Meg followed this up and found that the storekeeper was sympathetic. She agreed to let her cottage to Meg, but warned her that it would be a tight squeeze for six. When Meg returned to make final arrangements about her move to the cottage, Mrs. Milne said, “Mrs. Fraser, I have been wondering if you would care to help me in my store? Since my husband died I have had Lizzie Downs to help me, but she is marrying and going with her husband to work on Shorts’ dairy farm. If you do this, you could take over the quarters at the rear of the store. You would find them more commodious than the cottage.”
“Oh, Mrs. Milne! Oh, thank you, but I have no experience in such a position. I would be quite useless, I am sure.”
“Would you care to try it? I feel moved to offer you this because I know you are a woman of trust. I am sure you would soon learn. It would help me, too, for as I am getting old, I do not want to be at the store the whole time and if you are there, with perhaps some of your children to help you, I would find it a help.”
“I am overwhelmed! May I please consider it and speak with my cousin, Murdoch Macdonald, about this, please?”
Meg waited until that evening to see Mary and Murdoch, leaving Ian in charge of the girls. She told her news and finished by saying “I really do not feel confident that I could do it.”
“Well, lass, it would certainly be a challenge, but not beyond you,” said Murdoch. You are very capable, Meg, and I think you should accept it, don’t you, Mary?”
“Yes, I do. I know just how hesitant I would be, Meg, in your position, but think, dear, of the opportunity. If you take this job you will fare quite well and still have the children close by you.”
“But what will Alec say when he comes home? He wouldn’t like me to be doing this. I know that none of you think he will come back, but I know Alec. He wouldn’t leave us for long unless things have gone wrong for him and at the same time, I know he is alive.”
“We understand how you feel, Meg, but dear lass, he wouldn’t want you to starve.”
“No, he wouldn’t. Oh Murdoch, why doesn’t he come? Where do you think he is?”
“See here, lass, Mrs. Milne knows your story and she knows that you’ll not want to work when Alec comes back, so if she’s prepared to have you under those conditions, I’d say ‘yes’. You know, that we do feel that he won’t come,” Murdoch put in softly. “I think perhaps you are not facing reality.”
“I know you think that, but even though it seems a lifetime to me, he’s only been gone a few weeks. He will come, You see.”
Murdoch gave her a quick hug, “Alec has a wonderful wife!”
Chapter 16 - The Store
Meg settled into store life better than she had imagined. Mrs. Milne moved to her cottage on the edge of town and the arrangement suited both women admirably. The house at the rear of the store was larger than the farm-house at the Park, the garden not as well-developed, but the yard was large enough to be a satisfactory play area for the smaller Frasers. As it was well-fenced, Meg had no worries about the children while she was in the shop. She soon learned her work and her natural manner was excellent with the customers. As time went on, Mrs Milne was able to leave more to her, especially as twelve-year old Jennet was proving a valuable assistant. She enjoyed weighing sugar and flour, rice, etc., packing them neatly into bags and pricing them ready for sale. Ian made sure that all the heavy bags were brought in from the storeroom to the shop each night, ready for the next day’s sales. It was soon a family effort, with Jennet at 12, Effie, ten and Jamie, eight, doing jobs around their new home and looking after Kate.
On occasions Fergus MacKenzie came through the town on business, buying stock and selling to the country storekeepers from Mr. Trent’s warehouse. He usually stayed with the Macdonalds, but he always spent as much time as he could with Meg. Meg found him a fund of knowledge about the latest stock to arrive in Sydney. He arranged with Mrs. Milne to send to her all the newest things and so she often had articles as quickly as they appeared in Sydney stores. Fortunately the store was a large one and they were able to display their wares, especially their clothing, displayed in a way, on advice from Fergus, that kept a continuous flow of women through the door looking at the latest fashions. Even the poorest women were constantly coming, just to look at the clothes. When they came to look, they often bought some little thing that they could afford.
No word came from Alec. The Macdonalds felt certain he was dead. They knew Alec would never leave his family completely and so felt sure that even if it was not his body found after the Hawkesbury flood, then something equally as devastating had happened. Meg was still certain he was alive and was worried that something had prevented his return and so several times through the following winter Murdoch had asked for time off to go to the goldfields over the mountains to search for him. He found no trace of him at all which went to reinforce his idea that Alec was dead.
All this time Murdoch and Mary were planning and saving for their own farm. Mr. Forrest told Murdoch that as time went on and he felt Murdoch would be able to run his own farm, he would help him look around for a suitable one. Murdoch assured Mary that he had no intention of taking her into the bush as Alistair had done with Caroline. He didn’t think they would have a big farm when the day came, but he wanted it to be their own farm in a place where they could expand and so settle Malcolm and Duncan nearby when the time came for them to branch out. So they all worked very hard preparing themselves for that grand day when they could move to “Duntulm”, the name they all agreed to grace the gate of their dream. Mary and the 4 children worked on their little garden and farmyard and learned in miniature how to run pigs and fowls and ducks and all the other things that would help them in their future independent life.
