OUTPOST - A DOCTOR ON THE DIVIDE
Gweneth Wisewould had no direct descendents of her own but her local community was as important to her as a family. The community deeply valued and respected her. She was “The Doctor” for over 30 years. This book recounts her historical view of the people, their lives and illnesses, the beauty and ferocity of the local environment and great difficulties being the sole doctor practising in all weathers and harsh conditions. Her material possesions only had value to serve the purpose for which they were intended. Payment for services was never a priority, the patient’s treatment and recovery was all consuming.
“Outpost” exposes her great sense of compassion and strength of character in pursuing her own life on her terms. She lived by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s dictum; the whole adventure has been so very well “worth while.”
To my fellow medical practitioners: -
To the very young doctors who know everything,
To the very old doctors who know nothing,
And all those in between who bear the burden of the health of a nation,
For I have been all of them.
OUTPOST A DOCTOR ON THE DIVIDE
Gweneth Wisewould
Copyright Gweneth Wisewould 1971
Smashwords Edition
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright passed to Elizabeth Berzkalns nee Wisewould 1972
Reproduction and Editing by Elizabeth Berzkalns.
The process of living is changing rapidly. This new version will continue to preserve the old ways and tales. Changes were made to reflect requirements of ebook readers and allow enjoyment for persons with visual impairment.
Ebook ISBN 978 0 646 56866 9
Cover Design: GWENETH WISEWOULD
CONTENTS: OUTPOST A DOCTOR ON THE DIVIDE
6. SETTLING IN
FOREWORD
This chronicle is a medico-social history. It represents a cross section of life in a little town and district in the gold bearing country of the Divide, from its early settlement for 125 years. It could be typical of scores of other settlements in a similar type of country in Australia.
The stories are factual and occurred in the author’s experience, and all names are fictitious, or as otherwise stated, some being aboriginal. The process of living is changing rapidly; the old ways and the old tales will soon become only a memory or be forgotten. This is an attempt to preserve that memory.
Gewenth Wisewould
8th May 1971
1. THE CHOICE
There were several good reasons why I renounced practice in the city and moved to the country; one was the depression between two world wars. The other, the changing type of practice which was depriving town doctor of the responsibility of attending his own patients and their families for all ailments and making him a mere clearinghouse for the specialists or the public hospitals. For without responsibility, incentive and interest soon perishes. I did not feel justified nor delighted at the prospect of devoting my life work and abilities to the limits of cut fingers or gravel rash. I had finished my commitments and appointments in two large hospitals, in one a tutorial position to medical students, each as specialist in love with a different field; but my first, the patient as a whole individual in a general practice. And then someone suggested the country.
“You’d make a good country doctor,” said Wallie to me. I said to myself, “I’ve always loved country life, fresh air, no sea fogs, semi–retirement and pleasant work in pleasant surroundings, enough responsibility and not too far away from city amenities.”
I put my name down for a small practice, within say sixty miles radius of ‘town’ and forgot about it.
About twelve months later, a young medical called. “Yes?” I inquired. “I’ve a practice for you,” he announced. “Practice!” I have a practice; what do you mean?” He looked deflated. “Didn’t you ask us to find a small country practice for you, eh?” I turned an internal somersault, “So I did,” I remembered. “Well tell me about it.” He did, and we made arrangements which led me to an interview with the doctor selling the goodwill on the following Thursday (on the site) as it were.
Thursday afternoon found me well on the road in my car, of passable appearance being an early sedan body in blue and black on a four cylinder ‘Overland’ chassis– and suitably dressed including a short, though inexpensive fur coat and a becoming hat. The hat is the most important strategic garment, sometimes overlooked. On this occasion I chose dark, for dignity; on occasions when it is desirable and imperative to influence a business minded man, or to face an emergency, use a light hat, but always becoming.
I was accompanied by my personal– and– car dog, a gentleman whose manners were courteous and thoughtful and whose black satin coat, white shirt, and polished nails were always well groomed by him. He was named Sinclair, son of Clara–Sinnie for short, who was to be my friend and companion for nearly nineteen years.
My appointment to meet the doctor was weirdly suggestive of the clandestine. I found the doctor, waiting by arrangement, just outside the town boundary in his car, and acting on instructions I followed him through several streets to a house in a far street, discreetly placed in a charming garden, where we alighted and went in. He introduced me; “Mrs Tree is a very good friend of mine, who will let us talk without town publicity and comment.”
Mrs Tree was most kind and put at our disposal a pretty sitting room carpeted and furnished in pale and delicately coloured fabrics. So, I sat Sinnie on my knee and instructed him to sit still and say nothing, which he did, even when she subsequently produced a dainty afternoon tea with homemade cakes and biscuits. The doctor stood up and talked. He talked on for three quarters of an hour, giving to me frightfully interesting details of works and circumstances of the practice. I was intrigued into silence. Suddenly he stopped and said, “Is it any use my going on? – Are you interested? “Yes,” I said, “I am, very much so.” So he continued, giving the business details of sale. I did not like them much, but they were reasonable, sensible and, to me, practical. Mrs Tree said, “Don’t you give your dog anything? Wouldn’t he like a biscuit?” Much relieved, I said, “I’m sure he wouldn’t but he has good manners.” Sinnie accepted with alacrity and had his reward– in biscuits, pity, and praise!
