‘Well, I’ve no doubt the poor girl will be glad enough to have a cousin left to her. She must be so lonely in her grief.’ Elly’s volatile emotions see-sawed once more as she empathised with the forlorn young woman in Bathurst.
‘Which is why I must leave by the end of the week. The Reverend Barton’s epistolary style is curt to the point of rudeness. I’d say he wants to be rid of Lucy.’
‘I’ll miss your visits. Will you call again before you leave?’ Elly kept her disappointment under control. After all, she told herself, she was no longer an invalid and could easily take heartening walks without assistance. With spring just around the corner, the days were bright and invigorating. She would do perfectly well alone.
‘Of course I’ll come. I’m happy to see you so much stronger, although you must not return to your duties just yet.’
He doesn’t know how patronising he sounds, Elly thought as she bade him goodbye. And hadn’t she provided him with the perfect opportunity! “Convalescents are allowed to shed tears”, indeed. Well, this was one convalescent who had packed her tears away for the duration. However, he was right about not going back to her duties. She couldn’t face the wards just yet. Nevertheless, Jo-Beth must be supported soon. It was too much for her, even with the new staff.
Jo-Beth, who had long forgiven their quarrel, found her despondent that evening and questioned her about it. Insistent, impervious to snubs, she finally goaded Elly into response.
‘I’m tired, that’s all. I’m tired of these four walls, tired of fighting, tired of my ineffectual self.’
‘We’re all tired and overworked, but you’ve driven yourself beyond sense. While you are physically well again, your spirits have not yet caught up with your body.’
‘That’s as may be. But the malaise is so draining. It’s like being at the bottom of a well with a ladder to climb, but the rungs are so far apart and I haven’t the will to pull myself up.’ Elly laughed unhappily. ‘Take no notice of my whimpering. I’m not proud of myself.’
Jo-Beth was thoughtful. ‘You won’t thank me for telling you that this will pass. You know it will, in time. However, I can suggest a way of making it happen more quickly.’
‘How? Tell me.’
‘You should change your surroundings, find absorbing new experiences, new faces. You need a holiday, Elly.’
Elly’s face fell. ‘It’s impossible.’
‘No, it’s not. Paul and I have had a discussion behind your back, for which we hope you’ll forgive us. We have decided that you should go with him to Bathurst to chaperon young Lucy Whatmough on the return journey.’
Elly stared, open-mouthed. ‘You’re not serious.’
‘I am. The coach service over the mountains is good, and the passes are clear. There’s been no snow for weeks. You will enjoy the trip, I’m sure. I hear the mountain country and the western slopes are beautiful.’
Oh, if only she could go, Elly thought. But the notion was ridiculous, for many reasons. ‘Just who would chaperon me on the outward journey?’
Jo-Beth laughed. ‘The coachman and passengers.’
‘Your argument isn’t logical.’
‘It isn’t meant to be. Come, you know you would love to go. The change will do you so much good. I can continue to run the hospital perfectly well for a few more days, with the help of two excellent young nurses and the two new trainees. You know you’re not yet fit to go back to work.’
‘But Paul... Did he really suggest this?’
‘He approached me with the idea this morning, asking me to persuade you into agreement. Now, don’t be difficult Elly. Paul is not just anyone, he’s a friend, the longest-standing friend you have in this town. He can be trusted to care for you. After all, it’s not as if you haven’t travelled together before, unchaperoned.’
The unbidden thought flashed through Elly’s mind: perhaps, if they were thrown together for days on end... Caught between hope and duty, she wavered, finally raising her hands in surrender. ‘Jo-Beth! What will I do with you, and how can I do without you? I’m positively beset with goodwill. All the same, I intend taking my life back into my own control quite soon, and so I warn you.’
Jo-Beth wasn’t noticeably cast down. ‘We’ll defer to you in all ways, once you’re back from your holiday. Until then, I’m in charge, Matron.’
