Allen & Unwin’s House of Books aims to bring Australia’s cultural and literary heritage to a broad audience by creating affordable print and ebook editions of the nation’s most significant and enduring writers and their work. The fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry of generations of Australian writers that were published before the advent of ebooks will now be available to new readers, alongside a selection of more recently published books that had fallen out of circulation.

The House of Books is an eloquent collection of Australia’s finest literary achievements.

Katharine Susannah Prichard was born in 1883 in Fiji. Her family moved to Australia in 1886, and she spent her childhood in Melbourne and Launceston.

Prichard worked as a journalist, and travelled to London in 1908, where she was struck by the social inequality. In 1915 her first published novel, The Pioneers, won the Hodder & Stoughton All Empire Novel Competition, which enabled her return to Australia to write ‘about Australia and the realities of life for the Australian people’.

In 1919 she married war veteran Hugo Throssell VC and they moved to Perth, where their son, Ric Throssell, was born in 1922.

Prichard is the author of thirteen novels, among them Working Bullocks (1926), Coonardoo (1929), Haxby’s Circus (1930) and Golden Miles (1948). She was a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia, and remained a member until her death. After her husband’s suicide, she threw herself into political work. She died in 1969, aged eighty-six.

HOUSE of BOOKS

KATHARINE SUSANNAH PRICHARD

Winged Seeds

This edition published by Allen & Unwin House of Books in 2012

First published by the Australasian Publishing Company by arrangement with Jonathan Cape in 1950

Copyright © Katharine Susannah Prichard 1950

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

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83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

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ISBN 978 1 74331 206 3 (pbk)

ISBN 978 1 74269 942 4 (ebook)

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

FOREWORD

IT was on the Larkinville rush, I met the people whose yarns suggested the story of Sally Gough and Dinny Quin told in The Roaring Nineties and Golden Miles. But, as in the first two books, it is not intended that the composite characters in this one should be identified with any actual person, except where historical facts require mention of a well-known name.

Winged Seeds moves from the end of 1936, when the mining industry was weathering a depression, to 1946, when the prospect of a renaissance was glimmering like a mirage on the horizon.

K. S. P.

And if more blood must pour

Choose ye what things endure;

The past claims no allegiance, present years

Are crammed with falseness and the breath of fears.

Only the future lives and holds us sure

To things that never were

Being completely fair.

Then for a purpose of eternal worth

Human deliverance more vast than earth

Hath known, give gladly of your body’s breath

In sacrificial birth that men call death.

Now ye, who then

Being men of men

Proclaimed your right and readiness to die,

Claim now your right to live, and all is yours

Of conquest and the honour that endures,

And all the promise future years descry.

‘To Whom it May Concern’

FURNLEY MAURICE

CHAPTER I

TWO slight, jaunty figures swung along in the middle of the road towards Boulder.

Mrs. Gough could scarcely believe her eyes when she saw them. It was as if two brightly coloured parakeets had alighted on the goldfields. She had been pottering about her garden, scrabbling the earth round the mauve hibiscus Bill had brought her from the bush as a seedling, cutting back the bougainvillea which sprawled, purple and magenta, over a neighbour’s fence, pulling out the withered stalks of last year’s sunflowers. The girls were as alike as parakeets, she thought, when they came nearer, wearing green slack suits, red sandals, and kerchiefs of red, green, blue and yellow tied over their hair. Twins, Sally guessed, and got up in the irritating fashion twins adopt in order to bewilder people.

She straightened her back, a little stiff in the joints now, and took cover behind the bougainvillea to have a better look at the girls as they passed. But their chatter and squeals of laughter stopped suddenly as they stood still.

‘This is the place, I’m sure, Pam,’ one of them exclaimed.

‘I believe it is,’ the other cried. ‘There’s the ramshackle old house like a broken concertina, and the creeper with masses of creamy blossom over the veranda! And, look – look, Pat –’ the voice fell to a whisper, ‘I believe she’s in the garden.’

‘Oh, please,’ Sally found two eager faces gazing at her over the garden gate, ‘are you Mrs. Gough?’

‘I am,’ Sally replied, wondering what on earth could bring these smart young things looking for her.

Before her imagination had time to suggest any reason, they had pushed open the rickety gate and were beside her on the garden path, both talking at once, exclaiming delightedly, and looking so pleased with themselves to have found her that Sally had to smile at their ingenuous excitement.

‘Isn’t she just like what you’d thought she’d be, Pam?’

‘Oh, beautiful – like a Spanish peasant! If only I could paint her, just as she is in that old straw hat, eyes smiling in the shadow, faded red and yellow of her dress against that magenta blaze of bougainvillea!’

Sally was embarrassed at being caught in an old dress and working apron, and at being discussed so candidly. When she could get in a word edgeways she inquired:

‘But who are you, my dears? And why do you want to see me?’

‘I’m Pat and this is Pam,’ the girl who seemed to take the initiative for the two explained. ‘We only arrived in Kalgoorlie a few days ago.’

‘And we’ve been dying to meet you,’ the other chimed in. ‘Haven’t we, Pat?’

‘We’ve heard so much about you!’

‘And we do want to see Bill!’

‘We’ve got to see Billy!’

They rattled on blithely as Sally led the way to the veranda. She began to think that the girls must be friends Bill had made while he was away in the Northern Territory, or in Sydney. Bill had returned only a week or so ago, and had got himself a job on the Boulder almost immediately. Sally was proud of her grandson: his self-reliance and the knack he had of going after what he wanted and getting it. Although, usually, he came in to see her on his way home from work, there had not been much time for intimate confidences, or to hear about casual acquaintances he had made during the years he was away from home.