I asked could I see the doctor’s residence. I was permitted on leaving to drive slowly past the house pointed out to me, without stopping, and escorted out of the town again; all this secrecy was then explained. The doctor himself had practiced here up till sixteen months ago; the then incoming purchaser had not paid for it, so he had repossessed the practice for resale for the balance owing, asking for promissory notes over three years. The defaulter had not been informed of my presence to date. I said I would think it over, and I would let this agent know.
Taking things into consideration: – my large house of ten rooms almost entirely furnished with antiques, with insurances, rates, an overdraft of £2,000 at seven percent and an income of £250 a year to manage on, four semi–dependants, £5,000 in uncollectable debts owing to me. In the middle of a major depression and my two major hospital commitments finished, the temptation to go to the country was both attractive and reasonable. I accepted but I told the agent I had two requirements: – time to pack and a doctor to replace me. I would be ready in six weeks, during which time he must find a purchaser for my private practice. We fixed a date, six weeks ahead, for Thursday, 28th September 1938.
2. COMING
1938! There was a prospect of World War Two in the air. I had given up my two major specialties in medicine and surgery which were senior anesthetist at one major city hospital when I was a University tutor to medical students, an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist at another city hospital in charge of a large clinic. I had also been doing a variety of major general surgery cases and was looking forward to being a general practitioner, especially in the country. Here was a small practice, all duties, and lovely surroundings. It was past middle age. I could indulge in the luxury of country life into semi–retirement, a delightful prospect!
The changeover was not easy. Emerson has said that nothing worthwhile has ever been achieved without ecstasy. Here began an ecstasy of endeavour in the making, we started at once to make arrangements; my friend Ellabelle announced she would sell her lending library and return to her old job of doctor’s assistant and go with me. Together with our own dogs, we would found a new home. On Thursday 28th we would drive together to the new life. But first, six weeks of preparing for the changeover had to be planned and worked through. It proved all too short a time. Homes had to be found for half my possessions and half my household. Packing and discarding proved an enormous task. I had made a visit to the new home–to–be to take measurements. I co–opted Wallie to help pack, also to accompany the vans on the appointed day and care take the new home till we arrived. This entailed cleaning and distempering walls in the old home as the new Doctor’s wife would come in and take over as we left. The new Doctor was exacting. He would turn up at odd times each day and expect be taken out on trips of introduction whenever he had spare time, and that took a large and leisurely part of nearly every day. My work, including my practice, had to get done in the rest of the day and at night. In the end, I put in five continuous days and nights working on my feet, 120 hours during which I lay down on the floor for one hour only on the fifth night. On the appointed Thursday, the new folk arrived as we were getting breakfast and took over the gas stove, etc. so no more food. I had arranged to be at the new practice at noon to take over but there was still so much to be seen to and done, and surplus odds and ends to pack into the car that we didn’t get started till 6 30 p.m. By that time Ellabelle and I wanted our dinner before 6 pm (when the phone closed) we had rung Wallie at the new house and asked him to get a pound of rump steak and make a fire against our hungry arrival, but we still had to get there. Tired, hungry and with five days and nights without rest or sleep behind , we still had two hours’ drive in the dark to get home .We started.
That drive was a classic in memory, the ultimate achievement in ecstasy of endurance and can never be forgotten. The car, a two–seater sedan was loaded to the roof with oddments and leftovers from house and yards. It included not only our personal luggage but parcels of meat and vegetables and ‘groceries’ to be dropped en route, by detour of a mile, at the house of old friends living in the forest about twenty miles short of our destination. It also included Sinnie, Melisande (his sister and consort) and Mr Jones their pup, and one white hen. The hen and one precious parcel and the dogs shared the front compartment with us plus other parcels and she, the hen, with the precious parcel, would be dropped at a nearby house, about sixty miles short of our destination. Having done that, we would set off in earnest for our new home, a journey, which we expected, would take about two hours. Alas, it took six hours. Physical fatigue reared its unreasonable head while I was still clearing the city environs. I had reckoned on that, and had myself under control and knew I would not fall asleep at the wheel. I had no experience of the delirium of exhaustion till then. It was the ‘Angels of Mons’ * again, but in reverse. We had gone about five miles when I suddenly saw a woman wheeling a baby in a perambulator across the road right in front of me. I saw them quite clearly, and drove right over and through them, and going through them, I knew they were not there.
*Angels of Mons refers to an incident (which became legend) early in the First World War, when English soldiers in retreat, leg weary and exhausted passing through Mons saw visions of angels in the sky above them directing them homewards and took heart.
I had several of these hallucinations in the next few miles going through several pedestrians and realising, they were not there. I then came to an awkward bridge approach on a curving road and a huge stone pylon, and with no footways. Here I saw an old couple approaching me walking slowly– but getting nearer; at first, there were two old women in long black garments and very much in the way; nearer still, they appeared very clearly to be a youngish couple walking very close together. I could see details of dress. She had a brown crepe–de–chene dress with lace at the neck and a yoke of fine tucking and an obscuring hat; they crouched against the pylon and I flattened them against it and passed on over the bridge. I realised my hallucinations had come to stay but go on we must. I turned to Ellabelle and said, “I want you to help me. I am seeing things that are not there, but I am not going to sleep. I will keep talking so you will know what I am doing, and if you see anything I do mention please tell me. ” She said, “Poor Ella! I was hoping to get some sleep on the drive up. But I will keep awake and watch with you.”
