When Nance Radin was little she had seen a picture of a brick cottage with a thatched roof and flowers outside. The door of the cottage stood open to reveal a round table with chairs about it, a lady in a high-necked dress with frills serving tea and what looked to be crumpets in a silver platter. On the table there was a fine lace cloth with delicate cups and saucers patterned with blush-pink roses. It was the perfect image of what Nance wanted out of life.
So far she had not done very well in achieving it. She had never seen a cottage like it and could not have afforded it if she had. The buildings she knew had mostly been of wooden slabs with an earth floor and not a fine lace cloth or rose-covered teacup in sight.
She had been born in a humpy and would quite likely die in one. She had been in a big town twice in her life, once when she was little and her dad had taken her to Sydney and now to Melbourne on the arm and in the bed of Luke Bryant.
She had been sixteen when her father, part-time shearer and full-time drunk, had died, crushed beneath the wheels of a dray in an accident that would not have happened had he been sober. He left a wife, Nance and three brothers older than herself. Between them the boys brought in just enough to keep them all alive but, as the mother said, there was no room for idle mouths. When the youngest brother decided to try his luck on the goldfields and Nance said she would go with him, her mother made no attempt to dissuade her. The two of them had never got along.
They had gone first to Ophir and then to Sofala in the Turon Valley where the brother died in a disagreement with another digger over the boundaries of a claim. Sofala was known as a law-abiding town. Deaths or even violence were rare but the Radins had never had much luck. Now her brother was dead Nance had no way of supporting herself. In theory she could have worked her brother’s claim but for a woman alone that was impossible.
Sofala’s main street was a mud track churned up by the passing traffic and lined by rows of tents and drays with a few wooden stores here and there. Peaceful town or not it had forty ale houses full of men with money to spend. Nance reasoned that no girl need starve in such a situation. She had a word with Billy Hourigan, owner of the Shamrock Inn, and set up for business in his back room.
Nance never thought of whoring as more than a temporary job to tide her over until something better came along. One day it did. Luke Bryant visited her three times and then asked her to team up with him. He wasn’t young but was a big, tough man, well able to look after both of them, and she did not hesitate.
Since then they had wandered all over the goldfields. It had not been a bad time. Luke neither beat her nor hired her out nor expected her to service his friends. When he had money he spent it lavishly, on her as well as himself, and when he hadn’t they got by somehow. He wasn’t a softy—she’d seen what those big fists could do—but even drunk he had never harmed her. Not many women could say as much.
Nance wasn’t sure she liked the idea of Luke throwing in with the two blokes they’d met at the theatre. She’d got used to Luke. She didn’t want anyone else. But like it or not, to Ballarat they all went.
It was different there. For a start, the claims were bigger, or seemed so because they covered more ground. It was only later they discovered that, because more people were needed to work the deep diggings, the amount of claim per miner was in fact less. Over each shaft a windlass hoisted the buckets of water to enable the men to dig. Some men invested in a horse and chaff. The first thing they noticed about the field was the horses walking round and round a central whim, hauling from the depths a never-ending succession of bullock-hide buckets brimming with water. In one or two places enterprising diggers had installed steam engines to pump the water mechanically, adding the wheeze and clank of machinery to the clatter and cries to which they were accustomed.
At the gold commissioner’s tent they were shown a map of the workings.
‘The claims that have produced best so far are the Canadian Lead and the Blacksmith Hole,’ the commissioner told them. ‘Had to go down a long way, mind.’ He looked at the three of them. ‘Is this the lot of you?’
Luke grinned ferociously. ‘Reckon we’re not big enough to manage by ourselves?’
‘Not a question of size,’ the man said. ‘The syndicates all find they need a dozen men at least before they reach the gutter. To deal with the water, you understand, and to keep the shaft well shored. You’ll have to do that,’ he cautioned them. ‘You don’t, there’ll be a cave-in before you’re past fifty feet.’
They spent two days prowling around the area, meeting the same shut faces they remembered from their first arrival on the diggings two years earlier.
