by Peter Watt
The gold and money had come so fast this time that she hadn’t had a minute to count her takings. But she knew it was a small fortune to add to her rapidly growing store in the bank vaults of Cooktown and Townsville. She was a very wealthy woman by any standards.
As Kate stood counting the pound notes by the wagon she had the appearance of a hard and seasoned teamster more at home with rifle and bull whip than a lady in the genteel parlours of polite society, sipping tea from fine china. When she had finished, she folded the pound notes and turned to Ben. He was perched on the edge of the wagon with clay pipe in the corner of his mouth. His long legs dangled over the side while he cradled Kate’s rifle across his knees. He was a formidable sight, armed with his Colt strapped at his hip and on the inside of his boot a long bowie knife. Like most of the frontiersmen he had a dark bushy beard as a sign of manhood, and while he sat guarding the gold even the most daring of would-be thieves steered clear of the wagon.
‘Ben, sit on the takings until I get back,’ Kate said as she placed the notes in a tin box kept for paper currency. ‘I won’t be gone long.’
Kate found some privacy a short distance from the miners’ camp. When she had finished answering her call of nature she made her way back through the haphazardly arranged rows of tents and shanties. She noticed that there were few dogs in the camp to bark and yap at her heels. Most had been killed and eaten during the Wet by their owners.
As she pondered on the subtle changes in the camp she noticed a young girl dogging her steps. The girl gripped the hand of a hollow-eyed boy and attempted not to appear obtrusive. Kate had first noticed the two hovering around the wagon when she had sold the supplies to the miners and remembered how she had been struck by the pathetic sight. Her heart had gone out to the young woman and the child. But she had quickly steeled herself against feelings of pity, they were just another two of many who had become the flotsam on the sea the devastating Wet had left in its wake.
The pair continued to follow. Kate pretended not to notice them until she was near the wagon, then she halted and turned to the girl who she could see was painfully thin. Her long, blonde tresses were greasy and matted. She wore a ragged, filthy dress but under other circumstances she would have looked pretty . . . And she had a strangely poignant expression with an intelligent look in her darkly shadowed eyes, and a very large strawberry birthmark that covered the left side of her gaunt face. Kate guessed that the young woman was about eighteen; at twenty-eight Kate felt old in comparison.
The boy, whose hand the girl held tightly, was a pitiful sight too. Kate guessed that he was about six years old. He was filthy and had a surly expression on his face as he glared at Kate through haunted eyes. Brother and sister Kate thought, as there was a distinct likeness between the two. ‘Do you want to speak to me?’ she asked.
‘Yes . . . Missus O’Keefe. I . . . ’ The girl was trembling and on the verge of tears, yet there the loneliness about her bridged the space between the two women. Kate could see herself mirrored in the girl who was somehow herself those many years before in Rockhampton when she had lived through fever and childbirth.
‘Come with me to the wagons,’ Kate said kindly. ‘You both look as if you need something to eat.’
The young girl’s eyes filled with tears of gratitude. Kate walked over to her and impulsively put her arms around the thin shoulders. The girl trembled under the touch and burst into deep and racking sobs. A woman’s touch of compassion was not something she had ever known in her tormented life.
Kate guided her gently to the wagons as Ben watched curiously. ‘Ben! Get a brew going and make up a stew. Enough for four,’ Kate ordered. And he promptly obeyed.
Unlike many bushmen he did not think it unusual to take orders from a woman. Kate O’Keefe was not only his employer but also a woman who had long proved she was equal to any man he had met on the frontier. He was also just a little smitten with his employer who, when not on the track, was as beautiful as any woman he had ever seen, even more beautiful than the prettiest of Palmer Kate’s painted ladies at the Cooktown brothels.
Palmer Kate ran a very different kind of business to Kate O’Keefe. She was a notorious madam and it was rumoured that she would meet the single women who sailed north seeking their fortunes at the jetty and offer them employment. The alternative to refusing her offer was to be thrown into the crocodile infested river.
