The dances are always held on Sundays. There’s no digging on Sundays.

These men are sinners, but they are god-fearing sinners.

Throughout the week, many enlist the aid of a fallen woman to help them forget their wives back home, convincing themselves that the ten thousand miles between them means it doesn’t count; determined to strike gold one way or another. But on Sundays, they go to church, dressed in the cleanest clothes they have worn all week, muttering the Our Father like schoolboys. And then, in the evenings, they dance, the local hotel becoming a place of celebration and community.

But these dances aren’t like the ones back home. Here, women are scarce, mostly outnumbered by unshaven men who look more like farmers than gentlemen. Pipes hanging from their mouths, the men dance with each other. Some of them even seem to enjoy it more. Arms flailing and voices chanting drunken, broken tunes, no one is ever bothered by the sour stench of sweat and dirt that hangs over the room like fog. Often, this chanting continues through to morning. The mighty chorus replaced by the woeful voices of lonely men. Men who spent their night downing sorrows with pints of ale and shots of brandy.

It is on these mornings that you long for the gentle rock of the sea. That gentle sway you grew so accustomed to, travelling here. And your room, which back then felt like a poor substitute for the comforts of home. A four-post bedstead suddenly replaced by a cot barely big enough to move in. Back then, you never appreciated the peace of the ocean, the idly flapping sails, the whisper of the waves.

Back then, you viewed Melbourne as your reward for spending four months at sea, expecting, upon arrival, to be greeted by its beauty and bushland. The untamed colonies a welcomed change from the industrial hum of England. Instead, you were met with mud and swamp, and a few dying trees dotted lazily amidst the cattle. The mud so deep that it seeped into the hem of your dress. The dress you’d made especially for your trip to Australia. An indulgent luxury that you cursed as you walked across the planks of wood laid out to protect you from the sludge. Back then, you wondered how a place so wet could leave the trees so starved and miserable.

You know now that the rain is better than the sun, which produces a heat so intense that it rises thick from the ground, turning your corset and petticoat into a damp cotton cast. So intolerable that you often wonder whether the solitary blankets worn by the Aborigines are really all that strange. Or the loose-fitting trousers, donned by the Chinamen, who are free to move as they please, unencumbered by thick layers of muslin and wool.

You often wonder whether it is the heat that brings the flies, who come in swarms. Mocking you with their relentless buzzing, as they move in a great black mass, covering all that they touch in a thick thundering blanket. They particularly like the rotting carcasses, which lay abandoned amidst the holes and overturned dirt. Drawn to the vile odour they exude, matched only by the reek of human waste, unidentifiable from that of the horses and cattle.

The stench was what you had noticed first, arriving at the diggings by omnibus. You’d been enjoying the sweet scent of eucalyptus and bottlebrush as you sat perched on the wooden plank seat, gripping your carpetbag between your legs for fear it would tumble off the wagon, and you along with it. You wondered if you’d ever smell a scent so sweet again, as you watched them unload your belongings onto the dirt road, covering them in the same muck that now seemed to live permanently under your fingernails. And you began to question whether your small collection of brown-paper packages really belonged in a place as foul as Ballarat.

But you were soon reminded of what had brought you here, spotting Arthur mindlessly dogging the puddles that embellished the road ahead. A thick beard and smatterings of mud covered a face that you struggled to recognise. But his eyes, which lit up when he saw you, held a brightness that you hadn’t forgotten. And although two years had passed, he seemed younger. The free, roving lifestyle of the fields clearly agreed with him.

Arthur beamed as he led you to the wattle and daub hut the boys had helped him build, while you walked slowly behind him, deliberately letting the distance between the two of you grow. You watched him as he paced around its single room, which was mostly bare, decorated only by a filthy swag laying limp in the corner. And you watched him as he stood proud, relishing in all that he’d built for you. They all said I couldn’t do it. You moved away from his outstretched hands, before giving in, and reminding yourself that this was the man you married. This was your Arthur.

Though Arthur didn’t like it much when you offered to pick up extra work a month after your arrival, saying that you’d rather wash the butcher’s clothes than not eat. Though you didn’t like it much either when he held onto your wrist too tight and told you to be quiet. That night you ripped the hem off your mud-stained dress to cover the bruising, and you didn’t dare light a candle for fear you’d wake him. And you sat there, listening to the steady rhythm of his breath. Deeps sighs of silent relief that echoed the winds raging through the fields outside. The fields, full of too many men hungry for gold. Men, like Arthur, who had stated work at twelve and hadn’t stopped. Working class men desperate to escape the smoke and soot of central England. The same smoke and soot that had never really bothered you. For in England, you stayed mostly at home. First, at your father’s, and then at Arthur’s.

In England, you had spent your afternoons preparing potatoes to sit alongside bread rolls and whatever meat you could afford. The bread rolls were always your favourite. Fresh from the coals, you would slather them with butter bought from the shop down the road. They were your little treat for Arthur, each night, when he’d come home from the factory sore and complaining. 

You long for those rolls now, which seem lavish in comparison to the damper you are forced to eat every day. The few jars of preserved fruits that you brought with you from home are all but gone, so you prepare the same mutton stew you have eaten for months. A meal which now no longer resembles food, but a watery slurry; there to simply keep you alive. Though there are some days you wish it didn’t.

One night you decided to stop eating the damper all together, and decided, instead, to survey the little specks of white dough flying from Arthur’s lips. Oi? That night he was watching you, aware that you were giving more attention to the shape of his mouth than the words coming from it. You agree, don’t you? These young fellows shouldn’t be spending their days drinking. He was beginning to slur his words, his mouth struggling to form each new syllable. So, you agreed, and started to nod in the places you were meant to.

It was that same night that you watched him pull away the canvas sheet separating the kitchen from the bedroom, climbing on top of you with the acrid scent of beer on his breath. He had spent more time drinking long after you’d retired to bed. You could see it in the way he struggled with the belt of his pants. Let me be a good husband. The words were unpleasantly warm on your neck as you fought against the weight of his body. His hands, strong from months of wielding a pickaxe and shovel, held onto your arms, giving you no choice but to surrender.

You were his wife after all.

Looking back, you now know the danger that night was not your husband, but the threat he put inside of you. That small ball of life, which you guess now is the size of an apple. Or maybe a pear. That threat to your own life, which you always thought would bring you joy. A joy paired with aching breasts and sleepless nights. But joy, nonetheless.

But in this hell, you are beginning to forget what joy feels like. A feeling once preserved for Sunday picnics and Christmas dinners, now corroded by the diggings. A place where new life is paired with death, and women mourn their own passing nine months in advance. Or cry on the graves of their children, who were lucky enough to make it to the age of two. In this hell, where more people are buried than gold is found, and you feel yourself forgetting the memory of home.

The home you’ll never return to.