Category: History

Two men and a woman had me pinned to the ground. The woman had a pair of shears. She roughly turned my head and cut off my queue, holding it aloft, a growl of triumph as she brandished my hair for the mob. I struggled, a leg free, finding a groin, hearing a grunt, and I was up and running.

The mostly European ‘gweilo’ were fiery drunk, and baying for blood, as they came for us at the mine. Chants of “slanty chinks”, “murderous chinamen” “poxed coolies” could be heard as the mob came up the hill, picks and shovels shouldered to do battle. There were fifty or sixty, men and women in the chanting mass – we were five, all family, and I was just taking my place at our workings, to relieve my cousin Zhang Wei.

As I rushed to the mine, I saw my younger brother, Junjie Xi fall to the ground, blood pouring from his head with two men, picks held high, about to strike. Bo Wei, my elder cousin was surrounded by a group wielding shovels, and I saw him take a cut to the side of his head! As the evening closed in, Hell was upon us.

A snarling, bearded man saw me, yelling to alert the mob as I ran. I ran, and I ran, up and over the hill, down the other side, into a gully. I found a hollow log. My pursuers, initially rampaging, fell behind as I ran. I remained in that log until daybreak.

I tentatively inched out, I could smell smoke but all was quiet, save for a kookaburra laughing, somewhere in the distance! I couldn’t see the humour, and cursed the silly bird!

I buried three souls that morning! There was no way to ease their journey into the ‘afterlife’, no joss or incense to burn, just my humiliation, anger, tears and frustrations. Why had we come to this new country, this Tsin Chin Shan?

I remembered the trouble at home, the opium dens, the corruption back in our village in Sze Yup and my parents urging us boys to pursue the fabulous wealth being found in California. The lure of the yellow metal. It would mean eternal security for our families beside the beautiful Pearl River.

We boarded the ship to America, but it meant three years of hard toil, few rewards, abuse and regular discrimination against our families. We heard the stories that gold could be picked up off the ground in Australia. Surely it would be better than here?

My cousins and I had a letter written to our Shanghai sponsor, seeking an agreement to extend our indenture and provide passage to Ballarat. It took a few months but we were once again embarked, another ten weeks of seasick wallowing, and finally off the schooner for the long walk to the Ballarat field.

We joined forces with several other groups from the boat and collectively hired a guide for the five-week, overland walk. We had avoided the Victorian colonial tax by landing in South Australia, at Robe, but we all agreed that it might have been better to have paid the hefty £10s, rather than the long hot days, tramping to ‘Baallalat’.

Our guide was a drunken lout, driving a bullock dray loaded with supplies for the growing settlements along South Australia’s coast. He took our money and disappeared on the third night out from Robe. Other spivs were on the track, ever ready to take our few resources. We knew there was safety in numbers and drew comfort from the extra family groupings, particularly at night when we shared guard duties, campfire stories and homeland reminiscences.

It was a gruelling walk; at times a narrow path, enabling just a single file. When spirits flagged, Bo Wei started to chant ‘Baallalat, Baallalat, Baallalat’, maintaining a rhythmic chant that we all took up. I can only imagine the strange picture we must have presented to those large hopping animals we occasionally saw.

We had been on the track for two weeks, each with our worldly positions in the two baskets balancing across our shouldered, bamboo pole. The head of another family group, Zhang Yong had bought a precious wooden wheelbarrow from California. We enviously noted the extra provisions he was able to carry.

The dry hot summer made the trek that much more tortuous. Water and food were precious commodities and there was relief when an old black man showed us a small spring, just off the track. Somebody had already cut limestone blocks and started to line the spring. We took two days off our trek, cutting and fitting three more limestone blocks into the well’s sides.

Food was a constant issue. We spent a lot of our savings on rice at the store in Robe, but we supplemented supplies with grasses and any berries we found. We had unsuccessfully chased the hopping animal, drooling over the possible meat. Zhang found some fungi and cooked them up. He died in agony two days later, and I fought several contenders and took over his wheelbarrow.

We arrived at the small settlement of Penola. Several Chinese families had already given up on the lure of the yellow metal, settling and establishing market gardens on the rich, grassy plains. We were able to revictual ourselves, picking up advice from the storekeeper, Wang Wei, about the onward journey.

