Plagues and Federation Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  The Diary of Kitty Barnes — The Rocks, Sydney, 1900

  Historical Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The Diary of Kitty Barnes

  The Rocks, Sydney, 1900

  This Diary belongs to

  Kitty Barnes

  88 Windmill Street

  The Rocks

  Sydney

  Australia

  The World

  The Universe.

  If found please return.

  Reward.

  1st January, 1900, Monday

  Dear Diary,

  My name is Kitty Barnes. My teacher Miss Collins says I’m to write something every day, only not if it’s just to say it’s sunny or raining like. First but, I’m going to write about my family.

  There’s nine of us kids, four at home still.

  Bertie my favourite brother’s 22 and been humping his bluey up country since he were 16. He’s learnt to ride a horse and all, only now he’s come back to Sydney to enlist to fight the Boojers (that’s what he calls the Boers) in South Africa. The army give him leave from his barracks last night, on account of it was New Year’s Eve and why shouldn’t he have a good time I say, if he’s off to fight a war?

  After Bertie comes George. He’s 21 and works in a funeral parlour. He lives over the shop only I don’t know how he can. It gives me the creeps.

  Then there’s Ethel, 18, packs boots in a factory, and Dolly, 16, and in pickles. They share a room in a boarding house over Chippendale way, so’s to be near their factories. Next comes Mabel, she’s 15 and in service and lives in with a family at Darlinghurst. She has her own attic room and all.

  I’m after her and Ma thinks I’m a right handful. She says it’s because I got red hair, like hers, only I think it’s because I don’t always do what she says.

  After me there’s Fred, 11, and Artie, 9, then Clara May, Maisie for short. She’s 6 and the baby and her two front teeth is missing.

  2nd January, Tuesday

  Even though it were New Year’s Eve Sunday, everything was shut, just like any other Sunday. When night-time come but, the streets were chockablock with people out singing and shouting and all enjoying theirselves. The churches stayed open but, till after midnight to see the old year out. Us younger kids weren’t allowed to stay up real late, only Bertie was out all night just about. I know, cos I heard him come creeping in real early yesterday morning hoping Ma wouldn’t hear him.

  Our house is the browny yellow one with its paint peeling near the corner of Ferry Lane. It’s a one up, one downer. Ma and Pa got the bed in the room upstairs. Me, Fred, Artie and Maisie got to share two mattresses on the floor. It’s a bit cramped so if any of the others come home of a night unexpected, they got to doss downstairs.

  There’s lots of houses round our way. All sort of squashed in and climbing up the hillsides, higgledy-piggledy like. Ma says it look like a rabbit warren only it’s not too bad, just some of the streets are real narrow and the drains don’t work proper and the privies smell.

  Pa used to be a rag-and-bone man for all the houses round here, only he lost his horse and cart in the depression when the banks crashed. Now he does labouring jobs of a day when he can get them, which is not all that often, so Ma has to take in washing and ironing to help make ends meet.

  3rd January, Wednesday

  We used to go to Millers Point School only Pa can’t afford it no more so now we go to Ragged School down in Harrington Street. It’s for orphans mainly and poor kids whose pas got no work so it don’t cost nothing, only you’re s’posed to leave soon as you turn 13.

  Miss Collins give me this diary when I tell her I want to be a lady typist in a big office with a typewriter all my own. Or maybe one of them switchboard ladies as plugs in wires for the telephones. I’d like that and I can talk real posh too. ‘Just connecting!’ I’d say or, ‘Sorry he can’t talk right now. He’s real busy’. Sometimes I pretend I’m a switchboard lady with the handles of my skipping rope that I got for Christmas, only when no-one’s looking.

  Ma won’t agree, but. She says I’m to leave school and go into service, same as she did, and Mabel, to help out, but it’s all right for Mabel, she wants to be a lady’s maid. I DON’T.

  Miss Collins says 1900’ll be a good year for a diary, seeing as how it’s the last year of the 19th century. This time next year, we might have a federation. That’s one big country, not six separate colonies like now. She says Australia’s a bit like an old lady now with lots of parcels to carry and she keeps dropping them so it’d be much better if she tied them all up together like.

