Belonging

PART ONE

Chapter 1

The Black Doctor

1887

From the north you could hear the clanking beat of the steam train tunnelling through the night mist, passing stone cottages and solitary crossings, heading for the station. From either side of the driver's compartment were two lanterns, like giant's eyes, pierced the night for a mile across extensive pastures. Only when the locomotive pulled closer did its black form appear through the grey glow.

On the platform, the stationmaster held his flags stiff by his side, his figure outlined against the approaching train. Moving to the platform edge, he waved the huffing beast and its long blue carriages into the station. Two railwaymen stood nearby with their hot copper urns, their faces wet with the whirl of mist, coal-fired smoke and the urn's curling vapour. The train's high-pitched scream echoed across the valley.

A jolt, followed by a momentary silence, before the Clap! Clap! Clap! of opening doors released its weary passengers.

Amongst the anonymous passengers alighting onto the gravel platform, a gentleman arched his lithe body, threw out his arms. Resting his hat on his medical bag, he reached for the back of his neck, stroking it with vigour, his youthful face with its darkish complexion, shone in the night air.

So here I am, he thought, half-way to Gundagai, the task ahead. Doctoring.

An unexpected busyness surrounded him after the night hush, people hovering around the tea urn like a warm hearth. Passengers chattered, bumped into each other or else formed one of two queues.

He was too late! And it irked him that he'd been too slow to claim his place at a line to tea or toilet.

`Apples, mister?' ventured a nearby lad. `Socks, shoelaces, scarf?'

' Ahh,' said Louis, seeing a boy about ten years old, selling laces on a rail platform at midnight, wearing no shoes.

`Aren't you cold out here?' he said.

'Shoelaces, mister? Socks. Scarves. Apples.'

`Show me the laces then.'

The boy came forward, favouring his right foot.

Talipes. Club Foot. Talipes Valus, he thought.

`What happened to your foot, laddie?'

`You want som'tin? Penny an apple.'

`Apple for me,' he said. `An apple for me, and another penny if you'll see the doctor about your foot.'

`Yer. Sure enough,' and he grabbed the two pennies.

Later, Louis dashed aboard the train, its clunk and screech harrying him to jump aboard, buccaneer-like, on the brink for a moment, as the train gained speed. He stood there surveying the great nothingness before him, just a sweep of wind, and the train's great pull towards Gundagai.

All aboard the fire-bellied engine.

Father was his fire-bellied engine. At their home, he would start the day, slow and early. With a little huffing and puffing, he'd prepare his pot of tea and perhaps muse over last night's reading from a tattered Homer's Odyssey, or grandfather's copy of Rousseau's Confessions, signed in Napoleon's hand. Father would sit on the east porch quietly building up a head of steam, conversing with Mother on the day ahead. At full throttle by eight-thirty, he announced the day a success to anyone who'd listen. He would exclaim to citizens, 'Not an hour should be lost', following up with his afternoon siesta, a practice the Scots of sub-tropical Kempsey found puzzling.

Father's life savings had sent him to Edinburgh, where Louis found a commitment to Medicine that would stay within him all his days. To his immediate surprise, his lecturers embodied his father's gentlemanly manner. The learnedness that appeared eccentric in Kempsey was breed in the college. They were people of Learning, of Knowledge, infused with the spirit of Science. This was Edinburgh, the home of modern surgery, Lister's university.

But what happened when he returned?

Fourteen, tedious months at Sydney Hospital; intimidating months surrounded by bastardry.

Instead of putting my skills to good use, he thought, the Chief Medical Officer treated me as an unworthy. Amongst my equals, they made my work impossible. I had more surgical knowledge than they, yet I would never be good enough for them.

He sought new pastures—and his father supported him.

`Take heart,' he said. `In a smaller place, you're always more valued. Remember your grandfather. Without him, you and I would still be mending nets in a Martinique village.'

His father never let him forget. When France's doctors followed the aristocracy, escaping the revolution's excesses, they left the nation with a grave shortage. Under the banner of `Liberty, Equality and Fraternity', Napoleon brought the most talented colonial boys, grandfather amongst them, to France, training them as medical practitioners for his army.

For forty years our family lived in France, grandfather encouraging father to take up medicine, forced to serve on merchant ships when he could not complete his studies.

