Line of Fire

by Ian Townsend

  Then came the war and in 1914 he tried to enlist in Sydney but was rejected as medically unfit. There’s no record of what made him unfit for service; it may have been flat feet, or a finger missing from a sawmill accident, or it may have been something else entirely. He worked his way from Sydney to London and tried to enlist at Whitehall, but was rejected again.

  Dejected, he signed on as a hospital attendant on the RMS Omrah and sailed back to Fremantle to join the troopship Miltiades, but he wasn’t in the service long. In June 1916, he was discharged, again medically unfit.

  Five years later, he was in New Guinea as Alfred Arthur Harvey, an employee of the Expropriation Board, and ten years after that he was the proud owner of his own coconut plantation.

  One of the few surviving photographs of Ted Harvey also shows the plantation bungalow, on stilts, dominated by a large, deep, screened verandah. The house was two and a half miles inland and surrounded by neat lawns and garden beds. It commanded a view over a number of buildings that amounted to a small, self-contained village. There was a long building where the workers slept, a store, a native hospital and sheds for dried copra. The grass was kept short by lines of labourers swinging curved iron blades called sarips. Beyond the lawns were tall casuarina trees and, towering behind them, the Baining Mountains.

  The Lassul plantation house, about 1935, with Winifred and Ted Harvey on the lawn, and Mercia and a friend on the steps

  (JulieHarris collection)

  It looked beautiful, but it was a hard to place to live. Four metres of rain falls on that part of the Baining coast every year. It’s only four degrees south of the equator and when the sun’s out, it’s a steam bath. There are leeches, crocodiles, snakes and, most dangerous of all, malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Even the soil contains bacteria that can turn scratches into festering ulcers.

  And yet most people who lived in that part of the world loved it. There were small plantations right along the coast. Jock Maclean and his family lived on Rangarere, Hugh Scott and his wife lived closer, on Asilingi and Neinduk, as did Margaret and Eric Woods. Harry Briggs was at Nambung, Ernst Till had a large family at Neu Kauern, and Muriel Peterson was on Guntershohe.

  They would sometimes get together as the sun set over the Bismarck Sea, gathering on a plantation verandah to drink and talk. And drink. You can imagine a hand-wound gramophone playing Noel Coward’s ‘A Room with a View’ to the clink of glasses as the sun set.

  Fireflies would come from the dark edges of the garden, the moon would rise and the real world would seem far, far away.

  In September 1932, Harvey brought a new bride to Lassul. Winifred Consterdine was a perfectly reasonable woman who had had a disastrous first marriage. She had visited Rabaul expecting nothing and ended up with a new husband.

  Wyn was born in New Zealand in 1897, the daughter of an organist and choirmaster who moved from church to church until his wife tired of the endless moving and poverty and finally moved herself and her children back to her parents’ house in Anglesea in Victoria.

  Wyn’s first disastrous marriage was to a jockey also known as Ted, and they had a daughter, Mercia. Ted Murphy rode off to the Cootamundra races one day on a flash new colt called Bemboka Lad and never returned. Wyn divorced him for desertion and swore off men, but a decade later, on a steamship trip returning from visiting her sister’s family in Java, she met Ted Harvey. The steamships all stopped at Rabaul. Harvey was in town, charming, good-looking, and he said he owned a plantation.

  They were married quietly at the Rabaul Registry Office on 13 September 1932, leaving Wyn breathless, happy, perhaps a little disorientated.

  Wyn could have had no idea that Ted Harvey was already married and that in fact Harvey wasn’t his real name. He had the illusion of wealth, but truth be told Wyn didn’t care how wealthy he was. She was happy to have a husband and a house. Mercia joined them and for a while, life was good.

  There’s also a photograph of Wyn in the garden at Lassul, taken about 1935. She’s dressed in white, wearing a large white hat. In another photo, she’s wearing a spotted dress with her arms around two dogs, Scottie and Maurie. The picture was taken in front of ‘Mercia’s house’, a grass hut at the gold diggings on the creek near Lassul.

  They all seem happy.

  Later, after the war, Mercia remembered Ted Harvey fondly, calling him ‘Teddy’ and sometimes ‘Father’.

