A roar of approval went up and the barkeeper passed tankards of foaming beer to eager hands.

Caleb slowly downed his beer, only his second for the night. He’d long since learned that the secret to successful gambling was a clear head.

He unfolded the paper that the Irishman had staked in the game. Surmounted with the coat of arms of the Colony of Victoria, it appeared to be the registration form for a mining claim in the name of Roderick Hannigan. He turned the document over and read the elegant copperplate that gave the details of the gold-mining claim: ten acres at Pretty Sally in the Maiden’s Creek Goldfield. A second scrap of paper signed by the same Hannigan gave the bearer the rights to the claim.

Caleb’s pulse quickened. When he had boarded the ship in San Francisco, all he knew about the distant British colony of Victoria had been one thing.

Gold.

He tilted his head and considered the legality of the transfer. In this rough and tumble place, who cared much for legalities? As far as he was concerned the claim at Pretty Sally was now his.

‘Where’s Maiden’s Creek?’ he asked the barkeeper as he carefully folded the papers and stowed them in his pocket.

The man leaned an elbow on the bar and scrutinised a dark corner of the room as if it contained a map of Victoria. ‘About a hundred miles east of Melbourne in Gippsland.’

Caleb had been in the Colony barely twenty-four hours and all he had seen were the stinking streets of the port of Williamstown. Anything beyond this town remained a mystery.

‘How would I get there?’

‘Best way is to find one of the coastal traders heading for Port Albert but there’s a regular coach from Melbourne.’ The man paused. ‘If you want some advice for nothing, I can tell you that the only money to be made on the goldfields is in the pockets of the shopkeepers, the whores and the grog shops. Seen too many of you new chums heading off with gold fever in your eyes.’

Caleb laughed. ‘Seen them myself on the Californian goldfields.’

The barkeeper straightened and ran a dirty cloth across the counter. ‘You from California?’

‘Virginia,’ Caleb replied.

‘Virginia,’ the man repeated. ‘Did you fight in the war?’

Caleb picked up his empty beer glass, his fingers tightening around it. He pushed the glass at the barkeeper. ‘Pour me a whiskey,’ he said.

As he did so, the barkeeper jerked his head at a lithograph hanging above the bar—an elegant three-masted barque—and said, ‘We had a ship here back in sixty-five. They had her up in dry dock, so they was around for a while. The officers were popular with the ladies. All the high and mighty from town was down here courting them. Took on a good crew before they left.’