He withstood terrible conditions on south seas ships before escaping at Port Macquarie. By accident or good fortune, he settled into frontier Kempsey. What a chance he took. Jumping-ship with little English, Father regarded his new life as Destiny.

Louis had completed his studies, worked in Edinburgh hospital, on a ship, and in Sydney. Now he would be his fire-bellied engine. Modern medicine and the new surgery were his parallel rails, Gundagai his station. He'd practice there, and pray that his Sydney experience would not repeat itself. In Edinburgh, his tanned skin lent him the allure of the exotic; it made him strange, part of the exotica of ports, of ships and the university itself. With his classmates, it was almost a plus.

I'll brook no-nonsense. I have family support. I have some money. I will be generous.

Still, he wriggled in his seat, a prickly sensation running down his spine. His face grew tight and moist, so he wiped it vigorously. He could worry tomorrow.

Chapter 2

That first afternoon, Louis entered the Chidley's Club House Hotel's dimly-lit bar room on shaky legs. With its rough wooden flooring, scattered seats and iron spittoons, he stood at the bar not so much for the company but to avoid shut himself away in his barren room. He had to get started, even when he smelt the odour of pipe tobacco and brandy, rusting lanterns hanging from the rafters.

`Who's this, now?' greeted a shadowy figure. `You'd be the Doctor 'Lewis' Gabriel.'

How does he know?

Louis recognized an Irish accent, seeing a well-dressed, thin figure with a black medical bag like his own set upon the bar. He held his hand out to his fellow doctor, JJ O'Dwyer.

`Please, call me Louis. My father was French, you understand.'

`Yea? And I'm Chinese,' said a sprite O'Dwyer, turning to his companions, raising his eyebrows and sharing a chuckle.

He appeared to be some ten years Louis' senior, his long hair noticeably thinning at the front. His neat moustache, pointed nose and angular cheeks gave him an impish appearance. His bushy eyebrows and light blue eyes made his animated cockiness impossible to ignore. His boots were eye-catching: tall, handmade bone leather, with fancy, folded turndowns, the sides of each embossed with a green trumpet and drum.

O'Dwyer noticed Louis glancing at them.

`And can you play an instrument perhaps?'

`I'm afraid not,' said Louis. `But I am keen on Brahms and Bach.'

`Of course, of course. But what did they know of the trumpet? Of rousing them in Hades. But it's no good for Mr Brahms, is it? He ought to hear The Dublin March or the Song of the Green. I can play them with my sweet eyes closed, one hand tied behind me back, and riding a mare.'

`They make your eyes cry,' said the barman.

`And keep the dogs barking,' added O'Dwyer. `A few more fine tunes like those,' he sang to his audience, `and our Anglican sinners will be dancing in church, despite themselves.'

With jolly laughter all round, without warning O'Dwyer's high-pitched laughter soared over the room, sustaining the hilarity.

`They'll be after your neck, Jimmy,' said someone from the bar's dark recesses.

`Ah, but music's what they need,' said O'Dwyer. 'The ministers give them itchy bums with their long, pompous sermons. Give them music—and the congregation will be wanting a return performance.'

O'Dwyer's infectious laugh led a chorus of voices, Louis too laughing, a weak echo. His discomfort must have been apparent as O'Dwyer turned to him again.

`So, you're a doctor, eh? You've seen a few smashed limbs, a few cadavers, some sickly leprosy and malaria cases I'd wager.'

Such behaviour thought Louis. In public. It is unethical.

`If you mean,' said Louis, 'Am I a fully qualified doctor, and surgeon? Certainly.'

`A few smashed limbs it is then,' said O'Dwyer. `Nothing to match those I treated in our beloved Ireland. Hundreds, limbs smashed by the English occupiers, our folk taken out of their homes and tortured by them, butcher soldiers.'

No need to answer him.

`Every Catholic man and woman knows it, your good self as well, sir,' he continued, dwelling on Louis' formality. `But limbs is limbs, pain is pain, eh? We practice the arts of medicine, as bastards and lovers. And Gundagai already has three bastards; three doctors, with fifty-year’s experience between us. We might have performed a few miracles as well. But what's this now? We have yet another bright man on our doorstep.'

