I was impatient to be off on my new adventure, but as the time to leave came closer a sudden sense of loss washed over me. I would be leaving my mother, my sisters, the friends I had made here. Jack was right – Mrs Fagan, who was much older than me, would be my only female companion. I tried to put these thoughts out of my mind. Fortunately there was still a lot of work to be done. Mother fussed about my clothes. Emily cooked and filled a whole tin with biscuits that would withstand the heat and last for many weeks. Susan gave me a set of writing paper and envelopes that she had bought in Fremantle.
‘I’ve only used a few from this pack so they will last you nearly a year,’ she said. ‘You will write every week, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will,’ I said, knowing how much she treasured this smooth white paper and feeling surprised that she was willing to part with any of it at all. ‘I promise I’ll write and tell you everything. Jack can bring the letters back to you, each time he carts water to Coolgardie.’
I hadn’t written in my exercise book lately. I told myself I was too busy living my life to write about it. Sometimes there was nothing much to say, but that would change. I knew life was about to become a whole lot more interesting.
‘Clara,’ Mother was calling from the sitting room. I found her standing by the wooden box that held our small collection of books. ‘I want you to take this. Keep it by you and consult it whenever you feel the least bit poorly.’ She held out a thick, well-thumbed book. The words Encyclopaedia of Common Diseases and Remedies were written on the cover. I recognised it instantly. It had been a standby of hers and I had seen her consult it often. Not just when one of our family was feeling unwell. There were very few doctors in the places where we lived. My mother’s combination of intelligence, common sense and her encyclopaedia meant that people sought her out in an emergency. Over the years, she had helped many people recover from illnesses, broken bones and difficult births.
‘But Mother, what will you do without it?’ I asked.
‘I will order another one,’ she said. ‘I have heard that diseases like scurvy and dysentery – even typhoid – are rife amongst the prospectors on the new field.’ She handed me the book and I clutched it to my chest. There was such a comforting weight to it and the marks of my mother’s hands were all through its pages. I placed it carefully inside my bag and hugged her. She held me close. ‘Please be careful, Clara.’ Her voice was steady but gentle in my ear.
By Monday morning I was ready to go. Tom and Mary, Emily, Susan, Mother and Mrs Finnerty all came to say farewell and to see me safely onto Snell’s coach. Jack was already out loading water at one of the wells, sixty miles away.
Mr Snell, who was a licensee at the same hotel as Mr Wisdom, liked to drive the coach himself. He sat in the driver’s seat, in his workboots and battered hat, and held the reins of the two harnessed horses who stamped and snorted their disapproval of all the tears and fluttering handkerchiefs.
‘Good luck, Clara,’ Tom said. His eyes and mine were the only dry ones in the group, although I did have a strange lump in my throat as I waved my last goodbyes.
There were four other passengers travelling to Coolgardie that day, all hoping to strike it rich on the new find. A man called Jock, who wore a tartan waistcoat, was taking first turn at sitting up on the driver’s bench with Mr Snell. The rest of us sat inside the coach. Harry and his brother Will, both with black curly hair and beards, sat on the bench seat opposite. They were introduced by Tom Farren’s mate, Mac, who sat beside me.
We set off at a good fast pace in perfect weather. The sun was shining on the white surface of the lake, making it sparkle with a million pinpricks of light. A strong breeze blew from the east, cooling the horses and keeping us reasonably comfortable in our travelling clothes.
Later in the morning, the road surface became sandy and slowed the horses down. When we came to even deeper sand, we all had to get out and walk – except Mr Snell, of course.
Just on dusk, we stopped at Hunt’s Dam to camp for the night. I was tired, stiff and uncomfortable. Fortunately we were the only party camping there and the high bank of the dam gave me enough privacy to relieve myself for the first time that day.
There was a strong smell of camel at the dam. Flies crawled all over us, but we managed to fill several water bags with drinkable water. Mr Snell suggested we spend the night half a mile further on to avoid the worst of the flies and the smell. He moved the coach upwind and unhitched the horses. He fed them some hay and put hobbles on their front legs while we scoured the area for brush and sticks to light a fire. Mr Snell made damper and put water in the billy to boil. It was almost dark by the time we had eaten.
I got out my bed-roll. The men kindly rigged a tarpaulin over the coach, covering its windows. I thanked them and climbed inside to lie down full-length on the floor. It had been a long and tiring day, but I could not sleep at first. My family, Jack, the Finnertys, Mary and the new baby due any day now, all the events of the last few months kept circling around in my mind.
I had never been apart from my whole family before, and I wondered how I would cope without them, but I was surprised to find that I was sad to leave Mrs Finnerty, who had become like an older sister to me. She was about thirty, the same age as Mary, but she and the warden had only been married for six months. As I did the cleaning she would tell me about her travels in England and India, where she met Mr Finnerty. I was hoping to travel to places like that myself, one day, after I strike it rich. Mrs Finnerty was always interested in what I thought about things, too. She asked about the places where we had lived and where I had been educated. I told her that mostly there were no schools on new diggings, but Mother had been very strict when it came to lessons. She had a leather-bound copy of the Bible and a very big book of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. The black-and-white sketches in the Complete Works of Shakespeare were dull compared to the beautiful coloured pictures in Mother’s Bible. The dramatic scene of Moses parting the Red Sea and the glowing image of a pregnant Mary, sitting side-saddle on a donkey, were my favourites. Although the Virgin Mary didn’t look as if she was ‘great with child’, in spite of what the words said. And I knew that side-saddle was not the best way to ride a horse. It would only have to raise a trot and you would fall off. Each glossy picture was pasted onto a single page and Mother fretted about the edges of these colour plates being damaged.
