Sian: A New Australian

by D. Luckett

  The weather got warmer as we went. Mrs Sholto, the carpenter’s wife, just made sure I got up and got dressed, did the lessons that school had given me and went to bed not too late. The rest of the time she left me alone. So I spent most of my time in the front of the ship, what you call the bows, watching the water, and thinking. Sometimes there were dolphins. It looked like they were playing with the ship, leaping right out of the water. Sometimes I wished I was a dolphin.

  Sometimes I cried. But the ship just sailed on, and the dolphins were there, or not, and it didn’t matter if I cried. Sometimes I forgot and looked around for Olive, to tell her something, or to ask about something. It would just be for a moment, and then I’d remember. But you can’t cry forever.

  We sailed around the top of Australia. The stars at night were like lamps, great shining jewels in the sky, silver and gold. By day, the jewels were in the sea, sparkling green and blue. Sometimes I could see the land and it looked like a green ribbon across a window made of blue glass. When there was no land it seemed like the ship was nothing more than a splinter of iron afloat on a sea that had no end, a sea that shimmered and sparkled as if there was no dark in the world anywhere.

  The sea that splashed up on deck felt as warm as milk, and at night it glowed green as the ship went through it, drawing a pale shining ribbon behind it. It was so strange that I could watch it and not think about anything else.

  One day I saw islands with palm trees and a canoe with people fishing and I waved. For two days the sun rose behind us. And then, early in the morning, we came to Port Darwin.

  First we went past some islands, green as jewels. Parrots were flying against a glowing sky. Then there was land on both sides but I didn’t see any houses until we were right in close. Then there were some buildings ahead but they didn’t look very big, and there were trees between them. All the roofs were made out of iron, not tiles. Closer in, I could see that the roads were just dirt, not tar. I only saw two horses and carts and some people pushing wheelbarrows.

  Why, Port Darwin wasn’t much larger than the village we lived in back home in Wales. It was just a tiny place.

  Even the dock wasn’t big. We had to wait until the tide was high, Mrs Sholto said. But then we came in and the ship tied up – and there was Ellis, waiting for me.

  I walked down the ramp to the dock. It wasn’t like Sydney. There wasn’t a great crowd of people there. Then I found that I was running.

  I was so glad to see him. I just ran up and hugged him. And then I cried and I think he cried, too.

  Then we went home.

  Ellis’s house was just four walls plastered with hard mud on the outside with an iron roof. The floor was clay, wetted, smoothed down and then let dry. There was no fireplace inside. You didn’t need a fire, ever, said Ellis, not here in Darwin. It was always warm, he said.

  Inside there were three rooms, one for Ellis, one for me, and a sort of sitting room. There was one window for each. Outside, there was a water tank made of iron with a tap. Ellis said it was full but not to use too much until the wet season started again.

  I hardly like to say about the toilet. It was a hole in the ground, really, and you had to use a spade to cover it up once you’d been. It had a screen made out of hessian around it, held up by poles, like a tent without a roof.

  There wasn’t a kitchen. If you had to cook you did it over a fire in the yard but Ellis said he would bring dinner home from the work canteen. Anyway, when the wet season started, you couldn’t have a fire. You wouldn’t want one then, either, Ellis said.

  I stared at it. I couldn’t believe it. But it was all we had. At least I had a room to myself. A bed, even. It was made from what Ellis called ‘bush timber’, and he’d made it himself. Its legs stood in jam-tins full of water with kerosene in it, to stop ants climbing up. It even had a proper cotton mattress. Sheets, too. You didn’t ever need a blanket, said Ellis, not here.

  And he’d made other furniture too. A washstand and a table and some other things. Everything you needed, you had to make yourself, Ellis said. There weren’t shops or a cabinet works, or anything like that. Everything was terribly expensive, if you could get it at all.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I told him. He was looking at the ground as I said that. ‘We’ll make it nice, in time.’ But I didn’t believe what I was saying. ‘Olive would want us to,’ I said, and he closed his eyes, and then nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She would.’