O'Dwyer settled back against the bar, turning his eyes on Louis. No one in the bar spoke, and Louis could hear shuffling feet and elbows behind him.

`Yes, I understand what you say,' said Louis, `but I believe that Dr Marshall is soon to retire. My brother,' he added, `practised Dentistry here only five months ago. Surely the news is correct.'

`Oh, your brother is right, after a fashion. After all, what is our Dr Marshall but a fine joker. And sharp card-player. When Henry retires it will be with fanfare, yes indeed—and a purse of sovereigns too. And the next day, he'll be charging another guinea's consultation from his sweet guests.'

`For food poisoning,' shouted a joker from the shadows.

'And the pox.'

After the twittering laughter, O'Dwyer leaned forward to orchestrate a hush. `Then, there's that other bastard: Dr Murphy. A fine man, a fine doctor,' he enthused, with one eyebrow raised.

`He never arrived,' someone yelled.

`But of course,' said O'Dwyer. `Of course. Of course. I'm confusing him with…

`Freeland?' said another.

`And I left the hospital to him as clean as starched sheets, and him a poor Irishman wanting to practice here when we've so many worthy doctors of our own. If a job needs doing, I say, employ a local man.'

With the collective murmur of approvals from the bar room, Louis searched as if surrounded by lions.

`You'll have to excuse me, Lewis,' said O'Dwyer, `these doctors come and go so fast. And there's so little work to share around. People are getting healthier every year. But I'll tell you, Mr Gabriel,' O'Dwyer said, leaning back on the bar, `you'll find a lot of work with your brothers at Brungle.'

Brothers? Brungle? Where's-

A tense hilarity broke out, uneven laughter, broken by a few putting their hands held across their mouths, another slapping his hand on the table. Brungle. The publican spread both hands across the bar, his eyes widening. Louis reddened, at last suspecting what O'Dwyer meant.

He felt the piercing betrayal, his hand reaching for the back of his neck. He had heard enough.

`I'll be staying in Gundagai, thank you. I've medical business here and your advice is ...'

He jaw muscles tightened. As Louis turned to leave, O'Dwyer called out, `Best of luck to you, Lewis, the best of luck,' tipping an imaginary hat.

Around dusk, Louis paced the small confines of his room. O'Dwyer said three; three other medicos. Louis shoved a boiled-lolly into his mouth and savoured its sweetness.

Does Gundagai have three other doctors? Is Theo wrong about Dr Marshall's retirement? It was Theo who told me about Gundagai.

Between extracting teeth in his Kempsey torture room, Theo claimed that Gundagai the most bustling town on his three-month southern circuit.

`The hubbub, Louis,' he had said.

He urged me to make-a-go of it.

`There's plenty of work in Gundagai,' he had said, `with a fine hospital on Mt. Parnassus.'

`A hospital? Mt. Parnassus?' I had said.

He had bit his lip to the prospect of commanding a hospital. In Edinburgh, he learnt that a hospital could be more than a desperate last resort for the diseased, more than a place where the patient entered not expecting to leave, a place routinely built near cemeteries.

In the new hospital, the sufferer became a patient, who could be cured by the new means: surgery, medicines, treatments. No longer could it be left a hospice frequented by obscure religious rituals and surgeons inured to death.

`Just imagine: my little brother, running a big hospital,' Theo had taunted.

But Gundagai already has three doctors, as JJ O'Dwyer has rudely informed me.

And where is this 'fine hospital' Theo mentioned? Is this another one of his overblown claims? II should never have listened.

Theo always resented me. `father's favourite' is an accusation never far from his lips.

Ever since Father asked me to accompany him on his country tours, Theo has nursed a grudge. And when we fought with fists down by the river, and he lost a tooth, it was as if he had found two vocations: taunting me and becoming a dentist.

Our rivalry might have ebbed had it not been for my first young love. That must have galled him because the moment I returned from years of boarding school, only eighteen, he'd constantly display the local lasses as if they were his harem. So when any one of them took a liking to me, troubles brewed.

And I knew nothing of young women.

And it came to nothing.

If Louis could not out-charm his brother, he could at least out-dress and out-groom him. With his mother's assistance, he managed to be quite the town dandy. It impressed his father. Perhaps he saw in him a formality and precision required for doctoring.

