Furin Chime Press™

Tag: Chinese diaspora

  • Hessian Sack

    Hessian Sack

    Some weeks passed. Detective Forster, in his modest office at the Stawell Police Barracks, untied the hessian sack and spread its contents across his desk before Mow Fung. The coat and waistcoat had both been slit cleanly down the back, likely to ease their removal from the body; a white twilled shirt with blue spots, an undershirt, and a fragment of a wideawake hat lay beside them, all stiffened and blackened with blood.

    “These were recovered near where the corpse was found,” he said. “I’m showing them around the district, starting with the publicans, to see whether anyone can put a name to them. Ever clap eyes on them?”

    “Not easy to say. Clothes are clothes,” Mow Fung said.

    “The spotted shirt? Pale hat?”

    Mow Fung drew an exaggerated grimace of doubt.

    “Not so unusual. Could belong to anyone. You are going down to the Chinese camp after this, I suppose?”

    As it happened, that was precisely Forster’s intention.

    “What makes you say that?”

    “Police always look there first. I hear talk – they say the murder was done in the camp, and the body carried east to where the head was taken off. That ground lies midway between the camp and Stawell – four miles. Convenient.”

    He gave a wry smile. “Naturally, it must be the Chinese camp. Many more men live in Stawell – but they are good white men.”

    “No call to get prickly, is there? There have been disturbances in the camp. It draws the rougher element, that much is certain. I can’t say I blame a man for drifting there. There’s precious little diversion in the bush.” Forster, Melburnian by origin, retained something of the city’s broader tolerance.

    “Who is to say the owner is the same?” Mow Fung said. “Blood on shirt and vest – but none on trousers. They were not discovered together, correct?”

    “I believe I am the one paid to ask questions,” Forster said mildly, “but there is no harm in your knowing that they were not found in the exact same place. I recovered the trousers roughly four hundred yards from the body and the other items.”

    “The blood on the coat is faint. There has been little rain of late. It may be animal blood, or human. We shall never know. Anything is possible. But if the murder were done in the Chinese camp, why take the body east toward Stawell to dispose of it, when there are many deep mines much closer to the west?”

    “A reasonable observation. Still, someone in the camp may have seen these garments before, when their unfortunate owner was still walking about in them. If you are heading home, I wonder whether you might accompany me to one or two establishments there – since you were good enough to lodge the deceased on behalf of the Victoria Police. That is, if your good lady would not object to your being away from business a little longer.”

    “Why do you want me to come?”

    “Only that you’ve got more English than many of the men down at the camp, and some of them are apt to clam up – or go to ground – when a policeman turns up. Despite what you say, there may be one or two uneasy consciences there.”

    “Perhaps some understand English better than you suppose, but prefer not to speak to policemen.” He glanced at Forster’s plain clothes. “It is wise not to wear the uniform – it softens the impression. My wife will manage the pub. I had intended to return as I came – on Shank’s mare, as they say.”

    • • •

    Forster drove them out of the township in a trap, along the track, through the dust and glare beneath the blazing sun. The landscape grew strange once the town fell behind them and its ordered shapes yielded to the scrub. Each, sooner or later, noticed the black mat of flies on the other’s back, where they pressed and jostled to feed on sweat and the salt of human skin, in their obscene communion. Best to leave them; disturb them and they rose in a thick, droning swarm.

    The dull thud of the horse’s hooves, the creak of the trap, and the rattle of the harness were swallowed by the silent bush, as though sound itself were absorbed into the vast, listening earth. Holes appeared in patches of bare orange soil already surrendering to growth – the signs of earlier incursions. Here and there, mounds of excavated dirt lay heaped about deepening shafts, like oversized crab-castings along a shore. The human crustaceans who dug here twenty or thirty years ago were gone, many returned to the earth whence they came, having taken what was of value and left their detritus here. Thus history ends where it begins. Or only in these parts?

    Rear view of Forster and Mow Fung riding in a trap across an abandoned goldfield, their backs dark with swarming flies as the dusty track threads through pockmarked earth.

    The two continued along in a silence punctuated by the discordant cry of a single bird.

    “Did he say ‘Ballarat’?” Mow Fung said with a delighted start.

    “Not too far from home, enjoying his day-trip like us, maybe.” Forster chuckled. Grey butcherbird, probably. He had read that places were sometimes named for the cries heard there. “They say that Ballarat means ‘resting place.’”

    “Those shafts are Chinese ones,” Mow Fung said. “Round holes with no corners for evil spirits to hide in. Also, round is better than square, because the sides won’t fall in so easy, and you don’t need much timber. A European does not have to worry about ghosts and spirits, does he? Too rational for them, so they cannot harm him,” he added with a small laugh.

    The camp’s heyday lay twenty years past, when gold gravel was struck midway between Stawell and Deep Lead, one of the richest alluvial fields in Victoria. Before long most of the gold was taken, leaving only enough to sustain a dwindling community of oriental fossickers. Of late, the diamond drill had kindled hopes of renewal, and the New Comet Company had even set up in Deep Lead; yet a recent regulation barred Chinese from employment on non-Chinese leases.

    “A rough, strongly built man – there are many such men working on the railway these days,” Mow Fung mused. “If he is not known in Stawell, then he must have come from elsewhere, perhaps to work on the new line.”

    “They are indeed a transient breed.”

    Shops and dwellings huddled together, walls and a variety of roofs clad in boards all askew, yet which somehow in their chaos attained a harmony all their own; frail but sound constructions lining a street not wider than a cart track.

    To Forster, this time too, everything seemed Chinese, from curious fabrics and wares in the windows to the cats and dogs yawning and scratching in patches of shade. Mow Fung exchanged a few words in his own tongue with a plump, amiable woman shaking a mat as Forster pulled up the rig. Her two infants played with a top in the dust at her feet and squealed in high, lilting tones, miniature editions of their mother. The newcomers stirred a hubbub in the nearby buildings, and within a minute a dozen Celestials had poured out and gathered around the trap to inspect the garments Forster had displayed on the seat, while he fended off the more enthusiastic who reached to handle them.

    “Nobody recognizes these things,” Mow Fung said.

    They proceeded down the street, Forster leading the horse and trap.

    “What a pong. For God’s sake, that’s a great patch of human dung beside that place!”

    “Dried out, it makes good fertiliser,” said Mow Fung. “We Chinese have had to learn that practice, because Chinatowns are usually built below the main town, at the bottom of a hill where sewage and rubbish wash down. Very smelly, though. The newspaper editor often worries that diphtheria will not kill us here, but will drift over to Stawell instead.”

    They stopped before the joss house, a low timber building with a sloping roof. A faint scent of incense drifted from within. Mow Fung went over to pay his respects, bowing and disappearing through the open door.

    “No good,” he said when he came back out, holding a paper lantern. “Somebody knocked off some ritual ornaments. Terrible omen.”

    “What’s that you’ve got?”

    “Kongming. Sky lantern.”

    Forster made a noncommittal grunt. “Right. Say no more.”

    Mow Fung shrugged. “My mother used to say, ‘If you want to become full, admit the emptiness.’ Lao Tzu said the same. It means don’t think too much – listen once in a while.”

    “Steady on. It’s too hot for philosophy.”

    At the far end of the street, a group of men loitered smoking in front of a building.

    “Miss Lili Chan’s Jade Phoenix,” Forster said. “Its reputation precedes it, and not in a good way. Sly grog and opium. Fantan croupier of prodigious luck – or suspect dexterity.”

    “Good friend. Lady of fine quality,” Mow Fung said.

    Heavy curtains enclosed the parlour, parted here and there to admit thin slivers of light. As Forster looked about to gain his bearings, portions of the room surfaced briefly before retreating again into shadow. He had been expected; nothing illicit met the eye. A girl seated on the end of a couch plucked on an instrument resembling a pear-shaped lute, producing a languid, elusive strain. Beside her a man leaned with his head slumped insensibly against the shoulder of a young female, who smoked a long pipe and fanned herself with a bored look. Some men sat around a table playing pai-gow with black dominoes marked in red and white, wagering from little heaps of matchsticks.

    Lili Chan herself emerged from a curtained doorway in a loose-fitting, mercerised cotton changpao. The matte black fabric gave a restrained rustle as she crossed the room. For an instant Forster thought he saw a light-coloured shock of hair before the curtain slipped back into place. She took a cheroot from a lacquered box on the mantel shelf, inserted it into a cigarette holder and signalled to a brawny attendant to light it for her, before at last addressing the two men.