But it appeared, as they went on talking, that Pat and Pam had never met Bill. They had been in England and travelling about Europe for several years. Oh, yes, they were ‘dinkum Aussies’, and thrilled to be at home again, although the goldfields was not home. Not exactly. They were both born in Melbourne, but Pam loved Sydney, and thought she would be living there. She was engaged to an artist they had met abroad. Of course daddy was furious about it. He didn’t like Shawn because Shawn was an artist and always hard up; he often went about with the seat almost out of his pants. But Pam didn’t mind. She was an artist, too, and crazy about Shawn. She wasn’t going to let daddy run her life for her. Neither was Pat. They had both made up their minds about that. They were going to live their own lives, even if they had to stick to daddy a little longer.

It was very awkward because he had control of their money. Not a penny could they get hold of at present unless he gave it to them. Actually, they could get anything they liked out of him – almost anything – while they were living with him, because he was beginning to feel old and lonely, and wanted somebody to look after him. But it wasn’t good enough to waste one’s life looking after a selfish old man when there was so much one wanted to do. All the money in the world wouldn’t be worth it; but Pat hoped when they saw their lawyer in Melbourne, he might be able to make daddy part with a few hundreds of all the money their mother had left him. Some of it they knew they were entitled to, but how much they had not been able to discover; or the terms of their mother’s will which made daddy their legal guardian until they were of age.

Sally was dazed, and beginning to resent all this inconsequential chatter, obviously a screen for something the girls were reluctant to say.

‘It’s no use, Pam,’ Pat said, reading Mrs. Gough’s troubled gaze. ‘We’ve got to tell her.’

Sally decided that she would always know Pat from Pam. Although the girls were so alike, both ginger-haired, with greeny-grey eyes, freckled noses and the same red lips marking their thin, rather large mouths, Pat was more alert and assertive than Pam. Her eyes lighted to a quick intelligence, while Pam’s remained still and mildly shining like the salt lakes after rain.

Frisco strolled on to the veranda before Sally discovered what Pat was going to tell her. Sally introduced him.

‘Pat and Pam,’ she said laughingly, ‘I don’t know who — ’

‘Colonel de Morfé,’ the girls cried excitedly.

‘Hello!’ Frisco turned towards them with the expression of a blind man trying to remember where he had heard a voice before. ‘Pat and Pam Gaggin, of course!’ he exclaimed on a flash of recollection. ‘There can’t be another Pat and Pam who talk like young starlings.’

‘Oh, Colonel de Morfé,’ Pam giggled.

‘You said that years ago in London,’ Pat flung at him.

‘Well,’ Frisco walked carefully to his chair and lowered himself into, it ‘what does that prove? That I haven’t forgotten you?’

He was being gallant and charming, Sally realized; but a little patronizing, treating the girls as if they were still children.

‘But what brings you here?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t run away from Paddy, have you?’

‘No, worse luck,’ Pam murmured, and Pat glanced apprehensively at Mrs. Gough. Sally’s face had lost its animation and good-humoured interest in her visitors. If they had anything to do with Paddy Cavan, they could not be friends of hers, Pat guessed.

‘But we insisted on coming back to Australia with him,’ she said, as if that might be considered an extenuating circumstance.

‘Amy made us promise to bring a letter to Bill,’ Pam added.

‘We heard Amy had died.’ Frisco knew that this conversation was being difficult for Sally and talked to help her. ‘What happened?’

‘She was motoring with a friend,’ Pat said guardedly. ‘There was an accident. He was killed, and Amy badly hurt. We thought she’d get over it, at first, but she died – a week later.’

‘Poor Amy,’ Pam murmured, ‘we were very fond of her.’

‘She was a good sport,’ Pat spoke defensively. ‘But for Amy, God knows what would have become of us. We never knew what it was to leave boarding-school, until Amy made daddy let us live with them. And when she knew Pam was dying to study drawing, she persuaded him to let her, and let me do a course in journalism. Amy was good to us: tried to do things for us as if we were her own daughters. She told us never to throw away the best things in life for what she called “the trimmings”. It wasn’t worth while, she’d found out after all, she said. She wanted you to know that, Mrs. Gough.’

Pat’s eyes pleaded with Sally.

‘Did she?’ Sally said stiffly, her face unmoved. ‘Amy and I had become strangers to each other for so long, I can’t pretend to care.’

‘But you do, missus.’ Coming on to the veranda, Dinny stood beside the form on which the girls were sitting. ‘We all do. Though Amy treated us badly, we can’t forget she grew up here on the fields, and the pretty, artful ways she had when she was a young thing. But it was like as if she had died, when she went off with Paddy Cavan.’

‘Are you Dinny Quin?’ Pat asked eagerly.

‘That’s me,’ Dinny replied.

‘Amy used often to talk of you,’ Pat said. ‘You were her father’s oldest friend, weren’t you? “There’s one person,” she said, “will always have a good word for me, and that’s Dinny.” ’

‘Who are you?’ Dinny asked.

‘Pat Gaggin and this is Pam.’

‘Paddy Cavan’s daughters,’ Sally said.

‘We’re not his daughters,’ Pat cried, ‘though we’ve had to call him daddy since we were children.’

‘You still live with him?’