‘Now you must turn the pages carefully,’ she told us when we started to read the book for ourselves. By the time Susan had learned to read, the corners of some of the pictures had come loose. Mother made a paste from flour and water and carefully glued them down again. Over the years these books became even more battered than her copy of the Encyclopaedia of Common Diseases and Remedies. We were never allowed to read that one. Mother kept it in her special bag with the bandages, scissors and towels, always packed ready for when people needed her help. I was stunned when Mother gave me her precious book. I can see now that it was a profound vote of confidence in me, and her greatest act of love.
The men were still sitting by the fire, talking in low voices. At first I heard just a blur of sound. Then I began to hear the words they said. Perhaps they thought I was asleep and were speaking a bit louder. Or perhaps I was ready to be distracted from my kaleidoscope of memories. I heard my name and listened more intently.
‘You’re right. Coolgardie is no place for a growing girl,’ Harry was saying.
‘I agree,’ Will said. ‘We should take her back to Southern Cross. She’s a nice young lass.’
‘Too nice for the likes of us,’ they laughed.
Take me back! How dare they? I was a bit sad about leaving, but my journey had only just begun. During the day the heat had been trying, but I had managed to ignore my thirst and only drink when they did. I was aching all over from sitting down for so long and being bounced and jolted over the rough track, but I was not even thinking of giving up. I was tempted to go out and tell them so, but their laughter had died down and everything was quiet.
Then Mac spoke. ‘Wind’s changed,’ he said. ‘I can smell them camels again.’
‘Mm,’ Mr Snell agreed. ‘There’ll be a big row in Southern Cross when I tell Warden Finnerty about the state of the water here.’
There were sounds of the fire being stoked up for the night and the men settling down in their swags.
In the morning I heard someone moving around, stirring the embers of the fire into life. The warm bread smell of fresh damper wafted through the air. I sat up, straightened my dress and tidied my hair. As I stepped down from the coach, Mr Snell handed me a pannikin of tea. I set it down on the sand and went around to a sheltered spot behind a small ridge. I gathered up my skirts and squatted there. When I had finished I went back to the camp fire.
‘Your tea’s here, Clara,’ Mr Snell reminded me and pointed to my abandoned pannikin.
I picked it up, but didn’t drink from it.
‘What’s the matter?’ Mr Snell asked kindly. ‘Why aren’t you drinking your tea?’
I hesitated for a moment, but couldn’t think of an excuse. So I told him the truth.
‘I can’t drink it,’ I said. ‘I heard them talking about the camels fouling the water last night. I wasn’t asleep.’
‘Oh, that,’ Mr Snell gave a short laugh. ‘They didn’t mean this water, did you, boys? Anyway, when it’s boiled up it’s all right.’
I glanced at the other men. They were nodding.
‘It’s okay, we’re gunna tell Finnerty and Raeside,’ Harry said.
‘That’s right,’ Mac agreed. ‘And there should be signs on all the waterholes: Drinking Water Only. And a couple of tanks out here would help.’
‘A bit of rain to fill them would be handy, too,’ Harry added.
‘I knew a bloke what did a rain dance, once,’ Jock said, tipping his head back and draining the last of the tea from his cup.
‘Yeah,’ Jock grinned. ‘Ten years later the town got flooded and he drowned.’
‘All in the timing, eh?’ Mac nodded, straight-faced.
I wondered if their idea about putting up a sign would be any use. Could the Afghan camel drivers read English? And how did the Aborigines feel about their waterholes being fouled? From the stories I had heard in Southern Cross, the native people were shy, but they had been helpful to the first prospectors who came here. Some people said they were becoming more aggressive lately, though. And who could blame them? Most of their water was being used up by thoughtless newcomers and their animals. It didn’t seem fair at all.
When the tarpaulin had been folded and the camping gear packed away, we set off again. The road became rougher, stony in some parts, sandy in others. By midday the horses were plodding along in two wheel ruts that stretched out in front and behind us from horizon to horizon amongst the clumps of spinifex.
We travelled for two more days. Each day the sun climbed into a cloudless sky. In the evening we made camp, ate damper and tried to sleep. Dry cold nights turned into dry hot days. We shed our coats and passed the waterbag around, tipping it up and drinking from the spout, then carefully wiping it before passing to the next person. A plume of red dust rose constantly into the air behind us. While we continued heading east, the hot wind blew the dust away, but whenever the track veered north or south, to avoid some pothole or deep sand trap, our own dust blew back on us and into the coach. We tied handkerchiefs over our mouths and noses. They made us look like a band of bushrangers and I smiled at the thought of Moondyne Joe. I longed for the shade of the spindly gum and the distraction of Joe telling his stories.
The horses suffered more than we did. Their steps slowed as each day went on and we camped a little earlier in the evenings to let them rest. Mr Snell gave them hay because, unlike camels, they could not eat the dry, spiky spinifex and we had not seen a blade of grass for a hundred miles.
On this seemingly endless journey I had a lot of time to think. Pa had written to us in Southern Cross. He said that he missed us and talked about coming to join us. We had written back telling him about life in the Cross and how it was not all sand, sin and sorrow, as we had been told. But what would he make of the new diggings? As we bumped along the narrow track, I wondered what I would find there. Perhaps Jack was right. Perhaps I was making a big mistake. Then I thought of all that gold. They said you didn’t even have to dig for it. Gold was lying on top of the ground, just waiting to be picked up. I imagined Pa being even more impatient to see it than I was. Bayley’s Reward Reef was already the stuff of legend. The biggest find ever made in Australia. Maybe the biggest in the world! I couldn’t wait to see it for myself.