The Memory Chest

By Jenny Kroonstuiver

The discovery of a forgotten memory chest and an exquisite china bell from underneath the floorboards of a recently demolished house in Boulder, Western Australia, leads Susan Robinson on a fascinating search to identify the original owners.

Her investigations take her back to the early 1900s and the life of Katja, a young Croatian woman who finds herself unexpectedly uprooted and thrust into a new and strange life in Western Australia from the age of 11. From Fremantle to Gwalia and Boulder, Susan gradually uncovers the adventures, tragedies, a challenging court case and life experiences of this extraordinary young woman.

The Memory Chest is a story of the resilience and bravery of the women of the Goldfields, as they faced the challenges of living in remote mining towns, the rapid changes of the early 20th century and experienced the impact of a war in Europe. It is a heartwarming story of family, loss and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Sep 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781922912077

Jenny Kroonstuiver

Born in the 1950s, Jenny Kroonstuiver spent her childhood living on pastoral stations firstly in western Queensland and then on the Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia. She trained as a teacher and spent several years teaching in country areas of the Northern Territory and Queensland, before returning to Kalgoorlie in the 1980s. After a short-lived marriage, she raised her four children alone, continuing to work in the broader education sector. From 2004, she took up a role managing the national training system for the Australian meat industry, a role she held until her retirement in 2020. After publishing several family histories and biographies, this is her third novel in the series of the lost towns of the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia.Other novels in the lost towns of the Eastern Goldfields series: The Memory Chest Nod to the Admiral

Book preview

The Memory Chest

Jenny Kroonstuiver

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO Box 4363

Penrith NSW 2750

https://www.indiemosh.com.au/

Copyright 2022 © Jenny Kroonstuiver

All rights reserved

Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Disclaimer

While the characters in this novel are entirely fictitious, many of the events and experiences which affected them are not. Any resemblance to any person or persons living or dead is accidental and unintentional. The author, their agents and publishers cannot be held responsible for any claim otherwise and take no responsibility for any such coincidence.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Also by

Dedication

January 2004

January 2004

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

January 2004

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

January 2004

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

January 2004

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

March 2004

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

May 2004

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

May 2004

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

May 2004

December 2004

Epilogue

December 2004

Author’s note

About the author

Copyright Statement

Also by Jenny Kroonstuiver:

Glimpses of Jean: The story of Jean Zuvela Doda

Winton: The Swann Family story

They came to Glengallan: A family history

Before the West

As I remember it: The Lina Graebner diaries

For Heather

January 2004

Susan Robinson watched as the last wall crashed inwards in a cloud of red dust, leaving just the brick chimney standing like a sentinel above the rubble. With the old weatherboard house flattened, the quarter acre block looked enormous, with just the chimney, the old outdoor dunny and the wizened lower stem of an old grapevine left standing.

The block looks huge, Susan said to her companion, Phillip Madison. For the first time I can really see how the units are going to fit. It’s a pity we had to remove the old gum trees to make way for the buildings, though. There are no trees at all left on the block now, so the new residents are going to have to start from scratch.

I think it’s sad to see these old houses go, he replied. This old miner’s cottage had been here since the early 1900s. It’s a pity it had been locked up and vandalised for so long that the only option was to bulldoze it. Still, I guess that’s progress. This is the fifth development down this end of Burt Street in the last 18 months, and the demand for new housing out this way is continuing to grow. C’mon, let’s move down toward the back so that we can look more closely at the layout of the units. You’ll need to wear your hard hat.

Well, in a way I’m relieved, Susan said, donning a hard hat as they picked their way through the rubble. "If it had been in any better condition, it may have been heritage listed and then I would have had all kinds of problems.

I inherited this block from my father, but I don’t think he ever even visited in all the time he owned it. He bought it very cheaply as an investment property back in the ‘60s and never really knew what to do with it. I think it might have been rented out for a while, but when the gold prices dropped, he couldn’t get a tenant and so he just closed it up and forgot about it.

