Mosquito Creek

by Robert Engwerda

  It had somehow escaped Niall that the boat had to be large enough to ferry the stranded back, if indeed there was anyone to ferry home. In his mind’s eye all he saw was the vessel hacking its way through shallow waters and wind to the river. The journey back he couldn’t picture. There were no faces, no men to be placed, nothing.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. Then, casting his glance back in the direction of the river, he added, ‘Fog’s coming back in.’

  ‘Nothing that will prevent us from carrying out our work. We will need carpenters, in addition. I want you to see who you can find, a few men who can saw and shape a piece of timber to my requirements. Employ who you have to. Where those new buildings are going up by the farriers. It would appear we have some skilled tradesmen there.’

  ‘I don’t think any of them would know about boats, though,’ Niall said, before adding, apologetically, ‘And I definitely don’t.’

  ‘They won’t need to, Sergeant. They will be taking their instructions from me. So long as they can understand orders they can help put the Victory together.’

  ‘The Victory?’

  ‘That’s what we shall call her.’ Stanfield had also considered Resolution, for another famous ship, or the Prince Regent after one of the White Star Line. But Victory it needed to be. He shook some papers from his coat pocket. ‘Those plans I was referring to yesterday … You can see in these sketches.’

  He held the drawings wide between his hands.

  Niall saw three impressions in careful hand. The first was a bird’s-eye view of the framework of the boat with a scale in yards. The second showed the square stern. The final was a side view of the completed vessel.

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I’m sure anyone who sees it would approve. The finished boat, I mean. I think these drawings should suffice. There is a fine line between enough information and too much such as for the likes of those who will be working on it.’

  ‘You’ll be keeping an eye on it anyway as it comes along?’

  ‘I will. And I will be happy to have you working alongside me. You will see, it will be a first in this part of New South Wales, a rescue of this kind.’

  ‘Victoria is independent now.’

  The commissioner carefully folded his drawings into a tight square.

  ‘Independence implies progress, Mr Kennedy,’ he said, looking about him with bemusement. ‘Tell me what you see here that might suggest anything of that kind.’

  ‘It’s not just what it is now. It’s what it might be, too.’

  ‘Three cheers for your optimism, then.’

  With this boatbuilding business the sergeant was very much in the commissioner’s hands. He’d seen too little of ships under construction to add anything valuable to the discussion, even though he’d spent plenty of time aboard one on the passage to New South Wales.

  The commissioner turned to Niall. ‘Let me know how you fare with those carpenters. And one more thing. That circus going up. Tell the owner I’d like to see him.’ He then strode away through a wet fog to show the sawyers another tree he wanted felled; a gum tall enough to have avoided the general clearing that had gone on previously.

  ‘Hey!’ one of the men digging the hollow for the boat called to the sergeant, after the commissioner had departed. ‘Finders keepers if we cross a nugget?’

  He was grinning ear to ear, despite the weather. With their own claims out of action the two diggers were happy taking the work.

  ‘If it’s no bigger than a couple of quid’s worth. If it is, you have to go the spoils with me.’ Niall rubbed his nose with a finger to show the conspiracy.

  The men laughed.

  ‘Cold never goes away, does it?’ Niall said as the two stabbed their spades into ground, slinging earth away to one side. ‘It’d be worse over the other side of the river too, you’d think, if anyone is over there. You heard anything about who they might be? How many or who they are?’

  ‘Not really. You couldn’t see or hear ’em from here, not with the fog and all that,’ the first replied. He was a thickset man with sleeves rolled up, revealing powerful forearms. ‘The place’d be more than high enough. They’ll be right for a little while if they’s got enough to eat.’

  ‘I reckon you’re right. As long as they don’t start blueing,’ Niall said, more to himself.

  ‘Why should they?’ The digger momentarily halted his labours.

  Loathe to stir up stories of diggers fighting among themselves to survive, Niall quickly pulled himself up.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Hopefully they’ll just sit tight and keep an eye out.’

  The digger leant on his spade as though against the doorjamb of a comfortable house.

  ‘They’ll be goin’ nowhere where they is,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘The point is, where can they go? Water’s too dangerous for anyone to try a swim, even if they could swim and could see where it was they was swimming to. How else will they get away? Water and more water, everywhere.’

  ‘True,’ his mate nodded, returning to work.

  Niall watched the pair hack into the wet earth. If there were men out there they were most likely a handful of strangers stuck on a piece of land that had suddenly become a small island. Niall had been in places like that before – ships, Van Diemen’s Land, other rat holes too – and he knew what could happen unless someone came for them quickly. Prospectors especially could be skittish, quick to react. They travelled the world on rumours of gold and every day listened for cracks in timber supports. He wondered whether a group on a stranded patch of earth would have the sense to hold their place.

  The men digging the hollow were both strong and used to the work. This was like slicing through butter compared to what they’d be cutting if they were still here come summer. One spadeful of tossed earth followed the next as they developed a steady rhythm and worked their way across the marked-out area.

  ‘You’re doing a good job there,’ Niall remarked.