Both Kates provided valuable service to the frontiersmen in their own ways.
Kate O’Keefe now sat the young woman on a stump of a tree now long gone for mining cradles, firewood and rough planks for the shanties. The boy squatted silently, watching Ben prepare the stew of tinned beef. He was like a dog waiting to eat scraps from the master’s table. The stew of meat and onions tantalisingly wafted its aroma around the wagons arousing both hunger and suspicion in the boy who reminded Ben of some feral animal.
‘You know who I am,’ Kate said gently as the girl tried to wipe away tears from her face. ‘But I don’t know who you and the boy are.’
‘Me name is Jennifer Harris. I came to the Palmer with me son,’ she replied softly. ‘I thought I could use the last of my money to find a fortune for Willie and me.’
Kate was confused. Who was Willie? Surely not the boy watching Ben. If he was, then the girl must have only been twelve or thirteen when she had given birth to him.
‘Is that Willie?’ Kate asked pointing to him. She saw a haunted look in the girl’s eyes of things better not spoken about. Survival was a strong instinct and had the ability to overcome any rules of morality that men made. Kate knew without having to ask further how the young girl had traded for the meagre food that had kept her and her son alive. ‘Where did you come from before the Palmer?’ she asked softly.
‘Willie and me come up from Brisbane. Before that we came up from Sydney with me dad. Me dad was a gardener. He got sick with the consumption. It killed him a few years back when we were in Brisbane. He left me and Willie some money, but it weren’t enough and ran out. I used the last to come north. Willie and me come up together in December. That is when I first saw you. I thought you had a kind face. And when I saw you return . . .’ She could not finish her story and began to sob again. Kate guessed she was remembering the horror of the past months. ‘This place is worse than hell. The only way I could get food for Willie and meself was to . . . to . . . ’
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Kate said, stroking her matted hair as if she were a child.
Her simple gesture was soothing and Jennifer cried until she could cry no more. Gone now were the grunting bodies of the men who had used her body for their relief. Gone were the men who in their lust had bitten her young flesh leaving the bruises as a stallion might leave on the neck of a mare. Now there was the empathy of a woman who seemed to understand her pain, a pain of having been brutally deprived of childhood by the perverted demands of the rich and powerful Mister Granville White.
The birth of Willie had come too early in her young life. In Kate’s gentle touch she discovered a strange yet wonderful fleeting feeling of what it might have been to be a little girl safe from physical and spiritual pain.
‘You want to travel with us back to Cooktown?’ Kate asked gently. Jennifer nodded. ‘It is not an easy trip. You would be expected to help pay your way with hard work,’ she cautioned.
‘I would take the place of your bullocks to get away from here Missus O’Keefe,’ she replied with a bitter snort and glanced at her son. ‘I would do almost anything.’
‘And what do you plan to do when you get to Cooktown?’ Kate asked. ‘You do not appear to have any money.’
Jennifer sighed. Getting out of the Palmer would only put her and Willie in Cooktown. And from what she had heard of Cooktown’s evil reputation it was on a par with the biblical towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. Hell had a seductive call. It had called firstly from the banks of the Palmer River and was now leading her deeper into its pits. The deepest section of the northern hell was Cooktown itself. T
he newcomers had laughed at how the brothels outnumbered the hotels – and there were over sixty hotels licensed in Cooktown!
‘I don’t know what I will do. I suppose anywhere has to be better than the Palmer.’
‘Do you read and write?’ Kate asked.
Jennifer looked at her with an expression of surprise. ‘No, Missus O’Keefe. But I want Willie to learn one day,’ she answered with a firmness that assured Kate the young woman would make it happen. ‘All I’m good at is looking after young ’uns.’
