KAL

Random House Australia - ISBN 9781741665963

Maudie Gaskill stepped out of the Kalgoorlie branch of the National Bank of Australasia into the dry and dusty heat of Maritana Street. She held her hand up to her eyes to shield them from the shock of sunlight. Although it was late afternoon the glare was relentless and the heat oppressive. It was a goldfields midsummer.

She rounded the corner into Hannan Street. It was Friday, payday, and the bank had been busy. Maudie paid her staff every second Friday. The same Friday that the bank paid out the gold sovereigns preferred to banknotes by many of the contract miners. As usual on a late payday afternoon, the main street of Kalgoorlie was bustling with activity. Fashionably gowned women in ornate hats were strolling along the pavements towards the Palace Hotel. Others in bonnets and worn cotton dresses, were shopping with their children, scrounging in their purses for the last pennies. Men in wide-brimmed hats, well scrubbed after their eight-hour shift in the mines, were on their way to the pubs for a hard-earned beer and a game of billiards.

Fashionable sulkies drawn by pairs-in-hand shared the street with heavy drays hauled by Clydesdales and men on horseback from out of town. A man in a passing trap doffed his hat to Maudie and the woman beside him gave a graceful wave of her gloved hand. Richard 'Lord' Laverton and his wife, Prudence. Laverton was the General Manager of the Midas Mine and one of Kalgoorlie's elite.

To be openly acknowledged in the street by Lord and Lady Laverton was an indication of one's standing in Kalgoorlie society, a fact which meant little to Maudie, but it was good for business so she waved back. Most passers-by smiled a greeting as she walked down Hannan street. They doffed their hats or openly called 'Afternoon, Maudie', and she nodded to each in return. Everyone knew Maudie. Maudie Gaskill owned one of the most popular pubs in town.

….. A small willy-willy swept its way down the centre of the street. People stepped into shop doorways or turned their backs or simply stopped in their tracks and covered their eyes as the stinging funnel of dust swirled past. Then, seconds later, as quickly as it had ceased, the chatter and bustle of the street resumed and people made for the relative comfort of the pavement and verandahs and shop awnings as if the willy-willy had never happened.

But it was only yesterday, Maudie thought, that there had been no pavements, no verandahs, no shop awnings. Just squat Hessian huts and lean-tos and corrugated iron sheds baking amongst the red dust. All goldrush towns grew quickly, but Kalgoorlie's growth seemed to have happened overnight.

Maudie has headed out of town in her sulky with ten year old Jack, on her way to the Clover Mine.

'Look Maudie, a camel team!'

Jack was nudging her and pointing up ahead. 'Give me the reins,' she said. 'Walk on, Princess, walk on, girl.' She edged the sulky to the side of the track and eased the horse down to a walk. As the camel team approached, Maudie kept calming the mare. 'Easy girl, walk on easy.' Like most horses, the Princess did not like camels.

It was a small team. Twelve beasts harnessed in pairs hauled a massive, heavily-laden wood cart, urged on by three turbaned Afghan cameleers walking alongside. They were taking firewood to The Golden Mile, just south of Kalgoorlie. Most of the big mines were centred around the aptly named Golden Mile, where the rich gold-bearing lodes ran deep beneath the earth's surface.

Maudie pulled her travelling veil down over her face as the wood cart trundled by and the dust swirled up. She wondered how long it would be before the camel trains were a thing of the past. Soon all the big mines would be bringing in their wood supplies by locomotive-driven steam trains. And as for water - much of which was transported by camels - well if the government scheme was to prove successful, water would be supplied by pipeline from Mundaring Weir near Perth. They said that the dam was nearly completed, that next year they would start laying the pipes. And they said that the water would reach the goldfields by 1903. But, like many, Maudie would believe it when she saw it. To Maudie, the thought of water being pumped through three hundred and fifty miles of pipeline simply seemed impossible.

'Walk on Princess.'

She allowed young Jack to take over the reins and turned her attention to the surrounding countryside. She always loved getting out of the township, away from the bustle of the people and the noise of industry.

All about her was the endless red desert of low Spinifex scrub, saltbush and clumps of hardy Australian gum trees which somehow thrived under the seemingly impossible conditions.

Ahead of her lay a shimmering heat haze, through which the uninitiated would swear they could see a vast lake. Behind her, Kalgoorlie was an oasis in the midst of a treacherous landscape, a tribute to man's survival in an unforgiving land. Without shelter or water, a man would quickly perish at the mercy of the elements - many had, their bones bleached white by an unrelenting sun. How the aboriginal tribes survived in such a wilderness was beyond the comprehension of the white man, but survive they did. In fact, the two local tribes, rarely seen en masse by the townspeople, thrived happily on a land that had yielded up to them its secrets over thousands of years.

Maudie looked back at Kal where the clouds of smoke from the mills and the distant stamp of the grinders announced the industry of the Golden Mile. She thought of the ladies in their picture hats sipping tea at the Palace Hotel and the gentlemen parading the streets and tipping their hats at the passing gentry and she smiled. How unimportant it all was. The desert always got things in proportion, she thought as she watched a wedgetail eagle soar several hundred feet up in the sky.