Land of Golden Wattle

by J. H. Fletcher

  Still she didn’t trust him but where else could they turn for help? Police violence was an established fact and if there was trouble there was no way to know what people like Corporal Jenkins might do. And even William – surely? –couldn’t control what went on in the stockade.

  ‘He said it’s called a Navy Colt revolver,’ Alice said. ‘Fires six shots, he told me.’

  ‘Why would we want it?’

  ‘He said if there’s trouble we’ll be safer if we have a gun.’

  She’d told William that guns and the Darks were strangers and she’d prefer to keep it that way. But things were coming to a boil fast and she no longer knew what to do for the best.

  ‘We’ve known him since we were children,’ Richard said. ‘In his whole life he’s never lifted a finger to help anyone but himself. Why should he want to help us now? I don’t trust him.’

  Neither did Alice but it made no difference. The stench of trouble was everywhere. She was scared what the police might do and knew that having a gun would make her feel safer than she did now.

  Richard looked at her. ‘Do you really think you’ll feel more comfortable inside the stockade if there’s trouble?’

  ‘Rather than stuck here? I reckon I would,’ Alice said. ‘I’m like you – I’d sooner stay out of it altogether but what if we can’t? You know what these goldfield wallopers are like. I’ve a nasty feeling the soldiers might be even worse.’

  ‘Then we’ll go the first sign of trouble,’ Richard said.

  That night the rumours came flocking like crows.

  The soldiers were coming; the soldiers weren’t coming. There’d been fighting with people dead; there’d been no fighting and all was calm.

  It was impossible to know what to believe. From the day they arrived in Ballarat there’d been gunfire every night and they’d grown used to it. Not now.

  The next day, Saturday 2 December 1854, they told Karl Leipzig they were going to move into the stockade.

  ‘Don’t be fools,’ Karl said. ‘That is the first place the verdammt Soldaten will attack.’

  They did not believe him.

  ‘I’m staying put,’ Rascal Jones said. ‘If things get too hot I’ll hide down the shaft. I’ll be safe there.’

  ‘Can we trust you?’ Alice said.

  ‘I reckon you’ve seen enough of me to know the answer to that.’

  He’d always seemed a decent cove so she thought he was right. ‘Then if you do go down make sure you take the money with you. And mind,’ she said, ‘we’ll want our share when we come back.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Rascal said. ‘It’ll be there.’

  They went to the stockade, where they were made welcome.

  ‘Where is William Tregellas?’

  Who knew?

  The night was still, the tension thick enough to cut. Across the goldfields there was the usual nightly hullaballoo. Sleep was out of the question.

  The hours passed.

  Whispers. Rumours.

  ‘Syd says he saw soldiers formin’ up by the Eureka Lead.’

  ‘They say the governor’s comin’ to talk to us. Comin’ himself…’

  The hours passed.

  Dawn came like a thunderbolt. Alice would have said sleep was impossible yet she must have dozed because she woke to screams and yells and bullets, a world gone mad.

  The first thing she saw as she sprang to her feet was the dim light of morning shining coldly on a forest of bayonets as a skirmish line of red-coated soldiers came surging through the wall of the stockade, too fragile to prevent the attack.

  Bayonets and screams, yells of defiance, outrage and despair, and the bellow of guns as Alice stood trying to gather her wits, still her racing heart and decide what they must do, must do now, in the few seconds of grace while decision remained possible.

  We must get out of here.

  No doubt about that. But where? And how?

  She turned to Richard. Like her, he had confusion written all over his face but she needed a decision and when he snatched her hand and began to turn away from the advancing mayhem of the soldiers’ attack she went with him.

  Her whole body was urging her to run when Richard staggered, cried out and fell.

  Terror seized Alice’s heart. She saw him on the ground, his face contorted with pain. She fell to her knees beside him, her helplessness a wound.

  ‘Where did they get you?’

  ‘My leg…’ Speaking through gritted teeth.