There were strange nighttime cries, maybe just birds, but eerie, ghost-like. We had heard stories of hostile natives, and bushrangers. Their attacks on unwary travellers meant we slept fitfully, and someone was always awake and alert.

We approached a mountain range and the pathway divided, one track going to the northeast, the other, southeast. We went north, spending a few days in the cool bushland gullies of the ranges.

Our party walked around the mountains. We came upon another smaller series of hills and made camp. Bo had been to the toilet and came running back into our camp excitedly waving a small lump of rock. He pointed, we gathered and saw the yellow flecks. Was it gold? Bo assured us it was, and the decision was made to abandon our Ballarat quest; temporarily. We jokingly called our find Gwóngdūng Kwongmak – the Canton Lead. The name stuck.

Over the next few days, we scratched around in the creeks. Other parties joined us – the excited chatter saw upwards of two hundred men on the creeks within the week. Flecks, small nuggets, the hills echoed with the ring of picks, axes, scraping shovels and the creeks quickly turning into muddy brown sluices. A thousand buffalo couldn’t have turned over the hillsides quicker than our enthusiasm. Gold, gold, gold.  Our excitement drove us hard.

News of our find spread quickly and within two weeks we were outnumbered by the ‘gweilo’: colonials, Americans, Italians, Irish, British, and Germans. At first, they were quite friendly, but as their numbers increased, and the alluvial gold became harder to find, frustrations and tensions grew.

They came at sunset. From the store, from their hearths and tents, armed with picks, shovels, sticks and bloodlust. I escaped over the hill as they overpowered our family camp.

I returned the next morning. Our camp had been ransacked; tents burnt, our few possessions strewn or missing, and the vegetable garden trampled. The only positive was that they never found our yellow metal’s hiding place. We had an old tobacco tin and every evening we deposited our finds into the tin before returning it to the wire suspended into our toilet trench.

So much for the lucky future, anticipated those three years ago as we left Shanghai.  I sat, unsure of my next move. Would the mob return?

My mind ranged back over the years since I left the Pearl River; the voyage to California, my outstanding debts, the decision to extend the indenture and head to the riches of Ballarat, the eventual landing in Robe, the five-week overland trek, Bo’s discovery of the nugget, final success, then the ambush.

With nobody to share the gold, I made my way to Ballarat. I found my countrymen, a little work, even a little more gold, but I was humiliated, debt-ridden, and without the anticipated golden future for myself or the family back in Sze Yup.

I sent our collected gold ore home to my parents. I arranged to have a letter written that explained what had befallen us at the Canton Lead, asking that they pray for the departed, and share the meagre offerings across the family.

I never saw the Pearl River again! I settled on the banks of a small creek below the Canton Lead and started a vegetable garden. I built a small shack and store, I learnt a little English, and eventually married a local girl. Kids arrived, five sons and two daughters. There was a steady demand for our goods, and we prospered. Canton Lead was renamed, at first to Mount Ararat, then shortened to Ararat.

Background:

This story relates to the Ararat gold rush, beginning in 1857 with the chance discovery of alluvial gold by a family of Chinese diggers, enroute from South Australia’s Robe to the Ballarat diggings. As happened elsewhere, discrimination, jealousies and Chinese successes led to deadly, civil unrest at Canton Lead, resulting in at least three murders.  Commercial gold mining continued in the area up until the outbreak of WW1. Ararat today celebrates its history as the only Australian city founded by the Chinese.

 

Old books are as good as old friends, and second-hand bookshops are my go-to when the weather is lousy. I am meeting friends in Castlemaine; I’m very early. Yet again I pass that bookshop in Campbell’s Creek, the one I have been passing for years, always promising to pop in, one day. Today’s the day.

The hoarding outside advises there are 100,000 volumes inside, but the towering shelves, floor to ceiling, room upon room suggests that estimate is outdated. As I enter, the musty, delicious old-book smell envelopes me.

The usual stash of romance, thrillers, fantasy and historical novels fill the front rooms. I wander deeper, finding a small room dedicated to Australiana.

