THE CLAIM
A short story of 8000 words
© David Lowe, January 1992
Katherine Lacey's feet ached as she trudged along the muddy coastal road, pulling the unwilling pack horse behind her. Ahead, her husband Jack pushed a wheelbarrow. It contained all that the horse could not carry, and was heavy. He swore under his breath as the wheel stuck again in the rut left by a bullock dray earlier in the day. Atop his load a three year-old boy with straw coloured hair peeked out from beneath his father's dripping wide-brimmed hat. Katherine smiled at her child wearily. The little boy giggled before pulling the borrowed hat low over his eyes.
Rain fell softly all around. Gradually dairy farms were replaced by leafy forest. As they climbed, the clouds pushed down oppressively. Unfamiliar bird calls mingled with the distant sounds of civilization coming from the town clinging to the coast below. The woman smelled eucalyptus, sweat and soil as her shoes squelched along the road.
Katherine's hair dripped into her eyes. For the third time she slipped in the mud, hurting her knee. She clenched her teeth in pain. Another shoe broken. Without calling out, the young woman quietly got up again, tugged the horse back into motion and kept walking. Her long skirts stuck clammily to her legs. She had long since given up trying to keep them out of the mud.
Jack plodded on in front, head bowed in the rain. She did not disturb him. He had enough on his mind.
It was 1878 in the far south of the colony, and winter was coming.
The steamer ride from Sydney had been rough. No-one had said goodbye at the Quay, and there was nobody to greet them at the sea wharf of the southern fishing town. After the boat was moored, the child, Alex, got away from them. Katherine's heart almost stopped when she saw the boy skipping down the yawing gangplank. Somehow he reached the other side safely, and grinned back at her as if he had been to sea a thousand times. In fact it was the first time he and his mother had ever gone beyond the city.
After the steamer tickets there was less of their savings left than the family had expected. They could afford only one horse. At the end of the wharf Jack asked a fisherman about the gold. The man had simply pointed up into the grey cloud sweeping down from the hills.
Katherine trudged after her husband along the lonely track. Suddenly the rain stopped. For a moment there was a break in the clouds.
A mountain was framed by blue sky.
'Is that it?' Katherine asked. For a moment she forgot her pain, surprised by the primal beauty of the crooked peak.
'Bound to be,' he turned and smiled, suppressing a cough. 'Bound to be.'
The little family stood and watched the spectacle until the clouds closed back in.
In the afternoon a roughly hewn slab building approached on the left. 'Syd's General Store' was burnt into the wood over the door. Jack put down the wheelbarrow. Katherine tied the horse to the rail. She picked up Alex and followed her husband inside.
A filthy little man with a hunched back pushed past her at the door, bumping Katherine roughly. He was clutching a bottle and muttered apologies over his shoulder.
The shop was crammed with goods - every piece of mining apparatus from picks to cradles was on sale, neatly stacked. Elsewhere in the shop confusion reigned; pork and currants jostled with round cakes of soap and East India pickles, saddles and frocks were piled upon veils and shovels - ribbons and tallow candles were heaped indiscriminately together.
Jack asked about the track to the diggings. The store-keeper wiped his nose and looked down at the younger man's hands, blistered from the wheelbarrow.
'Off to try your luck then mate?' he asked with a wry smile. Suddenly he noticed the woman. Broken shoes.
'Looking for anythin' special ma'am?'
Katherine turned with a start. 'No. No thank you,' she gestured at Jack. 'We are together.'
As the store-keeper explained the route to the diggings to her husband, Katherine looked longingly at a pair of sturdy shoes. There was not enough money. From her arms, Alex reached for a jar of boiled sweets.
Her parents had said she must not go. Certainly not with the child. But she and Jack had been parted for too long for her to remain in the city this time. In the days before they left her parents did not speak to her. Goodbye was her mother crying at the second floor window of the house before drawing the curtain.
She knew it would be hard on the field, but Katherine was sure she had made the right decision. Jobs in the city were becoming scarce, and despite the pain, and the wet, she was glad she had come. Certainly her little son seemed happier than he had been for months.
Jack bought a small bag of sweets for the boy and thanked the store-keeper for his help.
A short way down the road, the turn-off to the diggings appeared. The mountain loomed huge above them. Katherine shivered in the cold and crossed her arms. The tip of the peak was cloaked in mist.
They turned off the main road and up the track. The sun dropped behind the mountain. Indistinct shadows grew.
The little family began to climb.
Most of the traffic was coming the other way. Men of all sizes; invariably bearded, lugging shapeless swags - their feet bare and their clothes dyed with clay. The miners' eyes were bloodshot and set deep in tired, wrinkled faces. Many were stooped and grey from hours underground.
Their reactions to Katherine varied. Some doffed saggy hats and managed a smile or a word of greeting. Others pointed and stared, whispering 'It's a woman!' to their mates.
