Haunted Creek by Ann Cliff

of her own, her udder swinging jauntily. They should never have come so far from home! They must have walked a couple of miles and one stretch of bush looked so much like another….
    Rose told herself severely not to panic. She had been here before with Luke and she knew roughly where she was. But where was Gertrude?
    Calling at intervals, Rose tried to walk in a straight line. There was no goat to be seen and the only thing to be heard was a magpie’s liquid warble, that changed suddenly to the crack of a whip and then to the grating of a saw. Nothing here was what it seemed. Surely there were no people about? Then Rose remembered she’d been told about the lyre bird that imitated all the sounds it heard in the bush. Maybe next week it would be chirping ‘Gertrude!’
    The eucalypt forest shimmered in the heat and the scent was heady and penetrating; it seemed to be growing stronger. Surely the goat would come back to her? She was tense with worry when she eventually saw Gertrude’s black and white head among the trees. The goat was towing someone else on the other end of the rope. It was Lordy, the sinister gentleman worker.
    ‘Mrs Teesdale, your goat, I presume?’ Lordy handed over his end of the rope and raised his hat. Was his face really evil, or was it just the scar? He had been kind … and his old-fashioned, precise way of speaking was somehow reassuring.
    ‘Thank you, Mr Barrington.’ Rose had run towards the goat when she first saw her and now they were in a clearing she remembered , but it was changed. The eucalypt smell was overpowering and soon she could see why. Her heart sank; the rapists were here in the bush.
    The trees had been stripped of leaves. A man with a cart was tipping piles of gum leaves into a metal tank, from which steam leaked out in several places. A big fire roared under the tank. Whiskery Joe was leading an empty horse and cart away, recognizable by his big hat and beard. Several other men were stoking the fire or adding more greenery and all around them were leaves and branches of eucalypt. All the small trees had been cut down and branches lopped off the large ones.
    ‘Please allow me to set you on the road home,’ Lordy said smoothly, guiding her away from the scene of action. ‘It really will not do for the other men to see you. Consequences might follow, y’know.’ Rose shivered. After they had walked for a while, Rose turned to the man beside her. ‘Please tell me … what are those men doing? Working on a Sunday, too?’ She passed a hand over her hot face.
    Lordy looked at her, then sat down on a log and drew Rose down beside him. ‘Let us have a short rest. Don’t be afraid, Mrs Teesdale, I won’t harm you. Quite the reverse. I was trained to protect females and I quite like goats.’ This was just as well, because Gertrude had sidled up to him and was nearly sitting on his knee. ‘These men with whom I have the misfortune to work are distillers of eucalyptus oil for the British market. They are called eucy men and they roam the forest with big knives and a portable still, as you could see.’ He looked earnestly at Rose.
    ‘And evil intentions,’ Rose reminded him. ‘Why are they like that?’ Heaven help any woman who met them in the bush.
    ‘Here today and gone tomorrow: they move about to get the best leaves. The work is hard and – well, you could say the workers are a little uncouth. They see no polite society, y’know.’ Lordy shook his head sadly.
    Rose couldn’t help smiling at the lack of polite society; the men she’d met the other day obviously didn’t want any. ‘Distilling, that’s a harmless thing to do. But why do they hate me?’
    Lordy sighed. ‘The selectors are cutting down the trees. Do you not see? There is a great tide of selectors flowing into Gippsland, taking the land for farming. Soon the forests will vanish and the woodsmen fear that eventually there will be only farm land, or at worst, desert. There will be no room for the