My neck is cricked badly after an hour of reading spines, moving through Astley; Bolderwood; Carey; Clarke; Flannery; Franklin, Garner; Grenfell; Stead, Tsiolkas; White; Winton, Wright. So many wonderful authors. I return to a battered, almost illegible leather-bound copy of Bolderwood’s Robbery under Arms!

I draw it out gingerly and open the flyleaf. ‘Second printing 1889’. The inscription reads ‘3rd August 1906 Alfred, Happy 50th Birthday, regards, Toby’. There is a pencilled price of $55 – that’s a steal. I take my prize to the counter.

I find the book a few days later. It has slipped off and under the car seat. I settle into my study, a small snifter of scotch at my elbow, and explore my latest purchase. A couple of old, browned pages float to the floor. My jaw drops as I take in the significance of the document in my hand. The Alfred and Toby on the flyleaf reference are identified!

On Australian High Court letterhead, the writer is identified as the former Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, (Toby), writing in a flourishing copperplate to his long-time friend and ally, the current Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin. Enthralled to be privy to this personal exchange, I read:

“Dear Fred,
50 years under your belt! My heartiest birthday wishes, trusting that the attached tome may entertain and while away possible spare hours, maybe on that regular, but quite tiresome train journey back to Ballarat.

I want to thank you for your tactical leadership as we move towards this referendum. The capacity to have members of both the Senate and the House elected at the same time will provide significant financial gains for the Commonwealth. Linking the plebiscite to the General Election should also auger well for your continued leadership. Well done, and I am sure you are set for a resounding endorsement.

Thinking back over the years, I am constantly reminded of your significant input into this new Federation. I am aware of the many hundreds of hours you were away from family and friends as you crisscrossed the country cajoling the colonies towards our proposed unification. The work you put into our founding documents, securing the necessary legislative capacities; and the tactical work at Westminster to ensure our charter was successfully legislated. While we missed securing the New Zealanders, you brought those pesky Sandgropers into the fold. Again, and in particular, the successful passage of the Immigration Restriction Bill wouldn’t have happened without your judicious and timely oversight.

So many issues delicately handled, I think your legacy will long be sung in the parliamentary corridors.

Again, the very happiest birthday wishes.

Sincerely
‘Toby’
Justice Edmund Barton,
High Court of Australia
3rd August, 1906”

 

My Grannie told me about the time the country finished up. That sun came down over the land – the kangaroos, wombats, snakes, flies, crows: just about everything melted. A terrible wind blew, howling like a lonely, sick dingo, sucking life up into a big hole in the sky. The ground melted into a hard sheet, covering the hills and our mother, our country. A deafening silence came. It settled across our blackened, Tjarutja lands. We can’t go to our country no more.

Mobs went missing. Hunters, mums and kids got really sick, as campfire stories everywhere told of the emptiness, of a really bad place. We can’t go to our country no more.

The whitefellas went there. Years later we heard that tourists go to that Maralinga place, to see and hear the stories of the sickness, of the time when the army men from Britain – where the Queen lives, came in planes and trucks, and made the sun come down and burn everything. A bus takes the tourfellas for short-trips – that land still got too much sickness! We don’t go to our country no more.

Blokes came with bulldozers, dug big hole and buried all the country inside. That big hole is covered up – they call him Taranaki They built a big fence around some other land – sign says “Plutonium – keep out”, forever, they reckon! We don’t go to our country no more.

New blokes came and took pictures. They walked around, talking. They got camera that can see the country, underneath. They wrote a story, saying the country looks like Oman, that country overseas where everyone rides camels. They say Oman got lots of petrol underneath.

We don’t go to our country no more.

Poor bugger me;

petrol, maybe

but no country

To look after we.

(* Maralinga was the site in remote, north west South Australia, the traditional lands of the Tjarutja people, that was unilaterally gifted/leased by the Australian Government to the British, to conduct their atomic tests between about 1956 through until 1967.)

Academic order was turned on its head, all because somebody found an old stone! You probably thought Egyptologists were above politics, happily translating their hieroglyphics as per the early nineteenth-century Rosetta Stone interpretations. But sadly, no!