~*~
Four days later Elly and Paul boarded the paddle steamer going upriver to Parramatta, a thriving town surrounded by farms, orchards and lush market gardens. There they joined the coach for the one hundred and twenty mile trip to Bathurst. Its huge body, painted tan with elegant black scrollwork and shaped like a large egg flattened at the top, hung on leather straps above the undercarriage; while the team of four strong horses harnessed to it appeared quite capable of dragging eleven people with sundry goods up and down mountainsides. Elly, excited by the bustle of departure and the new scenes, felt stronger by the minute.
Paul handed her up to join with the other four inside passengers, then took his seat beside her.
‘The baggage is secure, but I’m sorry for those poor devils up top. They’ll freeze, even in their greatcoats.’ He tucked a rug around her knees, checking that her feet were placed on a stone foot warmer.
She thanked him and leaned from the window to watch the coachman spring up to his seat to take the reins. With a shout and a whip-crack, the coach rolled out of the inn yard onto the hard-packed street, past St. John’s Church to join the pike road westward. Ahead of them the plain stretched towards a haze of blue-ridged mountains, and puffs of dust marked the passage of drays and carts carrying merchandise for the diggings. They passed these slow vehicles and bowled along at an exhilarating fifteen miles to the hour past farms, mills, orchards and, closer to the foothills, rows of grapevines snaking down to the river.
From the outpost of Emu the road sloped sharply upwards in long hairpin bends, affording stupendous views back to the coast. There was also the added excitement of negotiating a passage past spring wagons laden with travellers and their goods, mobs of sheep being herded west to a squatter’s domain, horsemen and men on foot with all their worldly possessions upon their backs, undaunted by the miles to be covered over disheartening terrain.
The three day trip was a total delight to Elly, despite the appalling road. In places, rocks protruded up to two feet above the surface of the track. However, the coach crashed hardily up and over to roll on undamaged through the forest towards Springwood, where they stopped for refreshment. The grandeur of the mountains, their magnificent stands of trees and fern-filled glens, the constantly occurring vistas of valleys and peaks and red-rock canyons continued to delight Elly. Then the scene changed to a bleaker, more alpine terrain, with stunted trees, their bark webbed in silver-green lichens. Yet even this had power to awe with its silence and the uninterrupted ranges marching away in splendid isolation towards the horizon.
The other passengers, an ex-digger returning to his farm, a husband and wife on a visit to their married daughter in Bathurst and a tongue-tied young man about to join a group of surveyors, were pleasant enough company. But Elly longed for privacy with Paul, for an opportunity to discover whether there was still a chance for true intimacy between them. It was such a joy to have him beside her, within touching distance, but tantalising, too.
At King’s Tableland, where they would spend the night at an inn, the temperature dropped sharply and Elly gladly left the coach for a log fire and a cup of hot cocoa.
‘The fleas were thrown in as an extra,’ she quipped the next morning to Paul as the coach moved out onto the mist-veiled track. There had been no opportunity for them to be alone together at the inn. She could only look forward to their day together in Bathurst before taking the coach home. Surely Lucy Whatmough could wait a few hours longer.
Her spirits rose with the sun. The journey, the change in surroundings had done their job, and despite chilled feet and a body bruised and shaken, with Paul beside her and her responsibilities left behind,
Elly was happy for the first time in months. As the coach slipped and slid down the steep pass, brakes hard on, with a great log chained to the back to slow them enough not to overrun the horses, she gazed out at the vista of rich pastoral lands and downs sloping out to the horizon and knew it for a rural Paradise. No wonder men fought to have their share.
The following day they crossed the sparsely-treed plains marking the most westward of the nineteen counties and rolled into Bathurst after sunset, muddy from stream crossings, the horses hanging their weary heads. At the inn, a verandahed two-story stone structure as fine as any in Sydney Town, Elly found herself so stiff she had to be lifted down. Held briefly in Paul’s arms she allowed herself the luxury of pressing against him. Then she was on her feet looking up at the inn lanterns burning in the frosty air, with the tingle of circulation returning to her limbs, and recognising one of those rare moments of complete happiness.
‘Thank you for bringing me, Paul. I’m so glad I came.’
‘I’m every bit as glad. But I hope you feel the same way on the return journey.’ He raised his head. ‘Those clouds are ominous. There’s snow coming.’