‘Then you have a job with me when we get back,’ Kate said with a smile. ‘If you wish to work for me, that is?’ Jennifer opened her mouth to express her thanks but Kate cut her short. ‘You might think the Palmer has more to offer when I tell you what I want to employ you for.’ Jennifer reached out and gripped Kate’s hands as Kate continued. ‘I have a position for a nanny. But for a nanny who can look after three children. Two boys and one girl. It would also mean looking after four when we count Willie. Do you think that you could do that?’
‘Yes, Missus O’Keefe. I would love to,’ she replied without hesitation.
‘You might not think the job is all that good when you meet them,’ Kate smiled mysteriously. ‘They are just a little bit wild. I’ve already had a couple of nannies give their notice. But I have a feeling that any woman who could survive on her own on the Palmer through the Wet might be just the person for the job.’
Ben soon had the stew ready while in the hot coals a blackened billy was full of steaming water ready for brewing tea. Although Jennifer was ravenous she had trouble keeping the food down. Her son had no such problem and volunteered to wipe the pot clean with a slice of damper bread.
While they were eating Ben stole glances at the girl. She was pretty, very pretty. And the birthmark did not detract from her beautiful oval-shaped face, pinched as it was with the privations she had suffered. He could also see that she was very self-conscious about the birthmark; she would try to let her long hair fall over her face to conceal it from the eyes of the curious.
As they relaxed by their campfire after the filling meal, they sipped on the hot tea sweetened with sugar, and listened to the sounds of the goldfields. From the depths of the night came the twanging sound of a jew’s harp and somewhere a fiddle yowled out a tune. The voices of men and women joined in popular songs to celebrate full stomachs and another day alive. Laughter was becoming a more common sound on the goldfields as the terrible months of the Wet were rapidly forgotten by the miners. They looked optimistically to the promised golden days ahead. By the light of scattered fires, under the constellation of the Southern Cross, miners swapped stories, drank rum and smoked clay pipes. The clear night sky promised another day and with it the chance to resume the search for personal fortunes.
And it was by light of the campfire that Ben continued surreptitiously to glance with keen interest at the pretty girl Jennifer. But his interest was not lost on her. She would turn away quickly when their eyes met and talk to Kate as if she were not aware of him.
Kate smiled to herself when she saw the way Ben looked at the girl. He was like a guilty little boy. What would Solomon and Judith think of Ben’s interest in a Gentile girl who had an illegitimate son, she wondered. But that was another problem and one of lesser concern for now. First they had the journey back up the track to Cooktown. They’d have to contend with fording rivers and creeks all over again. The only certainty was that the journey would not be easy.
Ben left their campfire for a short time to visit a miner he knew from his days hauling supplies to Tambo. When he returned he had a worried expression on his bearded face. He squatted by the fire and poked a stick into the red glowing coals to make a light for his pipe.
‘Word’s come back that the myalls jumped Inspector Clohesy up the track at Hell’s Gate,’ he said, puffing on his pipe.
Kate heard his words and sipped at a mug of hot tea sweetened with sugar. Jennifer lay asleep with her head in Kate’s lap while Willie slept with his head in his young mother’s lap. The good food and comforting warm fire had caused them both to doze before falling into a deep and untroubled sleep. Kate did not have the heart to wake the girl and cradled her as she would a child. ‘He had seven troopers with him when they attacked him on the Laura River,’ Ben continued as he stared into the flickering flames of the fire.
Aboriginal tribesmen attacking a heavily armed party of police troopers meant they’d be more than prepared to attack two wagons and their escort of just two women, one boy and a man, Kate thought. She nodded gravely. They would not only have to traverse some of the most rugged land on the Australian continent, but they would also have to avoid the painted warriors of the north. It was ironic to think that the Aboriginal warriors would not be interested in the small fortune in gold they carried, that they would be more interested in their flesh!
Kate shuddered. The thought of what could be their fate if the tribesmen took them alive was horrifying. She had heard stories of how the tribesmen smashed the legs of their captives with rocks so that the victims could not escape and then roasted them to provide a feast.