  ‘He bought me a sewing machine,’ she told her husband, Alan. ‘He took me around to Rabaul to see the manager [Philip Coote] of Burns Philp. Then he came out and took me to China Town and he bought the Singer [sewing machine] and gave it to me.’

  There’s another photograph, of a teenage Mercia at Lassul plantation patting a horse. She’s a small girl with tight curly hair and a dazzling smile. The horse is being ridden by Harvey, bearded this time, his face obscured once again, out of focus and misty from aging photographic chemicals.

  Mercia had actually won the camera with which she took all these photos. She’d won a newspaper competition for an essay she’d written describing life on a copra plantation.

  One never tires of the views round about and the mountain greenery. The sunsets are particularly beautiful and at night the fireflies come flitting among the trees, making it a real fairyland.

  The boys generally beat their drums on Saturday and Sunday nights, and sing their monotonous songs to the rhythm, but nevertheless the sound always succeeds in putting me to sleep.

  Ted Harvey had fallen on his feet. Lucky in love, he was also lucky to continue finding gold. Despite what the geologist Norman Fisher thought, it was rich enough to keep the plantation running through the Depression and the collapse of the copra price.

  That was more than could be said for Jack Gasmier, trying to scratch a living back in the goldfields of Western Australia.

  CHAPTER 7

  . . . a mile-long barrier of flame cast a lurid reflection in the sky. Stung to fresh fury, the foreigners again swept off the Ivanhoe dump and rushed the miners, who, however, withstood them and soon had them in retreat. Bombs were thrown and rifle fire continued throughout the night.

  — ‘Night of Unbridled Rioting in Kalgoorlie’, Canberra Times, 1 February 1934

  In January 1934, Marjorie held Dickie’s hand and half-pulled, half-carried him down the dusty streets of Prospect to catch a tram to Adelaide Railway Station. Phyllis had begged her to stay.

  Why Kalgoorlie? Phyllis demanded. Is it that man?

  She referred to Dickie’s father as ‘that man’, his name never mentioned, but she knew who he was, of course. It had been in all the papers.

  Why Kalgoorlie?

  Because you’re not in Kalgoorlie!

  Phyllis wrung her hands in her apron and fought tears. Darling, but what are you going to do for money?

  Dickie was close to tears now, too.

  I have something lined up. Don’t worry about me.

  And she left.

  Jack had written to tell her he was now a mine manager — What do you think of that? — and had sent Marjorie money for their fares. Even then, she may not have gone but for the deteriorating relationship with Phyllis. They couldn’t help but fight now; it had become a habit.

  And there was nothing for her in Prospect. She was 23. She didn’t want sympathy as a single mother, she couldn’t live with Phyllis any more, and no respectable man would want to marry her.

  Jack Gasmier might not have had the best form, but he had come good and he wanted her and Dickie to join him. That surely counted for something.

  The train pulled out of Adelaide and through the bright brown suburbs, out into the dry country, towards Port Augusta and then west. Marjorie let two-year-old Dickie climb over the seats as she stared through the train window, telling herself that she had made the right decision, the only decision, and that life would be better now.

  Back in Gordon Road, Phyllis had been struggling to feed everyone. Graham was still at school, George was still up country at Kybunga, and Jim was in
the last year of an apprenticeship as a sheet metal worker. He didn’t bring home much, but with what George sent home and Joseph’s pension, they weren’t starving.

  Better off than most, said Joseph.

  Phyllis supposed she should be thankful. In the evenings, as she watched the children playing cricket in the street, she would tut-tut at the sight of the ribs showing on the Skinner boys and take them all biscuits.

  All the boys were cricket mad, and none was madder than Graham, who, the previous year, had gone with a mate to the Adelaide Oval to see Harold Larwood bowl Don Bradman and England try to kill the Australians with the ball.

  You lucky bugger, said George, who’d come home for a few weeks.

  Little Dickie had been following Graham around like a puppy, which was annoying, but it broke Graham’s heart when Marjorie took Dickie away.

