‘Aye,’ Kieran said, standing to stretch his back and looking over at Dave. ‘Poor Scobie.’ James Scobie, a Scotsman they’d met a few times, had been clubbed and kicked to death the previous week and his friend had been badly hurt. Several men had been arrested for the murder including the owner of the newly built Eureka Hotel, James Bentley, but despite his obvious guilt, rumour had it that he would be acquitted by the police magistrate, Dewes, a close personal friend.
‘That bastard Hotham won’t do a thing about it, you’ll see.’ Despite early hopes that he would be sympathetic to their cause, the new governor’s appointment had proven disastrous for the diggers. He’d inherited an unhealthy state budget from his predecessor La Trobe and he was intent on fixing things by enforcing gold licensing even further. Twice weekly, increasingly brutal licence hunts kept the miners on edge, with many pushed to extreme poverty levels now that the gold was becoming scarce and they were still forced to pay. Kieran had been wondering himself if the Governor would intervene and judging by the yells of outrage at the next claim they were all about to find out.
‘What is it?’ Dave called out to Jock who was standing in the group.
‘That bloody murderer Bentley’s been acquitted!’ he called back. ‘Group meeting at the old pub!’
‘Come on,’ Dave said, standing up, but Kieran hesitated.
‘You go, I’ll just finish up here first.’
Dave stared at him. ‘Work can wait, Kier. This is a man’s life.’
Kieran wavered but then Eve’s face came to mind. ‘I’d rather not get involved at this point.’
‘Not…not get involved?’ Dave said, incredulous now. ‘You’re the one always carrying on about oppression and freedom and the like; chucking your rocks and getting in fights with these kinds of bastards. For feck’s sake, it could have been me that died the other week, or any of us when we take a beating.’
‘Aye, but would good can it do to retaliate?’
‘What good can it do? It can change things, Kier. That won’t happen if we just do nothing.’
Kieran looked at his friend and sighed. ‘Eve can’t marry a rebel, Dave.’
He stared back, digesting the full scope of what that meant before replying. ‘Take action or no’, Kieran, you can’t change who you are at heart.’
Kieran watched him as he left, angry at this new injustice and even angrier at Kieran’s stance, Kieran knew. Dave was true to himself, always, whether that meant acting the clown or giving cheek, his own brand of rebellion. But there was more anger in him since his latest beating at the hands of the traps and there would be more than words flung now. Kieran could feel the impending bloodshed like an oncoming stormfront and Dave would be swept straight into its eye. Rebellion was ingrained at birth in Ireland and Dave was right, you couldn’t change that part of who you are even if you tried. They’d learnt from bitter experience that the more you let men take your rights away, the more dignity you were denied; that’s why every generation before them had fought against being controlled.
Yes, a life without freedom isn’t a full life, Kieran reflected, yet the rebel within would remain silent, regardless. He’d sacrificed that part of his heart willingly when he’d made his vow.
For neither is a life without love.
It felt strange not to be down at the pub with his mates a few hours later and Kieran couldn’t quite shake a growing uneasy feeling of disloyalty. He took out a letter from Liam to distract himself instead, re-reading the lines with pleasure. The Clancys’ new land was right down by the sea and Liam had used his way with words to paint the picture clearly for Kieran. He ran his eyes over them again.
Warrnambool is cold at times, but wonderfully so when the wind carries the salt, and the view from down on the road, Kieran, well it’s as spectacular as any place I’ve ever seen. Great limestone towers stand alongside each other like giants walking in the sea, burning in a thousand shades of orange and gold when the late sun hits. They’re called The Twelve Apostles (although I have only counted eight) and it’s God’s work, Kieran. The waves are mighty, thirty feet at least I’m reckoning, and they pound away day and night. It’s wild and it’s dangerous and shipwrecks are common, sadly, but the beauty of it is truly astounding.
The children love running along the beaches down in the coves and Eileen seems happier now although still quieter than she was. She does worry over the cliffs but then again what parent wouldn’t, I suppose?
