by Valerie Volk
I had tried to understand the letter that had arrived. He had made clear the shock he had felt when my he read the advertisement. Shock, yes, and guilt. It was there in every word, in the knowledge that he had been wrong in his long silence. Apology, but not an explanation. Perhaps there was none.
I had tried to discern the tone of the writing. I was to come to him—that was definite, and whole-hearted. He could scarcely have done otherwise, on discovering that I had made this remarkable journey to find him. I scrutinised his words, desperate to read his feelings. Had Hanna been right? That this new land was for him an escape?
My thoughts went in circles, and I found it hard to share the genuine rejoicing of my friends. It was even harder to find answers when they asked why there had been so long a silence. All I could say was that he would explain it when we met.
I was to come to him where he lived and worked, in a small German community some ten miles from Albury, the border city I had heard of.
The Ohlenrotts were, as always, ready to provide information, as was Pastor Herlitz when he heard the news.
‘There is a large Lutheran settlement,’ he mused. ‘Mainly Old Lutherans—’ I was always amused at the way his lip curled under the heavy black moustache when he used this term, ‘—who wanted to get away from the state church Prussia had introduced. They went first to South Australia, many to the Barossa Valley.’
‘I know of that place. One of the young women on my ship was going there to marry.’ I thought of Ida, and wondered if the wedding had taken place.
He brushed aside my comment. ‘A stiff-necked people. And determined. Many set off with bullock wagons—perhaps thirty years ago—and made the long trip from South Australia to take up land just over the border.’
‘In New South Wales?’
‘They’d heard good reports, so they sent one of their own to investigate. He came back urging them to pack their wagons and go.’
‘That must have been a major enterprise. Almost another exodus.’
Pastor Herlitz looked at me with approval. The Biblical reference had appealed to him. They were, I had noted, always a way to his heart.
‘Their spirit was good, ja! They had their own ideas, that is true. Then, when there were disagreements, they divided into different synods. The foolishness. They would have been better to bury such controversies, and stick to the official church.’
I could see that he was congratulating his own church on having avoided dissension. He had made me wonder what sort of people I was going to find there.
Gerhard Ohlenrott was concerned for me.
‘It is a long train journey. About eight hours, I think. At least these days the train crosses the river and goes from Wodonga, on our side of the border, to Albury, over the Murray.’
‘There is a new bridge,’ Trudi added. ‘It was only opened four years ago. Before that train travellers had to leave the train at Wodonga and continue to Albury by coach.’
‘That is, a new rail bridge,’ her husband added. ‘Now the trains can cross that mighty river and take travellers into New South Wales.’
‘But there they all have to leave the train, even the ones who wish to travel on to Sydney. That is a different train.’
By now I was used to conversations with the Ohlenrotts. It was like the interweaving of pieces in a patchwork quilt.
‘The stupidity of it,’ Gerhard shook his head. ‘It makes you see why there is so much feeling about the need for our colonies to join in federation.’
He saw that I did not comprehend.
‘The rail tracks,’ he elaborated. ‘In Victoria the size of the track—the gauge—is different from that in New South Wales. So no train can travel straight through. Everyone must change to a new conveyance.’
I smiled at the formality of his speech. Although his many years in Melbourne had made him fluent in English, he, like many of the new friends I had made, still showed their origins in their use of the new language. Elaborate and precise, it seemed pedantic. I sometimes wondered if my own sounded the same, though many years of practice with the Countess had given me ease speaking in this second tongue. I have read that if a child acquires a new language in the early years, it will remain. It seems so, and I often blessed the woman who had given me so much.
‘Yes,’ Trudi chimed in, as always adding her piece. ‘You will find there are two platforms in the big new station in Albury. One side with one gauge for the train from Melbourne, then on the other side the gauge for the train from Sydney.’
‘I wonder,’ he speculated, ‘if federation will mean that one day the whole land will be united in rail travel.’
She laughed. ‘That will mean that someone must yield. No one will do that.’
I remembered this conversation the afternoon I finally stood on that platform, gazing down the impressive length of that showplace station, trying to quell the sick sense of anticipation that had been building throughout the journey.
But that was all ahead of me as I told my friends the news and prepared for departure.
‘Kurt says that he will meet me at the Albury station,’ I assured them. ‘It will be late in the day when I arrive. His employer, Herr Bergmann, has allowed him to bring the wagon to take me to his farm. I am to stay there with him.’
Margarethe was concerned. ‘You do not know where you are going!’ She shook her head. ‘This is too uncertain.’
‘It seems this is where Kurt has been working for the past year. I find it hard to see what work he would be doing on a farm—it is not his type of work at all. Still, I suppose he could work as a labourer anywhere.’
‘What sort of people are they, where you will be going? It is too unsure.’
‘Margarethe, you did not know what sort of people you were coming to, when you set sail for Melbourne.’
She grimaced. ‘That’s what I mean. If I had known just how difficult those girls would be, I might never have taken this position as their governess.’
