________________________________________________
Title: The Golden Graveyard
Author: Henry Lawson [
More Titles by Lawson]
Mother Middleton was an awful woman, an 'old hand' (transported convict)
some said. The prefix 'mother' in Australia mostly means 'old hag',
and is applied in that sense. In early boyhood we understood, from
old diggers, that Mother Middleton--in common with most other 'old
hands'--had been sent out for 'knocking a donkey off a hen-roost.' We
had never seen a donkey. She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper
when the spirit moved her; she went on periodical sprees, and swore on
most occasions. There was a fearsome yarn, which impressed us greatly
as boys, to the effect that once, in her best (or worst) days, she had
pulled a mounted policeman off his horse, and half-killed him with a
heavy pick-handle, which she used for poking down clothes in her boiler.
She said that he had insulted her.
She could still knock down a tree and cut a load of firewood with any
Bushman; she was square and muscular, with arms like a navvy's; she had
often worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband, when he'd be
putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate, as he often had to
do--because of her mainly. Old diggers said that it was lovely to see
how she'd spin up a heavy green-hide bucket full of clay and 'tailings',
and land and empty it with a twist of her wrist. Most men were afraid of
her, and few diggers' wives were strong-minded enough to seek a second
row with Mother Middleton. Her voice could be heard right across Golden
Gully and Specimen Flat, whether raised in argument or in friendly
greeting. She came to the old Pipeclay diggings with the 'rough crowd'
(mostly Irish), and when the old and new Pipeclays were worked out, she
went with the rush to Gulgong (about the last of the great alluvial or
'poor-man's' goldfields) and came back to Pipeclay when the Log Paddock
goldfield 'broke out', adjacent to the old fields, and so helped prove
the truth of the old digger's saying, that no matter how thoroughly
ground has been worked, there is always room for a new Ballarat.
Jimmy Middleton died at Log Paddock, and was buried, about the last,
in the little old cemetery--appertaining to the old farming town on the
river, about four miles away--which adjoined the district racecourse, in
the Bush, on the far edge of Specimen Flat. She conducted the funeral.
Some said she made the coffin, and there were alleged jokes to the
effect that her tongue had provided the corpse; but this, I think, was
unfair and cruel, for she loved Jimmy Middleton in her awful way, and
was, for all I ever heard to the contrary, a good wife to him. She then
lived in a hut in Log Paddock, on a little money in the bank, and did
sewing and washing for single diggers.
I remember hearing her one morning in neighbourly conversation, carried
on across the gully, with a selector, Peter Olsen, who was hopelessly
slaving to farm a dusty patch in the scrub.
'Why don't you chuck up that dust-hole and go up country and settle on
good land, Peter Olsen? You're only slaving your stomach out here.' (She
didn't say stomach.)
*Peter Olsen* (mild-whiskered little man, afraid of his wife). 'But then
you know my wife is so delicate, Mrs Middleton. I wouldn't like to take
her out in the Bush.'
*Mrs Middleton*. 'Delicate, be damned! she's only shamming!' (at her
loudest.) 'Why don't you kick her off the bed and the book out of her
hand, and make her go to work? She's as delicate as I am. Are you a man,
Peter Olsen, or a----?'
This for the edification of the wife and of all within half a mile.
Long Paddock was 'petering'. There were a few claims still being worked
down at the lowest end, where big, red-and-white waste-heaps of clay and
gravel, rising above the blue-grey gum-bushes, advertised deep sinking;
and little, yellow, clay-stained streams, running towards the creek over
the drought-parched surface, told of trouble with the water below--time
lost in baling and extra expense in timbering. And diggers came up with
their flannels and moleskins yellow and heavy, and dripping with wet
'mullock'.
Most of the diggers had gone to other fields, but there were a few
prospecting, in parties and singly, out on the flats and amongst the
ridges round Pipeclay. Sinking holes in search of a new Ballarat.