  At least it wasn’t his head or – heaven forbid! – his heart. She looked. There was some blood; not much. She looked over her shoulder. A melee was holding up most of the soldiers but it was obvious that resistance wouldn’t last long. Already some of the soldiers had broken through and were advancing across the level ground towards them. She saw bodies, some moaning, some still.

  Alice’s head cleared, her panicked heart slowed. What she had to do was plain. She would save Richard and herself or die in the attempt.

  ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘Hurting like hell,’ Richard said. ‘But I’ll live.’

  She thought the bullet might have clipped his thigh. A flesh wound, she told herself, willing it to be so.

  ‘Can you stand?’

  Because my love my dear love we need to get out of here. Get out of here now. If you can stand. If you can walk.

  ‘I can try.’

  Richard was halfway to his feet when Alice saw a soldier swerve towards them. His expression was maniacal, his rifle extended, the bayonet gleaming in the morning light.

  Richard had dropped the revolver when he fell. She snatched it up. Holding it with both hands she pointed it at the soldier.

  ‘Keep away from us!’

  Her voice was full of terror and determination.

  The soldier came on.

  ‘Keep away!’

  The soldier came on.

  Now only a few yards separated them and he was not stopping. Was not stopping…

  There was sickness in her throat. Alice shut her eyes and pulled the trigger. She staggered as the recoil flung her back.

  She opened her eyes and saw the soldier on his back, coughing, blood running from a massive chest wound.

  The redness of his blood… Horror engulfed her. If they caught her with the gun they would hang her. She flung it away. Her face was wet with tears but there was no time for sorrow. With Richard’s arm draped around her shoulders, hers around his waist, they hobbled away.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘As far away from here as we can get.’

  It wasn’t easy with chaos everywhere. The troops had gone rushing on while the bayonets continued their bloody work and now outside the stockade shots were being fired repeatedly through tents where dozens of people were cowering.

  ‘Most of the people out there had nothing to do with the protest,’ Alice said.

  ‘The soldiers don’t care,’ Richard said.

  A covered wagon, mule-drawn, was heading into town, moving fast to beat the roadblocks that were bound to be set up once the killing was over. It gave them a lift.

  ‘Where you wanna go?’ the driver asked.

  She remembered William’s advice. ‘Drop us off at the John o’ Groats. I was told they’d look after us there and my husband needs a doctor.’

  ‘Not dyin’, is he?’

  ‘No!’

  Although he was close to fainting with loss of blood.

  ‘I killed a soldier.’ She felt a pressing need to confess what – surely? – must be a sin.

  ‘Good on yer. Time them bastards got a taste of their own medicine. I wouldn’t be boastin’ about it though. Never know who might be listening.’

  Boast? It was the last thing she felt like doing.

  Simon Cohen moaned but it was his wife Thora who was in charge at the John o’ Groats and she said they could stay.

  ‘Such trouble we are having!’ she said. ‘How can you think of refusing them? Of course they must stay.’

&nb
sp; Still bellyaching, Simon hid them in a tiny loft under the thatch. It had a boarded floor but there was no room to stand. It was accessed by a rickety ladder.

  The doctor came. He told Richard he would live – luckier than some, he said – sluiced iodine over the wound and warned he might have a permanent limp.

  The first evening it rained and they discovered the thatch leaked: tap! tap! tap! Alice lay on the blanket in the dark and listened to small creatures rustling and scampering in the straw two feet above her head. It was hot and airless but she was too busy counting her blessings to worry about that. They were there; they were safe; the doctor had said Richard’s wound wasn’t too serious. For the moment the future could take care of itself. Hopefully, after all the drama had simmered down, they would be able to get on with their lives.

  Two days later, between one minute and the next, things changed.

  ‘Utterly shameful,’ William Tregellas said.

  ‘You can say that again, sir,’ the major said. ‘One of my own men was gunned down in the performance of his duty. Reports say by a woman with a pistol. A woman, sir! Outrageous!’

  ‘What kind of people are they?’ William said.

