Short story based in 1897, loosely inspired by the events in 'Picnic at Hanging Rock', and by a true story from the region. I pay my respects to the indigenous people of the Margaret River Region and acknowledge that the land this story is based on has always been, and always will belong to them.
Western Australia, 1897.
“Have you another candle?” Florence asks, and Alice quickly hands her one.
The two of them shone their small flickering lights around the chamber. Stalactites hung down from the ceilings, and great stalagmites grew up all around them. It is like some great underground forest. The candle light flickers on great piles of gleaming crystals. Florence and Alice, their jaws open in awe, carefully pick their way into the centre of the cavern. Great pillars of joined up stalagmites support the ceiling, and beneath them a crystal clear lake softly bubbled over the cave floor
“I knew this place was magical.” Says Alice triumphantly, looking glowingly at her companion’s awe. “Isn’t it marvellous Florence?”
“It’s truly magnificent.” Florence agrees, as she peers closely at the quartz that lines the cave wall. “Look over there Alice, there is another room.” Alice follows Florence’s pointing hand, and there is indeed an opening to a similar cavernous spectacle. A small natural bridge is formed over the water that runs into the next cavern and the girls carefully tread over it. Alice’s candle burns down to the base, and goes out, but they soon realise how well their eyes have adjusted. In the water some luminous substance glows, making the shadows dance about on the ceiling like great puppets.
Enraptured the girls make their way silently through series of cavernous rooms, following the bubbling water that slowly moved along the sandy bottom.
“Do you think that’s the way out?” Florence asks suddenly, pointing to a chink of light a hundred yards away.
“It could be? I cannot recall if caves like this have multiple entrances or only the one.” Alice replies.
“If only you had been paying attention in geology lessons.” Florence jokes, playfully nudging her companion's arm.
“If only.” Alice agrees. They sit in silence, watching the shadows dance, gazing at the towering creations of nature. The silence hums. Alice takes Florence’s hand, wrapping her slender fingers in her own. “Do you reckon that this is God’s work?” She ask suddenly, breaking the silence.
“Of course.” Florence turns to her, confused. “Why wouldn’t it be? He made everything.”
“But surely if He made something like this He would tell us about it. We would know, everyone in Laceyton would know!” She pauses. “It looks like some great cathedral of nature, it even smells like a cathedral.” Florence smiles agreeingly. “But it feels different.” She bites her lip. “Older somehow, more ancient, more magical.” She shakes her head, embarrassed for bring it up. But Florence grips her hand tightly.
“I know what you mean. It’s as if this is a church to the Old Gods. But I would have imagined it, oh, more malicious I guess.”
“But it’s not.”
“It is serene.” Florence feels guilty suddenly. “And that’s why God must have created it.”
The chink of light, which looked like a trick of the eye from so far away, does seem to be an exit. The girls clamber over fallen rocks towards it. Alice rushes on ahead, taking the candle off Florence. Florence waits for her to call her, and stares solemnly across the beautiful lake.
“Here, come on!” Florence turns and follows Alice, hauling her skirts above her ankles, and clambering over the rocks. Her petticoat catches on a pointy stalagmite, and rips. Florence hears a rip, but doesn’t notice the scrap of duck-egg blue fabric she leaves behind.
Alice pokes her head out of a hole in the ceiling.
“Here look, let me give you a hand.” She says, placing the candle at her side and reaching to help Florence pull herself out. “I’ve found a way out, follow me.”
The path goes steeply upwards towards the light. At the end of the tunnel the girls see that the light is filtering through the hanging roots of a tree. It looks like hanging ropes for the underworld, thinks Florence, as Alice pushes the roots aside with all her might, getting dirt on her face. The two girls climbed out in the open air and felt the sunshine warm their faces. When they blinked away the darkness they realised, with horror that they had arrived in what appeared to a sunken forest. Around them tall trees reached up into the sky, but surrounding this forest were huge walls of stone, great cliff faces with greying broken stalagmites, over 200 foot into the air. The sky is framed on all sides by these towering walls.
“How do we get out of here?” Alice says in a shrill panicking voice. She runs across the mossy ground, hitching her skirts up and places her hand on the stone wall. She looks up at the towering cliff face and her heart sinks.
“We will have to go back the way we came.” Says Florence.
“But we will be so late, oh I am so sorry for not listening to you Florence, you are always right.” Alice sits down on the log beside Florence and starts sobbing.
“Oh! Stop that! Don’t you worry, we will find a way out. Come,” Florence says, taking Alice hand, “Let’s go back to that tree.”
Alice, still tearfully, takes Florence’s hand and the two of them head towards the tall gum tree which had the hanging roots into the cave. But to their horror when they reappear at the cave entrance, they realise that they movements have disrupted the soil, and it has collapsed, blocking the entrance for good. Alice bursts into fresh sobs.
“How ever are we going to get out?” She wails.
Florence sits down beside her and wraps her arms around her companion’s doubled-up, shivering frame.
“Look there must be a way out.” Florence says quietly, taking out her pocket watch from around her neck and checking the time. It was past three o’clock and they needed to be back before four as that was when the girls were supposed to packing up their picnics and heading back to the township and the boarding house. They needed to get before four or they would be noticed that they were missing and would be deep in trouble. Florence turns over her golden pocket watch and rubs the faded initials on the back for luck. The initials belonged to her parents, who died when she was young. Her brother had placed it around her neck when she boarded the boat from England and told her it would bring her luck. She looked up at the canopy of trees and the blue sky far above. And then suddenly, she saw an animal appear from the forest, jump onto a fallen tree, scamper up it, then jump further onto a rock platform, from there the decline of the mountain side wasn’t quite as steep and he was able to scale the cliff-face with ease.
“Alice!” Florence shook her violently. “Look, look over there!”
“What is it?” Alice asks, lifting her tear-stained head from out of her arms.
“Look over there! A fox or something, he climbed that tree, and look where he is, he found a little path up the cliff face! Look!”
Alice jumps up, hurriedly wiping her tears away.
“You’re right! By goodness you’re right! Come on, let’s follow him.” She scrambles to her feet and takes off, running through the dense forest.
“Watch out for snakes!” Calls a fearful Florence, before taking after her. The two girls run towards the fallen tree the animal has climbed. A huge pine, rotting at the roots, fell across the cavernous sunken forest, with a large part of it resting on a rocky outcrop someway up the cliff.
“Wait for us!” Calls Alice as the animal disappears over the lip of the collapsed cave and vanishes into the bush. “What was that?” She asks Florence.
“I thought it was a fox?”
“They don’t have foxes in Laceyton, Florence, don’t be so obtuse.”
“A dog maybe?”
