Henry followed Frank away from the main road, weaving through the rows of canvas tents, ducking beneath lines of washing, avoiding piles of smelly rubbish and barking watchdogs and toddling babies. The joey had stopped shivering now, and felt warm against his chest.

Just beyond the Eureka Lead they came to a grassy area where scrub and scrawny trees still grew. Half hidden behind them was a small timber hut. Smoke drifted from its chimney.

Frank stopped. He cocked his head, listening, and then whistled softly.

The front door opened, and out came Happy Jack.

It was the first time Henry had seen him up close, and he couldn’t help staring. Happy Jack had bright blue eyes in a cheerful sunburned face. His hair was braided into a pigtail like a sailor’s and he had a tattoo of a star on one cheek. Around his shoulders he wore his fur dallong and some kind of scarf.

‘Frank Shanahan, my old covie,’ he said. ‘Greetings!’

He talks like a toff, Henry thought. He’s got the sort of voice that sounds as if it’s come from somewhere up behind your nose and got strangled on the way out. But he sure as blazes doesn’t look like a toff. I’m not sure what he looks like. A pirate, maybe.

Suddenly the scarf around Happy Jack’s neck began to move.

A snake! Henry started to shiver worse than the joey. Everyone knew how dangerous snakes were, and this one was licking the man’s face!

‘Jack,’ said Frank, ‘this is my friend Henry Bird. Henry, meet Jack. And Lola.’

‘How do you do, Mr, um, Jack,’ Henry said. He was quite sure now that Jack was as mad as a hatter. He couldn’t take his eyes off the snake. What if it slithered off Jack and slithered on to him? He felt his eyes starting to cross. Sweat broke out on his palms.

‘I am delighted to meet you, Henry,’ said Jack. ‘What brings you two to visit?’

‘We’ve got a baby kangaroo,’ Frank told him. ‘Five shillings we paid for him, and I’ve got sixpence-worth. His leg is hurt, and we hoped you’d look at it.’

Jack held the door open. ‘Of course I will. Do come inside. You mustn’t mind Lola, Henry.’

Henry put his hand in his pocket, found his pocket-knife, and grasped it firmly, just in case he needed to use it in a hurry. He squeezed past Jack, keeping as far away as possible from Lola.

The inside of the hut smelt of smoke and was almost completely filled by a table and a stretcher bed. The table was piled with pictures of animals and birds. Now that there was a fair distance between him and Lola, Henry put away his pocket-knife and picked up a sketch of a magpie. It was beautiful, each detail finely drawn.

‘I told you he was good, didn’t I?’ said Frank.

‘It gives me great pleasure to draw what I see in the natural world,’ Jack said. He unwound Lola from his neck and put her in a big round straw basket with a lid. ‘Let me see the patient.’

Very carefully Henry pulled the joey out of his coat and put him down on the table. The joey lay still, wide-eyed, while Jack gently felt his injured leg.

‘Aha!’ Jack pointed to a patch of dried blood in the soft grey fur. ‘There’s the problem.’

‘It might be from a gunshot,’ Henry said, looking at it. ‘Sergeant Nockles said they shot his mother.’

Jack nodded. ‘I expect the poor little fellow was in her pouch at the time. Fortunately the leg isn’t broken.’ He picked up a jar and scooped some brownish paste onto the wound. ‘It’s made from the leaves of the tea-tree,’ he explained. ‘The Wathaurong people use it. They know a thing or two when it comes to healing.’

He bound the joey’s leg with a piece of rag. ‘Leave him here with me. I’ll make a nice warm pouch for him out of an old gunny-sack.’

Henry pointed at the round straw basket. ‘What about . . .?’

‘Don’t worry about Lola,’ Jack said. ‘She’s not nearly full-grown yet, and she likes smaller food – lizards, mice, frogs and so on. There’s a patch of bush behind my home that I call her larder. But I’ll keep our joey well away from her, just to be safe.’

‘How will you feed him, Jack?’ Frank asked. ‘What do kangaroos eat?’

‘His last meal was probably his mother’s milk,’ Jack said. ‘But there’s no more of that, sadly. Grown-up kangaroos eat grass. I’ve seen them grazing near here, at dawn and dusk. They are probably this little fellow’s family, and when he’s well enough he can go back to them. Now, would you boys do me the honour of allowing me to make you a cup of tea?’