The track was steep, and Katherine was too tired to be offended by their rudeness. She tightened the strap of her bonnet and dragged the complaining horse upward.
With a shock she saw a six foot lizard striped with gold near the track. It looked at them languidly before slipping out of view.
The bush grew thicker, greener. Vines met over the track and a deep bed of rotting leaves covered the ground of the dark forest. A sound of running water. Tree ferns.
At the waterfall they stopped and rested. Jack knelt down by the side of a roughly built bridge laid over the stream. Katherine fondly watched him drink.
They had met when she was 20 years old, and he 25. He had been working then as a clerk for a wool-broking firm. They were married within the month.
The wedding ring had been cheap. When he heard about the new rush in Queensland, Jack promised he would replace it with something better. The next day he caught a boat to the tropics.
While he was away, Katherine grew large and gave birth to Alexander. Her parents looked after them grudgingly. They told her that her husband would never return, that she would spend her life in shame. Although he never wrote from Queensland, Katherine knew better.
She didn't see him for two and a half years. When he got off the boat he looked much older. Alex did not recognise his father from the photographs his mother had shown him, but laughed when the man picked him up and spun him round before embracing them both warmly.
Later, Jack had asked Katherine to close her eyes. Something cool slid on to her finger. The ring was gold, beautiful and simply made. Jack smiled. Katherine kissed him on chapped lips.
All the gold he'd salvaged after boat fares and living expenses she wore on her finger.
Jack finished drinking from the stream. With a tin pannikin, he took some water to the child.
'Wet,' said Alexander.
'That's right lad,' Jack coughed into his handkerchief. 'It is wet. That's why we're here.'
He turned to his wife, eyes shining. 'Water, Kath. That's what'll make the difference this time.'
For the hundredth time she listened patiently as he continued.
'No more God-forsaken, dusty deserts. No more empty rivers. No more flies and dry blowing. Here you can let the water do the work.' Jack had another drink and looked out over the darkening valley.
'They say a bloke can work his claim in this place without forever looking over his shoulder in case some accursed black is about to spear him. This is the country for gold. Not like that Palmer hellhole.'
Katherine spoke. 'Do you mean there are no natives left... on the mountain?'
'That's what the papers reckon. All wiped out by disease, so they say. Poor hopeless savages.'
'Look!' Katherine pointed excitedly at a round spiky creature waddling across the path.
'Porkypine,' pronounced the child.
'Well I'll be.'
They watched the animal sniff the air with its long snout. Suddenly it ran off into the undergrowth, scared by a noise behind them. They looked around.
A line of Chinese miners were approaching. There were ten of them, walking in single file. Conical hats covered the men's eyes. Their feet were in sandals. Over their shoulders swung long poles supporting heavy swags at each end. The leader of the band stopped and bowed when they reached the bridge. Katherine looked to her husband. His face was stony. Silently the Chinese set off again and filed past them up the hill. Katherine noticed the men were not panting.
Her husband watched them disappear round the next bend, glaring after them. 'Some things never bloody change,' he muttered under his breath.
The horse had a drink and the family were on their way once more.
Giant mossy granite boulders lined the path. It grew darker. Several times Jack stopped to catch his breath or cough. Katherine's lungs hurt from the climb. Nestled snugly inside blankets atop the wheelbarrow, Alexander fell asleep.
The track began to flatten out. Sounds of men laughing and drinking in the distance. A final turn.
They had arrived.
Canvas tents of all colours dotted the flat. Here and there a lop-sided log hut stood amid the mud. Pungent smoke filled the air, and miners sang raucously around campfires. Beyond the main area Katherine saw the neat rows of Chinese tents. She could glimpse the red of the sunset through gaping holes in the forest. In the distance - mounds of earth like anthills. Strange machines and sluices wallowed in the murky creek. Above the diggings, the creek tumbled down a steep hill out of the bush. In the last of the light the mountain peak leaned over the whole scene like a snake about to strike.
Chatter died down nearby as men noticed the new arrivals. At the entrance to the diggings stood a large, spotlessly white tent. A policeman stood at the door-flap, a sash across his chest. Above him, a square of printed fabric was pinned to the canvas. 'Moon Creek Diggings,' it proclaimed. 'Gold Commissioner's Tent. Licences Sold.'
Jack started towards the tent as his wife lifted their sleeping child into her arms. She tried not to notice the staring eyes of the miners.
The policeman blocked the way into the tent with his rifle. 'Come back tomorrow,' he said brusquely, looking straight ahead. 'The commissioner will see you at 8 o'clock.'
Looking for a place to camp, Katherine soon learned that you had to be careful where you walked. Everywhere there were holes in the ground, many only partially filled in.
The Laceys staked their tent by candle light in the only flat space left, near the edge of the encroaching bush. Too tired to eat, they fell asleep with their child between them.
In the night Katherine was woken by gunfire. She shook her husband awake violently.