‘We could have left him, and earned our own living, perhaps.’ Pat understood Mrs. Gough’s insinuation. ‘But we had a good reason for not doing so, and after all he’s never been unkind to us. Not as bossy and mean as most fathers. Usually he lets us do what we like and gives us whatever we want – particularly since Amy’s death.’

‘He was just helpless, at first,’ Pam explained. ‘You’ve never seen a man so distraught. He did love Amy and is lonely and miserable without her. Love’s like a stroke of lightning, or an earthquake – what’s called an act of God – isn’t it? I didn’t understand that until I knew Shawn. But I know now how daddy felt about Amy. He’s been quite decent to us, lately: would do anything to keep us with him.’

‘Paddy Cavan’s affairs are no concern of ours,’ Sally said.

‘That means you don’t want to have anything to do with us?’ Pat’s voice quivered to her perception of something implacable in Sally’s attitude.

‘I can never forgive Paddy Cavan for what he did to me and mine,’ Sally said.

‘Amy told us why you mightn’t want to know us.’ Pat spoke apologetically.

‘We’re not to blame because our mother married him, and left us in his charge,’ Pam wailed.

‘Let’s go,’ Pat said, springing to her feet.

‘Oh, yes, let’s!’ Pam jumped up and stood beside her.

‘It’s awful of us to have butted in on you like this, Mrs. Gough.’ Sally found it difficult to withstand Pat’s youthful grace, her sincerity and contrition. ‘If I were in your shoes I’d feel just as you do about Paddy Cavan. But if you were in our shoes, you’d want to settle a score with him before you were through. Poor old mum, she thought the world of him, and never knew about Amy. So she left us, and her money, completely in his hands until we are twenty-one. We didn’t intend to presume on your kindness . . . but we had to fulfil a promise to Amy to come and see you – and Bill. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye,’ Pam echoed.

They were walking away, a little crestfallen for all their casual, jaunty swagger, when Bill ran into them near the gate.

In his working clothes, fresh from a hasty shower, with his hair ruffled and a glint in his eyes, Bill Gough still looked rather an overgrown urchin. Dropping in to see his grandmother on his way home from work, he was surprised to see two such exotic damsels on her garden path. The glint in his eye was for them. Young Bill Gough was nothing if not enterprising where good-looking girls were concerned, it was said.

‘You’re Bill, aren’t you?’ Pam gasped.

‘Guilty,’ Bill grinned.

‘We’ve got a letter for you,’ Pat said curtly, refusing to meet the challenge of his friendly, inquisitive gaze as gaily as she would have done a while ago.

She knew now that as soon as she produced the letter from his mother, and Bill Gough knew who she was, his expression would change, become dour and hostile, as Mrs. Gough’s had done. She did not want that to happen. Not now, when she was still sore with the realization of having to share the bitter enmity these people felt for Paddy Cavan. Not while Bill was regarding her with a gay grin and bright freckled eyes: her inner springs were uncoiling to the incitement of his gaze.

Pam was surprised when Pat took the letter from the breast pocket of her tunic, gave it to Bill, and walked on without another word. Pam wondered why Pat was being so short and up-stage. It was not the way they had planned to carry off this encounter.

‘But we’ve got to see you again!’

Pat whirled suddenly to say as Bill stood reading his letter:

‘The matter is important, and strictly confidential,’ she added. ‘Mrs. Gough does not wish us to come here, so you must meet us somewhere else.’

‘Right.’ Preoccupied with his letter, Bill seemed scarcely aware of what he was saying.

‘I will organize it,’ Pat called with a triumphant glee which aroused him. Bill stared after her, dazed, and wondering why she had used those words. ‘And please remember we are not Paddy Cavan’s daughters!’

The girls turned away, with a subdued burble of laughter. They looked more like a stray pair of parakeets than ever, Sally thought, as they flipped past the plumbago hedge, swinging into the golden, dusty mist of the late afternoon sunshine.

CHAPTER II

‘HEAR Sir Patrick Cavan is payin’ the goldfields a visit,’ Tassy Regan chuckled.

‘And brought his daughters with him!’ Blunt Pick added in his high-pitched, squeaky voice, as if it were the latest joke.

There was an awkward pause. Everybody knew Paddy Cavan was not a topic for conversation in Mrs. Gough’s presence. Tassy and Blunt Pick looked sorry they had spoken.

To overcome their discomfort Young Bill butted in with an inquiry about the Larkinville rush.

‘Well, we none of us made our fortunes on Larkinville, Bill,’ Dinny said.

‘Some blokes done pretty well out of it,’ Dally demurred.

‘Cripes,’ Dinny’s eyes gleamed, winnowing a smile from the wrinkles driven deeply into his face, ‘when I got a wire from Mick Larkin sayin’: “Feeling crook, shake a leg, bring nap,” I reckoned he was on to something good!’

They were sitting on Gough’s veranda in the mellow glow which follows a goldfields’ sunset: Dinny, his old mates slumped along the form and a couple of boxes, Marie Robillard and Mrs. Gough in the dilapidated easy chairs with sagging bottoms, which had stood on the veranda for so many years. As the glow faded, the dusk crept up about them.

The Larkinville rush had created a sensation in 1930, but that night seven years later, Dinny started dry-blowing his reminiscences as if Young Bill, who had been away from home for a year or two, had never heard them before.