  So we started.

  It was just as well that Olive couldn’t see us. Or perhaps she could, I thought. Perhaps she was looking down on us. If she was, she wouldn’t have been pleased. Sometimes I could almost hear her telling me what had to be done about it. But at first it was as much as I could do not to cry all the time.

  At first, I couldn’t manage it. Olive had taught me how to cook but how could anyone cook without a kitchen? Same for washing. No tub. No copper. No washboard. Soap, yes, we had that, big yellow bars of it. Nothing else. How was I supposed to manage?

  The second day I was there I made a rag mop and tried mopping that clay floor. All I got was filthy and I made dirty puddles on the ground. I sat down and sobbed into my apron. Olive would have cried too. She hated being dirty.

  That was the worst day. I think it was even worse than being in Sydney. I was all alone in a dirty hut in a place I didn’t know anything about and I was hot and tired and I couldn’t do anything but cry about it. So I cried for hours.

  But every day ends, you know.

  I suppose I was complaining when I said all that to Ellis, when he came back from work. I don’t know what I’d have done if he’d snapped at me. But he just looked sad and that made me sad, too. ‘I’m sorry, Sian,’ he said. ‘I just didn’t think, I suppose. A floor, you say. Well, we can manage that. I’ll see about it.’

  So Ellis got some bags of cement and he and a couple of his workmates came and we made a floor. It took us a full day and the only day they had off was Sunday. It wasn’t the day of rest in Darwin, I suppose.

  We had to sleep outside while the cement dried properly. We had mosquito nets. Just as well, or we’d have been eaten alive. But you could look up through the netting and see the stars, and they looked close enough to touch. I could hear the boobook owls calling too, and the night wind was warm and gentle. I went to sleep, dirty and tired as I was, but I remember the stars and a big yellow moon, and the owls and the feel of the breeze.

  I think that was the first time I ever liked being in Darwin.

  The next day we had a floor you could sweep and mop every day.

  For washing I had to use a tin basin to wash myself in, and the same for clothes. But after a week Ellis got two steel drums from work, cut a hole in the side of one, so you could make a fire in it, and the other one went on top, to make a copper. So now we could wash clothes and sheets properly and hang them on a line between the trees.

  There wasn’t anyone else to do it. I just had to manage.

  It was very hard at first. I was always tired. It was always hot. Once I burned myself on the copper and it hurt for days. I cried again. Over and over, I wished I hadn’t come to Darwin. Sometimes I wanted to go back home, even to Caradog Street, even to Da and his belt. But Ellis was always kind to me and it was all right when he was there.

  Ellis and I kept on going, even when we were sore and tired and hot. I remember when we got a flywire door. That made it easier to keep insects out. Then we got a meat safe. It hung up from the roof. You could put a wet cloth over it and let the breeze cool it. Ellis built a bench along one wall in the front room and we got a bath – a tin one. Bit by bit, one thing at a time.

  Sometimes I’d talk to Olive in my head. I’d ask her what she thought I should do. She was worried, I think, about me not going to school. I was busy, though. But one night when Ellis came home he brought a newspaper, two or three sheets, with him. It was just getting dark. He lit the lamp before he sat at the table then started to read. ‘It says here that th
ere’s a new school opening,’ he said.

  I was putting dinner on the table. I wiped my hands on my apron and sat down.

  ‘School?’ I asked. ‘Where?’

  ‘Just up the road.’ I already knew that ‘just up the road’ in the Northern Territory could mean a hundred miles away.

  But it was just up the road. I could walk. ‘Enrolments – that means putting your name down – next Monday,’ said Ellis. He looked up. ‘We’re starting the decking for the new wharf then and I have to be there for that. Can you get yourself there? I’ll give you a note for the teacher.’

  So I walked to where the school was going to be on the next Monday and I had a look inside. My heart sank.