‘He has real good manners,’ Henry whispered to Frank.

‘Not always,’ Frank whispered back. ‘I heard him let loose once when a trap came to the door and tried to arrest him for not having a mining licence. The language he used! He hates the traps like poison.’

Henry remembered how Jack had yelled at the traps on the diggings. I hate the traps like poison, too, he thought. Maybe Jack isn’t so crazy after all.

A kettle was already boiling over the fire in the mud-brick chimney-piece that formed the back wall of the hut. Jack made tea and brought the teapot over to the table, together with three tin mugs.

Henry couldn’t believe it. The teapot must be solid silver!

‘You really are a toff, aren’t you?’ he blurted out.

Jack shook his head. ‘We are all born equal, Henry. True equality is something we must fight for, and where better than here on the diggings, where everyone has a common aim?’ He glanced down at the basket on the floor. ‘Ah, I see Lola is on the loose.’

Henry almost jumped out of his chair. Lola was lying along one of the roof rafters, right above where he was sitting. She slithered down until she was dangling over the table, her narrow head pointing straight at him.

Jack reached up and brought her down. She wound herself strongly around his arm, her tongue flickering.

‘There’s no need to be scared of her,’ Frank said. ‘I’m not. She’s a carpet python, so she’s not venomous.’

‘You may touch her if you like,’ Jack told Henry. ‘She won’t hurt you, I promise.’

Trying not to think too much about what he was going to do – touch a snake! – Henry brushed his hand lightly over Lola’s silvery-dark diamond-patterned body. To his surprise her skin wasn’t clammy or slimy, but soft and dry.

‘Good man,’ said Jack, putting Lola back in her basket. ‘That was brave of you. It wasn’t so bad, was it?’

Henry shook his head.

‘It’s like most things,’ Jack went on. ‘When you dare to do something, it is hardly ever as frightening as you expect it to be. I was afraid of coming to Australia. I was just fifteen, and I was sure that if I left England I’d never see it again. That was two years ago. Now I’m here, I wouldn’t wish to live anywhere else.’

Henry couldn’t imagine coming to Australia alone. He’d emigrated with Father and Mam and Eliza, and it had been like a huge adventure.

‘Why did you leave your home, Jack?’ he asked.

‘It doesn’t much matter now,’ Jack replied, pouring tea. ‘Let’s just say that my father and I didn’t . . . see eye to eye.’

That’s like me and Father, Henry thought, but he couldn’t say it aloud.

‘I still miss my father,’ Frank said. ‘When he died of typhus, it was the worst day of my life. He was the best man in the world.’

‘You are lucky to have had such a father,’ replied Jack. ‘I can’t say I miss mine. He believes that things like wealth, class and power make you a superior human being. Because I couldn’t share that belief, I was a great embarrassment to him. He packed me off to the colonies, and my mother did nothing to stop him.’ Jack gazed into his tea for a while before adding, ‘My father did me a favour, though, because here I have everything I want. In this I’ve learned a lesson from the Wathaurong. They have no money and few possessions, and all are equal, and all are happy.’

‘But they’re savages, aren’t they?’ Henry said.

Jack shook his head. ‘Indeed not,’ he said. ‘They are a fine people. In fact, I believe that we are the savages.’ He spread his hands. ‘Is life on the diggings kind and fair and equal? Is it the way you want to live?’

‘I suppose not,’ Henry said, thinking of Sergeant Nockles. ‘Or not always.’

‘Exactly.’ Jack smiled at him. ‘If we can find true equality here in this great country, I’ll die content.’

‘Thanks,’ Henry said as he and Frank walked back towards the Gravel Pits.

‘For what?’

‘For helping me with the joey, of course.’

Frank laughed. ‘I’m happy to do anything that gets up a trap’s nose. They’re a pox on the earth, they are.’

‘Me, too,’ said Henry. ‘I hate them more than anything.’

They walked on in silence for a little while, and then Frank said, ‘Well then, since you’re a rebel like me, I think you should visit our dining establishment tomorrow. It’s Molly Shanahan’s Pie Shop, down a little way from the Eureka Hotel. My ma would be happy to meet you.’ He looked sideways at Henry. ‘And you look like you could do with a good feed.’