Abandoning his bedside enamel basin, he carried his day clothes across the pebbled hotel courtyard, pursued his new Edinburgh habit of taking daily showers or baths, washing away his long, train journey.

At the stable entrance, he steered towards a simple door to one side, hay and dung plain to the nose. He entered the hotel bathhouse under a primitive sign of One bucket per person. A mere jerry-built enclosure attached to the stables, its walls of raw wooden planks assured a separation from livestock.

Simple enough, he thought, reaching for the tap.

Hauling the canvas bag up, tying it, he released the water.

Ah!

Cold, though not icy.

It ran over his head, trickled over his body until it reached his toes.

Thrilling.

Running over the skin.

He applied soap to his body, working a lather.

Cleanliness and hygiene practices, he thought, they abide a sensuality. I gain pleasure from a necessity, knowing your body, its muscles, skin, organs and joints; it risks a kind of comfort that others call prideful.

Ha. I am thinking of Dr O'Dwyer again.

My mother always said how finely built we Gabriel are, and after all my study and training, after seeing all that makes up the body, you knew what others fear as unknown or dirty.

Most people only know their skin, he thought, and even that appals them.

After washing, he dried himself with some handy rags, rubbing his loins, upper legs, hairless chest, muscular shoulders and head, giving particular attention to his toes. Not an ounce of moisture escaped his attention.

He dressed slowly, out of respect for himself, or perhaps from his studious regard for his body and his clothing. They had to last the years.

Outside the door, he pulled one of many sweets held in his coat's left pocket, placed it before the lips as a horse poked its nose through the sideboards. He selected a few rounded, river pebbles for his right pocket, a kind of balance to his store of sweets.

Damn Theo.

And damn O'Dwyer too.

Chapter 3

Next morning, Louis sought out Gundagai Hospital, passing Sheridan Street storefronts in his giant strides until he found Otway Street. Walking up the hill at the upper intersection with Punch Street, the homes ended, nothing but hillside paddocks and fields beyond.

It has to be here somewhere.

There.

A Red Cross emblem hangs limply from a single-storey brick house.

Is this the hospital?

A wide building with a long front veranda suitable for a family of means it was built on fashionable brick piers, overlooking the town and river flat. He knocked on the door.

With Dr Freeland, the hospital's Chief Medical Officer, absent, a wardsman welcomed him, saying the doctor would soon be doing his rounds. As the fellow shuffled out the back door for some urgent task, Louis stood in the hall, abandoned.

I'll let myself look around.

On the right were two dark, panelled doors, on the left, only one; each with 'A', 'B' or 'C' displayed.

The wards. Patient rooms.

At the far end of the aisle was another sign: the iconic serpent entwined about a pole, signifying the apothecary or dispensary. So he sneaked a look at the neat assembly of shelves with sparse medicinal supplies: antiseptic, pure alcohol, and various extracts. Somewhere nearby, there had to be a washroom.

Peeking into the backyard, he noted a well or refuse pit covered with wooden planks. Past the water tanks were stables and two other buildings, one no more than two yards square—probably the mortuary.

At last, Louis heard the front door open. Dr Freeland had arrived, both almost bumping into each other in the hall. A tall, thin man, with wispy brown hair and thick sideburns, Dr Freeland had a long drooping tobacco pipe in his mouth.

Seeing Louis in shadow, Freeland's eyes strained to make out the odd figure. He took a deep puff from his pipe.

`Dr Gabriel,' said Louis from the shadows. 'May I speak with you before your rounds?'

`Ah. Of course. The new fellow. Three patients are no crowd.'

By way of introduction, Louis presented his carte-de-visite, with his name and Edinburgh qualification prominently emblazoned.

By slipping into the dispensary and looking back, Freeland gained a better view of this oily-skinned doctor.

`I heard that we were blessed with a new arrival,' said Freeland. `Are you settling in?'

`As best I might,' said Louis. 'I am told already that there are too many medicos here.'

The heavy aroma of pipe tobacco already pervaded the hall, making Louis bristle.

`We do seem to have a glut at the moment. But, as long as one or two head for other towns, the Lord will provide,' said Freeland.

`And what of Drs. Marshall and O'Dwyer?'

