The Publicity Push Read online

  “What is the story Gran?” Kylie asked.

  “I told you that last night,” Gran replied.

  “Only the outline. What is the full story?” Kylie asked.

  Gran made a face. “Oh heavens! It will take an hour to tell.”

  Aunty Violet nodded encouragingly: “That’s alright Grace. We’ve got an hour. Please tell us.”

  Gran looked from one to the other, then nodded. “Oh alright. But another cup of tea first.”

  Kylie felt a surge of excitement. “Oh thank you Gran!”

  CHAPTER 4

  FAMILY HISTORY

  Gran settled herself more comfortably and took a sip from her tea cup. “Well now, to explain this I will have to go back in time and cover a bit of family history.”

  Kylie nodded and smiled. “Go on Gran. I would like to hear.”

  Gran smiled at her, then looked out the window. There was a moments silence as her eyes took on a misty, far away look. Then she turned back to the waiting group. “This is a bit complicated,” she explained. “I had better start as far back as I can. That would be with your Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather.”

  “Heavens! That is a long way back!” Margaret cried.

  Gran smiled again. “To you maybe. It seems like yesterday to me. Anyway, to begin. In 1880 Hector Pike migrated from England to Australia. He came to North Queensland to look for gold. From memory he went to the newly discovered field down at Goldsborough in the Mulgrave Valley. He must have found some gold because he bought the farm near Malanda and married Rose Till in 1885. They had eight children I think, but from memory only five of them survived.”

  Margaret looked horrified. “Only five. How awful. What happened Mrs Feltham?”

  “Oh you young people don’t realize how good you have it. In those days all sorts of things killed children, particularly in the bush: diseases we don’t even worry about anymore; and things like appendicitis and septicaemia, infections from small injuries. You look around an old cemetery some time and see how many young children are buried in them.”

  “How sad,” Allison said. She looked at Bert, who met her eyes and nodded sympathetically. Kylie noted this and felt a sharp little stab of irritation.

  Gran agreed then continued. “Her son Daniel married Evelyn Bunt and they had five children too. One was my dad Hector and another was Herbert. Now Herbert Pike is your grandad Violet.”

  Aunty Violet nodded. “Yes, I know that. His son Theodore married my mum, who is your sister.”

  Kylie frowned. “But wouldn’t that make them relations?”

  “Yes, they were cousins,” Aunty Violet replied.

  “But.. but isn’t that wrong?” Kylie asked. She was vaguely aware that there were certain relationships which were illegal. She wanted to know but was worried she might be intruding into a sensitive family area.

  Gran answered her. “They were first cousins. It caused a few murmurs at the time I remember but it worked out very well in the end.” She smiled at Aunty Violet, who smiled back.

  Kylie wasn’t the only one puzzled. Margaret asked: “But isn’t that against the law; for cousins to marry?”

  “No it isn’t. People frown on it a bit because too much in-breeding within a family is a bad thing,” Gran replied.

  Kylie nodded and felt a bit embarrassed. She roughly knew what Gran was talking about and was very conscious of Bert’s presence. She glanced at him; only to see that he was smiling at Allison, who was returning the smile. Nettled more than she wanted to admit Kylie turned back to Gran. “Wait a minute Gran. I need to draw all this on a piece of paper, to get a family tree. I am losing track of all these relations.”

  Gran laughed. “I lost track of half of them years ago; and good thing too. Some of them weren’t the sort of people you’d want to know.”

  Kylie’s mother chided her. “Now Gran! Keep the family skeletons in the closet.”

  They all laughed and there was a pause while Kylie found pencil and paper. More tea and biscuits was served and Kylie settled herself at the table and asked Gran to go back over the first part of the story. To help her understand she drew small circles for the females and little squares for the males, adding dates where these could be remembered.

  “So Daniel Pike and Evelyn had five children?” Kylie checked. She drew a line down from where a circle and a square were drawn interlocked. From this she drew a line horizontally across the page with five stems downwards.