    Lily Chang in a loose black thick-cotton changpao stands in the Jade Phoenix parlour before a curtained window, half-lit in shadow.

    “Detective Forster,” she said. “I assumed our paths would cross again. I take it this is not a social visit.” With a smile, she nodded to Mow Fung.

    “Business has a way of intruding,” Forster said. “Even in agreeable surroundings.” He tapped the hessian at his side.

    “Intriguing. Even so, perhaps you will still allow me to extend some hospitality.”

    She gestured to a young woman, who brought a small tray with porcelain cups and set it on the low table. Lili Chan took a seat without hurry. After a brief hesitation, Forster and Mow Fung did the same.

    Tea was poured from a pot painted with blossoms and winding script. Forster sipped from courtesy; the brew proved lighter than he expected. The murmur of Chinese between Lili and Mow Fung faded into the notes of the lute. Her garment fell in precise folds from her shoulders; the high Mandarin collar framed her face and lent her bearing a formal gravity. A diagonal opening crossed her chest, secured with subtle braided knots. Though the room held the day’s heat, she inhabited a cooler plane altogether. She offered him neither word nor glance, yet he was aware of being measured.

    Then the voices were quiet and he heard only the sparse notes of the lute. She drew on the cheroot, inclined her face and, exhaling the smoke through her mouth and nostrils, looked at him fully for the first time.

    Forster opened the sack and laid the clothing on the table. “You have seen these before?”

    Her eyes moved once across the cloth. “No.”

    “You are quite certain. Perhaps someone else present?”

    “I do not recognize these things,” she repeated. “Nor do my employees, for I do not.”

    At the door, Forster offered her a smile and nod.

    “I understand there was some trouble in the camp last week,” he said. “You see much in this street, Miss Chan. If any part of it bears upon my inquiry, I would be obliged to hear of it.”

    “The temple was robbed by a vagrant from Stawell, a European. I explained to the priest, Mow Fung, that there was no need for the law. The stolen goods were recovered, and mercy shown. Too much to drink. He returned everything when he sobered up and regretted his deed.”

    Outside, Forster turned to his companion. “Priest?”

    Mow Fung looked bashful. “I only consecrate a few things here and there, make rain, tell fortunes, guide the dead, heal boils, such matters…”

    • • •

    Forster found John Campbell, publican of the Royal Hotel at Glenorchy, in his back office. He placed the sack on the table and took out the clothes, one by one. Campbell watched without moving, then gave a short, humourless snort.

    “I know these,” he said. “I’ve seen them worn.”

    Forster waited.

    “Two railway hands, December – navvies off the Dimboola works. Twelfth to the fourteenth, in the one room. Burns was one – smooth-tongued. His mate called himself Charley Forbes. Big red-bearded fellow. ‘Scotty,’ they called him, though he said he was Irish.”

    Campbell touched the coat, as if confirming a weight.

    “He wore this. Coat and hat – same sort. Burns did the talking. Held the money. Kept him close.”

    Forster wrote.

    “They came down by train?”

    “From Horsham, they said.”

    Campbell’s mouth tightened.

    “They ran out of money here. Lost it at cards and drank what was left. When it came time to pay for the room, Burns left a watch with my barman as security – said once the debt was met it was to go on to Stawell, care of Phelan, the storekeeper.”

    Forster noted the name.

    Campbell reflected for a second and added, “I saw Burns at the Stawell races a few days after Christmas. I asked after Forbes. Burns said he’d gone up to New South Wales with an old mate.”

    Forster gathered the clothes together.

    “That’ll do,” he said. “And if you’re pouring, I’ll take that whisky now.”

    • • •

    A few days later, Forster reached the railway camp outside Dimboola, closing in on his phantoms.

    “Painter and his son?” Forster said.

    “Ain’t here …” the foreman began.

    The discharge came with a dull whomp! – sudden and overwhelming, as loud as a cannon, yet muffled by the tons of dirt and rock. The vibration struck the stomach as quickly, if not quicker, than the eardrums. Forster jumped and got through the “Holy–” before tons of dislodged rock thundered down out of sight around the bend.

    “… Jesus!” He blanched and stepped quickly into the cover of the embankment, underneath which a line of navvies was gathered in loose formation, with some standing and others seated in the dust or on rails and stacked sleepers. A drizzle of stones pattered beyond the shelter of the embankment and a cloud of dust surged round the bend. A few seconds of silence followed, the men watching the detective regain his bearings.

    “Who’s opened his bloody tucker bag?” one of them drawled, earning a chortle or two. Forster looked over and was met by steely, sullen faces and a few grins bordering on sneers.

    “Should’ve mentioned that,” said the poker-faced foreman. “Bit of blasting this morning.”

    Evident the copper was put out. Didn’t much enjoy being the butt of a joke.

    “The detective is lookin’ for the Painters?” he called. “Where are they?”

    “Morning off,” came a reply. “Doubler yesterday.”

    A whistle-blast came from around the bend.

    “You men get back to work now,” the foreman said.

    He showed Forster to one of the tents at the workers’ campsite some hundred yards off. Two men dressed identically in grimy singlets and shorts, Richard and John Painter, father and son, sat on stools drinking tea, either side of an upended wooden fruit box that served as a table.

    At Forster’s direction, they examined the clothing, identical smokes drooping from the corners of nearly identical mouths. Coat in two pieces, almost the same colour as the grass in which it had been found. Waistcoat also in two halves, the buckle and strap suggesting it had been quite new before lying exposed for a month or more. The blue twilled shirt, comparatively new, a button torn out – that button found in the vicinity. Relics of the wideawake hat. All the garments except the wideawake more or less saturated with what looked like blood. He had not brought the trousers, which were found down a mine shaft some distance from the body; he reckoned they were probably the dead man’s too. Less distinctive, though; harder to identify positively.

     The Painters hummed and harred, seeming to communicate to each other in their own language of undecipherable mutters and growls, scratching their beards and shaking their heads deep in thought. The detective waited. Just as his nerves began to wear thin, the two men sucked in a breath as one, glanced at each other over their cups of tea, and shook their heads.

    “Yep,” said the elder.

    He opened his mouth to continue.

    Painter the elder sits in a canvas tent beside an upturned fruit-box table, tea and battered cups among cards and ash.

    “Teeth, Father. Company. Manners.”

    Painter the elder fumbled for his dentures on top of the fruit box between them, alongside some grimy playing cards, three battered tin cups – two half-filled with tea – an overflowing ashtray, and half a browning apple.

    “Reckon we know this bloke,” the father said. “Or knew him, you might say.”

    “The feller who owns these here clothes,” the son said. “Know him pretty bloody well. Knew him.”

    “Worked with him, God rest his soul,” the father said. “Nice chappie, broth of a boy. Bit slow. Addicted to the drink.”

    “Never once saw him drunk, Father.”

    “Never seen him drunk? You must be jokin’.”

    “Who said he’s dead?” Forster said.

    “Been reading the papers, that’s all. The body at Four Posts,” said the son. “Terrible thing, shocking. Must’ve been him.”

    “What was his name, then?” Forster said.

    “Scotty, they called him,” the son said. “But Charley Forbes was the proper name.”

    “Charley Forbes,” the father agreed. “Charley Forbes.” Tutted.

    “You’re certain these belonged to Charles Forbes?”

    “We know this coat by where it’s mended,” the father said. “This bit of stitching on the breast here.” He pointed a finger, the hand had a slight tremor in it now.

    “This here stitching on the breast,” the son said. “Charley burnt a hole in it with his pipe, so he stitched it up like this. Couldn’t be more certain it’s the very coat. I never saw him burn it, but I saw it stitched.”

    “Not a bad piece of stitching, really,” the father said, bending closer. “Quite sure as to the identity of this coat. No question.”

    “No question,” said the son. “Ain’t seen him since him and Burnsey took off together, a bit before Christmas.”

    “What’d he look like?”

    “Broad-shouldered, stout fellow. Large, flowing beard.”

    “Sandy coloured.”

    “Well, light sandy coloured, I’d say. Beard was lighter than the hair on his head, which was a dark sandy colour.”

    “Yeah, I s’pose you’re right there, Father. Light sandy coloured beard. Dark sandy coloured hair on his head.”