  Over in Kalgoorlie, Jack Gasmier and Willi Fritz had been digging and shovelling their Bardoc claims all through winter, and in August 1933 they struck gold. From 36 tons of ore sent to the government stamping battery in Kalgoorlie, the pair had produced 16 ounces of gold. It wasn’t huge, but it was enough for the directors of the syndicate back in Adelaide to begin the next phase of their plan. They formed a company, Bardoc Consolidated.

  Edmund Hudd, who’d stumped up most of the money for the New Ora Banda Gold Syndicate, made good on his promise and made Jack the mine’s manager and Willi an employee.

  More men would now be needed to work the claims, to make it sound more substantial than it was, release a prospectus and dress the mine up for sale.

  Jack was now a mine manager, and he bought a motorcar on credit. With better prospects, he wrote to Marjorie and asked her and Dickie to join him in Kalgoorlie, and was surprised when she said yes. He rented half of a furnished house from Mrs Henry in Varden Street and prepared to make a home.

  Marjorie and Dickie stepped off the train into a blistering Kalgoorlie summer at the end of January 1934, and three days later, the city erupted in a riot.

  It started when an Italian barman threw a drunk miner named George Jordan out of the Home From Home Family Hotel. In a subsequent fight with the barman, Jordan fell, struck his head, and died. A mob descended on the hotel and set it alight. It then turned its attention to Italian and Slavic homes and shops. According to The Canberra Times:

  For some hours, Boulder and Kalgoorlie were in a state of siege and warlike measures were adopted by the foreigners to meet with the onward rush of miners. It is reported that some of the foreigners placed gelignite beneath some of their own houses and waited for the miners to get close before firing the fuses.

  In Varden Street, Marjorie heard the firecracker noise of rifle shots and the deep thump of explosives, and walked into the street to see the sky glowing orange just a few blocks away.

  It had been the end of her first tiring day alone with Dickie in the strange, strange town. Jack had driven off to the mine in the morning and hadn’t yet returned. She had spent the day sweltering indoors with Dickie and the cool evening was like heaven, except for the noise.

  Mrs Henry came outside too and Marjorie asked her what the noise was. Mrs Henry cocked her head. Brahms? Someone was playing music next door.

  No. A great shower of sparks rose above the roofs of neighbouring houses, and a distant cheer went up. That.

  Oh? Fireworks, I expect.

  Does that happen often here?

  Fireworks? No. Perhaps someone got married or struck it rich.

  Later, men came running down the street and told them to go inside and Marjorie became more anxious. Jack came through the door sometime after midnight, smelling of smoke, dragging Willi by the shirt, letting him fall unconscious near the front door.

  Oh my God, is he hurt? whispered Marjorie. (Dickie had finally fallen asleep despite the yelling and explosions.)

  Drunk. Took me ages to find him. I was worried someone might think he’s an Italian — which explained nothing until Jack, before he fell asleep, muttered that a man had died and the British had had enough of the Italians taking their jobs, so they were going to chase them out of town.

  Does that happen often? Marjorie heard herself asking again. Kalgoorlie was becoming a disappointment. But Jack had fallen asleep.

  In the morning, Jack told Marjorie not to worry about a thing and left with Willi for the Bardoc mine. Mrs Henry came to tell her about the riot and the homes that were blown up at Dingbat Flat.

  I’m surprised you didn’t hear something, dear.

  Things eventually died down. Willi Fritz was involved in a scuffle in the tearooms a few weeks later, but Jack Gasmier was determined this time to stay out of trouble.

  On 14 March 1934, a week after Dickie turned three, Jack and Marjorie were quietly married at the registrar’s office in Kalgoorlie. Jack had pocketed some gold from the mine and had had it made into a ring, a pure, soft, glorious thing to see slipped onto her finger. It was the most romantic gesture Marjorie had ever received, and in that moment she truly loved him.

  She had made her own wedding dress of cream rayon with a cowl neckline, full gathered long sleeves and train. The dress had a ribbon belt and she wore it for all of 30 minutes so as not to draw attention in the streets.

  It pained her that she couldn’t show or tell anyone. Uncle Albert thought that Jack was already married and had assumed that when Marjorie and Dickie arrived they were the wife and child come west to join him. And Marjorie had no intention of alerting Phyllis to the news, at least not until Jack was well and truly on his feet.