Billy Gough was still Young Bill to everybody who had known him since he was a kid, although he was a fully fledged mining engineer now. Bill had studied at the Kalgoorlie School of Mines, and been away gaining experience and doing a responsible job on a mine at Tennant’s Creek in the Northern Territory. But he had been lonely and homesick, taken a few months’ holiday in Brisbane and Sydney, and recently returned to the west.

As he sprawled on the veranda steps, watching a young moon with a golden ring round it and a bright star near, swing into clear green of the evening sky, Bill looked content to be among his own people again. He had the air of a young man who has proved his ability and weathered gruelling experiences, but there was still something of the eager, irrepressible youngster beneath his assurance.

‘Gee, it’s good to be home!’ he had been exclaiming, every now and then, during the last few days.

Bill was living with his uncle, Tom Gough, and Eily, who had taken charge of him when Missus Sally was so broken-up about his father’s death. He had come round for a yarn with Dinny and his mates. And that was what he said after greeting Dinny, Marie, his grandmother and the rest of them, as he flung himself down on the steps: ‘Gee, it’s good to be home again.’

He sat there in the warm dusk, a funny, satisfied grin on his face: had been hungry for this familiar atmosphere, Sally thought. The yarning and tough loyalty of Dinny and his mates: the fragrance of honeysuckle and creamy blossom on the potato creeper which hung in a dark rag at the end of the veranda, mingling with the smell of red earth and the faint, acrid taint of sulphur fumes from chimneys beside the mines.

“Course, I knew Mick wouldn’t be sending me a telegram like that because he was ill.’ Dinny’s little laugh gurgled in his throat. He spluttered and coughed over the smoke from his stubby old pipe.

‘L-lucky L-l-larkin, we used to call him,’ Blunt Pick stuttered.

‘Knew his mates, Long Bill Matheson and Paddy Hehir,’ Sam Mullett said, smoking thoughtfully. ‘Paddy was sandal-wooding in dry scrubby country about a hundred miles south of Coolgardie, then. And Bill was camel man for Canning, the surveyor, when they were exploring for a northern stock route.’

Dinny went on, simmering to his recollections: ‘Frisco and Missus Sally and me were on the road in the old boneshaker, at dawn – with prospectin’ gear, dry-blower-shaker and stores slung into the back.’

‘Not before a good many other boneshakers, buggies and bikes were making tracks for Mick’s camp, too,’ Frisco interrupted dryly.

‘Mick’d sent word to a few other old cobbers he was feelin’ crook,’ Dinny admitted. ‘That was the worst of it, knew we’d tumble he was expectin’ a rush when he declared some gold; and tipped us the wink to get in early peggin’ a claim. But the cat’s out of the bag when old prospectors start packin’ in a hurry. So there was a bit of excitement in Kal and Coolgardie that night.’

‘It was like old times,’ Sally exclaimed. ‘What with Dinny and Frisco mad to be off before the rush started, and the rumours going round about how rich Mick had struck it.’

‘A lot of ground was pegged when we arrived,’ Dinny agreed ruefully. ‘Mick and his mates held the original claims and a big prospecting area. And they’d sent for Bobby Clough to locate the reef – ’

‘Best prospector, ever I knew, Bobby Clough,’ Sam muttered.

‘Fair wizard on gold!’ Frisco drawled.

‘Be the Great Livin’ Tinker, Mick told me himself, they’d never’ve struck the reef but for Bobby,’ Tassy burbled. ‘They’d been loomin’ in every direction, tryin’ to trace her.’

‘Thin as a rake, he was,’ Dally muttered. ‘Couldn’t make the sign of the Cross on his face.’

Sally remembered the tall wreck of a man, withered and dry as the scrub he had been living in for over thirty years, but with its tough fibre and vitality. Few men went prospecting without a mate, but Bobby Clough had often packed his camels and set off for wild unexplored country, alone, and not been heard of for months. Once a partner had cleared out with £10,000, when they sold a good show. Perhaps that made him such an old hatter, the men said. He had struck gold, again and again, usually for a syndicate, and any money Bobby had made filtered away. Nobody knew where. Bobby did not booze or gamble. He was round about fifty when he joined Mick and his mates at Larkinville; his hair grey and his eyes bright hazel, almost gold themselves, with pupils which went to a pin’s point in the sunlight and expanded at sunset.

‘Mick’s message didn’t reach Bobby for days,’ Dinny went back to his yarn like a dog to a bone. ‘Bobby was away out in the mulga and couldn’t be found. But he came mooching along the track, one morning, and Mick nearly hugged him! Bobby was jest about all in; had been travellin’ for three days and nights after he got Mick’s news. Paddy put on the billy and made tea. But Bobby could scarcely wait to eat a bite before gettin’ to work. Mick pointed out where he’d picked up most of his slugs, and Bobby cocked his eye on the ridge. Down on the flat, a few trees looked as if they might be marking the course of a dead river. As Mick showed him the lay of the land, every now and then, Bobby’d stoop down and scoop up a handful of dirt: gloat over it.

‘ “Ye’ve loomed her north, a bit, Mick?” he asked.

‘ “Got colours in every dish,” Mick told him. “But we can’t pick her up on the ridge, Bob. Sunk to ninety feet by the old blackbutt, up there, and not a skereck. But I reckon the lode these floaters came down from’s not far off. If we don’t strike her, somebody else will.”

‘ “We’ll strike her,” Bobby said.

