The Denniston Rose by Jenny Pattrick Page B

turned against him. So withered inside, you know, he can’t talk to a friend or ask for help.
    ‘So that’s why your father take to the drink. Ease the pain. The arm pain and the lost fortune.’
    ‘But what about Scobies?’ says Rose.

    There is a silence while Con the Brake looks into the fire and Mrs C. Rasmussen takes up an iron poker, wrought with a sailing ship on the handle, and stirs the red coals to bring them to life.
    ‘Ah well,’ says Con the Brake at last, ‘I wasn’t there, sweetheart.’
    ‘Did my father kill a Scobie?’
    ‘It was an accident. So I hear.’
    ‘But why, then?’
    ‘Why what, sweetheart?’
    ‘If it was an accident, why do they shout at us?’
    ‘Well now,’ rumbles Con the Brake, looking to his wife for help. ‘Those English miners are careful men, Rose. They don’t believe in accidents.’
    Rose thinks about this. ‘Why not?’
    Mrs C. Rasmussen sighs. ‘Now that is the end of your story, Rose. This man will walk you over to your home.’
    Rose trots out into the dark readily enough, one small hand engulfed in Con’s warm paw. Bella Rasmussen’s heart breaks, though, to see her go.

The Miners’ Curse
    WHAT HAPPENED, ON that day of the picnic, as every mother’s son and every father’s daughter on the Hill knows but none will tell Rose, is this.
    Underground, miners work as pairs. It’s always the case. Josiah Scobie and his brother Arnold are a pair. He and Arnold have always worked as mates since boys. Mary Scobie doesn’t like it.
    â€˜If there’s an accident you could lose two in the family,’ she says.
    â€˜Or save both,’ is Josiah’s opinion. ‘We know to an inch where the other is and how the seam is cracking. I trust him.’
    The other brother, Frank, not so fussy about his mate, changes from time to time for variety.
    â€˜I’ll end up knowing more jokes than me brothers. And meeting a few more sisters maybe!’ he laughs. Frank is the youngest of the brothers, and sunny natured where the others are serious. Frank canwhistle to make you think a forest full of birds is on your doorstep, which brings tears to some eyes, up here on the Hill, where no bird sings. And he’s a good musician, like most of the Scobies.
    The day of the accident he’s working with stocky Peter Fogarty — not family but a good English miner. You’d never catch one of the English miners choosing one of the ‘volunteers’ as mate. Frank and Peter are joking about girls, or the lack of them, and laying plans to ride down the Incline next Saturday to see who might have arrived in Waimang. Frank is twenty-eight, a full ten years younger than his brother Josiah, but he can hew as fast, despite the chatter, and is known as a top miner. Each pair is working on a separate pillar of good hard coal, a distance apart but close enough to run for help if needed. There is a certain feeling of competition in the air as to which will get their pillar down first.
    To understand the accident it is necessary to picture the mine. Imagine, then, a thick slab of coal lying between layers of stone, as a wedge of meat lies between slices of bread in a sandwich. But in the case of the coal at Denniston the slab is vast — spread wider than a town and thicker than the height of a man, sometimes two men. This great slab of coal must be got out cleanly, without collapsing the rock roof in on the miners.
    So first you drive a bord — a tunnel about ten foot wide — to be your haulage line. In you go through the coal, extracting as you go, and putting up timber sets, one each side of the tunnel as props, and one across the top to support the roof. When you have gone a chain in, you cut across at right angles for a chain and then drive another bord in from outside. That’s your air supply. The flow of air is crucial in mining; you must have multiple shafts so fresh air can be drawn through.
    So. Now you go back to the main