Although not widely reported, except within archaeological journals, there was the quite serendipitous, 1942 discovery of the missing upper half of the Rosetta. Rommel’s tank divisions were bogged in the eastern Egyptian sands. A dozer, helping to extract the behemoths, nudged a rock – and away went the accepted modus operandi – fluttering feistily off into the Khamaseen winds.

One rogue archaeologist, Herr Bertie Heinrich did the hard yards, locked away inside Berlin’s Egyptian Museum for several years. Heinrich’s eventual paper declared that the original Rosetta translations, done by the British at the turn of the nineteenth century, and refined by the French twenty years later, had got it wrong. You can imagine the smouldering irritation, academic indignation, nationalistic fervour, and the coup delivered to remnant members of the Third Reich.

Let me briefly remind you that the Stone had already been at the centre of international controversy. It had become one of Napoleon’s forfeitures, following his defeat, by the British, in the 1802 Egyptian Campaign. For nearly 150 years, French academics were refused access to the British Museum.

While no one was doubting the general veracity and significance of the ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Demotic scripts to archaeology, there emerged a thorny problem surrounding the interpretations.  Academic traditionalists held that the stone revealed the decree of the Divine Cult of Pharaoh, Ptolemy V. Our German friend contended that this was an incomplete interpretation.

Heinrich argued that the upper half of the Stele explained in great detail the ritualised role of the Inner Temple priests, their duties, in the event of the Pharoah’s death, a duty to protect the holiest Temple rituals, if political instability ever threatened. There were also details of a curse surrounding the Stone, promising a grizzly demise upon any intruding infidels. The academic establishment, of course, dismissed any suggestion of a Divine Cult.

Heinrich wrote in great detail of his reading from the Stone about the embalming of Ptolemy’s father, presumably written as a guide for those to come. There were intricate explanations of how the body was to be drained of fluid, the herbs and spices to be used in the replacement elixir. There was another warning to the operatives, to anticipate and prepare for the viscosity likely to be encountered in removing the brain tissue and the larger internal organs.

The Germans, defeated in 1945, quietly revelled in the controversy surrounding this academic squabble. Papers were written, countered, and press releases appeared in the mainstream media supporting one perspective, over the other.

But by the ’60s, animosities had softened, the French were back researching at the British Museum, UK Egyptologists were accessing Berlin. Then disaster. Both sections of the Stone disappeared. Three researchers vanished as well, and were subsequently found dead, in fact, mummified at the British Museum, their bodies neatly secreted into a sarcophagus. Another two deaths were reported from Berlin!

There would be restrictive outcomes flowing from ‘joining the dots’, and despite several hours spent considering our options, none of them made sense! Church and promised salvation versus a slaked thirst. There would be considerable inconveniences, … and well, bugger it, the arguments went so far up our nostrils that we were finding it difficult to sneeze! We weren’t going to be pushed into something so devilishly evil.

The circling discussion echoed off the old cream tiles, as the mob got down to some serious choogling of the frothy amber liquid. “What about joining those fuckin’ dots? Fuckin bullshit. Bloody irrelevant, if yas arsks me,” proffered Bluey, his beer resting on the beermat as he battled with wet papers, sticky fingers, a damp lighter and a growing frustration with his inability to get the smoke lit.

Bluey had the floor. “That bloody Jack Kane, the DLP-stooge wants to continue the prohibition on Sunday trading. We working blokes gotta stand together. No more of this junk, we gotta back John Cain and the Sunday openin’ push. The missus and kids can still go to church.”  The assembled heads nodded in agreement. Someone gave Florence the nod “nother round, please Flo”, as the bloody dots’ conundrum continued to circulate around the bar stools.

Florence knew ‘em all, had been serving them drinks for a decade or more: knew that Bluey liked a dash; Johnno had a splash of raspberry, and Bill only ever drank his beer in a pony. Their swearing came with the job: she practised giving as good as she got, and she emptied the bar with the rule that the last person out wasn’t served for the next week. Clearing out was never a problem!

A young sheila helped Flo at the bar from 5 o’clock. The furniture factory down the road regularly delivered forty or so thirsty throats, eager to breast the bar right up to the ‘last drinks’ call.