  I’ve put ‘please return’ on the first page, because I don’t want no-one reading it. I’m not sure about the reward bit. I’ve only got my skipping rope and it might be a boy like Reggie Cook from next door, as finds it and what would he do with a skipping rope?

  4th January, Thursday

  After tea, of a night, Pa reads to us from the newspaper. The Sydney Morning Herald costs a whole penny to buy but Pa gets it for nothing out of a bin near the tram stop where this gent drops them when he’s finished. Sometimes they’re a day old but that don’t matter to Pa. He still brings them home.

  Last night he read this bit out about plague.

  I said, ‘What plague?’

  He said, ‘The bubonic.’

  Miss Collins has told us all about that so I said, ‘You mean the Black Death what killed all them people hundreds of years ago?’ and Pa said, ‘Yeah, seems like it’s back again.’

  Artie who’s always asking questions wanted to know what’s it do to you? and Ma said, ‘You get fever and the shakes.’

  Pa put on this real scary voice and said, ‘And you get big lumps on your neck and in your armpits, big as eggs, only black.’

  Me and Fred looked at each other and checked our arms to make sure, only there was nothing.

  The paper says it’s been in China and India. Now it’s in some place called Noumea Pa says is much closer. And there’s 16 people got it there already and one dead. I hope it don’t come no nearer but.

  Since I got my skipping rope I’ve been practising every day and I’m real good now. I can do slow and peppers and cross-over arms and I’ve got this new rhyme that goes

  Over the garden wall

  I let the baby fall

  Me mother come out

  And give me a clout

  And sent me over the wall.

  Only when Ma heard me she said, ‘I’ll give you a clout all right, if you don’t peel them potatoes like I told you.’

  Pa got work today and brung home a bit of mutton for tea. He said he got it real cheap cos the butcher was closing anyway and was only going to throw it out. So Ma boiled it up with the taters and it tasted a bit funny, only not too bad.

  Ma can’t read or write, only her name, that’s why Pa reads to her to tell her what’s going on. Last night there was this bit in the paper about some place in Africa called Ladysmith where there’s been fighting. Come Christmas Day, and the Boojers shot this shell over the wall into the town only it didn’t go off and when the soldiers come over for a geek they found this Christmas pudding stuffed inside. Fair dinkum, with a note saying Happy Christmas and all.

  Ma laughed when she heard, only not when Pa read out the bit about Queenslanders fighting at some place called Sunnyside and a trooper’s been killed. Ma looked real worried then, what with Bertie going, only Pa said, ‘Don’t worry, Ma. Bertie can take care of hisself.’

  Funny name for a place for fighting. Sunnyside.

  Bertie’s gone back to barracks now, only we’ll get to wave him off when his ship sails.

 
5th January, Friday

  It’s holidays now, not school, and just as well. It’s bad enough having to help Ma in the washhouse when it’s hot, what with all the steam, specially when I got to do the mangling. But stuck in class doing sums’d be worse. I like reading and writing and don’t mind sewing which us girls has to do to go into service, only I hate sums. Boys get to do carpentry and Fred says sums’ll help him because he wants to be a builder. Artie’ll most probably make furniture and Maisie don’t know. She only started last year.

  Miss Collins says if I work real hard, maybe I can prove to Ma I can do better than domestic. I hope so. When I showed Ma my diary she said, ‘What you want to do that for? Don’t think you’re getting out of service, my girl.’ I’m hoping she’ll change her mind.

  Today but, I had this wonderful idea. I’m going to teach Ma to read and write. I’ve got my slate and chalk and we can use Pa’s newspapers for practice and it’ll be our secret, her’s and mine. Then she’ll be able to read the papers for herself. She’d like that, I’m sure. And won’t Pa be surprised!