  ‘I’ll tell you what they are, sir. They’re savages. Absolute savages.’

  ‘I fear you are right, major. One fears for the future of the colony. One really does. I heard some of them are trying to hide in town. The John o’ Groats was mentioned. A Jewish couple owns it, I understand.’

  ‘Jewish, eh? Hmm. Thanks for the tip. I’ll have it checked out.’

  Shortly before dark Simon Cohen hauled his flab up the ladder to tell them that search parties were coming down the street.

  Alice’s heart lurched. ‘What do we do?’

  Simon was breathing like a furnace and it took him a minute to answer her. ‘Blow out that candle for a start. Then sit tight and keep your lip buttoned. Not a squeak, you hear me? They hear a squeak, we’re all done for.’ Apprehension made him angry.

  ‘Won’t they come up here?’

  ‘You better pray they don’t.’

  He closed the trapdoor and they heard him cursing beneath his breath and a scraping sound as he dragged the awkward ladder away. Alice blew out the candle, as instructed. They waited. Seconds seemed like minutes, minutes like hours.

  A hammering on the street door. Harsh voices in a suddenly profound silence. The sound of heavy footsteps on the hotel’s boarded floors. A crash as something fell. The footsteps came closer. A pause, then closer still. Another pause, then voices: clearly audible now.

  ‘Nothing here. We’re wasting our time.’

  ‘That bloke tole the officer they was ’ere. At the John o’ Groats. I heard ’im say it. An’ watch out, he said. They got a gun.’

  They were in the room immediately below the loft. Strips of light showed through the cracks in the floorboards. Alice held her breath. In the errant light she saw Richard’s eyes shining. Neither moved. She was conscious only of the pounding of her heart, drumloud in the silence.

  ‘Can’t believe a word those bastards say. They hate us –’

  Any minute they might look up. Any minute they might wonder what there was in the roof space above them.

  Alice’s skin crawled.

  ‘Simkins died.’ The first voice spoke savagely. ‘Shot down in cold blood. Twenty-two years old.’

  ‘We dunno which one done it –’

  ‘I don’ care which one done it. Have my way we’d ’ang the lot of ’em.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing ’ere.’

  ‘I’d like to burn the whole place down. That would flush ’em out.’

  ‘There’s sheds out the back. Maybe we should look there.’

  Footsteps retreating. Silence flowed back.

  Alice dared breathe. Softly, softly… Her heart was still racing, the sweat cold under her clothes. She didn’t dare hope the searchers were gone yet the silence grew stronger as the minutes passed. The walls of the hotel breathed.

  It was a long time before sounds from the room below told them the ladder was being replaced. The trapdoor creaked open.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ Simon Cohen said.

  Thank God.

  William Tregellas was lying in bed with Maria Hack at his side. They were naked. They had made love earlier and now he was playing idly with one of her breasts.

  She slapped his hand away. ‘If you want to do me again, get on with it, but don’t mess me about.’

  ‘You are how many months gone?’

  ‘Comin’ up to six.’

  ‘Then I think it might be a good time for us to make a move,’ William said.

  ‘Make a move where?’

  ‘My uncle has a property in Sydney. We can stay there until the kid’s born.’

  ‘Suits me,’ Maria said. ‘Sooner this business is over the better I’ll like it.’

  ‘Such touching affection,’ William said.

  ‘Don’t you get sarky with me. What happened about them two we met before the stockade business: that Richard Dark and his missus?’

  ‘Nothing. I told them to go to the John o’ Groats if there was trouble but the soldiers searched it and found nothing. It looks as though they must have got away.’

  ‘Takin’ their gold with them, more’s the pity. People said they had a fortune but when I checked there was nothing in that tent of theirs.’

  ‘Perhaps they came back for it.’

  ‘Or maybe you got there first. Bastard like you, I wouldn’t put it past you.’

  William smiled and again took hold of her breast. ‘You’ll never know, will you?’

  ‘Just so long as you pay me what we agreed when this blessed baby’s born.’

