A HAZARD OF HEARTS (40 page)

‘They can’t. Not ‘till they’ve got machines to
do the work up top. But the crushers’ll come soon enough, when the reefs are
found. I seen it all in California.’ He broke off a piece of tobacco from his
pocket, popped it in his mouth and, despite his lack of teeth, began to chew. ‘You
tired, gal? Want a ride on my Polly Doodle?’

In pity for the overloaded mule Pearl declined,
shifting her pack to a more comfortable position. The thieves had fortunately
taken fright when she knifed Redbeard and they had left her pack beside the
track, where it was picked up by her rescuers and taken, along with her
battered body, to the Chinese Doctor’s tent.

Her kit, supplemented with the herbal remedies
she had been studying, weighed like a rock, while the mud under foot sent her
sliding in all directions. Fortunately, the rain had ceased for the moment,
although the sky loured and a sharp wind cut through her wet clothes. Her
surroundings were depressing, a desolate landscape in sepia and black, barren
and heaped with ten-foot high clay hillocks. Everywhere water lay in pools. The
men throwing up clay to add to the mullock heaps worked hip deep in a slurry of
wet mud – hundreds of men, with hundreds more working cradles, windlasses and
wee-gees, the long poles balanced by a stone at one end and a bucket at the
other, used to pump out water.

It was an ant-heap, and to an outsider it would
appear mindless, perpetual motion without visible purpose – unless one saw the
gold peeping through the slush and heard the cry of delight from a man who had worn
himself down to a rheumaticky bundle of bones in search of it.

 When they reached the Chinese encampment it
looked no better and no worse than the tent towns of the western men, although
there were some queer structures made of packing cases and kerosene tins held
together with saplings. The ground here sloped sharply into gullies as barren
as the rest of the camp.

Ezra pulled Polly Doodle to a halt and pointed
to a large tent at the northern end.

‘That’ll be the head man’s place. He’ll be able
to tell you where your brother’s claim is. They live a kind of village life,
you see. There’s always someone in charge.’

Pearl put out her hand, and after a small
hesitation, he took it carefully in his grubby paw.

‘Thank you, Ezra. I hope you find a mountain of
gold.’

‘Wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did.’ He grinned.
‘The fun’s in the search, you see? Good luck, gal.’ He gave the mule a light
tap on the nose and moved off southwards, his gaze already turning to the
horizon, seeking a likely spot to stake his claim and start work.

 The tong, when queried, directed Elly to an
area a hundred yards down the gully where a party of Chinese worked around a
long wooden pipe about six inches square with a wheel attached at the upper
end. As she drew nearer, she saw it was like a paddle wheel, its canvas band
fitted with pieces of board which drew up water and discharged it down the pipe
and out the other end. It was, in effect, an elaborate baler, keeping a pit dry
enough for men to work.

Pearl approached a man clearing an obstruction
at the pipe mouth. ‘Do you know Li Po?’

He straightened up, a slender, brown-skinned
figure whose thinning hair hung in a rat-tail braid. His long blue blouse,
faded and patched, was smeared with the ubiquitous clay, his knee-high boots
the same. His gaze bored into her, sharp, almost hostile.

‘What do you want with Li Po?’

‘He’s my brother.’

‘I am Li Po, and I have no brother.’

‘Look closely. Have you never had a sister, Li
Po?’

Her excitement edged with a sensation of
let-down, Pearl studied the stranger as he studied her. She didn’t remember him.
With no conscious picture of him in her mind, she had somehow fallen into the
trap of imagining a benign, brotherly figure opening his arms in welcome, but
the reality could not have been more different. Li Po had the stringy,
exhausted aspect of so many diggers, with lines of bitterness around his mouth.

 ‘You could be Younger Sister. How do I know you
speak the truth?’

 ‘Do you remember playing with me in the fields,
lifting me over the ditches? I cried when I was sold away as a servant and you comforted
me. You told me that one day I would attract a rich man and have servants of my
own. I would wear fine silk clothes and never be hungry again.’