  There’s a ship called Maroc come in from Noumea, Pa says, only it’s stuck over at North Head in quarantine. It’ll have to stay there for twelve days with nobody allowed off in case they brung plague with them. Quite right, too. It were 80 degrees again today, not as hot as it can get, but awful humid and with no rain for ages so the gutters and drains are real dirty. Still, as Ma says, at least the clothes get dried and with Pa not getting any work she needs all the sun she can get.

  6th January, Saturday

  Yesterday, I wrote down all the names in our family on a bit of paper and made Ma copy them on my slate. Then I had her point to the letters and say them out loud. Her name’s Pearl and Pa’s is William so we got most of the letters between us. There’s only the funny ones left. Afterwards we sat and read the adverts together.

  Farmer and Company, one of them toff’s shops up town, has got ladies’ blouses, silk, come all the way from Paris. You can get them in any colour, it says, fancy pink or navy, cardinal and heliotrope—whatever that is—and they got striped silk shirts as well. I told Ma they’re probably what Mrs Alexander wears. She’s the lady that Mabel works for and whenever Mabel comes to visit on her day off, she’s always talking about Mrs Alexander’s fancy clobber.

  Ma must’ve been thinking the same, because suddenly she picks up this big pair of lacy drawers from the pile of ironing she got to do and drapes them round her shoulders like.

  ‘How do I look? La-di-da?’ she says and dances round and round the kitchen like it was the Federation Waltz almost. But we did laugh.

  Then I see this fancy jeweller’s ad for Princess pearl clasps on a ribbon as goes round the neck and I says, ‘There Ma. That’s the latest fashion.’

  Ma says, ‘Well I never! Fancy that. And all this time I was wondering what was missing from me outfit.’

  There was a notice too for a lady typist and shorthand writer and I tell Ma it’s what I want to do, only it says office experience necessary. But quick as a flash, Ma says, ‘Now, Kitty, you know what I’ve said about that,’ so I don’t mention it no more and don’t read out the one about respectable girl needed for light housework, neither. Ma don’t need to know that. She might make me apply. I just hope by the time she can read by herself she’ll have gone off the idea of me being a domestic.

  Pa says the government’s sent off for some medicine that’s meant to stop you getting plague. It come all the way from India cos they’ve had it already and you get it from a needle shoved in your arm. I don’t like the sound of that but.

  Tiger, the cat as lives round Ferry Lane, chased a rat in our yard today. He had it stuck out the sides of his mouth like he had this big handlebar moustache and looked ever so funny. Only when he brung it in the kitchen and dumped it at Ma’s feet for a present like, she screamed and told him to take it outside. Pa threw it over the fence then, into the gutter, and shooed Tiger off home. He says it’s the heat that’s brung them. If it turned cold tomorrow the rats’d most probably disappear. Not much chance of that but. Pa says the council should do something about the drains, rain or no rain, clean them up proper and get rid of the rats.

  7th January, Sunday

  Bertie come round to see us this arvo. He says each trooper’s to get at least 4 shillings and 6 pence a day in South Africa. Ma’s jaw dropped when she heard. ‘That’s a bloomin’ fortune for you,’ she says.

  Bertie grinned, ‘Yeah I know and there won’t be nothing to spend it on except beer and cards.’

  Only Ma says, ‘You spend that much on beer and cards, my lad, when there’s mouths to feed at home and I’ll be onto you quick smart, I will.’

  ‘Yes Ma,’ says Bertie and winks at me. Then he has to promise Ma he’ll get the army to send some of his pay back to her.

  I’ll miss Bertie, but he says he’ll write to me if I write to him first. I know he calls me chicken legs on account of I’m skinny, but he don’t really mean it. He only does it to tease, and besides he says I got real nice eyes. They’re greeny and Bertie says some day they’ll get me into trouble, whatever that means. Bertie’s got red hair too, so has Fred, only they both got Pa’s blue eyes.