He calmed her down. 'Don't worry about it,' he leaned back in his pillow. 'The miners did that every night in Queensland to scare men away from their claims.'
Soon her husband fell asleep again. He snored softly.
Katherine remained sitting up, listening to the strange sounds of the bush intently. She jumped as an owl-like creature called near the tent. Outside, miners talked and gambled into the night. Their shadows moved like ghosts on the wall of the tent, lit by firelight.
Katherine's mind drifted among memories.
When Jack returned from the failed North Queensland rush, he'd gone back to the wool firm in the city. For a while they had been happy. Her husband got to know his son, and with some help from her parents the little family moved into a place of their own.
But as Jack recovered from a bout of dysentery he'd caught up north he began to grow restless. When news came of the Moon Creek gold find there was no stopping him. They had to go. All of them this time.
Her husband studied the fine print about the progress of the diggings closely. A 'small, late find', but one of 'undoubted potential' he read from the paper by lamplight. Katherine learned that the creek flowed down a mountain of the same name. It had been named by an English navigator more than one hundred years before; the man keeping the night watch had seen the moon set behind the peak on the horizon, silhouetting its distinctive crooked shape.
'A good omen,' Jack had said.
And now they were here. It scarcely seemed possible.
Katherine lay back on her bumpy bed of folded clothes and fell asleep.
The next day the clouds were gone. Soon after dawn the tent city was empty as men hurried off to their claims. Katherine noticed rusting railway tracks running out of dark holes in the hillside nearby. Relics of earlier mining attempts.
The little family breakfasted on cold damper from the day before.
At 8 o'clock Jack set off to the commissioner's tent to take out a licence. This time there were two troopers at the door, brass buttons and peaked hats glinting in the bright light. They let him inside.
The commissioner was a burly man with an oiled moustache. His cheeks were red from drink, and he sat behind a large cedar desk which seemed oddly out of place in the tent. 'Yes?' he barked, sizing up the skinny man who stood before him, hat in hand.
'I've come for a licence sir.'
Jack Lacey filled out the paperwork and paid over most of the rest of their savings for the piece of paper. He turned to go.
'Lacey.'
Jack froze.
'I hear you've got a young wife with you.'
'Yes sir. I have,' answered Jack.
'Be sure to take care of her, son. The Creek's no place for a woman.'
'Yes sir. Thank you for your concern.'
The commissioner waited for him to leave before drinking from a whisky bottle.
Jack pegged out his claim beyond the creek, eight feet by eight, and began work.
The first day he took the boy with him, and Katherine felt a sudden desire to explore the mountain. She set off in the opposite direction from the diggings, towards the peak.
Soon the sounds of men and mining were left behind.
Although a path had not been cleared through the undergrowth, Katherine walked freely through the fallen bark and coarse grass. For the first time she noticed the beauty of the place. A brilliant blue dragonfly circled her and was gone. The forest hummed with life, and though the undergrowth pressed in close around her, she did not tear her dress or snag on the thorny bushes. Suddenly a lyrebird darted out in front of her, feathers raised, before disappearing. The spiralled bark of a giant trunk drew her gaze upward to the graceful crown swaying in the wind above. Another striped lizard was basking on the trunk near the top. Katherine walked deeper into the forest. It was not as dense as the dank jungle they had walked through on the first day, and though she was now quite a way from the diggings she felt completely safe. The big trees were evenly spaced. They had not yet tasted the blades of axes or saws, and seemed very old. Katherine had a sudden desire to know their names.
A massive, fallen black trunk blocked her way. Bushfire and termites had made the wood brittle. It crumbled off in her hand. Katherine stepped under the trunk and found herself in a circular clearing. The sunlight was warm and made her drowsy. She took off her shoes and then her bonnet. Her long black hair floated free in the breeze.
Katherine lay down on her shawl and slept.
When she woke the sun was low and she was shivering. A dark brown face watched her from the side of the clearing. Katherine sat up with a start. It was a woman of about her own age. The girl was naked but for a string of thong around her hips. Katherine blinked. The girl vanished silently back into the bush.
Feeling a tinge of fear, Katherine put her shoes and bonnet back on and left the clearing.
As she walked, she tried not to panic.
After what seemed like only a few paces Katherine was looking down at the diggings below. It grew dark as she scrambled down the hillside.
At the bottom Katherine looked up. The gold commissioner was leaning against a tree, watching her as he smoked his pipe.
'Evening Mrs Lacey.'
She dropped her eyes. 'Good evening sir.'
'Now you should know it's not safe for a pretty girl to be all alone up in the scrub so late. Hm?'
'No sir,' She turned to go. 'If you'll excuse me.'
The man's eyes ran over Katherine's rumpled clothes as she hurried back to the tent.
Luckily Jack was working late. She had made the fire and was cooking tea by the time he arrived home with the boy.
Katherine said nothing about what had happened, that night or the next. She felt she did not have the words to explain, and sensed that Jack would only reprimand her for leaving the diggings anyway.