  Gran nodded. “First a girl named Charlotte. She was born about 1900 I think. She went off south and married a baker at Dubbo in New South Wales. Never heard any more about her since. Then there was your Great Grandad Hector. He was born in 1908. His brother Herbert was born in the next year, 1909, then young Daniel in 1910 and last of all a girl, Emily, in 1912.”

  Kylie quickly added the details to her diagram. Gran went on: “Emily married Frank Joyce, a really nice man who was a carrier in Herberton. I think her family still live around there. Young Daniel was killed in a sawmill accident in 1929. I know that because it was the week my older brother Joshua was born. Have you got all that dearie?”

  “Yes Gran.”

  “Good. Now, Grandad Hector; ‘Grumps’ as he was nicknamed, married Emma Croswell in the summer of that same year. Emma’s people were bankers in Cairns and very respectable. They weren’t happy about the marriage I know because dad was unemployed at the time. The Great Depression had just begun you see and there were a terrible lot of men out of work.”

  Kylie had heard about the Great Depression at school but only had a vague idea what it had all been about. Gran now talked for some time about the thousands of unemployed men and how they tramped around the country looking for work. “It was a real bad time,” she said. “Dad was unable to find any work and nor could Hector so the two brothers went bush to go gold prospecting. They went searching for their granddad’s old mine.”

  Bert nodded. “That was the one called the ‘Sweat and Tears’ wasn’t it?” he asked. “Up here near Boonjee?”

  “Yes it were. They must have found a bit of gold for they somehow made ends meet and dad managed to buy a farm. That was the farm over at Churinga Flat at the base of Bartle Frere. It was the year I was born, 1930. But dad wasn’t much of a farmer and he had the gold bug real bad. He kept wandering off into the jungle to search and left mum and a hired hand to work the farm. Hector usually went with him but by then he had taken out a tin mining lease out beyond Irvinebank and was helping run the Malanda farm.”

  “Then dad made his discovery. He came staggering out of the jungle, sick as a dog with scrub typhus and dumped a bag full of nuggets on the kitchen table and boasted that he’d discovered the jeweller’s shop. Then he collapsed and they rushed him to hospital. He lived for another week I’m told. Remember I was only a one year old baby at the time so this is all hearsay from mum. I gather he never regained consciousness but did a lot of babbling and raving in his fever about the gold he had found and how it would make us all rich. Then he died. Poor mum!”

  Gran stopped and stared out the window for a while. Then she sighed and went on. “Poor mum. She was expecting Violet by then. It was terrible hard for her but she managed somehow. She had Vi and worked the farm and raised us kids. Her parents wanted her to come back to live in Cairns but she loved it here. She was a grand woman, true as steel and with a character as strong as could be.”

  Kylie nodded. She just remembered her great grandmother as a frail little lady who had sat here on the veranda looking out at the cows. “What happened then Gran?” she asked, as much to break the silence as anything.

  “Well, Josh grew up and worked the farm but he had the gold bug too and kept going off to look for the famous ‘Jeweller’s Shop’. He drifted away and settled up near Cooktown where he still is. I married Stanley in 1951. He grew up on this farm and had courted me for years. We went to school together.” She paused and smiled at the memory. “There is a photo of us somewhere, six kids all on one horse riding off for
school. Anyhow we married and we had four kids, all born here on the farm. They are your Aunty Tarah, Aunty Jennifer, Uncle Bill and your mum.”

  Kylie nodded and smiled at her mother, loving her deeply.

  “And I had to marry a sailor,” Mrs Kirk said with a smile.

  “Yes, well, I did warn you,” Gran reminded.

  It was obviously an old argument as Mrs Kirk quickly diverted the story. “Your mum was married the same year wasn’t she Violet?”

  Aunty Violet nodded. “Yes. 1951. She married Hector’s son Theodore. I was born in 1953 and my brothers Brian and Arthur two years apart after that. They were mad about the famous gold discovery too and went looking for it several times.”

  “So did your husband didn’t he?” Gran asked.

  “Yes. He and his brother. They went at least three times but all they ever found were lots of leeches and ticks.” She smiled at the memory and Kylie shuddered. She hated leeches.

