by David Vernon
We clustered around, wide-eyed, waiting for her reaction. She laughed as if Donny had told a joke, not even asking if Richie was okay.
“I suppose you boys want your sample bags,” was all she said.
The facts:
Mr and Mrs Paterson and their four sons lived in a one-room shack opposite our weekender in the Southern Highlands. Without telling us, the boys’ parents took the baby and went to the Royal Easter Show in Sydney leaving their sons aged nine, seven and five at home alone. My sister and I had no option but to mind the boys. This story recounts events of that day.
Kerry Lown Whalen is a writer who draws inspiration from the places she has lived. She grew up in Sydney near Coogee Beach where her senses were shaped by her environment, particularly the sea. She then called Canberra and Townsville home before retiring to the Gold Coast. Formerly a teacher of English, she now taps away at the keyboard allowing her imagination free rein. Writing about a ‘true event’ presented a challenge. Kerry has been published in the Stringybark anthologies, Behind the Wattles, Between Heaven and Hell, Tainted Innocence and Yellow Pearl.
Strange Encounter
— Jim Baker
The tracing of one’s ancestry has become a national pastime in Australia, especially if there are convicts in the cupboard where the skeletons normally reside. A few years ago I made the mistake of suggesting to my Australian-born wife, Sylvia, that we might look into the origins of her family, and a hobby rapidly became an obsession.
I should explain that I’m a recycled Pom who came to live in Perth about twenty years ago; I met Sylvia soon after I arrived and, as they say, the rest is history — family history! Early research showed that her family had origins in the same part of England as my own, the flat lands of East Anglia, a peaceful part of the country that has been lost in a time warp for decades. We decided to take a holiday in England and spend part of the time researching her family.
Some initial studies showed that her grandparents on her father’s side were buried in a churchyard in Norfolk, so that was our first port of call, to see if the gravestones might yield any information.
It was autumn in Europe, the air was crisp, and we drove up from London with the sun shining in a pale blue sky. When we reached Norfolk I introduced Sylvia to the Broadlands, where the sun glinted off reed-ringed man-made lakes nestling in flat meadowlands.
Over a pub lunch I told her stories of this ghost-ridden county where it is said that headless horses are seen pulling black carriages, forecasting death and where the spectre of the huge black dog of the Vikings roams the countryside at night with burning coals for eyes.
It was only mid-afternoon when we reached our destination, but already tendrils of mist were creeping across the fields and tiny drops of water hung motionless in the hedgerows, where red leaves were turning brown. The round, grey flint church tower was surrounded by a low, crumbling brick wall which housed the overgrown graveyard. A village had once stood here until it had been swept away, demolished to build the airfield from which planes had left, day after day, to drop their bombs on Germany during the Second World War.
Now only the church remained where it had stood since the Saxons built it centuries before, amidst vast acres of crumbling, weed-infested concrete. The tower looked out across a flat landscape broken only by a few low broken walls, the remnants of sheds and hangars of a bygone time. I drove the car slowly across the seemingly unending grey slabs, uneven and bumpy, with tufts of yellowing grass poking out from great cracks and huge dry thistles, yellow-brown with prickly thorns, stood like dead guardian soldiers.
I stopped the car by the wall and we got out into the silence. Ivy covered much of the church tower and brambles rampaged across the few gravestones that stood scattered below it. A chill breeze rustled through the churchyard.
The gate lay back on one hinge and we walked through, up the pathway to the door of the church, which was locked with a large brass padlock. I sighed and was about to speak when with a sudden burst of winter song a robin fluttered from the brambles and took flight across the concrete wasteland. I watched it until my eye could no longer pick it out against the gloomy background, then walked back to the gate and looked around me. All around the wasteland extended, flat and virtually featureless.
