Several men took to the tree-stump platform to speak but it was Lalor who held the audience captive with his calm manner and sophisticated way of speaking. The diggers thought Lalor to be Jesus, but Indy knew, in the end, he was just a man. A man who would get them all killed if he continued to rouse them with words like ‘independence’ and catchphrases such as ‘freedom from tyranny’.
She listened to him speak but couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. She still felt Will’s betrayal deeply. He’d not only been a part of the last raid, he’d been its leader. Shots had been fired. Had he ordered the troops to shoot into the crowd? She could scarcely believe it. Orders, he’d said. Bloody orders! Blindly following the direction of supposedly superior men regardless of whether it was right or wrong. Just like these men here listening to Lalor now asking them to swear an oath, allegiance to the cause and the new flag. The diggers would blindly follow Peter Lalor to their deaths if they weren’t careful. The latest licence raid on the Gravel Pits had been the catalyst they’d needed to get the unprecedented numbers Indy now saw gathered before her. Unprecedented numbers.
A thought struck Indy. She remembered the conversations she’d had with Will in the last month. More soldiers were arriving every day. The government camp was becoming more and more like a fort. Indy frowned, trying to block out all the talk around her. Had Will been right? Was it possible Commissioner Rede now believed these miners would attack the government camp? What could possibly be gained by miners attacking a virtual fortress of heavily armed soldiers and police? There was no resolution to be had on the other side of such an act of violent anarchy.
She contemplated the huddle of men who were cheering again and raising cries of rebellion. Battle cries. She’d told Will he was being ridiculous thinking these men would be stupid enough to take on the might of the British Infantry. Suddenly it didn’t seem so ridiculous.
These men and women were not soldiers. They’d be lambs to the slaughter. Especially if the army knew they were coming. The men were discussing erecting a barricade. It was tantamount to poking a bear. And not even a sleeping bear. She had to say something.
When a lull fell between speakers she took a deep breath and called out, ‘Do you think it’s wise to provoke the Commissioner with such a show of force and defiance?’
Silence fell as people scanned the crowd for the owner of the voice.
Indy stood reluctantly.
‘What are you doing?’ Sean hissed.
The men who held the high ground in front of the meeting exchanged glances. She could see what they were thinking. A woman was questioning them?
‘Young lady,’ one of the leaders called back, Hayes she recalled was his name. ‘We must do what we can to protect ourselves from the violence of the licence raids.’
‘And do you really believe you can beat back the Queen’s infantry by building a barricade?’
‘She’s a spy!’ someone yelled.
‘Yeah, I seen her talkin’ to that redcoat,’ another called. ‘Same one who led the raid today.’
‘And she’s Sergeant Donnelly’s daughter!’
Those who didn’t already know Indy’s family situation yelled accusations and pointed fingers and suspicious glares in her direction. She felt the humiliation as people sent her looks of disgust she’d dealt with all her life.
‘Yes, he is my father,’ she admitted, her chin jutting out. ‘And anyone who knows that is aware of just how much he hates me and how I return the sentiment tenfold.’
‘Easy to say …’
More grumbles of agreement.
‘Indy.’ Sean took her hand and tried to get her to sit again. She resisted.
‘The Army is reinforcing. More soldiers arrive every day. Can’t you see what’s happening?’
‘It’s all for show. To scare us into submission,’ Lalor said and he was quickly backed up by calls from the crowd.
‘Yeah, it’s just trickery!’
‘Falsehoods!’
‘Do you not wonder why the government camp now stands as a military stronghold instead of a simple gold commissioner’s compound?’ Indy asked, stunned that they couldn’t see what was right before their eyes. ‘They suspect you are going to attack the government camp.’
‘That’s a good idea!’ someone yelled.
‘Aye, let’s storm the fortress!’
There was laughter and there were calls of affirmation.
‘Let us have calm,’ Lalor called and the rabble settled down again ‘We shall take a stand. We have burned our licences. Most of us anyway.’