As the clock ticked down towards six, Flo came into her own; able to pour and deliver six pots quicker than a speeding ticket! The youngster was learning, but a cheer went up as she dropped four pots onto the deck!

The hose came in at six thirty every night, just after the local coppers had been in for their nightly ‘complimentaries’. No matter how much water was delivered, the combination of stale smoke, sweaty armpits and the sulphureous aroma of old piss created its own, possibly lethal funk. The young sheila gagged when she first started, but Flo sailed through with nary a snuffle.

Flo was back opening the bar at ten the following morning, Dettol a recent, tell-tale addition to the efforts to freshen the space.

Iwaitja tellin’ im properly

“Nah, nah, nah, that’s not right. My ole woraidjba, my granny’s granny had a story about that Balanda mob – long before dat Matthew Flinders come ‘ere!  She showed me when I was just a little kid, she took me to that ‘ollow mountain and showed me ta bit o’ mirror, dat ole white smokin’ pipe. She reckon dem olden mob was gib it for showing dat Balanda, that Hollander mob the wobaidj – the water ‘ole behind the beach.”

I was sitting on the beach with Joshua Lamila, the senior man for the country around Coopers Creek, midway up the Cobourg Peninsula, east of Darwin. I had been reflecting on a recent read – Ernestine Hill’s My Love Must Wait, prompting me to mention Matthew Flinders, to recount what I thought was accepted history, Flinders’ contact with the Iwaidja people on his 1803 circumnavigation. A wonderfully shadowy, counter-story unfolded!

Joshua’s family were able to draw upon a long oral history. I reckoned that the story was at least three hundred and fifty years old, back to the earliest voyages of the Dutch East India Company.

His family recalled a distant fishing expedition, two lippa lippa in the shallows off the west coast, the family waiting on the beach. A huge sailing boat came from the north west, around the point and anchored. A small boat appeared, with gurana-warg-bi (moon men) rowing towards the canoes. The fishing was abandoned, and they reached the beach at the same time as the ‘ghosts’ landed. They gestured an urgent need for bogala, unloading a barrel.

The ghosts fell upon the spring, drinking greedily. The barrel was filled and they returned to the ship, and over the next few days, the rest of the strangers came ashore, in rotation.  Iwaidja hospitality of roasted meat and fish was reciprocated with several glass mirrors, tobacco, meerschaum pipes and metal belt buckles.

Joshua’s story included recollections of sport on the beach – running races, jumping. The ‘ghosts’ joined a hunting party and used their guns to kill several wallabies. An old wa:rgbi, demonstrated his sublime skill with the spear, dropping an animal at 50 paces.  The history also recorded the death, and beachside burial of a crewman during that week.

It was a few weeks later that Joshua called me aside, and said we would go “…to dat ‘ollow mountain.” We walked across the savannah, sometimes wading and swimming across remnant wet season flood plains. I tried to ignore the potential croc attacks. Joshua broke into liturgical song as we slowly approached the upland, a small fire was lit, its smoke used to cleanse us and with deft flair, I was instructed in the protocols to be observed inside the ‘ollow!

There was a crevice, maybe 300mm wide, a metre high and we squeezed through. There was a shaft of light softening the gloom. I followed Joshua. There was a ledge with a collection of old artefacts, two mirrors, a clay pipe, buttons and an old metal buckle.

 

“Whither journeys goest with or without end, shall maketh thee, lad” was considered advice given to my great, great, great uncle, John Jarvis, by his father, at the Plymouth docks, as the eleven-year-old shouldered his canvas duffel, and bordered his ship’s lighter. He recorded those words as the opening phrase in his diary. The year, 1768.

There was a cold breeze riffling across the harbour on that late summer morn, as he boarded the HMB Endeavour, instructed to “…string hammock, and stow duffel ‘tween decks, under the for’castle.” His ‘master’ was yet to come aboard, so, at a loose end, he went a’lookin. Gantry were lifting barrels and boxes, crew sweating, swearing, and stowing supplies needed for the Atlantic crossing.

Mister Banks and retinue arrived at last light, noisily, a little intoxicated and his duties began. Meals to source and serve, unpacking, clearing away, to bed, awake, morning duties, mid-afternoon sailing down the channel.

