‘Ach no,’ replied the other woman. ‘The child can’t pay her way, and she’s not kin. But I know they haven’t the heart to throw her out.’
Nellie listened to them almost against her will, for she knew she was eavesdropping. But although the words sent a chill through her, she knew the truth of them.
When the women walked away, she stayed where she was, looking up at the stars.
Of course she couldn’t keep on living with the Trelawneys, eating their food and taking up space in their tiny home. They’d saved her life, but that didn’t mean they had to support her any longer. And what reason did she have now to stay in the Burra?
‘The women are right,’ Nellie said to herself. ‘Now that I have my health again, it’s time I left. I expect I should have gone earlier.’ She shivered, sighing, but cheered up almost immediately. ‘Then I can see my Mary all the sooner, and how good that will be!’ She hugged herself with joy at the thought.
Back in the dug-out, she took out her money and counted it by candlelight: three shillings, nine pennies and a halfpenny. For all her wishing, the amount never grew any bigger. She had nowhere near the ten shillings it would cost her for the coach trip home.
What I need, Nellie thought, is a plan.
By next morning Nellie had made up her mind.
‘Is there a way I might get back to Adelaide, apart from the coach?’ she asked Mrs Trelawney as they washed the dishes in a bucket of creek water. ‘There must be another way that doesn’t cost so much.’
Mrs Trelawney stood and thought, a dirty tin plate in one hand and her bunch of scouring twigs in the other.
‘There’s the teamsters,’ she said at last. ‘They could give you a lift as far as the Port Wakefield turn-off. Not that I like the idea of a young girl travelling with those Irish beggars,’ she added. ‘They’re a rough lot, mostly, although Dan Murphy is all right.’
‘I can look after myself, sure,’ said Nellie. ‘But why would I want to travel with a team of bullocks? They go slower than a one-legged dog.’
‘True, they are slow,’ Mrs Trelawney admitted. ‘About a mile an hour is all they’ll do, and that’s on a good day.’
‘I can walk much faster than that,’ Nellie said. ‘I’d be at the turn-off ahead of them.’
‘You probably would, my lamb,’ said Mrs Trelawney. She looked at Nellie. ‘So you are thinking of leaving us.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Nellie said. ‘I mean to go tomorrow. I can’t stay with you any longer. You’ve been kindness itself, but I must go back to my friend Mary in Adelaide. I know she’ll be missing me.’
‘You may leave whenever you like, lambkin, but I insist on your taking the coach,’ said Mrs Trelawney. ‘I shouldn’t be happy letting you go, otherwise.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Is that smoke? Drat those boys, they’ve snuffed our chimney pot again. Why can’t they find something else to entertain themselves? Run, Nellie!’
Nellie scrambled up the path. While she was shooing the boys away from the dug-out chimneys, she saw in the distance a familiar figure in a long blue coat.
‘Li!’ she cried joyfully. She waved, and started to run towards him. But when she drew closer, she realised that it wasn’t Li after all: it was a much older man. He was slightly stooped, and his pigtail was grey.
Oh, I expect it’s Li’s uncle, she thought, disappointed. He looks quite old, and it must be a long way he’s walked from his vegetable garden. I suppose he’s used to it, though: didn’t Li say he’d walked to the Burra all the way from Adelaide?
Then she stood still, looking at Li’s uncle without seeing him. A bubble of excitement rose inside her. Suddenly she’d had a great idea.
Nellie crawled out from under her sugar-bag quilt while it was still dark, and bundled up her few things.
Candlelight flickered in the main room of the dug-out. Bob was on early shift at the mine, and was eating porridge at the kitchen table while his wife prepared his midday dinner. This morning there was a second dinner on the table, ready to be tied into its square of cloth: several slices of bread and dripping, two Cornish pasties, a wedge of treacle tart, a hunk of cheese and a bottle of water.
‘That should see you right for the coach journey, my lamb,’ Mrs Trelawney said. ‘And I’ll start you off with some porridge. Always begin the day with a full belly, that’s my motto.’
Nellie forced the porridge down. It was hot, and warmed her body, but she was so nervous that she had very little appetite.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, why am I leaving these lovely people? she wondered. The bubble of excitement had disappeared overnight, and at that moment she would have given almost anything to stay here in the dug-out. It was cosy, and safe, and familiar. But of course she knew why she was leaving. She needed to be with Mary. And she needed to find work.
Surely by now there’d be something for her in Adelaide. She didn’t have to rely on the Immigration Depot for employment – there’d be other places. Perhaps she could work at the Infirmary. She’d ask that doctor if he might have a job for her. The place could do with a good clean. And if she worked at the Infirmary, she’d be close to Mary every day. That thought made her feel quite cheerful, and the last few spoonfuls of porridge went down more easily.
It was hard to say goodbye to Bob Trelawney. He took both Nellie’s hands in his own big calloused ones and then pulled her to him in a huge hug. The hug reminded her so vividly of her dada that her heart ached with missing him.
How can I bear it? she thought. I’m always going away from the people I love, or else they’re going away from me.