‘And they know that,’ Indy added. Another thought struck. ‘The raid today was in retaliation of that. They know just how many of you are unlicensed. They were there last night.’
‘And how, pray tell, do you come upon that knowledge?’ Hayes asked, suspicion written all over his face. ‘We have often wondered if there was a government spy amongst us.’
‘She’s the spy!’ someone called out again.
‘I’m no spy,’ Indy said standing straight and proud. ‘I’m a miner. Just like you. I believe we deserve the right to make a home here. To get more for our taxes than a few pieces of wood and a tiny patch of dirt to dig—even if you believe females are not worthy of the same rights as men.’
That brought more grumbles which were drowned out by the cheers of agreement by women. Once again she felt Sean tugging on her hand, trying to get her to sit down.
‘I will fight for my rights until I too can own land and have a say in this new Australia. But I don’t believe building barricades and tossing out threats is the way to go about that.’
‘If you are not a spy, then take the oath!’
‘Yeah!’
‘Make her take the oath!’
‘Aye, let her prove her loyalty to the miners!’
Peter Lalor stepped forward, the unfurled blue flag with the white stars of the Southern Cross held out to her.
‘The time for talk is over, Miss Wallace,’ Lalor said. ‘It’s time for action. Will you take the oath and stand by your fellow miners? Your fellow Australians?’
Indy felt trapped. If she didn’t say the oath, they would all think her a spy or a traitor. But if she swore the oath, she’d more than likely be signing her own arrest warrant.
She was a woman without choice.
In that moment she understood what Will had been trying to tell her. The Army was his home, just as this band of rebel miners was hers.
Life isn’t always black and white, his voice rang in her head.
Will had been forced to run that raid, she realised with a heavy stab to her heart. He would never have chosen to do it but he hadn’t had that choice. He would have been arrested, flogged, or whatever they did to soldiers who disobeyed orders. Having already been confined to quarters once, thanks to her, she doubted his superiors would be as lenient a second time.
But more than that, he would lose his family. The only family he’d ever known. To an orphan, she imagined, that would be harder than the arrest and punishment.
‘So you gonna say the oath or not?’
Indy had heard the oath read in groups all day long but now they expected her to say it alone.
Despite Sean’s murmured warnings, she pulled out of his grasp. The crowd parted as she walked towards Lalor.
She looked all four men who stood on the makeshift platform squarely in the eye. Lalor, Black, Hayes and Hummfray. Then she reached out and touched the wool of the dark blue flag. It was coarser than she’d expected.
Taking a deep breath, Indy turned and faced the crowd.
‘“We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties.”’
A deafening cheer went up. At Lalor’s signal, the crowd moved in a wave of humanity down the slopes from Bakery Hill to the Eureka fields following their leader and the flag he carried aloft. When they reached the Irish section of the camp, Indy turned and walked away from the mob.
F
or the rest of the day Indy watched with growing trepidation as all around her men worked, not on their mines, but at building what could only be described as a stockade. Wood from mineshafts, or anywhere else it could be taken from, was repurposed into a crude fence around a small patch of land that backed onto the scrub of Brown Hill. A few mines and at least ten tents had been encompassed within the stockade either by accident or plain bad luck as they had the poor fortune of holding good ground.
Anxious and irritated, she watched as groups of miners trawled the goldfields and the camps requesting, or demanding, that diggers and their families hand over all guns, weapons and anything else they wanted. Determined now that when the next licence raid came, they would be ready to fight back with force equal to what had been doled out to them. Try as she might, it was impossible to ignore the fortification being built not two hundred yards from where she and Sean continued to work their mine.
Indy found it hard to concentrate on the work at hand. All she could think of was that regardless of whether or not she joined the hundreds of rebelling miners behind the barricades, having taken the oath, she was now a sworn enemy of Her Majesty the Queen of England.