‘He went off next morning, nose and eyes to the ground, carrying his water-bag, light pick and panning off dishes. Mick went with him, at first; boiled a billy for him at midday and put out his crib. But Bob liked working on his own. Every morning, for a week, he went off at sunrise and’d come back at sundown with samples of dirt, and lumps of rock to dolly. He must’ve loomed for miles. When he lost a trace of gold in his dishes, he came back on his tracks and tackled the country about a mile to the north of Mick’s p.a.: so hot on the scent he wouldn’t eat or talk.

‘But one night he muttered: “We’ll strike her, soon, Mick! We’ll strike her all right! She’s somewhere not far off. I can feel her, now.”

‘It was late next afternoon, he came gallopin’ through the camel bushes, his hair on end and his eyes blazin’. “Got her!” he yelled.

‘Mick and Paddy and Long Bill followed him back to the outcrop Bobby’d located. No more than a half-buried snag of weathered quartz – and there was the gold showin’ all through the broken stone.

‘ “Loomed her right up to here,” Bobby cried, “and these rocks looked suspicious. Knapped ’em and there she was, first blow of the hammer.”

‘Paddy and Mick started in right away to dig a costeen, and everywhere they tapped the reef, she was lousy with gold. They thought they’d struck a golden hole, another ’Derry or a Carbine. Decided to apply for a mining lease in Bobby’s name and the name of Frank Pimley, as Mick and his mates were holding a lot of ground. No time was lost in pegging the area, and everybody thought he’d be home and dried on the pig’s back when that lease was granted.’

‘You’d’ve thought it was another Coolgardie they’d struck, with all the excitement in the air,’ Frisco murmured derisively.

‘Sometimes,’ Sally confessed, ‘in the evening, with the claims on the flat in a haze of red dust, and tents along the ridge looking like cockle shells in the distance, I used to picture to myself the town that might grow up round the Groundlark. That was what Bobby Clough’s mine was called, wasn’t it? I could see it there in the sunset, the new town, with its mines, big dumps, poppet-legs and skyshafts: the streets, shops, pubs and churches –’

‘We were all seein’ things like that for a while, ma’am!’

Tassy’s laughter rumbled in his big belly: his mouth opened and his fat jolly red face split to a wide smile.

‘But after all, Larkinville was only a flash in the pan rush,’ Young Bill observed lazily.

‘Some pretty good alluvial come out of her.’ Dinny was loath to disparage Larkinville. ‘She was a poor man’s field, Bill. Lots of blokes picked up slugs that went anything from a few weights to twenty and thirty ounces.’

‘How did you do, Dinny?’

‘Not too bad,’ Dinny admitted.

‘You bet he didn’t,’ Tassy gurgled. ‘Got a nose on him like a bandicoot when there’s gold about.’

‘Me and my mates pegged half a mile down the track,’ Dinny chortled. ‘We didn’t see colours for a week. And there was Frisco and me shovellin’ dirt in the blazin’ sun, and Missus Sally on the shaker, red with dust, so as you wouldn’t know her, Bill. We were ready to pull our pegs, and lots of others like us, all over the ground. Then a couple of little beauts turned up in the ripples and I got a thirty ouncer with a nest of small slugs in the “cat”.’

‘Hardest ground ever I slung a pick on,’ Frisco growled.

‘Go on, Frisco!’ The raillery and subtle melody in Sally’s voice told everybody they were still lovers. ‘You were a bit soft at first. But you can’t say you didn’t enjoy meeting all the old-timers who turned up at the rush, yarning round the camp fire and all that. Sometimes he’d play his guitar and sing like he used to on Hannans.’ Her eyes went to Marie. ‘Or Paddy Hehir’d get out his accordion and give us “McGinty’s Goat”.’

‘Y’re forgettin’ the “Dry-blowers’ Song”,’ Blunt Pick said slyly.

‘No, I’m not!’ With a flash of defiance, Sally sang:

Here’s to the dry-blower!

When he dies to Heaven he flies

With dust in his eyes fit to blind him

What a rattle he’ll make as he goes through the gate

Dragging his bloody old shaker behind him.

Frisco and the old men joined in, their hoarse, quagy voices rollicking over the ditty Lorne McDougal had made, and which was so popular on the rush, though the ‘bloody’ was slurred over, because women were present.

‘We had a good time, all right,’ Dinny gurgled, ‘though some blokes were shovellin’ dirt and not makin’ tucker for months. Blunt Pick and me, we met old mates we hadn’t sighted for years. Some of’m since we were dry-blowin’ on Fly Flat. Men like Johnny Micklejohn, Chassy McClaren – ’

‘And Bill Jehosaphat,’ Sally reminded him.

‘Cripes, yes!’ Dinny spluttered, his breath caught between laughter and coughing. ‘You never knew who’d lob into the camp. Blokes you’d thought were dead, long ago. Seemed as if Larkinville had roused the ghosts of scores of old prospectors out of their graves. And blowed if I didn’t barge into Bill Jehosaphat one day on the track. Bill said he couldn’t resist the temptation to pack his swag and make tracks for Larkinville when he heard all the rumours flyin’ round in the Eastern States.’

‘That was before the throubles began,’ Tassy said.

Everybody sobered in recollection of what the troubles had been. Smoke clouded up from pipes that had almost died down.

‘Rushin’ Bobby Clough’s lease,’ Blunt Pick broke the gloomy silence. ‘They’d ought to’ve been run off the field for doin’ it.’

‘There was a queer mob camped down that end of the ridge,’ Dinny said slowly. ‘When they started to peg right up to the reef – ’

‘They were within their rights,’ Sam Mullett muttered.