He waited impassively for Pearl to continue.

‘When I cried our father beat me and you took
the stick and broke it. Do you remember?’

Some of the tension went out of Li Po, although
there was still no welcome in his tone. ‘You are Younger Sister. How did you
come here? Why did you seek me out?’

‘Because you are all the family I have left. Because
I thought you would welcome me.’

‘You thought I had found much gold.’

The emphatic statement sent Pearl’s chin in the
air. ‘I’m not interested in gold. I’ve travelled from the Yangtse Valley to
find you. I’ve been enslaved; shipwrecked; raped and abused; I’ve used all my
ingenuity and all my strength in my search for a brother I thought I could
love. Now you accuse me of wanting your gold.’ Her anger sustained her, but she
was appalled at this outcome to her long journey. It had never entered her mind
that Li Po would repudiate her.

At a shout from above, she raised her head and
saw two men waving. Li Po lifted an arm in reply, saying, ‘I am needed. I must
go back to work. Wait at the tong’s tent and I will speak with you after the
evening gun.’ He sped away up the gully without a backward glance.

Pearl settled her pack and turned away. Numb
with reaction, she felt hurt and hollow in the middle, as if from a physical
blow. For it to end like this, with suspicion and negativity, instead of the
glad reunion she’d carefully constructed in her imagination for so many months.
Her numbness gave way to deeper misery. She climbed the gully away from the
tong’s tent, finding her way through a salty blur, unable to make any plans
beyond escaping to hide alone with her unhappiness.

She didn’t see the loose stone until her boot
slipped and she fell heavily. Throwing out her arms to save her battered ribs
another break, she landed awkwardly on one knee. Pain shot up her leg. She sat
in the wet clay hugging her knee, and for the first time in her life considered
giving up.

Li Po must have been watching, after all. He
arrived within minutes to stand over her.

‘Why did you leave?’

Pearl shook her head. If he couldn’t see how his
reception had affected her, she couldn’t be bothered to explain.

He put a tentative hand on her shoulder. ‘Are
you hurt? Show me.’

When she didn’t move, he squatted down and
pulled the leg of her trousers above the knee, which had already begun to
swell. Clicking his tongue against his teeth, he swept her up with a deceptive
wiry strength and carried her up the steep slope to one of the packing case
huts she had seen on the ridge.

Inside, he placed her on a mattress on a shelf
of mud bricks then lit a candle, revealing a compact space that was surprisingly
comfortable if one stood no higher than five feet. Pearl regarded the woven mat
on the earth floor, the slab table and bench, the tin chest hanging from a
rafter to keep food away from animals. Li Po had taken the trouble to construct
a home in the wilderness. While she watched in silence, he built a small fire
in the dry stone hearth to boil water for tea, then brought it to her in a tin
mug.

Finally he sat down cross-legged on the mat,
saying, ‘Will you stay here and rest? I have much to say to you, but not until
the day’s work is finished.’

Utterly weary, in pain from her throbbing knee,
Pearl hadn’t the energy or the will to set off again just yet. Here she was
protected from the weather, while Li Po’s softened attitude demonstrated some
sort of interest in her. Despite her disappointment, she still wanted to know
him better. They were still the same blood. However, pride must be preserved. She
appeared to give his request thought, then said coolly, ‘I will stay until you
return.’

Pearl stayed a lot longer. By the time she had
helped Li Po cook the evening meal and sat over their tea well into the night,
exchanging life stories, Pearl felt she had been accepted. Her brother was a
lonely, withdrawn man whose manner repelled any close relationship. However,
she had seen beneath to his real need and was glad she had come.

Settled in one spot for the first time since
leaving Sydney, she allowed herself time to acclimatise before tackling the
future, content to keep the camp tidy and learn her way about the vast Ballarat
diggings. In many ways it resembled all the others she had visited in her
search, yet there were differences, particularly in the weather, which had
turned bad enough to disrupt the Cobb & Co. coach service. This was
discontinued until there was some hope of the horses getting through.

