By the time Mr Snell halted the horses in the centre of the makeshift town, a crowd of twenty or thirty men had gathered.
I stepped down from the coach and a great cheer rose up from the crowd. I looked around to see what they were cheering about.
‘Don’t worry,’ Mr Snell said, lifting my bag down from the luggage rack and putting it by the side of the road. ‘It happens any time a lady comes visiting – especially a young one.’
I smiled a little nervously and thanked him for my bag. The waiting men began to crowd in.
‘Stand back now,’ Mr Snell shouted. ‘Give the young lady some room. And let Mr Wisdom through or you won’t be getting your mail.’
Then Mr Wisdom was beside me. He picked up my bag in one hand, the mailbag in the other. ‘Welcome to Coolgardie, Clara,’ he said.
We crossed the road to the Exchange Hotel. It was built of brushwood and canvas with a corrugated iron roof. A handpainted sign above the door declared its name and purpose. Mr Wisdom pushed the door open with his foot and stood back for me to go inside. The bar was also made of brushwood and stretched most of the way along one wall. Dozens of clean glasses hung in wooden frames, shaped for the purpose and suspended with chains above the bar. A row of stools stood in line, some of them already occupied by patrons. The rest of the room was crowded with tables and chairs.
As we entered, a stout woman in a cap and apron came in through a curtained doorway in the back wall.
‘Ah, Mrs Fagan,’ Mr Wisdom said. ‘This is Clara.’
‘Hello there,’ Mrs Fagan wiped her hands down each side of her apron, leaving two streaks of flour. ‘’Tis good to have ya here at last, so it is.’ Her black, beady eyes almost disappeared as her round cheeks swelled into a smile that took up most of her face. ‘Sit ya down, so. We’ll have to be sortin’ this mail here or we’ll have a riot on our hands, but that won’t be takin’ long. Then ya can tell me all about yerself.’
After three and a half days on the road, the last thing I wanted to do was sit down again, but I needed to make a good impression. Mr Wisdom might change his mind about keeping me on if he thought I wasn’t up to the job.
All three of us sat down at one of the tables and Mr Wisdom emptied the mailbag, spreading the letters and packages, turning them so that the names became visible. The hotel was the only official address in Coolgardie, and Mr Wisdom acted as postmaster as well as licensee. Most of the letters simply had a name, followed by the word Coolgardie, spelled in various ways. But one I picked up was addressed to ‘Larry at the Sandgropers’, another to ‘Mr R. Moline, T’othersiders’.
‘Just put those together,’ Mr Wisdom said. ‘The first person who comes into town will pick up all the mail for the camps.’
‘T’othersiders?’ I asked.
Mrs Fagan smiled. ‘’Tis what the boys from here are after callin’ them from the eastern colonies.’ She gave a nod of her head towards the street where knots of men stood around waiting. ‘Sandgropers – they’re the locals. The other names speak for themselves … Montana, Royal Ascot, Little Italy … Ya get used to them, so ya do,’ she said reassuringly.
When we had finished sorting the mail, Mrs Fagan took me to my room. It was next to hers at the back of the hotel. She pointed out the bathroom, then left me to unpack.
‘I’ll be in the kitchen,’ she said.
In the bathroom, there was a large china jug and matching bowl on a wooden stand. I lifted the jug but there was no water in it. A sign on the wall said WATER ON REQUEST – 2/6 per gallon. Below the printed words, someone had scrawled, Wash in champagne – it’s cheaper.
Across the yard, a row of cubicles with brushwood posts and canvas walls perched above a latrine-type trench. I went into one of the cubicles and found a wooden tea chest with a circular hole in the top. The edges had been smoothed with sandpaper, and a roughly shaped lid placed over the hole. Even this, and the strong smell of disinfectant, was no match for the flies. They crawled all over it and had to be constantly brushed away. I lifted the lid and a pungent smell rose up. I felt my stomach clench with disgust. But I simply had to go.
Back in my room I unpacked, and hung my two dresses on the empty coat-hangers swinging on a wire that was stretched tight across one corner of the room and served as a wardrobe. I placed my underwear in the small chest of drawers beside the bed and took my mother’s precious book out of my bag. As I hugged it tightly to my chest, a wave of homesickness swept over me. I was hot, tired and suddenly longing for my family. My earlier happiness at having no-one to tell me what to do had completely evaporated. I even found myself wishing that Susan was here. She would talk nonstop and expect me to unpack her things as well as my own, but it was strange to be without her.
It took the clatter of pans, and the inviting smell of bacon coming from the kitchen, to bring back the excitement of being in a brand-new place. I was a working woman now, with a real job, earning my own money in the richest field of gold in the world. I couldn’t wait to get a closer look at the legendary reef.
I sat on the bed and gave a little bounce of happiness. The fancy curved rails of the iron frame squeaked in protest. A light blanket and linen bedspread covered the clean mattress. This was such a new town that nothing looked worn or lived in yet, except for some of the people.
I went to the kitchen where Mrs Fagan was cutting a slab of meat into bite-sized pieces.
‘Ah, there ya are, Clara. ’Tis famished ya’ll be, I expect. Help yerself to scones and tea.’ She indicated the buttered scones and teapot she had set out at the other end of the bench. ‘When ya’re done, ya can be startin’ on those taties there. No rest for the wicked, eh?’ she winked.
I thanked her politely, drank my tea and set to work peeling a large mound of potatoes.