A year passed and then some months and still no Alec. Thankfully, Meg was quite the storekeeper now and Murdoch felt that it was time to start looking for somewhere of their own. Mr. Forrest asked about properties each time he went to a sheep sale or met any farmers in the town. In the meantime they worked and saved. The gardens bloomed and produced and the animals multiplied.
There was a dairy nearby that fascinated the Macdonalds. The Pollards came from Cornwall. Mrs. Pollard had worked as a dairy maid and he a dairy hand. They had toiled long and hard and now owned their own dairy farm. Mary loved to visit the dairy and some day dreamed of having such a one. Emma-Jane Pollard became one of Mary’s close friends and never seemed to tire of teaching Mary what she knew. The Macdonalds, of course, had only one house cow, but all this information Mary stowed away for the day when they would have a dairy of their own.
Pollard’s dairy was built low into the ground for coolness. It was a large stone building with several netted windows. The room was whitewashed and soot-less. You would never see a cleaner one or a lighter one and it was always cool. All round the dairy was a shelf that held all the necessary utensils, each one clean and sparkling. Big bowls were to be seen, full of rich, creamy milk for setting the cream, scrubbed wooden buckets with polished brass bands and several butter churns standing in a corner. There were slabs of polished stone where Mrs. Pollard made her delicious butter, golden yellow and artistically ‘patted’ into patterns and moulded shapes with a design on the top of each pat, that told the name of the dairy. In the room adjoining there were cheeses on racks and some hanging to ripen, vats of curdled milk-cheese in the making and sides of bacon covered with cheese cloth. At the far end of this room were baskets of eggs.
Further away again was the milking shed and here too, cleanliness was the rule. The stone floor was bare of any evidence that a large herd of cows came to it twice a day. The sloping floor allowed it to be washed down with ease. The cows coming into the hay at milking time to happily lip the feed in the boxes and each cow coming into the shed in turn and entering its favourite bay, waiting patiently to be tethered. There was a shelf that held several well-scrubbed wooden stools for the milking hands.
Sometimes Mary came down at milking time just to watch all the ordere
d busy-ness of this delightful place. She was encouraged by Mr and Mrs. Pollard to ask questions and to help when and wherever she wanted.
“I know how you feel, Mrs. Mac.,” William Pollard told her.
“When we came to the colony we didn’t know we would ever have a chance to have a place like this. I reckon I have a dairy as good as the one we worked in at home. I am really proud of it. So if we can help you and your man, we are only too happy to show you.”
“We really appreciate it, Mr. Pollard. We wouldn’t expect to have a place like yours. You see, there are no dairies like this where we come from and so we surely couldn’t do what you do. I think I could manage some of the things and I want to do them well.”
“You are welcome, Mrs., with anything we can help you with.”
All information she obtained was shared with the family over their meals. All had the same ambition, to work for a place of their own, something unachievable in Carbost, Skye. She shared it all too, when she wrote to her people back home, trying to put the feel of the place on paper so that those at home would know a little of what they were experiencing in this land of strangeness.
Chapter 17 - Felling Timber
The timber was huge. Great trees grew profusely in this beautiful forest, this forest of hardwood eucalypt that was superb for building. Alistair hated cutting the massive giants, but they grew in such soil that the farmer in him won each battle as he pondered the demise of these monarchs.
They had cleared quite a lot of the land which simply cried out to grow all the things Alistair asked of it. The season had been very good and his stock and family looked very fit.
Donald, now aged 17, and his father worked well together, the perfect team. They worked so hard that they had little time to think of life away from this lonely place. Everywhere there was beauty and who could want more? Yes, they had settled in better than they could have dreamed.”
Caroline missed the family, but she and the girls were kept occupied with all the things that needed to be done in their snug, one-roomed log farmhouse. She had hated the thought of being so isolated from the family but, now they were there on their farm, she was content.
They had seen almost no one since their arrival many months before. Their only access by land was a very rough track along the river. In fact, only one visitor had found his way to the farm. That was the parson from the town down the river. He had heard some settlers had come to this lonely stretch of the river and called to meet then. Caroline was amazed when his lean figure appeared at the house one day and was very pleased when Alistair greeted him with friendliness, though he gave him no encouragement to return or send anyone else to visit them, in fact, he made it plain that they wanted no visitors. The parson doubted whether anyone else would venture this far.
So each day was filled with work, either on farming or clearing and very quickly they forgot to expect anything else.
“I think we’ll take the big one next, Donald. I can’t think why I kept leaving it, but we’ve cleared all round it and now I think it time.”
The nearly eighteen-year old lad was now almost as broad as his father. Hard work and the good plain food Caroline provided had strengthened him and his muscles rippled as he and Alistair cut deeply into the wood, axe chop and axe chop alternately. The giant was many feet in circumference and it was late in the morning before they heard the first crack of the timber.
“Its coming, Father.”
“Just a little more, son.”
“Father, watch out! Run.”
The big tree seemed to twist as it fell towards the running men, then Alistair tripped. As Donald paused to look at his father, they were engulfed by leaves, twigs and branches. Donald screamed as a branch tore at his leg, but no sound came from Alistair.
“Did you see that, Liz? Come on.”
“Jack, you fool, leave them alone. You can’t go down there.”