The house that came with the land has far more room than our last and I cannot wait for you to come and see it all and hopefully, eventually, move here with your Eve. I’m so looking forward to meeting her when you do.
Kieran put the letter down, wishing he’d asked his family to come to the wedding now, but the idea of Eileen confronting Eve on the day was too worrisome. Besides, it was destined to be a bit of a circus with Amanda at the helm.
He stood and walked outside, staring up hopefully towards the Southern Cross but it was cloudy tonight. And dull. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to have a beer now and listen to what they’d all decided. It had been nothing to do with his input, after all. Kieran began to walk in that direction and before he knew it he was at the pub doors but it wasn’t rowdy, as he’d expected. A Welshman was talking to the crowd, who were hanging on to his every word and Kieran slipped in and leaned against the wall, listening too.
‘Squatters pay only ten pounds a year and have title to over a hundred thousand acres, and they can vote and basically control the legislative council in Melbourne. What we pay in comparison is ludicrous. For every tiny piece of earth you mine and pay tax on you could afford a farm – if the bastards would let you save any money to buy one!’ Murmurs of agreement followed as he continued. ‘We don’t have to resort to violence, gentlemen; indeed our truest weapon is constitutional. We should be fighting with our words and demanding our right to vote and make equality the law. Moral suasion will give us more power and, in the long term, more rights.’
‘We tried to reason with La Trobe last year and look where it got us,’ said an Irishman Kieran recognised as one of the more riotous among the diggers, Timothy Hayes. There was general agreement.
‘Just because we marched on Melbourne and had our say to no avail doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try again. We have even greater grievances now and surely no politician could deny that this is an abuse of our basic human rights.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ drawled Dave, prompting a few chuckles.
‘Why would they care about our rights? They don’t care now, when we starve or are beaten mercilessly by their tyrants,’ an Italian man called out. It was Raffaello Carboni, a well-known man among them all. He was fluent in many languages and was often heard translating conversations and speeches to other Europeans. He was also notoriously theatrical. ‘They would happily watch us perish and be wiped from the earth only they need to extract money from the very sweat of our heavy brows.’
‘Well, yes, but just think on it until next week, lads, and in the meantime keep your heads down. We don’t want any more blood being spilt.’
‘Except Bentley’s,’ said Jock and several around him agreed.
The Welshman didn’t comment further and the room soon swelled with noise as Dave made his way over to Kieran, handing him an ale.
‘Good to see you haven’t completely gone soft.’
Kieran chose not to comment, asking instead, ‘Who was that man?’
‘Humffray. He’s a smart fella, solicitor or something, but he doesn’t believe in violence unfortunately, as you probably heard.’ Dave had returned to his usual, more affable state but he still hadn’t quite lost his anger. Nor his cheek. ‘Perhaps you’d like him.’
Kieran ignored that one too. ‘What was the general consensus?’
Dave shrugged. ‘There’s talk of forming a reform league and more meetings. Apparently a crippled man was arrested for assaulting a trap so they’re also trying to get him out of gaol. It’s all just a fecken mess.’
> Kieran nodded. ‘Just don’t get yourself in any fights, Dave. You’re still not in very good shape.’
‘They’re just meetings. Why don’t you come along, if you’re worried, help me talk my way out of things? That isn’t rebelling exactly, more like moral persuasion or whatever he called it.’
‘I can’t see me being of much use. None of our Irish charms work too well on the traps for some reason.’
‘True,’ Dave agreed. ‘We should stay close to Macca. He’s like a hypnotist or something,’ he added, looking over at the gangly colonial. ‘I wonder if we can talk him into wearing a dress?’
‘Will you go?’
‘Aye, only to listen like. A promise is a promise,’ he added to reassure her. ‘It’s really just a political meeting to discuss reforms and legal rights so I doubt there’ll be any trouble.’