  “Your husband’s name is Bruce isn’t it Aunty Violet?” she asked, drawing a square to overlap Aunty Violet’s circle.

  “Yes. And his brother is Vince.”

  “And how many kids did you have Aunty Violet?” Kylie asked.

  “Three. Annabelle and Bert here, and Victor.”

  “What years were they born?” Kylie asked, her pencil poised over the diagram but her eyes meeting Bert’s.

  “Annabelle in 1977, Victor in 1979 and Bert in 1981,” Aunty Violet replied.

  Kylie pencilled the dates on the page, then studied the diagram. She made a face. “I was hoping we could work out who might be the person responsible for attacking Gran by working out who else knows about the treasure but you were right Gran. If all these people knew about it and told their kids it is dozens.”

  Gran laughed and so did Aunty Violet. “More like hundreds!” Aunty Violet said. “The whole Reid clan know about it. It must be the worst kept secret in history.”

  Kylie bit her lip and sighed. “It is a pity there isn’t a treasure map. Uncle Bill could save the farm then.”

  “Well there isn’t. So that all there is,” Gran said.

  The conversation shifted to farm expenses. Soon after that Aunty Violet looked at her watch. “We had better be going. Bert has to help with the milking.”

  They all stood up. Kylie spent a moment adding details to her diagram, then helped Gran to settle more comfortably. The others all walked out to the front. Kylie followed and was just in time to wave to Bert as he climbed into the driver’s seat of a blue station wagon.

  As the car drove off they all waved goodbye.

  “Isn’t Bert nice?” Kylie said to Margaret.

  “Yes he is,” Margaret replied. “I wish he was my cousin.”

  “He is only seventeen,” Kylie added. She had done the sum when she had learned his birth date.

  “Yes, I know,” Allison replied. “He told me.”

  For a moment Kylie was surprised and a little hurt. When had Allison found time to talk to Bert? It must have been in the few minutes when they had walked to the front of the house. She was surprised how she felt about it. ‘I’m being silly,’ she told herself. ‘He is too old for me; and for Allison.’ But she did not find this convincing. Allison was 13; only four years younger.

  They went back inside. Mrs Kirk looked at the clock and exclaimed: “Good heavens! It is lunch time. We’ve been chattering for hours.”

  Lunch was organized. Kylie did not really feel hungry but her mother made her sit and eat. By then she was feeling quite stiff and sore again and her cracked lip made it hard to eat. As soon as she had finished her mother told her to clean her teeth and go and lie down. This she did, without protest. The other girls came down and lay with her. Allison was soon asleep.

  “She was up early to help with the cows,” Margaret explained.

  Soon after that Kylie also slipped into sleep. She slept for nearly three hours and woke feeling refreshed but stiff. Her ribs and cheek were still sore and her lip cracked again as soon as she smiled.

  Allison was the cause of this. She was standing at the door in old clothes and gumboots. “Awake are we? Come up and have some afternoon tea sleepy head.”

  “Have you been out?” Kylie asked.

  “Been looking for a cow that Uncle Bill thinks has calved down near the back creek,” Allison explained.

  Kylie was amazed. She could not picture Allison walking around the farm amid the mud and manure but she was smiling and seemed to be enjoying herself. With a groan and a grin Kylie hoisted herself up and washed her face. She then made her way upstairs to join the others.

  Afternoon tea was a pleasant break with hot tea and fresh, buttered scones covered with honey. They sat on the back veranda and happily talked. Kylie felt more rested and relaxed and began to enjoy the peace and sense of purpose that always came to her when on the farm.

  When they finished afternoon tea Uncle Bill asked who wanted to help check the level in the reservoir. “I can show you where those men parked their car too,” he added.

  That got Kylie’s interest. She pulled on gum boots and went out with her mother, Uncle Bill and her two friends. They walked up the overgrown track to the top of the low hill behind the farm. The track was just two wheel ruts in knee high grass and Kylie disliked walking along it intensely for fear of snakes but Uncle Bill went first with the dogs.