I said, “I have just run through another woman with a perambulator and here is a black cat in the middle of the road. I’ve gone through it. Now I see a large lorry with high, red sides. It has just turned in front of me across the road (it was very real and freshly painted); I’ve gone through it so it wasn’t there. There are head lights rushing towards me, lots of them– but I don’t think they are there either.” Suddenly she said quite calmly, “Keep a little more to the left, those headlights were real ones.” I dropped pace to about twenty miles per hour for safety in manoeuvring just in case my hunches were at fault, and then I discovered my engine was boiling. With all our planning, I had forgotten to fill the radiator. We were out on the highway; I knew there would be no garage for many more miles. Then I remembered a waterhole at about the twenty–six mile post and nursed the engine along slowly for another ten or more miles till we came to it hallucinations and all– and pulled up. We were both very weary.
We had to wait a long time for the engine to cool, and we were empty for food, which we had not brought. I said to Ellabelle, “Here we can get water if there is anything to get it in. It’s through the fence. I’ll look for a tin or something.” But a search of the roadside revealed never a scrap of rubbish and no tin. Ellabelle, who had packed the car said, “Somewhere there is a thermos of black coffee and an orange.” I grubbed about in the dark and at last found one orange, one thermos, and one eggcup. We drank thankfully, black coffee in driblets per eggcup, and shared the orange. Life and sanity seemed to swoop upon us like a refreshing breeze and vigour returned. There still remained the problem of the radiator, no eggcup for that! Ellabelle thought awhile and then said, “Somewhere there is a poo.” ‘Somewhere’, was immensely obscure in that full load, but I eventually unearthed the chamber pot and with it climbed through the wire fence. It was quite dark; the lagoon was lined with rocks and boulders. I was clad in my best town shoes, but I made it, three trips and the radiator were dealt with and the journey resumed. We were partially refreshed and for another ten miles or so, there were no more illusions, a grateful respite. We arrived safely at our second detour to drop the ‘groceries’ at our friends, poor dears, they were too upset at our bedraggled and late appearance to think of offering refreshment, and we were glad to be on our way.
The rest of the journey proved to be a greater and a slower trial, weary as we both were. The hallucinations returned in another form. Five miles further we were off the highway and had before us fifteen miles of country road, less traffic, but no guide lines and more wheel tracks. It was difficult to keep on the centre or to the left, and the pace had to be slower. I could see at the road edges, green streaks where the wheels ran on to the grass and left brown muddy marks the colour of the roadway, and learnt to look for those green streaks to find the left boundary of the way. Then I went blind. For some time I had been seeing green streaks all over the roadsides, middle and on the metal centre too and just as they completely confounded me, sight failed. I was wide–awake, still staring ahead when things went blank. I drove very slowly on, knowing the road was straight ahead, and slowly, surprisingly, sight slowly returned.
It became a sort of rhythm: ten seconds of clear vision with clear road ahead for a hundred yards, a black–out while I drove the distance, a slow fade in again, and another hundred yards ahead visible, and fade out again. We finished the journey that way and at last reached the turn into the town and the last bridge. I said with relief to Ellabelle, “Only a bridge over the river and one more turn, and we are there.” She didn’t reply, but told me afterwards her heart sank when I said ‘bridge’, wondering how I would make it; but with that long, forced effort of alertness ending at last, we pulled into the garage of the doctor’s house and stopped, spent and thankful.
We sat there, just sat there. Wallie did not appear but the house lights were up, so we climbed out, dogs and all, and went into our home to be. In the lounge room, we stopped and laughed. Wallie was sprawled in an arm chair by a log fire, sound asleep, having spent the day furnishing the house by plan, and helping the van men unload, and waiting twelve hours for us to arrive. In the fender, in a frying pan, lay a large, juicy rump steak, raw and awaiting us. We woke Wallie and our welcome was complete. It was 11 30, but it was just after midnight when we finished that meal.
Wallie then broke the news that there were two calls awaiting me– a sick baby first, and a young man with bronchitis, very ill, in the hospital, also I hadn’t told him where I wanted my bed put, everything else of course, but not that! “So,” he said, “I put it just inside the door in your room and unrolled your swag on it, it’s not made, I only unrolled it.” I made the two calls before I found it. I had not seen it for five nights. It had been rolled up, pillow inside, mattress and all five days ago. I stripped and fell into it lumps and all, and fell immediately asleep.
I woke suddenly at Wallie’s voice in the doorway saying, “8 a.m., I’ve cooked breakfast and surgery is at 8 30, if you don’t get up I’ll pull the clothes off.” He might have too, so I yelled, “For God’s sake don’t, I’ve got nothing on.” He vanished.
In the surgery were two old men, very agitated because “No doctor yesterday. Doctor, could you sign our books?” I said, “Yes, of course,” and did so without authority, but knowing I would get it later. They went away much relieved, in spirit at least.