She distracted herself by digging overflow gutters around the tent and doing what she could with the interior. As their money trickled away, Katherine improvised with what was available; a block of wood on a box served as a table, a packing case became a chair. Their bed was a hammock stretcher made of an opened-up flour bag nailed to sturdy logs.
One day she scrounged an old mirror from somewhere, and was shocked to see her reflection; her face had become tanned, and her hair was wild. Katherine spent the afternoon brushing it until it shone.
After a month their food supplies were running low. It was too far to the shop at the bottom of the mountain, but she had heard there was a shanty store somewhere at the diggings and she set off to investigate.
Dragging Alex behind her, Katherine walked past disused diggings to the open square. A wounded miner called out to her from his tent deliriously, using another woman's name. Another crawled from his humpy as she walked past, smelling of liquor and rubbing sleep from surprised eyes. Katherine determinedly looked at the ground and pulled her son's arm as he protested.
It wasn't hard to find the store - there was a smell of rotting flesh from the ditch out the back. Inside it wasn't much better. The meat was fly-blown and bad.
Until recently the shop-keeper, Reynolds, had been a digger, but he'd soon found his new role to be more lucrative.
Reynolds wiped his hands on a filthy apron as he sidled up to the woman. Alex hid behind his mother's skirts.
'What'd yer like, Miss?' The man was short and bald.
'It's Mrs. Mrs Lacey.' She breathed through her mouth to avoid the smell. 'Do you have any vegetables?'
The man snorted humorously. 'Sorry Missus. Not much call for vegetables in these parts. How 'bout a nice chop?'
Katherine looked at the maggots crawling on the meat and retched. She walked out of the store without speaking. Reynolds looked after her frowning in surprise.
Katherine breathed in fresh air and looked around the makeshift square. Nowhere else selling food. Unless...
She stepped into the Chinese grocery. Curious eyes watched from the camp.
Unusual spicy smells filled the lean-to shop. Strange letters were painted on the walls. Immediately she noticed fresh fruit and vegetables piled high in colourful trays.
The pig-tailed man behind the counter bowed and smiled anxiously.
Katherine pointed to the carrots and potatoes.
The man looked confused. 'You want?' he asked.
'Yes please. A pound of each.'
With sign language she explained, and added mutton and flour to the pile.
'I grow. Out back.'
The man beamed and gestured towards neat rows of plants behind his shack as he packed the vegetables in an old crate.
Katherine paid with the last of the coins from her purse. The child pulled a face at the Chinaman. She apologised and began to drag Alexander away by the arm, embarrassed. The man bowed again from behind the counter as they left.
The gold commissioner stood outside.
'Morning Mrs Lacey.' He smiled gold fillings at her and handed her a wilting flower.
Katherine accepted it in surprise. 'Good morning sir.'
'Any problems...settling in?'
'No. None. Thank you.' Katherine started to walk past him.
The big man put his hand on her arm. 'Let me give you a word of advice. Stay away from those thieving yellow buggers.'
Katherine drew her arm away. 'Thank you Commissioner.'
That night Jack had good news as they ate by lamplight. 'There's not much surface gold, but I've hit wash-dirt,' he explained excitedly. 'The colour's bound to come.'
Katherine smiled gently. She did not tell him where she had bought the food.
As time went on, Jack's luck with the claim began to improve, and he took to sleeping there at night to guard the gold. His cough became worse. Katherine pleaded with him to see a doctor, but he assured her it was nothing.
Fragments of yellow metal and precious dust now paid for their groceries.
Katherine did not look up at the mountain.
She settled into a daily routine of cooking, cleaning and sewing. Sometimes Alexander helped her. More often than not the child went out to the claim with his father in the mornings.
Katherine grew accustomed to a life without women, and to the stares of men. Her ring meant nothing to the miners, but she projected a cool exterior, and learned to ignore the advances and innuendos. Meanwhile Jack grew away from her. When he spoke it was only of gold, and he seemed always tired, always pale. She missed him holding her in his arms.
More than once she wept, alone. But the work was hard and never-ending. She took out her frustrations on her husband's clothes, scrubbing them until her muscles ached. Still they were never clean. Slowly, Katherine settled into the lonely life of a digger's wife. She grew to accept the endless drudgery and the daily gamble of the claim, but no matter how she tried, Katherine could never get used to the gunfire at night. When the blasts came she took her son from his cot and clutched him tight to her breast until they stopped.
Apart from meals she saw her husband only on Sundays, and then he usually spent most of the day asleep, exhausted.
When summer came Alexander was still too young to go down the mountain to the village school. On the days he did not follow his father to the claim he spent his time toying with beetles and playing hide and seek with imaginary companions in the forest. Katherine felt the boy growing away from her.
One afternoon, near dusk, she heard the sounds of a crowd gathering in the square. Jack was not yet home, and Katherine left the tent to see what was happening.
