We’re millionaires. “

The letters came. regularly. I knew that tired as he was with the day’s work he always remembered how I would be waiting and watching for the posts.

There were letters from the ship posted at various ports of call. He described his fellow passengers amusingly for my benefit. I was terrified that his ship would ran into a storm which would be dangerous and I was very uneasy until he wrote telling me that he had arrived.

He wrote vividly and I had a clear picture of those early days, and although he wrote with the utmost optimism, I understood the hardships he had to endure. I pictured his setting out with the tools he would need: pickaxes; the cradle he used for puddling; his billy-can; his rations. I pictured the field on which he worked a desolate place it must have been with the trees chopped down and the tents pitched there I imagined their sitting round the fire at night exchanging stories of their finds and most of all their hopes. He would be in the centre; he would have more colourful tales than anyone; and of course there was his charm and his way with words. Somehow he made me see those unkempt men, their backs aching as they bent over their cradles watching the water run through the soil that could reveal the longed-for golden streaks. I could see their grim faces and on all was the lust for gold—the longing, the yearning-for they would all see in the yellow dust the gateway to fortune.

He loved the life, I sensed that. If I could have been with him he would have been perfectly happy. I believe now that had he made his fortune he could not have enjoyed life half as much as he did when he was endeavouring to find it. I should have been there with him. I could have cooked the food while they worked on the diggings; I saw myself as the little mother of the colony. Had I been there I was sure I should never have wanted them to find gold in any quantity. I should have wanted them to go on forever searching for it.

The months passed; he had moved to another field. He had found nothing but a little dust. Never mind. The new field was rich, he was sure; and one must have experience.

His optimism never flagged; he was always on the verge of great discovery. As to myself I must have seemed strange to my fellow pupils. I was aloof; I was not interested in school affairs but I managed to satisfy my teachers and I was left a good deal to myself. I was that ‘odd Nora Tamasin whose father was a gold miner in Australia’. They had wormed that much out of me.

Then the tone of the letters changed. He met the Lynx.

“The Lynx is the most unusual man I have ever met. We were drawn to each other from the first. I have decided to join him. He knows the country inside out. He’s been here for thirty-four years. If you could see him you’d know why they call him Lynx. He’s got a pair of eyes that see everything. They’re blue—not azure blue, not like the tropical seas, oh no! They’re like steel or ice. I never knew a man who could so quell with a look. He’s the big man round here. His name is Charles Herrick. He came out as a convict and now owns most of the place I’m in.

He’s a man in a million, it’s going to be different from now on. I’m going into business in a big way. No more working overworked plots.

It’s all different and all because of Lynx. “

I thought a great deal about the Lynx. I was a little jealous of him because my father’s letters were full of him. He admired him so much.

And now, through those letters, I understood what hardships he had suffered. The stories of campfire gaiety, the songs they sang by firelight, the comradeship of the diggings were only half the story. I now sensed the apprehension, the careful rationing of food, the preservation of the precious water, the terrible despair when day after day the cradles revealed nothing but the worthless dust.

“Lynx is going to strike gold in a big way, Nora, and when he does I’ll be with him. He’s a man of experience. Besides a sizeable property he owns the local store and a hotel in Melbourne. He has hundreds of men working for him and he knows all there is to know about gold. He can’t fail. I’ve told Lynx about you. He thinks that you should come out when you’re educated. But I’ll be home before then.”

I pictured Lynx—a pair of piercing eyes, a convict! Thirty-four years ago people had been sent out to Australia when they had been found guilty of some misdemeanour. Of what had Lynx been guilty? I wondered. Something political perhaps. I was sure he was not a thief or a murderer. I wanted to hear more of him.

“Lynx is a sort of king, magistrate, employer, dictator … the head of things. He is just, but he’ll have his own way. I’ve never felt such friendship as I do for him. It was a lucky day when I met him.