Well, your timing’s good now, Phillip said. With both gold and nickel prices high at the moment, Kalgoorlie-Boulder is booming, and there’s a continuous demand for housing. This should be a pretty good investment. These old houses were solidly built however – just look at these jarrah floorboards! If you’re interested, I think you could sell these. There’re lots of local craftsmen who are constantly looking for old timber like this, and these boards are all in pretty good condition.

Except for the laundry area where the fire was. It was so lucky that only a small area was burned. They even caught the kids who did it, which evidently was unusual. I was told that many of the vacant houses down this end of Burt Street just burned to the ground. Yes, I like to see old wood reused, so by all means let’s sell the floorboards if we can.

How did they get to the fire so quickly? asked Phillip. Wait, tell me in a minute. I just want to catch Rob before he starts damaging the floors.

Susan watched as Phillip strode across the yard, calling to his building foreman. She saw the two men exchange a brief word, Rob nodding in agreement to something. She looked around the nearly vacant block, feeling the heat radiating from the bare earth. She had arrived in Kalgoorlie-Boulder on the late afternoon flight the previous day, and this was the first time she had even seen the block inherited from her father nearly a year earlier. Coming to this outback Western Australian city in the middle of January would hardly have been her first choice, but it had taken months to make a decision about what to do with the old house, and then even longer to get the council planning permission through, despite it having been a relatively straightforward redevelopment. She had engaged Phillip Madison’s company through a referral from her brother and had met him for the first time the previous evening when he had picked her up from the airport.

Leaving Sydney to check out the building herself had been a spur-of-the-moment decision the previous week. The frustrating slowness of the approval process, plus the desire to meet her contractor face-to-face, had persuaded her to book a flight to Kalgoorlie. She was already on school holidays from the primary school where she had been teaching for the past five years, and after arranging with a neighbour from her small cluster of units to feed her cat, she had headed to Western Australia for the first time in her life. Not only had the trip taken over five hours of flying time, she had been dismayed to find that she had actually flown over the top of Kalgoorlie and had to catch another, smaller plane and do an about-face to get back there. By the time she had finally landed the previous evening, it felt as if she had been travelling for the entire day.

Absently, she brushed sticky flies from her face, wondering vaguely about the people who might have lived in the old house. Phillip had said the house was probably built as a miner’s cottage in about 1910, when Boulder was thriving as a wealthy mining town. There were still remnants of the halcyon days in the buildings at the top of the street, although her first impressions were that the old town had a rather dishevelled look. Phillip had given her a thumbnail overview of the town’s history during the short drive from the airport to the Tower Hotel, where she had booked a room for the four nights she was planning to stay.

Boulder is a bit like the poor cousin to Kalgoorlie, these days, he had told her. When the two towns amalgamated in 1989, most of the services were based in Kalgoorlie and Boulder was more or less forgotten. It’s only because there is a bit of a land shortage that a lot of the old quarter-acre blocks are being targeted for redevelopment now, and Boulder is much cheaper than Kalgoorlie.

It’s hard to believe that there is a land shortage in a place like this! Susan answered. From the air it just seems to stretch on forever, with just a few salt lakes. I have to say that the Super Pit was pretty impressive from up there, though. I never realised it was so big!

Yes, it is. In reality, it has swallowed up many of the old underground mines and even whole towns that started in the Goldfields in the late 1800s, and they became the Golden Mile. If you get a chance, go out to the lookout area of the Super Pit. You can still see some of the old shafts in the walls of the pit. It’s pretty amazing how far underground those early miners went. We still have the occasional old shaft open up at the end of a street or in a backyard.

Susan smiled as she recalled the conversation. Even now she wasn’t sure she believed that last comment. Mind you, she really hadn’t known what to expect from the remote Western Australian town. From her suburban home in Cronulla, south of Sydney, she had known Kalgoorlie-Boulder was a mining town somewhere in WA and knew from her school social studies that it had something to do with the gold rushes. And that was about it. When she discovered that she had inherited a property after her father had died suddenly of a brain tumour just a year ago, both she and her brother had looked askance, trying to fathom what had possessed their widowed father to make the investment in the first place.