In the centre of the ring of faces stood a large, round woman dressed in a man's dinner suit which strained around her girth. Strangely, her face was narrow and drawn. For a while she ranted incomprehensibly at the crowd. Men laughed and jeered. Someone played a jig on a fiddle as the middle-aged woman began to undress. Katherine noticed she wore five rings on each hand.
The woman's eyes were blank with madness. Her mouth was a gashed sneer.
As though it were a practised performance, she took off her coat and spun it round her finger before letting it fall to the ground. Beneath the black coat she wore another - this one was blue. Next she stepped out of the trousers, which were too long for her. A blue pair matching the second coat were underneath.
Someone threw a coin into the ring. The woman spoke, voice hoarse but loud as a ringmaster, 'That's right lad, throw Lucky Sal a coin for her troubles. Five of everything ladies and gentlemen, five of everything, and what have I to show...'
Now she stripped off the expensively tailored blue coat and pants. A tweed suit lay beneath. It was clear now that under all the clothes the woman was little but skin and bone. The performance continued as the men roared for more, cursing and laughing like schoolboys.
Katherine noticed an elderly miner turn and walk away from the scene sadly. She ran after him and asked about the woman.
'Lucky Sal?' said the man in a rasping voice. He spat and shook his grey head. 'You don't want to know missus.'
She begged him to tell her who the woman was.
The man explained that years ago Sal's husband had come to the mountain looking for gold. At the beginning everyone had thought he was crazy, but when he found a giant nugget on Mt Moon the rush began.
'Mick bought five rings for each of Sal's hands, five of the best of everything for 'imself and his missus. Still there were a fortune left. The fool had four gold horseshoes knocked up for his old nag. He jammed the fifth in his belt, and rode into town to celebrate.'
The old miner smiled wistfully at the thought of so much gold. He told Katherine that Sal's husband had never returned. It was thought that the man had been murdered for his gold, and his wife had never recovered her wits.
'They say she lives in a shack up in the scrub now,' he gestured up the hill.
Suddenly mounted troopers rode up and scattered the crowd. The woman had stripped down to her petticoat. Five expensive suits of clothes lay in the mud. She raged at the policemen as they leapt off their horses and grabbed her. Somehow she got away, and fled through the tents and into the bush as they crashed after her.
Katherine turned back to the old man, but he was walking away. The crowd began to disperse, grumbling.
At her tent a red-headed man with a long beard and a fossicking knife in his belt was waiting.
'Mrs Lacey?' he asked hopefully.
'Yes.'
'Pleased to meet you. I'm O'Reilly. Commissioner said where to find you. I 'spect your husband's told you about me.'
'No, I don't think so Mr O'Reilly.'
Just then Jack returned from the diggings, trundling his wheelbarrow. The child Alexander walked beside him.
When he saw O'Reilly her husband smiled with surprise. He dropped the wheelbarrow and walked over to the man. They shook hands and slapped each other on the back.
'What the devil are you doing here?' Jack asked.
'Oh you know, following the colour. Same as always,' replied O'Reilly.
'Have you met my wife?'
'Yes he has.' said the woman, glaring at her husband.
There was a pause. The man bent to ruffle Alexander's hair. The boy ran round the back of the tent and hid.
Over billy tea, Katherine heard all about about O'Reilly.
Jack had met him during the rush in Queensland. They'd worked a claim together. When Jack left, O'Reilly had stayed on. After the gold petered out he'd drifted down the coast to Sydney. Her parents had told him where they were. It seemed he was intending to stay at Moon Creek for a while.
'Brilliant,' said her husband. 'Now we can double the size of the claim. It'll be just like old times.'
O'Reilly laid out his swag alongside the Laceys' tent.
Over the next few weeks the two men talked endlessly of gold. O'Reilly bought Alexander sweets until they were friends.
The food had to be spread more thinly than ever.
As summer came on the creek began to dry out. The water was needed for drinking, and the work of teasing gold from the ground became harder.
Although the alluvial metal was running out, nuggets had been found closer to the summit. There was talk of bringing in a crushing battery to extract the ore from the rock.
The claim began to fail. Jack sold the horse for a few pounds so his wife could buy food.
Now Katherine saw even less of her husband. He spent every daylight hour in the ground, and sometimes he and O'Reilly worked into the night with lanterns, following the seam, just to find enough to survive.
One day the camp was empty and cicadas hummed in the trees. Inside the tent it was breathlessly hot.
Katherine stepped outside for a moment.
She looked up.
The mountain beckoned like a crooked finger. Katherine laid down her work and stepped into the bush.
The forest leaned over her gracefully. Again a sense of oneness with the place overcame her like a wave. Katherine climbed through the scrub quietly towards the clearing, knowing not what to expect. Blossoms carpeted the ground. Insects buzzed high above.
She ducked beneath the fallen log and stopped. From out of the bush the black girl was silently beside her, eyes and teeth sparkling. Katherine felt overwhelmed by strange, warm emotions. A bewildering happiness. Inside her head a word resonated.