`Marshall,' said Freeland. `He's a nice fellow if a bit rough and cantankerous. Dr O'Dwyer is more amusing and musical, a ready chap for the spirits. And I'm the other miserable sinner. Properly qualified. You'll be doing it tough as long as there are four of us.'

`You're not the first to suggest this. However, I am resolved to stay. There's work aplenty for medical men when we are within striking distance of wiping out many diseases.'

`Hold on there,' said Freeland, `we are medicos, not the Messiah. I see your zeal but our patients are still in the Lord's hands.'

Freeland took another puff from his pipe, staring outward.

`There are plenty of colonial towns crying out for medicos. Besides, I see here,' he said looking over the carte-de-visite, `that you are a surgeon. So you'll be heading for Sydney sooner or later.'

`Perhaps.'

If Freeland and O'Dwyer are staying, thought Louis, what of Dr Marshall? Surely, Theo had this one thing correct.

He thanked Dr Freeland, departing the hospital to seek out Dr Marshall, finding him at the town's carriage workshop.

Standing behind a Mr Bibo, its owner, Louis could see his fellow medico standing by his carriage, dressed in a flannel shirt, waistcoat and workingman's cap, grey locks protruding.

Is this ragged figure a medico, with his tattered tweed coat and hunched shoulders?

As soon as the fellow turned, Louis saw a tall, bulky man with a round, weathered face and long, greying beard. Seeing Louis, Dr Marshall gave a flashing smile.

`Ah,' said Marshall. `It's the black doctor. Welcome young fellow.'

`It's Doc-tor, Louis, Gabriel.'

`Yes, of course, keen to meet you. I'm on my way to the dispensary. Care to join me?'

Louis tipped his hat to Mr Bibo and followed Marshall, noting his slight limp.

Childhood poliomyelitis. It's obvious.

`Dr O'Dwyer tells me you are soon to retire,' said Louis regretting his directness.

`Did he?' said Marshall, pacing Sheridan Street with a spring in his step.

`I met Dr Freeland, so I thought …'

Marshall's pace persisted.

`My boy,' he said without looking, `you are always welcome here. You must make your own way without relying on rumours. People around here love juicy gossip.'

`I see,' said Louis, surprised that he would be so frank.

When Marshall reached Mr Mathew's dispensary, Louis reluctantly followed. `Good morning, Fred. I want a pint of Black Cohosh extract. That's Cimisifuga—in two bottles; plus four ounces of Cannabis extract, linseed, alcohol and opium. Here's the list. Can you have it by Friday?'

Mathews took the list, gazed at it intently before peering at Louis with flinty eyebrows, then headed for the back room. Marshall immediately made for the door, bumping into Louis. He put one hand on his shoulder and led him onto the sun-lit street.

`So. What's the problem?'

Before Louis could find the words, Marshall continued.

`Set yourself up here, if you wish. And if it doesn't work, move on. Nothing mysterious about it; you follow the money.'

`Really?'

`Are you married? No? Then you're a free man. You may wander where you wish. Try having a family of seven children. Must rush,' said Marshall, leaving Louis stranded on Sheridan Street, none the wiser.

It must be.

Gundagai has a four medicos.

Chapter 4

Louis' hotel residence became his first consulting room. Joined to his bedroom, it had a chair, a table and bed, with a pokey window onto Sheridan Street. Louis sat inside wondering why he had rented it at all.

To alert shopkeepers to his whereabouts, he had already visited most of Sheridan Street shops, handing out his dwindling stack of cartes-de-visite. If a proprietor showed an unhealthy curiosity about his background, he'd said `I'm a Kempsey boy. Do you know anyone from there?'

`Know the Keneallys?' said Dennis Ryan, shopkeeper to Gundagai's largest General Store.

`Ah, our faraway friends,' said Louis, glad to hear of familiar people.

He encouraged Dennis Ryan's talk of rough times on Sydney's streets, the gold rush days when there were three strangers for every local.

Ryan had met the Keneallys there; they'd worked together as carriers in Woolloomooloo, and dreamt of joining their mates on the goldfields. So he had departed for Melbourne on foot.

`I never made it,' said Dennis, `I met my darling wife. Gundagai had charms I hadn't expected.'

