Land of Golden Wattle

by J. H. Fletcher

  ‘Looks like those children will be brought up hard,’ Bailey said.

  ‘No choice,’ Ephraim said.

  ‘You got a long walk, Captain. How’s your foot?

  ‘My foot is fine,’ Ephraim said.

  All the same it was heavy going through the bush and his foot was indeed aching like the devil by the time he finally got back to the house, with the dawn breaking in the sky beyond the river.

  Emma said she had not slept.

  ‘Have we heard from your uncle?’

  ‘A note was hand-delivered last night.’

  ‘A letter of demand?’

  ‘Yes. But not for the two hundred thousand.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘He sent it to me personally, demanding payment of a thousand pounds he claims he lent my father back in 1824. The note says as Father’s beneficiary I am responsible for his debts.’

  ‘Surely your father was insolvent? Does that not nullify the claim?’

  ‘We cannot prove it, can we? And with my uncle’s influence the lawyers here will surely support his claim.’ She gave a sharp laugh. ‘He also wants interest: eighteen per cent per annum compounded over ten years. Seven thousand pounds, or so he claims.’

  The scorn in her voice snared Ephraim’s attention. ‘You checked his figures?’

  ‘At eighteen per cent for ten years the total comes to a little over five thousand pounds,’ she said. ‘He lied, even about that.’

  ‘I suspect he’s an expert liar,’ Ephraim said. ‘But it’s not important. You’re not going to be paying him anyway.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Emma said. ‘All being well we’ll be long gone by the time he finds out.’

  ‘I still think you should reconsider that,’ he said. ‘For the sake of the boys if not your own. It is so unwise –’

  She framed his face with her hands and pressed a finger to his lips. ‘No, Ephraim! We decided.’

  ‘You mean you decided,’ he said.

  ‘Let us say we decided,’ she said. ‘We are one family and will go together.’ She gave him a gay smile. ‘Don’t forget, if I stay here Uncle Barnsley will be after me for the money he says I owe him.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘So let us rather think what we have to do to get ready for our voyage north. Though it pains me that after all the effort I’ve put into it we’ve lost our lovely house,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll get it back one of these days.’

  ‘When we’ve made our fortune?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  It was time to sit down and make lists of all the things they would need to take with them.

  ‘There is something I want us to do first,’ said Emma.

  He looked questioningly at her.

  ‘Not much privacy on a small boat.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘So maybe we should do something about it while we can.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  She took his hand and led him into their bedroom. She turned to him, Ephraim smiling now.

  ‘This,’ she said.

  A hurried shedding of clothes. A radiant smile as she drew him down.

  ‘It’ll be weeks,’ she said afterwards as they got dressed again. ‘Maybe months. Do you think we’ll forget how?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s something you forget,’ he said.

  ‘Thank the dear Lord for that,’ she said.

  They sat down to prepare lists of the things they would need.

  ‘It’s hard when we don’t know how long we’ll be away.’

  ‘Could be years,’ Ephraim said. ‘Could be forever.’

  ‘And if your foot needs treatment?’

  ‘We’ll take an axe,’ he said.

  Flour, meat, fruit; axe, spade and tools of various kinds.

  ‘We’ll have to build a shelter of some sort,’ Ephraim said.

  ‘Children’s books,’ Emma said. ‘I’ll not have them growing up unable to read and write. Clothes and medical supplies too.’

  ‘Water,’ Ephraim said. ‘Maybe a little whisky.’

  ‘Guns and ammunition,’ Emma said. ‘We mustn’t forget those.’

  He looked at her admiringly: so young, so strong, so brave. ‘Feeling warlike, are we?’

  ‘Like an Amazon,’ Emma said.

  ‘You intend to go bare breasted, do you? Like I’ve read the Amazons did?’

  ‘In front of Mr Bailey? I don’t think so.’

  The rest of the day was a whirlwind but by the end of it Ephraim had obtained the services of a muleteer and three mules and the stores were piled in wooden crates, so many that it was hard to squeeze through the door of the house.