‘That’s what I like about the goldfields,’ Hamish said. ‘Everyone greets you like a long-lost brother.’
For no particular reason they picked a site at one end of a line of workings. On one side the racket and dirt of the diggings extended across the valley, on the other the gum trees hung their leaves in windless silence.
‘Get sick of work, we can go for a walk in the bush,’ Matthew said.
The other men looked at each other.
‘Got a poet ’ere,’ Luke said. ‘Jest ’ope ’e d’know ’ow to dig, tha’s all.’
‘He knows that,’ Hamish said. ‘Unless he’s forgotten since we left Mount Alexander.’
They went back to the gold commissioner’s tent, paid their licence and were in business.
‘It must have a name,’ the commissioner said. ‘For our records, you understand.’
They looked at each other.
‘California Deep,’ Hamish said. ‘That’ll bring us luck.’ So California Deep it was.
Next morning they stood on the unbroken ground and stared at each other.
‘A hundred feet,’ Hamish said. ‘We got to be mad.’
‘Mebbe more,’ Luke corrected him.
‘Probably more,’ Matthew said.
It meant months of work. Clay, rock, mud, water. Danger, darkness and heat. Burrowing like moles deep in the choking earth. With no guarantee of success at the end of it.
‘Something out of a nightmare,’ Hamish said for them all, and repeated, ‘Got to be mad, I reckon.’
The first twenty feet were clay, soft and not too wet, easily removed. They took it in turns. One man broke the ground with his pick and shovelled it into a bucket; the next man stood by the windlass at the head of the shaft, hauled up the bucket and emptied it before sending it down again; the third went into the bush to fell and split timber to shutter the sides of the shaft as they went down.
At thirty feet the water started to come in.
First it was in dribbles, beading the walls of the shaft with moisture, creating runnels in the soft clay, puddles forming across the floor of the shaft. Three feet deeper it became more persistent—constant rivulets carrying greasy crumbs of clay with them—and the water was over their boots as they worked. Five feet more and the rivulets became streams, the water in the shaft over their ankles. The back-breaking task of shoring the shaft began.
‘My God,’ Hamish said at the end of a shift. ‘I reckon we got the Mississippi River down there and we ain’t even fifty feet down yet. As it is the buckets are bringing up five times as much water as ground.’
Sometimes it seemed they spent more time shoring the shaft than digging, laying six feet slabs of stringybark lengthwise down the shaft to retain the loose ground, securing them with cross-pieces driven by brute strength into the walls, ramming clay behind the shuttering to hold back the water. Days and weeks of toil but it had to be done.
Half a mile away a shaft collapsed at the seventy foot level and entombed three diggers. Everyone broke off work to try to reach them but the shaft was vertical with no side adits and the neighbouring claims had not driven so deep. It took a day and a half to reach them and the men were dead long before they recovered their bodies.
The water flow increased steadily as they went down. At the eighty foot level it was all they could do to contain the flood.
‘Much more and it’ll be too much for us,’ Matthew said. ‘As it is, we’re barely keeping pace with it.’
‘Well have to take on some other fellows,’ Hamish said gloomily. ‘It’s the only way.’
‘Don’ ’ave no spare cash fer wages,’ Luke said.
He was right: digging the shaft was bleeding their capital to the point where they would barely have enough to reach the gutter.
‘What do you suggest we do, then?’ Matthew said impatiently. ‘We’re about exhausted as it is.’
‘We buys an engine.’
Hamish was dubious. ‘Can we afford to have one?’
‘Can we afford not to?’
They made enquiries. There were no pumps to be had in Ballarat; the only ones in the area were already fully committed.
‘We’ll have to get one sent up from Melbourne,’ Matthew said. ‘The haulage will set us back a few quid for a start.’
It would indeed. They found that a new engine at the Melbourne docks would cost two hundred pounds. Installed at Ballarat it would be over twice as much.
‘More than two years’ wages,’ Matthew grieved.
