Haunted Creek

by Ann Cliff

  When the cook had gone Rose tentatively spoke her thoughts. ‘If I forget about the horrible hut for a while and think about making money, we could keep more poultry – they don’t need fences. Is there a sale for eggs here?’ She thought that most families would keep hens; settlers would be self-sufficient.

  ‘Now you’re talking!’ Maeve looked pleased. ‘I could take several dozen eggs a week and so could the store at Wattle Tree, and that’s just a start. There’s still a lot of miners about, that need to eat, and folks working in the bush that buy all their tucker, tree fellers and the eucy men that make the eucalyptus oil. You’d be surprised how many men there are skulking about in those trees, right up into the mountains, with not many settlements up from here.’

  ‘And eggs are handy food for men on their own – don’t take much cooking.’ Rose nodded; she remembered the ‘eucy men’ only too well but she couldn’t imagine them buying from her. ‘And most of these workers will be your customers?’

  Maeve laughed. ‘Of course! What would single men do at all but come to the pub at night, whenever they come out of the bush? And buy their tucker from me when they go back to work. Now I think about it, there’s nobody keeping poultry seriously here. I have to buy eggs where I can, and none too fresh they are at times.’ Maeve sat down and then went on. ‘You could sell dressed chickens too. Fresh meat’s often scarce unless the butcher kills a bullock and nobody’s keen on kangaroo.’

  Rose’s mind was active now. She could use the feathers to stuff pillows and cushions … and the manure from the hens would go into the soil to feed the vegetables. All they needed was a bigger hut for the hens to perch at night and more nest boxes for them to lay in. Luke would have to help, but if she worked out the likely returns from selling eggs, he might be persuaded.

  By mid afternoon, Luke emerged blearily from the bedroom and stood under the pump outside in the yard. He was pale but sober and by the time he had eaten some bread and cheese with Rose, he said he was ready for the road. ‘Thank you, Maeve,’ Rose whispered as they left.

  Lordy had been right. Maeve had given her some very useful advice and one consequence was that she and Luke would not quarrel. She had decided not to fall out with him. The plan was too important. The hard words she had ready were put aside for if all else failed.

  ‘Be strong!’ were Maeve’s parting words. ‘Come back and see me with some eggs.’

  They walked along the track in silence for a while, following the creek back along the way that Rose had come. Many of the scattered wooden houses of Haunted Creek were falling down, crumbling back into the bush as if they had never been, as the gold field was gradually abandoned. Apparently it didn’t take long for bark huts to rot away in this climate, with its hot summers and high rainfall. In some places Rose could see a stone or brick chimney standing forlorn among the undergrowth where a hut had once been, or a straggly neglected garden. Would theirs be like this in a year or two? A sad reminder of failed hopes? It was a depressing thought.

  Other huts were still in use, one or two with paling fences round them and rows of vegetables near the house. There were even a few new houses. This must have been a sizeable village in the 1860s, a good market for produce, Rose thought regretfully. We should have been here earlier, before the decline. In those days, Haunted Creek was part of Wattle Tree, a big cattle run. She turned to say this to Luke, but he was trailing sheepishly behind.

  The main track out of Haunted Creek was not the one that led past Luke’s land, which was why she had not realized there were so many people down here. It went in the other direction down to the Tangil River.

  After some time Luke said sulkily, ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me all my faults and what a bad husband I am. Well, you’ll have to get used to it. Do you know, you’re a very irritating woman – always think you’re in the right.’ He clenched his fists. ‘You’ve seen nothing yet.’

  Rose straightened her back a little, brushed the flies from her face and held on to the plan. Luke was waiting for a quarrel, trying to bring it on. She would not make it so easy for him. ‘Well, Luke, I expect you’ll have a dreadful headache. Did you find any gold?’

  ‘A little bit – we washed some out down in the river,’ her husband mumbled. ‘But Jim went off with it and bought a bottle of whisky from a cart that came round the diggings, selling food and that …’ He tailed off.

  ‘Bad luck. Maybe Jim isn’t a very good friend to you.’ She glanced at Luke but he avoided her eye. She had been told that hard liquor was banned on the diggings, but the rules may have been forgotten by now.

