by Judy Nunn
It was mid-morning when she woke to discover him sitting on the bed beside her, a tray of tea and toast resting on his knees. ‘You’ve been asleep for twelve hours, so much for a person who doesn’t believe in jet lag and body clocks.’
She sat up and kissed him energetically, nearly spilling the tea. He put the tray on the floor, took off his shoes, and allowed her to wrestle him into bed.
But the images of last night were not forgotten. In the cold light of day they remained clearer than ever. There was a force in the house that had made it all happen, she thought as he kissed her. A benevolent force to which she would be eternally thankful.
EPILOGUE
Jason had been touched by her present. Sam walked into the drawing room and looked at the photograph. She’d given it to him only yesterday.
‘Mamma Jane and my father and old Godfrey,’ he’d smiled, ‘that’s lovely of you, Sam, and how well it’s come up, hasn’t it?’
She’d sneaked the old photo from his wallet and had an enlargement made and framed in silver. She sat it on the mantelpiece beneath Phoebe’s portrait, alongside the formal family picture of the Chisolms.
‘I think it’s right that Jane should be here with Phoebe,’ she’d said.
‘So do I, my love.’ He’d nodded approvingly. ‘So do I.’
He always humoured her about her fantasies, but the fact was they no longer existed. She no longer heard voices or saw visions. She no longer had time to be preoccupied with the past of the house; she was too involved in its future.
Sam looked about at the newly refurbished drawing room. She could hear Jason singing loudly in the shower upstairs. They’d done so much in just one month. The style of the house had been beautifully maintained; it was elegant, but it was also comfortable. A real home, she thought. And there was a tenant in the stables now. They’d leased the flat to a young lighting technician who was contracted to Ferneham Hall for a year. A man of the theatre – Sam found it wonderfully apt.
But today was the most important day of all: the opening of Jason’s medical practice. The brass plaques had gone up last week, one on the stone pillar of the main drive, and one beside the front door. ‘Doctor Jason Thackeray, General Practitioner’, and underneath were listed the surgery hours. Mavis, his receptionist, would be arriving in half an hour, and the day was already fully booked with six consultations, Jason allocating at least an hour for each.
‘I’ll allow less time when I sort out the hypochondriacs,’ he’d said with a grin.
Sam thought of the film script that had arrived from Reginald Harcourt last week. She couldn’t get enthused about it, and he’d told her not to anyway. ‘It’s an average script, Sam,’ he’d agreed, ‘and when Torpedo Junction’s released at the end of the year you’ll be the hottest thing on the market, Simon Scanlon tells me.’
Yes, her career could stay on hold for a while, she thought. There were more important things on the agenda at the moment.
She wandered over to the bay windows to look at the snow. She’d dragged Jason out of bed first thing this morning when she’d seen it from their upstairs window. A thick blanket had fallen during the night, silent and magical, everything draped in white, without a breath of breeze to disturb it.
Then, through the frost on the panes, Sam saw her. Standing by the fountain in the front garden. Maude. She was sure it was Maude. She rubbed at the windows to no effect. She contemplated running upstairs to get Jason. She had told him about the mysterious old woman in the park and she so wanted him to meet her. But her hesitation lasted for only a moment. By the time she’d fetched Jason Maude might have disappeared, and she desperately needed to talk to Maude.
She ran into the hall, grabbing her coat and throwing her scarf around her neck. She wasn’t thinking clearly, but she felt Maude might have some answers. To what, she wasn’t sure, but something told her the old woman held the key to the past.
She half expected Maude to have vanished by the time she’d raced up the main drive and into the garden. But Maude hadn’t. When Sam arrived, breathless from the cold, the old woman was still standing by the fountain.
‘Hello, Jane,’ Maude said, as if she’d been waiting.
Sam didn’t bother correcting her. ‘Hello, Maude.’
‘Maude?’ The old woman seemed confused.
‘Yes,’ Sam nodded firmly, ‘Maude.’ There would be answers this time, she thought. Maude who? she was about to ask.