Stomach, sea legs and routines had settled well before they reached the Canary Islands. A brief stopover, restocking water, meat, citrus and vegetables for the haul across to Brazil. The toffs went ashore, Uncle worked aboard. Demands at morning and evening mealtimes left him largely free during the daytime. He and two other young lads delighted in watching the dolphin performances, at the bow.

The Doldrums, colder weather, again restocking supplies in Rio before down, into and around the Cape. Mountainous seas, sails shredded, shrieking winds, working the pumps, gut-wrenching fear, partly assuaged by the captain’s demeanour.

They wallowed into the Pacific. Moods lightened as warmth, then humidity returned. Tropical isles, barely-clad beauties, fresh food, clear skies, rostered shore-leave, the temporary loss of his shipboard stagger!

While crew unloaded scientific paraphernalia to record Venus’s transit across the sun, he accompanied Mr Banks and Mr Solander on regular expeditions into the interior of the islands. He was instructed on using layers of tissue paper to press collected specimens. For my uncle, he recorded his sadness at eventually farewelling new found friends, feasting, fishing and effervescent frolicking in the lagoon.

As the barque weighed anchor, the captain assembled all-hands, to share the Admiralty’s secret orders for the journey ahead. They were instructed to find, and claim Tasman’s Zealand islands, thenceforth to search, and claim the assumed Terra Australis, somewhere further to the west!

He records the excitement of sighting land, months spent charting coastlines, landing and meeting heavily tattooed warriors, spending three weeks ashore as the barque was beached and careened.

He also recorded a growing angst at the close, shipboard quarters, and of his delight at being out with ‘the gentlemen’, collecting plants. Petty jealousies had become an issue, thieving, vicious brawls, even knife-work. A thirteen-year-old, salt-hardened, but nonetheless, a vulnerable lad.

Sir Joseph recorded his death, by misadventure occurring on Sunday 29^th April, 1770. A curmudgeonable old tar was convicted, and court marshalled. They were both buried in the dunes of Stingray Harbour, New Holland. Sir Joseph ensured that his diary eventually came back to the family.

Am I going mad? A vast, blinding flare in my face, lighting canary-yellow sunflowers behind, and yet I cannot determine whether it is sunset or sunrise! Sometimes my head wants to explode!

My shadow splays out in front of me, but is it to the east or to the west? As the minutes march, is it getting lighter or darker? I must keep painting, drawing, using knife and brush to translate the constant movement, to capture the play of light on the trees, the swirling afternoon winds sweeping in from the west.

As his patient, Doctor Gachet allows me to borrow his bicycle. I find it leaning against the Asylum wall. I load my gear and head towards and through Arles, into the yellowing farmlands of late summer. Crows caw as they lazily drift, the bumbling bees hum among the flowerheads. I unpack and challenge my demons. They are not going to spoil my day!

I have my easel, and a new canvas set up to capture the moment, but uncertainties are at every turn. I paint these sunflowers often and am timing this outing specifically to catch the early light. But darkness might approach, ensnare and, and  – no, it is definitely morning, I see the grassy moisture.

I sit for a few moments and consider my position. I have the security of the hospital’s support, guiding me through the dark times, encouraging me forward. No matter the missing ear! My dear, dear brother, so far away but still my constant companion. And the village folk, at the Tabac, at the Boulangerie, in the fields, ever ready with their “Salut, Vincent” as I pass. I recognise they probably see me as odd, … harmless, but odd!

So, it is morning, not more than an hour after sunrise. Theo has sent me more materials, including several palette knives and a rich assortment of the new yellow pigments gaining popularity in the north. His accompanying letter advises of the birth of their son, that they are naming after me! Is that wise? Mmm, what might I offer this young, unmet Vincent, to guide him safely through the future?

I play deliciously with the combination of cadmium and lemon, my brush swirling playfully in concert with the nodding flower heads. Chrome yellow reflects the distant wheat fields, and snaking blue-black inserts the poplars, defining the laneways. I revel in the unquestioning freedom given me from the landscape, its uncomplicated acceptance. The sun is high overhead, hot and baking as I attach my signature, at the bottom, left.