So started my first day’s work in the little country practice, in a little town of no importance that nobody I knew had ever heard of, my pleasant days of semi–retirement. We saw Wallie off in the train. Ellabelle settled to housekeeping. I made my bed– (It needed it)– and set out, without introductions, to make myself known to the town, and to make the district and its people familiar to myself. With sleep I had recovered completely except for one reaction, laryngitis that accounted for a hoarseness and almost complete loss of voice, so I called on the chemist. I had found he lived next door. I asked him to make up a then standard mixture for laryngitis, which contained some tincture of opium. He looked over the prescription, then looked at me sadly, and said, “No, oh no, Doctor,” which rather startled me until I realised my predecessor had been a drug addict. I gave the chemist my good reasons for the request and promised not to ask for a repeat.
He was a mine of information about local geography, roads, landmarks, snowfalls, and fogs; which led me to spend my first two or three months learning the roads and landmarks so as to be able to find my way in fog or snow, knowledge which proved absolutely essential to me in the winter months of the following years.
3. HOME TOWN
It is not given to everyone to start life afresh after middle age. I was fortunate, having surrendered city work in two specialties in starting a new life as a general practitioner in a country town solo. It gave me a fresh outlook, new people, and a number of strange new responsibilities in pleasant surroundings; which were altogether delightful. I set out to explore my new territory and its people, my people and my new home. I looked forward to making this country my home and its people my people, a place and people to serve and to belong to an adopted tradition and a heritage.
The little town, like Rome, was built upon seven hills, but it straggled more except in the main street, which entered it at one end by a bridge over the river. A shallow stream two to four feet wide, bumped its way in a boomerang curve between close set buildings, and out by another bridge over Deep Creek, three feet wide, but deeper. Both streams flow inland and helped fill reservoirs for two larger towns miles away to the north, past the farms and pasture lands. We are, here, a cold country over 2000 feet up in the great divide, on the frosty side of the ranges and expect frosts at night, cold winds from the north and south west in winter. A moderate snow fall occurring any time of the year, with a few hot, north and north easterly winds in summer; hot direct sunshine any time of year, with sun stroke in summer and some thunder storms. We are often shrouded in cloud. Most of the year we have typical wet mists, between which the bright clear sunshine is ever ready and welcome. The soil is fertile and will grow anything that will withstand frost; the paddocks are lush and green when other parts of the country are dry with sun burnt grass. Here hills are full of water. There are mineral springs also, and almost anywhere underground are fresh springs. The gullies are full with fern and streams, and the hills are clad with forest trees and scrub wherever not cleared for farming. It is an excellent grazing land for fattening sheep and cattle.
This is not the Australia of the ‘dry heart’ of the cattle stations and the sheep runs, and the drying billabongs. Nor the landscape artists’ dream of dead trees, bleached bones and stoney deserts, nor as such portrayed in legends; nor of dry rivers with periodic floods, scorching heat and mirage; but a rolling landscape of plenty, of forest, of warm sun and of cold air alternating, and bright with light, or grey with soft blue mists. I loved driving about its roads which turned and twisted among the hills and trees, opening a new and unexpected vista with every turn, and as I drove, my eyes often filled with tears at its beauty and the loveliness of its skies, so I wanted to stop and make pictures to keep it with me. The people I met would ask me, “Do you like being here?” and I would say, “Yes– it is very beautiful, isn’t it?” and they would look thoughtful and reply, “Well, we wouldn’t know, we live here.” Though they loved it, they took it all unconsciously for granted.
I liked these people. Some of them came to see me with very little excuse just to see what I was like. Their eyes were frank, as they looked me over. They did not say with their eyes, “What can I do you for before you do me!” Their eyes said, “Good enough, O.K. we’ll give you a fair go, without prejudice,” and they did just that.
It was a welcome change after so many strangers in the city. We came to trust each other and I began to feel a joy of welcome, and, after turmoil, peace. I was delighted that they would share their sense of humour with me.
My first Saturday turned out to be polling day for general state elections at which I voted as absentee. In the afternoon, Mr Casey, the father of a grown family, came to see me about nothing in particular, so to make conversation, I said, “Have you been to vote yet?” He twinkled at me solemnly and said, “Course I have, can’t you smell me breath?” So, I learnt that voting should be a cause for celebration.
The little town had a friendly air of cohesion, and the whole district wore an aura of the departed days of the gold prosperity, when it had been then nameless and merely known as ‘The Diggings’. Before the gold, it had been grazing country and forest. The people were of a mixture of origins and aims and carried on from there. As a result, there were farmers on the rich chocolate lands, and graziers on the hills, houses and hotels built for the gold days, and shops, some of which still served them. Some still had the original shingled roofs even in the main street. Many had galvanised iron roofs above the original shingles, and hotels of that period stood among the later built houses in the residential quarters. There were timber getters in the forest, and timber mills hard by the township, which in earlier days provided the timber for lining mineshafts and building houses, and which now carried on a thriving industry. There were a few old people who were born on the gold fields eighty or ninety years ago and whose sons, not young themselves, still had interests, or hobbies, gaining alluvial gold. There was another unexpected industry, which was a predominating influence in the town, a foundry, the history of which was interesting. The family, who owned it started farming, was then caught up in the gold days, mined successfully, and when that was over, returned to the land. The land being heavily afforested, they applied their inventive gifts to making machinery for quick clearing of trees from land for farming. This was a century before the invention of bulldozers. Their foundry was an industrious source of employment for a big work force, and it was a definite, beneficial influence in the town as I first saw it. Its steam whistle clocked all activities, social and private. The town’s prosperity largely depended on a distinct social institution. From the timetable of daily living to the Foundry Annual Picnic, when it closed for the day and all went for a ‘Trip down the Bay’.
