5

The Golden Graveyard

Mother Middleton was an awful woman, an 'old hand' (transported convict) some said. The prefix 'mother' in Australia mostly means 'old hag', and is applied in that sense. In early boyhood we understood, from old diggers, that Mother Middleton -- in common with most other 'old hands' -- had been sent out for 'knocking a donkey off a hen-roost. ' We had never seen a donkey. She drank like a fish and swore like a trooper when the spirit moved her; she went on periodical sprees, and swore on most occasions. There was a fearsome yarn, which impressed us greatly as boys, to the effect that once, in her best (or worst) days, she had pulled a mounted policeman off his horse, and half-killed him with a heavy pick-handle, which she used for poking down clothes in her boiler. She said that he had insulted her.

She could still knock down a tree and cut a load of firewood with any Bushman; she was square and muscular, with arms like a navvy's; she had often worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband, when he'd be putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate, as he often had to do -- because of her mainly. Old diggers said that it was lovely to see how she'd spin up a heavy green-hide bucket full of clay and 'tailings', and land and empty it with a twist of her wrist. Most men were afraid of her, and few diggers' wives were strong-minded enough to seek a second row with Mother Middleton. Her voice could be heard right across Golden Gully and Specimen Flat, whether raised in argument or in friendly greeting.