Dave Regan--lanky, easy-going Bush native; Jim Bently--a bit of a 'Flash
Jack'; and Andy Page--a character like what 'Kit' (in the 'Old Curiosity
Shop') might have been after a voyage to Australia and some Colonial
experience. These three were mates from habit and not necessity, for
it was all shallow sinking where they worked. They were poking down
pot-holes in the scrub in the vicinity of the racecourse, where the
sinking was from ten to fifteen feet.
Dave had theories--'ideers' or 'notions' he called them; Jim Bently laid
claim to none--he ran by sight, not scent, like a kangaroo-dog. Andy
Page--by the way, great admirer and faithful retainer of Dave Regan--was
simple and trusting, but, on critical occasions, he was apt to be
obstinately, uncomfortably, exasperatingly truthful, honest, and he had
reverence for higher things.
Dave thought hard all one quiet drowsy Sunday afternoon, and next
morning he, as head of the party, started to sink a hole as close to the
cemetery fence as he dared. It was a nice quiet spot in the thick scrub,
about three panels along the fence from the farthest corner post
from the road. They bottomed here at nine feet, and found encouraging
indications. They 'drove' (tunnelled) inwards at right angles to the
fence, and at a point immediately beneath it they were 'making tucker';
a few feet farther and they were making wages. The old alluvial bottom
sloped gently that way. The bottom here, by the way, was shelving,
brownish, rotten rock.
Just inside the cemetery fence, and at right angles to Dave's drive,
lay the shell containing all that was left of the late fiercely lamented
James Middleton, with older graves close at each end. A grave
was supposed to be six feet deep, and local gravediggers had been
conscientious. The old alluvial bottom sloped from nine to fifteen feet
here.
Dave worked the ground all round from the bottom of his shaft,
timbering--i.e., putting in a sapling prop--here and there where he
worked wide; but the 'payable dirt' ran in under the cemetery, and in no
other direction.
Dave, Jim, and Andy held a consultation in camp over their pipes
after tea, as a result of which Andy next morning rolled up his swag,
sorrowfully but firmly shook hands with Dave and Jim, and started to
tramp Out-Back to look for work on a sheep-station.
This was Dave's theory--drawn from a little experience and many long
yarns with old diggers:--
He had bottomed on a slope to an old original water-course, covered with
clay and gravel from the hills by centuries of rains to the depth of
from nine or ten to twenty feet; he had bottomed on a gutter running
into the bed of the old buried creek, and carrying patches and streaks
of 'wash' or gold-bearing dirt. If he went on he might strike it rich
at any stroke of his pick; he might strike the rich 'lead' which was
supposed to exist round there. (There was always supposed to be a rich
lead round there somewhere. 'There's gold in them ridges yet--if a man
can only git at it,' says the toothless old relic of the Roaring Days.)
Dave might strike a ledge, 'pocket', or 'pot-hole' holding wash rich
with gold. He had prospected on the opposite side of the cemetery, found
no gold, and the bottom sloping upwards towards the graveyard. He had
prospected at the back of the cemetery, found a few 'colours', and the
bottom sloping downwards towards the point under the cemetery towards
which all indications were now leading him. He had sunk shafts across
the road opposite the cemetery frontage and found the sinking twenty
feet and not a colour of gold. Probably the whole of the ground under
the cemetery was rich--maybe the richest in the district. The old
gravediggers had not been gold-diggers--besides, the graves, being six
feet, would, none of them, have touched the alluvial bottom. There
was nothing strange in the fact that none of the crowd of experienced
diggers who rushed the district had thought of the cemetery and
racecourse. Old brick chimneys and houses, the clay for the bricks of
which had been taken from sites of subsequent goldfields, had been put
through the crushing-mill in subsequent years and had yielded 'payable
gold'. Fossicking Chinamen were said to have been the first to detect a
case of this kind.
Dave reckoned to strike the 'lead', or a shelf or ledge with a good
streak of wash lying along it, at a point about forty feet within the
cemetery. But a theory in alluvial gold-mining was much like a theory
in gambling, in some respects. The theory might be right enough, but old
volcanic disturbances--'the shrinkage of the earth's surface,' and that
sort of old thing--upset everything. You might follow good gold along
a ledge, just under the grass, till it suddenly broke off and the
continuation might be a hundred feet or so under your nose.