A lizard scuttles across the forest floor in front of them, making them both jump. “They do have snakes though.” Florence warns, as they push through the dead bracken and fallen tree branches. Here the grass is long, and Florence keeps getting her skirts caught on brambles, tearing at her dress. She is glad she had worn her most sturdy boots, even though they were very damp from their exploration of the cave. One of the brambles whips up suddenly, and scratches painfully at Florence’s arm, and droplets of blood well to the surface. Florence cries out in pain, and Alice stops, and turns round to ask her if she is okay.
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
But Alice stops, bends over and tears a strip from her petticoat. She wraps he strip of fabric around Florence’s arm and ties it firmly.
“That’ll have to do. At least it will stop the dirt.” She says calmly. “Come on.”
The two girls, Alice leading the way, carefully climb onto the sturdy trunk of the tree. They walk in single file, balancing as they make their way on this makeshift bridge towards the rocky outcrop. Halfway across, with the forest floor dangerously far beneath them, Florence hears Alice gasp, and teeter. She slips. Florence watches in horror as Alice falls, and then catches herself, handing onto the trunk for dear life. Florence rushes forward and hauls her up. Alice is shaken, but fine.
“That was a close call!” She says, a little too cheerily. Both of their hearts are pounding, but they continue, this time on hands and knees, and carefully, along the tree trunk. In a few yards they each the rocky outcrop and help each other up from the tree trunk, scrambling onto the rocky platform.
They follow the winding path that the animal took, climbing steeply along the cliff face. The wind rushes in their faces, turning their ears pink. Alice’s loose hair blows into her face, and even Florence’s tight plaits have all but escaped. Soon enough, and without further incidents, the girls scramble over the lip of the sunken forest cliff edge. They laugh with relief, a bubbling laugh which escapes their lips and follows them as they run down the hill towards the creek. Alice, it turns out, was right. They did arrive on the northern face of the hill, near the bottom, and from here they followed the creek round. They hop across the stepping stones, splashing and soaking the bottoms of their skirts and their sturdy lace-up boots.
“Watch this!” Calls Alice, and takes a running jump across the creek, landing in the muddy patch on the other side. She wipes her hair out of her face, leaving a muddy streak, which sets Florence off in a fit of giggles. She crosses the stream along a fallen log, and joins Alice. Taking out her handkerchief, Florence dips it into the water, and gently wipes the mud off Alice’s face.
“You had a hanky this whole time?” Alice asks incredulously.
“Yes?” Says Florence, confused.
“So I really didn’t need to rip my petticoat for that!” Alice laughs, gesturing to the makeshift bandage on Florence’s arm. She doubles over laughing, and Florence slowly joins in.
Florence takes out her pocket watch. They are late. They hurry back, splashing along the side of the creek, and creep up behind the picnic area where the girls are demurely folding checked blankets and packing bottles of ginger ale into the big baskets. Alice grabs Florence’s hand, and squeezes it tight, as they hide behind a big tree, waiting until the Mistress’ back is turned. Alice comes close behind, and Florence can feel her warm breath on the back of her neck, as she whispers in her ear.
“We has our own little adventure didn’t we.”
“You call that little?” Florence asks, turning around.
“An adventure then, just us two.”
***
They didn’t get into trouble, no one had even noticed they were gone. They all piled onto the trap along with the baskets and the other girls, and the vicar’s son smiled shyly and whistled giddy-up to the two old carthorses that pulled them. The horse plodded down the winding path into the township, red dust thrown up into the air by the big creaky wheels.
The next day, a Sunday, Florence and Alice put on their best summer dresses, tied their hair neatly with their duck-egg-blue ribbons, and went down to the church. After the service, Alice led Florence into the garden where an old aboriginal woman sat bent over the flowerbed. Alice undid her sleeve buttons and rolled them up to her elbow and kneeled next to Mrs Kehoe. They greeted each other like old friends, Mrs Kehoe kissing the younger girl on the cheek.
“This is Florence, Mrs Kehoe, the one I told you about.”
“Ah!” Mrs Kehoe got up, and cradled Florence face in her muddy hands. “Darling Florence! Come and help me with these bushes.” Florence smiled, rubbed the soil off her face, rolled her sleeves up and sat down on the other side of Mrs Kehoe. The three of them carefully planted the seedlings into the garden as Florence and Alice told Mrs Kehoe about their adventure. She seemed pleased that they had discovered the paintings made by her ancestors, but even more curious about the animal that led them out of the strange sunken forest.
“That’s the dingo spirit girls, you have been blessed by him.”
“It was a dingo?” Asked Alice excitedly.
“Of sorts.” Said Mrs Kehoe, and would say no more on the subject.
The three of them didn’t see the vicar, who, on leaving the church, saw his gardener being helped by two girls from the boarding house. He smiled in surprise and ducked out of the hot sunshine into the leafy promenade towards the vicarage.
“You need to go see Mrs Bussell at Wallcliffe,” Said Mrs Kehow, handing Florence a small trowel. “She, back then in the ‘60s I believe, was a one Miss Frances Lacey, sixteen years old, and quite a beauty. Pass me that lavender there please Miss Alice.” She takes the small plant and buries it carefully in the fresh soil. “Mrs Bussell might have something interesting to say about that cave you said you discovered. I dare say no one else has heard of the place."
A week later Florence and Alice drew up in the driveway of Wallcliffe House, a grand estate on the outside of the township. It had a long drive, with trees planted either side of the driveway. It was fenced with a smartly painted white fence, that was covered in red dust from the driveway. Kangaroos nibbled on the grass on either side of the fence. The big house had a large wraparound deck, where Frances Bussell was waiting, wrapped in a checked shawl against the early evening breeze. The girls jumped out of the cart, thanked the driveway and stepped onto the deck. They shook hands with Mrs Bussell who invited them in for tea.
Mrs Bussell, an older, frail-looking woman, was part of the big family who founded Laceytown almost a hundred years ago. Above her mantlepiece was a frame photograph of her family, standing outside this very house, when it was first built.
“That was me.” She says, pointing to a happy looking girl of about the same age as the girls sotting in front of her, in riding habit. “I had just come back from rounding up the cattle, and hadn’t had time to change into my best as grandmother bustled us all into the photo. That was a few weeks before I found the cave.” She poured the tea with a shaking hand, clutching her shawl to her shoulder so the dangling bits didn’t fall into the sugar bowl.
Florence took the pretty rose-patterned cup off her host and carefully used the silver tongs to place a single lump of fine white sugar into her tea. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Alice trying to hide her inky sleeve as she stirred her tea.
