now and there’ll be no job for you when you come back.’

  ‘If we find gold who cares?’ Richard said to Alice.

  But Alice was more practical. ‘And if we don’t?’

  So it was 1854 by the time they got away and now they were there it was obvious the mining operations were much more extensive than they’d expected.

  They’d heard Ballarat long before they saw it for the noise of the diggings was indescribable. First off there was the barking of thousands of dogs, used to guard claims from thieves who without the dogs might have stripped the diggers to the bone. Later they made out the inane cackling of kookaburras, bellowing of bullocks and profane cursing of the drovers that provided highlights to a continuous and muffled roar of voices: the thousands of miners above and below the ground digging in a frenzy that defied belief.

  They had teamed up with a bloke they’d met on the track. Rascal Jones, which he insisted was his real name, had been at Mount Alexander. He had drawn a blank there and had now decided to chance his luck in Ballarat. He was lean and hard and about thirty years old. His face looked like it had felt a fist or two in its time and they thought he might be a useful companion in an increasingly rough world.

  The three of them stood on the high ground and looked down at the confused bedlam of the tent city that was the mining camp.

  ‘At least we won’t be lonely,’ Richard said.

  A termite mound wasn’t in it, with what looked like a million tiny figures swarming everywhere they looked.

  ‘We’ve been a week on the road from Melbourne,’ said Alice. ‘Let’s be thankful we’ve made it in one piece.’

  ‘Damn right,’ said Rascal Jones.

  ‘Let’s go and get rich,’ Alice said.

  They shouldered their packs, squared their shoulders and went on down the hill into what they had been warned was the gateway to hell.

  It was all of that, a boiling pot of noise and activity.

  ‘You have to shout even to hear yourself think,’ Alice said.

  On all sides men – and a handful of women – were digging, sifting and washing soil. Mounds of worked earth were everywhere and the air was foul with the stench of smoke and sewage.

  ‘We gotta find the gold commissioner’s tent,’ Rascal said. ‘He’ll tell us where there’s vacant claims.’ He made a sour face. ‘And charge us for them.’

  ‘Charge?’ Richard said.

  ‘Licence fees,’ Rascal said. ‘They knows how to sock it to us, believe me.’

  ‘And if we don’t pay?’

  ‘The goldfield police will chuck us off if we don’t have a licence. You got to produce it when they ask so make sure you always keep yours with you.’

  They found the tent and paid the fee for two adjoining claims.

  ‘You got to give it a name. For our records, see?’ the commissioner’s clerk said.

  ‘I tell you what,’ Richard said. ‘I remember Mama telling me about a Cornish word meaning a mine or place of work. Wheal, the word was. We’ll call it Wheal Alice. How about that?’

  ‘Fancy you remembering that. You were so small,’ Alice said.

  ‘Small maybe. But I remember good. Wheal Alice it is,’ he said.

  The clerk entered the name in the register, came and pegged the sites and they were ready to start.

  ‘Each one is only eight feet square,’ Richard said, looking at the licence in his grubby paw. ‘Doesn’t seem much for thirty bob a month.’

  ‘That’s the way it is,’ Rascal told him. ‘Now we’d better go buy ourselves some shovels to dig with. And a screen for sifting what we dig out.’

  They bought shovels and pickaxes from the blacksmith and a tent, windlass and fifty fathoms of rope from the general store. The prices made their eyes water but there was no choice: articles like these would have been far too heavy and awkward to bring with them, but they couldn’t survive without the tent or get at the gold without the tools.

  If there was gold in their claims to find.

  They rigged the tent, ate the little food they had with them and slept the sleep of the exhausted. There were sly grog sellers everywhere so there was plenty of drunken yelling but even that, coupled with a cacophony of screams, howling dogs and gunshots, failed to disturb them.

  First thing the next morning, heads down, hopes up, they set to work. They worked in shifts, Alice taking her turn.

  ‘Full marks for effort,’ Rascal Jones said. ‘Not your fault you ain’t got the muscles.’

  By evening they were three feet down and had found nothing, with Rascal shaking his head.

  ‘Don’t like the look of it.’

  ‘Still early days,’ said Richard.

  ‘At Mount Alexander it was the top layer where they found the nuggets.’

  ‘Maybe Ballarat is different,’ Alice said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  He sounded doubtful but Alice said she’d overheard blokes talking when she went to the shop for food.

  ‘If you can call a tent a shop,’ she said. ‘If you can call it food.’

  ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘They’re saying the real wealth is further down.’

  ‘How much further down?’

  ‘I heard hundred, two hundred feet.’

  Rascal whistled. ‘That’s deep, sure enough.’

  ‘It would take months to get down so far,’ Richard said.

  ‘And we’d need to shore up the shaft,’ Rascal said. ‘Or we’d likely have it come down on top of us.’

  ‘How do they know what’s down there, anyway?’ Richard said.

  ‘Seems some have gone down and struck rich ground,’ Alice said. ‘That’s what they called it: rich ground. The beds of what used to be underground rivers.’

  ‘Which brought down the gold? When was that?’

  ‘Thousands of years ago. Leastways, that’s what they were saying.’

  ‘Rivers of gold,’ Rascal said. ‘I likes the sound of that.’

  ‘How do we know there’ll be any under our claims?’ Alice asked.

  ‘We don’t.’

  ‘And if there’s not?’

  ‘Then we’re broke.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  They looked at each other. Alice lifted her chin and ignored her pounding heart. ‘We’re miners, ain’t we? That means taking risks. If we lose, we lose. I say we go down.’

  They laughed, excited by the challenge and the risk they were embracing. They all spoke together.

  ‘We go
down.’

  Alice knew she would never forget that time.

  It took them the best part of three months to reach the gutter where in the distant past the underground rivers had flowed. Thank God for Rascal, she thought. Without him they would never have managed it. Richard was strong and willing but one man alone could never have done it. Even working shifts both men were utterly spent when they crawled out of the steadily deepening shaft. There was no point Alice offering to help; they all knew that physically she was not up to it. What she did was use the windlass to haul up the buckets of clay twenty feet, forty feet, sixty feet as they were filled. That was an exhausting business too but something she could just manage.

  Each night all three of them died a deep death as sleep overwhelmed them.

  Outside the shaft trouble was brewing. Everybody knew it. As their neighbour Karl Leipzig said, it had been coming for months.

  ‘There will be deaths before it is through,’ he said.

  Of course Karl was not the most optimistic of men.

  ‘That’s his blood speaking,’ said Willy McNab, another neighbour. ‘That’s a German for you.’

  Willy was biased, having been in Stuttgart at the time of the 1848 uprising, but people wanted to believe him so most, Richard among them, did.

  Richard’s horizons were limited to the shaft that was sucking up their hopes and energy and the little money they had in a seemingly endless war against the recalcitrant earth. ‘We’ve too much on our plate to worry about what’s going on anywhere else,’ he said. ‘I doubt it’ll come to anything, anyway.’

  Alice wasn’t so sure. She had always liked to keep herself informed and what she was hearing did not make for a quiet mind.

  The first intimation of trouble had been back in June when the newly appointed lieutenant governor, Sir Charles Hotham, had infuriated the diggers by introducing weekly licence hunts.

  ‘So tyranny starts,’ Karl Leipzig had said. ‘First they harass us by checking the licences once each week. Next – you vill see – they vill increase the number of hunts. Twice weekly, maybe more.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Willy McNab.

  On 13 September Sir Charles Hotham ordered the licence hunts to be carried out twice weekly, while the goldfields police grew more and more aggressive.