Worondjiri. What did it mean?
The answer came. Women's place.
The girl took her by the hand. Her ebony flanks rippled with muscle as she guided Katherine into the centre of the clearing. The girl did not speak, but began to undress the white woman. Katherine felt as if she was hypnotised, floating delightfully without fear.
Soon she stood in her corset, bloomers and stockings. With an unselfconscious smile the girl indicated she should take them off also. After a pause Katherine complied. She felt as if she was drunk on sunlight, as if her mind had been taken over and bewitched by some other self she had barely known. The last of the garments fell to the ground. For the first time her white skin shone in the sun.
Again, the girl slipped her pale palm into Katherine's. Uphill from the clearing they walked, towards the peak. Katherine's breasts swayed lightly as she walked.
For what seemed like an eternity they climbed towards blue sky, but Katherine did not grow tired. Near the peak, the girl guided her between huge ancient boulders, stained with red. Her feet did not hurt, despite the rocky ground.
A cave waited under the lip of the rock. Sand lay in the entrance, and paintings of ochre covered the walls. The dark- skinned girl stopped on the edge of the darkness and released Katherine's hand gently.
Another unspoken word. Enter.
Without fear, Katherine stepped inside.
The cave was warm and humid. Underfoot the sand was in drifts now. Her bare feet sank down. A sound of running water deeper within. Suddenly she felt herself being picked up by many hands. A sense of whirling through blackness. From a distance her skin tingled sensually. Images of lizards. Scales and flicking tongues. A rush of dizzying pleasure. The whirling stopped. In the darkness she fell asleep.
Katherine woke back in the clearing, naked. The dark girl was not there. Her ring was gone. Feeling defenceless and exposed, she reached for her clothes. They were wet with dew. As she dressed, she looked back up at the craggy mountain, soft in the evening light.
Again the word. Worondjiri.
Katherine lost her way going home. In shock she pulled herself back from a sudden precipice.
There were three men behind her. They smelled of stale sweat and wore muddy shirts. One miner held a knife. Before she could scream, he clamped his hand over her mouth. They picked her up and straddled her across a rock nearby. She kicked out and shook in terror as one of the miners pulled up her skirts and began unbuttoning his trousers. Another slapped her across the face and drew blood. Katherine tried to scream.
'Shut up slut. We know what you're good for,' said one, pulling apart her legs.
Suddenly the ground rumbled. The man holding her legs was plucked up as if by a giant hand and fell screaming over the cliff. The other two looked down at their feet in horror as they walked helplessly back towards the drop. They fell. A sound of bodies breaking on the rocks below.
Katherine sat up in shock. A glimpse of a figure retreating to the shadowy forest. Terrified and confused, she made her way back to the diggings in the twilight.
Alexander was already asleep. The men sat drinking tea, talking intensely and drawing maps with charcoal.
'Jack. I must talk to you,' Katherine's voice trembled. 'Something happened...on the mountain.'
Her husband had not stopped talking as she spoke. Now the men looked up from their conversation, annoyed at the interruption.
Jack spoke. 'Tell me in the morning Kath. This is important.' He looked back down at his diagrams.
The Creek was abuzz with talk of an ore-crushing machine due to arrive the next day. The men were worried that the new company might resume their claims.
Still in shock, Katherine did not listen. She prepared the men's meal like an automaton. Sickened and unable to speak, she went to bed early.
'Women, eh,' they said to each other, grinning male grins.
Jack and O'Reilly talked into the night.
In the morning the gold commissioner arrived to check Jack Lacey's licence. It was in order. He noticed the scratch on the woman's cheek.
'Husband looking after you ma'am?'
'Yes sir,' a quiet voice.
'Nasty accident on the cliffs last night. Three diggers...' The commissioner drew his finger across his throat. 'Don't s'pose you saw anything up in the scrub Mrs Lacey?'
Katherine looked down. Her husband stared at her curiously. Suddenly the commissioner was distracted by a noise outside.
Dogs barked. There was a sound of a whip cracking on flesh. Everyone in the town came out to see what was going on.
Up the track to the diggings approached a strange procession. First there were fancily dressed men on horseback, doffing their hats to the diggers. Then bullocks straining together two by two. Behind them they pulled a mighty block of gleaming steel on an iron-wheeled dray. The device bristled with funnels and levers. On the side of the dray was emblazoned the words 'Southern Cross Mining'. Through the square towards the creek the team drove, as the driver shouted at the team. Bringing up the rear were fresh-faced workers lugging heavy swags. They stopped walking and looked around their new surroundings curiously.
The gold commissioner rushed out to welcome the new arrivals.
All that afternoon the steam-powered battery was manueovred into position.
It turned out that the company didn't intend to extract ore from the creek diggings at all. A track was constructed to the ore-bearing rock above, and over the next few days a flying fox was constructed to ferry rock down from the slopes of the mountain for crushing.