  All day they had been afraid Emma’s uncle would descend on them; they had learnt to detest him because of his mean ways but neither had any doubt about his uncanny ability to know everyone else’s business.

  ‘If he comes maybe we can shoot him,’ Emma said.

  ‘And hang for it? In any case he’s more likely to send his men than come himself.’

  ‘Will I have time to say goodbye to Lady Arthur?’

  ‘I know she’s your friend,’ Ephraim said. ‘But she won’t want anything to do with you once she hears we’ve lost our money. Her husband would never allow it.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Emma said. ‘Such a wretched business this is.’

  ‘I am sorry I let you down,’ Ephraim said.

  ‘You didn’t. Uncle Barnsley cheated you, that’s what happened. I have every faith in you, Captain Dark. I know we shall be rich and famous after we’ve opened up the north.’

  It was a declaration of faith that brought a lump to his throat.

  Baby William was screaming murder when they left the following morning. It was still dark, the only other sounds the soft sighing of the mules, the coaxing voice of the muleteer as he urged them along, the creaking of the wagon carrying the stores.

  It was slow going through the bush but by mid-afternoon they had reached the inlet where Ocean Rider lay concealed.

  Ephraim paid the muleteer. ‘And you’ve never set eyes on us, is that clear?’

  ‘I’ll not breathe a word,’ the man said. ‘Barnsley Tregellas would have my hide if he knew I’d helped you, the bastard.’

  They off-loaded the wagon and within minutes the muleteer, his animals and the wagon had vanished into the bush.

  It took the three of them a long time to get the stores on board; it took longer still to find places for everything.

  ‘I doubt we’ll be able to fit it all in,’ Emma said.

  But they managed in the end.

  ‘Now we wait for the tide,’ Bailey said. ‘Once the ebb starts we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘Where shall we sleep?’

  ‘There are two bunks in the forepeak,’ Bailey said.

  The ebb arrived on schedule. By midnight they were a mile off shore and heading north under a stars-bright sky.

  Afterwards Emma had no idea how long the voyage had taken.

  The wind had been cold as they headed up the east coast of Van Diemen’s Land, the seas grey and at times rough with spray arching high over the bows.

  A westerly gale came howling as they crossed the waterway that Governor Hunter had named Bass Strait back in 1800. The force of the wind blew them almost flat. Even with sails heavily reefed the wind and tumultuous seas combined to sweep them miles to the east, but once they had fought their way into the shelter of the mainland the seas moderated, the wind lost its edge; the days grew warm, then hot.

  Emma had her hands full with the two boys. Richard, into everything and always wanting to explore, was more trouble than baby William, although even he caused more problems than she would have expected. She experimented, taking him out of his basket and putting him on a towel on the deck, but after he had twice come close to rolling into the sea she abandoned that idea and back into the basket he went. That infuriated him and he screamed louder than the gulls that had followed them all the way up the coas
t, but Emma did not relent.

  ‘Better angry than drowned,’ she told him.

  For days on end she watched the coastline. Often it was barely visible over the horizon yet she still sensed the mystery and challenge of the unknown. What was there? What dangers? What treasures?

  She saw water creatures, sleek and shining, that accompanied the sloop for miles.

  ‘Dolphins,’ Mr Bailey said.

  ‘I wondered whether they might be mermaids,’ she said.

  She asked if he had ever seen a mermaid but he laughed and did not answer.

  Even without the mermaids it was a world of wonder. She leant with hands on the rail, breathing in the salt air. She had wondered whether she would be afraid of what lay ahead of them but instead found herself falling in love with what she was coming to think was the most wonderful adventure.

  A new life, she thought. After the disappointments of Hobart Town it was a thrilling prospect.

  ‘We were the first who ever burst into that silent sea,’ she declaimed, remembering a poem that she had read years before.

  Except these seas were not silent but alive with the silver glint of sunlight, the hiss and song of the waves, the creaking of the rigging as day by day they made their way towards the unknown lands far to the north.

