Golden Soak

CHAPTER SEVEN

I was released from prison on Monday, May 18, following a brief court hearing at which the authorities dropped their charges of illegal entry. The criminal charges of fraud in connection with the Blackridge prospect had also been withdrawn. Even the possibility of extradition had become remote. As my lawyer explained, for the insurance company to succeed with their charges of obtaining money by false pretences, when it was Rosa who had put in the claim, they would have to prove either complicity or arson. He thought, in the circumstances, I would hear no more from them now that my identity was accepted by the Commonwealth Department of Immigration. ‘There’s no law against a man leaving his wife, and since we now have evidence that she has been cohabiting with a man on Rottnest Island …’ He left it at that with a smile and a broad shrug.

It’s a strange feeling to suddenly find yourself free again after being held on remand for so long — a hundred days exactly. And though nobody in their senses would say that they have enjoyed being in prison, I cannot say that I regretted it or that I actively disliked it. This may seem strange, but it gave me opportunity to take stock, something I had not had time to do since I landed at Fremantle on December 27. In a way it was like being back at school, or in the services, for it enabled me to get to know an extraordinary cross-section of Australians, some good, some bad, but most of them men I should not have come across otherwise. There were other nationalities there, of course, but it was the Australians that interested me, and those hundred days, living in that close, ever-changing community, taught me a great deal about the country and the people. I do not recommend it as essential training for immigrants, but it is certainly one way of attending a crash course on the behaviour pattern of men whose grass roots are very different to those of almost any other nation. And I came out of prison, not in any state of uncertainty or depression, but knowing exactly what I intended to do, my mind wonderfully clarified, my metabolism like a dynamo recharged and my senses sharpened. I celebrated by staying the night at the Parmelia, a luxurious room with a view over the Swan River and a meal I still remember.

The fortnight before my release had been relatively crowded. Three days after I had finished my manuscript Kennie came to see me. He was on his way back from a survey down near Yornup in the South West. He had a letter from his mother telling him that she was still on her own and that his rather was at Nullagine trying to organize an expedition in the Gibson. ‘That letter was written on the 2nd, so he’s probably out there now. There’s talk, you see, that the pegging ban will be lifted soon.’ And he added, ‘I’d hate to think Pa and that partner of his are going to grab the Monster while you’re stuck in here awaiting trial.’ He had guessed that Kadek had had something to do with my arrest and he felt sorry for me, which somehow annoyed me. And he annoyed me even more when he said he had been to see Janet the day after we reached Ml Newman. ‘She took it badly, you know. The old man’s death. Have you heard from her at all?’

‘No.’

He gave that irritating little laugh of his. ‘Oh well, not surprising really. She’d been so sure you’d bring him back. And then being told of his death like that on the radio. I did my best to make her realize you’d done all you could.’

I wondered about that. If he was in love with her … but I didn’t ask him. Instead, I found myself asking about the station, what she had done about the cattle, and his face brightened. ‘It worked, your suggestion about bringing them into the gully.’ Apparently water from the lower levels of the mine had been forced to the surface. Neighbouring station owners had lent her boys and she had spent the week we had been in the Gibson mustering and driving the cattle out of the Pukara to water at channels they had cut in the old costeans. ‘But there’s precious little feed for them, of course.’ And the drought still on, not a drop of rain all the time I had been in prison.

It was seeing Kennie that started me thinking again about the Monster, and then two days later I was brought into the interview room to find Freeman and another man sitting there. He bounced to his feet and came towards me, his short stocky body radiating vitality, his hand held out and his round, smooth face strangely jubilant. ‘Soon as I got the news I got the first plane out of Sydney.’ He was smiling as he gripped my hand, but a little uncertainly, the uncertainty reflected in the nervous blinking of his eyes. ‘I just wanted to say I was sorry. We’re withdrawing the charges, of course, and we’ll work some form of compensation. That’s why I’ve got my lawyer with me.’ He introduced the other man — Ian Macclesfield. ‘But the first thing was to see you and apologize personally.’

All this in a rush of words that left me feeling slightly dazed. ‘What’s this all about?’ I asked.

He stared at me, and then he suddenly laughed. ‘Oh, my goodness,’ he said. ‘I forgot for a moment where I was. With everybody talking about it and the shares over five dollars And then he told me. As a final resort, before abandoning the Blackridge prospect altogether, they had Petersen do an IP, and the survey had shown a strong anomalous formation at a depth of just over 1,500 feet, almost underneath the poppet head of the old mine. The first drill-hole had been completed three days ago. ‘Petersen cabled me the core sample analysis yesterday — 4.2 nickel between 1,530 and 1,553 feet. So you were right, you see. I made an immediate press release. That’s what put the price of the shares up.’

‘And you’re withdrawing the charges?’

‘Of course. It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re Alec Falls or Bill Smith. It’s not my business how you got into the country. I don’t even care whether you’re a mining consultant or not. You were right. That’s all I’m interested in, and I’m sorry — I wanted you to know that straight away, and I hope you’ll accept my apologies.’

‘And you flew straight here?’

‘Yes, I got the night plane.’

I went over to the table and sat down in the vacant chair, feeling suddenly a little weak. He’d taken the night plane, come all that way, two thousand miles, to apologize. I wanted to laugh, or cry, anything to express my feeling of relief. I could hardly believe my luck. So many times these last months I had remembered Petersen’s words: So everything you touch … remembering them as a bad joke. And now Freeman was here telling me Blackridge of all unlikely prospects had come out trumps. I really did believe for a moment that I was born lucky.

‘No hard feelings, I hope.’ I remembered Westrop, so long ago it was almost unreal, and Freeman hovering there, misunderstanding my silence. I didn’t say anything, feeling dazed and thinking of the future. It was ages since I dared to think of that. And Kadek … I wondered what Kadek would do, the ground cut from under his feet. And suddenly I was laughing wildly and uncontrollably, and Les Freeman and his lawyer standing there in an embarrassed silence.

