Chapters (53)
- Cover
- About Alison Stuart
- Also by Alison Stuart
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgements
- Preview of The Goldminer's Sister
Caleb smiled. Hannigan would continue to call him ‘Yankee’ precisely because he knew it annoyed him, but if that was the price of this man’s cooperation, it was worth it. He turned back to face Hannigan, relieved to see he no longer held the knife.
The Irishman spat on his hand and held it out. ‘A deal, Mr Hunt.’
Caleb returned the gesture before wiping his hand on his trousers.
They arranged to meet in the morning and Caleb went back to his lodgings in the dingy street behind the main thoroughfare. As he washed his hands in the battered tin basin, he hummed the tune of ‘Oh Shenandoah’ with the sense that, for the first time in seven long years, he really had crossed the Missouri for a new life at the bottom of the world.
Two
Two
Maiden’s Creek
10 December 1871
Adelaide Greaves set aside her sketchbook and drew her knees up to her chin, enjoying the rare feeling of freedom that Sunday afternoons brought to her busy life. She and Danny had climbed the hill behind the cemetery to their favourite picnic spot, a large rock sheltered in a stand of tall gums. From here, they had a clear view down the steep-sided valley in which the township of Maiden’s Creek nestled. The town clung to the curve of a once pretty creek, now a clogged and stinking sewer, into which all the waste, both human and industrial, poured. Commercial buildings fronted the main street, exuding an air of prosperity and respectability, while the homes of the town’s residents were scattered higgledy-piggledy across the hillsides above, placed wherever a piece of flat ground could be found or hewn from the rocky soil. Whisps of smoke rose from crooked chimneys constructed from the local stone, bringing with them the smell of eucalyptus and roast meat.
At the far end of the valley, a massive spoil heap of broken rock spewed down the hillside, bright and harsh against the darker granite. Most days of the week, the tall chimney below the Maiden’s Creek Mine belched smoke from the boilers that were used to run the mine’s machinery, particularly the heavy stamping batteries that crushed the raw rock and measured the steady rhythm of the town’s heartbeat. On Sundays, only a watching fire trickled a thin line of white smoke from the chimney and the stamping batteries were silent. The townspeople found the silence deafening.
Above her a flock of bright, multicoloured parrots chattered among themselves as they swooped and dived in the stand of trees. She rarely saw the strange, shy fauna of this land. The endearing little wallabies with their soft, dark eyes and fat wombats kept their distance from the town. However she kept a wary eye out for snakes and spiders before setting the picnic blanket down in the shadow of the rock.