Men had to unharness the bullocks to turn the team around. Finally, with great fanfare, the procession departed again, brakes locked as miners whooped and hitched a free ride back to town.
The water shortage worsened as the crusher workers siphoned off the stream to run the engine. More forest was cut down to feed the machine. Soon a great clanking and banging filled the air from dawn until dusk.
With each impact Katherine felt a stab of pain deep inside. Her sleep was broken and she wondered if she was going insane. She tried to block what had happened on the mountain from her mind, but she could not forget.
The child Alex had become a wild boy, disappearing for hours and coming home only for meals. He was old enough to go to school now, but he refused. Neither Katherine or Jack had the energy to force him.
Each day Jack and O'Reilly came home from work disappointed and deafened by the steam-battery. The claim was running dry.
Within weeks of the crusher's arrival, the red-haired man left as suddenly as he had come. Jack continued to work the claim alone as his health declined.
As time passed, Katherine felt more and more unable to tell him what had happened on the mountain. Her husband was a stranger to her. His eyes looked hunted, and his back was growing bent with the work.
One night he flopped wearily into their tent and threw something white on to the makeshift table as Katherine stirred the pot. 'Look at the prize I found in the pit today,' he said bitterly. 'Better than gold. Probably a bunyip bone knowing my luck.'
Katherine examined the bone. It was part of a human hand.
That night she tossed in her sleep. The dark girl was in her dreams, crying. Mountains crumbled. Men drowned in mud as the earth roared, angrily. Boulders fell like marbles. In the dream Katherine was bleeding and could not speak or stem the flow.
Suddenly she woke from the nightmare. The camp was quiet.
She wrapped a blanket round herself and walked into the moonlight with purpose in her step.
Katherine stood in the square and looked up at the mountain.
'Stop!' she shouted at the sky, 'Stop it!'
Men opened their tents and peered outside. 'You're all going to die,' she yelled at them, voice cracking. 'The mountain will never forgive you!' As if still dreaming, Katherine watched herself scream the words as clouds covered the moon.
A murmur rose from the tents.
'Leave!' she screamed in desperation. 'All of you MUST leave.' Someone laughed uneasily. Another cursed her for waking him.
A hand gripped her shoulder strongly. 'Leave,' she sobbed quietly.
It began to rain.
'Go back to your tent Mrs Lacey,' the commissioner's voice was cold. 'Go back to sleep.'
Heavy drops fell in the dust. A thunderclap. Men scurried back inside as the rain began pelting down.
Katherine nodded at the commissioner silently. She turned back towards her tent. He watched her go, frowning.
She was soaked through by the time she reached the flap. Lightning streaked the sky. A second flash lit the strange figure of Lucky Sal staring after Katherine from the edge of the square.
The drought had broken.
When morning came, the floor of the tent was awash. Alexander huddled like an animal at the foot of their bed.
As Katherine piled their possessions high upon boxes, the previous night seemed far away.
For two days Katherine tended her husband as the storm raged and he coughed up blood. Miners stayed indoors and bailed out their dwellings. Even the steam-crusher was silent.
On the third day the rain stopped.
The creek was in flood. New gold shone in the sluices. Miners shouted in excitement and rushed outside. Jack pulled on his boots and was soon among them. The boy, Alex, ran eagerly after him as the crusher shuddered into action.
At noon Katherine felt the call for the first time in weeks. She tried to ignore it.
Come. The mountain called. Come.
Katherine obeyed.
She climbed through wet bush. Droplets hung on the ends of leaves and shone in the sun. Spider webs glistened.
This time the path of leaves led her not to the clearing, but to the quarry above the crushing machine. A wound gaped in the rock where the diggers had been picking away at the cliff with tools and explosives. Suddenly she noticed the woman from the square, Lucky Sal, carrying dry wood from the shelter at the top of the flying fox and dumping it on a crackling fire.
Far below, the men laboured like ants in their holes.
Katherine watched the woman strain and drag a heavy wooden case over to the fire. She removed the lid, tipped the contents into the flames and ran straight at Katherine.
'Get down!' the woman shouted hoarsely, knocking her to the ground.
The dynamite exploded. In slow motion, the hillside below them quivered and turned to jelly. A tongue of mud began to slide, gathering speed inexorably as it rumbled downward. Boulders became caught up in the saturated clay. Below, men pointed and began to run. They were far too slow.
The landslide struck the crushing machine first. Groaning, it fell on its side. Soon it was covered in mud, and a muffled explosion bubbled up from the machine as it died. Waterlogged clay rolled over the lines of tents and swallowed them hungrily. The earth shook. Katherine closed her eyes as the other woman stood and cheered jubilantly.
At last, silence. Katherine stood up and looked over the edge.
The tent town was no more. Nothing remained. Even the commissioner's tent was gone.
Lucky Sal danced about on the hill-top in the sun.