“You said you wanted to know about the caves, was it Miss Alice?” She pauses and looks carefully at the girls. “Nobody believed me. After a while I started to doubt if I had ever seen anything down there, as if I had imagined it all.”
As the girls drank their tea in silence they listened to Mrs Bussel talk. She told them about one summers day, in 1867, thirty years ago, when she was just sixteen, she was helping her brothers look for lost cattle that had broken through a fence and wandered off their farm. She spent hours fruitlessly tracking through the bush, until suddenly her horse came to a stop, almost throwing her off. She tried to push him forward, but the horse refused to take a step forward, she dismounted and looked carefully. There, not more than three feet away was the edge of the cliff. Below Frances the sunken forest, untouched, grew out of the belly of the earth. Tying her horse to a tree nearby, Frances Lacey wriggled her way onto a rocky outcrop near the top of the cliff. From here she could see deep into the cavern, and just about make out the great broken stalagmites and stalactites by the entrance to the cave. Without a rope to climb down further, or a lamp to enter into what seemed to her to be a wondrous cavern, Frances gloomily turned home, riding her horse as fast as she could, any thought of the lost cattle far behind. On returning to the farm she excitedly told her father, Alfred, about the sunken forest and the caves which might lay beneath it. The next day Alfred sent out a party of climbers, armed with ropes and lamps, in search of the place Frances found. But there was no trace of it.
“Until now I suppose.” Finished Frances thoughtfully, taking a sip of her now cold tea.
“Mrs Bussel, that sounds exactly like the caves Florence and I found.” Alice says, placing her teaspoon on the table with such a clatter that the tabby cat sat in Mrs Bussel’s lap jumped off and hid behind the curtain. “They were truly magnificent.” Alice and Florence described the caves to Mrs Bussel who listened keenly.
“If that is true,” She said when they had finished. “Then it must be the only of its kind in the region, perhaps in the whole country.” She stands, and goes to the window, where the afternoon sunlight is pouring in through the lacy curtains. “Your story confirms my tale.” She says finally. “ I must send out another search party at the soonest notice. You girls, if you are happy to do so, can lead them through the way you went, that way you can find it much more easily I hope.”
They happily agree to help, although Florence secretly feels that she would rather not enter those caves again for a long time.
“I’ll write to my brother, Charles, shortly and get him to gather a troupe of cavers. He will be joyous with the news, he is on the board of trustees for the caves in the region. It’s quite a profitable business you understand.” She says knowingly to the girls. They feel uncomfortable, remembering the silence, the calm beauty of the caves unknown to everyone. Their own secret world. Florence knows Alice is thinking the same thing, that maybe they should have never have told anyone about what they found.
As they are leaving, the driver helping them up onto the cart, Mrs Bussel calls from the veranda.
“You girls didn’t happen to see the dingo, did you?”
Western Australia, 1897.
Florence scrambled up the boulder, hoisting her skirts over her ankles with one hand, and gripping tight to the rock with the other. The cool mountain wind made her face flushed. Her straw boater hat hung loose, slung over her back, and tendrils of her red hair stuck to the back of her neck. From up on the hill Florence could see the whole valley, almost to the Southern Ridge. A large outcrop of rock towered above her. In the distance she could see red dust from the township, rising up from the carriages and motor cars, but she couldn’t hear them. Here it was peaceful, just the rustling of wind through the leaves, and the chirps and squarks of birds.
She tied her hat firmly back on and looked down the path they had come up, the boulders forming natural stepping stones up the hill. The path was littered with fallen leaves and pieces of torn eucalyptus bark. Late morning sunlight fell through the trees, heavy and warm on Florence’s flushed face. Lizards too sat sunning themselves, lazily flicking their tongues at flies and bugs. A red Admiral Butterfly floated past Florence’s face and alit gently on a plant with bright blue flowers and green globular fruits which hung like pearls off an elderly aristocrat’s neck.
At the bottom of the path, where they had left the others and their red-checked picnic blankets, was a whispering creek, named Hangman’s Creek. Florence could hear the faint shouts of laughter, and splashes as the girls skimmed stones into the water. Making sure her hat was firmly tied back on, and her boots laced up, Florence paused to scratch at a bite on her ankle, and then marched up the path.
“Alice?” She called when she came across a dead end in the path, a sheer rock face above her, with only a narrow gap leading into a dark cave. “Alice?” She called again, with more urgency.
“Come on, I am in here!” The other girl called back, her voice echoing through the cave. Florence followed the voice, stepping apprehensively into the gloom, brushing aside spider’s webs and silently preying to the Virgin Mother that none of them were venomous. The roof of the cavern was low, and Florence tall, so she had to crouch down, running her hands along the damp stone to guide her. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, after the bright morning sunlight on the mountain. The air in the cavern was stale, hot, and humid, and it made Florence’s skin crawl.
“Where are you?” She called out to Alice, who replied, sounding closer now.
“Just through here, come on!”
Florence’s ankles ached as the heel of her boots wobbled while she scrambled over the rocks. Ahead the tunnel narrowed further, and Florence thought perhaps she would have to crawl, but she ahead, she could see a shaft of light coming from above. She hurried towards it. Above her the tunnel went straight out into the open, an opening just bigger than her. The tunnel continued into the gloom, narrow and full of cobwebs.
“Are you coming already?” Alice said impatiently from above Florence. Florence squinted into the light. Above the sky was a fierce, cold, blue. But it was very high up, at least double her height. Water dripped steadily from the opening, where it pooled at her feet, a clear puddle which ran into a small stream that ran downhill into the tunnel.
Florence put her hand to the cold stone. The walls were damp, and it soaked through her white glove as she searched for a way up. There. A series of notches in the stone, shoulder width apart, leading up to the opening. Florence tugged her damp gloves off and held them securely with her teeth. Placing her feet firmly in the notches Florence pulled herself up the wall and through the opening into the warm air.
“Give us a hand would ya?” She called to her companion, hauling herself, unaided, onto the warm rock platform, but Alice was not paying the slightest bit of attention.
The dark-haired girl is looking at the expansive view of the valley, stretching all the way to the Southern Ridge. The Hangman’s Creek curls through the bush land and forests of the valley, a silent, silver snake of light. Alice’s boots lay discarded, her bare feet balancing on the warm boulder. Her hat is askew, her plaits are loose and her gloves somehow misplaced between the creek and the rocky outcrop. Her face is flushed and she smiles absently, turning to Florence.
“There you are. What took you so long?” Florence starts to defends herself but Alice moves on. “Isn’t it simply marvellous? Look at that view!”
The mountain air is bitingly cold, but the rock is warm. The girls lie down in the sun, their legs dangling off the edge of the boulder. Alice gently unties the ribbons around Florence’s neck and takes off her hat.