Elly tensed. ‘Oh, no!’
‘I’m afraid so. Elly, I think we should fetch Lucy immediately and take the morning coach back.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Pearl crouched on the back of the laden dray, swaying and lurching with each jolt. She was cocooned in a bone-deep weariness that had the advantage of masking both physical discomfort and the interminable length of days measured by the walking pace of a bullock. Always honest with herself, Pearl knew her inertia had its roots in disappointment after long-sustained hope.
Certain that Li Po would be found in one of the miners camps beyond the mountains, she had trudged the weary miles from Ophir to Hill End to the more far-flung diggings, through dust and dung, buoyed by this belief. Over the next rise, at the next creek he’d be there, sifting sand through his pan, rocking the miner’s cradle, plucking out gold from dross.
There were days when, parched by a merciless sun, she scrabbled in creek beds and sieved grit between her teeth to extract moisture. There were nights spent rolled in a ball under the roots of a fallen tree, plagued by hunger and pain in her abused feet, prepared for an uncertain reception at each new camp.
She questioned Chinese men who worked the abandoned tailings of more impatient westerners but none had heard of Li Po. Others treated her variously with hostility, derision or simple indifference as she followed the tracks marked on her map, earning food by cooking or binding up wounds. Enduring soaring temperatures and summer storms that cracked the forest giants and toppled them around her, without shelter or friendly company to ease the rigours of her journey, she combed the hills and plains of the western goldfields until her certainty crumbled into a despairing admission. Li Po was not there.
Then, like a trumpet call to arms, news of another great strike in Victoria swept through the camps, bringing hope to spirits ground down by months of toil and disillusionment.
“Victoria’s the place to go, boys. Let’s pack up and try our luck further south.”
Mustering her persuasion, Pearl managed to attach herself as cook to a party of four with an ox-pulled dray to carry their equipment. They were decent enough men beneath their rough, bearded exterior, who treated her with an off-handedness which suited her well. She ran to their cries of ‘Chinky, boil up the kettle’, baked their mutton chops and damper and kept her distance.
Through rough mountain terrain, down to the dry grass plains following the stock route, fording creeks, ferrying across the last great river dividing the two colonies, they reached the high gum forests of Victoria. There they joined the stream of gold-seekers and stockmen droving cattle from the north to feed the miners already established in their thousands throughout the land.
Pearl left her party when they turned off east to the Ballarat-Bendigo diggings. Having lost her pack of medical equipment when fording the Murrumbidgee River, she needed to replace this means of earning a livelihood. Cooks could be found amongst the weak or disabled, but a person with medical skills was prized beyond gold itself by men living in conditions ripe for disease and accident. She also wanted to honour her promise to Elly by visiting the Post Office in Melbourne, and to seek traces of Li Po amongst the burgeoning Chinese community in that city.
She arrived on the outskirts one afternoon to find herself in a town gone mad. Inpouring migrants scoured the stores to set themselves up for the diggings, while those who had made their pile but lost all common sense, whooped it up on the spending spree of their lives. Wild-looking fellows in cabbage-tree hats and moleskins galloped the streets on gold-shod horses, firing off pistols at will. Others had gathered flashy companions of both sexes in shiny new carriages and whipped through town at reckless speed while downing the best champagne and lighting cigars with five pound notes.
Amazed, Pearl stood well back on the boardwalk of Collins Street, the main thoroughfare. There were no saunterers, no people going sedately about their business, only men with purpose written on their faces, scurrying across the traffic to avoid being mown down by the roisterers. Gaudy street-women, chattering like macaws, clung to their escorts and screeched with laughter as men reeled from a nearby hotel to empty champagne bottles into a horse-trough, inviting passers-by to drink with them on pain of assault.
Pearl slipped away from the brawling streets to find the Chinese immigrant quarter, a cluster of shops, laundries and vegetable gardens, where Li Po’s name evoked no response, although she did learn that most men of her race favoured the goldfields at Forest Creek, Bendigo and Ballarat.
