Molly’s assault by the stockmen

Molly’s assault by the stockmen opens the novel’s action with a collision between colonial frontier violence and a mother’s determination to protect her children. At her isolated two-room shanty in the Snowy Mountains, two stockmen beat and threaten her while restraining an unconscious man. Though injured and outnumbered, Molly intervenes on his behalf; the attack leaves her unconscious, but does not extinguish her resolve to survive for her children.

Setting and Immediate Circumstances

The scene is dated late May 1893, a few hours before midnight. Molly lies badly beaten in the yard of her home, trying to regain enough strength to decide what to do. Her first consideration is survival: she has children to live for and knows she is no match for the two men. The narration makes her isolation part of the danger. The mountain range may echo her anger, but there is no one nearby to hear or care about her opinion.

The moonlight lays bare a sparse, enclosed homestead: boulders behind the hut, white sallees at its perimeter, and a fire pit beside an old log. Beyond a woodheap, a snow gum stands apart, its curved trunk likened to a woman’s form. Someone watches the assault unseen from behind it. The tree’s sentinel-like presence contrasts with the absence of any visible protection for Molly, while the hidden witness establishes that the violence is observed even as Molly appears abandoned.

Molly Intervenes

The men are not merely passing through: one has tied the legs of an unconscious man behind the log, while the red-bearded stockman drinks from the water barrel Molly and her children fill by carrying water from the Murrumbidgee. Molly’s instinctive concern for the captive competes with her awareness that she must protect herself and remain alive for her children. Her vulnerability is sharpened by the ordinary resources of the homestead being used around her: the water gathered for her family becomes the assailant’s drink, and the yard’s firewood and chopping block become the setting for the confrontation.

Molly picks up an axe and tries to drive the stockmen away. The younger man flees, but the older man raises his shotgun and threatens to shoot her. When he calls her a disgrace for risking her life for the unconscious stranger, Molly does not put down the axe. She strikes the chopping block instead, then retreats as the two men aim their weapons. Her effort fails to disarm or defeat them, but it makes clear that she will not willingly abandon the captive.

The Assault and Its Stakes

The older stockman grabs Molly and strikes her until she falls. As she pleads for her children, the younger man approaches her where she lies on the ground. The narration moves from the immediate attack into Molly’s fading consciousness, briefly turning toward a remembered image of her five-year-old daughter and a crown of wild daisies. That intrusion of family life into the scene gives concrete form to what is at stake: Molly’s fear is not only of injury or death, but of being taken from her children.

The episode also recalls the pressures surrounding her life before the attack. About a month earlier, Molly was eight months pregnant, washing clothes by the river while Danny, Joe Junior, Henry James, and Delphi were nearby. The brief domestic scene shows her managing the children’s arguments and the demands of daily life in difficult weather. Set against the opening assault, it underscores how the danger at the shanty threatens an already precarious family life, rather than interrupting a secure one.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

The attack does not resolve into Molly’s death. Later, when Molly goes into labor in the mountains, she encounters the same injured man who was present during the assault. In the course of that emergency, she recognizes the risk of accepting his help but ultimately frees him by breaking the iron collar from his neck. She reasons that he had helped with her stillborn daughter and had essentially saved her life; she also needs assistance while recovering from the difficult birth. Her decision to release him gives the earlier confrontation a consequence beyond the immediate violence: the man she defended becomes someone she chooses to trust, despite the danger that his presence may bring.

The assault’s central conflict returns in the novel’s later flight. Molly and Danny ride away beneath the full moon, carrying supplies; Joe’s boots are tied to Molly’s duffel, and Danny holds the killing spear Yadaka gave him. The scene’s opening image of Molly struggling to stay alive for her children thus resonates with a later, deliberate escape. The stockmen’s violence establishes the vulnerability of a woman isolated on the frontier, while Molly’s interventions and eventual flight show her repeatedly acting within that danger to protect her family and determine what happens next.