“Let the sun get to those pretty freckles of yours.” Alice murmurs, brushing aside Florence’s red curls, as Florence protests quietly. They lie in silence, feeling the stone beneath them. It is smooth, all the rough edges worn away by the elements, and warmed by the sun.
“Like some great dragon…” Alice suggests as they watch the clouds drifting across the sky, while Florence believes it’s like riding a horse bareback.
Florence complains that they should have brought something to eat, if they were going to trek so far away from the others, or at least some water or ginger ale, but Alice suggests it would have given away their plan.
“And anyway, it’s much nicer just the two of us.”
“Our own little adventure.”
***
A cool wind picks up, dragging with it a swirl of red dust. Florence awakes. The morning sun had sunk into a warm afternoon. Alice is sat with her back against the smooth bark of a tall gum that grows between the boulders. She is reading a small paperback, and looks up when Florence casts a shadow over her page.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Oh not too long - an hour.” Alice confirms after consulting her pocket watch. She slides the watch and her book into her pockets, and reaches out a hand to Florence.
“We had better get back.” Florence takes Alice’s warm hand and pulls her to her feet.
“We shan’t be missed just yet, don’t you fret.” She grins mischievously, her pretty face lighting up. “And anyway, we’ve barely had an adventure!”
Florence tugs on Alice’s plaits playfully.
“Been inspired by Lewis Caroll have we?” She jokes, gesturing to Alice’s pocket where her book is. “I apologise for falling asleep while you were reading. Where did we get to?”
“The chapter where the little mouse is drowning in Alice’s tears.”
“Oh how sad!” Exclaims Florence, quite upset by the prospect. “I only remember Alice falling down the rabbit hole and finding herself in that strange room.”
“I’ll catch you up, don’t worry yourself.” Says Florence's own Alice, bending down to put her boots back on. “Come on, let us go this way.”
“But that is the opposite way to the way we came.” Florence sounds concerned.
“Oh come on, Miss Compass, that’s part of the fun! And anyway, I want to see if there’s any more of those paintings in this cave.”
“Paintings?”
“Did you not see them?”
Florence hadn’t, and so Alice explained, as they made their way off the boulder towards the west slopes of the hill. In the tunnel that the girls had entered through there were many paintings of hands, and animals, and great monsters. Alice couldn’t believe Florence hadn’t seen them.
“You need to pay more attention! This is why you can never remember the latin verb conjugations.”
“I was far too concerned about the spider’s webs and the darkness.” Says Florence crossly, latin verbs annoyed her greatly.
As they stepped into the gloom of the cave, and felt the air grew cool and stale, Alice began to tell Florence what she new about the ancient art that lined the rock face of this hill.
“It was once known as ‘home of dingos’.” Began Alice, “by the people who lived here, the aborigines. They called it-”. To Florence the name sounded like a jarring, unfamiliar sound, but it slid with familiarity off Alice’s tongue.
“How do you know that?”
Alice, carefully hoisting herself through a narrow crack in the rocks, down into the ravine, told Florence about a woman she had befriended in the township, Mrs Kehoe. She worked in the church gardens and had grown up in a mission, taken off her aboriginal parents. Alice had spent weeks helping the older woman weed, carrying heavy buckets of water from the water tower across town to the church. Florence was shocked. She thought she knew everything Alice did. And…
“I thought we weren’t allowed to talk to the natives.” She says in a whisper.
“Don’t be so obtuse Florence.” Alice says wearily. “Mrs Kehoe is really rather sweet. She tells me about Laceyton, and about what it used to be before, stories of the people from now and from history. From Molly Bussell who always shows her ankles and flirts with all the miners, to Father Patrick and his smudged glasses and ink-stained fingers.” Alice laughs. “She knows so much, but what I really love to listen to is her stories, the legends and folktales of her people. The Dreamtime, she calls it.”
Pulling a battered matchbook out of her pocket, Florence strikes a match and lights a small beeswax candle stub, and they descend down a steep tunnel. The light dances around the cavern, alighting on the stone walls, heavy with damp. Alice tells Florence about the ‘home of the dingoes’, and about the paintings and the people who made them. Florence is amazed as she listens to Alice talking animatedly about the rainbow serpent and the goddess with the sharp claws who protected young women. Alice had always been fascinated by art and art history. Florence adored the paintings Alice would carefully create at home, and her still life charcoals
“But why is this place called the home of the dingos?” She interrupted suddenly.
“There used to be a pack of them here. Look here!” Alice took her candle close to the wall and pointed out an image. “This is a painting of a dingo.” The dog is carefully marked out in red ochre, making it look as though it has risen out of the desert sands. It has snarling teeth and long legs and looks as if it is ready to pounce. Alice remarks that this one must be ancient, and although it’s stylistic, it’s clearly a dingo. “Look at its snout here.” Florence peers closely at the dingo, and the flickering candle light makes it appear to be blinking at her. She steps back, scared.
“But anyhow,” Alice says, stepping away, and continuing leading the way down the tunnel. “The settlers killed them all when they first arrived so they didn’t attack their farm animals. Even Mrs Kehoe, who is ancient, cannot recall ever seeing one.”
The temperature in the cavern has dropped, quite suddenly, as if entering a great stone church, and Florence shivers.
“It’s got a bad feeling, this place.” She says quietly. Alice stops, and then agrees, nodding softly. They are quiet for a moment, listening to their own ragged breathing in the stillness of the cave. Both girls know what used to happen on the hill above them, what people don’t talk about. About the blood spilled by English soldiers. And later, the convicts blood as they built the town, the whips cracking down their backs echo in the very stone of the hill. They can almost hear the roars of the mines, the explosions as the Irish landowners sought to strike gold. Above them the sun bakes the red earth and plants grow on the hillside, but underneath, the ground is sobbing.
The paintings have stopped. Here the air is chill and damp, and the water, which has been dripping steadily down the walls, has gathered into a small stream that runs at their feet. The slope is steep and narrow, but the air feels strangely clear and fresh. A faint draft, from who knows where, flickers the flame of the candle in Alice’s hand.
“Should we really go any further?” Florence asks hesitantly. “I don’t think that this will lead us through the hill back down to the creek.”
“I am certain it will!” Contradicts Alice adamantly. “Here, hold this.” She says, handing Florence the candle stub. She digs about in her pockets and draws out her pocket watch and a compass. “Come closer.” She gestures to the candle. The compass point spins around before alighting on due north. “See! We will come out of the northern side of the hill, near the bottom, then we can follow the creek around to the picnic. And look at the time, no one will notice we have been gone, it’s barely even 2 o’clock.” Florence is still hesitant. She pulls out her own pocket watch, on a chain around her neck and confirms the time. She rubs the initials on the back of the case for luck and nods.