In the end I told him the whole story of the Blackridge deal. They didn’t believe it at first, but when I called the warder and got my manuscript, they believed me then all right. Not that there was much they could do about it, but it served its purpose. It opened Freeman’s eyes to Kadek and got me the backing I needed if I did eventually go back into the Gibson.

In the event, it wasn’t money that held me up, but the claims ban. Freeman had paid my lawyer’s fees and given me a draft on the Company’s bank for $10,000. In addition, I still had the 5,000 shares acquired when I exercised my option, and though the market had broken by the time I reached Kalgoorlie, Lone Minerals were still firm at $9.72, so that my total capital at that moment was more than enough to mount a small-scale prospecting expedition.

Culpin was still in the North West and Kennie living with his mother again. But I didn’t stay with them. I stayed with Jim and Edwina Norris. They were as kind and hospitable as ever, and it was Jim who put me on to a long-wheelbase Land-Rover that was almost brand new, owned by a survey outfit that was cutting back. The nickel fever was dying down, the Palace bar less crowded. Iron and copper, that was the future of Australia, according to the wise boys, and any day now the pegging ban would be lifted. Rumour had it that there would be changed claim requirements so that all those who had jumped the gun would have to peg again. ‘It’s going to be like the old gold-rush days,’ Kennie said, as I sat with him once more on the battered verandah, the hens pecking in the dust at our feet and his mother singing softly as she got our supper ready. ‘Laverton in particular. They’ll be lined up, waiting for the off — waiting for the mine wardens to announce the new pegging regulations. But this time there’ll be men in helicopters coming down from the skies. Nearly six months’ backlog, it’ll be like an army on the move.’ His voice was excited, his mood one of intense anticipation, and he kept on glancing at me, knowing why I had come, waiting to be asked.

I suppose it was all my fault in a way. Chris Culpin was still somewhere in the Pilbara, and though Kennie had heard he was now concentrating on a prospect in the Bamboo Springs area, I had an uneasy feeling that Kadek would have notified him that I was out of prison and told him to keep an eye on me. I should have warned Kennie. I should have made it absolutely clear to him that a confrontation with his father was a distinct possibility if he persisted in accompanying me to the Gibson. But I didn’t. He was a trained geologist, and now that he had been in the desert, now that he knew what it was like, just the two of us in the empty desolation of that vast area of sand, I preferred to have him with me rather than somebody I didn’t know. And he wanted to come. The moment I had arrived back in Kalgoorlie he had been pestering me to take him. It wasn’t only that he was fascinated, almost obsessed, by the idea of discovering whether the Monster existed or not, I think it was also the challenge that appealed to him. And we were in winter now, the going would be easier, the heat and the flies less exhausting.

It was settled that evening after supper. Edith Culpin knew why I was there. She was very quiet during the meal, but she knew her son had got to make it his own way, and I think she liked me. ‘You’re going back into the Gibson, are you?’ She was sitting facing me in the Victorian parlour, the best tea service in front of her, the antimacassars white in the lamp light, the furniture and the bric-a-brac all gleaming.

‘Not immediately,’ I said. There was no hurry since I was the only person alive who knew the location. And now that I had a prospector’s licence there was something I wanted to do first. But I didn’t tell her that I was going to peg the Coonde wanna claim. She was a loyal little woman and I was afraid she might tell her husband.

‘And Kennie?’ She was looking at her son, not apprehensively, but her face looked sad and the loneliness showed. ‘He’s going with you, isn’t he? That’s why you’re here.’ And I realized that she had been bottling this up, consciously keeping herself in check all through the meal.

Kennie laughed, that quick nervous laugh I remembered so well. ‘Alec hasn’t asked me yet, Mum.’ His eyes were on me, a pleading look.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m asking you now. I’d like you with me if you can manage it.’ I was watching his mother and I saw the blank look in her eyes.

But she said at once, ‘I think you should go, Kennie.’ And then she turned to me again. ‘But don’t take any chances, please. Chris always said the Gibson was about the worst. And you ought to have two vehicles.’

‘We will have two,’ I said. And I told her about the Land-Rover waiting for us at the Kurrajong Soak, Ed Garrety’s old Land-Rover. All it needed was a new fuel line and carburettor union.

‘And when will you be in the desert, so’s I know?’ Her voice was low, the nervousness well under control.

‘The middle of June I would think.’ The pegging ban was being lifted at noon on June 5. The new regulations would be published in the Government Gazette that day and we might have to start from Marble Bar in order to get the full details from the Mining Registrar’s office. Even if they were broadcast over the radio, we would still have to go to Marble Bar to register the Coondewanna claim.

Edith Culpin didn’t say much after that. She had accepted that Kennie would go with me, but she needed time to get used to the idea. And Kennie, now it was settled, was full of questions, plans, the things we would need. He had the sense not to ask me about the location, but I showed him the battered wallet that had belonged to McIlroy. ‘It was in here was it — the location?’ He was turning it over in his hand. And then he opened it and peered inside. There were a few old Australian pounds there, that was all, and he looked at me, his eyes questioning.

‘I destroyed it,’ I said. ‘It’s all in here now.’ And I tapped my head.

He smiled. ‘Safest place, I reck’n.’ He passed the wallet to his mother, who held it for a moment in her hands, gingerly, as though it were a tiger snake. ‘Won’t bite you, Mum,’ he said, laughing.

She looked at him, and then down at the wallet again. ‘So this was Pat McIlroy’s — his actual wallet.’ She turned it over in her dry, neat hands that were almost as worn as the leather. ‘Well I never — all these years. You know, Chris would have given his eyes to get hold of this. Once those rumours started, he could hardly think of anything else.’

‘You tell him to lay off, Mum. That don’t belong to him. that belongs to Janet Garrety now her father’s dead.’

She nodded. ‘I expect you’re right, but Chris wouldn’t see it that way and no good telling your father what he ought to do.’ She handed it back to me carefully, as though it were a museum piece. ‘That’s two men it’s killed,’ she said, so quietly that I hardly heard her. ‘Don’t let you be the third.’

