by Nevil Shute
“One of them,” the ranger said. “There was three hotels. He kept the best one, the Buller Arms. Two storeys, it was, with bedrooms. Used day and night, those bedrooms were, from what I’ve heard.”
“Like that, was it?” said Alec Fisher.
“My word,” the ranger said, “these gold towns were all the same. Booze and dancing girls and all sorts.”
Carl Zlinter said, “Was there a town then?”
“My word,” the ranger said again. “It was a big place at one time, over three hundred people. You’ll find the adit to the mine up in the trees there, back of the house paddock. It’s blocked now; it only goes in a few feet. The battery is still there down by the dam, in that clump of peppermint gums. There was houses all over in this valley flat.”
“I knew there was a town here,” Alec Fisher said. “What happened? Did the gold run out?”
“Aw, look,” the ranger said. “I don’t think there was ever much gold there. In 1893 it started, when they found a trace of gold in the conglomerate. The Rand mine in South Africa, that was conglomerate, so they called this one the Rand and floated a company in Melbourne.” He paused, and ate a mouthful of trout. “They got a little gold out, just enough to make it look a good bet. But it never really paid. It ran on for ten years and then it bust, in 1903.”
“That’s right,” said Fisher. “Everyone was gold mad at that time.”
“My old dad,” the ranger said, “he came out from home when he was just a kid, back in the ‘eighties some time. He came from a place called Northallerton in England, ‘n got a job in the police. Well, then when they found gold here he gave the police away and came and started the hotel. He was a fine, big chap ‘n handy with his fists, which you needed running a hotel in these parts in those days. He sold out in ‘98 or ‘99 and went to Jamieson ‘n got married. I was born in Jamieson.”
“How did they get all the stuff in?” asked Jack Dorman. “The track’s not so good.”
“Aw, it was better then,” said Slim. “They had a regular road up from the Jig, and brought it in in bullock wagons. I remember the road in here when I was a boy, you could have driven a car in down it, easy. But trees grow up pretty quick, ‘n nobody came in here when the mine shut down.”
“People all went away,” said Fisher.
“That’s right. There wouldn’t have been many left here after that. There’s not enough flat land to make a station, and it’s a long way from the town.”
Carl Zlinter asked, “What happened to the houses?”
“Aw, look,” said the ranger. “There’s been a fire through the valley twice at least, in 1910 and 1939. I come here first when I was just a nipper, in the first war some time. I don’t remember seeing any houses. There’s not much left of houses after a fire’s been through,” he said. “Only just the brick chimneys, and they soon fall down. Most of the places would have had a wooden chimney, too.”
“I remember the fire here in 1939,” said Dorman. “A bit too close to home it was, for my liking.”
“My word,” the ranger said thoughtfully. “A fair cow, that one. Just after I joined the Forest Service, that one was. The house was on the other side of the river then; we rebuilt it after on this side, because the land was flatter, ‘n better for the paddock.” He turned to Fisher. “Days ‘n days of hot sun, ‘n not a breath of wind down in the valley here. It got so that you couldn’t hardly breathe for the scent from the gum leaves; it made your eyes smart, sort of distilling out in the hot sun, ‘n no wind to carry it away. And then one morning I was out in the paddock lighting my pipe although I didn’t really want it for the way the air made you choke, and when I lit the match the flame burned blue. There wasn’t any yellow in the flame, just kind of blue, out in the open air, dead still, in the middle of the paddock.”
The men stared at him. “My word,” said Dorman softly.
“We hadn’t got no radio in those days,” the ranger said. “I put that match out quick and saddled up, ‘n rode out to the Jig. Mr. Considine, he was superintendent then, ‘n I got on the telephone and told him that my match burned blue, out in the open air, ‘n he as good as said that I was drunk. And then he said the fire on Buller was heading down my way, ‘n I’d better get anybody in the Howqua out, ‘n get my own stuff out.”