In time of stress or disaster, such as bushfire danger, the foundry closed and the men went out in force to fight the menace. They cared for the whole community. If oxygen was needed at the hospital, they supplied it, and a man to handle the cylinders for as long as needed. I remember one of their work–mates died, after a long and hopeless illness. On the morning of the funeral the foundry closed and the men marched. I shall never forget the solemn and purposeful beat of those marching feet, without music, as they followed the hearse to the cemetery. It was more deeply impressive than any band or ceremonial could possibly have been.
I found my little town geographically lying in the middle of the hypotenuse of an equilateral triangle of thirty miles. At each angle lay a larger town, each fifteen miles distant from me, and fifteen miles to the north lay Kingston the large town on which all early surveyed roads converged and which was our seat of municipal government. To our south lay forest twenty miles deep and around us on either side more forest so that the roads ran through it to reach neighbouring townships and settlements.
At some time in the early 1880’s, the railway had come to us. Some of the old freight roads lost their usefulness and became obsolete. So did the old stages for horses at the hotels along their route. Times had begun to change slowly, and the Railway Station had to acquire a name. I proceeded to make the little town my home and its people my heritage.
4. DRIVING ON
I found I had inherited a branch practice at Red Hill, down through the forest nine miles to the south. I left Ellabelle with Melisade and Mr Jones, and taking Sinclair with me proceeded to explore this direction. The arrangement was that I visit the local hotel to receive patients once a fortnight, giving the licensee free service in lieu of rent. Red Hill was the place where the first gold had been discovered, in about 1850, in this particular district. First in the creek, then Jackson’s Creek, by graziers herding cattle. It had become a big place in the gold days with a well–established system of sluice channels, waterwheels and a coach service and included a big Chinese settlement of about 3000 with their own Joss House, all– long since departed.
The road ran through ‘leads and reefs’, stopping places for mail, and for patients left over from the old days; places where towns had been abandoned and where rich reefs had been worked and gold mined by the ton. I found it hard to imagine gold by the ton, but this was literally true. I have seen the official government report of the largest of several reef mines at that spot and the official yield of one mine in the year 1881 was eighty tons of gold. What richness! Then the underground water stopped everything and the place was abandoned. A few people still lived there .One was an old man, living alone and near eighty. He had one leg. In the gold town he had been baker’s boy, delivering bread at one shilling per week since eight years of age and had broken a leg and lost it at that age in the wheel of the cart. He was as nimble on one crutch as most people on two legs, and fanned his pot. He still lived in his three–roomed house, scrupulous orderly, clean and still illuminated by a hurricane lamp. The road down to Red Hill twisted among the hills, through forest, through beautiful groves of lightwoods with their thick foliage. In spring, fragrant pallid yellow bloom, turning at least three ‘devil’s elbows’, through a stand of blue gums, not native to these parts but trees grown from scattered seed from Gippsland. Through white gums, messmates and peppermint gums and stringy barks; then down the last long steep curve, from above the treetops to the narrow bridge over the Laradoc and up, in a sweeping ‘S’ curve to the top of the hill (Red Hill)– up and over to the door of the old Family Hotel at the top. Such a hotel!
It was still in the style of the sixties, a single storey, wooden building with a verandah outside the parlour windows, part of it fenced to hold the private garden of tree ferns and plants in tubs. The double glass doors of the bar still bore the words in old lettering ‘Cobb & Co’. I approached the front door and out came to meet me the middle–aged barmaid, smart in black dress, white cuffs and collar, and white embroidered apron. Inside the parlour set aside for my use that morning was the table, sofa and chairs of the period; and the pictures that decorated the walls were oleograph landscapes, all but one, which was a huge wool work picture of the ‘Sacrifice of Isaac.’ The bar room was much smaller with a small private bar behind it, and a huge dining room, with two windows. All windows were sixteen paned, all bedrooms furnished with cedar, with small swing mirrors on the dressing tables and iron bedsteads. The bar must have looked the same seventy or eighty years earlier. Outer doors protected the glass ones which had been carefully repaired and were the original ones; even the pictures were unchanged. They included five of Alfred Worth’s ‘dark town’ coloured prints that must have been new when the hotel was first opened, for by the 1880's ‘dark town’ prints were finding their way into the second–hand shops and pawnbrokers.
The proprietor and his wife welcomed me and were most cooperative and Elsie, the barmaid, and general help turned out to be practical and full of worldly wisdom.