  She asked if the men knew where they were going and what they planned to do when they got there.

  ‘There are islands,’ Bailey said. ‘Captain James Cook named them the Whitsundays but I never met anyone who’s been there. The only thing I do know is there’s gold there.’

  He told them it was a fact well known among mariners.

  ‘Lying on the surface of the ground,’ he said. ‘Nuggets of pure gold.’

  ‘If no one’s been there how do they know? And why has no one collected it before?’ Emma said.

  Shortage of food, Bailey thought. Shortage of water. Sickness might have played a hand. There could be any number of reasons. The one thing he was sure about was that the gold was there. Many sailors had told him so. He would stake his life on it.

  But hadn’t they talked about building a house, establishing a settlement?

  Yes, Ephraim agreed, they had. ‘But surely you can see that the gold has changed everything?’ he said.

  It was plain that to her husband, as well as to Mr Bailey, the existence of the gold had become a matter of faith.

  Four days later a succession of islands appeared over the northern horizon, a chain of green extending out into the ocean from the mainland.

  Emma clung to the bowsprit with Ephraim beside her as Ocean Rider crested the waves. ‘Are they the islands Mr Bailey was talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘I reckon.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Find a secure anchorage first of all. Then we’ll go ashore.’

  ‘On one of the islands?’

  ‘Or the mainland.’

  ‘And start picking up the gold,’ said Emma, who had no faith in the story.

  ‘Why not? If it’s as plentiful as Bailey seems to think.’

  An hour later they dropped anchor in the calm waters of a bay on the lee side of an island a quarter mile from the mainland. The anchorage was sheltered on three sides by high green hills. They watched the land but saw no sign of human activity. Richard was vocal in his demands to go ashore and turned sulky when he was told he would have to wait.

  ‘He’s been cooped up so long,’ Emma said. ‘Can’t we let him have a run before it gets dark?’

  Ephraim pointed at an object lying on the muddy bank that fringed the water.

  ‘What’s that?’ Emma said.

  ‘A crocodile,’ he said. ‘Bailey says there are lots of them in these waters.’

  ‘Crocodiles?’ Emma’s voice went up an octave: nobody had mentioned crocodiles before. ‘How do we get ashore if there are crocodiles?’

  ‘We shoot them.’

  That night they stayed aboard but shortly after first light the following morning Ephraim and Bailey rowed over to the mainland. Emma stood at the rail and watched them. She saw no sign of crocodiles but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. With the dinghy drawn up on the sand, the two men climbed the tree-covered slope that rose behind the beach. They crested the summit and disappeared.

  Now she was alone.

  1913

  A kookaburra was calling from the trees that lined the dusty road as Bec Hampton walked through the early morning sunshine to the show.

  She was dolled up in her smartest clothes: white blouse, the one with the bit of lace at the neck, full-length navy skirt and black boots smeared with dust, broad-brimmed summer hat of yellow straw with the blue ribbon. Bec Hampton, sixteen years old and full of the joys and juices of youth, was heading to the annual Campbell Town show to make the most of whatever excitement she might find when she got there. She would have liked to wear the little jacket she’d had from Mrs Painter of Waldren’s Corner, for whom she’d done some chores, but the summer day was going to be too hot for a jacket.

  She regretted that, but only for a moment; Bec Hampton was not given to regretting much in her life. What was the use? Dad and Mum were as they were, which was fair to middling at best and often a lot worse, especially Dad when he’d had a skinful, and there was no one else who mattered in her life. Cyril Stubbs would have taken an interest if she’d given him the wink but she wouldn’t have touched Cyril with a ten-foot pole; his dad might own a small farm but everyone knew Cyril was a brick short of a load.

  Bec was not alone; Frances Tickell had agreed to come with her but Frances had no more bounce than a rubber ball with a hole in it so Frances didn’t really count except as a companion to join in whatever fun might be waiting for them.

  It was Saturday 15 February and by ten o’clock it was already as hot as fire, as the Tasmanian midlands usually were at that time of year.