Louis observed every Gundagai local's physical characteristics. He watched their movements, listened to their speech and even smelt their characteristic odours. He believed he could predict most people's maladies and their likely causes. If he could make a little story linking their name to their condition, then next time he could greet them by name, and anticipate their likely complaint. He thought Dennis Ryan, for example, a downright curious shopkeeper whose stare focused on Louis' face, directing his rambling stories with a hot breath. He took little care of his personal hygiene and thereby risked most common illnesses. Standing so close, Louis found himself looking at his spoiled teeth and thick skin, making him:

'Dental Rhino', or Dennis Ryan.

One for Theo!

One of five Gundagai publicans, Mr Ben Morley appeared pale and sallow, with a distinctly sour disposition, worn down by a liver complaint. His indifference to all about him was marked. His odd left and right facial features suggested he might have heart problems. Rather than drinking grog, he'd be better in `Bed More', or, Ben Morley.

Mr Fred Mathews pharmacy displayed many jars of varying sizes, shapes and colours. The aromas of spice, salts, plant extracts and chemical compounds prompted memories of his Chemistry classes, the jars and containers stacked on plain shelves against every wall impressive.

Without first introducing himself, Louis took a closer look at the copper sulphate, ground limestone and manganese ribbons on the middle shelf. It sent Mr Mathews into a rage.

`Get your dirty fingers off.'

`Eh …' said Louis.

`Piss off.'

`Excuse me,' said Louis.

`Bugger off,' he repeated.

`But you mis -'

`What the hell. I said: Piss off, boy.'

Louis eventually managed to placate Mathews by holding his leather medical bag to his chest, showing his name inscribed in bold lettering: `Dr C. Louis Gabriel'.

Mathews held his arm up as if to say `I'd hit you anyway,' before breaking into a false laugh. More conciliatory thereafter, he nevertheless offered no apology.

`Flaming Mad': Fred Mathews.

Worse epithets came to mind, but he resisted violent thoughts. Bad-temperedness rarely surprised him, but Mathews' rudeness cut across his evenness of mind.

Humiliating.

He told himself to smile, as Mathews was Gundagai's only pharmaceutical dispensary, prominent on its Sheridan; a wide, dusty way where everyone met. Its citizens wore their best clothes and best faces. If it were anything like Kempsey, the ghosts of the near past mingled uneasily.

As a public thoroughfare, it also provided passage for thousands of sheep herded to the Murrumbidgee's grassy flat, the public common where property-owners mustered and even fatten sheep before being loaded onto goods trains.

There could be no grander entrance for a pastoralist than amassed their mobs on Sydney road, and bustled passed Sheridan street's agricultural agent's offices. Either way, from Louis' viewpoint, it left a legacy of casual filthiness: a street amply sprinkled with refuse and dung from horse, cattle and sheep and other unidentified livestock.

Oddly lop-sided, Sheridan Street had an upper, or Mt Parnassus, side with Gundagai's courthouse, police station, the solicitors offices, stock agents and two banks, with wooden cottages covering the gaps. On its lower side, backing onto the flat, were numerous shops like Mr Bibo's carriage workshop, Ryan's general store, Sun Yek's merchandise shop and Mathew's dispensary. The three pubs made it as familiar as Kempsey itself. All of them had large fancy signs nailed onto backing boards, usually with merchandise cluttering their front doors.

Lower Sheridan backed onto Morley Creek. Though small and often dry, miscellaneous items there festered into unsavoury and unhygienic masses.

Beyond it, on the wide, fertile flat were a mix of eucalypts and spreading willows; beyond that, the barely discernible Murrumbidgee River.

Five streets running up Mt Parnassus's lower slope, all with substantial houses holding sweeping views of the flat and Gundagai's surrounding hills. He had walked past some of them already, and felt the odd familiarity. Though Kempsey was largely lowlands, both towns had wooden and brick structures, with their exposed piers and grassy edges.

No. It's not that familiar, he admitted.

This Gundagai. If only there were some kind of a welcome.

And fewer medicos.

`Some of that money is for me?' said a deep voice.

It was the plump and elderly figure of Mr Elworthy, the Gundagai Times proprietor, not to mention, its editor and journalist.