Patients began to arrive, the women mostly smiling, the men inclined to be a little bit awe struck at first but friendly. One tiny gnome like woman climbed out of the creek bed each fortnight, and appeared in a short thick coat, knee high rubber boots and a long staff that she used as an alpenstock. On her head was a ‘had been” green felt hat, worn down to a mushroom with a hundred percent watershed. Another woman, who became a regular attendant, drove in four miles from further on each fortnight. But it was when I began to visit them in their own homes that I began to know these people tucked away in the gullies and hills of this old gold country and to get the flavour of their independence, their hardships and their courage. To savour in retrospect the flavour and spirit of the busy days of the gold prosperity; for many of my patients had been born on the gold fields. The old buildings remained, though altered in use. All of them were of wood, most of them sprawled, especially the general store. Some were tiny and often complicated by additions. The bank, the forestry building, and the Post Office had become private residences, but the three churches and the Mechanics Hall remained. The butcher’s and baker’s had disappeared, the store now serving all purposes for shopping, and as post office. There was a telephone service, but it closed at night and on Sundays. The pub remained, and was still a popular holiday resort in summer; but it was shorn of its ‘Cobb & Co.’ glory of the days when the coach left at six in the morning, with its six–in–hand team of horses and galloped the twenty–six miles in one stage, to Kingston, changed team and returned the same day. Some horses! That road is not passable now, and its bridges long ago burned down in bush fires.
The little town perched on its central hill was surprisingly beautiful. All the surrounding hills were forested. Small roads led out of it in all directions, all of them appalling, running up and down and round blind cliff corners, mostly clay and narrow and all bridges, except the main one approaching the town, were down, burnt out years ago. All streams and gullies had to be crossed by a steep descent sideways, forded, and up the opposite bank, and the tracks wound about between old mullock and mine holes heaps, cliffs and precipices. There were places I visited where I preferred to leave the car and walk, or climb. I flattered myself I was a good driver, but this country taught me a lot more that I had not dreamed of, especially when I met local residents rattling patched old cars about these tracks with the most matter of fact confidence. I found strange dwellings tucked away in creek beds and other unlikely places. I had come in a time of depression, and many there who found refuge in these hills had little to live on: – pensioners, unemployed men, or men on “Susso”– the government allowance of six shillings a week to a man unable to obtain work. They built for themselves a home, or a refuge out of the most unlikely bits and pieces, worked when they could, grew what they could, and ‘scratched’ for gold in creeks, where there was still colour to find. Some were hopelessly ill, but made the best of it.
I visited Mr Mellor. He had found a small, level spot on the hillside just above the road, and with odd timber and old galvanised iron roofing, and posts cut from the bush, and a small tent had built a ‘house’, and enclosed a part of his narrow slope with old wire netting where he had three fowls. The soil was all clay, and so he was building up a patch for a vegetable garden with black mirth from anywhere he could get it, bit by bit, in a wheelbarrow. He suffered from a damaged heart, so could only manage a few spadefuls at a time, and I would meet him panting up the track with the barrow, slowly extending his holding with painstaking courage. There was Mr Casting. He was a sufferer from social disappointment; rumours had it his marriage had hopelessly failed.
He made himself a hut by the roadside– of two small rooms– and lived to himself, but every article in his hut was spotless and in its correctly assigned place. An orderly, silent man he was.
There was David Moulder, condemned to loneliness and isolation and tuberculous lungs. He lived on another cliff in an old two–roomed cottage with his treasures around him, till one day, one inevitable day came when he had to be sent to hospital. He was the last of his family. No one came for his possessions, and when the wind finally blew his house down, his old clothes, his heavy books, and his letters and papers and photographs scattered derelict, for the wind and the rain to read.
Another side road ran down to Jackson’s Creek, where gold had been first discovered, and where the bridge, and the old water–wheel that worked the cradles had both disappeared, and the road scooped round and down and up to another hotel, now a sprawling residence, which still had the letters ‘Royal Mail’ above its old bar door. Beyond this, the road ran beside the river and eventually forded it. It was deeper here and could be dangerous in flood. It had once washed away a man, gig, horse, and all at the crossing. Along here had been the quarters of the Chinese miners, three thousand of them, camped on workings here with their Joss House, which had long ago disappeared.
I received a call one day to visit Mrs Bligh at ‘Journeys End’. My directions were to take this road beside the river, but not to cross it, until I came to the top of the range where the road ended. I found out how well this place was named. I followed the river past a few lonely houses and then the track suddenly narrowed and turned a right angle round a cliff and dodged over old mine workings, all yellow, hard clay. Someone had mercifully filled in cross ditches and gulches with solid blocks of hard clay let into the holes where the car wheels would have to cross. After several of these crossings, the track twisted up to the top of a cliff on which stood a cottage. Here it turned another sharp angle round the cottage but here the road was smooth rock sloping outwards towards the precipice quite unprotected. Then it wound down to creek level again in the sharp angle of two hills making a corner so narrow the car had to be turned in two moves to get round the bend and up the next hill. This hill was bare, the track got steeper, and more side sloped till it petered out altogether. It was impossible to stop or return so I turned the car towards the top, revved up in lowest gear, shot up and over .I stopped suddenly in somebody’s woodheap at the top. The house, ‘Journeys End’ was behind the woodheap. I had arrived.
Having attended to Mrs Bligh, I said, “ I’m glad you didn’t send for me at night. She looked at me blankly and said, “ Why?” I felt suddenly very conscious of being a greenhorn driver and hedged, “Well my lights aren’t very good.” She thought for a few minutes while my self-esteem wilted then conceded, “I suppose you would want lights.” I subsided in silence but was grateful that she suggested the second visit be paid at my surgery.
She arrived a few days later at the appointed time being driven in by the lady of the cottage on the slidey hillside. They had filled the car up with others ‘just for the drive’ and moreover had come in the rain when things could be slippery on the clayey slidey track.