  It was like everything else in Darwin – not much of anything. A room in a house, only this house was bigger with stone walls on the outside. But there were no desks, only a table for the teacher. There were three rows of benches and when school started we had to sit on the floor and use the bench for a desk. There were only a few books, unless you brought your own, and the same for pencils and paper.

  The teacher’s name was Miss Alberts. I gave her Ellis’s note and she read it and told me school would start the week after. I’d be very welcome, she said.

  She saw me look around at the schoolroom and smiled. ‘It’s a bit basic, isn’t it? Never mind, Sian. I’m expecting some supplies on the next ship. We’ll have desks by the middle of the year, I’m sure. And even more important, some books.’

  The way to school was shorter if you didn’t go around by the streets. Nobody minded.

  I was carrying what I had for school in a hessian sugar bag. Ellis had got me some paper and pencils and I had a slate and my copy of The Wizard of Oz, the only book I’d brought to Darwin. I’d washed and combed my hair for school, remembering how Olive used to do it.

  But it was all so different from home. At home, all the houses were in rows, each one built against the next. It was even different from Sydney, where the houses were at least next door to each other, even if there was a space between. Here in Darwin there was just red dirt and dusty scrub and trees, small and big. There was a shop called a government store where you could only buy flour, tea, sugar, dry goods and things in tins.

  There was also a big house for the Administrator, a police station, and a small hospital. There was a railway but it didn’t have a proper station, and anyway, the train didn’t really go anywhere. And a telegraph office. And this was the only town of any sort for hundreds and hundreds of miles.

  So when I walked to school I cut through the empty spaces between houses, through scrub and trees. You had to be careful about snakes, keep out of long grass, carry a stick, look where you step. I was wearing boots with the sides buttoned up.

  Crossing the gap between two streets I found a creek bed. There was no water in it now, because this was still the dry season but you could tell that water had run there. There were trees along both sides of it and it was sandy.

  On the other side someone had cleared a patch of scrub and planted vegetables. I could see the garden just around a bend in the stream. Cabbages, I thought, in neat rows.

  So I crossed the dry creek, climbing down one side and up the other, to have a look.

  I saw a man hoeing between the rows of cabbages, no more than ten paces away, but he had his back to me and didn’t see me at first. He was walking backwards as he used the hoe but when he reached the end of the row, he turned and saw me. I knew he was Chinese, even before he turned round.

  So there we were, staring at each other, among the cabbages. When I looked around I could see that it wasn’t only cabbages. There were carrots as well, and onions and beans – long ones with funny purple spots. And some other plants that I didn’t know.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  The man said nothing. He just nodded and went on looking at me, leaning on his hoe.

  The Chinese people in Port Darwin lived in their own street, with their own shops and market but you saw them around in the town. I’d never talked to one before though.

  In pictures I’d seen of Chinese people they always have big flat hats like upside-down saucers and long pigtails. This man was wearing a felt hat with a drooping brim and it was stained with sweat but that was no different from what other men wore. He didn’t have a pigtail and his hair was cut short. He wore a loose thin coat and trousers made of blue cotton. He looked cooler than I felt in my long wool skirt and blouse.

  ‘Nice vegetables,’ I said.

  He nodded again. Maybe he didn’t speak English. Well, I couldn’t speak Chinese, so that was that, I thought. I started to turn away. School was over that way and I had to be going …

  The man took a small knife out of his belt and looked at me. I stepped back, feeling cold. Then he stooped, cut a cabbage and held it out to me. It was as round as a cannonball, tight leafy green.

  You can get very tired of bully beef and grey watery tinned peas, I can tell you. That cabbage looked good to me.

  ‘I haven’t got any money,’ I said.

  The man shook his head and held out the cabbage again.

  So I stepped forward and took it. I had to use both hands but it would fit into my bag.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘It’s very kind of you.’ Well, even if he couldn’t understand the words, he’d probably know that I was thanking him.