‘They were within their rights,’ Dinny agreed. ‘The lease hadn’t been granted, and it wouldn’t be, if they could prove there was alluvial gold still bein’ worked on the ground. Reg’lations permitted them to peg within fifty feet of the reef. But there wasn’t an old-timer would’ve exercised his rights against Bobby Clough – not anybody who knew the years he’d put in prospectin’ and livin’ on damper and parrots. We reckoned he’d earned his luck. Mick and his mates as well. They didn’t make tucker for months before they struck the first slugs on the field.’

‘Not like as if it was a rich man’s show,’ Blunt Pick growled.

‘But the mob on the flat weren’t dinkum prospectors,’ Dinny declared. ‘They were mostly the sort of riffraff follows a rush, thinkin’ all you’ve got to do is pick up the gold and not do any hard work for it. Well, when he found those blokes measurin’ off alluvial claims within his pegs, it was too much for Bobby. He rushed round, tryin’ to drive ’em off, threatenin’ to shoot the first man put a pick in his ground. Mick and Frank Pimley tried to quieten him; and Paddy and Bill Matheson worded the blokes who were rushin’ the lease. They asked the mob if it was a fair thing to butt in on Bobby Clough when there was miles of un-prospected country all round. They could take their pick. It was over-the-fence, Paddy pointed out, seein’ all the hard work Bobby had done, and not made a bean out of it, to do Bobby out of the first bit of luck he’d had for donkey’s years. But there was some tough customers in that mob. They said they weren’t goin’ to be soft-soaped and shoved around. Bobby Clough wasn’t the only man who’d been prospectin’ for years, and earned a bit of luck. A man had to stick to his rights and make the most of any ground he could peg.

‘ “I’ll shift ’em! I’ll shift ’em!” Bobby yelled, ran up to his camp, and loaded the gun he kept for shootin’ kangaroos or parrots when he was short of a meal. Mick and Frank Pimley had their work cut out to stop him usin’ it. He was a Cornishman, Frank, a long-jawed, level-headed chap. Bobby’d been prospectin’ for him before he got Mick’s wire.

‘ “It’s all right, Bob,” Frank said, “we’ve got the reef. They can’t touch the golden hole. All they can do is pick up a bit of alluvial, and when that’s worked out, the lease’ll be granted. Regulations are regulations, after all. We’ve got nothing to worry about. Take it easy.”

‘But Bobby couldn’t see it that way: was fair broken up: couldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat, wandered about ravin’ and shoutin’, tellin’ everybody how he’d loomed her along the ridge to the very spot where he struck the reef, knapped a rock and there she was, “a fair jeweller’s shop”. Mick thought it was a touch of the sun, at first, and he’d be all right in a day or two. Frank and Mick were afraid to let Bobby out of their sight. He was wanderin’ around with his gun loaded: couldn’t rest or stop talkin’. His eyes were so shifty and bright we thought he was clean off his head. Then he got an idea the mob’d be rushin’ the reef, stealin’ the golden hole from under his nose. Frank had to take the gun off of him. Bobby collapsed and lay in his tent too weak to move for a day or two. Then Long Bill got out his truck and Mick and he took Bobby to the hospital in Coolgardie. He died there.’

‘Poor old Bob!’ Tassy muttered. ‘After all the years he’d put in prospectin’ and livin’ hard out there in the bush be himself, it was too much for him to strike it rich – and be done out of his luck.’

‘Not much alluvial was found on the lease, after all, was there?’ Young Bill asked.

‘No,’ Frisco replied. ‘But when the lease was granted, the Groundlark looked like being a pretty promising little mine.’

‘Never forget the mornin’, the same mob rushed Mick’s and Paddy’s and Long Bill Matheson’s prospectin’ area,’ Blunt Pick struck up again.

‘There was a lot of mutterin’ about Mick and his mates not declarin’ all the gold they got,’ Dinny said. ‘Buck Rawson reckoned he and his mob could claim forfeiture on that score. The Warden got wind of a rumpus brewin’ and was comin’ out on Sunday mornin’.

‘But Buck and his mob didn’t wait for the Warden. Jack Hehir, Paddy’s young brother, heard a bit of a stir down on the lead where Mick’s dry-blower was standin’, and went along to see what was happenin’. He run back, shoutin’: “They’re jumpin’ our claims, Paddy!”

‘Paddy pulled on his pants, and half a dozen of us who was sharpenin’ our tools at Mick’s forge, went along with him. Paddy was jest about ropable, would’ve barged in and given any man a fistful, but we held him back. There’d’ve been a rough-up in no time, and only half a dozen of us with Paddy against forty or fifty men in a nasty mood on the other side. “What the hell’s the matter with ye?” Tassy yells. “The Warden’ll be here this mornin’. If ye’ve a case, ye can put it to him – and both sides’ll have to abide by what he says . . . Nothin’ to be gained by carryin’ on like this.”

‘When the Warden’s car came bumpin’ along the track in a cloud of dust, the jumpers were all at work on the claims they’d pegged. Paddy banged his dishes for a roll up, and first thing Warden Geary said was all pegs would have to be pulled before he’d hear what any man had to say. Buck Rawson and his mob trooped back to the claim, grousin’ and cursin’. Pegs were pulled, and the Warden got a statement from Buck about why his mob reckoned they had a right to peg those claims.