She sheltered over-night in the home of an ancient apothecary who gave her his own brand of salve to rub on her blisters, then sallied forth with renewed vigour the next day to visit the Post Office, buy new boots and medical equipment, and book a place on the stage to Castlemaine, Forest Creek. The fare of four pounds would deplete her hoard, but it would take her so long to walk the eighty-five miles. She feared her brother could move on to the new fields being opened up each week. Also, she had been warned of the dangers on the track, from ex-convict plunderers to snakes to sudden violent storms filling potholes deep enough to drown a horse. There had been adventures enough getting this far. Now her brother was almost within reach. This time, this time...
At six a.m. the next day a coach run by Mr Cobb’s American Telegraph Line left the Criterion Hotel in Collins Street, with Pearl perched behind a pile of baggage thirteen feet above the wheel hubs. She had not expected to be allocated an inside seat. Crimson plush was not for scrubby oriental boys.
Wedged between luggage and the iron rail running around the roof she held on tight as the ‘Yankee Whip’ on the box, once clear of the city, picked up the pace on a track knee-deep with dust. This rose to hang like fog over the drays and carts toiling along the ruts. Horses and bullocks strove under the whip, barely avoiding running down men on foot with swags on their shoulders or pushing wheel-barrows laden with tools.
Pearl saw children harnessed to carts, women trundling prams piled high with camping gear, their babies tied to their backs. A packhorse went by with a portable iron bedstead tied on, then a carriage pulled by a team of large white dogs. Every imaginable stratum of society was represented: runaway servants and seamen; ticket-of-leave men fresh from the penal settlements in Van Diemen’s Land; men who had abandoned business or profession; prostitutes, gentlemen, clergymen, the hale and the weak; plus whole families scrambling out of the slums and onto the rutted highway to riches, north to the goldfields.
The journey turned into an endurance test, with the six horse team being changed every ten miles so expertly that the passengers barely had time to register that motion had, blessedly, briefly ceased. They whirled past the grog shanties which had sprung up along the route, where many foot-travellers stopped for a dose of oblivion. Pearl’s heart was touched by the sight of children left untended and exhausted beside the track, along wit
h the carcasses of horses and bullocks pushed beyond tolerance then left to rot.
Rain had fallen steadily since they started the long steep climb up The Gap then plunged down the other side into Gisborne, thirty-four miles out of Melbourne. The worst stage of the journey lay ahead. Pearl sensed the other roof passengers’ anxiety as they entered a thirteen-mile stretch of range country which included the gloomy Black Forest – notorious for the shocking state of the track and the number of attacks by bushrangers who hid amongst the dense thickets of ironbarks.
Her own nerves tightened as they entered a cavern of trees where birdsong ceased and the only sound was the drumming of hooves and raindrops pattering on canvas. Common-sense told her the more obvious victims would be gold-laden miners returning to civilization, or even, daringly, the gold transport under armed escort. Yet logic had little weight when the senses were oppressed by such sullen, lonely surroundings and the travellers’ tales told with false bravado while eyes darted from tree to tree. Along with the other passengers, Pearl relaxed her taut vigilance only when the Wood End Inn at Five-Mile Creek came into sight, with its promise of food and rest and, above all, safety.
It poured all through the next day’s travel north over undulating high country, but eventually the coach drew into a muddy market square lined with wagons drawn up outside a row of shopfronts and weatherboard and canvas public houses. Shivering in her wet clothes Pearl climbed stiffly down to survey with unbelieving eyes the thousands upon thousands of dun-coloured tents extending through gullies for miles in all directions.
Despite its name, there was no sign of a forest, only a few straggling trees left as a reminder of how the land had once been. The slippery clay, pockmarked with immense holes, had been chopped to a muddy slush, knee deep in places. Everything dripped, including the ugly fungal growth of tents swallowing the countryside.
It was immense – impossible to search.
Pearl sat down on a tree stump, feeling her courage ebb. But she hadn’t come this far to be defeated. Soon, she rose again and set off asking directions to a Chinese encampment. Eventually she hurried off into the dusk, mentally repeating the rough instructions, anxious to find the creek before full dark.
A HAZARD OF HEARTS Page 25