She looked upward as a mob of pink and grey galahs swooped overhead in close formation, settling noisily onto the ground of a nearby park. She smiled as she remembered her father’s description of the politicians of the day as a mob of flamin’ galahs – he’d had little patience for politicians of any affiliation and, as far as she knew, he had voted informally for his whole life.

Phillip strode purposefully back to her side, smiling.

Good news, he said. Rob knows a bloke who would be happy to take the jarrah off your hands for about a grand. He can come this evening and lift the floorboards after we’ve cleared off the rubble from the walls and flattened the old dunny, if that’s OK with you."

Yes, that’s fine! Now can you show me how the three units will fit?

They spent the next hour going over the plans and pacing out the block. Susan was a little concerned about being an absentee developer, putting all her trust in this man she had only just met, but as they discussed the development, her confidence gradually grew. Phillip had pointed out several similar developments he had managed as they had driven from Kalgoorlie to Boulder, including the repair work on the old Tattersall’s Hotel, which he was currently managing.

I have a love of the old buildings, he had said. Boulder really has fallen into a lot of disrepair over the years, and every now and then a new owner will get a heritage grant or be prepared to spend a bit of cash restoring one of the old buildings. Problem is, restoration is just so expensive.

Isn’t it ‘Kalgoorlie-Boulder’? asked Susan.

Phillip laughed. Yes, it is, but no one uses the full name. To all the local residents you still just live in either Kalgoorlie or Boulder.

It was not until they left the builders to the demolition and headed back toward Kalgoorlie that Phillip returned to the conversation about the fire.

You were going to tell me how they got to the fire so quickly, he said.

From what I understand, it was just good luck, Susan answered. The kids started it in the early hours of the morning and, normally, no-one would have seen it. But the woman across the road had a new baby and was up for the early morning feed, and not only saw the kids racing off and snapped them on her phone, but also saw the flickers of flames. She roused her husband and he came across with their garden hose. Fortunately, the old tap was still working and he had most of the fire out before the fire brigade even arrived.

Wow, that was quick thinking! Good neighbours!

Yes, I wrote to them to say thanks, but I never heard back. Now, rather than go straight back to the hotel, can you please take me to where I can hire a car? I think I’d like to have a look around, and there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of public transport.

Yes, sure thing, Phillip replied. Back when your house was built there were trams everywhere, but these days you’re lucky to find even a bus. If you have a car, do you want to make your own way out to the site tomorrow morning? I have a few things I need to do first, and it would be easier if we could just meet there.

January 2004

After hiring a car, eating lunch at an odd place in Hannan Street called Monty’s, and then spending a couple of hours at Phillip’s offices going over selections of building materials and kitchen fittings, Susan set off to explore. She had made sure the car she hired was air-conditioned and was grateful for the coolness as the temperature seemed to just keep climbing, well into the 40s by the time she had finished lunch. The overhead fans at Monty’s had just seemed to push the hot air around, and she resolved then and there that she would do as much sight-seeing as she could from the car.

Kalgoorlie-Boulder was a curious mixture of the old and the new. The incredibly wide streets amazed her, as did the remnants of old facades above shops that were more modern. The faded lettering from bygone shops gave off an air of nostalgia, even if they looked a little incongruous. She smiled as she passed a Dome café, housed in an old two-storey building with ‘Exchange 1898 Buildings’ written in relief into the façade.

So many of the old hotels seemed to have been restored and had wide-open verandahs overlooking the street below. In fact, she thought to herself, she had never seen so many hotels in a single street! Some carried banners advertising ‘skimpy tonight’, leaving her rather puzzled and wondering if maybe it was some sort of fish dish.