She watched Bob trudging off down the creek-bed until he disappeared around a curve in the bank. It felt to her as if her dada was leaving her all over again, and once again she saw her dada’s thin face and the terrible sadness in his eyes. She knew she would remember that face till the day she died.
Mrs Trelawney’s arm around her waist brought her back to reality. ‘Well then, Nellie,’ she said. ‘The coach will be leaving soon, so it’s time we parted, too. You’re a good girl, and I’ll miss you.’ She kissed Nellie on the cheek. ‘Here’s something to help smooth the way.’
Nellie looked at the coin Mrs Trelawney had slipped into her hand. It was a silver shilling, and Nellie knew there weren’t many spare shillings in the Trelawney household. The ache in her heart grew stronger. ‘Sure, you mustn’t – you’ve been so kind to me. Why, if it weren’t for you I’d be dead and buried …’ She tried to say more, but choked on the words.
‘There, my lamb. You were worth the saving, and we were happy to help. Off you go, now. God be with you, Nellie dear.’
NELLIE walked to Market Square. She walked past the waiting coach, and she kept on walking. Her plan was to walk all the way to Adelaide on her own two legs.
She knew she could do it: she was quite strong again now. She didn’t want to arrive in Adelaide with no money at all. Destitute: that was the word Mary’s doctor had used to describe a person who had nothing. Nellie knew what it was like to be destitute, and the thought of it filled her with dread.
She was sorry she’d lied to Mrs Trelawney about taking the coach. It was a wrong thing she’d done, but Nellie was sure it was better that Mrs Trelawney didn’t know the truth. She didn’t want to cause her kind friend any heartache.
Li had told her that the journey had taken his uncle a week, and a week wasn’t so very long, was it? It would pass in no time at all. And there were places along the road where she’d be able to find some sort of shelter for the night. They’d been set up as camps for teamsters, in the days when the bullock teams went direct to Adelaide. She remembered passing through them on her journey up to the Burra. There’d be a barn, or maybe a wayside inn. So long as it wasn’t raining, she could curl up for the night under a tree, or in a haystack.
She would try to reach one of these settlements at the end of each day’s walking. Then, before she knew it, she’d be in Adelaide.
Feeling a little scared, but excited, too, Nellie m
arched down Burra’s main street. Her bundle was supported by a strap over her shoulder, and her shawl was pulled tightly around her.
In just a week, she thought, I’ll be seeing my Mary. Oh, I do hope she’s quite better now. Nellie imagined the joy of their meeting. They’d talk and talk and talk. Later she’d take Mary away from the Infirmary and they’d find a place to live. Perhaps there might be a spare room at the Golden Lotus boarding house. Mary could earn her living as a seamstress – nobody could do such fine needlework as Mary.
Soon Nellie had left the straggle of houses behind, and was walking through the low hills around the outskirts of Kooringa. All around her was peace: not a sound, not a movement.
Nellie’s fingers and toes were cold, but the morning sun was warm on her face and a light breeze lifted the brim of her cotton bonnet. After she’d been walking for an hour or so she sat on a rock and ate a piece of bread and dripping.
There weren’t many people on the road, although there were plenty of signs of traffic: animal dung, and the marks of heavy wheels in the dirt. There were cast shoes, too: horseshoes, and the strange half shoes bullocks wore on their cloven hoofs. Cues, she’d heard the teamsters call them.
Men on horseback rode by, tipping their hats as they passed her. Once she was overtaken by a smart buggy; several times by farmers’ carts. For a mile or so she walked behind a big flock of sheep and chatted to the shepherd, a soft-spoken man from Yorkshire. He topped up her water bottle from his own flask, and wished her good fortune.
To help make the time pass, she sang ‘The Minstrel Boy’ and ‘The Rose of Tralee’, songs her dada used to play on his tin whistle. She counted her footsteps, one to ten, over and over again, telling herself that each one brought her closer to Mary. She recited the ABC. She imagined herself writing a letter to Tom Thompson. Where are you? she wrote, spelling out the words in her head. Where did you go? I have looked for you. She wasn’t sure how to spell ‘looked’. Was there a ‘u’ in it?
She smelled the bullock train long before she saw it. The acrid smell of the animals hung like a taint in the air. Nellie walked faster than the bullock teams could travel, and before long she’d caught up with them.
It was like entering another world. The smell of the animals and the sound of cracking whips and the shouting of the teamsters and the creaking and rumbling of the loaded copper wagons blotted out everything else. It reminded Nellie of being on board the Elgin, where the rushing of the sea and the booming of the wind in the sails overhead became a part of life itself, so that you forgot things had ever been different.
She recognised some of the teamsters because they lived in the creek settlement. A few women were walking beside their men, one or two of them carrying babies. Nellie slowed down to talk with them for a while, but the plodding pace made her lose precious time. When she reached the head of the train she found that Dan Murphy was there with the lead bullocks.
‘And is it yourself, Nellie O’Neill?’ he said. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘I’m on my way to Adelaide,’ Nellie said. ‘I hope to be there in a week.’
‘Well I never. And will you honour us with your company, now that you’re here?’
‘I’d love to, Mr Murphy, but I can’t afford it,’ Nellie replied with a laugh. ‘You move too slow.’