    “Sandy complexion, wouldn’t you say, Son?”

    “That’s right, Father, very sandy.”

    “And this other character, his mate?”

    “Robert Burns,” said the son. “Like the Scottish poet.”

    “That Man to Man, the world o’er, Shall brothers be for a’ that,” quoth the father, and lapsed into vacant thought, his head nodding involuntarily.

    “Old Jake seen him over at Murtoa the other day, getting off the train,” the son said.

    “Burnsey?” Forster said. “Where’s this Jake?”

    “Shot through.”

    “Where to?”

    “Goodness bloody knows. Just cleared out the other night.”

    From the draft novel Stawell Bardo © Michael Guest 2026

  • The Joss House

    The Joss House

    Hung and festooned as it was with tablets, banners and fans, the joss house at the Chinese camp in Deep Lead was a living bubble of China in the Wimmera. House of deus, so called, from the Portuguese for god. Just inside the doorway, to the left, stood a large iron bell and a tall, barrel-shaped hand drum, with a peacock painted over the pig-skin drumhead. Beside them were glass cases containing sacred candles and five tiers of shelves holding prayers written on paper slips.

    To the unaccustomed eye, the decor was gaudy, with multi-coloured pennants, Chinese characters in purple and gold painted on the walls and roof. Paper and stained-glass lanterns hung from the ceiling; bunches of tinsel in vases were set on stands carved in relief, to depict different epochs. No master craftsman created these, but they proclaim a naïve hand: work executed with painstaking devotion by a jack-of-all-trades, a long-time resident of the Chinese camp.

    Watercolour of Joss House interior. A woman tends the altar, on which is seated a carved deity. There are incense, lanterns, a drum, and various other religios artefacts.

    In her ceremonial robe adorned with all the deities of heaven to clothe her in the protection of the universe, Huish-Huish, Mow Fung’s wife, prepared the altar for the ceremony dedicated to making peace with ghosts. At the very back, raised on a pedestal, in the position of greatest honour, stands the immortal Guanyin, provider of good fortune, who is certain to help, for she hears all the cries of the world and is ever willing to offer protection from any kind of threat or attack. She sits placidly upon a lotus, attired pure white, with gold ornaments and crown. In her right palm she holds a golden flask filled with pure water, in her left raised hand, a twig of willow. Water is to ease suffering and purify the body; willow keeps evil and demons at bay. Huish-Huish communes regularly with the bodhisattva, as though she is a dear friend. She regularly brings the statue flowers, food and drink to sustain and empower her. She is no less beautiful for being made out of plaster. The neck of the statue is pierced with a hole, for other spirits to enter and represent her, after the fashion of an avatar; for Guanyin cannot be everywhere at once herself.

    She lit the sacred lamp for the illumination of wisdom, then the two candles, standing for the sun and moon, and for the two eyes of the human being: the light of the Tao and windows to the psyche. These would help her penetrate the dust of the everyday world. In front of them, three cups, one each of tea, rice and water: tea for yin, the female energy; water for yang, the male; and rice the union of both of these, containing yang from the sun and yin from the earth. In front of them in turn, five plates of fruit to represent the five elements: green for wood, red for fire, yellow for earth, white for metal, black for water. These for the liver, heart, spleen, lungs and kidneys – in harmonious cooperation, a cycle of good health. Sour, bitter, sweet, salty, pungent: plum, apricot, dates, peach, chestnut. She placed dried foods on the altar on this occasion, because she wanted to absorb power from it. When she wishes to empower the altar, she gives it fresh food and flowers, from which it draws life energy.

    In front of the five plates stood the incense burner, a bronze dragon turtle, the smoke curling up through the vents in the top of its carapace – vents in the form of the eight trigrams. The joss sticks were Lena’s work: Mongolian incense, pepped up with dubious substances extracted from her beloved maiden wattle. Necessary cleansing rituals completed, Huish-Huish burned the protective talismans and traced their forms in the air.

    Knowing from previous experiences the ceremonial protocols, Chan Lee Lung – known in Deep Lead as Lili Chan, proprietor of the Jade Phoenix – bowed in deference as she entered, then seated herself. Huish-Huish placed a talisman on her head and performed the mudras, the hand gestures used for drawing out spirits. Based on their previous ceremonies, she has come to suspect that urges to self-harm and suicide afflicting the woman are quite possibly the handiwork of a ghost. There are any number of possible reasons why a ghost might wish the subject injury. She is a beautiful woman, and some ghost may want to marry her, particularly if she has said something inadvertently in earshot that put such a nonsense into its mind. On the other hand, it was common for the ghost of someone who died by suicide to become stranded at the gates of hell, compelled to reenact the fatal act for eternity, unless they were able to find someone to replace them, through that person’s own suicide. Or she may have crossed paths with the spirit of a suicide, or tarried at a haunted spot marked by an unnatural death. Such spirits were always in search of a victim.

    Watercolour image of a Euro-Asian woman in closeup, with her eyes closed, and acupuncture needles in her face, at a few points around the eyes

    The only way to get some idea is to travel with the woman as she journeys through her psyche via the medium of her speech, her story. In this way Huish-Huish may make the woman aware of the ghost, and encounter its weaker manifestations within the trance; there, the ghost itself may be dissolved or at least dissuaded. At the same time, however, in order to heal, she must make herself whole, cultivate herself, and grow in accord with the principles laid out in the Yi Jing and other Taoist teachings. No quick fix here, no game of fantan, this.

    “Every child loves the pretty fable of Kwang Kau’s dream about the butterfly, which Zhuangzi teaches us,” Huish-Huish says. “When Kau awoke from the dream, he found himself unable to tell whether he was Kau dreaming he was a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming it was Kau.

    “Another tale strikes me as somehow similar, in which Shadow and Penumbra converse – Penumbra wanting to know why Shadow moves as she does, perhaps because Penumbra must follow. So Penumbra says, ‘Before, you were walking, but now you have stopped. You were sitting, but now you stand up. How and why do you do that?’

    “Shadow answers, ‘I have to wait for something else to move, and then I will do the same thing as it, almost as though I am its second skin …’”

    The woman listens, as though to a disembodied voice – fluent, lilting Mandarin. Though her own native tongue was that of the city of Taishan – Taishonese, a dialect of Yue, kin to Cantonese – the music of the hypnotic voice draws her into its discourse, and it seems she leaves the world behind her.

    “‘How on earth would I know?’ says Shadow,” Huish-Huish continued. “‘How could I possibly know what it is, that thing which moves, and which I follow – whether the scales of a snake, or a cicada’s wing? How should I have an idea why I perform one particular act instead of another?’”

    The woman’s eyes are closed, and she is already on the brink of a great descent. She hears the pure tone of a chime, and the jingling of rattles, the sounds suffused with the heavy smoke of the incense.

     “Like Shadow and Penumbra,” the voice continued, “I wonder whether we might allow ourselves to pass through phases of our deeper selves – or our earlier selves, when these are not the same thing – and sink into each other, you and I. Penumbras of the scales of a snake follow the shadows of the scales, which follow the snake; they need not feel the belly of the snake sliding across the sand, which is irrelevant to them and impossible to access. And to whom is visible the penumbra of a shadow of the wing of a cicada? And what does the cicada follow, when it does as it does?”

    Huish-Huish aims to melt away her own ego – to become a nothingness, receptive to the projections of memory – because memory is the essence of the psyche itself.

    She guided Chan Lee Lung to lie back upon a low wooden plinth set before the altar, her head resting upon a rice-husk dragon cushion.

    With an austere calm, she placed fine needles along the woman’s brow, at the temples, beneath the eyes, where the face is thinner and the mind can loosen its hold. Chan Lee Lung felt no pain – only a spreading lightness, as though the weight of her features were being unhooked from memory.

    After a while, Chan Lee Lung could no longer separate her inner dialogue from the sound of the guiding voice, which had transposed itself into a chant, whose symbolic words she was unable to comprehend as words, but which fell into a silence as deep as that of the deepest well. As they penetrated the surface of the ether, or whatever liquid-like substance lay at the bottom of the well, something more pure than water, the pitch darkness ignited: each word flared into a splash of sparkling light, cohering into one image, then another, then the next, setting in play a flickering spectacle. A dream that was not quite a dream; a reality that was somehow greater than her reality of the everyday. As instructed, she began to say whatever went through her mind, as though she were a traveller in a railway carriage, sitting by the window, describing to someone else in the carriage the changing scenes she saw outside.

