18th February, Sunday
The Paines come back again yesterday. Mr Paine too. Seems he’s better now. But they found their house all covered in lime. Mrs Higgs had made them a stew to make up a bit and Ma left a plate of scones for them, only it must have been a shock to find it looking like that.
Reggie were at Mass today with his Ma and he give me a wink across the aisle only I lowered me eyes and pretended I were saying prayers.
19th February, Monday
Bertie must have landed by now and I’ll bet he’s all excited. Pa says they got twenty officers and three hundred troopers and more than four hundred horses. Bertie’s in the NSW Mounted Rifles. That’s part of the 2nd Contingent. But just cos they got horses don’t mean they ride all the time, only from place to place, then they get off and fight while somebody holds the horses for them. Pa says it’s usually a bugler or drummer that’s too young to fight. I expect it’s what that 14-year-old stowaway’s doing right now. That’s if they haven’t sent him back home.
20th February, Tuesday
There’s a man called Mr Oliver whose job it is to find somewhere for a capital city for when we get a federation. He goes round all these different places to look. I can’t see why we need a capital city when we got Sydney. Only Pa says people in Melbourne’d say what’s wrong with having Melbourne and they’ll never agree. So they got to find a new place. Mr Oliver’s already seen lots of places like Eden and Goulburn, only he hasn’t found one he likes yet.
21st February, Wednesday
The trouble with getting Ma to read out adverts is having Maisie listen in. Fred and Artie go out and play in the street, only, Maisie, if she’s not with Elsie and Jess, hangs round here. So there’s me reading out things for sale and Maisie says can she have a pony that’s for sale.
Ma says, ‘Lord save me, child! Where would I put a pony?’
Maisie says, ‘In the yard.’
‘A yard that size?’ says Ma. ‘With my clean washing?’ and that seems to shut her up for a bit till she hears there’s someone over Glebe way got a St Bernard for sale.
‘Then can I have a puppy?’ she says. ‘That’s not as big as a pony so it won’t take up as much room.’ She even tries to win Ma over by saying it’s named after a saint which must make it good.
Only Ma says, ‘Maisie, it’s hard enough having to feed you lot without feeding a dog or horse besides.’ And then she give up and went to play with Topsy.
22nd February, Thursday
Elsie and Jess come over to play today after school. Them and Maisie pretended they was fairies out back and Ma tore up an old sheet into triangle rags for wings and pinned them to the back of their pinnies with safety pins. That kept them happy for ages and meant Ma and me could get on with her reading practice. She’s getting real good now.
But the best news is tonight I started writing my essay!
23rd February, Friday
Ma’s getting a bit too good at reading, if you ask me. Seems she’s been practising while I’ve been at school, when she sits down to take the weight off her feet and have a cup of tea. Today when I get in she says,
‘You didn’t tell me there’s been all these adverts for girls needed.’
And I says all innocent like, ‘What girls?’
And she says, ‘You know very well what girls I mean. Them as wanted for general housemaid or light housework or maybe mind children. You could do any of those, Kitty, but you never said.’
So I think quick and tell her that if she puts me into service now, then I won’t be around to help do the mangling and it’ll be ages before Maisie’s strong enough to work it. Ma thinks about this for a bit, then says, ‘Well maybe just a bit longer.’ Only I’m thirteen in May remember and she’ll see about it after that. So I’ve still got a bit of time up me sleeve to make her change her mind.
24th February, Saturday
There’s someone’s DIED of bubonic. Captain Thomas Dudley as owns a chandler’s shop down Sussex Street. He found five dead rats in a toilet out the back of his shop. Only last Sunday he come down sick and died Thursday in his house over Drummoyne way. Now there’s coppers standing guard outside, front and back, and Pa says his body’s been taken to North Head where it’ll be buried deep down still wrapped up and in its coffin and no-one’s allowed touch it. His wife and family’s gone off to quarantine too and all those as worked alongside him or lived close by.
Most everyone round here knew him but. And us kids used to call him Cannibal Tom on account of Reggie says he was shipwrecked once and him and another man killed a cabin boy and ate him. Fair dinkum! He even went to prison for it, only they let him out after a bit, then he left England and come out here to live. Fred and Artie and Eddy used to keep right away from him but, just in case.
There’s proclamations going up now on the walls round here saying
Plague is present in Sydney.
It has been introduced by diseased rats and there is great danger of its spreading still further.
They say anyone as finds any sick or dead rats is to tell the Board of Health straightaway. They’re going to put stuff in the water to flush out the sewers. And about time too Pa says.
Mr Ah Han says there’s even been proclamations go up over his way, only they’re in Chinese.
There’s definitely something been killing the rats down the wharves cos there’s lots more of them dead lately. I’m real glad I had that needle. I only hope it works.
25th February, Sunday
This morning Ma took Maisie and the boys off to Mass. She said the more prayers Sydney had said for it, the better.
While she was gone but, Pa and me sat down at the kitchen table and he got out the inkwell and some paper and said I was to write a practice essay while he wrote a letter.