  Luke was quiet again, probably with surprise that Rose was so calm. ‘I’m sorry, lass,’ he blurted out after a minute or two. ‘I’ll make it up to you, work real hard.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, and it will make you feel better. Would you like to build a bigger hen house? I’ve been thinking, Luke, that I could sell a lot of eggs and that would give us a start….’ Rose decided to leave it at that. Luke was in no shape for a proper discussion, but the seed had been planted. A poultry house built with saplings and slabs of bark would be a small job compared with the task of clearing fifty acres of trees.

  The next morning, Luke got up at dawn. ‘I reckon we need a bigger hen house, lass. You could sell the eggs to the hotel. I’ll cut some slabs straight after breakfast.’

  SIX

  ‘LUKE! WAKE UP! The roof’s leaking!’ Cold water dripped onto Rose’s face and her pillow was wet. Incessant, heavy rain had soaked the bark slabs of the roof and was finding its way inside. Luke grunted, turned over and went back to sleep.

  With a sigh, Rose fetched a bucket to catch the drips and curled up at the bottom of the bed to wait for daylight. Maeve had been right; Luke was pleasant but not willing to put himself out. But then, he could hardly patch the roof in the middle of the night, and fetching a bucket was a wife’s job.

  The rain had changed everything, just a week or so ago. The hot weather had built up, more humid every day, until it pressed on you like a heavy weight. Huge biting flies that Luke called March flies were everywhere and they were both covered by angry red bites before the weather broke with thunderstorms.

  They had watched lightning dancing along the tops of the mountains, more dazzling than anything Rose had seen. Thunder rolled ominously through the bush and far away on tree-covered slopes they saw points of fire. ‘Lightning strikes,’ Luke said. ‘But the rain will put them out, I hope.’ It was strange to see forests climbing to the mountain tops, after the bare, sheep-nibbled grass of Yorkshire uplands.

  The dust outside the hut turned to mud, but the water barrels were full. A haze of green appeared where Luke had dug the earth and some of the trees started to flower. Rain made everything harder, but it was a blessing and at last Rose could start her garden.

  ‘This is the Victorian autumn,’ Luke told Rose. ‘The best time of year.’ It seemed all wrong to have Easter in the autumn, but everything was upside-down here. On Easter Sunday the Teesdales joined other settlers in the Wattle Tree school for a service conducted by an Anglican vicar from Moe.

  The rain had stopped for a while and the trees were brilliant with new green leaves. Apart from the strange and beautiful tree ferns in the sheltered gullies, Rose thought it looked more like an English spring than autumn.

  It was good to see so many people crowded into the little school-room, more than you’d expect when you looked at the empty bush. Some selectors were tucked into pockets of good land, surrounded by trees and hidden from the main tracks. You only knew they were there when they came out of their hiding places.

  Bert and Martha Carr were there with Charlie and Peter, the boys’ hair smoothed down with water and parted in the middle. Lordy, the gentleman worker, looked distinguished and altogether different, in clean clothes and wearing a tie. His back was straight and he had the high-beaked nose of authority, but the scar gave him a sinister look. The other eucy men were not there, thank goodness; Rose didn’t want to meet Joe
of the hat again.

  Lordy nodded to Rose. ‘Good morning, Mrs Teesdale. A Happy Easter to you.’ Mrs Teesdale felt almost like dropping a curtsy. The moors at home were full of gentry like Lordy in the grouse season and she’d helped to cater for them once or twice.

  Luke turned to Rose and whispered furiously, ‘How do you know him? He’s a villain.’ Rose smiled; he probably was, but his manners were good.

  Freda Jensen played the piano for the hymns, accompanied for some of them by Erik on a mouth organ. ‘We should have a dance here one night, if the music’s this good,’ Luke whispered.

  It was odd to hear the familiar Easter hymns so far from home … but this was home now, wasn’t it? Rose enjoyed singing, but it was so long since she had used her voice that it was husky at first.

  The Reverend Horace Jennings was on a mission that day. Speaking without notes and with rather less churchiness than Rose expected, he said that he realized the effort they had made to come to the service. Anyone who was even vaguely Christian had come from Haunted Creek, from Fumina and from the farms on the Latrobe River. It was the first time that so many had met at Wattle Tree, he said, a good sign of things to come.

