The Boy with Blue Trousers

by Carol Jones

  ‘Then perhaps we shall drum some up, just for James,’ Violet said with a wink.

  Whether for the sake of seed cake or expediency, Alice acquiesced and they set off across the dunes, the boy kicking up sand while his sister berated him. Violet left her to it. Chastising children was exhausting and to be avoided wherever possible.

  The road into Robetown lay on the other side of the dunes. More of a track than a road, most of its traffic comprised the bullock drays that brought wool and wheat from the pastoral runs to the port, drovers herding cattle, and local residents on horseback. On summer nights, thousands of large, brown mutton-birds descended upon the dunes in noisy flocks, heading back to their burrows after a day of fishing far out to sea. At dusk, other small, furry creatures emerged from the dunes to scurry about; dark-visaged wallabies bounding for the marshy ground further inland, and plump grey wombats waddling through the heath searching for roots and leaves. Even for a habitué of drawing rooms, it was difficult to avoid nature in these parts.

  From the top of the dune, she gazed out across an expanse of flat country to a string of shallow lakes in the south. It was all so flat and dreary that come winter, the entire area would become a swamp. While to the north, the land stretched away in a series of scrub- and grass-covered hummocks, with a small peak rising in the distance. However, even before she looked northwards, the rumble of hooves and wheels alerted her to the approach of a bullock dray from that direction, as it followed the track through the sand hills. Its driver walked beside a team of twelve bullocks. A black and white dog dodged in and out of the animals’ legs, nipping at their heels, while a riderless horse plodded along behind.

  Bullock drays were a common sight in the port of Robe as they queued to load their cargo onto the steamers and cutters that plied the coastal route, so she did not pay it much heed. But the children were distracted from their search for gull eggs. They watched the approach of the dray, the driver cracking his whip above his head once when the animals appeared to stall.

  ‘It’s Mr Thomas,’ said Alice.

  ‘Who is Mr Thomas?’

  ‘He plies the bullock route from Victoria.’

  ‘That is a long way indeed,’ said Violet, who had begged some maps of the local territory from the children’s father for their geography lessons.

  ‘Mama says he has a sheep station near the Grampians, but he’ll be lucky to keep it if he doesn’t make some improvements soon. She says he is quite genteel for a dirty, rough bullocky.’

  Violet suspected that Mrs Wallace had said no such thing in her daughter’s hearing. The children’s mother was nothing if not a paragon of propriety. ‘It isn’t ladylike to listen in on another person’s conversation,’ she reprimanded dutifully, although privately she had found that listening at doors was the only way to discover anything useful.

  ‘I like him. He tells funny stories,’ shouted James, above the racket. The bullock dray was almost upon them now, the combined noise of hooves, wheels, whip and wind drowning out their voices. She could just make out the details of its driver who was almost dwarfed by his bullocks: lean and average height, with a tanned face and thick moustache. A cabbage tree hat rested on the back of his head and he wore a brown twill shirt and moleskin trousers.

  ‘Does Mr Thomas have a Mrs Thomas?’ she asked, glancing speculatively at the approaching dray.

  ‘I do not think so,’ said Alice. ‘He has probably never met a lady as pretty as you, Miss Hartley.’

  Mr Thomas did not appear to have noticed their presence as yet. All his concentration was reserved for the uneven track and the great beasts hauling the dray. But Violet had her ways of attracting notice when she deemed it opportune, and now seemed the perfect moment to become acquainted with the almost genteel bullocky with some means and no wife. Through no fault of her own she was marooned in Robetown for the foreseeable future so any promising introduction was worth pursuing. Alice thought her pretty, but Violet was pragmatic enough to realise that any prettiness she possessed would fade soon enough. Already she was at risk of that dreaded epithet bestowed upon every woman above five and twenty years, and unlike her peers she did not have a mama to arrange matters for her, nor a papa to provide even the most modest of incomes. She must depend upon her native wit to secure her future. Love, she had recently discovered, would not procure even a new pair of gloves.

  ‘Quick, children, run!’ she shouted above the sound of gusting wind. ‘There’s a snake in the grass!’