  He shook his head again. Then he turned and called some word or other. I didn’t know what it was. But down the slope towards the creek, somebody answered. Then a girl came into sight, walking up from a house down in the dip. I could just see its iron roof.

  She was dressed like the man in a blouse and trousers. Trousers! She had long shining black hair and she wore it in two plaits down her back.

  She came up the slope, stopped, and spoke to the man in Chinese, and he answered.

  Then she turned to me.

  ‘My father says free sample,’ she said.

  ‘You speak English!’ I said.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I speak English?’ she said. ‘I was born here.’

  ‘I … didn’t know,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Hardly anyone does.’ She waved her hand at the rows of vegetables. ‘My father is Gok Ah Sin, at your service. I am Mae Gok. Or Gok Mei-lin. Your family name comes first in Chinese. This is our market garden.’ She seemed very proud of it.

  I nodded. ‘Sian Roberts, if you please.’

  Mr Gok nodded at my bag and said something.

  ‘My father asks if you are going to school,’ said Mae. She frowned. ‘He thinks that I should go too.’

  ‘Don’t you go to school?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I have work to do.’

  ‘So do I. But I thought everybody had to go to school.’

  ‘We are Chinese,’ said Mae, as if that explained it.

  ‘I’m Welsh,’ I said.

  ‘So you have to go to school,’ said Mae, like it was some sort of rule.

  ‘But you don’t?’ I asked.

  Mae only shrugged. ‘I don’t have to,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I told you: I’m Chinese,’ said Mae.

  ‘But you said you were born here,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t that make you Australian too?’

  Mae just laughed. ‘The Aborigines were born here. They’re Australian, if anyone is. But they’re not allowed to go to school.’

  ‘I have to go to school,’ I said, ‘even if you don’t. I’ll be late if I don’t hurry.’

  Mae nodded. ‘I must get back to work. These cabbages won’t hoe themselves. But they’ll all be ready in another week, at two pence a head. Carrots, nine pence a pound. Beans, available all year.’ She looked up at her da and smiled and he smiled back at her. ‘My father is a very good gardener,’ she said.

  I looked around at the neat rows of growing vegetables. ‘I’ll come back another day,’ I said. I stepped back and turned.

  Mr Gok tugged his hat down again and took up his hoe once more.

  It was
the first day at the new school. There were fourteen of us, all ages. Two boys were older than me and all the others were younger. There weren’t many children in Port Darwin, see. Most of the people were men working on the new docks or the harbour works, or the railway, and they hadn’t brought their families with them.

  Ellis hadn’t either. At first, anyway.

  Miss Alberts said the first thing we had to do was to find out how far along we all were in our studies. So she started out with tests. Arithmetic was easy and Miss Alberts gave me another set of sums to do. Then there was dictation for the older children, and for me. After that Miss Alberts had me read The Wizard of Oz to the little ones while she got on with teaching the others how to add up shillings and pence. I already knew how to do that.

  When I’d finished the chapter she said, ‘You read very well, Sian. Do you have a pencil and paper?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ I said.

  ‘You came to Darwin on a ship, I expect. Suppose you write me a composition telling me what that was like.’

  So I started with how I came to be on the ship on my own. After a while, Miss Alberts came and read it over my shoulder but she said nothing. I only heard the click of her tongue, a sort of ‘tut’ sound. I remembered Olive used to do that too.

  John Draper and Matthew Bradshaw, the two older boys, didn’t bother me much and the rest were too young to play with. They all called me Taffy, which means Welsh.

  I was Welsh. I wondered how you got to be Australian. Seemed that being born here wasn’t enough, at least not for Mae.

  Ellis came in when it was already dark and he was tired and dirty. They’d been working on the new extensions to the wharf, he said, and every timber had been soaked in tar to keep the white ants off for a while. He went straight into his room to wash. Lucky I had hot water ready.

  When he came out we sat down to supper. I put a tin plate in front of him with the corned beef and cabbage. It smelled a lot better than what we usually had. Even in the dim light of the kerosene lamp it looked better too.