I put it back in my pocket, thinking of only Ed Garrety and his young hopes for Jarra Jarra, and three days later we left for the Pilbara, just the two of us in my new Land-Rover.

* * * *

Before leaving we checked that ABC would be broadcasting details of the new pegging requirements, and at noon on June 5 we were back on the shoulder of Mt Coondewanna with our portable radio tuned into the Kalgoorlie station. We had reached Golden Soak just before seven the previous evening and in the dusk the scene around the old mineworkings in the entrance to the gully had been appalling, the flyblown carcases of dead cattle everywhere and those that were alive so gaunt, so bone-staringly thin as to be resemble nothing less than a horrible cartoon of famine. Water they now had — not much of it, but enough. It welled out of the ground in the hollows of the caved-in costeans. But cattle can’t survive on water alone and now all the flat land below the mine buildings was a desert, the arid vegetation eaten out, the mulgas stripped of bark, even the spinifex gnawed to its roots. Many of the beasts were too weak to move, lying thick in the gully so that it was only possible to get the Land-Rover through by the horrible process of terrifying them with shouts and the blaring of our horn so they were forced to their feet.

This gully had now become the graveyard of Jarra Jarra and all Ed Garrety’s hopes. God knows how many head were starving to death there. The sick reek of it hung in the air and one wretched cow, still just alive and lying with its starved udder draped like a pancake over a boulder, blocked our way so completely that I had to get out and shoot it and then drive over it. I switched on my headlights in the gloom of the gully, and lying sleepless for a long time that night under the stars I could still see its eyes, enormous in the bony skull and crawling with flies, a sad patience in their expression as it waited motionless for the end.

We had seen nobody on the drive down to Golden Soak and when we reached the shoulder of Coondewanna the hollow was deserted, the little piles of dust samples still there around the hole Duhamel’s rig had drilled. And now, as we waited for the broadcast with our portable standing on the tailboard of the Land-Rover, I was thankful that Culpin had not returned to re-peg his claim. Presumably the Bamboo Springs prospect had proved more promising. The newscaster’s voice, tinny and unnatural in that wild, remote setting, began reading the details from the Government Gazette as they were phoned through from Perth. The new regulations called for corner pegs 5-foot high and 6-foot trenches in addition to the substantial 3-foot comer posts Culpin had erected and the 4-foot angled trenches he had dug. And further pegs or cairns 3-foot high set in 4-foot long trenches were required at 15-chain intervals. The ABC announcer had read slowly enough for us to take it all down, and when he had finished, we read it through and then checked our stock of timber. Even allowing for the use of Culpin’s posts, we hadn’t enough to fill in along the sides of the claim every 330 yards.

‘We could peg at the corners, register the claim and fix the intermediary pegs later,’ Kennie suggested. But I shook my head. I wasn’t taking any chances this time. ‘Okay. Then we need some more timber.’ He was looking at me and I knew what he was thinking, what we were both thinking, that there would be fence posts available at the Garrety homestead.

‘You going, or shall I?’

‘You,’ I said. I didn’t want to face Janet, not yet — not until I’d got this claim pegged and had been into the Gibson again.

He nodded. ‘You start on the trenches then. I’ll be back in time to give you a hand with the corner pegs. At least we’ll get those in before dark.’ He was already offloading the timber, and then as he started to get behind the wheel, he paused. ‘Any message?’

I shook my head. What the hell message could I send her? And as I stood watching him drive off the shoulder into die gully, I was thinking that it hurt that she hadn’t written, hadn’t even bothered to answer my letters.

He was back just as I hammered the last corner peg and was starting on the intermediary trenches. ‘No fence posts,’ he said. ‘But I got some shed timbers.’

‘You saw her, did you?’

He nodded, staring at me rather strangely.

‘Is she all right?’

‘Yes, she’s all right.’ But he didn’t sound very sure.

‘You told her what we were doing?’

‘Yes. She said we could do what the hell we liked. It didn’t make any difference and she didn’t care now.’

‘Did you tell her we were pegging it for Jarra Jarra?’

‘Sure. But I don’t think it registered.’ He hesitated, still with a strange look in his eyes. ‘Tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘she seemed sort of dried-up inside.’

‘How do you mean?’

He shrugged. ‘Oh, I dunno. Scared maybe — about the cattle, the future. But she seemed dazed, half dead if you like — ‘sthough nothing mattered any more. But she let me take all I needed from one of the old sheds.’

If I hadn’t been so anxious to get the claim registered, I’d have driven up to the homestead myself. As it was, we went right on into the dark, working by the Land-Rover’s headlights. We finished pegging just after ten, had some food and started straight away, headed for Marble Bar.

Driving through the night along that ribbed highway, I had plenty of time to think about what Kennie had told me. The hell of it was Coondewanna still had to be proved, and the Monster, even if we found it, would take years to develop. Mining prospects don’t bring rain. They don’t put green growth back into a drought-ridden land. And all the wealth in the world cannot bring a dead man to life again.

Dried-up inside Kennie had described her, and now that I was in the outback again I could appreciate how she must feel, the loneliness of her solitary life eating into her like a canker, destroying the natural resilience of youth. God knows, I now knew what loneliness was like, but strangely enough, the loneliness of a prison cell is quite different from the loneliness of a vast empty country. There is a curious protectiveness in four walls. Prison shuts you off from the world outside. Here, in this dusty, arid, desert world, the exposure to elemental forces was total and crushing.

I was tired when we finally got into Marble Bar. We both were, for the ribbed dirt road and the speed at which we’d been driving had made it difficult to sleep. Trucks and Land-Rovers were parked both sides of the sloped tarmac of the main street and there was a queue for breakfast at the Ironclad. There was a crowd, too, garnered outside the Mines Department building, waiting for the office to open. We parked just off the tarmac at the bottom of the slope and cooked breakfast. I didn’t notice Culpin until we had joined the queue of prospectors and he came out after registering his claim. He had Smithie with him and he walked straight past us, a quick sideways glance of his eyes the only sign of recognition.