If they were not going to bring in outsiders it was the only way.
‘There’d better be gold when we get down there,’ Hamish said grimly.
While they waited for the engine they dug and shuttered and rammed clay and dug again, trying to keep pace with the water and drifting sand.
‘I’ll ’ave three dead men on me ’ands, that engine don’ get ’ere soon,’ Nance said.
As long as he lived Matthew would never forget the torment of working at the bottom of the shaft.
First, to get down without falling when he had scarcely woken from the drugged unconsciousness that was sleep. Ninety feet from top to bottom and only the footholds carved in the clay or the wooden cross-pieces securing the shuttering to keep him from pitching to his death. Ninety feet, with a stump of candle stuck on the brim of his hat and the flame leaping and lurching crazily over the restraining lengths of stringybark, the yellow teeth of clay and drift sand smiling through the gaps, the creak and groan of wood under pressure, the constant grey run and splash of water, the smell of the grave coming up from the black depths beneath his boots. Step by step he went down, feet groping, hands groping, as the stink and the heat grew close about him and his lungs laboured to find oxygen. And then the bottom, water a foot deep or more in the few minutes it had taken for them to change shifts, the sullen clay waiting for the pickaxe, the bucket to be filled again and again with water before there was any hope of filling it with clay.
Always the thought that, at ninety feet, they were little more than half way to the gutter. That might make their fortunes. That might be empty.
The bucket rose swinging and dripping out of sight. The pickaxe rose and fell, shadows flapped their black wings against the walls of the shaft. Muscles settled for the hundredth time to their work. Somehow, inch by inch, with sweat and sometimes close to tears, the shaft went down.
They had started by working eight-hour shifts but were now too tired to keep it up. Now they worked two four-hour shifts a day. The rest of the time they hoisted buckets, cut and split wood for shuttering, hoisted buckets, split wood …
Life was a nightmare of sodden clothes, muscles that had gone beyond screaming into the sullen pain of exhaustion, eyes gritty with sand and weariness.
At the end of one shift, as Matthew hauled his exhausted body foot by foot from the depths of the shaft, he noticed perhaps ten feet from the bottom a shadow across one wall that he had not seen before. He paused to examine it. One of the sections of stringybark shuttering had shifted, perhaps by as much as an inch. He prodded it with the tip of a finger, pressing down on it as hard as he could. It did not move and looked safe enough. No more water or sand than usual seemed to be coming in.
He climbed on and out of the shaft into air so fresh that his head spun with it as he hauled himself into the light.
‘Have a look at the shuttering near the bottom,’ he said to Luke. ‘It may have shifted a bit.’
Luke nodded silently. None of them wasted more energy than they could help on talking. Even breathing had become a burden.
He lowered himself over the side of the shaft, boots groping for the first foothold, and disappeared from view.
Matthew sat on the ground, breathing the air, feeling the sunlight on his face, too weary even to get to his feet and go in search of food or bed. He managed it eventually and turned to look down the shaft. Far down, he could see the black mass of shadow that was Luke against the faint flutter of candle flame. Little ripples of light ran up the sides of the shaft, too far away and too faint to see detail.
He heard a crack, like a stick snapping.
Luke gave a cry, sharp with surprise. A hundred feet above him, Matthew heard it clearly. A sudden rush of black quenched the light. There was a rumble. A puff of air, stale as a five day corpse, came up the shaft.
Matthew was running.
Nance was asleep. He cursed, shaking her wildly, shouting at her. Her eyes flew open but it took a minute that seemed hours to get her to understand.
‘Where’s Hamish?’ Matthew shouted.
‘He’s gone to fetch wood. Why?’ Strands of hair like black silk trailed across her face.
‘There’s been a fall.’
He saw the impact of his words in her eyes.
‘Luke …?’ Scrambling to her feet, face white, hands to the red mouth.
‘Down the bottom of the shaft. I’m going down now. Get Hamish, quick as you can. And anyone else who can give a hand.’