‘Good heavens, how silly of me.’ Maude smiled her pretty smile. ‘I’m always so bad with names. Come closer, dear, where I can see you, my eyes aren’t what they were.’
Sam crossed to the fountain.
‘You’re not Jane at all, I know that, it’s just that you look so very like her, forgive me. Do your coat up, dear, you’ll catch your death.’
Sam automatically did as she was told. The questions she’d been about to ask now escaped her, and she found Maude’s eyes distracting. They were vivid for someone so elderly, and they seemed familiar.
Maude chatted on. ‘I’ve noticed the plaques,’ she said. ‘Your husband is opening a general practice. How nice to have a family doctor back at Chisolm House. Just like the old days. Chisolm House has a fine medical history, you know.’
‘Yes, so I believe. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?’
‘No, dear, thank you, I can’t stay long.’
‘But it’s cold, please come inside.’ The old woman wasn’t even wearing a coat, Sam realised. She took Maude’s arm, it was warm to the touch.
‘I don’t feel the cold,’ Maude said. ‘And don’t you find,’ she added, ‘that after a heavy snowfall like this, the air is actually quite warm?’ She smiled. ‘It’s as if the snow is a blanket, wrapping us all up in its warmth.’
‘Yes, I do find that.’
‘See this fountain?’ Maude placed her hand affectionately upon the fountain. ‘So pretty, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, yes it is.’ Sam rested her hand on the fountain beside the old woman’s, her bare fingers not registering the ice-cold of the snow that shrouded the stone.
‘Jane and I used to build a snowman over this fountain. Jane always said it was cheating, but I said, who cares, we have the best snowman in town.’ Her laughter was girlish and stopped as quickly as it had started. ‘Congratulations,’ she said.
‘On what?’ Sam was mystified.
‘Your baby of course.’
Sam stared at the old woman. How could Maude know? Two months didn’t show at all.
‘Oh my dear, one can always tell by the look in a woman’s eyes.’ Maude turned to the bay windows. ‘And that is your husband, I take it?’
Sam turned. Jason was standing in the drawing room looking out at them, and Maude gave him a flirtatious wave. ‘How very handsome he is.’
Jason smiled and returned the old woman’s wave.
‘Yes, I think so too, but then I’m biased,’ Sam said as she waved back. ‘Please, Maude,’ she said, ‘please come in and meet him.’
‘No, dear, no I won’t, as I said I can’t stay. In fact you won’t be seeing me any more.’ Maude touched Sam’s hand where it rested on the fountain. Her fingers were so warm, Sam thought. ‘I just wanted to say welcome home.’
She turned as if to go, then paused, pensive, her eyes focussed upon the fountain. ‘Jane always told me I could make things happen,’ she said. ‘For others, it would appear, not always for myself, but then I have a feeling I may not have deserved it. No matter,’ her smile was radiant as she looked at Sam, ‘all is well now. Goodbye, my dear.’
Sam watched her walk away, healthy and strong. For a woman that age, there was no halt in her step.
She went inside. Jason was still standing by the bay windows.
‘You see?’ she announced triumphantly. ‘I told you she was real.’
He didn’t seem to be listening. ‘You looked so beautiful out there, Sam,’ he said.
‘I tried to get her to come in and have some tea, I mea
n, she wasn’t even wearing a coat, but she said she doesn’t feel the cold.’
‘Who? Who are you talking about?’
‘Maude of course. She waved at you.’
He looked blank.
‘You waved back at her, Jason.’
‘I waved at you, Sam. You were standing in the garden leaning on the fountain, and you looked so incredibly beautiful. And you turned to me, and I waved.’
‘I was with Maude. We both waved.’
‘No, my love. You were alone.’ He pointed through the bay windows. ‘Look.’
In the deep fall of snow, there was just one set of footprints.
‘Are you all right, Sam?’ He was concerned.