“Alright then.”
“There!” Says Alice triumphantly, “I knew you wanted an adventure.”
The girls continued their careful descent down the tunnel, Alice follows the path of the stream, telling Florence that the water must run somewhere. And it did. Soon enough the path opened out into a vast cavern, as their voices echoed around it.
She tied her hat firmly back on and looked down the path they had come up, the boulders forming natural stepping stones up the hill. The path was littered with fallen leaves and pieces of torn eucalyptus bark. Late morning sunlight fell through the trees, heavy and warm on Florence’s flushed face. Lizards too sat sunning themselves, lazily flicking their tongues at flies and bugs. A red Admiral Butterfly floated past Florence’s face and alit gently on a plant with bright blue flowers and green globular fruits which hung like pearls off an elderly aristocrat’s neck.
At the bottom of the path, where they had left the others and their red-checked picnic blankets, was a whispering creek, named Hangman’s Creek. Florence could hear the faint shouts of laughter, and splashes as the girls skimmed stones into the water. Making sure her hat was firmly tied back on, and her boots laced up, Florence paused to scratch at a bite on her ankle, and then marched up the path.
“Alice?” She called when she came across a dead end in the path, a sheer rock face above her, with only a narrow gap leading into a dark cave. “Alice?” She called again, with more urgency.
“Come on, I am in here!” The other girl called back, her voice echoing through the cave. Florence followed the voice, stepping apprehensively into the gloom, brushing aside spider’s webs and silently preying to the Virgin Mother that none of them were venomous. The roof of the cavern was low, and Florence tall, so she had to crouch down, running her hands along the damp stone to guide her. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, after the bright morning sunlight on the mountain. The air in the cavern was stale, hot, and humid, and it made Florence’s skin crawl.
“Where are you?” She called out to Alice, who replied, sounding closer now.
“Just through here, come on!”
Florence’s ankles ached as the heel of her boots wobbled while she scrambled over the rocks. Ahead the tunnel narrowed further, and Florence thought perhaps she would have to crawl, but she ahead, she could see a shaft of light coming from above. She hurried towards it. Above her the tunnel went straight out into the open, an opening just bigger than her. The tunnel continued into the gloom, narrow and full of cobwebs.
“Are you coming already?” Alice said impatiently from above Florence. Florence squinted into the light. Above the sky was a fierce, cold, blue. But it was very high up, at least double her height. Water dripped steadily from the opening, where it pooled at her feet, a clear puddle which ran into a small stream that ran downhill into the tunnel.
Florence put her hand to the cold stone. The walls were damp, and it soaked through her white glove as she searched for a way up. There. A series of notches in the stone, shoulder width apart, leading up to the opening. Florence tugged her damp gloves off and held them securely with her teeth. Placing her feet firmly in the notches Florence pulled herself up the wall and through the opening into the warm air.
“Give us a hand would ya?” She called to her companion, hauling herself, unaided, onto the warm rock platform, but Alice was not paying the slightest bit of attention.
The dark-haired girl is looking at the expansive view of the valley, stretching all the way to the Southern Ridge. The Hangman’s Creek curls through the bush land and forests of the valley, a silent, silver snake of light. Alice’s boots lay discarded, her bare feet balancing on the warm boulder. Her hat is askew, her plaits are loose and her gloves somehow misplaced between the creek and the rocky outcrop. Her face is flushed and she smiles absently, turning to Florence.
“There you are. What took you so long?” Florence starts to defends herself but Alice moves on. “Isn’t it simply marvellous? Look at that view!”
The mountain air is bitingly cold, but the rock is warm. The girls lie down in the sun, their legs dangling off the edge of the boulder. Alice gently unties the ribbons around Florence’s neck and takes off her hat.
“Let the sun get to those pretty freckles of yours.” Alice murmurs, brushing aside Florence’s red curls, as Florence protests quietly. They lie in silence, feeling the stone beneath them. It is smooth, all the rough edges worn away by the elements, and warmed by the sun.
“Like some great dragon…” Alice suggests as they watch the clouds drifting across the sky, while Florence believes it’s like riding a horse bareback.
Florence complains that they should have brought something to eat, if they were going to trek so far away from the others, or at least some water or ginger ale, but Alice suggests it would have given away their plan.
“And anyway, it’s much nicer just the two of us.”
“Our own little adventure.”
***
A cool wind picks up, dragging with it a swirl of red dust. Florence awakes. The morning sun had sunk into a warm afternoon. Alice is sat with her back against the smooth bark of a tall gum that grows between the boulders. She is reading a small paperback, and looks up when Florence casts a shadow over her page.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Oh not too long - an hour.” Alice confirms after consulting her pocket watch. She slides the watch and her book into her pockets, and reaches out a hand to Florence.
“We had better get back.” Florence takes Alice’s warm hand and pulls her to her feet.
“We shan’t be missed just yet, don’t you fret.” She grins mischievously, her pretty face lighting up. “And anyway, we’ve barely had an adventure!”
Florence tugs on Alice’s plaits playfully.
“Been inspired by Lewis Caroll have we?” She jokes, gesturing to Alice’s pocket where her book is. “I apologise for falling asleep while you were reading. Where did we get to?”
“The chapter where the little mouse is drowning in Alice’s tears.”
“Oh how sad!” Exclaims Florence, quite upset by the prospect. “I only remember Alice falling down the rabbit hole and finding herself in that strange room.”
“I’ll catch you up, don’t worry yourself.” Says Florence's own Alice, bending down to put her boots back on. “Come on, let us go this way.”
“But that is the opposite way to the way we came.” Florence sounds concerned.
“Oh come on, Miss Compass, that’s part of the fun! And anyway, I want to see if there’s any more of those paintings in this cave.”
“Paintings?”
“Did you not see them?”
Florence hadn’t, and so Alice explained, as they made their way off the boulder towards the west slopes of the hill. In the tunnel that the girls had entered through there were many paintings of hands, and animals, and great monsters. Alice couldn’t believe Florence hadn’t seen them.
“You need to pay more attention! This is why you can never remember the latin verb conjugations.”
“I was far too concerned about the spider’s webs and the darkness.” Says Florence crossly, latin verbs annoyed her greatly.
As they stepped into the gloom of the cave, and felt the air grew cool and stale, Alice began to tell Florence what she new about the ancient art that lined the rock face of this hill.
“It was once known as ‘home of dingos’.” Began Alice, “by the people who lived here, the aborigines. They called it-”. To Florence the name sounded like a jarring, unfamiliar sound, but it slid with familiarity off Alice’s tongue.
