Goldfields Girl

by Elaine Forrestal

  The men were still sitting by the fire, talking in low voices. At first I heard just a blur of sound. Then I began to hear the words they said. Perhaps they thought I was asleep and were speaking a bit louder. Or perhaps I was ready to be distracted from my kaleidoscope of memories. I heard my name and listened more intently.

  ‘You’re right. Coolgardie is no place for a growing girl,’ Harry was saying.

  ‘I agree,’ Will said. ‘We should take her back to Southern Cross. She’s a nice young lass.’

  ‘Too nice for the likes of us,’ they laughed.

  Take me back! How dare they? I was a bit sad about leaving, but my journey had only just begun. During the day the heat had been trying, but I had managed to ignore my thirst and only drink when they did. I was aching all over from sitting down for so long and being bounced and jolted over the rough track, but I was not even thinking of giving up. I was tempted to go out and tell them so, but their laughter had died down and everything was quiet.

  Then Mac spoke. ‘Wind’s changed,’ he said. ‘I can smell them camels again.’

  ‘Mm,’ Mr Snell agreed. ‘There’ll be a big row in Southern Cross when I tell Warden Finnerty about the state of the water here.’

  There were sounds of the fire being stoked up for the night and the men settling down in their swags.

  In the morning I heard someone moving around, stirring the embers of the fire into life. The warm bread smell of fresh damper wafted through the air. I sat up, straightened my dress and tidied my hair. As I stepped down from the coach, Mr Snell handed me a pannikin of tea. I set it down on the sand and went around to a sheltered spot behind a small ridge. I gathered up my skirts and squatted there. When I had finished I went back to the camp fire.

  ‘Your tea’s here, Clara,’ Mr Snell reminded me and pointed to my abandoned pannikin.

  I picked it up, but didn’t drink from it.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Mr Snell asked kindly. ‘Why aren’t you drinking your tea?’

  I hesitated for a moment, but couldn’t think of an excuse. So I told him the truth.

  ‘I can’t drink it,’ I said. ‘I heard them talking about the camels fouling the water last night. I wasn’t asleep.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ Mr Snell gave a short laugh. ‘They didn’t mean this water, did you, boys? Anyway, when it’s boiled up it’s all right.’

  I glanced at the other men. They were nodding.

  ‘It’s okay, we’re gunna tell Finnerty and Raeside,’ Harry said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Mac agreed. ‘And there should be signs on all the waterholes: Drinking Water Only. And a couple of tanks out here would help.’

  ‘A bit of rain to fill them would be handy, too,’ Harry added.

  ‘I knew a bloke what did a rain dance, once,’ Jock said, tipping his head back and draining the last of the tea from his cup.

  ‘That worked, did it, Jock?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jock grinned. ‘Ten years later the town got flooded and he drowned.’

  ‘All in the timing, eh?’ Mac nodded, straight-faced.

  I wondered if their idea about putting up a sign would be any use. Could the Afghan camel drivers read English? And how did the Aborigines feel about their waterholes being fouled? From the stories I had heard in Southern Cross, the native people were shy, but they had been helpful to the first prospectors who came here. Some people said they were becoming more aggressive lately, though. And who could blame them? Most of their water was being used up by thoughtless newcomers and their animals. It didn’t seem fair at all.

  When the tarpaulin had been folded and the camping gear packed away, we set off again. The road became rougher, stony in some parts, sandy in others. By midday the horses were plodding along in two wheel ruts that stretched out in front and behind us from horizon to horizon amongst the clumps of spinifex.

  We travelled for two more days. Each day the sun climbed into a cloudless sky. In the evening we made camp, ate damper and tried to sleep. Dry cold nights turned into dry hot days. We shed our coats and passed the waterbag around, tipping it up and drinking from the spout, then carefully wiping it before passing to the next person. A plume of red dust rose constantly into the air behind us. While we continued heading east, the hot wind blew the dust away, but whenever the track veered north or south, to avoid some pothole or deep sand trap, our own dust blew back on us and into the coach. We tied handkerchiefs over our mouths and noses. They made us look like a band of bushrangers and I smiled at the thought of Moondyne Joe. I longed for the shade of the spindly gum and the distraction of Joe telling his stories.