Katherine's head spun. She fell to the ground, weeping.
'Don't cry for the men, girl,' said the other woman. 'I saw what the bastards tried to do to you that day.'
Worondjiri, whispered the voice in Katherine's head. Women's place.
The peak stared down from above.
There were only two survivors of the disaster.
The gold commissioner had been on top of the mountain surveying the field at the time of the landslide. He had seen the fire, the dynamite, the women on the hill.
Reynolds, the store-keeper, had been in the next valley that day hunting game.
A battalion of police escorted the women from the diggings to the wharf, and then to Sydney. News quickly spread of their horrific crime.
From the docks the women were taken to their cells in a horse-drawn wagon. Townsfolk spat through the bars as the police cart bumped up cobbled streets.
In court neither of the women spoke. Mad Sal shook her head and smiled at the judge in answer to every question.
Katherine, charged as an accomplice to mass murder, was barely there at all. The city made no sense to her anymore, and the court seemed insubstantial and far away. In the distance she heard the bewigged men of the bar speaking a foreign language.
The commissioner, in full uniform, told the shocked court what he had seen from the peak - the explosion, sliding mud, the defendants lying on the ground and cackling like witches.
Reynolds smirked at Katherine as he was brought in. The little man puffed himself up when called to the stand as a character witness.
Both men described Mrs Lacey's prophetic outburst on the night before the disaster. Her failure to care for her husband and child was brought up, and there were hints that she had augmented her husband's dwindling income by performing 'favours' for miners in the scrub.
There were no witnesses for the defence.
Katherine, dressed in prison rags, stared at the floor.
The Crown noted the fact that Mrs Lacey seemed quite unmoved by the awful fate of her husband and child. Her court-appointed counsel entered a plea of temporary insanity, but soon despaired at his mute client's refusal to cooperate and sat down.
Justice Daylesford summed up the case.
He told the jury that there was strong evidence to suggest the women who stood before them had coldly and deliberately plotted the shocking crime.
A jury of men took five minutes to make their decision. Gleefully, the papers spread news of the fate of the 'Black Widows'.
Both women were to be hanged.
As the date approached, Katherine sat silently in her cell in the women's gaol. In thin grey prison clothes she grew round despite the meagre food.
The matrons were called. It was found the woman was pregnant.
The Governor granted her a stay of execution until the child was born.
Six months passed. Katherine sat looking at the floor of her cell, brushing her hair for hours on end, getting up only to eat and use the pot in the corner.
One day she heard the sound of a trapdoor opening outside as Lucky Sal was hanged before the other prisoners in the courtyard.
The birth was difficult, and the matrons showed little compassion. From above Katherine calmly looked down at herself writhing in pain on the hard wooden bunk.
After many hours the child was born. Her skin was black. The matrons suffocated the child with a towel as Katherine lay unconscious.
When she awoke she was told the child had been born dead.
The next day an apologetic-looking man came to weigh the woman for the drop.
The day of the execution arrived. Katherine's long hair was chopped short. She stared at the long strands falling to the floor.
They marched her to the scaffold. Other prisoners looked on in silence.
A priest muttered some words from the Bible. The executioner placed a rope around her neck and tugged it tight.
She fell with a jerk. The knot loosened and unravelled. Katherine fell to the ground gasping for air as the prisoners murmured.
Again the woman was carried up the steps. A new noose was prepared.
The signal was given and the executioner stepped on the release pedal with his foot. This time the trap did not budge. Katherine waited silently, her body tense. The executioner and the priest glanced at each other.
Someone jolted the stuck mechanism back into place as warders quietened the excited crowd.
Another attempt. The trap opened with a clank.
This time the woman fell cleanly.
The rope snapped.
A great cheer went up from the crowd of convicts.
Katherine lay on the ground, struggling for breath.
As the onlookers were taken back to their cells, the clergyman walked briskly over to the Provost Marshall of the gaol and whispered in his ear.
'This is most extraordinary sir. His Excellency the Governor must be informed at once.'
The Governor of the Colony, a superstitious man, was duly informed of the situation by messenger. There was no precedent for the case. He listened to the counsel of his religious advisers.
'The invisible hand of Providence,' said one, excitedly.
'God wishes this woman to be reprieved,' said another.
'A divine pardon from above,' said a third.
The Provost Marshall was duly instructed to take the prisoner to the edge of the city and release her.
Katherine's eyes lifted to the sky, visible through the bars, as the cart bumped along the road.
They left her at the bush on the edge of the city.
Katherine Lacey began to walk. South.
Night and day she walked, down a spine of hills. As she walked her strength grew. The voice in her head told her where to find food and water, how to cross the rivers, how to avoid the settlements. Katherine's hair grew long again.
Finally she stood beneath the mountain with the crooked peak.
Worondjiri, whispered the voice.
A smiling dark brown face waited in the trees at the foot of the mountain.© David Lowe, January 1992