Standing outside its office, Louis fiddled with the silver shillings and heavier sovereigns. He had noticed this stout figure yesterday treading Gundagai's streets dressed in distinctive black trousers and coat with a dark blue waistcoat. A lively gesticulator; seen flaying his arms about, and punching his cane against the ground before his small audience.

`Mr Elworthy? May I introduce myself?' said Louis, overcoming his caution.

He handed Elworthy his carte-de-visite, as he had for all the town's shopkeepers, the fellow taking an special long look at the inscribed `C. Louis Gabriel, Physician and Surgeon, LRCP, Edin, LRCS, Edin, 1885', with a photographic image attached.

`Your cards. A bit tatty, doctor.'

`Yes. They're getting on. But a good likeness?'

Elworthy looked carefully at the photograph on the card, then to Louis. `Very good. Come inside,' he said. `Come and read about our latest medical charlatans.'

Louis accepted, happy to discuss with Elworthy the quacks and medical magicians so roundly scorned in Edinburgh. The colony's popular newspapers regularly featured the purveyors of `Electric Essence' and `Magnetic Ointments'. One entrepreneur defined himself as a `Naturally Qualified' herbalist who thundered that he had `cured more cases of chronic diseases than any ten medical men in Australia.'

Elworthy grabbed a stream of telegrams and newspaper clippings. `Here is a woman surrounded by a cavalcade of entertainers, who tells us she will cure every mind-chilling disease known to Man. Look at her, surrounded by banners and performers like a Roman circus.'

Louis nodded and smiled.

`And less than half of our state's doctors are qualified. So many untrained and uncommitted medicos,' declared Elworthy thumping the table with a forefinger, `there's bound to be first class trouble. And that is why I worry about our hospital.'

`How so?' said Louis.

`We had Dr Ogg—God bless him— and after him, Dr Canny, then O'Dwyer. Both, twice, followed by Dr Murphy, who failed to arrive. O'Dywer again. And now Freeland—seven changes in six years.'

Louis only nodded as Elworthy seemed keen to do the talking.

`I see you are a surgeon, or so it says here. Nevertheless, what can you contribute to town life? Can you play an instrument, act or recite?'

`I am afraid not. I love good music, the Latin philosophers and poets— and my reading,' said Louis, `so I will happily join the Literary Institute.'

`Ah,' said Elworthy, `Your involvement there would be timely— we are on our last legs.'

`Would a gift subscription to The Telegraph be a help?' said Louis.

Elworthy raised his eyebrow, and nodded in appreciation.

`Arthur. Call me Arthur.'

Louis let silence reign. He needed time to broach the subject of his own curiosity.

`I notice that Dr O'Dwyer is a long resident,' said Louis. `Is he keen to regain the hospital position?'

`Over my dead body,' said Elworthy. 'The troubles he's given us. For a year there nobody knew how much rum is for the patients, and how much is for himself. He'll get no sympathy from me.'

`You have strong thoughts on the man.'

`You'll pardon me,' said Elworthy. `I do not normally denigrate local doctors, nor good ones, nor lightly. My wife's the daughter of one, and my youngest son is gaining his medical degree. Oh, no: O'Dwyer is a larrikin, with too sharp a mind to be anything but dangerous. One step out of line and I'll have the entire town against him.'

Perhaps there is hope. Who knows: perhaps Freeland won't last; perhaps Marshall will give up or O'Dwyer might collapse in ignorance and ill will. Father expects me to make a go of it. And I will.

Within weeks Louis also placed a new advertisement in the Elworthy's Gundagai Times:

Dr C. Louis Gabriel

Physician and Surgeon

Registered by the Medical Board of New South Wales;

Medical Officer to the Oddfellows Lodge, Gundagai)

May be Consulted at his rooms adjoining Chidleys Club

House Hotel, Gundagai.'

Mr Elworthy would organise his new carte-de-visite, and see to his progress. Louis nailed the sign to his new consulting room door, opening for business.

This will be my home, he thought. This is where I shall make friends, a family and a practice. Is that expecting too much?

Chapter 5

A Practice Makes…

-1888

At first, no one entered his consulting room—not one person. It made for a long day, and an even longer week.

No matter, he thought. Sooner or later, some odd fellow will walk in. People get sick.

In the meantime, I shall