The Silent Frontier (3 page)

Reluctantly, Lachlan accepted Duncan’s offer and ate a hearty meal of boiled meat and cabbage. It was not long before he drifted into sleep with the Scot’s dog curled up beside him.

Duncan placed a blanket over the boy who slept soundly under the wagon. ‘Ah, you poor wee laddie,’ he murmured. ‘I hope that we find your family.’

Duncan sat down beside his camp fire amidst the carnage
of the stockade. He lit his pipe and stared at the starry night. He was a long way from his beloved green fields of Scotland but his life had always been like that, serving the British Crown on foreign battlefields and travelling across three continents. It had been a lonely life, despite the wonderful comrades he had served alongside. For most of his years he had only known the life of the Scottish Regiment. First as a drummer boy and then to the rank of Colour Sergeant near the end of his service. Finally, he had taken his retirement and meagre pension to seek a life in the Australian colonies as an itinerant salesman of home wares.

The brief blaze of a shooting star lit the southern sky and tapered off to a trail of heavenly sparks. Duncan watched the astral display and sighed. Today something had happened here that instinctively he knew would change the face of the Australian colonies. But for now, his only concern was his temporary custody of this little Scot and the responsibility of reuniting him with his family.

The sun rose hot and dry over the goldfields, now almost deserted of miners. The numerous pits dotting the landscape were empty of their diggers and the pall of grief after the massacre still lay heavy on the encampment. Duncan rose early as was his habit from his many years in the army and woke the lad. Together, they went in search of his brothers and sister. They found the Irish sergeant, Paddy Rourke, busy at work on Soldier’s Hill among his men. When he saw Duncan his face broke into a broad smile but the smile faded when he noticed Lachlan beside him.

‘The miners identified your brother Tom amongst the dead,’ Rourke said sadly to Lachlan. ‘We buried them yesterday. I’m sorry, lad.’

At first, Lachlan could not believe that he had lost his eldest brother as well as his father. It had been bad enough that his mother had died only weeks earlier, but now he barely knew how to react to the sudden loneliness the news had imparted to him.

Duncan could see the stony expression on the young man’s face and had a partial understanding of what it meant. ‘Well, laddie, time that we went and found your brother John and your wee little sister,’ he said kindly, placing his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure the government can do something for you.’

Duncan spent three days searching for Lachlan’s brother and sister but it seemed that the children had simply disappeared. When Duncan asked questions at the military headquarters, still tense with an expectation of a counterattack by the armed survivors of the massacre, one harassed officer irritably snapped that orphans had been kindly taken in by miners’ families departing the goldfields. When he went on to say that he could not find any records of who had adopted the rebel’s children, even at ten years of age, Lachlan realised that he was alone in the world with just the company of a tough Scot and his little dog. The future looked bleak; all the little boy had to cling to was the former soldier of the Queen.

Part One
THE DREAMER
1862
The Colony of
New South Wales

ONE

T
he great wedge-tailed eagle circled over the vast, sun-baked plains, high above the stunted trees and desiccated grasses which shimmered from horizon to horizon. Far below the bird’s flight, a tiny wagon and horse sheltered from the heat under the tall river gums. The river of cool, clear water which snaked sluggishly through the plains provided the only relief from the searing summer sun.

In a reflective silence Lachlan MacDonald sat by the lifeless body of Duncan Campbell. The old Scotsman had been everything to Lachlan as he had grown into manhood. He was now eighteen years of age, of medium height but broad-shouldered and equally broad-chested. His grey eyes held an inherent intelligence and his thick hair curled at its ends. He was clean-shaven and had strong, handsome features. His face and arms were darkly tanned by exposure to the sun during the years he had been with Duncan Campbell, wandering
the colonies of Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales as he plied the trade of a salesman of home goods.

They had been relatively happy years for Lachlan as the assistant to the Scot who, rather than describe Lachlan as a waif he had collected in his travels, passed the boy off as his nephew. Duncan had taken Lachlan under his wing and ensured, even while on the road, that the boy learned to read and write. Soon Lachlan was devouring every book he could lay his hands on. Duncan had been self-taught and had an insatiable appetite to educate himself, so was pleased to be able to pass on his skills to his young protégé. Lachlan’s Christmas and birthday presents always consisted of expensive texts on mathematics or books of poetry. The great Scottish poet Robbie Burns’ books were prominent amongst Lachlan’s collection.