  ‘It’ll be fair sizzling later,’ said Frances. ‘You mark my words.’

  ‘It’s doing a good job already,’ said Bec, feeling a trickle of sweat worming its way down her front. It tickled but it would be impolite to scratch, especially there, so she let it be.

  ‘It’s gunna be a hot one,’ Frances said.

  Frances was the sort who’d be married long before she’d met her husband. Because she would be married – you knew that as soon as you looked at her – knew too that the identity of the victim wouldn’t matter.

  Whereas Bec… Bec was different.

  The way things worked out, that was lucky.

  Campbell Town’s agricultural show was an annual event, the biggest of its kind in the midlands – some said in the whole of Tasmania – and there were people everywhere. Not only people: there were mobs of sheep and cattle, produce stalls, flags and bunting, sideshows, places to eat, places to drink, a steady surge of farming folk on the hunt for bargains.

  Bec and Frances picked their way across the dusty ground past the judging tents where competition was fierce for the best wether in show, the best ram, the best poddy calf, the best colt, the best bull. There was a hurdy-gurdy, steam engine pumping. There was a fat lady stall and a boxing booth. A shearing competition with five quid for the winner drew a crowd, as did the axeman competition, wood chips flying in a frenzy of blows from blokes wider than any barn door.

  The dust was awesome as was the noise: the squawk and cackle of poultry almost lost behind the bellowing of livestock, the rhythmic patter of auctioneers from the auction ring.

  ‘Ten bob I’m bid. Ten bob, eleven, fourteen. And sixpence. Fourteen bob and a tanner I’m bid. Any more? All done?’ A crack, sharp as a gunshot, as the hammer came down. ‘Sold!’

  The girls poked their noses into this stall and that; they inspected the homemade cakes, the woolly jumpers for kiddies; the Empire mugs at the china and glass stall. They each wasted a halfpenny at the hoopla, drank a lemonade at the refreshments tent, watched sweaty men arguing prices over sudsy beers. They walked on. Along the edges of the track the grass was already wilting u
nder the hot sun.

  ‘So many people,’ Frances said.

  ‘There always are.’

  ‘Even some from Hobart, I wouldn’t wonder.’

  Hobart was another universe to Frances Tickell.

  ‘There always are.’

  Two hours after they arrived the frenzied barking of dogs alerted Bec to trouble. First it was one dog, followed a moment later by a second. Then came a sudden cacophony of barks, a frenzied racket in the sunlight. Frances would have walked on but Bec had an instinct for dogs and cocked an ear. ‘Something’s up.’

  ‘They’re only dogs,’ said Frances.

  ‘It’s more than that. Something’s wrong.’

  They walked around the corner of a big marquee and there it was.

  It was a paddock where the livestock were readied for showing or for the auction ring. In the middle of the paddock was a small boy, maybe five or six years old. He was alone and a few paces from him was a bull that had somehow escaped its handlers and now stood staring at the child, head down, front hooves raking the dusty ground. No sign of the boy’s parents or the bull’s minders; only the dogs performing but not game to get too close.

  ‘Ohmygod.’

  While clouds of dust billowed behind the raking hooves.

  Bec looked around but there was no sign of anybody.

  ‘Maybe we should go for help,’ Frances whispered.

  ‘By the time anyone comes that bull will have had him,’ Bec said.

  ‘If we shout at it?’

  Frances didn’t know bulls from armchairs.

  ‘That’ll just annoy it. There’s only one way to deal with this.’

  The child was less than twenty feet from the bull, well inside the animal’s comfort zone. If she could get him to back away…

  The boy was looking about him, sensing his danger, on the edge of running.

  She had to stop him doing that.

  Bec walked out slowly into the paddock. The bull’s head was lowered, its shoulders hunched. As she watched it curved its neck towards the boy.

  One false move and it would charge. If the boy ran…

  The bull would come after him.

  The child was thirty yards away now. Bec’s every instinct was to run to him but that would be dangerous. It might even be fatal.