  “There was a school here in the old days,” Uncle Bill explained to Margaret and Allison. “The building was over there and this was the horse paddock.” He pointed out the line of the old fence and the trees which once stood in front of the now vanished building. In its place on the crown of the hill was a large concrete water tank. As always Kylie was amazed by the sheer beauty of the scenery. From the crest of the hill they had almost a three hundred and sixty degree view. The massive bulk of Bartle Frere loomed over nearly half of this. Off to the west were glorious vistas of rolling farm land dotted with dairy cows, backed in the far distance by the blue line of mountains marking the other side of the Tablelands.

  “It is absolutely the prettiest view I have ever seen,” Allison enthused. “It reminds me of England.”

  “Have you been to England?” Uncle Bill asked.

  Allison nodded. “I was born there. We have only been in Australia four years.”

  “Do you like it here?”

  “Love it,” Allison answered. She smiled at Kylie and Margaret and they smiled back. Kylie felt a surge of affection for her friends.

  For a few minutes she just stood and drank in the view and sniffed the fresh mountain air. It was all so pretty and clean. ‘How could such a horrible thing happen in such a nice place?’ she wondered.

  Uncle Bill checked the level of the water, then led them over to where two wheel tracks showed in the long grass.

  “The men parked their vehicle here, just over the crest and out of sight of the road,” he explained.

  Once again Kylie puzzled over what had motivated the men to come to the farm. The question nagged at her so much that she re-opened the topic when they rejoined Gran in the kitchen.

  “I know that dozens of people must know about this famous lost gold mine, but from what you have said Gran no-one has looked for it for years?”

  Gran nodded. “That’s right. It must be twenty years. The last time I remember anyone actually looking for it was when Bruce Reid and his brother went off. That must have been in the mid 1970s; just after he married Violet.”

  Kylie frowned. “So why has someone suddenly started looking for it now? When did you last hear someone talk about it Gran?”

  Gran knitted her brows, then nodded her head. “Why, only a week ago now that I come to think of it. I took it into my head to sort out all Stan’s papers which have been stored in the cellar. When I started to unpack them I found several boxes of stuff that my mum must have put away, diaries and things belonging to my dad, Grandad Hector.”

  Kylie felt her pulse quicken. It had been Grandad Hector who had discovered the gold mine! �
��What were they Gran? Did they tell you about the gold?”

  Gran shook her head. “Not that I saw, but then I didn’t really read them.” She then stopped and shook her head, frowned and went on. “Yes, now I remember. I mentioned finding them when I was at my weekly Mother’s Union meeting at Malanda just last Tuesday. Someone asked if there was a treasure map and I said no, but I wish there was, and we all laughed.”

  “Who asked that Gran? Who was at the meeting?” Kylie asked. “One of them might have told those men.”

  For a moment Gran looked horrified. “Oh dear me no! I have known them all for years. They are dear friends.”

  “But someone said something to someone,” Kylie persisted. “Who was there Gran?”

  Gran hesitated again and looked slightly annoyed and upset. For a moment Kylie feared she had offended her and that she would refuse to discuss the topic but when Mrs Kirk also urged her she reluctantly named the people present.

  “There were only seven of us. Myself, Mrs Philp, Mrs English, Miss Woods, the teacher; that snooty-nosed busy-body Mrs Tomlinson, Mrs Carlow and Aunty Violet.”

  Mrs Kirk asked gently: “Which one made the comment about the treasure map mum, can you remember?”

  “Of course I can remember! I haven’t lost my marbles y’know! Why I can still remember quite clearly all that horrible business leading up to World War Two. Of course I can remember. It was Mrs English. But I’ve known her for fifty years and I’m sure she had nothing to do with the attack.”

  “No mum. But she might have mentioned it to someone else who got the story a bit wrong,” Mrs Kirk suggested.

  Gran nodded. “You could be right.”

  Kylie felt slightly sick. It was awful to think that there were horrible men out there who were a threat to them. “Oh I wish the police would catch them!” she cried. “Then we could all relax.”

  Uncle Bill heaved himself out of his chair. “No we couldn’t. The cows would still have to be rounded up and milked. Who is going to come and help?”