Susan decided to take Phillip’s advice and visit the Super Pit lookout. As she left the well-preserved streets of Kalgoorlie and headed along Boulder Road toward Boulder, she found herself agreeing with the ‘poor cousin’ characterisation Phillip had used to describe Kalgoorlie’s twin town: so many of the old buildings on Burt Street seemed to have fallen into disrepair, or had simply been boarded up. It was hard to imagine the street as a thriving, busy shopping thoroughfare.

The Super Pit was nothing like she had ever imagined. The lookout where tourists gathered offered a bird’s-eye view into a massive pit with contoured walls, two-toned in grey and beige by the afternoon sun. As the guide reeled off facts and figures about the production and longevity of the pit, Susan looked for the old shafts that Phillip had mentioned and was amazed at the small openings in the walls of the massive open pit. They looked barely big enough for a small man to squeeze through.

They say that the Super Pit is visible even from the moon, claimed the guide, and Susan believed him. Looking down as she had landed the day before, the pit seemed to diminish the town. Even now, the massive trucks travelling up the earthen ramps seemed to be miniatures.

Taking the guide’s advice, she finished off the day’s touring with a visit to the Museum of the Goldfields, overshadowed by a large orange structure with the rather odd name of ‘poppet head’. Although never much of a lover of museums, Susan nonetheless found the eclectic memorabilia fascinating. Her visit coincided with a temporary display of local photography, and she was taken aback by an amazing image of a lightning strike over the well-lit city.

That’s one of our most famous photos, the woman in the gift shop told her. When it was taken, just a few years ago, it became famous worldwide in a matter of days. It’s available in limited-edition prints, if you are interested. It’s by far our best seller.

No, it’s a bit expensive for me, smiled Susan. Instead, she bought a photographic record of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, and at the last minute added another book to her purchases, a second photographic book titled In Old Kalgoorlie.

These are the photographs of Jack Dwyer, the assistant said, holding up her second purchase. He had a photography studio down near the Palace Hotel in the early days, and this is the most wonderful collection. It really gives a sense of what it was like to live here around the early 1900s.

Susan thanked the woman and returned to her car. It was getting towards dusk and she was ready for a shower and an early evening meal. The time difference between the west and east coasts was taking some getting used to and she found herself yawning, even though the sun had not yet fully set.

Just as she turned into the Tower Hotel car park, her phone rang, with an unfamiliar number.

Hello? she answered hesitantly.

Ms Robinson? Susan? It’s Rob here, the builder at your house.

Oh yes. Hello, Rob!

Er … I’m here with my mate Joe and we are pulling up the floorboards at your house. We’ve found something I think you should see. Do you think you could come over? I know it’s the other side of town, but it would be best if you could come.

Of course, I can come right away. I’m leaving now, Susan said, amused by the fact that ‘the other side of town’ was still quicker to reach than most suburbs in Sydney.

Twenty minutes later she arrived at the block to find the two men loading floorboards into an old truck. Rob came forward to greet her, introducing her to Joe, a wizened man whose craggy face displayed a lifetime of hard work, drinking and smoking. Joe could have been any age between 50 and 80 and seemed almost part of the landscape of his surroundings.

It’s over here, Rob said, going to the front of the truck and opening the door. He reached in and pulled out a wooden box.

We found this in a hollowed-out section under the floorboards in what would have been the old bedroom, he said as he lowered it to the ground. It’s not locked, but, essentially, it’s yours, so we felt we should call you. We haven’t opened it, but we’d love to know what’s inside.

Susan looked in amazement at the remarkably well-preserved old box. It was about 60cm long, half as wide and about 20 cm deep, made of old timber that had once been oiled and still retained remnants of a deep lustre, despite having been placed in an earthy tomb. On each corner, protective brass guards were still in place, matching the hinges and handle brackets. A piece of worked leather hung from one end, evidently the remains of a handle.

It’s beautifully made, Joe said, You don’t see craftmanship like this these days. Are you going to look inside?