  Kalgoorlie for a few weeks held no more surprises. Marjorie set up her dressmaking business in a front room in Varden Street, but Dickie was now a toddler and wasn’t easy to ignore, and for the first time she missed Phyllis’s help. It wasn’t turning out quite as she expected, but at least she had a husband who had work, which was more than could be said for most women she knew back in South Australia.

  Unfortunately, however, things weren’t going well at Bardoc. After striking gold, the investors in Adelaide had poured £1800 into the mine, and Jack had employed more miners. But the gold seam had petered out before the prospectus could be printed. Jack tried to reassure Hudd in Adelaide that they’d find the seam again. He just needed faith.

  I’m not trying to sell a bloody church, Hudd told Jack.

  Jack suggested the Adelaide syndicate apply for ‘an exemption from labour’ for three months, so they could suspend mining and stop spending money without worrying about claim jumpers. Jack would handle things at the Kalgoorlie end.

  The letter sacking him and Willi, and revoking his power of attorney, came as a complete shock, but he told Marjorie, It’s not the end of the world. Marjorie by then was thinking the end of the world was exactly where they were.

  To Marjorie, Jack Gasmier’s finest trait, his irrational optimism, had become his most annoying. It turned out that he hadn’t applied for the exemption from labour, which was apparently good news, because it meant he could apply to have the mine forfeited to him. He fought Hudd and his company in the Warden’s Court until the end of the year before eventually, inevitably, losing.

  After that, things fell apart in rapid succession.

  Jack still owed money for the car and sold it. Then Mrs Henry decided to sell the Varden Street house.

  But I’m pregnant, Marjorie told her, only suspecting it at the time, although it turned out to be true.

  Uncle Albert helped Jack and Marjorie find a place to live and gave Jack some work on his own various money-making schemes until one day, in June 1935, Marjorie began to bleed. Jack took her to the doctor’s surgery, where she miscarried.

  The bleeding stopped and Marjorie was sent home, but she couldn’t shake a fever and the doctor talked gravely about infection. It was beyond him, he told Jack, and he needed to take his wife to Perth to save her.

  Supporting Marjorie onto the train and carrying Dickie, Jack travelled west again, cursing what he believed was a run of bad luck. For Marjorie it was all a
vague dream, the rocking of the train and the heat and cold in turn, Dickie for the first time quiet and Jack actually holding her hand. Under other circumstances, she thought feverishly, she would have enjoyed it.

  Marjorie found herself in the women’s ward of the Mount Hospital, a clean, airy place of white walls and antiseptic, where she overheard a doctor telling Jack about puerperal fever and that it would be a long stay if she was to recover.

  Glorious, she thought, selfishly. Marjorie was in the private Mount Hospital for months.

  How can we afford this? she asked Jack when he visited, and he just winked at her and said he had a plan, and not to worry. As he had Dickie to care for, she wondered what the plan could be.

  With his last five pounds, Jack had opened a bank account; now he began writing cheques to pay the bills. When Marjorie was discharged from hospital in mid-October, the matron presented them with a bill for £29 and 12 shillings.

  That much? Marjorie whispered.

  Jack Gasmier produced his chequebook and asked the matron if she had some cash; he said he’d been caught short by the banks closing. He wrote a cheque for £34 and 12 shillings and she gave him a £5 note.

  When his cheque bounced, the matron called the police, and when the police came to the door of the small flat he’d rented, they discovered he’d written other worthless cheques worth about £6, all for medical expenses.

  Don’t tell me that was your plan?

  Had Jack reasoned that it was worth sacrificing his own freedom? Quite possibly. He hadn’t run. Marjorie was alive. She’d had the best care other people’s money could buy.

  On 5 November 1935, Jack Gasmier was convicted of five counts of false pretences and sentenced to seven months hard labour in Fremantle Prison.

  Weak from months in hospital and shocked by the sudden turn of events, Marjorie was stranded in Perth with Dickie. She had been planning to tell her parents that she had married Dickie’s father, the successful mine manager. She couldn’t now tell them she’d married Dickie’s father, the jailbird.