    Standing on a Canton roadside are a woman and her five children, all dressed in their best holiday black, which is nevertheless patched in some places and threadbare in others. Hardly finery, but the woman does her best under extenuating circumstances, as she repeats often to her neighbours and the grocery vendors. The middle daughter examines her mother’s face and observes a liquid bead run down along her nose and fall to the dust.

    “Mama, do you cry?” she asks.

    “Only sweat. Stand quietly.”

    Their sign leans upright against the trunk of the slender tree under whose branches they have sought shade. The mother pacifies the baby, bounces him gently and reassures him with baby-talk, before binding him again to her back, where he falls asleep immediately. At this sight, the eldest daughter stifles the lump in her throat until the mother notices her quivering jaw and corrects her sternly. In the joss house at the Deep Lead Chinese camp, Chan Lee Lung is once again overcome with a profound sadness. Her mother was a hard woman. Again she tastes the blood in her mouth, where she bit herself on the lip to prevent herself from crying – and bites it once again.

    They met up with the broker, who was carrying their sign, at the appointed spot. She disliked the man’s fat, ugly, greasy face. Even his queue seemed to have lumps of fat in it, and he smelled like rotten pork. He laughed when she pointed out these shortcomings to him. He took a piece of lemon from his pocket and presented it to her. She asked him why he thought she would want a piece of lingmung. He corrected her, with another patronising laugh.

    In a Canton street, an old Chinese man, grinning. offers a young woman a piece of lemon. Watercolour image.

    “Ningmeng,” he said, pronouncing the syllables of the Mandarin word. And again, after sucking the lemon, he repeated it, pedantically now, with his bloated, sensual, wet lips, “Ning meng.” Emphasised with two beats of his fat forefinger on her forehead. He told the girls to stand in line, with their bags arranged neatly by their feet.

    She wanted to know what was going to happen to her and he replied that if she was a good girl she would go in a magnificent European ship to a wonderful place called Gold Mountain, an earthly paradise where the streets were paved with gold. There she would find boundless happiness as a wife to many men, have all the food she could eat, wear a cheongsam of the finest silk, and return to China a rich lady.

    She saw the improper look he cast her mother, which he pretended was secret while intending her to notice it, a wink and leer that revealed his green teeth. She complained to the mother, saying she did not want to leave her sisters and little brother, and the mother reassured her that her sisters were leaving as well, to somewhere they would be safe from the fighting here. Her brother was too young to miss her, so she need have no concern for him.

    Another man arrived by rickshaw, perused the sign, and Lemon-man took him aside to discuss a transaction. Her mother told her to take up her bag and walk with dignity to the rickshaw. She was a big girl now, and the world would be her oyster. That is all she remembers of the time her mother sold her, except that as the vehicle moved off, she looked around to farewell her mother and siblings. Her mother had her back turned, remonstrating with the broker, as was her usual way in such pecuniary transactions. Her sisters were waving to her gaily, delighted to see her riding in a rickshaw for the first time.

    Two months later, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s China passed through the narrow strait into San Francisco Bay. The voyage seemed far shorter to the girl, who had been pacified with narcotics for much of the time, in order to prevent her from creating any fuss. It was a recurring delirious episode; she was rolled to and fro on her narrow bunk with the tossing of the vessel, nausea melding with visions of her sisters who, in her dreams, were transmogrified into salivating crimson ghouls. They were standing beside the repulsive man, between whose luminous green teeth issued copious streams of blood. In her waking moments, she was indifferent to the crush and squalor around her. 

    “This is the Golden Gate to Gold Mountain, the country of your dreams.”

    The woman assigned to play the role of her mother had, during her lucid intervals, been tutoring her in what she must say in case she was questioned by someone called Customs. The girl learned to utter the English word “seamstress” while performing an appropriate pantomime, smiling with an air of great earnestness.

    If her acting talents were unconvincing and the two apprehended, the White Devil would visit unspeakable torment on her.

    Although the two travelled in a better section of steerage, it was only thanks to the ‘value’ her buyers saw in her looks and talents in song and dance, which they judged superior to those of their former favourite, a Hong Kong girl they subsequently cast aside. Chan Lee Lung was cloistered with a group of a dozen other girls, away from the hundreds of male emigrants and prostitutes also travelling in steerage, shielded from the rapes and bashings by two bodyguards known not for their physiques, but for their ruthless cunning and their expertise with concealed weapons.

    Leaning against the railing on the starboard deck, bracing herself against the jostling crowd, the girl inclined her face to the magnificent morning sun, emerging from wisps of fog that had been thick and opaque only minutes earlier. This was the first time for the duration of the voyage that she had been permitted up on deck. The ship was about to dock when a splash was heard from the port side, followed by distinct female screams and a rising volume of anxious chatter, as a wave of agitation spread through the huddle of disembarkees. Descending the gangplank, shouldering a jute sack containing her meagre belongings, she overheard a high-pitched, trembling mention of the name Lee Sing, which seemed vaguely to resemble that of the girl in Hong Kong whose fate she had supplanted with her own.

    A girl among a crowd of disembarkees from the steamship China, docked at a San Francisco wharf.

    Bound-footed Madame Ah Toy, the girl’s new owner, immediately warmed to her. When the ageing madam raised the girl’s chin with two fingers to appraise her face more closely, despite the air of sadness that still hung over her, the girl’s eyes reminded her of her own, formerly renowned for their laughing quality. Goldminers “came to gaze upon the countenance of the charming Ah Toy,” the newspaper said once, in poetic, libidinous understatement. And they would come to gaze on the countenance of this girl, her newest attraction, as well. “But only gaze for the time being,” Ah Toy said to herself, in the cold arithmetic of her trade, now satisfied the girl was physically sound, “until you’re growed up good and proper.” There was more in those eyes, however, that drew the woman’s attention: a depth of soul and intelligence; a quiet defiance that she could see would never be crushed. The madam had good reason to identify with the girl’s sterling qualities, having herself wrought a fortune as the first Chinese courtesan and the first Chinese madam of the red-light district, the so-called Barbary Coast.

     Ah Toy oversaw the education of her new protégé as she would that of a cherished daughter, with a loving and stern hand. She declaimed her belief that “son without learning, you have raised an ass; daughter without learning, you have raised a pig,” and over the next few years, the girl flowered under her regime. She soon assumed mastery over the various academic and dance hall pursuits for which her tutelage had been commissioned, guided by professorial clients of Ah Toy’s famous establishment in an alley off Clay Street, under contracts of barter.

    The girl’s getting of wisdom served, as ever, a financial motive, for the ladies of the Chinese establishment trailed those employed in French, Mexican, British and American cat houses, whose popularity ranked roughly in that order. Competition was fierce in the bagnio trade. The French fandango parlour had its les nymphes du pavé, late of the Parisian gutters, who were packing in the patrons to overflowing, gussied up in their red slippers, black stockings, garters and jackets, nothing down below. Stories abounded of outrageous personalities: The Roaring Gimlet, Snakehips Lulu and the rest. Holy Moses! Madame Featherlegs would gallop a horse down the main street wearing nothing but batwing chaps.

    Unfortunately, although a successful entrepreneur, Ah Toy had also become rather a laughing stock, largely because of her Chinese-ness, but also because of the young age and sickly condition of the girls crammed into her shacks, or “cribs,” in Jackson Street, sometimes abused by white boys scarcely older than children themselves.

    These girls she considered, and treated, no better than chattel.

    The girl grew into her role admirably, expressing as though they were natural traits the aristocratic airs she was schooled in; airs that in fact derived from no single country, but from an amalgam of places, real and imaginary. Yet somehow her intrinsic class seemed to imbue these artificial attributes with substance.

    She was not overawed by anyone she met, but treated with due respect and equality all who crossed her path: from city officials who surreptitiously joined the growing flood of patrons paying good money for no more than the pleasure of gazing upon her, to slave girls locked in the cribs like animals. Most of these girls had been smuggled from China, either peddled, like her, or abducted outright. Sufferers of syphilis numbered among them, their short futures preordained: to die disfigured beggars on the streets of Chinatown.

