Jack did not go with the men. His father needed him to run the team of horses that delivered water to the Cross. I had already made other friends in the town, but Jack was my best friend. He was cheeky and full of surprises. The same things made us laugh and we both loved dancing. Although we danced with other people during the evening, we made a habit of saving the first and last dances for each other. Afterwards we would often go for a stroll out to the ridge above the town. Emily and Tom sometimes came with us, at least part of the way.
‘Are you thinking about trying your luck on the new field?’ I asked Jack one night, as we sat staring up at the vast black sky full of stars.
‘What, and risk you finding a better dancing partner while I’m away?’ he said.
‘That’s not likely,’ I told him. ‘All the boys in town have either gone, or they’re packing up to go. They say there are already more than two thousand men camped out there at Bayley’s Reward. And Mr Wisdom has gone out there to build a new hotel. I heard he’s ordered six water tanks and they’re already on their way from Perth.’
‘Are they now?’ Jack said. ‘And where does he plan to get water to fill his tanks?’
I already knew that the soaks and waterholes in the area were nearly dry. And the camel teams going through to the new diggings had fouled what little water was left. A few of the Aboriginal gnamma holes still had water in them, but that wouldn’t last long amongst two thousand thirsty prospectors.
Water was never a problem on the diggings in the east. There were always streams or rivers nearby so we carried our own water up to the hut in buckets. Out here in the desert, water could be harder to find than gold. Jack’s father had signed a contract to deliver water to the new diggings regularly, by horse and dray, from the soaks and wells he owned. A purifying plant had been set up in Southern Cross to supply the town when the surface water ran out, but the new diggings were more than a hundred miles from anywhere. It would take at least three days to reach them.
‘Will you and your father cart water out to them?’ I asked, already planning to go there, if I ever got the chance. How exciting it must be to pick up nuggets off the ground, without having to dig, or even pan for them.
‘There’s no road at all out there yet,’ Jack said, shaking his head. ‘Although with so many people trekking across the country, there’ll soon be wheel tracks to follow.’
‘Jack!’ I suddenly had an idea. ‘What if you, or your father, picked up a nugget on one of your delivery runs? I know Pa would be off to try his luck the minute he heard about something like this.’
Jack looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes I do think about being rich,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want to die of thirst.’
‘There must be a way to have water and gold,’ I insisted.
‘Come on,’ Jack said. ‘Wave your magic wand, then.’
‘Abracadabra!’ I leapt up and waved an imaginary wand over his head. ‘Oh look. You’ve turned into a frog,’ I teased.
‘Cr-o-a-k,’ he gasped, clutching his throat. He did a funny frog jump towards me and I started to run. ‘Come back here and undo this spell,’ he called, and chased me until we were both out of breath.
‘No-o,’ Jack moaned as we stood together, breathing hard and looking across to the darkened town. ‘It’s too late! The witching hour has passed. Now I’ll be a frog forever.’
The hotel lamps were put out at midnight. The town was in darkness.
‘Never too late to undo a wrong, my mother says. Anyway, I don’t want a frog walking me home.’
‘So you agree to release me from your spell, then?’ Jack asked.
‘Just for now,’ I conceded, and linked my arm through his.
As we walked back to the hotel I thought about the differences between Jack and me. His family valued water above most things, but gold had an unbreakable hold on mine. Even when Pa did strike it rich, it didn’t satisfy him for long.
‘This is just the beginning!’ he would say, showing us the nuggets in his hand. ‘There’s more colour out there. I can feel it in me bones.’ Chasing the gold wasn’t such a problem for him. Water and gold go together in the east. Here we seem to have one or the other, but not both.
We usually lived in a tent on the diggings, outside the towns, until we could build a hut. Pa and the boys hunted rabbits and wallabies for food. Mother cooked over the open fire. It was a new adventure for all of us children. We had our chores to do, but once they were done we were free to explore, play games, make up stories. Mother taught us reading and writing – and good manners, of course. She was very strict about that. When there was gold to take to the bank, we went into the nearest town with Pa. There were shops with real windows and they sold iced buns for a penny each. The icing on top came in lovely colours. I could never decide which to have.
‘I wish we could live in the town,’ Susan said once.
‘No, you don’t!’ Billy told her.
‘I do!’ Susan protested. ‘We could have iced buns every day.’
‘Shush!’ Joe said, giving her a poke. Mother and Pa were just up ahead. ‘We’d have to go to school every day, stupid.’
‘Come along now,’ Mother called, looking around to see what the fuss was about.
I grabbed Susan by the hand and tugged her along. By then I’d had enough of the noisy town and its smelly drains.
Southern Cross only smells of salt and dust, but I’m getting a bit tired of it. The big adventures of our sea voyage and even my first ride in a buckboard buggy seem so long ago now. The excitement of seeing Mary and Emily again has worn off, too. Meeting Mary’s four little girls has been fun – although Mother is much more interested in them than I am. I wonder if my wild ride out into the desert on Buster has woken something inside me. A hankering for the freedom that is missing in the towns, a need for new adventures, different challenges perhaps?
Over the next few days the last of the prospectors filtered out of the town and Jack got ready to make his first run to the new diggings. When I had finished my work on the day Jack was due to leave, I went down to the Raeside stables. He was still loading up his wagon.
‘I’ve decided to stick to carting water,’ Jack said.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because … Well, because water is life, isn’t it?’
‘But someone else could cart it, couldn’t they?’ I was not looking forward to Jack being so far away for at least six days at a time.
‘My father can’t do everything.’
Jack finished the loading and we sat on the buckboard together. The wind sighed around us as if we were in its way. It lifted the brim of Jack’s hat, flapped at my skirts and blew my hair into my eyes. I thought of all the creatures who lived out there in the desert and wondered how they managed without water. At least they didn’t have to cook and clean and wash their clothes in it.
‘They’re calling the new town Coolgardie,’ Jack said, breaking the silence that had stretched out and settled over us like a bedsheet. ‘It’s a name the natives use for mining areas. It means “white man’s holes”.’ He gave a half-laugh. With that look in his eyes I was never quite sure whether he was joking or not.
‘Really?’ I asked.
‘Dinky-di. Cross my heart –’ I quickly put my hand over his mouth. I didn’t want him to say the rest of the old rhyme, but he pulled my hand away. ‘And hope to die,’ he said, still holding my hand. Then he thought again. ‘Better not, eh? If I die who’ll drive the team to Coolgardie?’
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘I bet you could,’ Jack said. ‘If you put your mind to it.’