Had the 'ground' in the cemetery been 'open' Dave would have gone to the
point under which he expected the gold to lie, sunk a shaft there, and
worked the ground. It would have been the quickest and easiest way--it
would have saved the labour and the time lost in dragging heavy buckets
of dirt along a low lengthy drive to the shaft outside the fence. But
it was very doubtful if the Government could have been moved to open
the cemetery even on the strongest evidence of the existence of a rich
goldfield under it, and backed by the influence of a number of diggers
and their backers--which last was what Dave wished for least of all. He
wanted, above all things, to keep the thing shady. Then, again, the old
clannish local spirit of the old farming town, rooted in years way back
of the goldfields, would have been too strong for the Government, or
even a rush of wild diggers.
'We'll work this thing on the strict Q.T.,' said Dave.
He and Jim had a consultation by the camp fire outside their tent. Jim
grumbled, in conclusion,--
'Well, then, best go under Jimmy Middleton. It's the shortest and
straightest, and Jimmy's the freshest, anyway.'
Then there was another trouble. How were they to account for the size of
the waste-heap of clay on the surface which would be the result of such
an extraordinary length of drive or tunnel for shallow sinkings? Dave
had an idea of carrying some of the dirt away by night and putting it
down a deserted shaft close by; but that would double the labour, and
might lead to detection sooner than anything else. There were boys
'possum-hunting on those flats every night. Then Dave got an idea.
There was supposed to exist--and it has since been proved--another, a
second gold-bearing alluvial bottom on that field, and several had tried
for it. One, the town watchmaker, had sunk all his money in 'duffers',
trying for the second bottom. It was supposed to exist at a depth
of from eighty to a hundred feet--on solid rock, I suppose. This
watchmaker, an Italian, would put men on to sink, and superintend in
person, and whenever he came to a little 'colour'-showing shelf, or
false bottom, thirty or forty feet down--he'd go rooting round and spoil
the shaft, and then start to sink another. It was extraordinary that
he hadn't the sense to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second
bottom, and if he found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other
bottoms, or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them.
He was living in a lunatic asylum the last time I heard of him. And the
last time I heard from that field, they were boring the ground like a
sieve, with the latest machinery, to find the best place to put down a
deep shaft, and finding gold from the second bottom on the bore. But I'm
right off the line again.
'Old Pinter', Ballarat digger--his theory on second and other bottoms
ran as follows:--
'Ye see, THIS here grass surface--this here surface with trees an' grass
on it, that we're livin' on, has got nothin' to do with us. This here
bottom in the shaller sinkin's that we're workin' on is the slope to the
bed of the NEW crick that was on the surface about the time that men was
missin' links. The false bottoms, thirty or forty feet down, kin be said
to have been on the surface about the time that men was monkeys. The
SECON' bottom--eighty or a hundred feet down--was on the surface about
the time when men was frogs. Now----'
But it's with the missing-link surface we have to do, and had the
friends of the local departed known what Dave and Jim were up to they
would have regarded them as something lower than missing-links.
'We'll give out we're tryin' for the second bottom,' said Dave Regan.
'We'll have to rig a fan for air, anyhow, and you don't want air in
shallow sinkings.'
'And some one will come poking round, and look down the hole and see the
bottom,' said Jim Bently.
'We must keep 'em away,' said Dave. 'Tar the bottom, or cover it with
tarred canvas, to make it black. Then they won't see it. There's not
many diggers left, and the rest are going; they're chucking up the
claims in Log Paddock. Besides, I could get drunk and pick rows with the
rest and they wouldn't come near me. The farmers ain't in love with
us diggers, so they won't bother us. No man has a right to come poking
round another man's claim: it ain't ettykit--I'll root up that old
ettykit and stand to it--it's rather worn out now, but that's no matter.