I took my wife’s hand and we walked slowly through the overgrown graveyard, around the tower and back to the path. A few of the gravestones bore barely decipherable inscriptions; others had long since yielded to time and sunk into the ground or were so ravaged by the weather as to be impossible to read. Nothing yielded any hint of my wife’s family.
Sylvia looked at me and I shrugged, about to suggest that we give up and go back to the car.
“Can I help?”
We both jumped and spun around. He was standing by the church door, a small elderly man, dressed in old-fashioned country clothes, tweed jacket, dark green trousers and brown boots. He wore a cap and leaned heavily on a stick. His face was brown and wrinkled and he looked at us through steady, pale blue eyes.
“Do you want to go into the church?”
“No,” I stuttered. “Sorry, you took us by surprise. It’s just, well, we believe my wife’s grandparents are buried here and we wondered where their graves are. But it’s all so overgrown and we can’t see any headstones…”
My voice tailed off as his eyes stayed fixed on mine. He walked up to me.
“What would be their surname, young man?” His accent was strongly local.
“Er, Wilkinson, sir. We think they lived in the village…”
He was no longer listening. “Wilkinson,” he whispered. “James and Emma. Yes.”
“Around there.” He pointed with his stick. “Their graves. Round the other side of the church. In the corner by the wall. Come along with me.”
He lead us around the ancient flint to the north side of the tower where the undergrowth was a little thinner, and there by the wall were two grass mounds side by side, unkempt but unmistakeably graves.
“They were poor people,” our guide said. “They couldn’t afford a headstone.”
We stood for a moment and I bowed my head. Sylvia bent down and plucked a few a few small wildflowers from the ground at our feet, stepped forward and scattered them on the two mounds. She stood for a moment, and then turned back towards me.
“Let’s go, Jim,” she whispered.
We walked back round the tower to thank our guide, but there was no-one to be seen.
“He must be in the church.”
The padlock was still on the door. I strode to the gate and stared around the acres of nothingness surrounding the church. I walked around the wall, my eyes searching everywhere but nothing was moving on the featureless landscape.
It was empty and silent.
We walked around the church-yard, called out, searched, to no avail.
The sea mist was creeping in and darkness was falling as I drove the car back over the bumpy surface. Neither of us spoke until we were on the road.
“So who was he?” Sylvia’s voice was pitched low. “Where did he come from, Jim? And where did he go?”
“I don’t know, love. But I’m sure, and I don’t know why, that the graves were those of your grandparents.”
There was a long silence as we drove down the quiet road.
“And, love, maybe I’m crazy but I somehow think that guy knew them personally. A very long time ago.”
As I spoke the bright lights of a pub appeared ahead and I swung the car into the car park.
“Come on, time to eat and drink.”
The facts:
This was a real event. It happened about ten years ago exactly as described. I can’t explain it!
Jim Baker is a recycled Pom who left the UK with his wife Sylvia in 1975. Work took him to Rio, Bangkok, Seoul and Singapore until, worn out, he retired to Perth in 1998. Now, at the age of 68, Jim spends time writing short stories and travel articles. Other interests include long distance walking, both in Australia and o
verseas, gardening and not playing golf. Jim has been previously published in the Stringybark anthology, Valentine’s Day.
Bessell’s Creek
— Jillian Brady
Alf sat by the fire with a steaming cup of sweet strong black tea. Three sugars — that was how he liked it. This was still a pretty rough campsite. The moss-covered ground had quickly turned to mud beneath their boots as the sun struggled to penetrate the tall blackwood and myrtle canopy above them. His brothers, Charles, Ted and Tom were already working in the creek bed with their mate, Gibbs. They were digging shovels of gravel from the creek bed and mud from the banks, and swirling it in their pans with cold clear water from the creek. Swirling and swishing and carefully tipping out the lighter silt, and swirling and swishing again until they saw what they were looking for.