  With a squeal, Alice set off at a run through the heath down the dune, but James hesitated, stick in hand, as if he might investigate. Grabbing his hand, she did not give him a chance, propelling him down the slope, her hooped petticoat bouncing about her legs as she ran. She gave him a little push and flung her body forward to land delicately in the dunes.

  ‘Woo there, Bruiser! Woo there, Taffy!’ shouted a voice not very far away.

  She lay where she landed, waiting until the racket of bullock and dray dulled to a snorting shuffle before raising herself upon one elbow and letting her wide pagoda sleeve float back to expose the delicate bones of her wrist. With a toss of her head, she shook her bonnet so that it fell to her shoulders, revealing disordered blonde locks framing a heart-shaped face, and adding honey-toned highlights to her creamy skin. She opened her eyes to their widest – she had once been told that her eyes were the exact hue of aquamarines – and bit her lips to rosy plumpness. Lying on her side, with her waist curved to its tiniest, her view through the low vegetation showed that the bullocks were taking the opportunity to rest, sinking to the ground with their legs folded beneath them. Of the driver there was no sign.

  ‘Are you all right, Miss Hartley?’ Alice called from the safety of the track.

  ‘I believe so. Don’t move, children. Take care for the snake.’

  She heard a rustle and looked up to find a pair of solid legs planted in the sand beside her. The bullocky was certainly fast on his feet, sprinting to her side so quickly that she did not see him coming. She looked up to find him gazing at her in concern. He seemed taller from this angle, his trousers slung low on his hips and held up by a belt of plaited leather. He bent towards her, extending a hand sprinkled with dark hair, his eyes disturbingly black.

  ‘Thank you.’ She clasped the hand in her free one and allowed him to pull her to her feet.

  ‘Can you walk?’ he asked with a slight Welsh lilt, examining her boots rather than her face, a unique occurrence in Violet’s experience. Usually a man was drawn to her ‘swanlike neck’ or ‘fine eyes’.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She took a tentative step and winced. ‘I may have twisted my ankle. I was in too much haste getting the children away from the snake.’

  ‘What kind of snake was it, Miss Hartley?’ called James, who was fascinated by anything clawed or fanged.

  ‘A brown one,’ she said. Surely snakes came in brown.

  ‘Good thing you ran then. The brown’s a bad-tempered blighter.’ The bullocky grimaced, revealing a surprisingly good set of teeth. ‘Deadly too.’

  She was about to extend the conversation into a discussion on the nature of the Australian snake, which she felt certain must be of interest to a man of his profession, but she realised that he was no longer looking at her boots or her face. Indeed, he had taken to stomping about in a very peculiar fashion.

  ‘What on earth are you doing Mr…?’

  ‘Thomas. Lewis Thomas,’ he muttered, eyes to the ground. Strangely, he did not appear to have noticed her honey-blonde tresses either. ‘I’m ensuring the damned snake does not show its face again.’

  ‘Violet Hartley. The Wallace children’s governess.’

  He ceased his pacing to take her hand. ‘I’d heard Mrs Wallace was advertising in the London papers. The colonies not good enough for her?’

  ‘I expect it was a matter of quantity rather than quality.’

  For the first time he looked her in the eye with a curious glance. ‘Robetown is something of a backwater for
a Londoner.’

  ‘Well, a lady must eat. And there are other necessities.’ She replaced her bonnet upon her head, tying the long silk ribbons with a flourish.

  ‘Of course, what lady can survive without her bonnets?’ he laughed. ‘But this is a harsh land for a woman alone.’

  ‘Every land is harsh for a woman alone. But one does one’s best.’

  ‘Miss Hartley is teaching us French,’ announced Alice. ‘Parlez-vous Français, Monsieur Thomas?’

  ‘Very nicely done, chérie. Your vowels were quite French,’ Violet complimented her pupil.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ James called from the track, suddenly remembering his stomach, now that their expedition had been interrupted.

  ‘We might have to put you up on the dray then. Since Miss Hartley cannot walk far on that ankle. If you don’t mind riding along with the wool,’ Thomas said to the boy.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  Alice looked as if she might be about to say that she did indeed mind riding with a load of smelly wool, but Violet forestalled her. ‘Thank you, Mr Thomas. Alice is such a kind girl, I’m sure she won’t mind.’

