The Night They Stormed Eureka Read Online Free PDF Page A

diggings?’
    ‘That’s about the size of it.’ Mrs Puddleham straightened her skirts, avoiding Sam’s eye.
    She wasn’t lying. Sam was pretty sure Mrs Puddleham would keep her word about that. But there was a lot she wasn’t saying, too. It took months to sail to Australia from England these days, didn’t it? Probably a lot of money, too. Had the Puddlehams saved up enough back at the palace to get them here?
    No, there was too much pain in Mrs Puddleham’s face for that to be the whole story.
    And who was Lucy?
    But before she could ask any more questions Mrs Puddleham stepped carefully away from the wet patch on the ground, holding her skirts up high. ‘Come on, deary. We’d best be going. Mr Puddleham will think we’ve had to pee a river, we’ve been so long away.’
    They walked back through the trees together.
    Sam trudged along the track. The sun danced high and hot above the trees. How far away was this farm, anyhow? She wished she had her watch, though she supposed it would look strange to the people here.
    Excitement was draining away, leaving weariness instead. Tired from lack of sleep. Tired from shock. Tired from strangeness. Too tired to think much, even, which was good. She didn’t want to think, just let the world flow by. Let Mrs Puddleham look after her, tell her what to do …
    She glanced at the Puddlehams, plodding along beside her. They were the only familiar things now in this world, the only anchor that she had.
    One minute they were wandering through trees. Then they turned a corner, and the farm was in front of them.
    It wasn’t much of a farm, just a clearing in the bush. There weren’t even proper fences, just two paddocks with wooden railings around them. There was a hut made of saplings stuck together with cracked clay; it had slabs of wood for a roof and windows with ragged hessian instead of glass. Dead trees lifted leafless branches, like they’d got a plague. Sheep the colour of dust and rocks grazed underneath, along with a couple of bony cows.
    A boy sat on a log, apparently seeing the sheep didn’t stray, though he had a book on his lap. He stood up as they approached. He was about Sam’s age, barefoot and ragged-trousered. His garments had been cut down from an adult’s clothes, and he wore a wide hat like the men they’d met before. He had brown skin, and brown eyes that stared sullenly at Sam and the Puddlehams.
    ‘Suppose you’re after more bleedin’ mutton,’ he muttered, shoving the book under the rope that held up his trousers.
    ‘Language! You show some respect, you whippersnapper.’ Mr Puddleham’s face flushed with sudden anger.
    The boy stared at the ground. ‘Sorry, sir.’
    ‘That’s better. You think again before you use words like that in front of a white woman.’
    White woman? Sam blinked. But this was the past. Brown skins, white skins mattered back then. Now. And the brown of this boy’s skin was more than tan from the sun.
    ‘I think more’n you. All youse think about is bleedin’ mutton,’ muttered the boy behind them, as they began to tramp across the paddock, Mrs Puddleham pushing the wheelbarrow between lines of dusty cabbages towards a man tipping a thin stream of water onto seedlings from one of a pair of buckets on a pole across his shoulders, while a brown-skinned woman in a faded skirt and sacking apron used a long-handled tool to hack at the ground.
    ‘Da! It’s them Puddlehams again.’
    The man put the bucket down. He was as short as Mr Puddleham, a battered potato of a man, his mouth twisted in lines of old bitterness. But he smiled when he saw who it was.
    ‘Ah, Mr Puddleham, sir, and Mrs Puddleham too.’ There was a lilt in his voice. Irish, thought Sam. ‘You’re after supplies again, is it?’
    ‘We are, Mr Higgins,’ said Mr Puddleham.
    ‘Well, and wasn’t I killing a sheep this morning? I must’ve known youse were comin'.’
    The woman stood behind him, her brown eyes watchful. Neither the Puddlehams nor Mr