They had been here for three days now. Charles and Gibbs had come in first, trudging up over the ridge from the valley at Tobacco Creek, where their main camp was. They had been working Tobacco Creek for several months. Sometimes they took home enough gold to Launceston to buy more supplies and a bit of tobacco, but rarely did they get any more than that. They were beginning to lose hope of making their fortunes at Tobacco Creek, so they had started to wander further afield into the bush-covered mountains searching for other creeks to try their luck in. This one was promising. Charles and Gibbs had found specks of gold in their first pans, and then several small grains. They returned to Tobacco Creek with a good report, and so they had all battled their way over the densely timbered ridge down to the fern-lined creek. They carried in enough supplies and tools to work the creek for several days to see if it warranted a more permanent camp.
Alf stood and stretched his back in preparation for another day’s work. Panning for gold could be back-breaking work. There was no avoiding the mud. Fortunately their father had taught them all well. They all knew the art of tanning and boot-making. Alf was particularly skilled. He took great pleasure in selecting and tanning the right skins to create full kip watertight boots, which could take eighteen months of toil in the mud.
Alf chuckled to himself as he picked up his shovel and pan. He was thinking of poor Allen. Just last month they had talked their fifteen-year-old brother into walking back out with them. They’d been home for the weekend in Newnham to pick up some more supplies and convinced young Allen he should come with them and try his hand at gold mining at Tobacco Creek. Ma wasn’t too keen on Allen going but Pa thought it’d be good for him — toughen him up. Well, after thirty-five miles of walking through the bush, no roads or tracks, poor Allen had collapsed into the bunk in the tent and laid there all the next day, too stiff and sore to move. His ambition to go prospecting like his big brothers was pretty much killed off there and then. He had slowly got himself moving and had a bit of a go with the gold pan but not much luck. Yes — gold mining was bloody hard work but maybe, just maybe, it might make you rich if you were lucky, and worked hard.
The brothers would work steadily for three or four hours, then break for a cuppa, then work for another few hours and stop for a bit of lunch, usually some bread or damper, a bit of jam and cold meat if they had any, with tea, then they’d work until near sunset before lighting the fire to cook dinner and sit around drinking tea and smoking a pipe before turning in for the night. There was something quite satisfying about the routine and the hard work and the solitude of the bush. They enjoyed each other’s company and being surrounded by the sounds of the birds and wind in the trees.
This morning was like any other morning as they worked away. Often they would work in silence, only speaking when they had gold to report and add to their growing collection. They were busy swirling water around in their pans when they heard a series of sticks cracking in the bush. They knew immediately someone else was there. They stood and looked around for the source and caught a glimpse of a man peering around a large tree trunk just down the creek a little, and then he was gone. Ted ran down the creek to where they had seen the man, but only managed to catch a glimpse of his back disappearing into the forest.
“Pretty sure that was Brewer from Bowood, down near Bridport,” Ted exclaimed.
“Darn!” said Tom. “We’ve been found out! The bugger must have seen the dirty water we’ve caused and followed it back up the creek. It must flow a fair way down to his farm down on the Little Forester.”
“Do ya reckon he knows how much gold we’ve been getting?” Alf was worried. “We need to make a claim or we’ll lose it.”
“Okay. You blokes stay here and guard it. I’ll go into Launceston and report the find,” ordered Charles. “Reckon the quickest way will be down to Patersonia and back in that way, rather than going back up over the ridge to Tobacco Creek.”
Charles was the oldest of the brothers and the most experienced bushman out of them, so he’d be less likely to get lost on the way through the forest back to Launceston. They all agreed he was better suited to make the journey quicker than the rest of them, so off he went — running as fast as he could, leaping over logs and dodging around tree trunks all the way to Patersonia where Millwood had the hotel which was the overnight coach stop between Launceston and Scottsdale.
When Charles staggered into the hotel, Millwood was rather shocked at the state of him. At first he thought something terrible must have happened for a man to run so wildly and desperately into his bar. Charles breathlessly explained he wanted to borrow a horse to race to Launceston. Millwood gladly supplied him with a horse from the stable and helped Charles to mount. He thought Charles looked like a sack of potatoes as he galloped off down the road.