  Thomas supported her as she limped towards the dray where the bullocks waited patiently. He gave a leg-up to James, who clambered happily onto the single row of bales at the front of the dray. Behind him, the load tottered three bales high. Then he placed his hands at Alice’s waist and lifted her, light as a kitten, next to the boy. Once the children were settled, he looked at Violet with a lift of one thick dark brow. ‘Miss Hartley?’

  ‘My ankle,’ she shrugged, with an apologetic smile.

  ‘Those petticoats aren’t made for climbing either, I’ll wager.’ The solid feel of his hands upon her waist was all too brief as he swung her onto the bales. ‘All settled?’

  When the children answered in the affirmative he took up his whip once more, waving it in a signal to the bullocks. ‘Get up there, Bruiser! Get up there, Taffy!’ he shouted to the lead pair. Once all twelve bullocks had risen to their feet he commanded them to walk forward. The dog took this as its cue to resume the job of harrying the rear animals.

  ‘I didn’t see any snake,’ Alice informed Violet as the team set off at a lumbering pace towards Robetown.

  ‘That’s the thing about a snake in the grass, Alice. It’s usually too late once you see it coming.’

  4

  As the bullock dray rumbled past the ramshackle White Horse Cellar, Violet settled herself to enjoy the view from her perch upon the hay bales. Reputedly, the proprietor of that establishment wore earrings, although she was yet to have the pleasure of his acquaintance. Nor had she met his sister, who was renowned throughout the district for her baked fish. They proceeded up Victoria Street, passing scattered stores and dwellings. Some were sturdy edifices built of the local limestone with proper iron roofs. Others were low-ceilinged hovels, slapped together with slabs of bark for walls, stringybark shingles and calico ceilings. Robetown was so far from the ordered streets of Piccadilly that sometimes Violet felt she had descended into a kind of Danté-ish purgatory from which only the purest of souls would emerge unscathed. And that would not be her, she warranted.

  The children squabbled contentedly as they drew closer to home while Violet amused herself studying the figure of the bullocky as he flicked the tip of his lash in the air to coax a bullock to order. She pictured him garbed in a green cutaway jacket that would draw attention to his broad shoulders, and a crimson satin cravat to enhance his complexion. He wouldn’t look out of place in Lady Palmerston’s drawing room. She might have enjoyed engaging in a light flirtation if several tons of animal had not interposed. But perhaps it would be safer not to distract him.

  ‘Why do you drive bullocks rather than horses, Mr Thomas?’ called James, who had no such compunction. He was examining the animals closely as they rode upon the dray.

  The bullocky answered companionably as he strode alongside, ‘For one thing, they are cheaper than horse.’

  ‘My father could give you a good price on some horse. He breeds them, you know.’

  ‘I do know that. Thank you, James. You are as shrewd as your father, I see,’ he answered in the manner of one man of business to another.

  ‘Papa is teaching me.’

  Alice had been giving the matter some thought of her own. ‘A team of horse would be more handsome,’ she said.

  ‘Not to another bullock,’ said Violet, and Alice giggled.

  ‘Horses are sensitive creatures,’ explained Thomas. ‘A single working horse may be faster and stronger than a single bullock, but a team of bullocks is steadier. A team of horses cannot go where a team of bullocks will go, for the bullock has cleft hooves so he does not become bogged. He can handle a flooded river, a treacherous hill or a sea of mud. His feed is cheap, he does not require shoes, and he will not turn up his nose at a home-made yoke.’

  ‘Sturdy, inexpensive and utilitarian, not unlike serviceable cloth,’ said Violet, who much preferred silk.

  ‘Much like their master!’ laughed Thomas, with a friendly slap on the rump for one recalcitrant beast. The man was not as full of himself as some with less to recommend them.

  A half-hour later they came to the Royal Circle where tomorrow the bullockies would queue their teams, while waiting to load their wool onto the Burra Burra. Here the dunes were low enough to give a view over the tussocked grasses to the beach, the jetty and the long sweep of the bay. Close to shore stood Mr Ormerod’s wool store, and beyond it lay the government jetty, where a most curious event was occurring.