‘Oh yes, I’m fine. Really,’ she said as she kissed him, ‘I’m fine, just the last of the ghosts, that’s all,’ and she smiled.
She realised where she’d seen those eyes before. They were the eyes in the portrait. Goodbye, Phoebe, she thought. Perhaps she even whispered it as she looked out at the fountain and the clear imprint of her hand in the snow upon the stone, right where her fingers had rested beside Phoebe’s.
‘This land and its history are ancient, Pietro,’ Lucky said, ‘as ancient as time itself. But as a civilisation, it is only just being born, and we are part of that birth.’
In a time when desperate people were seizing with both hands the chance for freedom, refugees from more than seventy nations gathered beneath the Southern Cross to forge a new national identity. They came from all over wartorn Europe to the mountains of Australia to help realise one man’s dream: the mighty Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century.
People of all races and creeds tunnelled through a mountain range to turn the course of a majestic river, trying to put to rest ghosts from the inferno of history: buried memories, unimaginable pain and deadly secrets.
From the ruins of Berlin to the birth of Israel, from the Italian Alps to the Australian high country, Heritage is a passionate and fast-paced tale of rebirth, struggle, sacrifice and redemption, and a tribute to those who gave meaning to the Australian spirit.
‘Give me a man who’s a man among men
Who’ll stow his white collar and put down his pen
Who’ll blow down a mountain and build you a dam
Bigger and better than old Uncle Sam.
Sometimes it’s raining and sometimes it’s hail
Sometimes it blows up a blizzardy gale
Sometimes it’s fire and sometimes it’s flood
And sometimes you’re up to your eyeballs in mud.
Give me bulldozers and tractors and hoses
And diesels to ease all my troubles away
With the help of the Lord and of good Henry Ford
The Snowy will roll on her way.’
Extract from the song ‘Snowy River Roll’
CHAPTER ONE
They came from everywhere. Within a matter of months, the mountain work camps and townships of the Monaro rang with a cacophony of unfamiliar accents and languages which confused both the locals and the hundreds of their fellow countrymen who had flocked to the area looking for work. Even city-bred Australians, who’d bumped into the odd ‘Wog’ and considered themselves relatively sophisticated, were confounded. They were outnumbered by the Europeans, and bewildered by the sudden onslaught of foreign accents and the sights and smells of strange foods. Garlic wafted from the kitchens of the Italians; the Poles and the Czechs ate evil-looking, thick sausages; the Germans downed sauerkraut by the bucket-load; and the Norwegians, incomprehensibly, relished soused herring and pickled rollmops with their beer. The previously sheltered Australians didn’t know what to make of this avalanche of new sensations.
It had been on August 1, 1949 that fifty-three-year-old William Hudson was appointed Commissioner of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Authority. ‘Ahead of us lie many years of toil, numerous obstacles to be surmounted and, I have no doubt, many disappointments,’ he announced in his radio broadcast to the nation. ‘But these are what make the achievement worthwhile. The nation has accepted the Scheme and if I judge Australians rightly, we will see that it goes through.’
The people of Australia listened in awe as Hudson unfolded the plans for the massive construction scheme, the most ambitious ever to be undertaken in their country.
The waters of the Snowy River were to be diverted from their path to the sea by a series of tunnels under the Great Dividing Range. The waters would be channelled westwards into the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers, whose flow would be regulated by the provision of two main water storage areas, Jindabyne and Adaminaby Dams. The Snowy Scheme had two principal purposes: the irrigation of dry inland areas, and the creation of a massive source of electrical power. As the accumulated waters were diverted through the system of tunnels and reservoirs, the energy generated by their movement would be stored at various stages in power stations where it would be converted into electricity. It was estimated that the Scheme would require the construction of approximately fifty miles of aqueducts, ninety miles of tunnels, sixteen large dams and seven power stations.
Commissioner Hudson set about the task with all the energy and commitment for which he was renowned. Overseas contractors were employed, not only for their engineering expertise and the supply of heavy equipment and vehicles, but for the construction of temporary ‘townships’ at the many work sites.