So I wrote that keeping a diary’s like having a special friend you can write to only you can’t see them but. Still that don’t matter cos you can tell this friend anything as happens to you and your family, even outside your house. Then I said this was going to be a special year for keeping a diary on account of I could tell my friend all about us getting a federation and how one day if I maybe have children and grandchildren even I can let them read my diary to see what it were like in 1900.
When I’d finished Pa said it were very good only I should maybe check up on some words in my speller at school before writing it out proper. And tomorrow he says he’ll buy us two penny stamps from the post office in Millers Street.
26th February, Monday
Pa’s letter was to the Council Clerk at Town Hall about the rats. He said as how Tiger brung just one in that time only now there’s tunnels all under the backyard and it don’t matter how many you kill there’s always more come in their place. He said we seen them on the stairs and up the bedrooms even. Pa don’t know if he’ll get an answer. There’s probably that many letters come in from other people that got rats too, but they got to do something about it soon or there’ll be plague all over Sydney.
There’s another person sick now. John Makins as worked for a steamship company in Sussex Street come down with a lump under his arm and stomach pains. Now he’s got very high temperature as well and delirious. Sounds to me like he’s got it all right.
Today I checked the words for my essay in my speller and after Fred and Artie and Maisie had gone to bed, I sat up for a bit and wrote out my essay on a clean bit of paper Pa give me, in my very best running writing.
Then, soon as I’d blotted the ink and folded the paper like, I put it in the envelope with the jam tin labels Ma had got off the tins while I were at school. Then I addressed it to Peacock’s ‘O.K.’ Jam Co., Broughton Street, Glebe and Pa give me the penny stamp to put on.
27th February, Tuesday
Posted Pa’s letter and my essay on the way to school today and I told Miss Collins about my essay and she were real pleased. Now all I got to do is cross my fingers and wait.
Saw Reggie after school and told him about the competition. Only he said if
he went in it he’d most probably win and that wouldn’t be fair to me. I were so cross I told him it were a wonder he didn’t send hisself a Valentine’s note. Only then I see him grinning so he knows I got it. Worst luck. He’s the last person I’d have for a Valentine.
28th February, Wednesday
It’s Bertie’s birthday today only I don’t s’pose you’re allowed to have birthdays in the army. He’s lucky he weren’t born on the 29th of February cos then he’d only have one every leap year. I can’t remember for leap years if you say 4 goes into it or 8 only Fred says for the end of a century you got to divide by 400 and that don’t go into 1900.
1st March, Thursday
Now Ladysmith’s been relieved. Yesterday. The Boojers had it under siege for a hundred and eighteen days. Like being stuck in quarantine only for longer but. The Herald says when the troopers rode in the people give three cheers for Queen Victoria and all the church bells started ringing. I asked Pa why they cheered the Queen and he says it’s because it’s her army.
Mr Oliver’s been to Marulan now and says it won’t do for a capital city.
2nd March, Friday
There’s people starting to leave Sydney now. For the Blue Mountains mostly, but Melbourne too. Ethel come over for tea tonight and said they was lining up to buy tickets at Redfern Station this morning. And Mabel’s sent a note saying the family’s taking her to the Blue Mountains where they got another house just to get away from the city. Ma says all we can do but, is stay put.
Mr Oliver don’t like Wingello neither but I expect he’ll find somewhere eventually.
3rd March, Saturday
There’s another proclamation gone up this morning:
Bounty 2d a head.
For every rat delivered (dead or alive) to the Bathurst Street Public Incinerator.
By Order—Board of Health.
Fred and Artie were that excited when they read it only they made me promise not to say anything to Ma on account of they were planning something. I told them not to go doing something silly but, only then I forgot all about it and when they weren’t around, just thought they was out playing.
It were only when it started to get late and Ma said to go and call them and they was nowhere to be seen I remembered the notice. Then I began to worry where they’d got to. Only next thing there they were coming down the hill grinning from ear to ear like they’ve just robbed the Bank of New South Wales. Ma took one look at them and said, ‘And what you two been up to then?’
They wouldn’t say at first, only they was so pleased with theirselves, it all started to come out. Seems they’d found a couple of sacks and went down the wharf and picked up all the rats they could find, twenty-seven between them. Artie went mainly for dead’uns on account of he’s not as fast as Fred but Fred had a couple of live ones in his sack as well. Then bold as brass, they took them right up town to Bathurst Street incinerator on the public tram! They said they’d ‘borrowed’ a couple of pennies from Ma’s purse for their fare up George Street.
Ma’s jaw dropped at first, but not for long. She made them empty their pockets and between them they got 4 shillings and 2d left. They’d had 4/6d, only there was the fare back and they bought two bags of boiled lollies on the way home. They wouldn’t say why they did it at first, only Ma got it out of them eventually. Seems they wanted to buy her a present for her birthday come end of March.
Anyway, Ma took the twopence and said it were going straight back in her purse, then she marched them straight out the washhouse and made them scrub themselves from head to toe before she let them inside again. She told Pa she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But when she give them their tea Pa said, ‘Now you listen to me you two. You’re not s’posed to go picking up dead rats just where you find them and take them off for burning. You’re meant to soak them in acid first or boiling water to kill all the fleas. You know you could have left fleas on them trams? The pair of you’s probably given plague to half of Sydney by now.’