What am I to do? I peddle furiously back through the Village to my monastic, medical sanctuary. Another self-portrait suggests itself.  Visions of a young nephew, Theo, Doctor Gachet, my spurned lover swirl, briefly, before my brush begets my tormented face, a mostly shaved head, eyes staring, unseeing, but inwards towards a tortured soul.

The old pistol, found on a distant hillside, months ago, now lies on the floor beside my bed.

Ooh, Theeooo …

Tuilaepa looked down at the planet. As always, the swirling mass of weather systems held her at the window – this view, the ultimate prize for her six-year, double degree in Meteorology and Planetary Sciences, her application and successful recruitment into Australia’s arm of the International Climate Institute, further years of post-graduate study and research, and finally the pay-off, selected to serve a twelve-month stint aboard the Aristotle international met station.

She had flown from Woomera, with a week spent adjusting to weightlessness at the International Space Station, then the tricky wire transfer across to the Aristotle, involving a mathematically precise alignment of the two orbits, followed by astronautical gee wizardry.

Her tasks involved monitoring, recording and reporting Earth’s increasingly unstable weather patterns. Her three companions shared a common background, all Climatologists, all rostered to compile the three-hourly observational log, the information transferred down simultaneously to the twenty, planetary-based met stations, used to direct and coordinate PESA, the Planetary Emergency Services Agency, in their never-ending confrontations with climate-induced catastrophe.

Tuilaepa reflected often upon the stories she had heard from her grandmother, about the Pacific nation of her forebears.  That time before the Water-Terrors, that time when tidal surges moved across her country, drowning the villages, whole families, the gardens; that heralded forced migration, a resettlement into Far North Queensland, and labelled taunts of ‘reffos’. Other low-lying populations had fled to New Zealand, some to China, others to the US.

It was a resettlement carrying significant social disquiet, met in many quarters with antagonism, violence, and disputation, as their new ‘homelands’ meant displacement for others. History’s pages were littered with similar upheavals.

The world stage had been turned on its head. Almost all of the large, coastal cities suffered inundations, catastrophic dislocations of infrastructure, and major social upheavals. It was continuing to impact hundreds of millions of people. Coastal farmlands had been lost to saltwater intrusion. The pressure on elevated land for new residential and commercial development had become intense. Food security was one of several new battlegrounds.

The water wars of last century have transmogrified into bitterly contested Elevated Territorial disputes. The concept of national governments had largely dissolved into racially-identified, vigilante cohorts, heavily armed terrorist groups, organised and with the unofficial backing from industrial oligarchs.

The polar caps, the Greenland ice sheet and most of the planet’s glacial topography had gone a generation ago, a geopolitical map of the 2200 planet, now looked like large mice had been chewing the continental coastlands of yore. There were expanded estuaries along the major river systems, most of the Amazon Basin had gone, Sydney’s Vaucluse was now on an island, and a new Gulf of Mexico coastline offered sea views along Baton Rouge’s esplanades.

The Planetary Government, formed after the collapse, last century of the United Nations, was taking a belatedly keen, some would say desperate rear-guard action to salvage humanity’s wherewithal. Their sponsorship of the work that Tuilaepa did, just one of a number of initiatives being adopted to try and generate planetary-warming’s reversal.

Two men, (I am sure one was the local constable) and a woman had me pinned to the ground. The woman had a pair of shears. She roughly turned my head and cut off my queue, holding it aloft, a growl of triumph as she brandished my hair for the mob. I struggled, a leg free, finding a groin, hearing a grunt, and I was up on my feet.

The Ararat mob was fiery, drunk, and baying for blood, as they came for us at the mine. Chants of “slanty chinks”, “murderous chinamen” “poxed coolie chinks” could be heard as the mob came up the hill, picks and shovels shouldered to do battle. There were fifty or sixty, men and women in the chanting mass – we were six, all family, and I was just taking my place at the mine face, to relieve my cousin Zhang Wei.

As I rushed to the mine entrance, I saw my younger brother, Junjie Xi  fall to the ground, blood pouring from his head with two men, picks held high, about to strike. Bo Wei, my elder brother was surrounded by a group wielding shovels, and I saw him take a cut to the side of his head! Hell was upon us.