  The horses suffered more than we did. Their steps slowed as each day went on and we camped a little earlier in the evenings to let them rest. Mr Snell gave them hay because, unlike camels, they could not eat the dry, spiky spinifex and we had not seen a blade of grass for a hundred miles.

  On this seemingly endless journey I had a lot of time to think. Pa had written to us in Southern Cross. He said that he missed us and talked about coming to join us. We had written back telling him about life in the Cross and how it was not all sand, sin and sorrow, as we had been told. But what would he make of the new diggings? As we bumped along the narrow track, I wondered what I would find there. Perhaps Jack was right. Perhaps I was making a big mistake. Then I thought of all that gold. They said you didn’t even have to dig for it. Gold was lying on top of the ground, just waiting to be picked up. I imagined Pa being even more impatient to see it than I was. Bayley’s Reward Reef was already the stuff of legend. The biggest find ever made in Australia. Maybe the biggest in the world! I couldn’t wait to see it for myself.

  October 1892

  We had just set off on the fourth day of our journey when I was startled by a group of kangaroos. They stood up from the hollow where they had been sleeping, just a few yards off the track. The largest would have been at least as tall as Mr Snell. The animal stood, calm and still, his red-brown coat blending with the landscape. Only his pointed ears moved, flicking back and forth, as if he was trying to make sense of the new sounds invading his land. I counted six kangaroos in the group. They ranged in size from the big male to a tiny joey. For a few minutes they stared at us with their soft brown eyes. Then, at some signal detected only by them, they all moved off together, loping effortlessly away across the flat red plain.

  We moved on slowly through the deserted landscape. The syncopated rhythm of the coach as it swayed and bumped over the uneven surface of the road both lulled and disturbed me. On the first day, the men had kept us entertained by swapping increasingly outrageous stories, but now they were withdrawn and silent. Their bodies slumped against the sides of the coach. Their eyes were closed, their legs stretched out, except when we hit an extra-large bump and they jerked awake. Involuntary curses sometimes escaped their lips before they remembered I was there and apologised profusely. At first I accepted their apologies with a polite nod. But as time went on and boredom set in, a contest developed between the men. They smirked and tried to outdo each other. Mildly at first, under their breath, then a little louder and faster each time until, smiling openly, they swore and apologised at the slightest excuse. At first I found this performance quite funny. Then it became ridiculous.

  ‘Bloody hell, you blokes!’ I said, unable to hide my irritation any longer. ‘Why don’t you have a bet on who can swear the loudest?’ A shocked silence followed.

  ‘Sorry, miss,’ Mac said.

  ‘And don’t keep saying sorry! I’ve heard men swear before, you know.’ I folded my arms across my chest and stared out at the flat, featureless country. The men were very quiet. When I glanced sideways I saw their contrite faces. Then Harry started to sing softly, ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’. One by one the others joined in. At the beginning of the second verse I added my higher, lighter voice. We sang all the verses and when we stopped there was clapping from the driver’s seat up front.

  ‘Bravo,’ Mr Snell called. Then Jock started up with ‘The B
onnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond’.

  We sang until our throats became as dry as the dust, but at least it seemed to make the time go faster.

  When no-one could sing any more, we all lapsed into our dozing positions again. I thought about Mother and was glad that she hadn’t heard me swearing at the men.

  ‘Language defines you before all else,’ she had always said to Susan and me. Pa swore, and so did the boys. Why were there different rules for them? Anyway, I could make up my own rules now. I was in charge of my life, whether Mother approved or not. I felt very grown up.

  At last, about midday, we began to see signs of human activity. Small piles of rubble dotted the landscape where prospectors had dug holes. There were a few random pegs left in the ground where claims had been marked and later abandoned. Jock had heard a story about a young man, crazy with thirst and dysentery, who staggered into Mr Wisdom’s pub in Coolgardie. He carried a rifle and waved it at the men in the bar.