    She felt a compassion for these creatures in the cribs, pleading their cause to Madame Ah Toy and doing her utmost to convince her, in terms she would understand, that acknowledging even minimal duties of care to the crib girls might serve her business-wise – allowing her to be perceived as less of a pariah and blight on society, though she couched that more gently.

    No cribs for her, nor even a residence in one of the sumptuously appointed parlour houses. Ah Toy set her up in a double storey brick house of her own, where she entertained only the most prestigious clientele – exclusively white, expressly no Chinese – when she was not assisting her proprietress to operate the gambling house and manage the business affairs. As well, Ah Toy provided her with a chaperon, a certain Fung Jing Dock, whom she introduced to Chan Lee Lung as an office bearer in a newly formed organisation known as the Society of the Mind Abiding in Tranquility and Freedom. He was, Ah Toy said, a virtuoso on the zither as well as an avid student of the Yi Jing.

    “Regarding my degree of talent with the zither, I must refuse to answer,” Fung Jing Dock pleaded charmingly, “in order to avoid incriminating myself.”

    Nevertheless, he proved to be a surprisingly good amateur zitherist, and Chan Lee Lung and he spent a few minutes at the instrument together now and then during the daylight hours.

    “But there is more to this story,” Lili Chan said as they came out of the joss house and into the dazzling sunlight. “It does not end well, I’m afraid.” She turned towards her establishment.

    Huish-Huish looked at her face, which seemed pallid.

    “As a process, the ceremony may sometimes require any number of iterations,” she said. “Some subjects joke that it will go on forever, and they will never be free of me. Things cannot be rushed, however. We will have plenty of opportunity next time.” She laughed. “There is no cure for the human existence, you know,” she said. She briefly squeezed her companion’s arm and went back briskly into the joss house. Pausing to look up at the empty expanse of sky for a second, Lili took in a long breath, before making her way languidly down the street.

    From the draft novel Stawell Bardo © Michael Guest 2026

  • 5. Missing Persons (from the draft novel Stawell Bardo)

    5. Missing Persons (from the draft novel Stawell Bardo)

    Missing Persons

    “Here, have a go at this:

    “A strange discovery was made yesterday by a miner named Wilson. While cutting props in the bush, about two miles from the Deep Lead, he found that he was at work beside the headless trunk of a human being. The remains were lying about ten feet from an abandoned shaft. The head was severed from the body, and although a careful search was made, it was nowhere to be found. The body had apparently been removed to its present spot within the last week, for there is a mark on the ground close to where the remains were. The body appeared to be that of a male, tall and slender. Not a vestige of clothing of any description was found on or near the remains.

    “Well, that is out of the ordinary, ain’t it, Wilson, what it says in this rag here?” Cleggett, the barroom wag, lowered the newspaper and gave Wilson a sidelong look over his glass.

    “Indeed, well it was exceeding strange,” Wilson said. “Eerie, horrible, and awful as well, I can assure ye. Not every day a cove turns around and cops an eyeful of sompthing like that, I mean to say, a naked corpse right there next to you where you’re workin’. Inches away. Cop that, mate! A nude, naked body of some bloke without no head and all – without a particle of clothing. Ants all over it. Crawling down his throat and everything. No private parts neither and all.”

    “Where was is clothes?” Nash muttered from along the bar.

    “No one knows for godsakes, shit! But you know, there wasn’t no stink of decomposing, having been there a while, and the skin was a kind of mystic golden colour, swear to Christ, like the Pharaoh, I reckon, like some mummy. Cor’blimey, fill this up for us, Ronald, wont’ya? I’m still a’shiverin’ and a’shakin’ from the shock. Shout me one? What about it? Calm me nerves. Who’s won the bloody cricket in Melbourne, anyhoo?”

    Cleggett set his glass down and snorted wearily.

    “No, I mean, strange you was working, like the paper says here. I ain’t never seen you doing no work never. Never heard of it neither. Yet here it is in black and white in the bloody paper. You working! How do they get them facts the sorts of which no-one’s never seen nor heard of before? Cutting props, you? God Almighty, what a farce. Love to witness that. That is an original story!”

    He paused for effect. “Oh, I see! No, the point of the story is, some bloke’s got himself murdered and ’ad his head cut ’orf and you found him.”

    A couple of grunts along the line.

    “Well anyway, who is he? Or if you like, who was he?”

    “They dunno who he was,” Wilson explained. “That’s the problem, like. How can they catch who done him in, if they don’t even know who he was, like? That’s just what I’m trying to tell the bloomin’ coppers. Detective didn’t even want to listen to me. Just kept telling me to shut up every time I opened me mouth. I was invited to the whatsit, of course – as what they call the discoverer of the cadaver. Bloody dead body layin’ there large as life. Shit. And I lost the day’s work of cuttin’ props and all.” He took a gulp of whiskey.

    “Oh yes, you and your props. Hi, get that dog out of ’ere!”

    “Oi, get that bloody dog out!”

    “Ah, he’s not doin’ no harm.”

    “Yeah, leave the poor bastard be.”

    “Ah, e’s bringin’ in the flies!”

    “No he ain’t. Look, he’s drawin’ ours over there into his corner! Look at that one, there you go.”

    “So he is, leave him then.”

    “Yeah, leave him be, he ain’t doin’ no harm nohow.”

    “Leave him be, you bastard!”

    The greying old red and tan kelpie settled in.

    “That is a problem, about the identity. But I overheard the coppers say some bloke was missing.”

    “Yeah, who?”

    “Bellman, I think I heard. Poor bastard. Wife and child, I think I heard. Maybe not, I dunno. She left him, I think maybe I heard.”

    “Good name,” Cleggett reflected.

    “Yeah, I know.”

    “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls …” Cleggett drawled.

    “Yeah, I know.”

    “It tolls for thee.”

    “Oh, for Chrissakes. Blimey, you don’t half bang on. Gad, what are they putting in this stuff?

    •

    The mystery astonished and horrified the community, locally and across the country. At last the police had something to work upon in ferreting out what had seemed a hopeless mystery. Steadfastly, Detective Forster – dour, methodical, undistracted – set himself to the task of unravelling the details and run the murderer to ground.

    One Frank A. Bellman, a labourer, hadn’t been accounted for during the past month and seemed a likely candidate for the victim. The time frame was right, and his brother was concerned enough to notify the constabulary. Bellman was supposed to visit him at Warrnambool – but failed to show up.

    Forster was at his desk, some new leads having come in. He perused the recent details on Bellman, a page and a half. Hopefully, this was the man. Seemed a decent enough fellow, drank a bit, perhaps too much, but what was that? Didn’t gamble, hardly.

    Why was the head cut off? Obviously, to hide the identity of the deceased; so it was likely the perpetrator either had some connection to him or had been seen with him recently.

    Forster harked back to the inquiry at the pub at Deep Lead, and how the Celestial seemed to look not at the corpse, but somehow through it. That Mow Fung, weird character, Chinese or no. Forster could not get him out of his head. Perhaps call in on him in a couple of days, might know something he’s not saying.

    Frank A. Bellman.

    Frank a bellman?

    Rubbish.

    He was at his wits’ end, mind going around in circles, at the end of a track that petered out and turned into sand, just like his visit to the Junction Hotel and the crime scene. The crime scene a murderer’s paradise, if one had such an inclination. Footprints in the sand were erased in no time. Bottomless mining holes everywhere for miles around, one right near the body. Take the head and clothes, and you are away Scot free.

    Bellman was a good chance, so Forster mounted up and set off to do the rounds of Bellman’s known haunts. He rode out to Bellman’s shanty, where he found a dead dog, and a half-mad horse, and spent a while getting water into it and shifting it into the shade.

    “I’ll send someone in a little bit, you blokes, you keep tight, won’t be long.”

    He rode out through the front barbed-wire gate and dismounted to hook it up again. Clear as day, the Junction publican came to mind again. That inscrutable look still gave you the shivers somehow. He mounted, wheeled about, feeling an impulse to return to the shack.

    A shed fifty yards off stood steaming in the midday sun, so he went over. Behind the shed, a foal lay panting. He coaxed it into the shade, then went to fetch some water from Bellman’s muddy dam. When he poured it gently over the foal’s neck, the animal blinked, snorted, and took a drink. It would live.

    He paused at the gate, took a long breath, and rode to the barracks.

    Mounted-Constable Hadfield was there, chatting with a civilian. They stopped and looked up when Forster came in.

    “This is Mister Bell,” Hadfield said.