Jennifer stirred when she felt the tiny shudder and opened her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Missus O’Keefe,’ she slurred sleepily. ‘I must have gone to sleep.’
Without thinking Kate gave Jennifer’s shoulder a gentle and reassuring squeeze. Her mind was on the supply of rolled brass cartridges for her Martini Henry, a rifle capable of bringing to a stop the fiercest of tribesmen. Although it was a single shot weapon she was very skilful with the gun and it would be this skill that would matter most in the weeks ahead. Kate was a long way from the comfort and security of her uncle’s hotel in Sydney. But then, she was a long way from the young girl she had once been before coming to Queensland to make her personal fortune.
She gazed down at Jennifer and the sleeping boy and was acutely aware that they had now become her responsibility. Glancing up at Ben squatting by the fire she felt somewhat reassured. Life had a way of bringing into her life capable men when she needed them most. ‘Luke?’ she whispered, and Ben glanced up from the coals of the fire.
‘You say something Kate?’ he asked in a puzzled voice.
‘No, I was just thinking about something.’
He looked away and Kate realised that there were tears in her eyes. The American prospector Luke Tracy came so easily to her thoughts when she was lonely and frightened. He had always been like a tough yet gentle guardian angel, guiding her safely along the dangerous tracks of her life. She had long convinced herself that she had not loved him and that he was merely a dear friend whose company she sorely missed. He was six years gone, to where only God knew, and she had to accept that, like her dead brothers Tom and Michael, and her father Patrick Duffy, the American was just another sad memory in her life.
But sometimes his slow drawling voice would be in her head when she slept under the stars. Or she’d briefly see his face in the image of a miner walking the tortuous track to the Palmer. At those times her feelings for Luke were even more confused.
FOUR
So they called the place Cooktown, the lanky prospector mused as he stood at the edge of the dusty, bustling main street of the boom town. Might have been Tracytown, if I’d got to the Palmer first. With an ironic smile he hefted the swag onto his shoulders and strode down Charlotte Street.
Much of what he saw, heard and smelt brought back twenty-year-old memories of another great gold strike. It all had the same feeling as Ballarat back in ’54: the hastily erected shops of bark and tin selling everything from laudanum to gunpowder, the numerous but less than salubrious places of solace for a man’s carnal needs and the ever-present establishments to quench a thirst with fiery spirits. And always in the air an electric expectation generated by the newcomers preparing to go up the trail to the goldfields, convinced that a fortune awaited them at the end of their journey.
Six years he had been away from the land he had grown to know so well. A land where he had receiv
ed his scar in the fierce battle on the Ballarat goldfields fighting the British army in an ill-fated rebellion against injustice. A land where he had searched for years for the elusive strike that would make him a rich man.
He appraised the eager faces around him and shook his head with a sadness for the bitter disillusionment he knew would be the fate for most. For this was not Ballarat within practical reach of the port of Melbourne and an easy road journey to the fields. This was the north where harsh jungles, mountains and monsoonal rains provided a natural barrier to even arriving on the fields. Luke knew. He had once attempted to reach the Palmer back in ’68 – and failed. That prospecting journey had almost cost him his life.
Perhaps if he had not been betrayed by a treacherous lawyer by the name of Hugh Darlington he might have been the first and his name written into history. He would have returned to the valleys south of the Palmer River and finally on to the Palmer itself. If he had he would have found what the dying prospector had told him about: ‘nuggets as big as hens’ eggs just lying in the shallows of the river for the taking.’ But the fever and the lack of supplies had driven him back when he knew he had been so close to his El Dorado. And a second opportunity to retrace his journey north had not presented itself.
Luke sighed for what might have been as he remembered the events that caused him to flee the colony for the far-off sanctuary of the land of his birth. Before he fled he had entrusted a large sum of money to Kate O’Keefe’s lawyer in Rockhampton – money made from the gold he had been given by the dying prospector. But Darlington had betrayed him to the police. Trading gold without official sanction brought heavy penalties.