  ‘You will know that a state school is not supposed to be used for religious purposes,’ the reverend went on. ‘The Victorian government in their wisdom has kept religious instruction out of the school curriculum. And so I would like to suggest that you, as a new community of souls, might make a further effort. You might work together to build your own little church, to bring civilization and religion to Wattle Tree and to keep the forces of darkness at bay.’

  Rose looked round uneasily. On such a bright morning the forces of darkness were not worrying her but she knew what he meant. She had sensed that the eucy men carried a darkness with them. What dreadful past had made them what they were? The bush was very dark at night. Would a church make a difference? Human effort seemed so small and powerless in this huge landscape, so maybe religion would be a comfort. Perhaps anything that brought people together would make them feel safer.

  The vicar was developing his theme. ‘Then you might have marriages and christenings in your church, to bring your children into the light. There will be builders and carpenters among you, who can direct the work.’ The men looked at each other and Rose could almost hear them thinking about all the work they had to do on their own blocks. ‘Of course, some generous landowner will need to donate the land.’ Some of the possible generous landowners shuffled their feet.

  Judging by the number of small children at the service, Freda would have a full class of infants next year. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly when Rose remarked on it afterwards. ‘The settlers all seem to have plenty of children to help with the work.’

  Freda invited Rose and Luke to share their meal after the service. ‘I want to hear what progress you’ve been making,’ Freda said in her schoolmistress voice and Luke grinned.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, with a mock bow. ‘I’m doing my best, you know. I’m very proud of our chicken house – sheer luxury for chooks.’

  While they ate cold beef and potatoes, Rose was asked to tell the Jensens what she had been doing. ‘I bought some pullets from a farmer down towards Tangil,’ she explained. ‘We’ve also got some young chicks hatched out by our old hens. A bag of grain lasts them quite a while – they scratch about in the bush for insects.’ She was quietly proud of the healthy little poultry flock.

  ‘How do you sell them?’ Erik turned to her with intense blue eyes and Rose had to look away quickly, pulling against a powerful magnet, or so it felt. She had to fight the melting feeling whenever he looked at her. This was very wrong in a married woman.

  Rose told them she’d bought two wicker baskets and packed the eggs with dried fern to keep them from cracking. She had orders from the All Nations and the Wattle Tree store and was building up a list of customers. Erik smiled his approval with a beautiful warmth and Rose caught Luke frowning at him.

  Luke chatted easily to the Jensens apart from this and it was clear how much he liked company; he was not cut out for a solitary life in the bush. Erik said little, smiled at Luke’s jokes and listened attentively to everything that was said.

  After lunch they all went on a tour of the farm, but by then Luke seemed less than happy. He leaned on a gate with his hands in his pockets and it was left to Rose to ask the right questions.

  ‘Look, these trees are ring barked,’ Erik told them. ‘We take off a section of bark all round the tree and it dies.’ He seemed pleased by her interest. ‘Once the trees are dead, there’s more moisture in the ground for crops and more light.’ The skeleton trees looked ugly, but the crops were growing well.

  ‘We could do this, Luke!’ Rose said eagerly. ‘We could grow crops or grass and then the trees could be cut down later, when you have the time.’ Luke nodded, but said nothing. Wasn’t he interested? Rose touched his arm but he ignored her.

  There were sheep in one paddock, black-faced Suffolk ewes. Erik said he preferred them because it was often too wet for the heavy-woolled Merino that was so popular in other parts of the country. The butcher at Haunted Creek would take all the mutton he could produce.

  Rose looked longingly at the sheep. ‘I hope that we can keep sheep … but fencing them in will be a problem. If they escape into the bush they might never come back.’ She sighed; it all came back to fencing, to keep farm stock in and wildlife out. ‘Do wallabies eat onions?’

  Erik laughed. ‘I’ve never given them the chance … probably not, I should think. But they eat our good grass, I know that much.’

  Luke muttered to Rose, ‘That bit about fencing was meant for me, I know it.’

  Maybe it would shame him into doing some more work, although Rose hadn’t meant any criticism. The fact remained that fencing was the most urgent job for them and Rose could not do it.