  ‘Woo there, Bruiser! Woo there, Taffy!’ Thomas called once more, and the team came to a lumbering halt near to the water’s edge. He called the dog to heel and wandered back to stand alongside his passengers, whip held loosely in his hand.

  ‘Now there’s a sight I never expected to see,’ he said, as they all stared out towards the jetty.

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Can we run down to the jetty?’ asked James.

  ‘Certainly not!’ said Violet.

  The Burra Burra was docked at the furthest reach of the jetty, where the water was deeper. Its passengers were in the midst of disembarking. Dressed for the most part in wide blue trousers and loose tunics, they trotted in single file along the narrow pier to shore. Most wore shallow, conical hats, and balanced poles with baskets at either end upon their shoulders. From Violet’s vantage point on the shore, they looked to be fine-boned and slight of stature with swarthy complexions, very different from the usual run of pale Irish, Scottish and English immigrants arriving on these shores. And nothing like the Germans. Perhaps the strangest thing about them was that they all bore a single plait hanging down their backs almost to their waists.

  They could have been a party of oddly dressed young women, but even from this distance she could tell that they were men. There was something about the breadth of their shoulders and the narrowness of their hips that spoke of that sex. Despite the loose garments, Violet knew a man when she saw one, even one as alien as these pigtailed fellows.

  ‘Looks like the Celestials are taking a shortcut,’ Thomas observed.

  ‘But it must be hundreds of miles to the goldfields from here. Why would they trek so far when they could sail on to Port Phillip?’

  ‘Since the Victorian government imposed a ten-pound tax on all Chinamen arriving in Port Phillip they’ve been landing in Adelaide and walking to Ballarat. Robe is considerably closer.’

  He gazed at the rickety jetty where the long line of men traipsed towards them, carrying their worldly goods upon their shoulders. ‘There’s talk of them dropping like flies along the route, poor blighters. Can’t find water in the dry. Can’t find the route in the wet.’

  The novelty of the event was too much for James, who had wriggled towards the edge of his bale and leapt to the ground while Violet’s attention was focused on her conversation with the bullocky. Already he was scampering towards the first of the blue-clad men who was even now gaining
the shore.

  ‘James, come back here!’ she shouted to the heedless boy.

  She slid to the ground and was about to take a step before Alice hissed, ‘But Miss Hartley… your ankle!’

  ‘Of course, my ankle.’ She threw the child a grateful glance.

  ‘I’ll retrieve the boy,’ said Thomas, setting off at an easy lope to collar James before he could reach the approaching Chinamen.

  ‘That was nicely done, chérie. I thank you,’ she whispered while the bullocky was out of their hearing. It seemed that she and Alice were to be friends.

  ‘Your ankle must be very painful.’ Alice regarded her with a question in her eyes.

  ‘I expect it must. A lady must have a few tricks up her sleeve, even one as pretty as you,’ Violet answered her silent question.

  By the time Thomas returned with James, to deposit him upon the bales once more, Alice was still beaming.

  ‘You may sit between Alice and me for the remainder of the journey,’ Violet told James, determined to keep him in place this time.

  ‘You should consider yourself lucky to sit between two such beautiful ladies,’ said Thomas.

  Violet acknowledged the compliment with a gracious nod. ‘Speaking of luck, I expect those men will need someone to guide them to the goldfields.’

  ‘I expect they will.’

  ‘Will you be heading that way upon your return?’ She could not resist a smile at his good fortune. She could do the arithmetic as well as anyone when required, and there looked to be a hundred men trotting along that jetty. She wondered how much each would be willing to pay to reach his El Dorado.

  ‘Where there is one gold digger, there are bound to be more.’ He raised a speculative eyebrow at the trail of men snaking along the jetty.

  ‘What’s a gold digger?’ asked James, gazing from one adult to the other.

  ‘It’s someone looking to make his fortune,’ she said. ‘Someone following his destiny.’

  Someone willing to do whatever he must to get what he desired. And that would be anyone who wished to better his lot. Including a blue-trousered Celestial braving a strange new land far from the Middle Flowery Kingdom.