Gone.
She sat quietly while the rage and pain devoured her. ‘I will be there for you,’ he had said. There for you.
She heard a sound behind her and looked up. The troopers had come up and were staring down at them, their black faces expressionless. She should hate them for what they had done but did not. The surge of rage had passed as quickly as it had come, leaving behind it an emptiness that filled the world.
I will be there for you.
She heard his voice, telling her again that he loved her. The remembered words filled her heart then slowly died, muffled by a distance too great to comprehend. He had been everything, her strength, consolation, laughter and passion, her hope for the future. Her love.
Gone.
Gently she laid down his head. She bent, kissed him. She stood. Her face was frozen, bereft of tears. She turned and walked away.
EPILOGUE
I
So, at last, we have come home. Alison, Alison’s unborn child, Joshua and myself. We are content together. I say little to Alison about what has passed; it is beyond my ability to tell her how much I admire her courage, her determination to face the future.
Whitby Downs lies at peace, bathed in sunshine. I stand in the open doorway of the house, looking across the golden acres towards the invisible sea. This far country to which my husband brought me has become my life and from hatred I have come to know and love it well. It is peopled with my ghosts. Edward and Gavin, Ian and now Jason. Blake, too, is part of those memories. In his lifetime I hated him but now … Let him rest. All of them striving to create a future from the raw materials of the earth, all now gone. Yet not gone, while I live. In my memories they are alive as I, too, shall be alive in the hearts of those who know me. Joshua, should he survive me, Alison, Alison’s child.
It is a miracle that the last two survived.
Alison has told me what happened, of their nightmare journey, the battle with Blake, the renewed flight and its tragic end. What she did not know was how Dawkins was able to out-think them and lay the ambush into which they blundered. I knew. I was there.
II
I reached Bungaree shortly before sunset to find no-one there, neither Jason nor Alison nor Blake. Later I understood that Blake had been and gone by then, following Jason’s trail while the light lasted, but at the time I did not know that. I had come to warn Jason and Alison that Dawkins and his troopers were in the district; now they were gone I could do nothing but return home.
Before I could set out for Whitby Downs Dawkins and his man arrived. He did not arrest me but neither did he allow me to leave. He sent the trooper to fetch his other men, keeping me with him at Bungaree, and at first light the next morning we all rode north.
I had refused to tell him why I had ridden to Bungaree but he knew, of course.
‘They’re somewhere close,’ he said, ‘I kin smell ’em.’
The sun was barely clear of the horizon when we came across a strip of burnt land half a mile wide extending east and west across the peninsula. He sent his men to ride along it and when they returned to report no sign of tracks he rubbed his hands. ‘If they ain’t crossed they still got to be south of ’ere.’
He set his ambush, himself and two of the men at one point, the others a mile further on, and here it was that Jason and Alison, two hours later, arrived.
After Jason was dead Dawkins wanted no more to do with us. Even the discovery of Blake’s body did not interest him. Jason he had sought and Jason he had found; now all he wanted was to go home. He would have taken the body with him but Alison talked him out of it.
‘Let him lie here where he belongs.’
Dawkins, brute though he was, agreed. Less trouble than taking him, I suppose.
Hector Gallagher took Blake’s death better than I had expected.
‘He’d gone from me long ago,’ he said, but aged overnight, no longer the violent man he had been.
We buried Jason and Blake with the rest of our dead and got on with our lives.
III
Alison often goes to the grotto and when she returns her face is that of one who has walked with the spirits. As for me …
Long ago I had a dream. Jason was that dream and Jason lives on in memory, in his unborn child. The future still beckons all of us, as the shores along this coast must have beckoned Jason when first he arrived here. I have arrived at the point of acceptance. Not of forgetfulness, never that, but acceptance of something that cannot be changed. The acceptance brings comfort, of a sort.
Joshua tells me we are rich, will be richer still, in time. There seems to be no limit to the wealth of the Matlock mine. I would have known that for myself, once, had my finger on every ounce of ore raised, every penny spent. For the last three months, since Jason died, I have taken less interest. It no longer matters to me. Still, it is better to be rich than poor.
Joshua has been pressing me to marry him. I think I shall say yes, not now but soon. It will provide a symmetry to my life that it currently lacks. I swore I would never again be answerable to a man but Joshua is not the type to take advantage of a husband’s authority. Besides, I have come to love him. There is certainly great comfort in that.
Today is a bad day. Despite my acceptance, there are still times when my sense of loss becomes too strong to bear. Anguish returns. In the old days, after Edward died in the sea, I used to return often to the spot where it had happened. It is years since I last did this but now, once again, I shall go on pilgrimage to the place where Jason was gunned down.
I shall sit there, alone with my memories. The silence will soothe me and restore my strength. Finally, when my heart has grown quiet within me, I shall mount my horse and ride home.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
The Narungga people, or Narrunga as it is sometimes written, inhabited the Yorke Peninsula of South Australia from ancient times until shortly after the arrival of the first white settlers in the 1840s. Their first contact with Europeans is generally accepted to have been with mariners and sealers shipwrecked on the peninsula. The Narungga had no difficulty in absorbing such isolated individuals but the arrival of organised groups of white people proved fatal to tribal society as it did elsewhere in Australia and, indeed, throughout the world. The scattering of the Narungga was so complete that few traces remain of their language or culture. The ceremonies described are based on aboriginal ceremonies but no-one can say with certainty whether the beliefs and customs I have attributed to the Narungga people belonged to them or not.