Fred and Artie looked real worried then and Artie said, ‘Will that mean the coppers find out and put us in jail?’ And Pa said, ‘More than likely.’ Only then I see him wink at Ma behind their backs and he said all serious like, ‘Let’s just hope it don’t come to that.’
4th March, Sunday
Pa was only kidding about Fred and Artie but there’s more people starting to come down with it. Now a man named Walker got it in Annandale and someone in Sussex Street. It’s getting really scary. I keep wondering where it’ll turn up next. Pa says he’s not the least bit surprised about Sussex, and Clarence Street would be just as bad. There’s boarding houses down there he says, nothing like Ethel and Dolly’s but, where the men are just packed in. Sailors and wharfies mostly, sometimes maybe seventy men all crammed into six rooms. So of course it’s going to spread.
There’s houses starting to be empty now and put up for sale. All over Sydney just about. Newtown, Stanmore, Enmore out that way and as far as Dulwich Hill and over the east side at Darlinghurst and Darling Point. Maisie saw an advert for one house in Paddington at 75 Cascade Street, as had a loft and stables and that’d mean room for a pony only Pa said, ‘It would and all, lovey, if I could afford the pony, let alone the house.’
Yesterday I spent all day helping Ma with the wash. She lost some customers when she were away. They’d found someone else. Now she wants to make up to the others. Once it’s been in the copper, she lifts the load out with the wash stick straight into the tub for rinsing. Then she gets me to feed the sheets and pillow slips through the mangle to get rid of the water. It’s hard work turning the handle and sometimes I get Fred to give it a few turns while I have a rest. I tell him it’ll give him big strong arms like a wharfie one day. Only you have to watch him real careful like, because if a shirt go through with the sheets the buttons get broken in the rollers and then Ma has to sew on new ones and that makes her real cranky.
5th March, Monday
There’s businesses coming up for sale now and Pa says there’ll be lots of people ruined because of plague. There’s some people won’t go near someone that’s had it, or their family or someone that works for them. So there’s all these adverts for butter runs, restaurants, mercery shops even, all going real cheap.
Still hot and sticky with no sign of a let up yet. Wonder what it’s like up the mountains where Mabel is? It’s been two years since she went into service and I still miss her. Ethel and Dolly were that bit older to play with and Maisie’s too little really but me and Mabel used to play together all the time when she were still home. We’d dress up in Ma’s clothes when she let us and sometimes when she were out in things that belonged to her customers. Only we had to be ever so careful not to tear anything as didn’t belong to us. One day but Maisie saw us and told Ma who got that mad we weren’t allowed to touch nothing from the ironing ever again. I bet Mabel don’t go dressing up in Mrs Alexander’s things now but.
Seems Mr Oliver don’t like Albury for a capital site neither.
6th March, Tuesday
There’s more coming down sick now. A family named Dovey as lives over Moore Park near the rubbish tip and others besides. And there’s been government men round to inspect all the houses round and yards and water closets. They’re going to disinfect everything and Ma says good, it’ll save her having to do it and besides, that way, they pay for the carbolic.
7th March, Wednesday
That man from Sussex Street died Monday and Mr Walker from Annandale snuffed it yesterday. I’ll bet all them shrouds Ma and the others made at North Head are coming in real handy now.
I’ve not seen Reggie now for a week. Thank heavens.
8th March, Thursday
Bertie were in a battle yesterday, at a place called Poplar Grove. Banjo Paterson, the man that wrote Waltzing Matilda, is in South Africa writing war things for the Herald and he says there was mounted rifles fighting, so that must mean Bertie was there. There were five killed and fifty wounded and soon as Ma heard she crossed hersel
f and said a prayer under her breath only Pa said, ‘Now Ma, they would have said if it were Bertie.’
They was meant to circle round and capture the Boers and Mr Kruger, their President, in the middle. Only the Boers took off and got clean away. Pa says our horses were probably too tired to chase them and what can you expect if they only get half rations?
The firing was heavy but and one of the troopers as used to be a copper at Darlinghurst police station, run out in the thick of it to pick up this wounded trooper on the ground and carried him nearly a mile till he were safe.
Later on but, he goes off with this mate looking for Boers and they get off their horses and tie them up, only when they come back they’re gone. So then they up and help themselves to a couple of real nice horses tied up in camp. Trouble is, these belong to Lord Roberts hisself so the troopers get arrested and court-martialled, only Lord Roberts lets them off. I’m real glad it weren’t Bertie what nicked his lordship’s horse.
9th March, Friday
They’re setting up barricades in Kent Street and others and nobody’ll be allowed in or out. Ma came home mad as a bandicoot when she heard. Seems she’d been talking to Mrs Higgs and Mr Higgs won’t be able to get out to his job as storeman in a warehouse up town. And Ma said, ‘How’s anyone s’posed to feed a family with no money coming in?’
Plagues and Federation Page 4