Chapter 24
The dark clouds building overhead matched Will’s mood perfectly. He was angry with himself. He was angry with Indy. How could a man be expected to live up to such high moral standards as held by Indigo Wallace? She was by no means perfect. A gambler, he thought, ticking off her flaws one by one in his head. She stuck her nose into things that didn’t concern her on a regular basis, and that temper of hers was legendary. Everything she thought came straight out of that smart mouth of hers. Not to mention the stubborn streak broader than the Yarrowee River that ran through her.
It was probably for the best that they went their separate ways now, he decided as the first fat raindrops began to leak out of the menacing clouds. He’d said it before: he and Indy were different creatures from different worlds. Wild and determined, she knew exactly what she wanted out of her life and, no doubt, she expected to get it. He was a soldier. A military man who had been taking orders for so long he scarcely knew how to think for himself anymore. She’d been right about that, and it irked him.
Sitting just inside the open flap of his shabby tent, Will took a good look around the camp. It was not yet three in the afternoon but the severity of the approaching storm descended the day into an early twilight. Timmons grumbled behind him as the hole in the roof of their tent sent small rivers of water flooding onto his cot. But Will was past listening and certainly past caring.
Soldiers and police scattered as the rain fell in torrents now, seeking out shelter wherever they could find it. Turned out of the stables in favour of the soldiers who had arrived that afternoon with Major General Nickle, the police huddled beneath their horses to try to stay dry. Those soldiers unable to leave their posts, guarding the perimeter of the compound, folded into themselves against the weather, looking weary and quickly becoming saturated in the heavy downpour.
Captain Thomas had been keeping them up for twenty-four hour stints on sentry duty. The soldiers were unwashed, unfed and antsy. Many of them were young and bored and everyone was irritated at the state of the camp. These men were spoiling for a fight. Any fight. Soldiers and police were kept at the ready as they waited for the rumoured attack by the rebel miners. But by the time the rain had stopped late in the evening, the expected attack had not yet transpired.
With cabin fever setting in, Will decided to go for a walk about the camp. He came upon George in the mess tent playing cards with several other officers. Gentlemen of the same ilk as George, from wealthy families who had bought their commission, unlike Will who had earned his in battle. George would be promoted to Captain soon, Will was certain of it. He also knew that he would never move higher up the ranks of the military than Lieutenant. His upbringing and parentage were too questionable. It had never really concerned him since he was a soldier for the adventure. He was not attracted to the posturing and pretentiousness that so often went with the higher ranks of the British Army.
Leaving George to his cards, Will wandered along the perimeter of the compound. Part of him wanted to jump the fence, go to Indy and finish explaining to her his role in the Gravel Pits raid that morning. Could he make her understand? He doubted it. The woman was immovable when she dug her heels in.
As he neared the front entrance of the compound he could hear shouting, and curious, he moved towards the gate.
‘You’ll not cross! Come any closer and I’ll shoot.’
Fearing the itchy trigger finger of a tired sentry, he rushed towards the two soldiers pointing their rifles at a contingent of three miners. He recognised Father Smythe and the Italian he’d seen a few times around the goldfields named Carboni.
‘These rebels are trying to enter the camp,’ the soldier relayed as Will made his presence known. ‘It’s a ploy to get into the compound. Captain Thomas said an attack was coming and to shoot any miner who tried to cross.’
‘Lower your weapons,’ Will told the soldiers. ‘You can see these men are unarmed.’
He turned to the three men who stood warily back from the armed soldiers. ‘What business have you here, gentlemen?’
‘We demand to speak with Commissioner Rede,’ one of the men said.
‘Demand?’ Will asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose wearily. They really had no idea of negotiations. If he took these three men into the camp and they went down their usual path of making ‘requests’, Commissioner Rede would toss him out with them.
‘Father Smythe may enter,’ Will said, noting that the young priest seemed much less antagonistic than his two counterparts. ‘You two can stay here.’
Father Smythe placated the other men who complained at being denied access and said he would try to bring Rede back.
Will took the young priest to Rede, who did indeed follow him back to the entry to the compound.
‘You must listen to reason, sir,’ the man named Black insisted.