‘Well, there’s a great disappointment,’ Dan Murphy said, grinning. ‘We mustn’t be keeping you, then. A safe journey to you, Nellie.’
Shouted good wishes and farewells followed her down the road. Nellie turned and waved until the sounds of the bullock train receded into the distance and she was breathing fresh air again.
When the sun was high in the sky she came to Black Springs. Here the road branched, one part going west to Port Wakefield, and the other going south to Adelaide. Nellie was very hungry now, and she decided to celebrate this milestone by eating her treacle tart.
As she sat munching the tart, she heard a whirring sound close by. Small birds erupted from the bushes next to her, a whole flock of them, and darted away like vivid green-and-yellow arrows. It took only a second for Nellie to realise what they were.
One of the little birds didn’t fly away. He stayed perched on a twig, almost close enough for her to touch him.
Nellie held her breath. ‘Nei hou,’ she whispered. ‘Is it you, Bertie? Nei hou?’
Surely the little bird was looking at her – wasn’t he?
She moved closer, stretching out her hand to him.
In a flash he was gone. The twig trembled, and then was still.
Nellie looked up, squinting into the sun. Had she really seen Bertie? Had he found his family, at last? If he had, then surely it was a true miracle!
‘Juk nei hou wan, Bertie!’ she called out to the huge empty sky.
Suddenly Nellie felt very happy. I might not have found the Thompsons, she thought, but how lucky I’ve been! I found kind friends when I needed them most. I’m strong, I’m wearing a good pair of boots, and I have four shillings and ninepence-halfpenny in my pocket. All I need to do now is walk, and keep on walking. It will be an adventure, so it will. I’ll be back in Adelaide with my Mary in no time at all.
She rose to her feet, hitched up her bundle, and turned her steps to the south.
I am descended from Irish, Scottish and English immigrants who came to this country in the mid-nineteenth century. One of them, my great-great-grandmother, was a young farm girl from Somerset, England. She arrived in South Australia in 1856, and a year later, while still only a teenager, she married a Scotsman who owned a large sheep property. He was a widower with four children. She became a mother to these four and went on to have twelve more babies of her own. My Irish great-great-grandparents, who owned the property next door, had eleven children. Even allowing for a few infant deaths, these two families between them had so many sons and daughters that they hired a teacher and built their own school!
I grew up on a farm, too, and had the happiest of Australian girlhoods.
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 up 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 grow up my children, in a country that doesn’t fear the future.
THE discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851 lured thousands of people to the goldfields, brought great wealth to many, and changed Australia for ever. Within ten years the country’s population trebled. But Australia’s first mining boom happened earlier than this, with the discovery of copper in the mid-north of South Australia. The most important discoveries were made near Burra in 1845.
By 1850 the group of towns known as ‘the Burra’ had a population of about 5000. It was the biggest inland settlement in Australia, and one of the richest copper-mining areas in the world. A thousand people worked in the mines, mainly in the Monster Mine. Most of the people who came to the Burra were miners from Cornwall in England, but there were also smelters from Wales, teamsters from Ireland, engineers from Scotland, miners from Germany, shepherds from India, and market gardeners from China.
About 2000 people, mostly miners and their families, made their homes in dug-outs in the banks of the Burra Burra Creek. There was no proper sanitation, and more than a third of the children who lived there died from diseases like typhoid fever or cholera.
Burra’s mining success didn’t last. When gold was found in Victoria, South Australians flocked to the goldfields, hoping to make their fortune. A year later there were only twenty men left wor
king in the Monster Mine.
The Burra mines closed in 1877, although they operated again briefly a hundred years later. Burra is now a rural centre with a tourism industry based on its extraordinary mining heritage.
Imagine what it would have been like to live here! By 1850 hundreds of these cave-like dwellings had been dug from the clay banks of the Burra Burra Creek. Nearly all the dug-outs were washed away by floods in 1852, and those that remain are now a tourist attraction.
IN AUSTRALIA IN THE 1850s …
Many families had at least six children, and families of twelve or more were quite common. Women often died in childbirth.
Big families meant more mouths to feed, but also more money coming in. Children in poorer families often worked for wages when they were as young as nine or ten.
Going to school wasn’t made compulsory until the 1870s. Many children had only two or three years of schooling.
On average, men could expect to live to the age of about forty, and women just a little longer.
Two in every five infants died before their fifth birthday.
The main health risks for children were dysentery, croup, diphtheria, whooping cough, scarlet fever and measles.
People didn’t think the common but deadly disease tuberculosis (also known as consumption) was ‘catching’. We now know that it is caused by bacteria and is very infectious.
‘Cures’ for tuberculosis included drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco.
‘JESUS, Mary and Joseph, what am I doing?’ moaned Nellie. ‘Was I daft, thinking I’d walk all the way back to Adelaide?’
The Burra, where she had lived for so many weeks, was now just a distant memory. After four days on the road, Nellie wasn’t sure where she was, or how much further she had to walk. Her face and hands were sunburned, her eyes were gritty with dust and tiredness, and her feet were badly blistered. She was hungry, too, and her water bottle was nearly empty.
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