    “Bellman?”

    “Just Bell, Detective Sergeant. He’s a woodcarter, lives here in Stawell.”

    A bleached, weathered scrap of clothing lay on the desk: the torn-off half-portion of a waistcoat, violently ripped from the rest, buttons missing and lining torn askew.

    “What’s this?”

    “Mister Bell found these items in the bush, sir, a bit of a way from Deep Lead towards here, and he brought them in for us.”

    Forster checked himself – he’d been too brusque. “That’s very kind of you, sir. Do you mind telling me what took you out that way?”

    “Following my occupation. Gathering and carting wood. Sometimes I carts it, sometimes gathers, most often usually both.”

    “Might you be available to show us the spot, post haste?”

    •

    Bell had found the waistcoat on his way to a place called the Four Posts, about eighty yards from the Old Glenorchy Road. The three fossicked through the immediate area, moving as systematically as they could outward from the spot, which Bell had thoughtfully marked with a cross of four rocks. After about an hour, Forster dispatched Bell to fetch Constable Hillard for another set of legs and eyes.

    Alone now, taking a mental break, he wandered down to a dry creek bed, fringed with scrub and tall kangaroo grass.

    A  lone bird call rang out – Four gallons of water! – and he stopped, turning towards the sound. To his left, where the call had come from, something caught his eye: a small heap half-hidden in the grass. He’d almost missed it, for the cloth had taken on a yellowish-green tinge from long exposure, nearly the same as the tussocks around it. He might have passed and re-passed forever without discovering it, but for that bird. Feathered bloody oracle.

    Three buckets of water! Fainter, receding, gone. Magnifying the heavy, empty expanse. What turns up when you are not looking.

    The coat was blood-stained, especially about the neck. One button remained on the waistcoat, the only one to withstand the violent strain by which the garment had been yanked open. It matched one found under the body. On the shirt, too, were the gaps where two buttons, also recovered under the remains, had been torn free. There could be no doubt that the clothes were those worn by the murdered man. He drew from the tangle of cloth a third of a wideawake felt hat, the rest having been cut away. A few hairs clung to the remaining rim, the same colour as those found at the base of the dead man’s neck. They were stuck to the felt by blood. The trousers were missing, and so was the dead man’s head.

    “Wideawake,” he couldn’t help saying softly aloud, as he made his notes, “no nap.”

    He’d organise another sweep in a week or so, but for now there were other fires to tend.

    Bellman’s mother had been summoned over from Horsham to examine the remains, which she was sure as sure could be were her son’s:

    “It can’t be he, oh it can’t be he! But I fear it is. I’m certain it is! His hair’s turned a little more to the reddish hue, that’s all, workin’ out here like a navvy! What a bonnie bairn he was, the wee rascal! That mole on his shoulder is sure his. Oh, he was a fine laddie, with all of his future in front of him. But will you look at him, look at his skin. It’s … radiant, the peak of health! Bless the daft lad – he couldn’t scrub up like that when he was living. Ach, ma heid’s mince!”

    Hillard fetched her again from the Commercial Hotel in Stawell, where she was being put up, having imperfect relations with her other son. This time, it was not the body she was brought in to identify, but the items of clothing recovered from the bush.

     “He was a dear laddie,” she said quavering, placing her frail hand on the waistcoat. “Och, to think this was the last thing he wore, it sends me heart racin’. Well, whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye!” Overcome, she paled and drew the back of her hand up to her brow. Forster pulled a chair over and lowered her into it.

    There came a knock at the door, and a constable poked his head in. “There’s a bloke out here to see you, Detective.”

    “Not now.”

    “It seems important.”

    “I said not now.” The door closed.

    Mrs Bellman began to sob. The door opened again; the same constable gestured to Hillard, who looked at Forster.

    “For goodness sake, go and see what he wants.”

    The woman sobbed convulsively. Forster laid a hand lightly on her shoulder. The door opened and Hadfield came in quietly followed by a man.

    “You alright, Ma?”

    “In the name o’ the wee man, this isnae real!” Mrs Bellman turned white as a sheet, rose shaking – “Ye’re meant to be deid!” – and abruptly dropped to the floor.

    Thus the Bellman mystery – if one can call it that – was solved. Instead of going to Warrnambool as planned, he had detoured over into New South Wales and returned the next Saturday. He’d left the animals with feed enough for a few days, thinking he’d be home on Sunday. But his horse threw a shoe past Moama and went lame, and the smith wouldn’t see him till Friday, he had to lay up at some wayside inn, only the publican’s daughter had the measles, and he ended up minding the place while the missus boiled onions. At any rate: no foul play, no mystery. Just an irritatingly loquacious fellow, who couldn’t be bothered sending a wire.

    The case of a carrier named Flannigan, though not dissimilar, was in some respects more of a nuisance. His circumstances made it likely that the remains found near Deep Lead might be his. Detective Forster left Stawell by the first train Monday morning to conduct some interviews. On Tuesday, he struck out for Woodend and went some distance into Bullarook Forest, before doubling back to Seymour. He set the telegraph wires to work, then back to Ballarat, chasing a clue. By wire, he learned that Flannigan was alive and well in Deniliquin.

    The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of all persons reported missing from the district had now been accounted for. The discovery of the clothing further assisted in establishing the identity of the murdered man and was expected to furnish evidence leading to the apprehension of the perpetrator. Another step had been taken in the matter, and it was to be hoped that justice, having misplaced its head, would soon find its footing.

    Michael Guest © 2025

    Images generated by AI

  • 3. Glenorchy Royal (from the draft novel Stawell Bardo)

    3. Glenorchy Royal (from the draft novel Stawell Bardo)

    Glenorchy Royal

    Let us regress a few weeks, before the scene at the homely Junction Hotel. Before the discovery of the headless body. Before any names were written down, even in a dog-eared notebook. The world barely notices such half-invisible men until a cause arises to record them – for all their swagger. This was before all that, when they strode unhindered and unsought. Dust clung to them, and their deeds had not yet congealed into fates. Glenorchy manifested itself lazily as they approached: a post fence, a dozing kelpie mix, the tin flash of a roof. The Royal Hotel waited in the heat, half-slumped, only half-aware.

    “This is a hellish, God-awful, melancholy town. The miserable bloody air here alone is enough to make a cove want to get rotten,” Burns said, dispensing with his hat and scratching his head. Truth was, he was feeling tolerably well, buoyed by the promise a day held that commenced with a bout in the Glenorchy Royal Hotel, renowned as it was in the district for its unadulterated grog. No fig tobacco in the brandy casks here, cobber. And the publican’s daughters are good sorts, too – said to cut out a stubborn bullock as good as any plains stockman. The publican knows everything about anything, by all accounts, including, perhaps, the lay of the land. But it turns out he ain’t here. Joseph Jenkins, the self-styled “part proprietor,” has charge of the place today and is big-noting himself on the strength of it.

    A hollow masculine chorus echoed in the bar – voices of shearers, farmhands, bullock-drivers – out of which one solo strain or another might ascend now and then, distinct enough to catch scraps of individual wisdom: the blowflies, the heat, a dog’s virtues, or a horse’s ailment. The most vocal, a couple of ancient farmers at a table by the front window, were bemoaning rabbits.

    “Official work to do, Scotty,” Burns said. “No good to be drunk as fiddler’s bitches.”

    “Why bullock our guts out? Like my old man used to say, never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after. A spell of easy drinking will give us zest for the task. Don’t take much, anyway, to find out where the lots are, chuck up a couple of pegs and notices.”

    “Back here by late afternoon for cards and hot whisky anyway.”

    “You’ve already got a good start on it, mate.”

    But Burns called the barman over and ordered four tots of rum for a heart-starter.

    “Me and me mate’s got a thirst on after a’rambling place to place for work, which we’ve been doing in the hearty manly fashion, in the spirit of comradeship that is the pride of the Australian bush,” he said – in a forced jocular, theatrical tone that, boorish as it proved generally to most audiences subjected to it, he knew would draw a guileless grin from Forbes.

    “Soon to be landowners,” Forbes said. “Proper cockies, us!”

    Burns inquired of the barman:

    “Would you mind fetching us some of the more recent volumes of your collected publications, my good fellow – any sorts of broadsheets, gazettes, whatever journals have informed and entertained your distinguished clientele.”