We'll shift the tent down near the claim and see that no one comes
nosing round on Sunday. They'll think we're only some more second-bottom
lunatics, like Francea [the mining watchmaker]. We're going to get our
fortune out from under that old graveyard, Jim. You leave it all to me
till you're born again with brains.'
Dave's schemes were always elaborate, and that was why they so often
came to the ground. He logged up his windlass platform a little higher,
bent about eighty feet of rope to the bole of the windlass, which was a
new one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party (that is
to say, a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down about forty feet of
rope and then wind, with simulated exertion, until the slack was taken
up and the rope lifted the bucket from the shallow bottom.
'It would look better to have a whip-pole and a horse, but we can't
afford them just yet,' said Dave.
But I'm a little behind. They drove straight in under the cemetery,
finding good wash all the way. The edge of Jimmy Middleton's box
appeared in the top corner of the 'face' (the working end) of the drive.
They went under the butt-end of the grave. They shoved up the end of the
shell with a prop, to prevent the possibility of an accident which might
disturb the mound above; they puddled--i.e., rammed--stiff clay up round
the edges to keep the loose earth from dribbling down; and having given
the bottom of the coffin a good coat of tar, they got over, or rather
under, an unpleasant matter.
Jim Bently smoked and burnt paper during his shift below, and grumbled a
good deal. 'Blowed if I ever thought I'd be rooting for gold down among
the blanky dead men,' he said. But the dirt panned out better every
dish they washed, and Dave worked the 'wash' out right and left as they
drove.
But, one fine morning, who should come along but the very last man
whom Dave wished to see round there--'Old Pinter' (James Poynton),
Californian and Victorian digger of the old school. He'd been
prospecting down the creek, carried his pick over his shoulder--threaded
through the eye in the heft of his big-bladed, short-handled shovel that
hung behind--and his gold-dish under his arm.
I mightn't get a chance again to explain what a gold-dish and what
gold-washing is. A gold washing-dish is a flat dish--nearer the shape
of a bedroom bath-tub than anything else I have seen in England, or the
dish we used for setting milk--I don't know whether the same is used
here: the gold-dish measures, say, eighteen inches across the top. You
get it full of wash dirt, squat down at a convenient place at the edge
of the water-hole, where there is a rest for the dish in the water just
below its own depth. You sink the dish and let the clay and gravel soak
a while, then you work and rub it up with your hands, and as the clay
dissolves, dish it off as muddy water or mullock. You are careful to
wash the pebbles in case there is any gold sticking to them. And so till
all the muddy or clayey matter is gone, and there is nothing but clean
gravel in the bottom of the dish. You work this off carefully, turning
the dish about this way and that and swishing the water round in it. It
requires some practice. The gold keeps to the bottom of the dish, by
its own weight. At last there is only a little half-moon of sand or fine
gravel in the bottom lower edge of the dish--you work the dish slanting
from you. Presently the gold, if there was any in the dirt, appears in
'colours', grains, or little nuggets along the base of the half-moon of
sand. The more gold there is in the dirt, or the coarser the gold is,
the sooner it appears. A practised digger can work off the last speck of
gravel, without losing a 'colour', by just working the water round and
off in the dish. Also a careful digger could throw a handful of gold
in a tub of dirt, and, washing it off in dishfuls, recover practically
every colour.
The gold-washing 'cradle' is a box, shaped something like a boot, and
the size of a travelling trunk, with rockers on, like a baby's cradle,
and a stick up behind for a handle; on top, where you'll put your foot
into the boot, is a tray with a perforated iron bottom; the clay and
gravel is thrown on the tray, water thrown on it, and the cradle rocked
smartly. The finer gravel and the mullock goes through and down over a
sloping board covered with blanket, and with ledges on it to catch the
gold. The dish was mostly used for prospecting; large quantities of wash
dirt was put through the horse-power 'puddling-machine', which there
isn't room to describe here.
''Ello, Dave!' said Pinter, after looking with mild surprise at the size
of Dave's waste-heap. 'Tryin' for the second bottom?'