As I was showing her out, the cottage lady consulted me too. She said, “I’d like you to examine me Doctor to see if I have a broken rib.” Examining her, I found she had not but asked, "What happened? “ “Oh” she said, “I fell over the cliff about a fortnight ago.” “However did you come to do that?” I asked. She thought back hard awhile and then told me, “Oh yes, I went over after the baby.”
“Good gracious. Did the baby fall over that cliff?’”
“Oh yes”, she said. “But he was stopped by a tree. He’s all right but I rolled to the bottom.” Well, they had their pleasure drive leaving to get home by that road in the rain and in the dark .I only hope they enjoyed it in the way they expected. I learned to know all those roads better as I used them at any time in the twenty–four hours and in all weathers. They were difficult in places and could be frightening especially in snow or storm. After heavy rain, old trees could fall and block the way. Twice I have found my car suddenly among the treetops, met unexpectedly in the night in the middle of the road. They could even be dangerous in the dark or impassable, if undergoing reconstruction in bad weather. The road to Red Hill was the best made road in the district, in spite of its three devil’s elbow turns, but there were occasions when only the mails and the doctor got through when even priest and parson balked at it. One of them said to me, “That’s an awful road. What do you do?” I felt rather sympathetic, I said, “I pray.” My answer was received in silence.
There was the day we had ten inches of snow and the mails were coming up in charge of a very young, woman driver in a mini car. She braved it through the worst of three uphill turns, then changed cars and arrived safely only twenty minutes late. Cheers and song greeted her at the railway station. They had held back the train for her, and she made it in the best tradition of ‘Her Majesty’s Mail.’
However, that road was at its worst the winter the road construction authorities decided to do up the first hill a mile out of the town. The stretch under repair was a mile long and straight, but it switch backed, up and down. The middle section was afflicted with springs of water. Therefore the original laid road was corduroy that is made of poles cut from the forest and laid side by side; over this a second surface of macadam, – (blue metal, tar and sand)– had been laid, but which had worn thin over the years and the ends of the poles poked through. The completely mixed surface ran through a narrow lane in the forest. The new plan was to overlay the existing road with clay and gravel, let it settle and then lay a solid metal, tarred road over this foundation. However, unfortunately, there was a delay of six weeks after laying the clay and gravel, and the rains descended, and nothing further could be done to it. It rained in deluges for weeks. The whole area became not pea soup, but soft pudding a foot deep, with pools, holes, and stones in it. It was a narrow track only. The wheel marks were visible; were channels of muddy water and no two cars could pass. And still it rained! Nothing could be done about it. Only cars with a powerful engine could get through at all. Logging buggies had to, mail had to, and I had to. If you saw a car at the other end when you arrived at the beginning, one of you stopped till the other came down, or up, the full distance, to pass, for there was no room to manoeuvre. At night, you both stopped, and the first one to put out its light stayed till the other got through.
Things were at this stage when I received a police call that some two miles further on a load of logs had overturned and a man was seriously injured. That stretch of road was at its worst that afternoon. The police car and a breakdown truck struggled ahead of me and stirred up the mud very well. I was driving a big utility truck with a stretcher and I only just managed to clear the last, steep hilltop by short repeated rushes in low gear in the mangled tracks of the two cars in front, panicking that the poor man might be in very urgent need of medical aid and I was not there. But the utility did it just; – and I soon made up the remaining miles and was in time, but sadly, as the falling load had killed the driver outright.
The stretch of the road where this happened was particularly beautiful. Sloping and dipping between sharp turns, through the forest of tall grey gums and messmates with a creek full of ferns running under it. Groves of dark–green lightwoods, which in spring became a creamy froth of scented bloom, and banks of hickory and ‘prickly mosses’ blooming golden in the under scrub, with patches of white and pink heath where the red earth had been cut away, forming banks, to allow the road to pass through. The driving surface was good blue–metal, and sound here, one straight patch had been recently overlaid with yellow clay and gravel. I had the good fortune to pass along it one summer’s morning at six o’clock with the brightness of the early sun shining on it through the tops of the trees. It looked pure gold, and the grey gum’s tops cast a broken shadow on the gold, like black lace.
It was strikingly beautiful, as if someone had spread a mantle of black Valenciennes’ lace all over it. It looked fit homage for a Queen. I called it ‘Queens Way’. But, alas, it became a place of ill fortune for in addition to this tragedy, I had also to attend there a motor accident involving two cars and six persons, three of whom died there, and two later, and all were severely injured. I had to cope with this with the aid of one junior policeman who had to do the work of two or three men that busy day and yet managed to do so, to his great credit. It filled my day to over flowing.
After this accident, Queen’s Way vanished, as the roadway was broken up and re–routed at that spot, so making it safer on blind turns for driving.
5. ODD JOBS
One of the men who came to me at the hotel was in trouble with a sick wife. “She’s very sick, Doctor, I’ve got her in bed.” They had two small children and he was ‘on Susso’. (The term Susso was short for government sustenance allowance, a small fortnightly payment during the depression on which the unemployed subsisted.) It implied he had no money. They lived ‘down the Nuggetty ‘. This was a part of the bed of the Laradoc along where the old coach road used to run when the bridges were there, further up–stream. I found I could drive to the edge of the valley, and then he took me down the cliff on a foot track and along the bank of the stream until we came to his dwelling. It was a makeshift of three rooms but fairly snug, built partly into a cave in the cliff and partly a roughly built outside shelter, plus a tent. It had a small stove, table and beds, the bare essentials, but it was rent–free and firewood and water cost nothing. It was as ingenious as it was lonely, but made a home.