“But, Liz, they is hurt. You can’t leave that kid down there.”
“And get yourself hanged. Go if you like, but I ain’t.”
“Look, Liz, we know there’s no one on this farm but them two and the wife and kids up at the house. If we help them, they might help us.”
“Help us get caught, more like. Just look at us. Who would believe we are anything but what we are? We even look worse than when we arrived in the colony and that’s saying something. Have sense.”
“Look, Liz, I don’t reckon we could stick it much longer on Abo tucker. If we help them now, I don’t reckon we’d be worse off than we are. We could always go bush again. Come on.”
JackJack went down the hill to the clearing where the huge tree lay, fallen into the nearby crop. The branches lay thick and he could see no sign of Alistair or Donald, but he could hear a moaning and struggled through the tree towards the sound. He found Alistair lying still under a large bough and he called to Donald deeper in. He found the boy under a mass of greenery pinned by the leg under a branch. He easily lifted it off and tried to clear some room to see how badly the boy was hurt. His arm and left leg were twisted unnaturally. By this time Donald was conscious and wondering about the strange figure who had appeared from nowhere.
“We’ll soon get you out of this,” said JackJack cheerfully.
“Father. Where?”
“He’s over there. He’s alive, so don’t worry. We’ll get you out first.” He then called, “Liz, come here and help me.”
Donald gazed at the two dirty, ragged people and was only too pleased to let them help. He hurt too much to wonder much about them.
JackJack cleared a way through and soon he was able to drag Donald by the shoulders and pull him free. Liz tried to make him comfortable in the ploughed field.
JackJack didn’t like the look of Alistair, in fact, was surprised to find him still alive, but he was, with both legs pinned under a huge bough.
“Come in here, Liz, and try to help me lift this.”
She struggled through and found that they could only move it slightly.
“Look, if I use this as a lever and push it up, do you think you could hold it up while I drag him out?”
“I’ll try JackJack, but I don’t reckon I could.”
With much heaving and resting and heaving again, JackJack eventually pulled the big man out.
“Is he alive JackJack?”
“Yes, he is. His legs are smashed and he’s got a cut on his head, but he’s all right, I think. All we have to do now is get them on the dray. That’s gunna be a job.”
They managed it by using the backboard of the dray and manoeuvering each patient onto the vehicle.
A slow procession moved up the rise and into the clearing where the house stood. Ann saw the dray come up to the yard and ran to her mother.
“What is it, child?”
“Some people with our dray, Mama.”
“Quickly, take your sister and hide under the bed, like I told you to do.”
Caroline saw the children safely under the bed, grabbed the gun beside the door and stepped out, leveling the gun at JackJack as the dray pulled up. She gazed in horror at the two ruffians, thinking that they could mean nothing but trouble.
“Put your gun down, Missus. We won’t harm you. Liz and me, we’ve come to help you. Look here in the dray. The boss and the boy have had an accident. Look.”
With a look of horror on her face, Caroline drew near the cart and peered over the side. “Alistair, Donald. oh, dear Lord, please help me.”
“Well, Missus, I don’t know if He will, but we will. We’d better get them inside.”
Donald was stirring. “Mama, is Father all right?”
“What happened, Donald?”
“The tree fell. I think these people will help.”
“We will, Missus. we’ll try to get your man into the house while he can’t feel it, because his legs are hurt bad.”
“What will I do?” Caroline cried in anguish.
“Now, Missus, we’ll manage.”
With a struggle the
three adults carried first Donald, then Alistair to their beds. JackJack cut Alistair’s trousers off and inspected his legs and considered how to set the breaks. There were no bones sticking through, so he felt he could try to straighten the limbs out and tie them to pieces of wood. Whether they would be any good ... he sighed. “Well, it’s all we can do.”
“They need a doctor,” said Caroline faintly. “Would you go and try to get one?”
“No, Missus, I wouldn’t and I won’t waste me breath telling you why now. I must get to work on this bloke.”
Alistair was breathing evenly but still hadn’t stirred, so using some pieces of timber, JackJack splinted both legs. It was a difficult job and needed all his strength, but when he was done he thought they looked straight and even felt pleased with his work.
“I think he’s all right, Missus. I am not much good at this, but I seen it done before. It’s the best I can do. I got to do the young fellow now. It will hurt him, so why don’t you busy yourself washing the boss and try to keep away from your boy and let me get at it.”
Caroline had hardly taken in that these two strange unkempt creatures had taken over her house. She felt so helpless and JackJack seemed to know what to do. She wondered what Alistair would think but at that moment it didn’t seem to matter. She heard a yell from Donald and then silence.
“He’s fainted, Missus. That’s a good thing. He’ll be all right. This is much easier. I’ll get his leg fixed fine.”
They tore up some of Caroline’s precious sheets to bind the broken limbs and soon had them as comfortable as they could. Donald woke feeling very sick and sore, but looked better.
“I can’t thank you enough, but I think I can manage now,”
Caroline said uneasily, not knowing quite what to do with JackJack and Liz.
“Could we have some tea, Missus, and something to eat? We ain’t had nothing but black’s tucker for ages.”
The Heather to the Hawkesbury Page 11