'Yes,' said Dave, guttural.
Pinter dropped his tools with a clatter at the foot of the waste-heap
and scratched under his ear like an old cockatoo, which bird he
resembled. Then he went to the windlass, and resting his hands on his
knees, he peered down, while Dave stood by helpless and hopeless.
Pinter straightened himself, blinking like an owl, and looked carelessly
over the graveyard.
'Tryin' for a secon' bottom,' he reflected absently. 'Eh, Dave?'
Dave only stood and looked black.
Pinter tilted back his head and scratched the roots of his
chin-feathers, which stuck out all round like a dirty, ragged fan held
horizontally.
'Kullers is safe,' reflected Pinter.
'All right?' snapped Dave. 'I suppose we must let him into it.'
'Kullers' was a big American buck nigger, and had been Pinter's mate for
some time--Pinter was a man of odd mates; and what Pinter meant was that
Kullers was safe to hold his tongue.
Next morning Pinter and his coloured mate appeared on the ground early,
Pinter with some tools and the nigger with a windlass-bole on his
shoulders. Pinter chose a spot about three panels or thirty feet along
the other fence, the back fence of the cemetery, and started his hole.
He lost no time for the sake of appearances, he sunk his shaft and
started to drive straight for the point under the cemetery for which
Dave was making; he gave out that he had bottomed on good 'indications'
running in the other direction, and would work the ground outside the
fence. Meanwhile Dave rigged a fan--partly for the sake of appearances,
but mainly because his and Jim's lively imaginations made the air in the
drive worse than it really was. A 'fan' is a thing like a paddle-wheel
rigged in a box, about the size of a cradle, and something the shape of
a shoe, but rounded over the top. There is a small grooved wheel on the
axle of the fan outside, and an endless line, like a clothes-line, is
carried over this wheel and a groove in the edge of a high light wooden
driving-wheel rigged between two uprights in the rear and with a handle
to turn. That's how the thing is driven. A wind-chute, like an endless
pillow-slip, made of calico, with the mouth tacked over the open toe of
the fan-box, and the end taken down the shaft and along the drive--this
carries the fresh air into the workings.
Dave was working the ground on each side as he went, when one morning
a thought struck him that should have struck him the day Pinter went to
work. He felt mad that it hadn't struck him sooner.
Pinter and Kullers had also shifted their tent down into a nice quiet
place in the Bush close handy; so, early next Sunday morning, while
Pinter and Kullers were asleep, Dave posted Jim Bently to watch their
tent, and whistle an alarm if they stirred, and then dropped down into
Pinter's hole and saw at a glance what he was up to.
After that Dave lost no time: he drove straight on, encouraged by the
thuds of Pinter's and Kullers' picks drawing nearer. They would strike
his tunnel at right angles. Both parties worked long hours, only
knocking off to fry a bit of steak in the pan, boil the billy, and throw
themselves dressed on their bunks to get a few hours' sleep. Pinter had
practical experience and a line clear of graves, and he made good time.
The two parties now found it more comfortable to be not on speaking
terms. Individually they grew furtive, and began to feel criminal
like--at least Dave and Jim did. They'd start if a horse stumbled
through the Bush, and expected to see a mounted policeman ride up at
any moment and hear him ask questions. They had driven about thirty-five
feet when, one Saturday afternoon, the strain became too great, and Dave
and Jim got drunk. The spree lasted over Sunday, and on Monday morning
they felt too shaky to come to work and had more drink. On Monday
afternoon, Kullers, whose shift it was below, stuck his pick through the
face of his drive into the wall of Dave's, about four feet from the end
of it: the clay flaked away, leaving a hole as big as a wash-hand basin.
They knocked off for the day and decided to let the other party take the
offensive.