A good two hours later, Charles rode into Launceston, tumbled off the exhausted horse and staggered into the Mines Office.
“I want to report a find!” He gasped to the astonished clerk at the counter.
He took a deep breath to steady his breathing and his hand as he began to fill in the paperwork. He would receive a reward claim of half an acre of his choice along the creek he called Bessell’s Creek, as that was his name and he had found it.
“Not a bad Christmas present,” he thought, as he wrote the date. “December 1878.”
A short while later, with a copy of the paperwork in his hand, Charles left the Mines Office. He paused at the door, relieved and exhilarated. A satisfied smile crept across his face. There, across the street, was Brewer, standing beside his horse and looking none too happy.
Then Charles realised how stiff and sore his own body felt. He had never ridden a horse before!
The facts:
This is the true story of how the Bessell brothers discovered gold north east of Mt Arthur, fifty kilometres from Launceston, which resulted in a gold rush to what became the town of Lisle with 2,500 residents at its peak. The information is primarily from my grandfather, George Bessell’s handwritten unpublished notes. George was the son of Alfred Bessell and was born at Lisle in 1901.
Jillian Brady is a Tasmanian who grew up in Queensland but has now returned to her ancestral home which she truly believes is the best place in the world in which to live and gain inspiration. Her day job is as a librarian but she would much rather be wandering and writing.
Eleven Candles
— Sharon Haste
It’s almost Christmas — my last one. I shiver despite the December heat, fingers gripping the cotton sheet, the memory shaking the last remnants of sleep. My eyes squeeze tight, lashes tickling freckled cheeks, arms finding my two best toys. The shrine of my short life is strewn across the walls around me, amid peeling paint and worn furniture. Ribbons, won on the school oval, hang like soldiers staked by a single thumb tack. Plastic ornaments, stuffed animals and amateur sketches of family and friends. Piles of books litter the floor. I wonder which of my sisters will sleep here when I’m gone.
My tapping heart has me up, tugging at the sheets and scrambling in my cupboard for clothes. I yank a uniform over my head, checking the pock-marked mirror. The faded maroon shift hangs limp, stopping well above the knees, toothpic
k legs beneath. I crinkle my nose and set the brush to my hair, raking it through the thick mass, filling it with curly, brown knots. I scrunch it up and tie it with elastic. A pale stranger eyes me in the mirror, frowning, wondering how it will happen. The thought is enough to propel me through the door, toward the comfort of Mum and breakfast.
The first fingers of light split the curtain, waking me before five on Christmas Day. Butterflies dance in my belly as I nudge my cousin, Michelle. Sleep creases her face, fists in her eyes.
“It’s Christmas.”
She bounces up with a sleepy grin, sheets tangling her legs, hair askew. We crawl off the mattress and sneak to the lounge. A spindly Ghost Gum branch casts a shadow against the gathering light, leaves replaced with paper chains and coloured bells. A cardboard star, covered with gold glitter, sparkles at the top. We tiptoe to the tree, hearts pounding, and squint at the pile of presents beneath. Squealing we hug each other tight, giving them a last look before scurrying back to bed, giggling in the growing dawn. The floorboards creak and our eyes shoot wide.
We tiptoe to the kitchen and peer through the door, gasping at a large man bending over the stove. Santa? A shrill whistle glues us together, before Grandad turns to pour steaming water into the teapot. He lowers himself onto the chair at the far end of the table, knees spread wide to accommodate his girth, blue dog parked at his feet. We burst in holding hands.
“It’s Christmas, Grandad.”
“And Santa left us presents.”
“You must have been good, then.”
We scamper back to the bedroom to wake Auntie Beryl. She’s snoring softly, ample frame rising beneath the sheet. We pounce on her giggling and shouting.