He was down the shaft in what seemed seconds.
The blow-in had ripped away a ten feet section of shuttering, leaving a gaping wound in the earth. One look told him it was unsafe. As he watched, a dribble of wet sand and gravel slid down to join the fall at the bottom of the shaft. Below his boots was a mess of fallen earth, water, shattered strips of timber. And somewhere, underneath it all, Luke.
Even standing on it might add hurt to anyone beneath but there was no other way. It was soft earth and not more than six feet deep. Provided he wasn’t underwater, Luke had a chance.
He started to shovel, furiously yet with as much care as he could, stacking the fallen ground against one side of the shaft, boots squelching in mud as he did so.
At least the run of water seemed no worse than before.
There was a creak and a groan from above his head and he looked up, frozen in an instant of terror, but apart from a thin sifting of sand nothing more fell.
He dug with increasing frenzy.
Two feet and nothing.
Three feet and nothing.
Where was he?
A voice called from the top of the shaft, ‘Need anyone else down there?’
Hamish. He knew as well as Matthew there was no room for more than one person at a time to work at the bottom of the shaft, but he had to ask.
‘No,’ Matthew shouted back. There was no time, no breath, to say more than that.
The shovel rose, fell. Shadows flared. His breath echoed harshly in his throat. The broken soil sucked and complained, spilling water, resisting the blade.
Luke’s foot appeared.
Energy redoubled, Matthew drove the shovel blade down into the gluelike mass of clay, forcing it back from the body. Now the leg was exposed, both legs, one of them twisted at an ominous angle. He changed position, trying to free the body. He was frightened of going directly for the head until he knew which way Luke was lying. Get the angle wrong, he could kill him.
A dozen shovelfuls of soil and he tossed it aside, kneeling and scrabbling at the clay with bare hands. God, how it resisted him. His shoulders creaked as he hauled it away, nails ripped, fingers bled from a hundred nicks and cuts.
How could Luke breathe under this lot?
A section of fallen shuttering lay across the upper part of Luke’s body. Cursing monotonously, Matthew worked it free. He seized the shoulders and tried to drag the whole body out of the earth. Failed. He worked up the side of Luke’s head. Groping, working by feel.
He took a deep breath, hauled again. He slipped, stumbled and his hat fell off. The candle went out.
‘Christ!’ His scream of outrage, exhaustion, agony, echoed up the shaft. He was half-aware of shouts coming from far above him.
He had no time to think of that, no time to think of finding the candle or relighting it. He pulled and worked in a paroxysm of energy, knowing as he did so that the moment was rushing inexorably upon him when the bruised and abused mechanism would simply stop.
He felt the body shift under his hands. Renewed energy powered through him. He crouched, feet together, arms under Luke’s shoulders, and heaved. Blood-red patterns flared before his bulging eyes.
The body moved, sucking, out of the mud and stones.
He did not know if Luke were alive or dead. At that moment, after all the energy he had expended, he did not care.
He had got him out. That was all.
Nance waited at the top of the shaft. Hamish had gone down when Matthew’s candle went out but several men still surrounded her—the Goods from the next working, the Devines and Landers from the one beyond that, several more whose names she did not know.
She could not stay still. She paced to and fro, brushing loose strands of hair off her face, feeling the slow claws of dread tighten upon her. First brother Michael, she thought. Now Luke. It was more than she could bear. To be alone again. No one caring if you were alive or dead.
Luke Bryant, she thought, feeling laughter rise hysterically in her throat, if you’ve died on me I’ll kill you.
There was shouting from the open shaft, Patrick Lander had his head down it as he listened. He straightened, turning to Nance.
‘They got him.’
Time still, heart still. ‘And?’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t know.’
The men drove the capstan around, putting their backs into it. She watched, nerves screaming under her skin. The windlass groaned, bitten by the weight on the rope’s end. The rope came into the light, yard by taut yard. Water dripped from it. The object on the end of the rope rose bobbing and swaying into the light.