It was almost eleven by the time we were through. The crowd of vehicles had thinned by then, but a Chev ute was backed close up against our roo guard, Culpin leaning against it, waiting for us. ‘Claimed above Golden Soak, did you?’ And when I didn’t say anything, he added, ‘Too bad. I missed it by a day. Remember?’ He was smiling, trying to be friendly. ‘Smithie here reckons you’re lucky. The Swede said the same.’ He came away from the side of the ute. ‘What about the Gibson? You going to be lucky there too?’

‘What do you want?’ I asked him.

‘We could team up,’ he said, his eyes squinted against the sun-glare from the tarmac. ‘I know that desert country. You don’t.’ And he added, as though it made a difference, ‘I got the use of a helicopter when I want it.’ He waited, watching me, his legs straddled and his hands thrust into his belt. A big survey truck roared passed us. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But I’m warning you. You try and go into the Gibson without me and I’ll make dam’ sure you never get beyond the Soaks. For your own good,’ he added, thrusting his head forward.

Out of the tail of my eye I saw Kennie suddenly very tense, his face white with anger. ‘You t-try that, Pa and I’ll…’ He checked himself, and then with more control: ‘The Monster doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to — ’

‘Belongs to nobody till a claim’s registered. You know that as well as I do.’ He swung round and was facing his son. ‘If Alec wants to risk his life, that’s his concern. No reason for you to risk yours. You stay here. Understand?’

‘That’s for him to decide,’ I said.

‘No, it bloody isn’t. I’m his father and he does what I tell him. Right?’ He wasn’t looking at me. He was watching Kennie and I think he knew this was the moment when the boy would finally rebel, for he went on quickly: ‘Now you listen to me, boy. A man’s already lost his life out there. Mebbe it wasn’t Alec’s fault. But he was alone with him at the time, and as I told his daughter, when a fortune’s at stake men don’t always act the way they should.’

‘You told Janet Garrety that?’ I should have beaten the daylights out of the bastard mere and then, but I was too appalled to do anything.

And Kennie stepped forward and was standing there between me and his father, his body literally trembling with fury. ‘You ch-cheapen everything,’ he stammered. ‘You and that man Kadek. You t-talk of a fortune. You can’t think beyond your pocket. You’ve never understood there are other things in life. That’s what’s wrong with this country. It was men like you slaughtered the blacks, destroyed the ecology so that most of the land’s now desert. First the sheep, and now minerals.’ And he went on, the words pouring out of him, his lean body tense, ‘You can’t see that it’s people like you that’ll destroy Australia. Take, take, take … you never think of giving. You never have. Well, let me t-tell you this — the reason I’m going with Alec is because if he finds it he’ll do what Ed Garrety would have done. He’ll use the money to enrich the land, not himself. It’ll go to Janet and she’ll carry out her father’s wishes. You understand?’

Culpin was staring at him open-mouthed. ‘You believe that,’ he muttered. And then he thrust his head forward, his small eyes glaring. ‘So he’s pulled the wool over your eyes the way he did Les Freeman. You can’t kid me, boy. The Gibson’s tough and nobody goes in unless there’s money in it.’

‘You honestly think that?’ Kennie was looking at him with disbelief. ‘There are Native Affairs officers, missionaries — there was an American professor and his wife who spent a whole year there, living with an aborigine family. You think they did it for money?’ There was a moment’s silence, and then he said, ‘You don’t understand what I’m talking about, do you?’

‘No, I don’t,’ his father snapped. And Smithie said, ‘Come on, Chris, we’re pegging my claim now an’ I don’t want anybody getting in ahead of me.’

Culpin hesitated. He was watching as Kennie turned away and got into the driving seat of our Land-Rover, his heavy forehead wrinkled in a frown. He looked strangely bewildered. ‘No,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I’m buggered if I understand.’ And he turned slowly and went to his own vehicle. They drove off, taking the track that followed the course of the Cougan River towards the Comet Mine. We kept to the tarmac, on the road that led to the Highway, and then we headed south, back to Nullagine and Lynn Peak.

We fed that evening with Andie and his family. He had seen Janet only once in the last three months. She had come in to collect the monthly supplies and cancel the order. ‘Christ knows what they’re living on now at Jarra Jarra. We’ve had a little rain. No’ verra much — just a quick storm. But I’m told they didna have a drop over to the west of here.’

The Lynn Peak bore was still flowing and after our meal we filled up with water and got the petrol we needed. I was alone with him for a moment at the pump and I settled the Jarra Jarra account. I also gave him enough for another month’s supplies and he promised to take them over himself. ‘Do I tell her who’s paying for them?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Just tell her a friend sent them.’ He looked doubtful. ‘I’m no verra sure she’ll accept that. She’s proud, like her father, and they’re not used to charity.’

I hesitated, thinking of the Gibson and the possibility that I might never.come out of it alive. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Tell her it’s from me — payment on account for something her father told me. That should do it.’

‘And do I tell her where you have gone?’ The curiosity he had been bottling up all the time we had been at the homestead showed in his eyes.

‘You think you know?’

He nodded his round dark head. ‘Aye, the Gibson I reck’n.’

‘Well, keep it to yourself.’

‘And what if you get stuck out there?’

‘Give me to the end of the month,’ I said. ‘If we’re not back by then …’ I didn’t say any more because Kennie joined us. But Andie understood. By the end of three weeks we’d be out of water.

We got as far as Walgun before bivouacking for the night and we started again at first light. With the vehicle we now had and driving in daylight, we made much better time. We were beyond the Soaks and into the desert by sunset. Shortly before noon the following day we actually sighted Winnecke Rock, away to the north of us, and by nightfall we were camped somewhere close to the spot where Ed Garrety had disappeared. Dusk was closing in and we did not start searching for the rira until dawn the next day.