    Then turning to his companion:

    “Must keep track of world affairs, when you’ve got your head in a hole in the ground half the time, old man. See how the Australian Eleven are going over in the old Britannia, and so on and so forth.”

    “Oh yes, God almighty!” Forbes let go a cracking belch that silenced the bar for a moment, and the two roared madly, Burns holding his stomach and shaking his head.

    When the barman returned with their nobblers of rum and some newspapers, Burns raised a hand as if to prevent Forbes from paying and produced two shillings from his money purse. “It’s what a bloke does for a good cobber, who’s a half decent sort,” he said.

    Forbes threw his head back from his paper, then tapped it three times with his index finger to mark the rhythm of his utterance, as if to emphasise its gravity.

    “I bloody well knew it! People on Mars are no bloody different from us here on Earth.”

    “What is that nonsense?” Burns said, glancing up from a cricket report.

    “Not nonsense, mate, The Australian Town and Country Journal, scientific notes. It’s not as bright as it is down here, but their eyes are more sensitive, so they can see just as good. The polar snows extend further, so it’s colder, you know, naturally, but by no means less in proportion to the lessened power of the solar rays – so, anyway, make of that what you like.”

    “Fuck me dead,” Burns said.

    “This Professor Lockyer – or some what’s-his-name or other – has discovered several remarkable seas in the southern hemisphere, including inland seas, some of them connected and some not connected with the larger seas by straits. One of their seas looks exactly like the Baltic, and there’s an equatorial sea, a long straggling arm, twisting almost in the shape of an S laid on its back, from east to west, at least 1000 miles in length, and 100 miles in breadth.”

    Forbes shook his head slowly and mused through the window towards outer space.

    “Let’s have another rum. That reminds me, we need some S-hooks from the blacksmith’s, for sinking them dams in Dunkeld.”

    When the barman served them, Burns was again magnanimous in paying.

    “Why do you say that every time?” Forbes said.

    “What?”

    “All that deal about paying for your mates. I’d take my turn just as quick, except you’re holding all my dough.”

    “What?”

    “Nothing.”

    “And why would that be, do you reckon?”

    “What?”

    “Why am I holding your dough for you, do you reckon?”

    “So as I won’t chuck it away on cards?”

    “Or pour it down your gullet, right? Look here, if you want to hold it yourself, you’ve only got to say so.”

    “Ar, it’s alright, you go on holding it.”

    “No, no, here you go, have it bloody back, because I know what’s going to happen.”

    “No, it’s alright mate, you hold it. You hold onto it for me.”

    “No,” Burns said, raising his voice as he bent down to undo his swag, lying on the floor by his boots. “If that’s how you feel about it, you take it, and we’ll wait and see what happens.”

    He fussed around, unable to lay his hand on the stash immediately, testily disembowelling the swag. The bar now quiet, furtive eyeballs over nobblers of whisky hot. Strange ones.

    “Don’t worry about it, Bobbie” – Forbes pleading – “I’m sorry. You look after it for me, please mate.”

    Burns’ back and shoulders slumped as he sighed, tut-tutted, shook his head, sat up, leaned back.

    Pause.

    “Ah, Scotty, what are we going to do with you, son? I know you’re a good’un right and proper, but god you make it hard to look after you sometimes.”

    Weary head shake.

    “Sorry mate, sorry.” Forbes placed his hand on the back of his mate’s wrist, and the two men looked each other in the face. His eyes watered, a teardrop forming at each inner corner. Conscious of it enough not to sniff, he looked into Burns. A kind man, tough but kind, good to me. His eyes, well, there was a trace of softness to them. Like his beard, bushy but soft. Burns could see right into him, too; he could see that much. They had shared tender times together, which was not the usual lot of those thrust together in railway camps. Forbes sought a salve of kindness in his eyes, the closest thing he had known to affection for a long time – who knows? – for his whole life long.

    Day moves along, and the rambunctious hour draws near. Patrons who’d started at half past ten in the morning are caught up by tardier arrivals, spurring themselves on to comparable states of elation.

    At some point, a mob of navvies crowd round the old farmers and begin to ply them with whisky for sport. Taking a barrel or chair for a seat, the hands share the one table, while one or two stand leaning against the wall engaged in their own conversations.

    “Bloomin’ city so-called ‘sport shooters’ brung ’em over from the Old Country, and the sparrows and deers and all. Said in the paper, if we got rid of the vermin, they’d get even more. Bloody Wild Rabbit Propagation Committee, would you believe?”

    “Don’t tell me!” yells a hand, hawks and hacks in his pocket-rag out of politeness.

    “I’m telling you, my son,” says the old red-haired feller, “It’s bad enough now with the rabbits, but in the sixties, them damn vermin was so many, you’d go to pull out spuds and find they was rabbit nuts instead!”

    “You don’t say!”

    Hoots and hollers. “What’d you do with the rabbit, mate?”

    “Well, you threw it out and chucked the balls in the broth for veggies. No one was in the mood for rabbits no more, in no shape or form, I’ll tell yer that much.”

    “Didn’t the government do nothin’ about it?”

    “I tell you what,” says old red-headed bloke’s mate. “I’ll tell you right now all what the guvment’s good for. Bloody nothing. A year ago they come up here, these blokes, an army of them got sent by the guv’ment. Half a dozen Melbourne loafers and twenty-eight mongrel dogs! They went into a district so thick with pests that hundreds of men, women, and children had worked day and night for months with dogs, guns, and traps – and still made no impression. So we laughed our guts out at these poor bastards running around with their dogs. Not worth a tinker’s dam, them blokes. And sure enough, the dogs tired of huntin’ rabbits and thought they’d prefer worrying the sheep, and the local inspector took out a writ against these bastards for having unregistered dogs!”

    A gust of laughter rips through the heat – “God Almighty!” – “Don’t tell me!” – “You’re havin’ us on, y’old bugger!” – “Bloody hell, so who was the vermin after all, eh?!”

    Misshapen dwarfish gargoyle Poor Joe the Ostler is all unbridled mirth.  Lets loose an ear-splitting hoot, perching upon his stool. Leaning next to him, kindly Tom Piper, who was once a prize-fighter, stands Poor Joe another, but will keep an eye on him.

    “Goin’ to have a wee jig, Joe?” lisps a vile flea called MacDougal, peering across Tom Piper’s face, up to mischief. Poor Joe’s drunken antics are a thing to behold.

    “Do you want to find yourself out there on your face in that muck-heap, MacDougal?” Tom Piper is not one to waste words, and MacDougal slurps quietly, before seeking less perilous entertainment.

    Old red-headed bloke’s mate. “An imbecile from Warrnambool invented some kind of pills to poison them rabbits, and them pills did work to great effect for sure when a rabbit ate one, but hardly any of the rabbits did. Weren’t to their liking. God’s blood! We tried destroying them, filling their burrows with poisonous fumes, but that was damnable hard work, and we didn’t know where half their burrows was. It’s a nightmare, as you can well imagine!”

    Burns sorts the accommodation.

    Pencil poised, the barman assumes: “Two rooms?”

    “Just the one, son. He’s too far gone to warrant a room his own. I know him. I’ll have to look after him later.”

    “Who’s paying?”

    “I am, for sure as lookin’ at me, see this roll I’ve got here!”

    The barman looks him in the eye – a flicker of recognition there, and maybe a hint of suspicion.

    “Come on, cobber, I’ll see you an extra couple of bob.”

    Something in the barman’s smile twitches – almost salacious, or maybe just the beer – but not enough to call it a leer. And Burns missed it anyway.

    “If you say so, mate. Two bob, ya reckon?”

    Forbes mingles, spreading his innocent masculine charm, and generally the locals take to him. Burns has passed him enough dough to stand a few rounds, and he is liberal with it. Here is the single theatre where he can demonstrate the largesse that he aspires to be known for. In return, you have to lend him your ear to chew on for a bit.

    “Who are you, my good man, and what’s your game?” says Forbes to an amiable fellow

    “Archibald Fletcher. I work for Stawell Council as a road overseer.”

    “Well, Archy, I wish to have a word with you. Who is that gentleman over there with the long white coat? He insulted me about my church, my creed, and my coat, and I will not take that from any man! Not him nor you.”

    “I see no such chap.”

    “Do you think I’m stupid, do you? You might be surprised to hear that some fellow in England has made a remarkable invention called ‘captive daylight.’ Did you know that, smart-arse?”