  ‘“Empty your pockets, you thieving bunch of louses,”’ Jock imitated the young man’s American accent, croaky as a crow. Some heads turned towards the American, Jock reported, but most of the blokes in the bar ignored him – until he shouldered the rifle and rested his finger on the trigger. That got their attention all right. ‘Whoever it was stole my nuggets had better own up or I’ll shoot every last one of ya!’ the young bloke had shouted.

  Jock continued, ‘Arthur Williams, who is a champion boxer and not someone to be trifled with, was behind the bar. “Now calm down, mate,” Arthur says. “Give me the gun and we’ll sort this out in no time.” But your man there, he was havin’ none of it,’ Jock changed his voice again. ‘“Y’all turn out your pockets!” the gunman says, and makes a crazy sweep of the room with his rifle. A couple of blokes look like they’ll oblige, but most of them just laugh. “We know you ain’t got no ammo in that shooter, Davey,” they shout.

  ‘Well your man, Davey, his eyes are rollin’ by now,’ Jock goes on with the story. ‘Suddenly there’s a hell of a bang. Everyone looks up and, sure enough, there’s a dirty great hole in the roof! Ya coulda knocked ’em all down with the one feather.’

  ‘Just goes to show, eh?’ Mac nodded, straight-faced as usual.

  ‘And what happened to the man with the gun?’ I asked.

  ‘He fell on the floor,’ Jock tells us. ‘Stone dead.’

  We stared at Jock and waited for him to go on. ‘Dunno whether it was a heart attack or the typhoid what got ’im. When the blokes in the bar got over the shock someone moved the body.’ There was another expectant pause. ‘A small bag of nuggets fell out of his coat.’

  We all laughed – not because it was funny. We knew that our own lives could be just as mercilessly cut short at any moment, but the knowledge of it made us feel very much alive.

  Mr Snell was the first to see it. A glint of sunlight bouncing off an iron roof. He called out and we all sat up. Voices became animated. The rhythmic clanking of the horses’ chains and harness picked up pace. We passed a cluster of deserted tents. The end of our long journey was in sight.

  October 1892

  By the time Mr Snell halted the horses in the centre of the makeshift town, a crowd of twenty or thirty men had gathered.

  I stepped down from the coach and a great cheer rose up from the crowd. I looked around to see what they were cheering about.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mr Snell said, lifting my bag down from the luggage rack and putting it by the side of the road. ‘It happens any time a lady comes visiting – especially a young one.’

  I smiled a little nervously and thanked him for my bag. The waiting men began to crowd in.

  ‘Stand back now,’ Mr Snell shouted. ‘Give the young lady some room. And let Mr Wisdom through or you won’t be getting your mail.’

  Then Mr Wisdom was beside me. He picked up my bag in one hand, the mailbag in the other. ‘Welcome to Coolgardie, Clara,’ he said.

  We crossed the road to the Exchange Hotel. It was built of brushwood and canvas with a corrugated iron roof. A handpainted sign above the door declared its name and purpose. Mr Wisdom pushed the door open with his foot and stood back for me to go inside. The bar was also made of brushwood and stretched most of the way along one wall. Dozens of clean glasses hung in wooden frames, shaped for the purpose and suspended with chains above the bar. A row of stools stood in line, some of them already occupied by patrons. The rest of the room was crowded with tables and chairs.

  As we entered, a stout woman in a cap and apron came in through a curtained doorway in the back wall.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Fagan,’ Mr Wisdom said. ‘This is Clara.’

  ‘Hello there,’ Mrs Fagan wiped her hands down each side of her apron, leaving two streaks of flour. ‘’Tis good to have ya here at last, so it is.’ Her black, beady eyes almost disappeared as her round cheeks swelled into a smile that took up most of her face. ‘Sit ya down, so. We’ll have to be sortin’ this mail here or we’ll have a riot on our hands, but that won’t be takin’ long. Then ya can tell me all about yerself.’

  After three and a half days on the road, the last thing I wanted to do was sit down again, but I needed to make a good impression. Mr Wisdom might change his mind about keeping me on if he thought I wasn’t up to the job.