He paused. “Well, there was nobody else in, that I knew about, and nothing in the house I thought a lot of but my gun, that I got from my dad. An English gun it was, a good one that some toff had give my dad, a twelve-bore made by a firm called Cogswell and Harrison. Well, I rode back towards the Howqua, and when I got up on the ridge I could see the fire on Buller, and it was a whole lot closer now not more’n seven or eight miles away. I sat on the horse and thought about the air down in the valley where the match went blue; it was hot as hell, ‘n not a breath of wind. I didn’t like to go down there a bit, my word I didn’t.”
“Not worth it for a gun,” said Alec Fisher.
“I tell you,” said the ranger, “I wouldn’t have gone down for the gun. I’d have given it away. But I’d got three horses down there in the paddock, ‘n I’d got to get them out. So down I went, and by the river here the air was worse than ever, sort of choking. I just grabbed the gun and left everything else, ‘n let the fence rail down and drove the horses out ahead of me and up the track. I never been so frightened, oh my word.”
“Lucky to get away with it,” Jack Dorman said.
“Too right. Well, I got back on to the ridge in Jock McDougall’s pasture with my horses and the gun, and there I stayed a while. I wasn’t going to stay down in the valley, but I’d a right to stay as near I could to where I ought to be. So I stayed there on the ridge for a while. And about three in the afternoon, that fire on Buller, she began to jump. She come down this valley in leaps about two mile each time. She’d be blazing way off up the valley, ‘n then there’d be a sort of flash and you’d see everything alight and burning two miles closer on. Then she’d rest a while, and then she’d leap on another mile or two mile down the valley. In a sort of flash.”
Alec Fisher said in wonder, “The whole air was exploding?”
“That’s right,” the ranger said. “The whole air was exploding. That’s how the old house come to be burned down. After that we built this one, next year.”
Carl Zlinter said, “Let me understand. It was hot, so hot that the sun evaporate the eucalyptus oil out of the trees, and that explodes?”
“That’s right,” said Jack Dorman. “I’ve heard of that happening over in East Gippsland, by Buchan in the Cave Country.”
“But that is terrifying!”
“Too right,” said the ranger. “It terrified me.”
“You can’t do anything about a thing like that,” said Fisher. “You can’t stop a fire from spreading when it jumps two miles.”
The forest ranger said, “Folks down in the city think you can stop a forest fire by spitting on it. They come along after and ask why you didn’t put it out. Maybe you can do a bit to stop one starting, like getting campers not to light a fire in January. But only God can put it out when it gets hold.”
“We do not have fires like that in my country,” said Zlinter. “Perhaps it is too cold, and too much rain. We have fires sometimes, but not to jump two miles.”
“Which is your country?” asked Jack Dorman. “Where do you come from?”
“From Czechoslovakia,” the other said. “In Pilsen I was born.”
The names meant nothing to the Australian. “Working up at Lamirra?”
“That is right. I work there for two years.”
“Like it?”
“I like it very much. It is like Czechoslovakia, with the forests and the mountains. I would rather be working here than in the city.”
Billy Slim said, “You don’t have gum trees in your forests over there, do you?”
“No, we do not have the gum tree. There all is pines and larches, and oak trees a few, and sometimes the silver birch.”
“Get much snow in
winter?” asked the ranger.
“Oh, we get much, much snow. Three feet, four feet deep from November until March. It is much, much colder in Czechoslovakia than it is here.”
“I wouldn’t want four feet,” the forest ranger said. “Four inches is enough for me.”
Carl Zlinter said, “I am from Europe, where villages remain for many hundred years. I do not know of any village in Bohemia that has vanished with no sign left, as this one has.”
The ranger said, “Aw, well, there’s plenty left here if you look for it. Only there aren’t no people living here any longer. There’s the mine adit, and the battery, and down the river, ‘bout a mile, there’s the cemetery with all the stone headstones still standing up. The fire couldn’t burn up those.”
“Where’s that?” asked Alec Fisher.
“You know where there’s a red stone bluff on the right side going down? Well, on past that there’s a big tree-trunk lying along the bank, where I pulled it with three horses when it fell across the river. The cemetery’s in behind that, on the north side.”