Susan carefully tried to lift the lid, but it remained stuck.

Hang on, I’ve got a can of WD40 in the cabin. I’ll spray it on the hinges to loosen them up a bit, Joe said.

A few minutes later, Susan tried the lid again and this time it slowly creaked open. The leather straps supporting the lid had long since perished, and she held it open and peered inside at an odd collection of items. The remnants of a red velvet lining lay tattered on top of the objects.

It looks like some sort of keepsake box, she said. Look, this looks like part of a child’s wooden train set. There is a bundle of old letters, and some old photographs. Oh, my goodness, look at this!

Susan lifted a photograph of a rather severe looking young couple, obviously dressed in their Sunday best. Across the bottom of the photo was the scrawled signature of ‘J.J. Dwyer’.

I just bought a book of his photos this afternoon! she exclaimed. Wow, this must have been taken back in the early 1900s. The woman in these photos seems to be the same, but the men are different. And there are five children. I wonder who they were? And look, here is a photo of the same woman with another woman under a sign. It looks like a café – I can’t quite read the words … ‘Blue’ something. Could that be ‘Goose’? She passed the photograph to Rob.

Yes, I think it is, but I’ve never heard of a place of that name in either Kalgoorlie or Boulder. How strange, he said, handing back the photograph.

And this one seems to be of a hotel, and look at the old car in the front. Those people look very well dressed, and I love the driving hat that lady is wearing. This one doesn’t look as if it’s in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

That’s an old Renault, Rob said, looking over her shoulder. That looks as if it somewhere in Perth to me. There’s a name on the awning – ‘Klepac’. That should give you some clues about who the people are.

Look at this old linen, it is so beautifully embroidered, Susan said. And it looks as if it was embroidered by hand as well. It seems to have been remarkably well protected inside this box. It’s all a bit yellowed with age, but there are no holes or signs of insects having got to it. This seems to be a tablecloth, and there are a heap of doilies as well. What a treasure to find!

Careful, there’s something inside that, Joe said as she went to lift the final item from the box. It looks like that piece of material has been used to protect something.

I think it is an antimacassar, said Susan as she carefully lifted out the faded material and began unwrapping the object it protected. Ohhh, look, it’s a bell!

The three stared in amazement at the exquisite miniature bell which had been wrapped inside the antimacassar. It was made of very fine china, and Susan slowly turned it, taking in the faded, painted images of a hillside village, a whitewashed church and a sea at the foot of a cliff. It made a delicate tinkling sound, like nothing she had ever heard before.

This is just amazing, she said. I wonder who these people were, and why they left the box behind. These were obviously important memories. Thank you so much for calling me. I will take this with me and see if I can find out who these people were. How exciting!

Is there anything else in the box? asked Joe.

Just this, answered Susan, holding up a knobbed object. It looks like some sort of rock.

Let me see, Joe said, turning it over and examining it closely. I think it might be a piece of coral. It has lost all of its colour, but the texture seems to be coral.

Susan returned to her hotel, excited by the find and keen to explore the contents more thoroughly. Suddenly the old town had thrown up a mystery and had just become a whole lot more interesting. She resolved to find out as much as she could about the history of the old house before she left.

We have no trumpery gimcracks for sale; no accidental ornaments; no show done up with gilt paper; and visitors are all struck with the practical exhibits showing the staple products of the country, their solidarity and usefulness.

Mr HW Venn, The West Australian Commissioner at the Paris Exhibition.

The Collie Miner, Sat, 11 Aug 1900

Chapter 1

The girl was motionless, lying face down on a large rock, her alert eyes fixed on the water below. One slim hand reached down to the water, momentarily catching the tips of the swell as it swirled gently around the rock. The gentle breeze lifted Katja’s thin skirts to reveal thin, tanned legs and small feet, hardened from days of clambering over the rocks to reach the rock pools. She stared, peering past the tips of the swell that glistened as it caught the sun, deeper into the brilliant blue of the shadow below and the glint of the corals lying just beneath the surface. The fish had not moved for some time but she was sure it was still there, lurking beneath the hidden crevices of the submerged rock. For many days she had lain in wait at this very spot, her patience tested and her determination growing. She would see it, as she had once before – a momentary flash of brilliant colours as it glided past to the larger rock.