But Duncan taught him more than reading, writing and arithmetic. Around the camp fires he regaled him with stories of faraway exotic lands the former soldier had campaigned in – from the cold, snow-covered hills of northern Victoria to the arid, sun-baked plains of South Australia and New South Wales. These tales fired Lachlan’s imagination and he dreamed of one day becoming a famous explorer in the mysterious new colony of Queensland, a place Duncan had told him was inhabited by fierce war-like cannibals and giant, man-eating alligators.

‘You have to be good at mathematics,’ Duncan would warn him, as stern as any school master when Lachlan flagged in his studies while they were on the road. ‘Explorers have to know how to make measurements, navigate and make precise sketches for maps. You have to have the skills of a master mariner – but on land – to be an explorer.’

Duncan had never been demonstrative in his love for the boy he had unofficially adopted but Lachlan sensed his
fatherly love in everything he did for him. Once, after a beating Lachlan had taken from the local toughs years earlier in a town they had visited, Duncan had taken the bruised boy aside and taught him how to fight. Not just in the manner of the bare-knuckle boxer but also in the rough rules of the mean streets of Glasgow. Duncan himself had learned the hard way and after years of constant practice was second to none, be it in a street fight or in the ring. Lachlan learnt quickly and had eventually been able to earn a little money aside from what Duncan paid him, by fighting in the improvised boxing rings of many of the towns they passed through. Very rarely did he lose and his reputation had grown to the point that he was remembered with respect when they passed through those towns again.

It did not matter that the old man did not express his words in intimate gestures or words. What counted was that the Scot had always been there for him and that he had been kind and gentle in his gruff way.

Now he was dead.

The annoying clouds of bush flies buzzed around the body lying beside the wagon. It seemed to Lachlan that Duncan had known his death was coming the night before. The chest pains had become more and more frequent and even more painful. In the dark night lit only by the gentle flames of a dying camp fire he had called softly to Lachlan.

‘Lad, get over here now,’ he had gasped.

Awoken by the call, Lachlan had scrambled to the side of the Scot. ‘You all right, Mr Campbell?’

‘No, laddie, I’m dyin’.’

The statement, so frankly uttered, shocked Lachlan. ‘I’ll saddle up the horse and get you to a doctor,’ Lachlan said.

‘No need,’ Duncan groaned. ‘Waste of time. I just want you to know that you can bury me out here. I thought it
might have happened many times when I was younger, that I would be buried in some foreign land. At least here I will be buried in the earth of a Christian country.’

Unconsciously, Lachlan took the old man’s hand in his. Never before had he allowed himself such an intimate gesture, as it would have embarrassed them both.

‘There is something I think that you should know, laddie,’ Duncan said with some effort. ‘You have to sell up all that I have when I’m gone and follow that dream of yours to become an explorer.’ Lachlan made to protest, to say that he would continue the trade of his mentor, but Duncan cut him short. ‘You are different, laddie, you have a fire in your soul that sees beyond the far horizons. One day, you may stand before the honourable gentlemen of the Royal Geographical Society in London and speak of the places that you have blazed for God and the Queen in this big country. I have always thought that you would be the man to explore that new colony of Queensland. You can do better than that mad Irishman, Robert O’Hara Burke, who got himself killed last year. I know you can. This is a time for young men to make their name in the annals of the Empire. Don’t waste your life being an ordinary man, like I did, be an explorer and make a dying Scot proud. Go find those silent frontiers and shout out your name for all to hear. Make the land echo with the voice of a Scot.’

Lachlan had been stunned. How was it that the old Scot could understand his own restlessness to seek those unseen places beyond the horizon?

Suddenly, Duncan had arched his back, gripped his chest and slumped back against the earth. A strange gurgling sound came from his throat.

‘Mr Campbell?’ Lachlan said, desperately shaking the old man’s shoulder. Then he kneeled, his ear to Duncan’s chest.
Lachlan sat up and squeezed the hand he still held. It was now soft and yielding to the touch and the young man knew that the kindly, gruff man he had loved as his adopted father was now dead.

It had been many years since Lachlan had truly cried. The last time had been the night after the rebellion when the full impact of the death of his father and brother had finally hit him. The young boy had sobbed himself to sleep under Duncan’s wagon; the little dog, now long dead himself, had attempted to console him with licks to the face. Duncan had sat by him throughout the night and had let him cry until he could cry no more.

Now, alone on the flat, desolate plains of western New South Wales, Lachlan rocked back and forth on his haunches, sobbing and holding the dead Scot’s hand. For the first time in his life he felt truly alone. A fleeting memory of his brother John and little sister Phoebe came to him in his grief. He had never given up looking for them and Duncan had always asked questions, whenever he was in a Victorian town. Neither had received any news about the missing pair. It was as if they had vanished into thin air. Finally, Lachlan came to accept that the Scotsman was the closest thing to family he had.