At night temperatures dropped below freezing,
and by morning a light dusting of snow frequently frosted the ugly surroundings
with a deceptive beauty. However, it only added to the misery of the miners,
forcing them to work in icy slush, often up to their waists, weakened by the
lack of proper nutrition, since they existed mainly on damper, mutton and black
tea. Milk could not be had at any price, unless a family cow had been dragged
up from Melbourne to be cherished and guarded by its owners; while vegetables
were an occasional luxury, with cabbages selling at half a crown each and
potatoes at a shilling and sixpence a pound. The cost of cartage usually
trebled the city prices. Even flour for dampers sold at up to two hundred
pounds per ton. All this resulted in a variety of deficiency and skin diseases,
usually dismissed with contempt by the miners but actually quite seriously
draining their physical strength.

Because the creeks were polluted, fresh water
brought in by a few entrepreneurs willing to travel to distant streams sold at
a shilling a bucket – too much for the many miners who thus fell prey to
dysentery, even in winter. Infections spread rapidly in the crowded, primitive
conditions, while rheumatism, fevers, cramps and colds were endemic. The
situation cried out for medical men, of which there were a few, mostly quacks. After
Pearl visited one so-called doctor’s tent and watched him handing out patent
pills, calomel and sulphur for every kind of ill, she came away thoughtful.

Meanwhile, despite their difficulties, or
perhaps to spite them, the diggers created their own entertainment. This ranged
from campfire songs accompanied by harmonica, or squeezebox accordion, even
bagpipes, to Saturday nights in the illegal grog-tents where the favours of
harlots could be arranged, and wild partying was accompanied by fights and
gunshots until dawn. For the more sophisticated, dances were held in a hall
built in Ballarat for the purpose, or a concert by visiting players.

Pearl found the township to have a settled,
prosperous air, its thronged main street lined with shops, lodging houses,
banks and hotels. Delivery drays vied with water carriers and shoppers, many of
these women and children who accompanied their menfolk to the goldfields in
increasing numbers.

One day she witnessed a digger wedding, the
bride in full satin and lace, the groom and his friends in silk hats
contrasting with their workday clothes, racing from church to hotel to begin a
week-long fiesta. She also witnessed the outcome at the end of the week, a
drunken brawl in which the bride received a black eye and knocked her husband
out with a bottle of gin before departing for fresher fields.

Pearl reported this with some amusement to her
brother, who retorted, ‘These western “marriages” are an excuse for licence.
The bride will have offered herself at a price and when she tires of the
situation will return to the town to seek another partner. Some women will
enjoy six wedding feasts in the same hotel in as many months.’

Before long Pearl recognised the same rumbling
precursors to rebellion as she’d seen in other mining camps. The ostensible
problem, the miners’ resentment of a licensing tax which fell most heavily on
the poor and unsuccessful, only masked the true problem, their real hatred of
the fee collectors, the Gold Commissioner’s police. These sprang from the ranks
of ex-convicts and bullies who delighted in exercising their power against
those without redress. With bribery and stand-over tactics the norm, in
retaliation many diggers refused to pay for their licences, instead posting
look-outs for the ‘traps’ then disappearing into hiding at the first warning.

There were constant confrontations, while the
local gaol became so crowded that men who could not pay the immediate fine, or
had to wait for a magistrate to arrive on his circuit, were left chained to
trees like dogs in all weather to be mocked by their gaolers.

Pearl stepped uneasily around the indignation
meetings and the raids by mounted troopers. Her people were resented for their
lack of interest in the miners’ rights as well as for their strange and no
doubt devious ways. She shopped for their needs with Li Po’s gold dust,
discovering a market where the destitute sold their clothes and valuables for food
or a passage back to civilization. She also found a school being conducted in a
tent by a digger returning to his previous profession, but attended by all too
few of the hundreds of children who swarmed through the camps. Most of them
were unpaid labourers for their fathers and would never be educated.