‘Paddy put the position for himself and his mates. The Warden retired to Mick’s tent to consider his decision. Round about two o’clock, he came out and gave it. Said there was no doubt in his mind Mick and his mates hadn’t been declarin’ all the gold they’d got and he was going to forfeit their ground. It was like a bomb exploding amongst us. In view of the circumstances, however, Warden Geary said he had decided not to enforce the full penalty of evading the regulations, but would reduce the holding of the original prospectors to a four-man claim. He authorized Paddy and Bill Matheson to go down and peg the four-man claim in any direction they chose.

‘ “Y’re not bein’ very generous to the original prospectors, Warden Geary,” ’ Tassy piped up.

‘Warden Geary’s been praised and blamed for what occurred that morning,’ Sally said. ‘But Lord knows what would’ve happened if he hadn’t come!’

‘To the jumpers, he announced he was goin’ to regard the rest of the area as Crown Land,’ Dinny continued. ‘Alluvial claims would be marked off, and these claims would have to be balloted for, so that a mad rush of prospectors for the new ground would not end in injury and disaster, or be the cause of further disputes. There were one hundred and eighty men to ballot for the fifty new claims. A surveyor was found among the diggers to tape them off. Another young chap who said he was a draughtsman volunteered to draw up a plan. The claims were numbered and numbers put on the pegs. The numbers were put in Paddy’s old hat and men queued up to draw. Some of ’em, of course, didn’t get a claim; some who did, didn’t even have a miner’s right. Buck Rawson was one of the blokes who got left.’

‘Dinny, and some of the mugs who reckoned Mick and his mates had got a raw deal, wouldn’t take part in the draw,’ Frisco remembered, as if he were laughing up his sleeve at them.

‘The reshuffle of claims didn’t bring the jumpers much luck, anyhow,’ Sally flared.

‘Most of us weren’t makin’ tucker on our claims,’ Dinny admitted. ‘A lot reckoned the field was as dead as mutton soon afterwards, packed up and cleared out. Missus Sally and Frisco among ’em.’

‘And Bill Jehosaphat,’ Tassy spluttered.

‘He done his dash, all right,’ Blunt Pick mourned.

‘Bill was glad to go back to ‘is sheep?’ Marie queried.

‘And thoroughly disgusted with shovelling dirt in the heat and dust,’ Sally laughed. ‘He got blisters on his hands and a sore back. Blunt Pick and he didn’t see even a colour of gold. Bill was satisfied the field was worked out when he left. So were we, Frisco and I, though Dinny stayed on. He and Tassy were there when the Golden Eagle was found.’

Young Bill jerked himself up to exclaim:

‘Gee, that must’ve been a great day!’

‘It was,’ Dinny agreed, ‘and gave a new lease of life to Larkinville. Funny thing, we reckoned there was no gold along that end of the ridge. Nothing but hard hungry rock and cement stone. Spud Murphy, the bloke who got that claim in the ballot, put in a few weeks on her. Jim Larcombe had a look at the claim when Spud was slinging it.

‘ “Pullin’ out?” ses Jim. “I might give her a fly.”

‘ “Right,” ses Spud. “Go for y’r life. She’s too like hard work for my likin’ – and nothing to show for it.”

‘Jim started sloggin’ at the claim. She was tough all right. We reckoned he was balmy, breakin’ all that rock without anything to go on. After a bit, it seems, he struck a small slug and it kept him goin’. But he’d jest about had enough and was ready to shift his pegs when his son, Young Jim, blew along – out of a job and wantin’ to try his luck. His father put him on to shiftin’ that cement. He hadn’t been workin’ more than a couple of days when he let out a yell. Jim ran over to see what he’d struck. The lad’s pick had laid bare a lump of gold. Took ’em a good while to work round it.’

‘Be the Great Livin’ Tinker,’ Tassy chorded, ‘Jim said he’d’ve thought he was seein’ double or dreamin’, if the lad hadn’t been there.’

‘Christ A’mighty, she was a bobby-dazzler all right,’ Blunt Pick put in reverently.

‘When Jim yells: “Slug O!” the mob came racin’ from everywhere.’ Dinny was as excited as if he had just heard that yell. ‘We tried weighin’ the eagle, that’s what she looked like – a dead bird with spread wings – ’

‘If you used a bit of imagination to see it,’ Sally murmured.

‘We tried weighin’ her in the store against a bag of sugar – nobody had gold scales big enough to take her. Sufferin’ cats, what a shindy there was! All of us sweatin’ and cursin’, and beside ourselves with excitement. She was the biggest lump of pure gold ever seen in the west. Fresh and clean but a bit rough on one side.’

‘Went 1135 ounces, 15 ’weights,’ Sam Mullett said solemnly. ‘Twenty-six and a half inches across and eleven and a half wide. Worth £5655 then; would’ve brought double that, today.’

‘He was always unlucky, Spud Murphy,’ Dally observed dreamily. ‘Unluckiest man ever I knew. If it was raining pea soup, he’d only have a fork.’

When the gust of laughter had rattled away, Young Bill brought Dinny’s wrath about him.

‘There was a rumour going round a while ago, the Golden Eagle was smelted gold,’ he said.

‘Me foot!’ Dinny exclaimed. ‘Y’ couldn’t put a stunt like that over the men on Larkinville. And y’ can’t tell me if there’d been a trace of telluride in her, there wouldn’t’ve been a howl about it.’

‘You reckon?’ Bill queried easily.

‘Nothing much seems to have happened round Kal and Boulder since I was away,’ he added, in order to turn the conversation and placate Dinny. ‘Same old smell, same old dumps by the roadside, same old crowd yarning on Gough’s veranda!’