“Many graves there?”
“Aw, no — just a few. Just a few headstones, that’s to say. Might have been more one time, with a wood cross perhaps; there wouldn’t be nothing left to show those.”
Jack Dorman sat puzzled, hardly hearing what was going on, a vague memory of little Peter Loring and Ann Pearson stirring in his mind. “Say,” he said to the Czech, “is your name Cylinder by any chance? Are you a doctor?”
“My name is Zlinter — Carl Zlinter,” said the other. “I am a doctor in my own country, but not here in Australia. Here I work at the timber camp.”
“That’s right,” said Dorman. “I heard about you one time. Didn’t you pick up a boy that had fallen off his pony?”
Zlinter smiled. “He had very high temperature,” he said. “The lady was helping him when I arrived. It was not that he fell off because he could not ride. He was ill, that little boy, with a bad ear.”
“That’s right. You took him into hospital.”
The Czech nodded. “I think his mother was a stupid woman not to see that he was ill when he left from his home to go to school. It could have been a serious accident, but he was scratched a little, only.”
“You speak pretty good English,” said Jack Dorman curiously. “D’you learn it since you came out here?”
The other shook his head. “I learned English at school, and then for nearly five years I was in Germany, where many people now speak English, in the camps and with the officers. Also, I have been here now for fifteen months, and perhaps I have improved.”
“What’s it like, coming to Australia from Europe, now?”
“It is good,” the Czech said. “It is a good country, plenty to eat and to drink, and plenty of freedom.”
“You’ve not got plenty of freedom, working for two years in the woods.”
The other shrugged his shoulders. “I like the woods and the mountains. It is not cruel to me, to send me here.”
Alec Fisher said, “Lot of people coming out here to this country now.”
“My word,” said Jack Dorman. “My wife’s got a niece, an English girl, arriving in about a fortnight’s time. Seems like it’s better out here now than it is in England.”
“An English migrant, like your wife’s niece,” asked Zlinter, “ — she will not have to work for two years, like a New Australian?”
The grazier shook his head. “I don’t think so. This girl, she’s coming out just on a visit, though — paying her own passage. She says she’s going back again in six months’ time.”
“It must be very expensive, to do that.”
“She got a little legacy,” the grazier said. “She’s spending it in coming out here for the trip, to see what Australia’s like.”
They settled down to an evening of local gossip, with the assistance of a bottle of Scotch whisky produced by Alec Fisher.
They were all up soon after dawn, to take advantage of the cool of the day when fish feed well. They had a quick breakfast of eggs and bacon, and split up for the day’s fishing. They tossed a coin for who should go alone, and Alec Fisher won; he started off up-stream. Carl Zlinter and Jack Dorman went down-stream, having arranged to fish alternate pools, leap-frogging each other.
They fished on down-stream for an hour or so, catching a few fish and exchanging a word or two when they overtook each other. Presently Carl Zlinter, going on ahead, came to a red stone bluff upon the right side of the river, and a memory of the conversation of the night before came to his mind.
Jack Dorman was not far behind him. He sat down and waited for the grazier by a little rapid; when he came, Carl said, “There is the red bluff that Billy spoke about. Somewhere here is the cemetery of the old town of Howqua.”
The Australian grunted. “Want to go and look for it?”
“It is a pity to be here and not to see it,” the Czech said.
“He said it was behind a tree-trunk lying along the bank, didn’t he?”
“There is a tree-trunk, there. Perhaps that is the one.”
They laid the rods down on a boulder by the rapid, and pushed their way through the scrub that lined the river. Away from the water there were wattle trees in bloom among the gum trees of the forest, vivid splashes of a bright mimosa colour in the dappled sunlight. For a time they saw nothing of the cemetery; they moved down the bank in the forest, keeping near the river. Presently Jack Dorman spied a leaning headstone, and they were there.