  All three of us sat down at one of the tables and Mr Wisdom emptied the mailbag, spreading the letters and packages, turning them so that the names became visible. The hotel was the only official address in Coolgardie, and Mr Wisdom acted as postmaster as well as licensee. Most of the letters simply had a name, followed by the word Coolgardie, spelled in various ways. But one I picked up was addressed to ‘Larry at the Sandgropers’, another to ‘Mr R. Moline, T’othersiders’.

  ‘Just put those together,’ Mr Wisdom said. ‘The first person who comes into town will pick up all the mail for the camps.’

  ‘T’othersiders?’ I asked.

  Mrs Fagan smiled. ‘’Tis what the boys from here are after callin’ them from the eastern colonies.’ She gave a nod of her head towards the street where knots of men stood around waiting. ‘Sandgropers – they’re the locals. The other names speak for themselves … Montana, Royal Ascot, Little Italy … Ya get used to them, so ya do,’ she said reassuringly.

  When we had finished sorting the mail, Mrs Fagan took me to my room. It was next to hers at the back of the hotel. She pointed out the bathroom, then left me to unpack.

  ‘I’ll be in the kitchen,’ she said.

  In the bathroom, there was a large china jug and matching bowl on a wooden stand. I lifted the jug but there was no water in it. A sign on the wall said WATER ON REQUEST – 2/6 per gallon. Below the printed words, someone had scrawled, Wash in champagne – it’s cheaper.

  Across the yard, a row of cubicles with brushwood posts and canvas walls perched above a latrine-type trench. I went into one of the cubicles and found a wooden tea chest with a circular hole in the top. The edges had been smoothed with sandpaper, and a roughly shaped lid placed over the hole. Even this, and the strong smell of disinfectant, was no match for the flies. They crawled all over it and had to be constantly brushed away. I lifted the lid and a pungent smell rose up. I felt my stomach clench with disgust. But I simply had to go.

  Back in my room I unpacked, and hung my two dresses on the empty coat-hangers swinging on a wire that was stretched tight across one corner of the room and served as a wardrobe. I placed my underwear in the small chest of drawers beside the bed and took my mother’s precious book out of my bag. As I hugged it tightly to my chest, a wave of homesickness swept over me. I was hot, tired and suddenly longing for my family. My earlier happiness at having no-one to tell me what to do had completely evaporated. I even found myself wishing that Susan was here. She would talk nonstop and expect me to unpack her things as well as my own, but it was strange to be without her.

  It took the clatter of pans, and the inviting smell of bacon coming from the kitchen, to bring back the excitement of being in a brand-new place. I was a working wom
an now, with a real job, earning my own money in the richest field of gold in the world. I couldn’t wait to get a closer look at the legendary reef.

  I sat on the bed and gave a little bounce of happiness. The fancy curved rails of the iron frame squeaked in protest. A light blanket and linen bedspread covered the clean mattress. This was such a new town that nothing looked worn or lived in yet, except for some of the people.

  I went to the kitchen where Mrs Fagan was cutting a slab of meat into bite-sized pieces.

  ‘Ah, there ya are, Clara. ’Tis famished ya’ll be, I expect. Help yerself to scones and tea.’ She indicated the buttered scones and teapot she had set out at the other end of the bench. ‘When ya’re done, ya can be startin’ on those taties there. No rest for the wicked, eh?’ she winked.

  I thanked her politely, drank my tea and set to work peeling a large mound of potatoes.

  November 1892

  I had been working for a month now and, although there could be customers in the bar at any time of the day, around evening we were really busy. Prospectors came in with red dust in their hair, their clothes, their boots and under their fingernails. They were hot and thirsty after a day of digging and scraping at the dry, rocky ground, always believing that there would be gold in the next shovelful – or the next, or the one after that. They walked into town or came on horseback, with friends or on their own, carrying their swags with them, or just in the clothes they stood up in. Arthur Williams had been here from the start and had set up a billiard room next door to the bar. He and Mr Wisdom were run off their feet serving hundreds of men each evening. Mrs Fagan and I were kept busy in the kitchen cooking, serving meals and washing dishes.

  As the meals were ready I carried them through to the bar. I quickly learned to balance three plates on my outstretched left arm and hold another in my right hand. As I placed them on the bar, Arthur Williams shouted four names above the din until those men came up to collect and pay for their food.