‘There were the riots, Bill,’ Sally said.

‘That’s right.’ Bill seemed to wake up. ‘They blew up soon after I went north.’

‘It was a bad business.’ Dinny prodded the ashes in his pipe with a dead match as if his thoughts needed prodding also. ‘Worse than the first anti-foreign rioting, Bill. Kind of hangover, maybe: started in the same way with a lot of young men out of work – unemployed from all over the country swarmin’ here, t’other siders as well as W.A. blokes – and foreigners in good jobs. A returned soldier who’d been on the beer, and was makin’ himself offensive, was slung out of the Home from Home pub by a foreign barman. It’s a foreigners’ hang out. The soldier died of a fractured skull, and a crazy mob started smashing up foreign wine saloons, shops and restaurants, set fire to ’em and ran amuck, boozin’ and lootin’. The west end of Hannan Street was blazin’: broken glass, fish and chips, fruit, vegetables, flour, sugar, coffee, spaghetti and clothing piled up on the footpaths, with tills that’d been burst open and furniture kicked to pieces.’

‘Beer and wine pourin’ down the gutters,’ Dally murmured dolefully.

‘It was a real night of terror: foreign women and children screaming and crying, and running after their men into the bush.’ That sight still weighed heavily on Sam Mullett’s mind.

‘The mob commandeered the trams and went off to Boulder,’ Blunt Pick butted in.

‘Soon after, the sky was red with the blaze of houses burning on Ding Bat Flat,’ Sally said.

‘Some of the I-talians and Yugoslavs dug a trench out beyond the railway station,’ Dinny went on. ‘The rumour got round they were makin’ bombs. The mob rolled up to chase ’em out of the trench, yellin’ like mad: “Clean up the Dings! Clean up the Dings!” They got rifles and revolvers, made hand grenades out of jam tins stuffed with fracteur, and rushed the trench. Y’ could hear the explosions and see flashes of rifle and revolver fire. The foreigners beat it, runnin’ away towards the Ivanhoe dump, throwin’ bombs as they went, and the mob kept on firm’ at them. Jo Katici, a Dalmatian, was killed. Tom knew him, a decent chap. Seems a miracle there were no more deaths – though six of the rioters were injured.’

‘’Course the coms were blamed.’ Blunt Pick let fly his jibe, grinning at Bill.

‘They would be.’ Bill lit a cigarette.

‘But they had a man here, at the time, a little bloke name of Docker,’ Dinny went on. ‘And he pretty soon showed that was a lie. Got out a leaflet urgin’ the workers to have nothing to do with the demonstrations against foreigners who were workin’ men like themselves. Pointed out the coms were against makin’ ill-will between workers on racial grounds. It was playin’ the bosses’ game, and the unemployed had nothing to gain by turning their grouch on the foreigners. It was the mine owners and conditions of work on the mines they had to tackle if there was to be work for all. Tom and Docker were out all that night, helpin’ foreign women and children to get away from their burning houses; and tryin’ to make the rat-bags who’d started the riotin’ listen to reason. Tom spoke at Katici’s funeral. He said Jo’s death had been caused by the acts of a few irresponsible fools. Every sane man on the mines was opposed to the rioters.’

‘Good old Tom,’ Bill’s face lit up. ‘You could bet what he’d do. Just as well Docker was here to give a lead, though. I know Ted, and he’s all grit.’

‘You’re a bit of a com, y’rself, Bill, they tell me,’ Frisco remarked, the idea amusing him.

‘A bit of a com?’ Bill whooped. ‘I’ve been more than a bit of a com, a long time, haven’t I, gran?’

‘Oh, Bill – ’ Sally’s voice held a troubled tenderness. ‘I do wish Tom hadn’t dragged you into his committees and things.’

Bill laughed.

‘Tom didn’t drag me into anything, gran. I’ve got enough common sense to work things out for myself.’

‘That’s right, son,’ Dinny said. ‘Always work things out for y’rself. I’m a Labour man meself, but some of us old battlers’ve got a bit stiff in the joints and rusty in the top piece. And the working-class movement’s got to keep movin’. It’s you young chaps must see to that. Here on the goldfields, there’s only a handful like Tom and y’rself with the guts to tackle a tough proposition like tryin’ to make people understand what communism stands for.’

‘Everybody’s talking about it, for or against – mostly against,’ Sam Mullett said, weighing his words carefully. ‘No use shuttin’ y’r eyes to the fact.’

‘You can’t paint any real picture of what’s happening in the world today, and leave us out.’ Bill threw him a challenging glance. ‘There may not be many coms in the mining industry, but people are beginning to realize what we’re after is a decent life for everybody.’

‘You think what you call “social ownership” will be a cure for all the ills the flesh is heir to, don’t you, Bill?’ Frisco liked to give himself an air of leisurely cynicism. ‘Put an end to the whole business of exploitation, poverty and war?’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ Bill grinned.

‘I don’t hold with socialism,’ Tassy said heavily.

‘It’s against human nature,’ Blunt Pick asserted, as if he had said the last word on the subject.

‘You’re just a lot of old stick-in-the-muds,’ Bill declared heatedly. ‘May have done a bit in the struggle for democratic rights in your day. But what are you doing now? Most of you are just sitting back in the traces or have become downright reactionary. And there was never a time when men and women with a spark of intelligence were more needed to organize against the dangers threatening us today.’