strapped and sewn down. Habitation straggled down either side of the street, but a few side lanes revealed wooden towers, struts, sheds, a bizarre landscape whose purpose she could not guess at. It was ugly, ugly, ugly!
The houses became commercial buildings and shops, all sporting awnings held up by wooden posts; no one awning looked like its neighbors, nor was joined to them, nor had been erected with any attention to symmetry, order or beauty. The signs were roughly hand-painted and announced that here was a laundry, a boarding house, a restaurant, a bar, a tobacconist, cobbler, barber, general store, doctor’s rooms, an ironmongery.
There were two red-brick buildings, one a church complete to spire, the other a two-storied block with its upper verandah lavishly adorned by the same cast-iron lace Elizabeth had noticed all over Sydney; its awning was of curved rippled iron, had iron posts holding it up, and yet more lavish application of cast-iron lace. An elegantly lettered sign said KINROSS HOTEL.
Not a single tree stood anywhere, so even the foundering sun beat down like a hammer and turned the hair of a woman standing outside the hotel to pure fire. Her attention riveted by the martial posture, the sturdy air of invincibility the woman exuded, Elizabeth craned her neck to watch her for as long as she could. A striking figure. Like Britannia on the coins or Boadicea in illustrations. She gave what seemed a mocking salute to Alexander, riding beside the carriage, then swung to stare in the opposite direction from the convoy. Only then did Elizabeth notice that she held a cheroot, her nostrils trickling smoke like a dragon’s.
There were plenty of people around, the men shabbily clad in dungarees and flannel shirts, with soft, wide-brimmed hats on their heads, the women in much laundered cotton dresses thirty years behind the times, shady straw hats on their heads. And many were unmistakably Chinese: long pigtails down their backs, quaint little black-and-white shoes, hats like conical cartwheels, women and men in identical black or dark blue trousers and jackets.
The convoy passed into a wilderness of machinery, smoking chimneys, corrugated iron sheds and high wooden derricks, then came to a halt at the bottom of a sloping cliff that ascended at least a thousand feet. Here railway tracks actually ran upward until they disappeared from sight among welcome trees.
“Journey’s end, Elizabeth,” said Alexander, lifting her out of the carriage. “Summers will let the car down in a moment.”
And down the tracks it steadily came, a wooden conveyance not unlike an open omnibus on train wheels, for it had four rows of plain plank seats-for-six as well as a long, highly fenced tray for freight. But these seats were built at an impossible angle, so that sitting in one tilted the passenger far backward. Having closed the end of their seat with a bar, Alexander slid down beside Elizabeth and put both her hands firmly on a railing.
“Hang on and don’t be afraid,” he said. “You won’t fall out, I promise.”
The air resonated with sounds: the chug of engines, a quite maddening constant, thumping roar, metallic screeches, the slap-slap of rotating belts, crunches and grinds and howls. From high above came a separate noise, one lone steam engine. The wooden car began to move over the level ground to where the rails curved up, gave a lurch, and started to ascend the incredibly steep slope. Magically Elizabeth went from almost lying down to sitting upright; her heart in her mouth, she gazed down as the town of Kinross spread before her, widening in scope until the fading light turned its unlovely outskirts to impenetrable shadow.
“I didn’t want my wife down there,” he said, “which is why I built my house on top of the mountain. Apart from a snake path, this car is the only way up or down. Turn your head and look up—see? It’s being pulled by a heavy wire cable that’s wound or unwound by an
The houses became commercial buildings and shops, all sporting awnings held up by wooden posts; no one awning looked like its neighbors, nor was joined to them, nor had been erected with any attention to symmetry, order or beauty. The signs were roughly hand-painted and announced that here was a laundry, a boarding house, a restaurant, a bar, a tobacconist, cobbler, barber, general store, doctor’s rooms, an ironmongery.
There were two red-brick buildings, one a church complete to spire, the other a two-storied block with its upper verandah lavishly adorned by the same cast-iron lace Elizabeth had noticed all over Sydney; its awning was of curved rippled iron, had iron posts holding it up, and yet more lavish application of cast-iron lace. An elegantly lettered sign said KINROSS HOTEL.
Not a single tree stood anywhere, so even the foundering sun beat down like a hammer and turned the hair of a woman standing outside the hotel to pure fire. Her attention riveted by the martial posture, the sturdy air of invincibility the woman exuded, Elizabeth craned her neck to watch her for as long as she could. A striking figure. Like Britannia on the coins or Boadicea in illustrations. She gave what seemed a mocking salute to Alexander, riding beside the carriage, then swung to stare in the opposite direction from the convoy. Only then did Elizabeth notice that she held a cheroot, her nostrils trickling smoke like a dragon’s.
There were plenty of people around, the men shabbily clad in dungarees and flannel shirts, with soft, wide-brimmed hats on their heads, the women in much laundered cotton dresses thirty years behind the times, shady straw hats on their heads. And many were unmistakably Chinese: long pigtails down their backs, quaint little black-and-white shoes, hats like conical cartwheels, women and men in identical black or dark blue trousers and jackets.
The convoy passed into a wilderness of machinery, smoking chimneys, corrugated iron sheds and high wooden derricks, then came to a halt at the bottom of a sloping cliff that ascended at least a thousand feet. Here railway tracks actually ran upward until they disappeared from sight among welcome trees.
“Journey’s end, Elizabeth,” said Alexander, lifting her out of the carriage. “Summers will let the car down in a moment.”
And down the tracks it steadily came, a wooden conveyance not unlike an open omnibus on train wheels, for it had four rows of plain plank seats-for-six as well as a long, highly fenced tray for freight. But these seats were built at an impossible angle, so that sitting in one tilted the passenger far backward. Having closed the end of their seat with a bar, Alexander slid down beside Elizabeth and put both her hands firmly on a railing.
“Hang on and don’t be afraid,” he said. “You won’t fall out, I promise.”
The air resonated with sounds: the chug of engines, a quite maddening constant, thumping roar, metallic screeches, the slap-slap of rotating belts, crunches and grinds and howls. From high above came a separate noise, one lone steam engine. The wooden car began to move over the level ground to where the rails curved up, gave a lurch, and started to ascend the incredibly steep slope. Magically Elizabeth went from almost lying down to sitting upright; her heart in her mouth, she gazed down as the town of Kinross spread before her, widening in scope until the fading light turned its unlovely outskirts to impenetrable shadow.
“I didn’t want my wife down there,” he said, “which is why I built my house on top of the mountain. Apart from a snake path, this car is the only way up or down. Turn your head and look up—see? It’s being pulled by a heavy wire cable that’s wound or unwound by an
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