It should have been easy to locate, knowing roughly where it was and the whole area of that rock conglomerate extending a dozen acres and more. But nothing was easy in that rolling sand sea, our view obscured by the troughs, and even from the tops nothing visible but the next sandhill and the intervening valley floor. The directions were from the actual soak so that it was essential to find it. We operated a box search, working our way steadily eastward on a six mile front, and again it wasn’t the rira we sighted first but Ed Garrety’s abandoned Land-Rover.

We saw it away at the end of a shallow trough. We were on the southward leg then and it was half-hidden by a new drift of sand, only the canopy showing. The broken rock of the rira started just beyond it, over a slight rise, the astonishing green of the kurrajong tree visible as soon as we walked to the top of the dune.

I showed Kennie the rock shelter where we had huddled against the fury of the sandstorm, the soak in its rock basin marked with the dark of moisture welling to the surface. It was damper now that winter had cooled the ground, and by scraping out handfuls of sand, we were able to produce something very near to a puddle of water. At least we wouldn’t die of thirst and we celebrated with a can of beer each. But we didn’t drink it there. The soak and the rock shelter was too unhappy a place for me, the memory of Ed Garrety very strong. I wished to God he was with us now. But it had been his choice, and surely a man has a right to die in his own time.

We had parked our Land-Rover alongside his and we drank our beer standing by the tailboard, small birds darting among the spinifex, flashes of blue, and some delicate little grey birds that looked like finches. It was hot in the sun, but not as hot as I remembered it, the sky clear blue and no vestige of cloud on the horizon. ‘Where do we go from here?’ Kennie asked. And I knew by the way he said it that this was a question he’d been wanting to ask for a long time.

‘It’s not going to be easy,’ I said remembering how long it had taken to find the rira. ‘They’re not compass directions. They depend on the sun, some trees, and the distance a man can walk in a day.’ I had been over it in my mind so many times, but that didn’t make it less vague, more like the wishful thinking of an aborigine seeking payment for a lie. ‘From Kurrajong Soak walk short day into sunrise, find’im three ngalta. Then, facing high sun, walk till him half set. Small gibber hill, all rock him same ngalta.’ I looked at him, wondering what he’d make of it. ‘That’s all, except that McIlroy added a note to say that ngalta was how the black had described the green of the copper deposit.’

‘A bit vague, innit?’ Kennie’s features were creased in a frown. ‘Short day into sunrise; that’s presumably east — north of east if you take short day to mean it’s winter. How long do you reck’n a short day’s march — twenty miles?’

‘I doubt whether you or I would cover as much as that.’ I was remembering the two night treks I had done, the sand and the spinifex and how exhausted I had been. ‘But an aborigine might.’

He nodded. ‘Call it fifteen then, and take a bearing on tomorrow’s sunrise. Shouldn’t be far out. But I doubt whether we’ll find the ngalta. That’s the abo word for the kurrajong tree. Right? It has water bearing roots and the blacks can practically live off the seeds when they’re ripe. Those trees will surely have disappeared after all these years.’

‘What about the kurrajong here?’

‘Could be a new one, a seedling.’

In the end we agreed we would drive fifteen miles on our sunrise bearing, then north for eight. After that we’d start a box search working steadily eastward and hoping for the best. By then we had finished our beer, and after a quick meal, we began repairing the fuel line of Ed Garrety’s Land-Rover, watched by a goanna and interrupted periodically by flights of small birds coming into the soak. It took us the rest of the afternoon to get the engine going and clear the sand drift that had built up around the chassis. And that evening after sunset we buried the remains of Ed Garrety’s body. Kennie had found it while stalking the goanna with my rifle. It was away to the south, just beyond the edge of the rira, the covering of drifted storm sand blown away to expose the whitened bone of the skull and one skeletal hand. It was something I could have done without, and after a restless night, cold and plagued by ants and the presence of several small snakes, we took a compass bearing on the sun as it heaved itself up over the horizon like an erupting orb of red-hot metal.

We had our first puncture that morning, but all Kennie said was, ‘Lucky it’s a drought an’ the spinifex not in seed, otherwise you’d have clogged the rad, the engine running hot — you wouldn’t be able to see either, it’d be that high. Wouldn’t worry ‘bout a little thing like a puncture then.’ He was strangely patient, almost subdued as we sweated at the cover, a spinifex wren darting flashes of blue. It took us three hours to cover the fifteen miles. We were into an area of steep sand-hills then, the vegetation sparse and all burned up, not a sign of a tree anywhere, only wattles. At noon we headed into the sun, holding on a course due north until we had covered eight miles. The same dead scene, poor scrub and no trees, and the sandhills rolling endlessly, shimmering like liquid in the afternoon heat. After a meal we began our search and by nightfall had completed two boxes, which meant that we had made three north-south runs and moved the search area eastward four miles.

That night I remember we were both of us very tense as we sat huddled in sweaters over a miserable fire. It was surprisingly cold after the day’s heat. Kennie was smoking, a thing he seldom did, and he hardly spoke. He seemed shut up inside himself. Quite what the Monster meant to him at that moment I’m not sure. But I know it meant something much more than a geological phenomenon.

We didn’t talk much, both of us wrapped in our own thoughts, but we did discuss the next day’s search. I think we talked about it twice, and each time his eyes shone with a strange inner light. It wasn’t just excitement. It was something more, something deeper. I don’t know what put it into my head, but suddenly I found myself remembering lines from a poem I had to learn as a boy: Nought in the distance but the evening, nought to point my footsteps farther… Burningly it came on me all at once, this was the place! And then at the end of the poem: Dauntless the slug-born to my lips I set, and blew. ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.’ I leaned forward, pushing a charred and blackened spike of mulga root into the fire’s glow, now almost dead with white tendrils, smiling to think that I should remember Browning when Ed Garrety, if he had been here, would have quoted Shakespeare. God help me, I didn’t realize how near I had come to understanding. Kennie was no Childe Roland, but he had developed strong moral convictions as a reaction to an unscrupulous father, and like so many young men in the process of growing up, uncertain of his physical courage, he had the need to prove himself.