They were lying on the river bank, bodies drying in the sun, and Eve seemed in no hurry to get dressed and go today, which suited him fine. They’d made love in an urgent, heated blur but now they were satiated it was time for more sensual, lazy pleasures as he stroked her back and she ran light nails across his chest.
‘I really should get back to the tools,’ he said, looking over at the half-finished frame he’d been building for their new house. Fortunately this land had been considered available for sale and Kieran had used everything he had to purchase it. He’d been excited to start putting the foundations together this Sunday and had spent the whole day doing so. Well, most of it anyway.
‘What’s that section going to be?’ Eve asked, lifting her head to look at the frame too.
‘That’s the kitchen where you can look out over the river while you bake me lots of lovely cakes.’
‘Baking for you, am I? I think it will be a nice view for you when you do the dishes for me.’
‘Well, I suppose I could help out while you knit my socks on the front verandah.’
‘Oh, a verandah. How wonderful!’ she said, ignoring his jibes and getting excited now.
It motivated Kieran to jump up and put on his breeches to show her his plans. ‘I was thinking a nice long one here,’ he gestured, ‘with the table and kitchen over there and two bedrooms off the back.’
He went on to show her where the fireplace and stove would go, along with the larder and lean-to for storage, and by the time he’d finished they were both so excited about their future they ended up making love again. On a blanket, on the ground that would soon be the location of their marital bed.
Trouble may well be building over on the goldfields but Kieran was determined to leave it all behind him in December. There were other things to build in life that were far more precious.
The meeting itself had been sensibly conducted and Kieran had been impressed with the official format and intelligent approach the leaders of the Reform League were taking to present all the issues plaguing the diggers to Governor Hotham. A man called Thomas Kennedy, in particular, gave an eloquent and impassioned speech on the importance of justice being served regarding the death of James Scobie and there was loud applause at its conclusion.
A committee of seven men was appointed, mostly ex- Chartists from Ireland, political activists who were well used to fighting for democratic freedom, and among them was a man named Peter Lalor, known to be Timothy Hayes’s mining partner. Kieran observed him keenly, having already learnt from Dave that his family had been involved in the Irish struggle for independence for two generations. He had that look about him, probably a similar ferocity of countenance that Kieran had often worn himself; proud, unyielding, fierce, yet with egalitarianism at its core. Those who fought for equal rights all tended to don that mask at times such as these.
By the time the meeting began to disperse several thousand men were in attendance. Passions were high as they began their walk home, but it soon became apparent that the traps were following them in large numbers. Their presence spread unease through the crowd, slowing them down as heads turned and angry voices stirred through their ranks, until outside the Eureka Hotel they came to a halt altogether and the dissention grew into a stirring pool of unrest.
‘What’s up here?’ Dave muttered and Kieran watched as men began to jostle with the soldiers and police.
‘Bentley’s in there,’ Jock told them, pointing at the man’s impressive but now controversial new hotel. This was being passed around in an angry chant and someone hurled gravel at the window. Bits of wood, stones and bottles followed and the fine panes shattered as the mob pulsated in frenzied outrage, their appetite for destruction incited beyond control. Kieran looked nervously over at the traps, fearing retaliation, but they were far too outnumbered to do very much and within minutes every pane was destroyed. Suddenly, a man shot out from the hotel’s rear on horseback, no hat or coat to be seen, and therefore easily recognisable as Bentley. Many ran to pursue him while others ran into the building itself and crashing could be heard as they began to tear it apart.
More and more men were arriving and the crowd swelled to enormous numbers in the afternoon light, but most just watched as the main agitators did their work.
Kieran knew he should leave but it was darkly mesmerising watching such a thing unfold, the miners crawling like harvesting insects, the thuggish traps watching on angrily, and it looked to be reaching a violent crescendo as more and more military personnel arrived. But the troopers were still vastly outnumbered, despite the reinforcements, and broke suddenly to run and station themselves in the bowling alley building behind the hotel instead. Kieran wondered briefly if the violence would now be thwarted, and he knew he should feel relieved if it turned out to be so, but the Irish in his blood was up, and it wanted more action. Revenge was a powerful drug when the hunger for it had been fed for a lifetime.