There was not very much to see; three leaning headstones, and four or five lying on their faces on the ground, partly covered in creepers and trash. If there had been a fence at any time it had gone the way of the houses in the forest fires; if there had been wooden crosses marking graves, fire and the ants had taken them. Jack Dorman bent to read the lichened names carved on the three headstones still erect. Peter Quillam, of Tralee, Ireland. Samuel Tregarren of St. Columb, Cornwall.
He came to the third headstone and stood staring at it, amazed. “Hey, Zlinter!” he said. “This some relation of yours?”
They stooped together at the stone. It read:
Here lies
CHARLIE ZLINTER and his dog.
Born at Pilsen, Bohemia, 1869.
Died August 18th, 1902.
The Czech read it carefully, in silence. Then he looked up at the grazier, smiling a little. “That is my name,” he said, “ — Carl Zlinter, and I was born at Pilsen in Bohemia. Of all the things that have happened in my life, this is the most strange.”
Five
THE DORMANS LEFT Leonora for their holiday in Melbourne on New Year’s Day. They drove down in the old Chevrolet utility, leaving Mario in charge of the station and taking Tim Archer with them, sitting all three in the front seat and with four suitcases in the truck body. Mario had had letters from Lucia; her passage was booked on the Neptunia for April, and he was busy with the builder working on the shack extension of the stable that they were to live in. Tim Archer came to Melbourne with them to drive the old utility back to Leonora and to see his parents; Jack Dorman had already arranged to buy another near-new Ford utility at an inflated price in Melbourne, and to drive it home.
They went with an air of festival excitement. Thinking back over their long married life, Jack and Jane had been unable to remember when they had last gone away together for a real holiday; there had been trips to Melbourne for various business reasons, always cramped and curtailed by the need for rigorous economy and by the need to get back quickly to the station. Certainly, they had not had a genuine holiday for at least ten years. Now, with two men to help them and with what was, for them, unlimited money, they were able to relax and to enjoy the fruits of thirty years’ hard, grinding work.
Jane Dorman had heard from Jennifer that she was coming to Australia and that she proposed to take a job at once in Melbourne, and would like to come out to Merrijig to see them as soon as she could get a holiday. Jane thought this a bad idea; the Orion was due to doc
k in Melbourne on January 3rd and they had put forward the date of their holiday to meet the ship. There had been no time to write to Jennifer before she sailed, but Jane had written to her at Port Said and at Colombo urging her to come back with them to Leonora for a short visit before taking a job in the city; she was arriving at the hottest time of the year, Jane said, and office work in Melbourne might be trying till the end of February for anybody just arrived from England, especially if the summer was a hot one.
It was hot the day that they drove down from Merrijig; at midday the shade temperature in the country was in the nineties. Before long they stopped by the roadside for Jack Dorman to take off his coat and undo his collar; Tim Archer got out of the front seat and into the back with the luggage; the dust swirled round him there and made sweat streaks of mud upon his temples, but it was cooler so for all of them, and better travelling.
They stopped at Bonnie Doon for the cold, light Australian beer, and at Buxton for lunch. By four o’clock they were running into Melbourne, perhaps the pleasantest city in the Commonwealth, and at four-twenty they drew up in front of the Windsor Hotel.
Tim took the utility away and the Dormans went up to their bedroom, a fine, lofty room with plenty of cupboards and a bath. After the constrictions of their rather mediocre station homestead it seemed like a palace to them; the hard years fell behind them, and for the moment they were young again. “Jack,” said Jane, “don’t let’s see anyone tonight. Let’s just have a very, very good dinner and go to a theatre. Any theatre.”
“Don’t you want to see Angie?”
“Angie can wait till tomorrow,” said her mother. “I want to see a theatre. Angie’s probably seen them all. Let’s go out alone.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll go down and see what we can get seats for.”
She said, “And I want a bottle of champagne with dinner.”
“My word,” he said. “What’ll I order for dinner — mutton?”
“You dare! Oysters and roast duck, or as near as you can get to it.”
They went out presently and walked slowly in the heat down the tree-shaded slope of Collins Street, tacking from side to side to look at the shops. Jane said presently, “I know what I want to buy.”