‘I must not do anything of the sort,’ Rede countered. ‘A rebellion uprising is hardly appealing to my good faith, gentlemen.’
‘But no one is listening to our concerns,’ Carboni added. ‘We have petitioned the Governor time and again and have not had the response we require.’
‘Then what do you expect me to do?’ Rede asked. ‘The Governor’s word is final. I answer to him. If you insist on barricading yourselves behind that stockade you have created, I cannot guarantee your safety.’
‘Reduce the severity of the licence raids at the very least,’ Father Smythe tried.
‘They are necessary,’ Rede said. ‘It is my duty to ensure that licences are held by those who wish to dig for Her Majesty’s gold. Otherwise we would be even more overrun on the goldfields than we are now. It is the only way to keep order.’
‘But, sir, it is the manner in which the raids are carried out—’
‘I am done with this line of discussion,’ Rede interrupted. ‘It seems we are at an impasse. But let me warn you, gentlemen. If any of the rebels attempt to infiltrate or attack the government compound, we are ready and will strike with fatal force. Do you understand me?’
As the three men turned away from the gates of the government camp, the Italian let fly with a host of words Will didn’t understand, but his temperament gave him the gist of the man’s sentiments.
***
The noise of the storm made it impossible to sleep. Or perhaps it was her fight with Will that had Indy tossing and turning in her cot. Sean didn’t seem troubled by the thundering downpour as he snored on behind the sheet that separated his bed from hers and Annie’s in the tent.
When the rain finally abated, Indy crept outside and sat by the waning fire. Despite the rain it was a warm night, though the events of the day left her feeling cold. The chill, which ran deep into her bones, was more a feeling of dread that time was fast running out. For her and Will, for the unlicensed miners, and for the men and women ensco
nced inside the now completed stockade.
For the hundredth time that day her eyes were drawn across to the northern border of the Eureka camp, towards the crudely constructed barricade. Campfires burned low inside the stockade grounds. The large dark flag, now hoisted high upon a makeshift flagpole, waved in the light breeze—the white stars and stripes glowing ominously by the light of the bright moon. Some men had gone to sleep inside the small area of fortification, others sat around a single fire while two men stood guard at the small entrance.
Not a hundred yards from the stockade, just down the Melbourne Road, Indy could see the burned out shell of the Bentley’s Eureka Hotel. It stood as a sad reminder of how rapidly a peaceful protest could get out of hand. McIntyre and Fletcher languished in jail for their part in the burning of the Eureka Hotel. Possibly in the very same area of the prison that Bentley, Vance and Farrell were all serving time for the murder of James Scobie. What a ridiculous, futile waste.
Indy poked absently at the sodden coals in the fireplace with a stick, staring blindly into the glow as the flames struggled to reignite after the rain. So much had happened in just a few months. Letting her gaze fall back on the stockade, she wondered what would come of this latest outlandish defiance. Hearing a twig snap, Indy twisted quickly in her seat to check behind her. But seeing no one she turned back to her fire. It was probably just a fox picking up dinner scraps or more rats on the move spreading disease through the camp.
For almost three years she had lived in this camp with Annie and Sean. It was miraculous how fast it had grown from a small temporary tent settlement of only a few thousand miners to a bustling town with wood and brick buildings. Small businesses thrived as demand necessitated supply. Industry may have been booming but the alluvial leads of Ballarat were beginning to run dry. More mines duffered out, but people still needed to eat. They still required doctors and blacksmiths and tinsmiths. Not to mention the all-important enterprise of liquor and beer.
Glancing back at the stockade, she sighed. She’d had enough. Enough of living side by side in over-occupied camps with hundreds of other people. Enough of digging her mine every day—she didn’t need to, she’d found enough gold. But if they didn’t dig, they would lose the claim to someone else. Did she even care anymore? Someone else could have it if Sean didn’t want to continue to work it himself. She wanted out. She could move in with her mother, find occupation that meant she didn’t need to stay in the camps or in town.
The Girl From Eureka Page 26