Just then rags and paper were brought forward by a miner and Kieran watched, ashamed of himself and horrified now, as the man stuffed them under the calico covering of the alley. Kieran was struck by how calmly and coldly he proceeded to light a match, blinking at the reality of such blatant revenge in motion, and the fire caught quickly on the downward wind. The military could do little to stop it with the water cask now tipped over and the stables catching too.
He watched transfixed on the fringes until the whinny of horses roused Kieran to action at last, and he and Dave joined a few others in running to save the livestock inside. Other miners seemed to realise things were going too far and too fast too, and some began helping the servants escape with their belongings.
But anything deemed of ownership by Bentley was quickly destroyed.
‘Argh!’ called the fire-starter from before as he threw what appeared to be Mrs Bentley’s jewellery box into the flames. The lady herself was heavily pregnant, and was now being evacuated, and Kieran fleetingly registered the depths of her runaway husband’s cowardice.
Fire crackled and licked and soon the hotel itself was lit too, in terrible, leaping flames that devoured it hungrily. What was once the new, upscale watering hole of some of the most hardened miners, ex-convicts, traps and even bushrangers was being reduced to charcoal, the heat of it forcing the crowd to retreat and stare in silence now. The air itself seemed to melt as the building collapsed as if to its knees, crumbling further and further into the earth until only the joists and ridge poles stood tall, like fiery ribs in a carcass. They too eventually collapsed, one falling on the fine new ballroom attached, which caught alight and burnt slowly against the wind in a reluctant kind of curling.
They picked up anything that remained of Bentley’s fortune and finery to feed the smouldering remains: a fence, a dray, a shay-cart, until all of his possessions were wiped from the very earth where he took a digger’s life. Then they hunted through the rubble for whisky and ale, and crowed to the night that vengeance had been won, as the embers glowed and the smoke blew free.
Striker and Betty came to stand alongside Kieran, his massive arm wrapped protectively around her, and the others turned towards him as he spoke. ‘The rebellion has b
egun, lads,’ he said, ‘there’ll be no stopping it now.’
‘Aye,’ Dave agreed, looking pointedly at Kieran. ‘No turning away from it either.’
‘Humffray would say violence isn’t the way,’ Kieran reminded them, ‘that we should seek justice through law.’
‘This is justice,’ Striker said firmly. ‘Sometimes ye have to make yer own.’
But as the triumphant diggers ransacked the remnants of a wealthy murderer’s world Kieran couldn’t quite believe that two such enormous wrongs could ever make a right.
Thirty-Three
29 November 1854
‘Beastly weather,’ the captain commented and Kieran agreed politely as he sat perched on the edge of the settee, sticky from the spring heatwave and feeling awkward as Eve poured the breakfast tea in her usual role as maid.
Kieran thanked God it was only one more week until the wedding when she’d be able to go home and live with him each night. It was harder for them both since the captain had returned. He expected Eve to behave as an invisible servant, unlike Amanda who wanted her company for entertainment, but right now the lady of the house seemed oblivious to anyone but herself.
‘I must say, this new morning tonic your sister sent is wonderful, Kieran,’ she told him, leaning back to sip her tea. ‘I’m literally bouncing out of bed, aren’t I, Charles?’
‘I think bouncing may be pushing things a little far,’ he returned but there was amusement there as he glanced at her above his spectacles.
‘Pooh, I do so bounce,’ she admonished. ‘Oh, look at Arthur’s roses. How lovely.’
Arthur was bringing in an armful of red and orange blooms and he laid them on the side counter before standing back to look at them. ‘Pity they bloomed too early fer the weddin’ an all but they’ll brighten the house anyways.’
‘What are these ones called?’ Kieran asked. Arthur had been enjoying teaching Kieran about his hobby these past months.
In a Great Southern Land Page 23