  There’s horses for the army gone off to South Africa already but Pa says some never make it. They die on the way over if the ship hits bad weather. They get knocked about in their stalls and when they’re hurt real bad, they have to be put down, on account of it’s kinder. Then their bodies is pushed overboard. That’s so sad but. There was five lost on Langton Grange only a while back. I don’t think it’s fair horses have to go to war, when it was people started it. Sometimes when they get there, Pa says, there’s not enough feed for them either or water and they catch diseases like diphtheria, only for horses.

  8th January, Monday

  I saw Mr Ah Han today. He had his dray up in Kent Street. I always stop and pat his horse and let it nuzzle my hand, just like I used to pat Pa’s horse when he had one. Lots of the kids round here call Mr Ah Han ‘Chink’ or ‘Chinaman’ only Ma says that’s rude. Sometimes he gives me an apple, or maybe a spotty ripe banana, cos I don’t. He always laughs and says I got freckles just like the banana. I hate my freckles only I don’t mind Mr Ah Han teasing cos he don’t mean to be unkind either.

  Just because the troopers are going off to fight, it seems everybody’s giving them things. I can’t see why but. There’s people giving them horses and presents and fruit to take with them and there’s ever so many dinners and concerts on. Bertie’s been to lots already and the night before they sail he says they’re off to Government House on the invite of His Excellency. Ma said better him than her when she heard. She don’t have a thing to wear, only I said, ‘But Ma, don’t you remember, there’s your heliotrope blouse from Paris and the Princess pearl clasp.’

  Ma said, ‘Now why didn’t think of that?’ and we started to laugh and Bertie and Pa had no idea what we was talking about!

  9th January, Tuesday

  Pa’s real keen on a federation and he says the diggers on the goldfields in West Australia want to vote on it now. And a good thing too Pa says, because West Australia hasn’t said yes yet. They say they’re too far away from us eastern colonies for it to matter to them and besides, the railway tracks’ll be different sizes. But maybe if the diggers vote for it, then the rest of West Australia’ll have to change their minds.

  Real sticky weather this. Pa went down the wharves today looking for work. The foreman said there was a ship come in as had to be cleaned so Pa said he’d be in it. Only it were so filthy he’d never seen nothing like it. They all got given nips of rum before they went down the hold on account of the smell were so bad they’d’ve been sick otherwise. Pa said the ship had been stuck out at sea for weeks and weeks and the cargo rotted and the rats got really bad. Anyway when they opened the hatches all these rats come pouring out on the wharf and headed up the hill towards the houses. I shivered when I heard. So did Ma. ‘Didn’t they have them round things on
the ropes as stops them?’ she said and Pa said, ‘Course. Only so many of the blighters come ashore all at once rat guards was useless. If they fell in the water they just started swimming.’

  Fred and Artie said they saw some big ones down Pottinger Street today. They was playing with Elsie Paine as lives in Ferry Lane what owns Tiger. Fred found this bit of tin he wanted to take home to Pa. Only when he lifted it up rats scarpered everywhere and Elsie screamed. Just as well Jess, her little sister, and Maisie weren’t there. Fred said it must have been a nest because there was little’uns there as well as big’uns.

  10th January, Wednesday

  The paper says there’s this toff Lord Roberts gone off to South Africa to run the war. He’s a Field-Marshall and that’s as high a soldier as you can get Pa says. Only the Queen’s higher and that’s cos it’s her army. If anyone can win the war and beat the Boojers, he can. It’ll probably be over now before we know it, only Bertie won’t be pleased if he gets there and finds there’s no fighting left. It’s sad but Lord Roberts’ only son were killed there only last month and he still got to go.

  11th January, Thursday

  Ma and I did some more reading today. First I read a bit out then Ma says it after and points to the words as she goes. There was this notice that said Mrs Fairfax at her residence Leamington Tintern Road Summer Hill the wife of Charles E Fairfax a daughter. And I said, ‘What’s all that then?’

  Ma said it were just a fancy way of saying she’s had a baby. Then she said, ‘Come to think of it, I could have had me name in the paper nine times with you lot. “Mrs Barnes at her residence Windmill Street The Rocks.” It makes it sound quite grand don’t it, instead of just another mouth to feed.’