“How do you know that?”
Alice, carefully hoisting herself through a narrow crack in the rocks, down into the ravine, told Florence about a woman she had befriended in the township, Mrs Kehoe. She worked in the church gardens and had grown up in a mission, taken off her aboriginal parents. Alice had spent weeks helping the older woman weed, carrying heavy buckets of water from the water tower across town to the church. Florence was shocked. She thought she knew everything Alice did. And…
“I thought we weren’t allowed to talk to the natives.” She says in a whisper.
“Don’t be so obtuse Florence.” Alice says wearily. “Mrs Kehoe is really rather sweet. She tells me about Laceyton, and about what it used to be before, stories of the people from now and from history. From Molly Bussell who always shows her ankles and flirts with all the miners, to Father Patrick and his smudged glasses and ink-stained fingers.” Alice laughs. “She knows so much, but what I really love to listen to is her stories, the legends and folktales of her people. The Dreamtime, she calls it.”
Pulling a battered matchbook out of her pocket, Florence strikes a match and lights a small beeswax candle stub, and they descend down a steep tunnel. The light dances around the cavern, alighting on the stone walls, heavy with damp. Alice tells Florence about the ‘home of the dingoes’, and about the paintings and the people who made them. Florence is amazed as she listens to Alice talking animatedly about the rainbow serpent and the goddess with the sharp claws who protected young women. Alice had always been fascinated by art and art history. Florence adored the paintings Alice would carefully create at home, and her still life charcoals
“But why is this place called the home of the dingos?” She interrupted suddenly.
“There used to be a pack of them here. Look here!” Alice took her candle close to the wall and pointed out an image. “This is a painting of a dingo.” The dog is carefully marked out in red ochre, making it look as though it has risen out of the desert sands. It has snarling teeth and long legs and looks as if it is ready to pounce. Alice remarks that this one must be ancient, and although it’s stylistic, it’s clearly a dingo. “Look at its snout here.” Florence peers closely at the dingo, and the flickering candle light makes it appear to be blinking at her. She steps back, scared.
“But anyhow,” Alice says, stepping away, and continuing leading the way down the tunnel. “The settlers killed them all when they first arrived so they didn’t attack their farm animals. Even Mrs Kehoe, who is ancient, cannot recall ever seeing one.”
The temperature in the cavern has dropped, quite suddenly, as if entering a great stone church, and Florence shivers.
“It’s got a bad feeling, this place.” She says quietly. Alice stops, and then agrees, nodding softly. They are quiet for a moment, listening to their own ragged breathing in the stillness of the cave. Both girls know what used to happen on the hill above them, what people don’t talk about. About the blood spilled by English soldiers. And later, the convicts blood as they built the town, the whips cracking down their backs echo in the very stone of the hill. They can almost hear the roars of the mines, the explosions as the Irish landowners sought to strike gold. Above them the sun bakes the red earth and plants grow on the hillside, but underneath, the ground is sobbing.
The paintings have stopped. Here the air is chill and damp, and the water, which has been dripping steadily down the walls, has gathered into a small stream that runs at their feet. The slope is steep and narrow, but the air feels strangely clear and fresh. A faint draft, from who knows where, flickers the flame of the candle in Alice’s hand.
“Should we really go any further?” Florence asks hesitantly. “I don’t think that this will lead us through the hill back down to the creek.”
“I am certain it will!” Contradicts Alice adamantly. “Here, hold this.” She says, handing Florence the candle stub. She digs about in her pockets and draws out her pocket watch and a compass. “Come closer.” She gestures to the candle. The compass point spins around before alighting on due north. “See! We will come out of the northern side of the hill, near the bottom, then we can follow the creek around to the picnic. And look at the time, no one will notice we have been gone, it’s barely even 2 o’clock.” Florence is still hesitant. She pulls out her own pocket watch, on a chain around her neck and confirms the time. She rubs the initials on the back of the case for luck and nods.
“Alright then.”
“There!” Says Alice triumphantly, “I knew you wanted an adventure.”
The girls continued their careful descent down the tunnel, Alice follows the path of the stream, telling Florence that the water must run somewhere. And it did. Soon enough the path opened out into a vast cavern, as their voices echoed around it.
“Have you another candle?” Florence asks, and Alice quickly hands her one.
The two of them shone their small flickering lights around the chamber. Stalactites hung down from the ceilings, and great stalagmites grew up all around them. It is like some great underground forest. The candle light flickers on great piles of gleaming crystals. Florence and Alice, their jaws open in awe, carefully pick their way into the centre of the cavern. Great pillars of joined up stalagmites support the ceiling, and beneath them a crystal clear lake softly bubbled over the cave floor
“I knew this place was magical.” Says Alice triumphantly, looking glowingly at her companion’s awe. “Isn’t it marvellous Florence?”
“It’s truly magnificent.” Florence agrees, as she peers closely at the quartz that lines the cave wall. “Look over there Alice, there is another room.” Alice follows Florence’s pointing hand, and there is indeed an opening to a similar cavernous spectacle. A small natural bridge is formed over the water that runs into the next cavern and the girls carefully tread over it. Alice’s candle burns down to the base, and goes out, but they soon realise how well their eyes have adjusted. In the water some luminous substance glows, making the shadows dance about on the ceiling like great puppets.
Enraptured the girls make their way silently through series of cavernous rooms, following the bubbling water that slowly moved along the sandy bottom.
“Do you think that’s the way out?” Florence asks suddenly, pointing to a chink of light a hundred yards away.
“It could be? I cannot recall if caves like this have multiple entrances or only the one.” Alice replies.
“If only you had been paying attention in geology lessons.” Florence jokes, playfully nudging her companion's arm.
“If only.” Alice agrees. They sit in silence, watching the shadows dance, gazing at the towering creations of nature. The silence hums. Alice takes Florence’s hand, wrapping her slender fingers in her own. “Do you reckon that this is God’s work?” She ask suddenly, breaking the silence.
“Of course.” Florence turns to her, confused. “Why wouldn’t it be? He made everything.”
“But surely if He made something like this He would tell us about it. We would know, everyone in Laceyton would know!” She pauses. “It looks like some great cathedral of nature, it even smells like a cathedral.” Florence smiles agreeingly. “But it feels different.” She bites her lip. “Older somehow, more ancient, more magical.” She shakes her head, embarrassed for bring it up. But Florence grips her hand tightly.
“I know what you mean. It’s as if this is a church to the Old Gods. But I would have imagined it, oh, more malicious I guess.”
“But it’s not.”
“It is serene.” Florence feels guilty suddenly. “And that’s why God must have created it.”