    “And what might that be, Scotty?” Burns sidles up, winking a cold wink at Fletcher, the council road overseer.

    “What it sounds like, mate, just what it sounds like. I read that this chap, a Mr. Balmain, I think his name is, if memory serves, has succeeded in producing a luminous paint which can absorb light, as it were, and during darkness will suffice to illuminate an entire apartment. Very interesting article.”

    “My lord! That will be good for the outhouse!” Howls from those in earshot. “Yeah, good for readin’ the paper in the dunny without no candle!” Further rustic, scatological expressions of humour.

    Fletcher moves off, as the others incline an ear.

    “Yes, well, indeed, some might suggest there are those dimwits who can’t get their minds out of them parts! Anyways, they’re going to use it in compartments on board ironclads, probably. It’s quite intelligent, really,” Forbes says.

    “How would you turn this paint off when you wanted to go to sleep?”

    “Well, I don’t know, I suppose you don’t need to sleep in the dark, does you?”

    “A lot of blokes don’t like to sleep when the room’s all lit up, like. I’m one of them myself, in fact, so it seems to me there are apparent drawbacks with this invention.”

    “I can assure you as some folks would prefer to read late into the night, save on the price of oil at the same time, and pull the sheet up over their head later.”

    The laughter swells around them, voices breaking off into pockets of side talk. Burns drags a barrel up beside Forbes and leans close, his mouth near the other man’s ear, speaking gutturally against the racket, passing on what Jenkins the barman calls good oil on the allotments of land up for selection. There’s one or two up this way, not far from the river, which at this time of year has dried up into a line of muddy water holes, but there’s some better ones closer to Stawell, too. Blow going all the way down there today; best to catch the train there tomorrow or the day after. Cast an eye over the ones up here first. Bit of a walk this arvo. Then go down to Stawell by rail. You can meet the missus and kids.

    They down two more solid nobblers of rum apiece, before following the route Jenkins’ map takes them on, out of town and north-east towards Swede’s Creek. Forbes has procured two flasks of brandy with what is left of the money Burns has given him, and they alternate swigs, while Burns elaborates on his vision of their shared future as wheat farmers. For the most part, Burns will live with his wife and six children in Stawell, and Forbes will occupy a house on the new property. They stop at the weir for a smoke and gaze down at the muddy trickle way below. Burns lets drop the empty flask, which comes to rest with its mouth barely above the surface, such that suddenly the waters eddy in, until it emits a comic gurgle and disappears.

    Burns knows more than enough about farming, he reckons, to put Forbes on the right track. There are two classes of selectors – one goes on the land without money, and the other without knowledge; and there are some who go on the land without either. But of the first two, he would rather give credit to the man who lacked money but possessed knowledge than he would trust the man who had a limited supply of money and no knowledge at all. Did you know, mate, that sailors make the best selectors? The best of non-farmer selectors, that is. They are quick-eyed, active, strong-handed, and excellent judges of the weather. They can, he opines, almost without exception, successfully compete with old hands in fencing land.

    Four bottles of water? asks some bird invisible in the bush, the phrase clear as speech.

    “Well, I sure ain’t no sailor neither,” Forbes admits, in a tone that one would not quite call wheedling as such, though a kind of seeking for self-reassurance is evident in it, some murky undertone. “I think I might have my work cut out,” he says with a self-deprecating smile.

    “Tosh! you will do alright, son,” Burns says with a wink and a slap on his mate’s shoulder. “Well, I have to say the land’s not much good around here. Only fit for a sheep walk and a poor one at that. You’ll find a sheep every five acres around this place at best.”

    They continue their trek for a while, Burns examining a clod of the friable clay here and there, until the second flask is emptied. “Not too heavily timbered around here,” Burns observes, taking a final swig and tossing the flask. “Just a few patches of bull-oak – though that’s useful stuff for building.” Belch. “The creek’s not always like this, you know, just waterholes. It fills up alright, and I heard some talk back there about some sort of irrigation scheme that might come through in a while.” Snort, hack.

    “Listen to them birds,” Forbes says with a giggle. “They’re saying the same thing over and over and over. What sorts of birds is they?”

    They stop still and listen. A long silence. Then … CRACK! Click-click-click!

    “Out here? Must be lost,” Burns mutters of the Eastern Whipbird.

    Four bottles o’ water – watchya baaaack!

    “There he is!” laughs Forbes – a flash of sheer, foolish delight. “Four bottles of water!”

    “They’re not talkin’, just skwarkin’, son.” Burns’ patience thins. “Will you listen to what I’m saying to you, for Chrissakes?”

    Forbes is still looking up into the branches, laughing.

    Burns exhales, the sound more growl than sigh. A shadow seeps into his gaze and his jaw tightens.

    Cackling, Forbes mimics some more, then falls silent, listening. Burns spits, thinking. Here and now, God help me, I could kill him.

    As they go on, Burns lags behind, wobbling his head, sneering, and mouthing Forbes’ words in a sarcastic pantomime.

    They arrive back at the Royal. Forbes takes some brandy and old newspapers up to their room and pores over some articles of passing interest, though his brain is unable to comprehend much of what his eyes admit into it: The necessity of employing very intense temperatures in cremation, so as to convert the body into ashes, appears likely to be done away with by the experiments of M. Lissagarry. The difficulty in cremation is to decompose and reduce to ashes tissues containing 75 per cent of water; but M. Lissagarry overcomes this by exposing the body, first of all, to the action of superheated steam, which chars the tissues and enables them to burn easily in an ordinary simple furnace at a very much less cost of fuel and without the least unpleasantness . . .

    He blinks slowly, reaches for the brandy, and lets the print swim before his eyes, the words dissolving into the paper’s yellowy grain. His lips shape the words soundlessly. There are some hard ones, but Bobby will know what they mean. He always knows. Rolling onto his back, arms askew, Christlike, he drops into unconsciousness. Snores like ballast pouring into a hopper. Dreams a dream of a sky fretted with magpies, wings beating over acres of land littered with skeletons.

    Tom Piper steers Poor Joe, incoherent, out the back to his mat of hay in the stable. Off he totters, and Tom returns to the fray.

    Burns throws himself into a chaotic game of three-card loo in progress in a smoke-filled room adjoining the bar. Six men compete for tricks around a dilapidated table buried under piles of coins and damp clumps of notes, while onlookers crowd in to outshout each other’s wagers. In the main bar, an accordion strikes up an off-key melody, an Irishman belts out an amorous ditty, forcing the instrument to conform. Then a polka, and a few dance in pairs, man on man, stiffly wobbling around each other like toy peacocks, leaning away, gripping each other by the elbows. Only one woman is present, and she is too far in her cups, anyway, to be of any use, engaged in a slurring interchange with a navvy at the bar, though their topics are unrelated, and they speak past each other’s eyes.

    Burns’ cheer curdles as his luck rots. Repeatedly ‘looed,’ he feeds the pot, three at a time. Others scoop the winnings while his pile shrinks. The pool swells. Greed thickens. The drink works deeper with each loss, peeling him down – the drunken, belligerent aggrandising become brutish, to reptilian – to a being older than men. His hands move more slowly now, eyes narrowed, as though weighing the other men for more than their cards. A primitive thought coils, half-remembered, half-whispered by something older than his bones, shedding centuries like skins – as though a presence that had slithered through ages of darkness might, on a vicious whim, infect a human soul.

    After the fun, Jenkins the barman is left to sweep the refuse into piles on the floor. He leaves the doors open for the last curls of tobacco stench to drift out with the nocturnal breeze. The place is otherwise empty except for Burns – or rather, what’s left of him. The man-shape slumps in the chair, but the thing inside is pared back to its oldest layer, the cold-blooded remnant that survives when all else is stripped away. His gaze is hooded, face sliding off the skull, mouth agape and drooling. A slow flick of the tongue, lizard-like, tastes the air.

    When Jenkins has finished sweeping, he leads the creature up the stairs. By the top step, Burns is down on all fours, almost slithering. “Here you are, mate,” Jenkins says at the door. “Allow me…” He turns the master key and ushers the creature inside. From somewhere far back in his skull, Burns watches this with cold detachment. When he spits, his saliva oozes in strings to the floorboards. He tries littler ptuh! ptuh! spits to be rid of it, but it clings there.

    Michael Guest © 2025

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