A snarling, bearded man saw me, yelling to alert the mob as I ran. I ran, and I ran, up and over the hill, down the other side, into a gully. I found a hollow log. My pursuers, initially rampaging, fell behind as I ran. I remained in that log until daybreak.

I tentatively inched out, I could smell smoke but all was quiet, save for a kookaburra laughing, somewhere in the distance! I couldn’t see the humour, and cursed the silly bird!

I buried five souls that morning! There was no burning joss paper or incense to assist their journey into the ‘afterlife’, just my humiliation, anger, tears and frustrations.

Our encampment had been ransacked, tents burnt, our few possessions strewn or missing, and the vegetable garden trampled. So much for the lucky future promised last year, as we boarded the tramp steamer at Shanghai.  I sat, unsure of my next move. Would the mob return?

My mind ranged back over the year, the voyage, my outstanding indenture, the eventual landing in Robe, the map, with instructions for the long overland trek to “X”, the cross promising riches, and great fortune, at Ballarat.

I recalled that propitious overnight camp, just behind the settlement of Ararat. Bo had been to the toilet and came back excitedly waving a small lump of rock. He pointed, we gathered and saw the yellow flecks. Was it gold? Zhang assured us that it was, and the decision was made excitedly to abandon our Ballarat quest, for the moment.

Eventually, I made my way to Ballarat. I found my countrymen, a little work, even a little gold, but I knew I was homeward bound, humiliated, debt-ridden, and without the anticipated golden future.

I was never to return.

Reg and Deirdre pushed six-year-old Johnny across the park. It was a glorious spring day – sunshine, a light breeze, the ducks on the lake. Johnny squealed, and dribbled with delight, the weekly outing, away from the home, just him, his Mum, Dad and the birds.

Seven years earlier, Reggie piloted the aircraft that deployed the only British atomic weapon dropped from a plane.

Reg had always assumed it was his charm that got him selected for the Australian tour. A routine application, his schmoozed interview, confirming his endorsement to fly the new Vickers Valliant bomber, and he was onto the 36-hour flight, London to Adelaide.

”Just pack a light suitcase, you’ll be home by Christmas” the flight sergeant had advised, news that brought some comfort to his young bride. “Think of the extra money, love. We’ll have enough for that house deposit.”

It was a short hop from Adelaide up into the remote desert, a secret British military base codenamed Maralinga. Reggie teamed up with the other 1500 service personnel. While the village was being finished, his job was pretty cushy – mostly ferrying VIPs between Adelaide and the testing site, bringing in supplies and conducting aerial familiarizations of the surrounding desert.

Christmas came – the crush at the Officer’s Mess was only challenged by the rigours of negotiating the trip across the crowded room towards the catering station. He’d sourced and flown in the large Christmas tree, gift-wrapped cases of beer, a festive distraction that kept him and the rest of the officers in high spirits.

He’d spoken to Deirdre, and his parents – able to let them know that he was in the Australian desert “somewhere”, and that the daytime temperatures were over 110 degrees, every day!

Festive excitement mellowed. Crews were now far more focused, there was a sense of drama sweeping the base and despite efforts to keep the operational teams separate, and incommunicado, confidential chit chat established that the ‘pointy-end’ was approaching.

Reggie’s Vickers’ bomber flights were tightly monitored, a routine, practiced over and over – dropping a 44-gallon drum of water through the bomb bay onto a ground target. Code named Kite, his brief included dropping the weapon, and then, with special collectors attached, to circle around and fly through the mushroom cloud.

Reg was the toast of the Mess that evening – much congratulatory back-slapping, maybe a few too many beers, slurring, a stagger and an early night. His roommate called the medic at 2 am as Reg noisily rose from his cot, yelled something incomprehensible and fainted, flat-out onto the floor.

He was in an isolated room off the end of the sickbay for a week before being evacuated back to the RAF military hospital at Uxbridge. He was again in an isolation unit, for two months, before Deirdre and his parents were even advised of his return to the UK.

He was eventually discharged, with a small military pension and the deposit on a small cottage. Johnny arrived. The Doctors advised it might be spina bifida!