The chink of light, which looked like a trick of the eye from so far away, does seem to be an exit. The girls clamber over fallen rocks towards it. Alice rushes on ahead, taking the candle off Florence. Florence waits for her to call her, and stares solemnly across the beautiful lake.
“Here, come on!” Florence turns and follows Alice, hauling her skirts above her ankles, and clambering over the rocks. Her petticoat catches on a pointy stalagmite, and rips. Florence hears a rip, but doesn’t notice the scrap of duck-egg blue fabric she leaves behind.
Alice pokes her head out of a hole in the ceiling.
“Here look, let me give you a hand.” She says, placing the candle at her side and reaching to help Florence pull herself out. “I’ve found a way out, follow me.”
The path goes steeply upwards towards the light. At the end of the tunnel the girls see that the light is filtering through the hanging roots of a tree. It looks like hanging ropes for the underworld, thinks Florence, as Alice pushes the roots aside with all her might, getting dirt on her face. The two girls climbed out in the open air and felt the sunshine warm their faces. When they blinked away the darkness they realised, with horror that they had arrived in what appeared to a sunken forest. Around them tall trees reached up into the sky, but surrounding this forest were huge walls of stone, great cliff faces with greying broken stalagmites, over 200 foot into the air. The sky is framed on all sides by these towering walls.
“How do we get out of here?” Alice says in a shrill panicking voice. She runs across the mossy ground, hitching her skirts up and places her hand on the stone wall. She looks up at the towering cliff face and her heart sinks.
“We will have to go back the way we came.” Says Florence.
“But we will be so late, oh I am so sorry for not listening to you Florence, you are always right.” Alice sits down on the log beside Florence and starts sobbing.
“Oh! Stop that! Don’t you worry, we will find a way out. Come,” Florence says, taking Alice hand, “Let’s go back to that tree.”
Alice, still tearfully, takes Florence’s hand and the two of them head towards the tall gum tree which had the hanging roots into the cave. But to their horror when they reappear at the cave entrance, they realise that they movements have disrupted the soil, and it has collapsed, blocking the entrance for good. Alice bursts into fresh sobs.
“How ever are we going to get out?” She wails.
Florence sits down beside her and wraps her arms around her companion’s doubled-up, shivering frame.
“Look there must be a way out.” Florence says quietly, taking out her pocket watch from around her neck and checking the time. It was past three o’clock and they needed to be back before four as that was when the girls were supposed to packing up their picnics and heading back to the township and the boarding house. They needed to get before four or they would be noticed that they were missing and would be deep in trouble. Florence turns over her golden pocket watch and rubs the faded initials on the back for luck. The initials belonged to her parents, who died when she was young. Her brother had placed it around her neck when she boarded the boat from England and told her it would bring her luck. She looked up at the canopy of trees and the blue sky far above. And then suddenly, she saw an animal appear from the forest, jump onto a fallen tree, scamper up it, then jump further onto a rock platform, from there the decline of the mountain side wasn’t quite as steep and he was able to scale the cliff-face with ease.
“Alice!” Florence shook her violently. “Look, look over there!”
“What is it?” Alice asks, lifting her tear-stained head from out of her arms.
“Look over there! A fox or something, he climbed that tree, and look where he is, he found a little path up the cliff face! Look!”
Alice jumps up, hurriedly wiping her tears away.
“You’re right! By goodness you’re right! Come on, let’s follow him.” She scrambles to her feet and takes off, running through the dense forest.
“Watch out for snakes!” Calls a fearful Florence, before taking after her. The two girls run towards the fallen tree the animal has climbed. A huge pine, rotting at the roots, fell across the cavernous sunken forest, with a large part of it resting on a rocky outcrop someway up the cliff.
“Wait for us!” Calls Alice as the animal disappears over the lip of the collapsed cave and vanishes into the bush. “What was that?” She asks Florence.
“I thought it was a fox?”
“They don’t have foxes in Laceyton, Florence, don’t be so obtuse.”
“A dog maybe?”
A lizard scuttles across the forest floor in front of them, making them both jump. “They do have snakes though.” Florence warns, as they push through the dead bracken and fallen tree branches. Here the grass is long, and Florence keeps getting her skirts caught on brambles, tearing at her dress. She is glad she had worn her most sturdy boots, even though they were very damp from their exploration of the cave. One of the brambles whips up suddenly, and scratches painfully at Florence’s arm, and droplets of blood well to the surface. Florence cries out in pain, and Alice stops, and turns round to ask her if she is okay.
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
But Alice stops, bends over and tears a strip from her petticoat. She wraps he strip of fabric around Florence’s arm and ties it firmly.
“That’ll have to do. At least it will stop the dirt.” She says calmly. “Come on.”
The two girls, Alice leading the way, carefully climb onto the sturdy trunk of the tree. They walk in single file, balancing as they make their way on this makeshift bridge towards the rocky outcrop. Halfway across, with the forest floor dangerously far beneath them, Florence hears Alice gasp, and teeter. She slips. Florence watches in horror as Alice falls, and then catches herself, handing onto the trunk for dear life. Florence rushes forward and hauls her up. Alice is shaken, but fine.
“That was a close call!” She says, a little too cheerily. Both of their hearts are pounding, but they continue, this time on hands and knees, and carefully, along the tree trunk. In a few yards they each the rocky outcrop and help each other up from the tree trunk, scrambling onto the rocky platform.
They follow the winding path that the animal took, climbing steeply along the cliff face. The wind rushes in their faces, turning their ears pink. Alice’s loose hair blows into her face, and even Florence’s tight plaits have all but escaped. Soon enough, and without further incidents, the girls scramble over the lip of the sunken forest cliff edge. They laugh with relief, a bubbling laugh which escapes their lips and follows them as they run down the hill towards the creek. Alice, it turns out, was right. They did arrive on the northern face of the hill, near the bottom, and from here they followed the creek round. They hop across the stepping stones, splashing and soaking the bottoms of their skirts and their sturdy lace-up boots.
“Watch this!” Calls Alice, and takes a running jump across the creek, landing in the muddy patch on the other side. She wipes her hair out of her face, leaving a muddy streak, which sets Florence off in a fit of giggles. She crosses the stream along a fallen log, and joins Alice. Taking out her handkerchief, Florence dips it into the water, and gently wipes the mud off Alice’s face.
“You had a hanky this whole time?” Alice asks incredulously.
“Yes?” Says Florence, confused.
“So I really didn’t need to rip my petticoat for that!” Alice laughs, gesturing to the makeshift bandage on Florence’s arm. She doubles over laughing, and Florence slowly joins in.