I’ve thrown in all I have with him. He’s certain that we’ll find a rich vein of gold. We’re going to work as secretly as possible. If we don’t keep h dark we’ll have diggers here from all over the place. The rumour only has to get round and they come in their thousands. Lynx is wily and we’re in this together. ” Letters had been coming more or less regularly. Sometimes I would get several together. My father would explain that there had been floods which had made it impossible to get letters down to Melbourne, or an expected ship had not arrived on time. There was always an explanation for delays and he never failed to give it. The message which came to me through all the letters was that however hard he was working, whatever was happening, he never forgot me and the ultimate goal, which was for us to be together.

And then no letters came. At first, though disappointed, I was not unduly alarmed. It was the floods or a delayed ship and there would be several when they did come. But they did not come and the weeks went on and there was still no news.

Two months passed. I was frantic with anxiety; and one day Miss Emily sent for me to come to the study. It was an arid place with its polished floor, its reverent silence broken only by the ticking of the ormolu clock on the macrame-draped mantelpiece. Miss Emily was seated at the desk, her expression one of pain which suggested, erroneously, that what was to follow hurt her more than it hurt me. Parents thought Miss Emily very kind and gratefully entrusted their children to her; they felt she would protect their darlings from the harsher rule of Miss Grainger. In fact it was mild-seeming Miss Emily who was really in charge, but she liked it to be believed that the unpopular rules and regulations were made by her sister.

“I am sure,” she said, her elbows resting on the desk, the tips of her fingers pressed together while she regarded me with some severity, “I am quite sure that you would not wish for charity. It is now two months since we heard from your father and while Miss Grainger is always prepared to be reasonable, she cannot be expected to feed and clothe you, at the same time giving you an education fit for the daughter of a gentleman.”

“I am convinced that a letter from my father is on the way.” Miss Emily coughed.

“It is a long time coming.”

“He is in Australia, Miss Emily. Posts are delayed.”

“Those were exactly Miss Grainger’s words in the beginning. Now three months’ school bills are outstanding.”

“But I am sure it will be all right. Something has delayed the letters. I am certain of it.”

“I wish I could be … for your sake. Miss Grainger is distressed but she has decided she can wait no longer. She cannot continue to support you—feed you, clothe you, educate you….” She made each item sound like a labour of Hercules.

“But, however, she does not wish to turn you out.”

“Perhaps,” I said haughtily, ‘it would be better if I left. “

“That is a rather foolish statement, I fear. Where would you go, pray?”

When Miss Emily ‘prayed’ it meant that she was really annoyed; but I was too apprehensive for caution. My fears for my father’s safety—because I knew that only if something dreadful had happened to him could those letters have failed to arrive—made the wrath of Miss Emily comparatively unimportant to me.

“I could do something, I suppose,” I said spiritedly.

“You have no knowledge of the world. You, a girl of what is it?

Sixteen? “

“Seventeen next month. Miss Emily.”

“Well, Miss Grainger is going to be very generous. She is not going to turn you adrift. She has a proposition and of course you will wish to accept it. Indeed you can do nothing else when you consider the alternative.”

Miss Emily’s smile was pious; the palms of her hands were now pressed together and she turned her eyes up to the ceiling.

“You may stay at the school as one of our pupil teachers. That will go a little way towards earning your keep.”

So I became a pupil teacher and knew utter despair. It was not because of my position in the school but because with every passing day, when no letter came, my fears increased. I “had never been so miserable in the whole of my life. Every day I would tell myself that a letter must come; and every night when I lay in my little attic bed—for I had been moved from the dormitory—I asked myself whether it ever would.

Should I live the rest of my life at Danesworth House waiting for news? I should grow old and fusty like Miss Graeme whose hair resembled a bird’s nest made of grey-brown fluff; I should become pale and wan like Miss Carter; I should peer myopically like Mademoiselle and worry because I could not control the girls.

In the meantime I was less important than they were. I joined Mary Farrow in the attic bedroom with its bare boards and rush mats. Mary had been an orphan in the care of her grandmother and when Mary was sixteen the grandmother had died and Mary was left penniless. Miss Grainger had been magnanimous as with me, and Mary had become a pupil teacher. She was as colourless in her character as in her complexion, and was resigned to her future as I never could be.