Tuesday morning Dave and Jim came to work, still feeling shaky. Jim
went below, crawled along the drive, lit his candle, and stuck it in the
spiked iron socket and the spike in the wall of the drive, quite close
to the hole, without noticing either the hole or the increased freshness
in the air. He started picking away at the 'face' and scraping the clay
back from under his feet, and didn't hear Kullers come to work. Kullers
came in softly and decided to try a bit of cheerful bluff. He stuck his
great round black face through the hole, the whites of his eyes rolling
horribly in the candle-light, and said, with a deep guffaw--
''Ullo! you dar'?'
No bandicoot ever went into his hole with the dogs after him quicker
than Jim came out of his. He scrambled up the shaft by the foot-holes,
and sat on the edge of the waste-heap, looking very pale.
'What's the matter?' asked Dave. 'Have you seen a ghost?'
'I've seen the--the devil!' gasped Jim. 'I'm--I'm done with this here
ghoul business.'
The parties got on speaking terms again. Dave was very warm, but Jim's
language was worse. Pinter scratched his chin-feathers reflectively till
the other party cooled. There was no appealing to the Commissioner for
goldfields; they were outside all law, whether of the goldfields or
otherwise--so they did the only thing possible and sensible, they joined
forces and became 'Poynton, Regan, & Party'. They agreed to work the
ground from the separate shafts, and decided to go ahead, irrespective
of appearances, and get as much dirt out and cradled as possible before
the inevitable exposure came along. They found plenty of 'payable dirt',
and soon the drive ended in a cluster of roomy chambers. They timbered
up many coffins of various ages, burnt tarred canvas and brown
paper, and kept the fan going. Outside they paid the storekeeper with
difficulty and talked of hard times.
But one fine sunny morning, after about a week of partnership, they got
a bad scare. Jim and Kullers were below, getting out dirt for all they
were worth, and Pinter and Dave at their windlasses, when who should
march down from the cemetery gate but Mother Middleton herself. She was
a hard woman to look at. She still wore the old-fashioned crinoline and
her hair in a greasy net; and on this as on most other sober occasions,
she wore the expression of a rough Irish navvy who has just enough drink
to make him nasty and is looking out for an excuse for a row. She had
a stride like a grenadier. A digger had once measured her step by her
footprints in the mud where she had stepped across a gutter: it measured
three feet from toe to heel.
She marched to the grave of Jimmy Middleton, laid a dingy bunch of
flowers thereon, with the gesture of an angry man banging his fist down
on the table, turned on her heel, and marched out. The diggers were dirt
beneath her feet. Presently they heard her drive on in her spring-cart
on her way into town, and they drew breaths of relief.
It was afternoon. Dave and Pinter were feeling tired, and were just
deciding to knock off work for that day when they heard a scuffling in
the direction of the different shafts, and both Jim and Kullers dropped
down and bundled in in a great hurry. Jim chuckled in a silly way, as if
there was something funny, and Kullers guffawed in sympathy.
'What's up now?' demanded Dave apprehensively.
'Mother Middleton,' said Jim; 'she's blind mad drunk, and she's got a
bottle in one hand and a new pitchfork in the other, that she's bringing
out for some one.'
'How the hell did she drop to it?' exclaimed Pinter.
'Dunno,' said Jim. 'Anyway she's coming for us. Listen to her!'
They didn't have to listen hard. The language which came down the
shaft--they weren't sure which one--and along the drives was enough to
scare up the dead and make them take to the Bush.
'Why didn't you fools make off into the Bush and give us a chance,
instead of giving her a lead here?' asked Dave.
Jim and Kullers began to wish they had done so.
Mrs Middleton began to throw stones down the shaft--it was Pinter's--and
they, even the oldest and most anxious, began to grin in spite of
themselves, for they knew she couldn't hurt them from the surface, and
that, though she had been a working digger herself, she couldn't fill
both shafts before the fumes of liquor overtook her.
'I wonder which shaf' she'll come down,' asked Kullers in a tone
befitting the place and occasion.
'You'd better go and watch your shaft, Pinter,' said Dave, 'and Jim and
I'll watch mine.'
'I--I won't,' said Pinter hurriedly. 'I'm--I'm a modest man.'
Then they heard a clang in the direction of Pinter's shaft.