Florence takes out her pocket watch. They are late. They hurry back, splashing along the side of the creek, and creep up behind the picnic area where the girls are demurely folding checked blankets and packing bottles of ginger ale into the big baskets. Alice grabs Florence’s hand, and squeezes it tight, as they hide behind a big tree, waiting until the Mistress’ back is turned. Alice comes close behind, and Florence can feel her warm breath on the back of her neck, as she whispers in her ear.
“We has our own little adventure didn’t we.”
“You call that little?” Florence asks, turning around.
“An adventure then, just us two.”
***
They didn’t get into trouble, no one had even noticed they were gone. They all piled onto the trap along with the baskets and the other girls, and the vicar’s son smiled shyly and whistled giddy-up to the two old carthorses that pulled them. The horse plodded down the winding path into the township, red dust thrown up into the air by the big creaky wheels.
The next day, a Sunday, Florence and Alice put on their best summer dresses, tied their hair neatly with their duck-egg-blue ribbons, and went down to the church. After the service, Alice led Florence into the garden where an old aboriginal woman sat bent over the flowerbed. Alice undid her sleeve buttons and rolled them up to her elbow and kneeled next to Mrs Kehoe. They greeted each other like old friends, Mrs Kehoe kissing the younger girl on the cheek.
“This is Florence, Mrs Kehoe, the one I told you about.”
“Ah!” Mrs Kehoe got up, and cradled Florence face in her muddy hands. “Darling Florence! Come and help me with these bushes.” Florence smiled, rubbed the soil off her face, rolled her sleeves up and sat down on the other side of Mrs Kehoe. The three of them carefully planted the seedlings into the garden as Florence and Alice told Mrs Kehoe about their adventure. She seemed pleased that they had discovered the paintings made by her ancestors, but even more curious about the animal that led them out of the strange sunken forest.
“That’s the dingo spirit girls, you have been blessed by him.”
“It was a dingo?” Asked Alice excitedly.
“Of sorts.” Said Mrs Kehoe, and would say no more on the subject.
The three of them didn’t see the vicar, who, on leaving the church, saw his gardener being helped by two girls from the boarding house. He smiled in surprise and ducked out of the hot sunshine into the leafy promenade towards the vicarage.
“You need to go see Mrs Bussell at Wallcliffe,” Said Mrs Kehow, handing Florence a small trowel. “She, back then in the ‘60s I believe, was a one Miss Frances Lacey, sixteen years old, and quite a beauty. Pass me that lavender there please Miss Alice.” She takes the small plant and buries it carefully in the fresh soil. “Mrs Bussell might have something interesting to say about that cave you said you discovered. I dare say no one else has heard of the place."
A week later Florence and Alice drew up in the driveway of Wallcliffe House, a grand estate on the outside of the township. It had a long drive, with trees planted either side of the driveway. It was fenced with a smartly painted white fence, that was covered in red dust from the driveway. Kangaroos nibbled on the grass on either side of the fence. The big house had a large wraparound deck, where Frances Bussell was waiting, wrapped in a checked shawl against the early evening breeze. The girls jumped out of the cart, thanked the driveway and stepped onto the deck. They shook hands with Mrs Bussell who invited them in for tea.
Mrs Bussell, an older, frail-looking woman, was part of the big family who founded Laceytown almost a hundred years ago. Above her mantlepiece was a frame photograph of her family, standing outside this very house, when it was first built.
“That was me.” She says, pointing to a happy looking girl of about the same age as the girls sotting in front of her, in riding habit. “I had just come back from rounding up the cattle, and hadn’t had time to change into my best as grandmother bustled us all into the photo. That was a few weeks before I found the cave.” She poured the tea with a shaking hand, clutching her shawl to her shoulder so the dangling bits didn’t fall into the sugar bowl.
Florence took the pretty rose-patterned cup off her host and carefully used the silver tongs to place a single lump of fine white sugar into her tea. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Alice trying to hide her inky sleeve as she stirred her tea.
“You said you wanted to know about the caves, was it Miss Alice?” She pauses and looks carefully at the girls. “Nobody believed me. After a while I started to doubt if I had ever seen anything down there, as if I had imagined it all.”
As the girls drank their tea in silence they listened to Mrs Bussel talk. She told them about one summers day, in 1867, thirty years ago, when she was just sixteen, she was helping her brothers look for lost cattle that had broken through a fence and wandered off their farm. She spent hours fruitlessly tracking through the bush, until suddenly her horse came to a stop, almost throwing her off. She tried to push him forward, but the horse refused to take a step forward, she dismounted and looked carefully. There, not more than three feet away was the edge of the cliff. Below Frances the sunken forest, untouched, grew out of the belly of the earth. Tying her horse to a tree nearby, Frances Lacey wriggled her way onto a rocky outcrop near the top of the cliff. From here she could see deep into the cavern, and just about make out the great broken stalagmites and stalactites by the entrance to the cave. Without a rope to climb down further, or a lamp to enter into what seemed to her to be a wondrous cavern, Frances gloomily turned home, riding her horse as fast as she could, any thought of the lost cattle far behind. On returning to the farm she excitedly told her father, Alfred, about the sunken forest and the caves which might lay beneath it. The next day Alfred sent out a party of climbers, armed with ropes and lamps, in search of the place Frances found. But there was no trace of it.
“Until now I suppose.” Finished Frances thoughtfully, taking a sip of her now cold tea.
“Mrs Bussel, that sounds exactly like the caves Florence and I found.” Alice says, placing her teaspoon on the table with such a clatter that the tabby cat sat in Mrs Bussel’s lap jumped off and hid behind the curtain. “They were truly magnificent.” Alice and Florence described the caves to Mrs Bussel who listened keenly.
“If that is true,” She said when they had finished. “Then it must be the only of its kind in the region, perhaps in the whole country.” She stands, and goes to the window, where the afternoon sunlight is pouring in through the lacy curtains. “Your story confirms my tale.” She says finally. “ I must send out another search party at the soonest notice. You girls, if you are happy to do so, can lead them through the way you went, that way you can find it much more easily I hope.”
They happily agree to help, although Florence secretly feels that she would rather not enter those caves again for a long time.
“I’ll write to my brother, Charles, shortly and get him to gather a troupe of cavers. He will be joyous with the news, he is on the board of trustees for the caves in the region. It’s quite a profitable business you understand.” She says knowingly to the girls. They feel uncomfortable, remembering the silence, the calm beauty of the caves unknown to everyone. Their own secret world. Florence knows Alice is thinking the same thing, that maybe they should have never have told anyone about what they found.
As they are leaving, the driver helping them up onto the cart, Mrs Bussel calls from the veranda.
“You girls didn’t happen to see the dingo, did you?”
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