These are the afterthoughts, of course — an endeavour to explain the inevitability of what happened. But I still cannot excuse myself for not being prepared for it. I should have talked to him, there over the dying ashes of that fire. I knew that this second journey out into the desert was a self-imposed ordeal, that he was tensed up and scared. But I thought it was something physical, a weakness to be overcome, a challenge. I never appreciated his real fear. I never understood, till it was too late, that this search for a copper deposit in the Gibson Desert had become for him a sort of purification of the greed he had grown up with.

He was awake at the first light, his eyes dark-rimmed with lack of sleep. ‘We’ll find it today, won’t we?’ his voice was high and trembling. ‘We must find it today.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘If it’s there.’ Instinctively I felt the need to damp down his intense eagerness.

We had completed the first box by nine o’clock. The going had been bad, but it was worse on the second leg north, the sandhills steep-faced, requiring a running start flat out in four-wheel drive. I.was driving at the time, the sun in my eyes; Kennie was acting as observer. I saw him suddenly lean forward as the wheels churned at the top of a sandhill. I thought he had seen what we were looking for and I slammed on the brakes, the bonnet of the Land-Rover dipping to the sand trough below. ‘What is it?’ I was looking at him as we sat there motionless, the radiator steaming. He was still leaning forward, staring straight ahead, his eyes wide and his face drained of all colour, almost white.

He didn’t answer and I cut the engine to let it cool, shading my eyes and staring into the sun. But the view hadn’t changed, the desert a series of giant sand swells rolling away to the horizon, an ocean of red sand patched with vegetation. And then, very faint above the boiling of the rad, I heard the sound of an engine. ‘A plane?’

He nodded, pointing, his hands clenched and his body strained forward. The drone of it was moving across our front from left to right and a moment later I caught a glimpse of silver beyond a distant sandhill. It was flying low, literally skimming the surface. We caught another glimpse of it, a flash of sun on metal, to the right of us now and flying south. The sound of it faded. ‘Your father?’ I asked. It had looked like the same plane.

He held up his hand, sitting listening, his body rigid. The radiator had stopped boiling and in the silence we heard it again, flying north this time. We didn’t see it. But both of us knew what the pilot was doing. He was flying a low level search, doing exactly what we were doing, but doing it faster and with much less effort.

The sound came and went for perhaps ten minutes, and then we lost it. We didn’t hear it again until at 09.42 it passed to the north of us, a speck high in the sky flying back towards the west. We were both of us out of the Land-Rover then, standing in the hot sun at the very top of the sandhill, and when the sound had gone and we lost sight of it, Kennie turned to me. ‘D-dogging us like that — why didn’t we do it by plane?’ He was suddenly very tense.

‘You think he’s found it?’

He shrugged, his eyes still staring at the empty sky to the west.

‘If I’d hired a plane and we’d failed to find it, then you’d be telling me we should have done a ground search.’

He looked at me then. ‘You can’t win, can you?’ He said it with a smile, but the tension was still there and his face looked pale.

We didn’t say anything after that, but pressed on fast, taking a chance and moving the area of our search forward a few miles. We were then into a patch of old mulga scrub, all dead and their roots half buried in the sand, and we had two punctures in quick succession. Altogether it was a bad day with only two boxes completed from our new starting point. Clouds came up in the late afternoon and the night was very dark. Our position was now 26 miles east of the lira, and I remember thinking that the abo who had given McIlroy the directions must have been a hell of a tireless walker. Either that or the Monster didn’t exist.

We filled up and checked our petrol before turning in. The situation was becoming critical. Each box was 13 miles of ground covered and at our present rate of consumption we had just enough fuel for five or six more box runs, unless we decided to rely on finding the rira again. We had already taken two cans from the abandoned Land-Rover, but there was still a sufficient reserve there to see us back to the Stock Route. We argued it out for some time, lying wrapped in our swags, but when we started out the next morning we had reached no definite decision.

We need not have bothered. Our search ended that morning just as we had completed the first run north. I was driving, keeping an eye on the clock and the compass as we began the eastward mile. We were then cutting diagonally across the sandhills and for just over a third of a mile we were on the flat floor of a trough, travelling quite fast for once. Then we came to the slope beyond. I didn’t change into four-wheel drive, just kept my foot hard down. It was a mistake. I hit a soft spot near the crest and we slowed, the rear wheels digging in, the chassis slewing and tilting.

It took us half an hour to dig ourselves out and get the Land-Rover to the top. We stopped there for a breather, both of us hot and tired, our tempers frayed. And it was while we were standing there, grateful for the breeze and the clouds that had obscured the sun, that it gradually dawned on us that we were looking across, not another sandhill, but at an area of gibber eroded from the younger Permian overlay to form a shallow rounded hill, and the green that showed in patches in the light brown of the gravel was not the green of vegetation.

I don’t know which one of us realized it first. I think it hit us in a flash almost simultaneously, for both of us suddenly dived for the Land-Rover and the next minute we were roaring down the slope. We hit the bottom on a hard rock, our heads bumping the roof. We were lucky not to break a spring, and when we got out, staring upwards now at the rounded, gentle slope of that hill, it looked like the giant carcase of a giant whale, its petrified flesh blotched with gangrenous streaks of malachite.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Kennie breathed. ‘It really does look like a monster.’ And he started work there and then collecting and examining samples, moving with feverish haste, literally dancing on his toes with excitement. It was copper. No question of that. The whole red-brown hill was patched with a lighter brown, the surface smooth and rounded and littered with stones and small rocks, and the copper, exposed by the weathering of the calcareous sediments and sandstones that had overlaid it, showed in streaks and blotches that were a greenish brown in colour and merged with the sparse covering of spinifex.