How she wished she could lie in wait on the larger rock, King Rock. Looking upward from Baby Rock, she stared at the towering height of King Rock, standing tall, surrounded by baby rocks, and with a perfect ledge from which she knew she could outwait the fish. She often saw the older boys from the village jumping from that ledge and wrestling to be first to the top, to be the king. King Rock was whiter than the others, with deep, weather-worn crevices, full of promises of hidden treasures. Looking down again she stared at the glistening water between the two rocks, and then back at King Rock, enticingly out of reach, further than she could jump without getting wet. Her mother had forbidden her to get wet.

She sighed, stretched and jumped lightly to a sitting position, dangling her toes into the water. Let the fish win today. She had more important things to consider. Uncle Michael was coming, bringing his new wife. Uncle Michael, from Australia. Turning, she stared back across to the narrow beach, and the string of rocks which formed a watery path of stepping stones between the shore and King Rock.

The white limestone buildings set into the steep hillside rising above the shore were dazzling in the morning sun. Narrow stone paths meandered past each building, past Grandfather’s house where she knew he would be sitting on the rough wooden bench under his favourite olive tree, smoking his pipe and staring out to sea, watching for the barge from the mainland. Then past Nazor’s house, with its bright geraniums providing brilliant splashes of colour; past Ristics’ house where the five children were finishing their morning chores, their high-pitched laughter and tinkling voices carrying staccato-like on the gentle breeze.

Her eyes moved onwards and upward to her mother’s house. Even from Baby Rock the crumbling lack of repair was evident. Large cracks were opening up where the water ran, and the limestone wash was faded and peeling. There in the dark window beside the open door, she knew her mother would be watching. She often used to watch for the return of the ferry, each time hoping her husband would be aboard, returned from another journey as a stoker on the cargo ships. She watched for his swaggering leap as the ferry neared the small jetty – too impatient to wait for Mr Nazor to throw out the rope. By the time the rope was tight on the cleats, he would be halfway up the hill, whistling and calling, with promises of gifts and surprises.

The news of his death from pneumonia had come 18 months ago, brought by an officious-looking policeman from Sibenik. Visits from a police officer always meant bad news to the quiet Zlarin island community, and at the first sighting of the tightly buttoned figure standing at the helm of the barge, word spread quickly so that by the time the barge had pulled into the wharf, a grim, silent group waited for the inevitable tidings. Her mother, always fearful when her husband was away, had been one of the first on the wharf, and her emotion-filled wail had brought Katja running down the hillside. The details were scanty, but at the same time well known. So often the stokemen, eager to cool off after the heat of a ship’s engine room, sought relief on the icy decks and succumbed to pneumonia.

Now she just watched for Katja, knowing the girl would be out on Baby Rock, trying to outwait a fish.

Katja’s eyes moved further along the beach, past the small store to the jetty, with its piles of fishing pots awaiting the arrival of the ferry to the mainland. It was not yet nine-o’clock in the morning, but for most of the island’s men, the day’s work was half done. The catch was in, the boats cleaned and the pots loaded, and the men were repairing nets as they waited. She could hear snatches of gruff conversation, as they finished the morning chores with the ease and grace of centuries of practice.

An uncle from Australia. She had heard tales of her father’s younger brother, the dashing young quarryman who had made the trip across the Adriatic Sea nearly 15 years ago as a young teenager. The news of his impending visit had come with the barge three weeks ago. He was bringing his wife, an Englishwoman whom he had met in Australia, and this, more than anything had been the cause of much speculation among the island women, as rarely had