I had known that her life in the Bauer household was not happy, and I grieved for her. She had become a dear friend, someone I could confide in, and more than any of the others she understood something of the fear I felt about meeting my son. A thought had come to me of making her life more bearable.
‘Can we,’ I asked Dr Menge one day, ‘take a friend of mine when we next go to the Gallery? I know she would enjoy the exhibition.’
Melbourne’s National Art Gallery had just re-opened, after being closed for many months for renovations and repairs. He and I had spent happy hours there, impressed by the imposing State Library buildings to which it was attached. We stood on the green lawns surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and gazed at the bronze lions in the entry area, and admired the most recent acquisition, the statue of St George and the Dragon, which English sculptor Sir Joseph Boehm had just installed.
‘Mmph,’ grunted Dr Menge. ‘At least his name is German, even if he is an English artist!’
I was constantly amused at the show of devotion to the Fatherland. A fierce nationalism, and the strength and numbers in the German Club seemed amazing in this new land.
This art gallery was, he had claimed, the oldest in the colonies. Started in 1861, and often extended. I knew Margarethe wished to see the new Buvelet Gallery, but I confess my wish to have her join us was not inspired only by a desire to show her paintings. I had hopes that my two friends might find each other pleasant company, for they seemed well suited … Yes, I admit it; women are hopeless romantics. Or, in this case, hopeful.
The Lindners too were uneasy about my setting out on what seemed to them a perilous adventure. I smiled to myself. This seemed so slight a journey, compared to what I had already done. And yet, as my reunion with Kurt drew closer, this next stage seemed to me also more threatening.
They fussed about me, helping with preparations for the journey, checking train timetables and purchasing my ticket.
‘We shall miss you at the German Club,’ they assured me. ‘You have become
a part of our lives there. And Dr Menge will be sad to see you go.’ Their smiles were arch.
‘He has been pleasant company,’ I replied. I did not add that I had done my best to ensure that he had company after my departure.
Mrs Clark was practical. We had an easy companionship; the loss of her son to typhoid fever during an epidemic had given her a warm interest in my search and sympathy for my feelings. Her joy at the way my advertisement had been answered was almost as great as mine.
‘You do not want to take that big chest with you,’ she insisted. ‘It can stay here until you see what will happen. Take just a smaller valise. We can send the chest to you if you plan to stay there. If not, you will be most welcome to return.’
I hugged this option to myself like a security blanket. I knew, from talking to the other boarders in her house, employment would be easy to find. I could save money for a return trip to Germany. Or to stay here, where I had made friends. Or even to travel further, to Sydney, and see what life offered me there. I had come to see that my life was by no means over.
As I stood on the platform of Spencer Street Railway Station, I looked at my new friends with affection. The engine had been shunted into position at the front of the train, and porters were heaving the great sacks of mail into the carriages that awaited them. This was a mail train, providing communications throughout this huge country.
Goodbyes are always painful, and I hoped to make these swift. But the Ohlenrotts were determined to wait until the train left, and Dr Menge seemed forlorn. I touched his hand.
‘I rely on you, my dear friend, to look after Margarethe for me. She is alone in that household, and I know she values your friendship.’
He was not a stupid man, and the look he gave me was shrewd and understanding. He nodded.
‘I will miss you, Frau Werner, and the pleasure of our companionship.’
People were boarding the train, and whistles were sounding in warning of departure as carriage doors clanged shut.
We opened the door to my compartment, and stowed my luggage. A relief, I had to admit, to have abandoned the big wooden chest. Yet I felt almost disloyal, abandoning it after so much travel together.
‘I’ll come back for you,’ I vowed silently, ‘just as soon as I see what happens next.’
Part Four
CHAPTER 21
Jindera, New South Wales, 1889
Though I have often tried to recall details of that journey, they remain stubbornly elusive. A haze of people. The young mother, with her baby clutched close to her breast while she tried to occupy the little boy who wanted only to escape the confines of the compartment and run into the side corridor that bordered these boxes. Had Kurt ever been as active, as hard to control as this imp? I thought not. The elderly ladies, who so carefully dusted the seats before settling themselves, and demanded the windows be closed lest smut and flying ash from the engine pollute our air. The young man who looked over his fellow passengers with boredom and retreated to the safety of the newspaper that obscured him from our view. Would Kurt behave like that? Round in circles, my thoughts. Always Kurt at the centre, and growing panic.
Jigsaw memories of the train making interminable stops at little country stations—for it was, after all, the mail train. Mailbags unloaded and received, before the long hoot of the whistle sounded and we rattled into life again.
Longer stops, I do recall, at bigger stations with their chances of food and drink. Seymour, Benalla, Wangaratta. At one of these, Benalla, I think, I held the baby in the station hall while her weary mother bought sandwiches for herself and her little boy.