Winda, or winta, as some sources would have it, is the Narungga word both for a spear and a barn owl. It features in the dreamtime legend that I have recounted here.
As a result of white settlement alcohol became available to indigenous people who had no previous experience of it. As in many other countries, the experience proved catastrophic and remains so to this day.
Although there were very many acts of sympathy and kindness between the races, atrocities of the type described undoubtedly took place from time to time. The hatreds created over the ensuing years, justified or unjustified but invariably counter-productive, are also with us to this day.
The reference to the island far to the north where the Narungga people obtained the flints used to tip their weapons is to South Molle in the Whitsundays where the remains of an old quarry are still being examined by archaeologists. Current belief is that, through trading, the stone from this quarry found its way throughout Australia.
The first white settlers bought pastoral leases from the government and in terms of their own society were legal owners of the land. Conditions were always harsh for the pioneers but the high price of wool enabled some of them to make large fortunes. The Matlock family is fictitious, as are all the main characters, but the way they lived is based on records of pioneer life. The murder of Gavin Matlock is based loosely on an actual incident where a relation of the pioneering Bowman family was killed at the Foresters Arms at Tarlee. The inn no longer exists but a heap of stones in
a paddock outside the town shows where the inn once stood.
Coppermania was the term used to describe the frenzy that overcame the colony at the time of the great copper discoveries.
Kapunda was the first mining settlement in Australia. It was discovered more or less by chance by Francis Dutton, a local squatter who, with his neighbour Captain John Bagot, developed the mine. There were numerous German and Cornish immigrants in the area, although both Walter Lang and Joshua Penrose are fictional characters. Contemporary reports indicate that in its early years the town was much as described. Much of the rock in the area is soft in character and could often be worked without blasting. Occasionally, however, explosives were used. Mining ceased at Kapunda many years ago but the old mine workings still exist and form an important part of the town’s heritage. As readers of my novel The Burning Land will know, the town later became an important centre for the sale of livestock driven down from the interior. The Sir John Franklin hotel where Asta Matlock stayed during her second visit to Kapunda still stands in the main street, although the earlier Miners Arms no longer exists.
Joshua Penrose’s injudicious purchase of land with no payable ore deposits is based on an episode when Captain Bagot paid a huge sum for land that proved to have no mining value at all.
Whittaker, the man to whom Lang refers in his discussions with Gavin Mortlock, was one of pioneer Kapunda’s most notable businessmen.
The Burra Burra mine, or Monster Mine as it was known, flourished in the 1840s and for many years afterwards. It was managed from Adelaide by the efficient but unscrupulous Henry Ayers, after whom Ayers Rock (now known as Uluru) was named.
The company charged a rent of three shillings a week for their miners’ cottages. By the standards of the time this sum was exorbitant. Miners avoided the rent by digging homes for themselves along the creek bank. Conditions were as described and, after the dugouts had been flooded, the company required all miners to move into company cottages or face dismissal. Help to the stricken miners was initially provided by the mine captain until Ayers issued specific orders that no assistance was to be given.
Mine accountant Challoner existed, although was not necessarily as described. Many years later, in the dying stages of the mine, he became general manager.
Burra Burra mine’s dishonest attempts to change the assayed weight of copper were engineered by Henry Ayers and caused serious labour troubles about this time.
The muleteers at Burra Burra were mostly from Chile.
Silas Tregloam’s complaints about John Graham taking ten thousand pounds a year from a mine he never saw were in fact an understatement. Graham, an ironmonger from Hindley Street, Adelaide, was the largest shareholder in the Burra Burra mine. In its best years his annual dividends exceeded £16 000. But let’s be fair about it. He risked every penny he had to take up his stake in the mine and the gamble came off. If it had not, he would have been destitute.
The gaol from which Jason escapes exists to this day as a tourist attraction.
The name Burra Burra, incidentally, is not an aboriginal name but is taken from the Hindi word burra, meaning great.
Port Wakefield, although never really suitable because of its offshore shallows, was opened up at this time as a means of avoiding the long overland route to Port Adelaide. Numerous small towns of South Australia’s mid-north—Mintaro, Watervale and Leasingham among them—owe their existence to the route connecting the Monster Mine with the coast. Port Wakefield was originally named Port Henry.
The horse race to Adelaide was an historical event and took place when huge copper deposits were discovered at the northern end of the Yorke Peninsula. It ended much as described, the latecomer being granted title on the strength of personal connections; it is interesting how little the world has changed over the years. The mines at Wallaroo and Moonta on the Yorke Peninsula subsequently eclipsed the Monster Mine itself.
ABOUT JOHN FLETCHER
John Fletcher lives in a small coastal town south of Adelaide. He has lived and worked in Europe, Asia and Africa as well as Australia. An author and dramatist whose plays have been produced for radio and television by the BBC and the South African Broadcasting Corporation, his short stories have appeared in Australia and throughout the world. He writes a regular column for the Straits Times in Singapore.
John Fletcher is the author of four previous novels, all of which have received both critical and popular acclaim and earned him a wide audience and loyal following.
Claim the Kingdom and The Burning Land, both historical sagas set in Australia, were first published by Arrow in 1996 and 1997.
ALSO BY JOHN FLETCHER
Claim the Kingdom
The Burning Land
First published by Random House Australia in 2000
This edition published by Momentum in 2013
Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
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Copyright © John Fletcher 2000
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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A Far Country
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