I found my patient was indeed ill, feverish, in bed and in need of urgent ‘minor surgery’. This was serious but could be remedied. Between us, we had no money, no transport, no hospital bed, no nurse, and no anaesthetist. Acting on the principle, ‘if you can’t take Mahomet to the mountain, bring the mountain to Mahomet’, I arranged to come again the next morning, bringing all necessities to do the job on the spot unassisted.
I had been used to doing this kind of thing in home kitchens and bedrooms in the city during the depression, all sorts of minor surgery requiring short general anaesthesia, single handed, but leaving someone, on call in the next room. I instructed the husband to provide me with a boiling kettle, cold water, a basin for my hands and an empty kerosene bucket, a common utensil then being an empty four–gallon tin with handle of bent fencing wire for slops. When I arrived next day all was ready. I then told the man to take the two children for a walk, come back in an hour, when all would be over and he could empty the bucket, and take care of his wife. All went well, as expected, but although I had undertaken this sort of job many times before, I still find it difficult to describe the feeling of utter remoteness and isolation and the extra load of responsibility I felt on that abandoned hillside, alone in the bush with one human life in my hands. I was thankful to achieve a successful outcome of their blind faith in me. When I visited her next day, she was making a good recovery.
Work multiplied down in that remote area. I soon took to visiting Red Hill weekly. But work in my own town also multiplied and I found I could ill spare a whole morning a week, so before long I changed the time to an afternoon and then later to an evening a week, and that meant more visiting because the hotel was closed. I found myself treking all over the place at all hours. One celebrated evening I had a message at the pub to see Mrs Wiggins who was ill and had sent for me. It was winter by then and the time midnight. The light and landscape were both uncertain, as there were two or three inches of snow on the ground. Very gradually I realised I was ‘bushed’. Finally, I got out at a house in a lane and knocked them up to ask the way. The man kindly got up out of his warm bed to give directions. “Yes, Doctor,” he said. “But you’re on the wrong road. Go back to the fork, go on left, and keep on till you hear two Alsatian dogs.” I thanked him and took a bearing from his pointing finger. At the fork in the road, I found more confusion of tracks, so I abandoned my car, seized my bag and walked. It had stopped snowing and was quite pleasant, though a bit cold. At this stage, I thought it safer to rely on finding the two Alsatians, or let them find me. Then down the next left hand turn, I saw a cottage and knocked. It was the correct house, but the dogs were inside it and asleep– till I knocked– for which I was thankful. Mrs Wiggins appeared in her nightdress. “Oh, it’s you, Doctor,” she said. “Whatever are you doing at this time of night?” It was then 3 a.m. I said, “I had a message you were sick and wanted to see me.” She looked mystified “No, Doctor, no, there’s no one sick here.” So I said, “Thank you, good night” and went home. Still, you never know! I had determined on two things, never to refuse a call and never to let the weather stop my taking one. I had proved my vow that night.
But I was to find I needed more than that. To these resolves, I found I required adding a certain amount of endurance and often a bit of muscle too. Three men at the pub told me John Peters was sick in his hut and gave me directions. I found his hut down by the water. It was a place where you left your car on top of the bank. A sloping foot track wound down to the bottom. Poor John was in his bunk and very ill. He appeared to me to have pneumonia and should be taken to hospital. I told him so. “Yes” he said, “I would come if I can. I don’t know how I am going to get up the bank though.” Neither did I. If I could get him into the car the problem would be solved. I had a look round and then by his wood stack I saw the wheelbarrow. I said, “Mr Peters, do you think you could stand up long enough to sit in this if I helped you?” “Well I don’t know.” He was so surprised that he did it. I helped him balance, tucked up his knees, and started. We got half way up the hill when the three men from the pub looking a bit shamefaced came down to see what was doing and they kindly helped finished the wheeling. Peters and I made the hospital without further incident and he made a full recovery.
Then there was Wally Pendragon. He was not a Pendragon of course, but he could have been. He was all Cornishman, as so many whereabouts were at one time. He was stocky and short in the legs, and in the old country, he used to be in the brass band, of which he was rather proud, he played the tuba. I met him in the bar or rather outside it. He was as innocent of medical knowledge as hell is of iced water. Wally had a cough or ‘something wrong with his wind’ and a request, would I please put those little telephone things on his chest and see what was wrong with him. After the consultation, which took place of course by appointment, he confessed himself delighted and satisfied with my examination with a stethescope and with a favourable verdict. He showed his gratitude by paying me and then asking me to let him buy me a beer. Nothing else would satisfy him a drink being appropriate. Finally, I had to compromise and Wally brought the glass out to me in the street so I would not suffer the company in the bar, a true gentleman gesture!
He way–laid me later in the same place and presented me with a small glass tube of gold dust, as a very special ‘grace and favour’ and added, “And take care of it, for I got every gram of it meself, settin’ oupto meboum in wet clay.”