'She's thrown her bottle down,' said Dave.
Jim crawled along the drive a piece, urged by curiosity, and returned
hurriedly.
'She's broke the pitchfork off short, to use in the drive, and I believe
she's coming down.'
'Her crinoline'll handicap her,' said Pinter vacantly, 'that's a
comfort.'
'She's took it off!' said Dave excitedly; and peering along Pinter's
drive, they saw first an elastic-sided boot, then a red-striped
stocking, then a section of scarlet petticoat.
'Lemme out!' roared Pinter, lurching forward and making a swimming
motion with his hands in the direction of Dave's drive. Kullers
was already gone, and Jim well on the way. Dave, lanky and awkward,
scrambled up the shaft last. Mrs Middleton made good time, considering
she had the darkness to face and didn't know the workings, and when Dave
reached the top he had a tear in the leg of his moleskins, and the blood
ran from a nasty scratch. But he didn't wait to argue over the price of
a new pair of trousers. He made off through the Bush in the direction of
an encouraging whistle thrown back by Jim.
'She's too drunk to get her story listened to to-night,' said Dave. 'But
to-morrow she'll bring the neighbourhood down on us.'
'And she's enough, without the neighbourhood,' reflected Pinter.
Some time after dark they returned cautiously, reconnoitred their camp,
and after hiding in a hollow log such things as they couldn't carry,
they rolled up their tents like the Arabs, and silently stole away.
[THE END]
An incomplete glossary of Australian, British, or antique terms and concepts which may prove helpful to understanding this book:
"A house where they took in cards on a tray" (from Joe Wilson's Courtship): An upper class house, with servants who would take a visitor's card (on a tray) to announce their presence, or, if the family was out, to keep a record of the visit.
Anniversary Day: Mentioned in the text, is now known as Australia Day. It commemorates the establishment of the first English settlement in Australia, at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour), on 26 January 1788.
Gin: An obvious abbreviation of "aborigine", it only refers to *female* aborigines, and is now considered derogatory. It was not considered derogatory at the time Lawson wrote.
Jackaroo: At the time Lawson wrote, a Jackaroo was a "new chum" or newcomer to Australia, who sought work on a station to gain experience. The term now applies to any young man working as a station hand. A female station hand is a Jillaroo. Variant: Jackeroo.
Old-fashioned child: A child that acts old for their age. Americans would say 'Precocious'.
'Possum: In Australia, a class of marsupials that were originally mistaken for possums. They are not especially related to the possums of North and South America, other than both being marsupials.
Public/Pub.: The traditional pub. in Australia was a hotel with a "public" bar--hence the name. The modern pub has often (not always) dispensed with the lodging, and concentrated on the bar.
Tea: In addition to the regular meaning, Tea can also mean a light snack or a meal (i.e., where Tea is served). In particular, Morning Tea (about 10 AM) and Afternoon Tea (about 3 PM) are nothing more than a snack, but Evening Tea (about 6 PM) is a meal. When just "Tea" is used, it usually means the evening meal. Variant: Tea-time.
Tucker: Food.
Shout: In addition to the regular meaning, it also refers to buying drinks for all the members of a group, etc. The use of this term can be confusing, so the first instance is footnoted in the text.
Sly-grog-shop: An unlicensed bar or liquor-store.
Station: A farm or ranch, especially one devoted to cattle or sheep.
Store Bullock: Lawson makes several references to these. A bullock is a castrated bull. Bullocks were used in Australia for work that was too heavy for horses. 'Store' may refer to those cattle, and their descendants, brought to Australia by the British government, and sold to settlers from the 'Store'--hence, the standard draft animal.
Also: a hint with the seasons--remember that the seasons are reversed from those in the northern hemisphere, hence June may be hot, but December is even hotter. Australia is at a lower latitude than the United States, so the winters are not harsh by US standards, and are not even mild in the north. In fact, large parts of Australia are governed more by "dry" versus "wet" than by Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.
--A. L.
[The end]
Henry Lawson's short story: Golden Graveyard
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