  They began shovelling harder as Niall wandered off to rejoin the commissioner, to see how the felling was going. He was only halfway there when someone grabbed his sleeve unexpectedly. He swung around to see the trooper who had approached stealthily behind him.

  ‘Smales! What are you doing sneaking up like that?’

  ‘Just had to report in,’ Smales said, making it clear he hadn’t come to speak to his sergeant just because he wanted to.

  ‘What did you want to tell me?’

  His question came out sharper than he’d intended but somehow Niall was made impatient by the trooper’s sullen appearance, every bone in his body sagging with complaint.

  Smales pointed back to where the diggers were excavating the bed for the commissioner’s boat.

  ‘What’s the idea of that?’

  ‘The commissioner says there’ll be timber planks laid across the hole, nailed front, middle and back to the top of the boat to keep it steadier for working inside it and out. What did you want to tell me?’ he asked again.

  ‘Right. The bloke in that tent. Phillip Oriente. One of the other diggers had come from up north with him. Worked a field near Beechworth for a little while before coming here. New South, they say, before that.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Not much. Just he’s suddenly gone missing.’

  ‘Gone to another diggings?’

  ‘Not likely.’ The trooper suddenly looked pleased with himself. ‘Bloke wouldn’t leave everything behind if he was off to dig somewhere else.’

  ‘So why would he do that?’

  ‘Fuck knows. There’s all types here.’

  Niall wondered if they’d find Oriente on the island, or whether his body would eventually float up from one of the flooded shafts. There were plenty of men who would settle a score or rob a digger under cover of the flood. But the tent was found empty just before the flood; perhaps the score had already been taken care of. Either way, someone would know what had happened.

  ‘It’s only another digger,’ Smales sa
id.

  ‘Keep asking.’

  The trooper grew surly. ‘Suit yourself.’

  Niall gestured curtly to Smales to keep following him while he trudged towards where the uniformed commissioner stood as a splash of red paint against the drab olive-green backdrop of the bush.

  ‘I’m going to tell you this just once, trooper – watch who you’re talking to. Got it?’

  Smales pouted in response, but with his face turned.

  ‘This other bloke who knows him. What did he say about him?’ Niall continued.

  Smales took a few seconds, before answering. ‘Not much. Just that they were partners in New South somewhere and had come from Beechworth after that.’

  ‘When abouts?’

  ‘I got no idea.’

  ‘Then I want you to ask him. I also want to know when he saw this Oriente last.’

  ‘He didn’t say much, this other bloke.’

  ‘You start him thinking, then.’

  Smales sniffed. ‘All right.’

  They walked closer to the tree line, crossing poorer ground even scavengers hadn’t bothered testing. Two more of the commissioner’s workers were straining at a crosscut saw like apparitions through the ghostly fog, rasping the saw back and forth through the wide girth of an ancient red log.

  As he watched the workers put their shoulders into the sawing it put Niall in mind of the backs of convicts flogged at Macquarie Harbour, the lash ripping fibrous pieces of flesh from men who were little more than beasts there, human stock to be herded and flailed from one dismal place to the next. The dregs of society had been sent there and for what had happened he counted himself among them. It didn’t matter that only he knew the truth of the terrible wrong that had been committed. He carried it as a burden every day he walked this sorry goldfield.

  5

  Niall Kennedy trudged away from the police compound with Smales at his side, in search of Oriente’s former mining friends, doing his best to ignore the fact that he was getting wet inside his boots. He pushed along as Smales steered them to a claim across the diggings, happy that for the moment the trooper was choosing to keep quiet. No more about Van Diemen’s Land, or any other gossip of people’s past or plans. The less you opened your mouth the safer you would be. And yet there were times when he wanted to confess the mistakes he’d made, take his punishment and wipe the slate clean. But that could never happen either, he knew, because they would believe the worst, and make him pay again. Joining the police had given him a chance to make good some of it but the law had a long memory, equally here as in England.

  Smales nudged him, meaning it was the cove in the grubby chequered jacket of browns and yellows, and moleskins so short not even his boots met them, who they were interested in.

  Niall silently observed a minute. Realising they were under scrutiny, the digger and his two companions exchanged quick glances before getting on with the business of bailing water from their claim.

  ‘Getting anywhere?’ Niall asked them.

  The digger in the chequered jacket looked up. ‘It might look a waste of time, but you’ve got to do something, eh? Can’t sit around doing nothing.’

  ‘True.’

  The digger lowered a bucket on a rope down their flooded shaft from their crudely constructed windlass. When he turned the handle he became an extension of it, his arms and bony body just another part of the mechanism.

  ‘Just want everything to clear up quick smart, we do.’

  ‘They say more rain’s coming,’ Niall said.

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Well, a bloke just come up from Wangaratta said it was on the way. He’s supposed to be in the know.’

  ‘Wangaratta,’ the digger spat. ‘What would those whackers know? Weather’s not coming from there.’

  The miner eyed Niall suspiciously, knowing it wasn’t weather the trap had come to speak with them about. His companions hauled the now full bucket to the surface, muddy water slopping over the rim, and one emptied it nearby. Why they were even doing it was beyond the sergeant. The ground was so sodden water would seep back in as quickly as it was bucketed out, if not quicker.

