Adventures are not without peril By Sarah Girdler
Never one to let her gender get in the way of adventure Ellen Clacy’s life in Australia was far from dreary. One night the gold digging party became lost in the pitch black of night after walking some distance from their camp. Luckily they eventually spotted a light, and walked towards it. "But it was a perilous undertaking. Luckily my wise brother had managed to get hold of a long stick, with which he sounded the way, for either large stones or water-holes would have been awkward customers in the dark; wonderful to relate we escaped both, and when within hailing distance of the light, which we perceived came from a torch held by someone, we shouted with all our remaining strength. Soon, with feelings that only those who have encountered similar dangers can understand answering voices fell upon our ears. In the excitement of the moment we relinquished all hold of one another and attempted to wade through the mud singly. ‘Stop! Halt!’ shouted more than one stentorian voice; but the warning came too late. My feet slipped, a sharp pain succeeded by a sudden chill. A feeling of suffocation of my head being ready to burst and then I remembered no more." Clacy had fallen into one of the many holes that littered the gold fields, which, due to heavy rain, had filled with mud. As Clacy was short, she was totally immersed in mud and suffered a sprained and cut ankle.