Kennie was immediately convinced that it was a discovery of major importance. I was more cautious, fearing he was letting his excitement run away with him. But, growing up with the geology of Australia constantly in his mind, he had developed a sort of sixth sense that I respected, and after we had climbed to the top, so that we had a clear view of the whole hill, he argued very convincingly that this was an old leach area, the Permian sediments worn down by the winds and the extremes of temperature over millions of years to expose the trapped ore in the Archaean rock beneath.

The first thing was to surface map the entire area, and it was while we were discussing this, back at the Land-Rover, planning how we would do it, that the stillness of that strange place was invaded by a low droning sound. It was high up to die southwest, but growing all the time, and then we saw it like an insect descending toward us. It was lost for a while behind the whale back hill, the sound of it beating against the sandhills behind us, and then suddenly it was there to our right hovering over the tail end of the Monster.

We watched as it settled and the blades stopped turning. A man climbed out, glanced quickly in our direction, and then began unloading an aluminium peg about 6 feet long. The battered hat, the bulky body — no question who it was. And Kennie staring, his body rigid, his face gone white as death. I could literally feel the anger in him as he watched his father start to set up the first comer post. The pilot got out, and another man, and they began attacking the rock with hammer and chisel.

That was when Kennie moved. He gave a sort of grunt, not quite a cry, but a furious expellation of breath that expressed the pent-up fury within him. Then he moved, very fast, and the next thing I knew he was in the Land-Rover, the engine roaring as he slammed it into gear and went bucketing across the rock slope towards the helicopter.

I followed on foot. But I didn’t hurry. I didn’t think there was any need. I knew he had to get this off his chest, have it out with his father, and there were two other men there if it came to blows. I saw the Land-Rover stop, saw him jump out and go towards his father, who was standing there, leaning on the post, waiting for him. They were arguing there for about a minute. I could hear Kennie’s voice, high and strident, but not his father’s. Culpin seemed to be reasoning with him quietly.

Then suddenly the whole scene erupted in violence. Culpin dropped the post, caught hold of his son by the collar of his shirt and shook him. The others said later he was merely trying to shake some sense into him, that there was no reason for him to call his father names like that. But there must have been more to it than that for I heard Kennie scream something at him, and then Culpin at him.

That’s when I started to run. But too late.

Kennie had come up off the ground with an inarticulate cry that seemed to express some inner horror. He was round the back of the Land-Rover in a flash and came out holding my rifle. He took about a dozen steps towards his father, then stopped and raised the gun. Culpin didn’t say anything, didn’t move; he just stood there, his mouth open and an expression of shock on his face. Kennie’s movements were quite deliberate. He took careful aim and fired.

I had stopped by then, of course. But at the sound of that shot I started running again.

Culpin’s body took a long time falling, a slow crumpling at the knees. The boy had, in fact, shot him through the heart. But I didn’t know that. I yelled to the other two. I wanted them to grab him before he fired again. The sand drifts tugged at my feet, the rock stony and uneven, and as I raced the last few yards, Kennie standing dazed, his father dead at his feet and the gun lying where he had dropped it, I saw his legs begin to go. He was in a state of shock, trembling violently and unable to speak, and then he fell forward, his arms flung out, reaching for the rock as though to embrace the entire monstrous body of the ore.

The ten days it took me to get out of the Gibson were the loneliest I have ever spent in my life. The real reaction to what had happened didn’t come until after the helicopter had taken off with Kennie and the body of his father. For the rest of that day I just sat there by the Land-Rover, or mooched around unable to think, or even to feel anything. And all the time the greenish brown of that copper showing through the gibber stones and the redder brown of the whale’s back.

And that night, lying sleepless and cold, with nothing there with which to make a fire, I thought back to McIlroy. My God, he’d named it well! McIlroy, Ed Garrety and now Kennie facing a charge of murder — the murder of his own father. And the guilt was mine, or so I felt, alone there in the Gibson with the desert all round me and that hill of copper rising beside me. Edith Culpin’s warning words, Kennie and his talk of mamus, so like his mother, and I lay there remembering his voice, the way he tossed his head when the long hair fell over his face, the irritating little laugh. I wished to God I could have that day again, change what had happened.

In the morning I drove the Land-Rover to where there was some wattle and snappy gums, built myself a fire and had coffee and a large breakfast. And after that, I went back and pegged the bloody Monster, using a pick to set the stakes and cut the trenches. It was hard, slow work in the sun, and it took me two days all on my own. And when I had finished setting up the intermediary pegs, I got my camera and photographed the datum post as proof that I had done it. Then I started back.

I didn’t go near the lira. I couldn’t face that place again on my own. I just headed back west, on a compass course for the Soaks, hoping to God I’d make it on the fuel I had left. And then the rain started. That was one thing I hadn’t expected. Rain. There was a day of broken cloud, the second I think after I had started back, and then about noon the next day it began. Showers at first, some of them quite heavy, but intermittent, so that I was able to keep going. It was like that all night. And then in the morning the clouds thickened, very low clouds and heavy rain, torrential at times, with lightning and thunder around midday.

The desert was suddenly changed, the sandhill troughs awash with water, the air damp and humid, difficult to breathe, and a cold wind blowing. I lay up all that day, and the next, the Land-Rover just below the crest of a sandhill. And then the clouds dispersed, the sky was blue again and the sun blazed down, and the desert took on a sheen of fresh green before my eyes. It was a sudden, extraordinary miracle of re-birth.

I was there altogether four days until the sand had sucked up all the flood water. And after that I was able to drive quite fast in places, the going surprisingly firm, almost like a blacktop road in the flats between the ridges.

My fuel carried me all the way to Lynn Peak, but when I got there I was suddenly too tired to go any further. They made up a bed for me and I stayed there two days, sleeping most of the time, too exhausted even to bother about shaving. They knew what had happened, but they had the sense not to talk about it. Kindness is a great healer and they couldn’t have been kinder, Maria fussing over me and Andie sitting beside my bed for long stretches during the day, not saying much, just sitting there so I wouldn’t be on my own. And the kids came and went, little Anna Maria, aged five, and Bruce, who was two years younger. They did more than anything to restore my sanity.