The Snowy Scheme was to be a long haul – twenty-five years in all – and men couldn’t live in tents forever, especially during the bitterly cold winter months.
Most important to the success of the Scheme was the supply of workers, both skilled and non-skilled. An undertaking of such magnitude demanded legions of workers along with the hundreds of specialists required and, with a population of only eight million and a critical post-war shortage of men, Australia had to look overseas for labour. The call went out.
The Australian Government’s offer resonated throughout war-torn Europe and was answered in droves. Those whose lives had been destroyed by the ravages of war felt a new world was opening for them.
The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Authority considered the combination of so many nationalities a potential danger and initially established separate camps for the local and migrant workers. An ‘Aussie’ camp and a ‘New Australian’ camp were erected on opposite sides of the Snowy River, just downstream from Jindabyne. The latter quickly became known as ‘Wog Camp’, the Aussies choosing to ignore the official term ‘New Australians’, referring instead to their fellow workers as Reffos, Balts, Wogs, Krauts, Eyeties, Dagos and any number of other derogatory titles.
None of these names seemed to overly bother the Europeans, though some new arrivals found the Australians’ inability to distinguish between different nationalities irritating. Germans and Poles, bitter enemies in their home countries, disliked being collectively referred to as ‘Wogs’, and Hungarians and Czechs were annoyed at being dismissed as ‘Balts’. But for the most part, the Europeans understood that the Australians’ attitude was a product of insecurity and ignorance. Australia had no bordering countries, no immediate neighbours whose languages and cultures differed from their own. The European Snowy workers, unlike their counterparts in the cities, were not a lonely, stigmatised minority. They were not easily threatened. Buoyed by the strength of their numbers, they recognised the Australians for what they were: naive.
Cooma, the largest of the Monaro townships, with easy rail access from Sydney and Canberra, had been selected as the Authority’s headquarters. Satellite townships of prefabricated houses and facilities were erected to the north and the east of the town. As the migrants continued to pour into the township, Cooma became a microcosm of Europe and proximity forced its local inhabitants to recognise and accept their new neighbours. In the nearby rural townships of Adaminaby, Berridale and Jindabyne acceptance was more gradual, with many of the townspeople fearful of the unfamiliar and ‘different’.
But it was the wor
kers themselves who first forged the bond that slowly spread throughout the mountains and valleys and plains. Workers started referring to themselves simply as ‘Snowy men’ and, although there was occasional friction, the Authority’s fears of fierce racial disharmony proved groundless. Commissioner Hudson’s policy from the outset had been one of assimilation, and his presence remained a daily driving force for harmony throughout the region.
By the early 1950s mobile houses were already replacing tents in many work camps. The prefabricated structures, built on sled bases and known as ‘snow huts’, were transported to each new site as the work progressed. In areas where labour was required over a long period for a particular phase of the project, mobile settlements became townships with married couples’ quarters and prefabricated cottages, and single men’s huts and barracks. There were canteens, mess halls, and entertainment facilities, and an overall sense of permanency prevailed as ‘Snowy people’ formed bonds that would last a lifetime. Communities flourished, gardens were carefully tended and the simplest of houses became nurtured homes.
It was to one of these townships that young Pietro Toscanini arrived in early 1954.
Twenty-year-old Pietro had been bewildered when he’d arrived at the picturesque railway station of Cooma and walked through the gates to the forecourt overlooking the town below. They’d told him in Sydney that he was going to the Snowy Mountains. But where were the mountains? Where was the snow? He’d anticipated a replica of his native alpine Italy, but all he could see were distant low-lying hills surrounding a vast plain, in the centre of which sat a shabby town with makeshift settlements sprawling either side. The heat, too, confused him. It was so hot that he was sweating beneath the fine wool suit he’d purchased before he’d left his home country. It was the only suit he possessed, the latest fashion with tapering collar and trouser legs, and he’d worn it to impress his new employers.