  ‘Easy money I call it but that’s what we agreed so that’s what you’ll get.’

  ‘Easy for you. You’re not the one ’avin’ it. When you plannin’ to give that wife of yours the good news?’

  ‘When we’re in Sydney.’

  ‘She better not make no fuss. Not with me. She try anythin’ like that I’ll cut her, so ’elp me.’

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘You wanna play or doncher?’ Maria said. ‘Make up your mind.’ It was like picking over the ruins of a lost war.

  The bodies had been taken away but many tents had been destroyed and the people they saw had the lost and wandering look of the dispossessed.

  People they spoke to said there had been wholesale looting, in many cases by the soldiers.

  Alice and Richard looked at each other, dread in their hearts, and set off as fast as they could to find their own tent.

  They couldn’t find it, or old Karl Leipzig’s tent next door. Both had vanished, with everything that had been inside them, and a passer-by they knew as a face in the mob told them that old Karl had thrown in his hand and gone away.

  Of Rascal Jones there was no sign either. So much had happened while they’d been hiding in the roof space of the John o’ Groats that it was hard to know where they were or what they should do.

  The windlass rope was hanging slack. Richard went down but found nothing.

  ‘All of it?’ Alice said.

  Every last penny, with the steel box in which it had been kept.

  ‘Who could have taken it?’

  ‘Anybody.’

  There was no way to know; despair had become a feature of the landscape.

  ‘We’re back where we started,’ Richard said.

  By his expression he could have wept.

  ‘Not quite,’ Alice said. ‘I know you aren’t keen on banks but I put some in anyway, just in case.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A thousand quid.’

  Thank God for Alice.

  A woman they knew saw them and stopped to jaw a minute.

  ‘Good to see you back. I thought they’d taken you in.’

  ‘Why should you have thought that?’ Alice said.

  ‘They’ve taken in plenty,’ the woman said. ‘And your names was on the list they stuc
k up. You’re wanted, you are.’

  ‘How could they have known our names?’ Alice said.

  ‘Search me,’ said the woman. ‘But I wouldn’t hang around here or they’ll have you for sure. I was you I’d clear off altogether.’

  ‘There’s gold down there,’ Richard said.

  ‘Gold ain’t much use if they top you.’

  ‘Why should they hang us?’ Richard said.

  But Alice remembered shooting the soldier. Maybe he had been the one the searchers had mentioned, the man called Simkins who had died. She knew he would have killed them if he’d had the chance but that didn’t stop her feeling like a murderess. Not that feeling bad about it would stop them stringing her up if they caught her now.

  ‘I think she’s right. I think we should get out while we can.’

  ‘Not without the money in the bank,’ Richard said.

  They knew they were taking a risk but they managed it without any problem, and three weeks later they were back on the island.

  It rained all the way to Melbourne where they would stay a day or two before heading on to Sydney. William stared out of the coach window as it lurched its tedious way through the puddles of the rutted track.

  ‘Will it ever stop?’

  Maria Hack was inclined to be more philosophical. ‘At least it should keep them bloody bushrangers to ’ome.’

  ‘You’d think the governor would want to do something to improve communications,’ William said. ‘Ballarat, after all, is a major source of revenue to the government. But I suppose we are foolish to expect efficiency from these people.’

  Maria glanced sideways at him. ‘Someone got up the wrong side of the bed this morning. I’d’a thought you’d be glad to get outta that dump. I know I am.’

  ‘I am sorry those two slipped through the net,’ he said. ‘But I suppose there’s no help for it.’

  He had certainly done all he could to get his own back for the way Alice and Richard had treated him, with Alice first encouraging him then turning against him, and Richard attacking him the way he had.

  He had sworn to punish them for that. It was frustrating that somehow they had got away. It just showed what Uncle Barnsley had always told him: if you wanted a job done properly you did it yourself. At least he’d got their gold money, but he had hoped to see them hang as well. Well, maybe there’d be another opportunity in the future.