  Niall turned in the direction where the boat was being prepared and fancied he could still hear the working of axes. But the boatbuilding site was too remote from here and there were any number of diggers busy cutting and sawing whatever timber they could find to reinforce collapsing shafts.

  ‘Ask him then,’ Smales prompted. Niall could’ve knocked his block off.

  The digger in the chequered jacket looked up contemptuously, willing the sergeant to get on with it. The other two kept bailing.

  ‘There was a bloke called Phillip Oriente,’ Niall started. ‘I think he’d been working with you till a week or so ago.’ The digger didn’t answer. ‘I want to know where he is now.’

  ‘What’s up with him?’

  ‘Let me worry about asking the questions. You just give me the answers.’

  ‘What’s he done?’

  Niall glared at the man. ‘Keep giving me the run around if you want to spend a few hours over at the lockup.’

  The digger let the windlass go and arched soreness out of his back.

  ‘If he hadn’t done something you wouldn’t be looking for him now,’ he said sullenly. ‘The only time you traps want to know about any of us is if you want us for something. Or get some information that’ll land someone else in strife. But I’ll tell you anyway. He was working with us for a while. I couldn’t say how long. He was with us for a while and then he wasn’t. Till about a week ago, like you just said. That’s all I can say.’

  ‘All you feel like saying or all you know?’

  ‘All I know.’

  ‘And he didn’t say anything at all before he left?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Smales looked on, about to throw his two-bob’s worth in before catching the irritation on the sergeant’s face.

  ‘Try to think,’ Niall pressed. ‘How long did this bloke work with you exactly?’

  ‘Hard to say, he didn’t stay long. Maybe three weeks. Maybe a bit less. Though he’d been with Kel here a little while before that in Beechworth. I think he started with us about the time Darby Wilson knocked out the American bloke in the fights here. There was another bloke too, but he took off to the other side of the river or somewhere.’

  ‘That’d be about three weeks ago,’ Kel agreed.

  ‘Yes, probably three weeks,’ the chequered jacket said.

  ‘This Oriente. You think he’s stayed around here then, or gone off somewhere else?’

  ‘He could’ve just gone off to another diggings, you know. It wouldn’t be news if he did.’

  ‘Seems funny, though,’ Niall said. ‘He wouldn’t have gone and left his tent and everything else he owned. He was either in trouble, not with us, or something’s happened. Was he on the grog?’

  ‘Not much. He minded his own business, you’d say. A bit of a funny bloke. Spoke sort of educated, like he’d gone to proper school. Read our letters for us. Didn’t knock about much with other blokes. Didn’t even knock about much with us come to think of it. But he’d shoot through for a day or two every now and then and appear again out of nowhere.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘He’d never say.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Nothing special. He mostly dressed good, fancy. About as tall as you or me but other than that he wasn’t much different to all the rest of us.’

  ‘Nothing unusual about him?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say so.’

  ‘And where did he come from before he got here from Beechworth? Did he ever say anything about that?’

  ‘Well, he was in New South with Kel, like I said. And then like most others, probably Geelong or Melbourne before that.’

  ‘Nothing more definite?’

  ‘No.’ The digger was tiring of the questions. He waved his hand at the shaft. ‘I have to get on with this.’

  ‘Right.’ Niall kn
ew he couldn’t push too much further now. ‘Just one more thing and I’ll take off. Have to see what they’re up to with that boat.’ He paused and drew some air. ‘This mate of yours, Oriente. Do you know when he first came to Australia, or how he’d come in the first place?’

  ‘How he came to Australia?’ The digger looked incredulous.

  ‘The ship he came out on. Did he say anything about the ship?’

  It was a question so far out of the blue, it forced the digger to think.

  ‘Why do you want to know that?’

  ‘It’ll help us work out where he’s been and when. Also where he might go next.’

  ‘Well, hold on. The boat …’ The chequered jacket rubbed at stubble on his chin, teasing some bit of recollection out of his head. ‘Yes, there was something he said once. Thought it was funny when he mentioned it.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Because he said the boat out was the only good thing that had ever happened to him.’ Now he stared directly at the sergeant. ‘Who else would say a thing like that? Every trip out there’s littl’uns pitched over the side. Rats, rotten food, stink. If you get out here in one piece, that’s all you’re grateful for.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what he was grateful for. Thanks for your time. You can’t remember the name of the ship?’

  ‘I think he said the James Cook, or something like that.’

  ‘Thanks again.’ Niall glanced up at the gloomy heavens above. ‘I hope it comes good for you quick.’

  For all of us, he thought, as he and Smales wandered away.

  ‘You think he was telling the truth?’ Smales asked.

  Niall turned a glance over his shoulder back at the claim where the three men were huddled in talk.

  ‘The last bit maybe. The first bit I’m not so sure about.’

  Then they were wending their way through the heaviest concentration of shafts on the diggings, where claims were so close together diggers often got snarly with one another. But even out here where finds had been good almost half the claims appeared deserted. Rain would’ve washed away all hope for most of them, Niall thought, as they carefully negotiated a path.