Finally, Lachlan lay down beside the dead man and fell into a troubled sleep. When the early morning sun rose over the Hay Plains he sat up to stare at Duncan’s body. Lachlan went to the wagon and secured a shovel. He looked around the camp site by the water hole and noticed a site overlooking a sweeping bend in the river. There he commenced digging a grave and by mid-morning had finished a reasonably good-sized hole. Satisfied that it would be deep enough, he took the body under the arms and dragged it over.

When he had shovelled earth over Duncan’s body,
Lachlan went back to the wagon to recover the battered Bible from which the Presbyterian Scot had read for at least an hour every Sunday. Lachlan did not know what he should read, so placed the Bible on the mound of fresh, grey earth under the wooden cross that he had hastily made to mark the grave. He was through crying, he told himself, it was time to remember the Scot’s dying words.

After washing himself in the river, Lachlan hitched up the cart-horse to the wagon. He knew from past experience that it would take him two days to reach the next reasonably sized town to report the death to the police. Then he would make his way east to Sydney. The future was still blurred but at least he had a goal: to reach Sydney, where he would sell the horse, wagon and all its goods. With the money he would seek out his new occupation. Although, as he admitted reluctantly to himself, he was not quite sure how to go about becoming an explorer of great note.

Even as Lachlan trekked east towards the Great Dividing Range heading for Sydney, which lay beyond the blue-hazed hills and ancient sandstone escarpments, another young man had finally reached his destination outside the town of Ballarat in the colony of Victoria.

John MacDonald was now twenty years old and had saved enough money to travel from Hobart in Van Diemen’s Land. His apprenticeship as a printer in a Hobart printery had been completed and he was now free to go in search of a dream. Determined to honour the dying wishes of his brother, John had, as a child, scribbled on a piece of paper a rough map of what he could remember about the place where his brother died.

But what if his memories from that terrible day so many
years past had just been a figment of his imagination? John trudged the last mile to the foothills of the mountains that had provided temporary sanctuary the day of the rebellion. And what if the treasure had long been found by someone else? The question was like a dagger in his belly. He had spent just about every penny he had saved to purchase his ticket for the voyage to Melbourne and had just enough left over to pay for travelling costs to the old goldfields at Ballarat. If the gamble did not pay off, he would be stranded in a colony he scarcely remembered without any means of support.

The sun was still high in the heavens and the weather hot, bringing a sharp and disturbing memory of the day of the massacre when he had lost his family. At last, John began to recognise landmarks from his youth. But the stretch of bushland was daunting. There was a maze of possible routes into the hills. Where had he entered the bush from the road? John stood on the road, looking up at the hills in the distance. One tree looked much like another.

He made a decision, left the road and entered the bush-land. For hours he meandered amongst the trees searching for the one that had a slash on its trunk. But time, as the young man realised, had healed many wounds, including ones inflicted on trees.

Despair began to set in as thirst and the hot day took their toll on him. He drank the last drops from his canteen and gazed up at the hill which was slowly falling under the shadow of late afternoon. He decided to give the search one more hour before returning to Ballarat and his lodgings at the boarding house.

John stood and slowly scanned the small clearing. His gaze fell on one particular tree. He walked towards it and ran his hand down the bark. There it was! The scar of a knife
blade etched on the trunk by Luke Tracy so long ago!

John dropped to his knees, reached for a piece of branch on the ground and, with his heart pounding, began digging into the soil at the base of the tree. Within moments the tip of the branch struck something solid and John discarded the makeshift tool to claw at the yielding earth with his fingers. A rolled-up lump of leather was revealed and with both hands John pulled the heavy object from the ground. A partially rotted compartment tore open to spill the golden five-pound coins at his knees.

‘Oh, God, thank you,’ John gasped.

He had found the small fortune secreted by his eldest brother before he died of his wounds. John’s gamble had paid off and he knew that he was now a very rich young man. He had in his possession half the small fortune his father had made from a gold strike and then a good sale for his claim. Now it was time to consider how he could invest his newfound fortune in an enterprise and make it grow even further.

His thirst and the heat of the dying day were easily forgotten as he made his way back to his lodgings, the gold coins concealed in the carpet bag containing all that he owned. But the small fortune was not his alone. John had sworn an oath to his dying brother to look out for Lachlan and Phoebe. All he had to do was find them – but that was likely to be a much harder task than uncovering the cache of coins.