‘No, thank you,’ I replied to her offer to purchase for me too. I could not have forced down food, though I recollect a cup of hot strong tea from a platform food bar. By then the little boy had fallen asleep, and the young man had escaped to the pleasures of solitude and a cigarette at the station. Why, I wondered, had he not chosen a smoking compartment? The fierce glances of the lady opposite him had made it clear that ours was not, when he first brought out his cigarette case.
Such bits and pieces come back to me. Of the countryside we passed I remember nothing, and little settlements with pretty names, like Violet Town, are only blurred memories. It was summer, that I knew. The foot warmers provided in each compartment remained unused and the view out the windows seemed an unending sea of golden wheatfields. Hours were lost in apprehension.
Even the last stretch of the journey, from Wodonga across the new railway bridge, has left me with no sense of the border crossing or of the mighty Murray River. My focus was ahead.
Albury station, and the longest platform, apart from Flinders Street Station, in the land. ‘It had to be,’ they’d told me. ‘It had to take two full-length trains each side.’
Now I waited until the mother had managed herself and her children off the train, helped by the young man.
‘Wait a moment,’ he said to me, ‘and I’ll help you with your bags.’ I silently apologised for thinking him surly. Would I have expected Kurt to chatter to a group of women on a train? I manoeuvred my two bags down the steps and gazed at the length of that enormous platform, wishing only to walk across it to the Sydney train on the other side. What had possessed me to do this? To come here?
No matter how I try, I cannot recall more than the first words we spoke. I can see him coming towards me, a dark head I recognised, his figure larger and clearer as he moved through the disembarking passengers toward me, my bags beside me. I might have been paralysed; my feet would not obey me.
He did not pause until he stood in front of me, then shook his head slightly and smiled. ‘Oh, Mutti!’ he said, and the years fell away at the sound of that childhood name.
We held each other close, and suddenly all my apprehension was gone. This was the son I loved, and the months, the years, I had lived through were forgotten. My search had ended.
It was only as we settled ourselves in the wagon, and the horses began the long trek home in the haze of this late-afternoon sunshine, that I looked back at the station. It gleamed in the full light. A building to rival any I had seen in my homeland. It was, I knew, Italianate in style, with the clock tower above the centre, though no clock face had yet been installed. The perfect symmetry of the two brick wings, the long verandahs with the double cast-iron columns, the detail of the pediments, the architraves, the arches, could have graced any European city.
‘They said it was a splendid building,’ I commented. We both sensed a need to keep talk light and casual.
‘It is indeed. Not yet ten years old. There was a temporary station here, but this one was designed by Mr John Whitton, a name known to everyone in the area. It had a splendid opening, with the premiers of both the colonies attending. An unusual sight—to see New South Wales and Victoria together.’
‘I understand there is great rivalry between the two. Back in Melbourne they are constantly telling everyone how superior it is to Sydney.’
‘If federation does come about, there’s going to be a problem with the choice of national capital. Both will expect it.’
‘Perhaps they will need to find a new place and make it the capital.’
‘Perhaps. Now we begin the trip home—more than ten miles we must travel, and these horses are strong but not fast, especially with this wagon.’
A pang went through me when I heard his easy use of the word ‘home’. I looked around me at the city we were passing through.
‘Tell me about it, about where we are going. And who will be there.’
‘Right now we are leaving the city of Albury. I will bring you to see it properly some time soon. It’s worth exploring—the way that you and I explored Breslau in the old days.’
That touched my heart, the recollection of our times together there. I knew that we would talk, talk properly, of what had happened. But not yet. We needed to feel our way back into our relationship, and it could not be forced. Yet so tempting to reproach him vehemently. How could you do this to me? What d
id I do to be treated like this? So tempting, but I bit back the words.
‘So this is not really the city?’
‘These are just the outskirts. We need to set off for Jindera, where you will be staying.’
‘Staying where?’
‘I had thought of finding you accommodation in one of the hotels in Jindera—there are four to choose from—but Carl would not hear of it.’
‘Carl?’
‘Carl Bergmann. I have worked for him on his farm for almost a year. “Your mother comes this distance to find you,” he said, “and you think to put her into a hotel! She will stay here with us.” ’
I silently blessed this Carl Bergmann for his understanding.
‘Who is in the household?’
The horses were keeping a steady pace, and already we were out of the settled areas and into countryside. I looked with interest at the cleared fields where flocks of sheep were grazing, quite different from the forest ranges outside Melbourne.
‘Carl’s wife died in childbirth just before I came to him. He was left with a baby son. I think that is why he took me on, to have someone to assist with the outside labour and to give him time with the children.’
‘So he is quite a young man? Not much older than you?’
Kurt looked surprised. ‘No, no. I have given you the wrong impression. I think he must have married late in life. He is actually quite old—even older than you, Mutti.’
I felt a flicker of annoyance. I had only just stopped thinking of myself as old, and I did not welcome being put back into that category. Still, to my son anyone of fifty would have seemed elderly.
‘Who cares for the baby?’