The third morning I got up. That was when Andie let me see the papers. Culpin’s body had been flown to Kalgoorlie and the inquest had been held there. Smithie and the helicopter pilot had given evidence. But it was Edith Culpin who told the court what lay behind the tragedy. ‘Kennie took after me. He was farming stock. He was always working for the future. He believed in it. My husband lived for the present. The two of them just didn’t suit.’ And there was a picture of her, dressed in black, neat as always, but stony faced. It was a sad picture that seemed to say everything.

Sometime soon there would be a trial and I would have to give evidence. I thought a lot about that, and about Edith Culpin — it was what I could say to her that worried me most. And there was Janet, too. Andie told me that when he had driven over to Jarra Jarra with the supplies she had burst into tears. She wants to see you, he said. But that, too, would have to wait.

I left that morning, driving north up the Highway, and with the creek bottoms bad after the floods, it was late afternoon before I reached Marble Bar. I drove straight to the Mines Department office and there I registered the claim to McIlroy’s Monster, the first I think that had ever been registered deep in the Gibson Desert. I could have stayed the night at the Ironclad. Instead, I drove up the valley of the Coongan River towards the Comet Mine and camped above Chinaman’s Pool, by the Jasper Bar that had given the gold-rush town its name. The river was running fast over the cream and ochre striped marble of the bar and the pool below it was peaceful in the still evening, the sand at the edge marked by the feet of countless birds.

I didn’t sleep that night. It was just after the shortest day, the moon past the full, and I sat there beside the pool, the sound of running water, the soothing stillness of the night giving me a sense of peace. It was still there when the moon set and dawn broke, a few kangaroos coming down to drink, a heron and other birds moving very close. And after breakfast I started out for Jarra Jarra, feeling more myself but still surprised to be driving the Land-Rover on my own down the familiar road.

I reached the homestead just before sunset. The paddock was all green with new grass, a mass of cattle grazing, and the ghost gums on the windbreaks had a fresh sheen that glimmered in the slanting sun. The camel Cleo was couched under the poinciana trees, just as she had been when I had first come to Jarra Jarra, and the bitch Yla came out barking, then seemed to recognize me, her tail revolving in sudden pleasure as I got stiffly down from behind the wheel. I walked slowly between the outbuildings and was halfway across the quartz-paved patio when Janet emerged from one of the French windows that opened on to the verandah. I stopped then, not knowing what to say or how to greet her, the Alsatian nuzzling at my hand.

She stood there for a moment, absolutely still, her face frozen as though she had seen a ghost. I remember she was wearing blue jeans tucked into mud-bespattered boots, a dark blue shirt, and her hair looked wild, a bright halo catching the light. And then she moved, her boots sounding hollow on the bare boards, and suddenly she was running towards me, her face, her eyes, her whole being alight with excitement. ‘Alec, the paddock. Have you seen it?’ She reached me, grasping me, her head buried against my chest. ‘It’s all green.’ She was laughing and crying at the same time and holding me very tight. ‘It’s like a new world. Everything fresh. Oh my God, it’s wonderful to see you.’

I felt peace then, real peace — as though I had come home at last. And that spark between us. I felt it again. But it wasn’t the same spark. It was there. But it was different now.

It was only later, over the evening meal, just the two of us there and the candles lit, that I began to talk. And when I had told her everything, I gave her the registered claim to Coondewanna. ‘That’s for you to keep. I don’t know whether it’s worth anything or not. But if it is …’

‘You already gave me the one thing I needed,’ she said. ‘Only I was — ‘ She hesitated. ‘I’m sorry. I should have written, come to see you. But I was too shocked by what had happened to Daddy, and there was so much to do here — I couldn’t seem to think straight.’

‘What did I give you?’ I asked.

‘Why, Golden Soak. The water from the lower levels. Just as you were driving off — remember? You told me to try Golden Soak for the water we needed. It saved over two thousand head. And now the rain.’ She was smiling, her freckled face looking almost beautiful, and her eyes, those blue eyes reminding me suddenly of her father, bright with hope.

That was when I explained to her what we would have to do about the Gibson claim, how Kennie’s hopes paralleled the dream her father had once had. But I didn’t tell her the other parallel, that Ed Garrety had also killed a man out there in the Gibson. She knows now, of course. But it was too soon to tell her then.

I fear we are still upsetting some of the more conventional folk around here, living together, waiting for my divorce to come through. And there is a child on the way, which makes it look worse, of course. During this period I have worked harder than I have ever worked before — new fences, a deep bore and reservoir down by Golden Soak, and the drilling on Coondewanna. We have proved the reef there, but in the meantime the price of antimony has slumped. So has the price of copper. The bottom has dropped out of the stock market and until there is some sign of recovery nothing can be done about the Monster.

But it has done something for us already. Les Freeman took a lease on the claim, and before the winter of 1970 was out Lone Minerals had completed a geophysical and two exploratory drill holes, confirming it as a major copper strike. As the price of the lease we got $20,000 in cash, which is what we have been living on for the last eighteen months. Most of it has gone now, in improvements and the purchase of stock. I doubt whether I shall ever be able to get the station back to what it was in the days of Janet’s grandfather. But at least we have made a start, and the future is bright. The price of antimony is still at rock bottom, but the American dollar crisis has raised the value of gold and I reckon Golden Soak is profitable at anything above $50 an ounce. And if copper recovers, too, then part of the deal with Lone Minerals is that we get a royalty of 5 per cent on the value of all ore extracted from the Monster. That’s a long way into the future, but whatever happens about the Monster, Jarra Jarra is now secure, the grass coming back and water in the dry. My son will inherit at least some of his grandfather’s dream … or if it is a girl, then pray God she grows up with the same qualities as her mother, the same love of this harsh demanding place where I have now put down my roots.

Jarra Jarra, Nullagine, Pilbara, W.A. February, 1972.