were called the diggings because that was exactly what they were. There were hundreds of great deep holes, many filled with water, with soil flung up around them, and left there in heaps. Besides that, there were more people than they had ever seen before, even in Melbourne, crammed though it had been. They swarmed round the muddy holes and the canvas buildings like wasps around a honey pot.
Whatever there had once been of rural beauty before the gold rush began had long since disappeared. The settlement pullulated with life and noise, particularly noise, something which none of the party had expected, and to which none of them was accustomed—but which, like everyone else, they came to accept and ignore.
Symbolically, perhaps, the first people Kirstie saw as soon as they arrived were The Wreck and Corny lying in the muddy road where their driver had turned them out when he had found that they had little to pay him with. Somehow they had managed to beg enough to share a bottle and a pie between them, and were busy sleeping their impromptu banquet off.
Worst of all, Kirstie could plainly see that living in the diggings was going to be one long, improvised and dreadful picnic. Any hope that she might resume the orderly life she had been used to on the farm disappeared in the face of the cheerfully impromptu nature of gold-field society.
The men would love it, she thought bitterly, trust them. No need to be good-mannered, to sit down decently to eat. Male entertainment of every kind was laid on in abundance, for there was no getting away from the alleys where the grog shops, brothels, gaming halls, and bars flaunted their wares to the world.
There were even boxing booths, she discovered, and shortly after they arrived a small improvised theatre called The Palace started up—as though any palace could be constructed out of tent poles and canvas! There were few women in the diggings and Kirstie soon discovered that little was provided for them in this masculine paradise.
But exploring Ballarat was for the future. For the present it was time to settle in, to discover how to make one’s claim and work it, and how to sell the gold—if they ever found any, that was.
Unkempt men, quite unlike the husband whom Pa had promised her, their soil-encrusted clothes reeking of sweat, came over to speak to the new chums, to advise them where the stores were, who was honest and who wasn’t. They stared jealously at the drays and bullocks, at Geordie’s horse and wagon, and the equipment which the men began to unload while Geordie helped Kirstie to light a fire outside, and set up a tripod and cooking pot over it. Meals would have to be eaten in the open.
‘Really need all this, do you?’ asked one ginger-haired digger. He was pointing at the trunks and blankets Sam was lifting out. ‘Give you good money for this,’ he offered, putting a hand on a storm lamp.
Sam pushed the eager hand away. ‘Nothing to sell, mate. We need all we’ve brought for ourselves.’
‘Seems a lot to me,’ said Ginger, whose real name was George Tate. ‘If you’ve ever a mind to sell anything, I’m in the market for what you don’t want.’
The firing of a gun in the middle of removing Ginger’s sticky fingers from Kirstie’s cooking pots surprised them all. Kirstie dropped the frying pan she was holding and the younger children began to cry. Emmie Jackson, already depressed by their primitive living conditions, howled with them.
‘That’s nowt,’ said Ginger phlegmatically. ‘All digging has to stop when the gun goes off. It’s time to light the fire, eat your grub, and…’ he paused a minute to wink at the men ‘…that’s when the evening’s fun really begins.’
‘For the men, I suppose,’ returned Kirstie smartly, for only men, she thought, would want to live in this dreadful way—and enjoy it, too. No woman of sense would ever want to settle down in such dirt, confusion and mess, even to find gold.
Just to show that she meant business, she struck Ginger’s hand smartly with her iron ladle when it strayed again among the pots lying on the ground. ‘Give you good money for it, gal,’ he said cheerfully—it seemed to be his favourite phrase.
‘Don’t want money for it, good or bad,’ she snapped back. ‘We shall need all we’ve got in this Godforsaken hole.’
Grinning at her, he wandered off—only to be succeeded by another set of diggers who, like squirrels, Geordie said, descended to try to wrench their stores from them. He made it his business to protect Kirstie so that she could prepare their supper. The children had long since run off to begin a disorganised game of tag in and out of the filthy maze of holes and the alleys which stood in for streets. It didn’t improve her temper to see The Wreck shamble by, still clutching his bottle, Corny trotting along behind him.
Somehow Pa managed to round everyone up at last, after Big Sister had shouted, ‘Grub’s up,’ and they ate their meal with all the relish of the genuinely hungry.
‘Work tomorrow,’ he said, after he had finished eating. ‘Fancy a stroll, eh, Bart, Geordie?’ Kirstie, gathering up dirty pots, an apathetic Emmie Jackson helping her, watched them go.
Pitched among the tents and the huts of the diggers were all the masculine delights which Kirstie had disapprovingly noted, and the three men found themselves part of the seething life which roared and reeled around them. They stopped at a sly grog shop, drank and moved on. The lure of a dance-hall was rejected. Fat Lil’s Place, with Fat Lil outside in satin and feathers—the girls were all inside—was reserved for another night. Money best spent elsewhere at the minute, thought Sam regretfully, but Hyde’s Place, as the Golden Ace gambling den was known, beckoned them in, not to play, but to watch.
Further down the alley was a music hall where the trio enjoyed themselves after moving on from Hyde’s. After that they reeled home singing, waking up Big Sister when they stumbled around before falling into their improvised bedding.
Sam and Bart had already agreed that life was never like this on the farm!
The diggers in Melbourne who had told them that two of them were not enough to make a successful syndicate had not been deceiving them. Even adding Geordie was not enough, so the Moore party, as Geordie had nicknamed them, decided after a couple of weeks’ fruitless work that they really needed a new chum—preferably one big and strong. Sam suggested that they try to hire someone—safer than trying to find a partner since they could control him.
‘Well, now,’ Bart said, ‘that’s a good idea, but who is going to hire themselves out when they can stake their own claim, eh?’
‘You can’t mean a layabout, Pa,’ said Kirstie disapprovingly. ‘He wouldn’t work, not after the first pay day.’
‘Never know ’til you try,’ said Sam mildly. But even he quailed at the sight of some of the rogues and ruffians who worked until they earned a little money for drink and then lay about the alleys. Kirstie was probably right.
‘What about The Wreck?’ asked Geordie, while drinking tea one breakfast. ‘God knows he’s big enough.’
‘The Wreck?’ said Sam dubiously. ‘You can’t seriously mean The Wreck, Geordie.’
‘Yes, I mean the big fellow Corny Van Damm brought here. Corny was the brains of the pair of them. I’ve been watching him. Ever since the police frightened Corny away he’s been a lost soul. In and out of the nick, every penny thrown to him going on drink. But…’
Geordie stopped. How could he tell them that something about The Wreck roused his pity and his interest? The occasional worried and questioning look in his eye, perhaps. Whatever
