A Town like Alice

Burn, the Shell agent and truck repairer came by and stopped to join them. "Got fixed up all right, Miss Paget?"
    "Yes, thank you. I'm staying here till Wednesday and then going on to Cairns."
    "Good-oh. We don't see too many strange faces, here in Willstown."
    "I was asking Pete here about the bore. Pete, do the cattle drink that water?"
    The boy laughed. "When they can't get nothing sweeter they'll drink that. You'll see that they won't touch it in the wet, but then in the dry you'll see them drinking it all right."
    "Some bores they won't touch," said Al. He was rolling himself a cigarette. "They sunk a bore on Invergordon, that's a station between here and Normanton-over to the south a bit. They had to go down close on three thousand feet before they got the water and did it cost them something, oh my word. The bore crew, they were there close on three months. Then when they got the water it was stinking with the minerals and the cattle wouldn't touch it, not even in the dry. What's more, it wouldn't grow grass, either."
    Two more men had drifted up and joined the little gathering about her chair. "Tell me," she said, "why is this town so spread out? Why aren't the houses closer together?"
    One of the newcomers, a man of forty that she later learned to know as Tim Whelan, a carpenter, said, "There was houses all along here once. I got a photograph of this town took in 1905. I'll bring it and show you tomorrow."
    "Were there more people living here then?"
    Al Burns said, "Oh my word. This was one of the gold towns, Miss Paget. Maybe you wouldn't know about that, but there was thirty thousand people living here one time."
    The other newcomer said, "Eight thousand. I saw that in a book."
    Al Burns said stubbornly, "My Dad always said there was thirty thousand when he come here first."
    It was evidently an old argument. Jean asked, "How many are there now?"
    "Oh, I dunno." Al turned to the others. "How many would you say now, Tim?" To Jean, aside, he said, "He builds the coffins so he ought to know."
    "A hundred and fifty," said Mr Whelan.
    Sam Small had joined them on the veranda. "There's not a hundred and fifty living in Willstown now. There's not more than a hundred and twenty." He paused. "Living here in the town, not the stations, of course. Living right here in the town, not counting boongs."
    A slow wrangle developed, so they set to work to count them; Jean sat amused while the evening light faded and the census was taken. The result was a hundred and forty-six, and by the time that that had been determined she had heard the name and occupation of most people in the town.
    "Were there goldmines here?" she asked.
    "That's right," said Mr Small. "They had claims by the hundred one time, all up and down these creeks, oh my word. There were seventeen hotels here, seventeen."
    Somebody else said, "Steamers used to come here from Brisbane in those days-all around Cape York and right up the river to the landing stage. I never seen them myself, but that's what my old man told me."
    Jean asked, "What happened? Did the gold come to an end?"
    "Aye. They got the stuff out of the creeks and the surface reefs, the stuff that was easy got. Then when they had to go deep and use a lot of machinery and that, it didn't pay. It's the same in all these towns. Croydon was the same, and Normanton."
    "They say they're going to start the mine in Croydon-open it again," said somebody.
    "They been talking like that ever since I can remember."
    Jean asked, "But what happened to the houses? Did the people go away?"
    "The houses just fell down, or were pulled down to patch up others," Al told her. "The people didn't stay here when the gold was done-they couldn't. There's only the cattle station here now."
    The talk developed among the men, with Jean throwing in an occasional remark or question. "Ghost towns," somebody said. "That's what they called the Gulf towns in a book that I read once. Ghost towns. That's because they're ghosts of what they were once, when the gold was on."
    "It didn't last for long," somebody said. "1893 was the year that the first gold here was found, and there wasn't many people still living here in 1905."
    Jean sat while the men talked, trying to visualize this derelict little place as a town with eight thousand inhabitants, or thirty thousand; a place with seventeen hotels and houses thickly clustered in the angles of the streets. Whoever had planned the layout had dreamed a great dream; with people streaming in