  ‘We’re learning, all the time,’ Erik said before they left. ‘I wish I knew more … it’s new for all of us – this country hasn’t been farmed before. It needs careful handling, we’re finding that out. I’ve got a long way to go to be a good farmer.’ How could such a large, handsome man not be confident? With such a tidy farm, he must be a perfectionist.

  As they walked home Luke said, ‘That Erik was looking at you a bit too friendly for my liking. I wonder why he doesn’t go and start a farm of his own instead of hanging round his mother.’ He’d taken a dislike to the Viking, which was a pity. Erik could have taught Luke a lot: perseverance, for one thing. Sticking at a job until it was finished.

  ‘This is his farm,’ Rose pointed out, refusing to quarrel. ‘He came up here on his own at the start and then his mother joined him when the school was opened. They were looking for a good teacher …’ But Luke had lost interest.

  ‘Oh, they’re so pleased with themselves! Nobody else can farm like they can.’ Luke was irritated by the Jensens and Rose decided to say no more about them. ‘Let’s go for a walk, Rose, on a new track, let’s explore a bit.’

  They were wearing their best clothes but if they stayed on the tracks they could keep dry. The ground dried out so quickly here after rain. Rose trotted after Luke as he strode out on his long legs, hoping that a walk would put him in a better humour. Luke could be moody at times, and very possessive. She hadn’t expected that.

  Luke turned off the main Haunted Creek track and headed down a narrower one. ‘I think someone lives down here, but I’m not sure.’ They heard the insistent plopping of frogs and soon came to a watering hole, full with the recent rains. Several black ducks swam on the water and Luke’s eyes shone. ‘Good dinners there – you’d like roast duck. Wish I had my gun.’

  Rose was thinking about the work she would do in the week ahead and hardly noticed the enormous dead tree standing in a little clearing at the side of the track. It took her a while to realize that it was a house and people lived in it. The top of the tree had been cut off and a slab roof sheltered the hollow trunk. A man and woman sat on stumps beside the tre
e and a child played on the grass at their feet.

  ‘This is the place!’ Luke was suddenly animated. ‘Good day!’ He must have taken this direction on purpose, to find these people. Why?

  The woman nodded shyly and the man, who was probably in his forties, took the pipe out of his mouth and moved his wide-brimmed hat to the back of his head. ‘You’ll be yon couple from Teesdale’s, I reckon.’ Already their bit of land had acquired their name. ‘Dressed up too! Must a bin to church.’

  ‘And you’ll be Tom Appleyard, that does the tree felling,’ Luke responded. ‘How’s business?’

  Mrs Appleyard stood up and rearranged her shawl, then gave the fire a kick and pulled a kettle over it; they were going to be given tea. Her husband grunted and pointed to a rough bench. ‘Sit yourselves down. Business is good, you might say. Plenty of work felling trees for me and my mates – we work crosscut between us and we’re always in work.’ He paused. ‘But in another way, it’s bad. Bad for the land, all this clearing. We’ll be sorry one day.’

  Here it was again, another point of view. How could making farms from the bush to produce food be a bad thing? Why would a man question his own way of making a living? The settlers Rose had met thought that the only good tree was a dead one. Luke hated the trees that loomed over his block, shutting out the sun. Perhaps the man was a little bit strange? She sat quiet and listened while they drank sweet black tea in tin mugs, handed out by the woman.

  ‘But it’s got to be done if we’re going to settle here,’ Luke reminded him. ‘We’ll improve the land, once the trees go.’

  Mrs Appleyard had evidently heard all the arguments before. ‘And we’ve got to have a living!’ she whispered to Rose. ‘Tom sees that, of course.’

  Tom Appleyard was clever to make a home in a hollow tree, to save building. It even had little windows cut in the bark here and there and seemed to have two storeys. ‘I suppose you’ll keep cattle or sheep,’ Tom said to Luke, who nodded. ‘Plough the land, grow cabbages and spuds, just the same as in England. That’s what they all do and I must admit we eat the stuff the farmers grow – we couldn’t live off the bush. But,’ and his face was grim, ‘you have to remember the soil’s very soft, it cuts up with the hooves of animals. It dries out when we plough it. Take trees away and the dirt’s nothing but powder in a few years, blows in the wind.’