Golden Soak

ONE

I woke to a long-drawn howl, quite close. It was dark and very still, and I thought the truck had come to a stop. I moved stiffly, conscious of the hard surface under me, the yielding coarseness on which my head was pillowed. Then I remembered that the truck had gone. I pulled the gold hunter out of my pocket and flicked my lighter. The time was three-forty, no moon, but the stars brilliant in the night sky. The sound that had woken me was gone now, but far away I heard the echo of it, an answering call.

I was tired, exhausted by the long rattling journey north in the appalling heat. Vaguely I remembered where I was, how I had seen the bulk of Mt Whaleback black against the moon as I stood watching the tail lights of the truck disappear in a cloud of dust down the dirt road. The howl came again, long drawn out, throbbing in the darkness. Something crawled across my hand, a feather touch of small legs moving. I shook it off. An ant probably. And faint in the distance came the answering howl. The weirdness of the sound, the loneliness of it, and myself alone, lying on a stony gravel bed.

I remembered Emilio arguing with me, trying to persuade me to go on with him to Nullagine. The Conglomerate — issa not very good, but you getta meal there, some beer. Is better than living bush, yes?’ But the telegram I had sent her had said I’d be waiting at the turn-off by the old airfield, and in the end he had agreed to make the detour. He knew where it was, for he sometimes made deliveries to the motel at Mt Newman.

I stared up at the stars, wondering what the day would bring and whether she’d come, what I was going to tell her if she did. The dingoes were silent now, the night hot and still, not a breath of wind. I could see the Southern Cross, and lying there alone I was overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all, even the night sky entirely different, no sign of the Bear.

I closed my eyes again, but sleep eluded me now, my fears taking over and chasing each other through my heat-stunned brain. I hadn’t worried on the voyage out; it had been like a dream, a sort of hiatus, myself in limbo and all sense of reality suspended. But now it was different. Now reality stared me in the face and there was no escape. What the hell did I tell the girl? That I didn’t exist? That I was almost penniless? She’d want to know about Rosa, about Drym — she’d want to know what the hell I was doing in Australia. Come in the spring, she had said — not in summer. And here I was in summer and the luck she had envied clean run out.

I was thinking back now, tired and trying to convince myself it would be all right. It had seemed all right at the time, a way out. There’d even been a sort of inevitability about it. And at 14,000 miles’ remove Jarra Jarra had appeared a sort of oasis, a place where I could find myself again, a springboard from the security of which I could make the plunge into a new life. But now that it was only 60 miles away the prospect of it was quite different. It wasn’t only Janet who would be full of questions. There was her father, too. What would Ed Garrety think of a stranger arrived out of the blue, almost penniless and wanting a job? She had talked of drought and an iron ore company moving in on them, but with all that acreage and 3,000 head of cattle they were still rich enough to scare me.

I reached into my hip pocket, to the slender wad of notes, counting them by starlight. But I knew the score — one hundred and twenty-seven dollars. That’s all I had, all that was left after I had got myself to Naples, paid my passage out and all the incidentals. And naturally they had been expecting me to arrive by car. The letter I had found waiting for me when I got off the boat at Freemantle made that clear, and she’d given me detailed instructions — where to turn off the Great Northern Highway, how to find the start of the backtrack leading to the station. But instead of a car I’d wired her to meet me. How was I going to explain that? And no job, nothing to go back to?

The dingoes sounded again, but very far away. I dozed, my head fallen forward, and when I woke again it was to a different sound, a soft-toned bellow and the rumble of an ore train going north. The stars were paling now, the leaves of the eucalyptus tree under which I lay visible against the growing light of the sky. Something moved behind the patch of scrub to my right, a tall grey shadow. I watched, suddenly wide awake, my nerves tense. It was bending down, screened from my view, and then with three quick leaps, it was within yards of me, standing erect and balanced by its tail, its short front legs hanging limp, its head lifted, alert and listening, the muzzle twitching like a rabbit’s.

In the half light the kangaroo looked big as a man. Instinctively I scrambled to my feet. Its head turned in a flash. I had a glimpse of soft eyes, and then it was bounding away at a gallop. And all around me grey shadows were moving at speed, heads thrust forward to balance the powerful strokes of the back legs as they covered the ground in great leaps. One moment they were there, the whole bush around me erupting in lolloping forms, then they were gone. No sound. It was like a dream.

I sat down again and lit a cigarette, my back against the gum, watching the sky pale to eggshell green, the dawn coming fast. And as the light increased, the shapes of trees and scrub emerged from shadow to become hard outlines. All gums. Nothing I knew or recognized, the earth red like dried blood, everything cruel and harsh, baked in the oven of yesterday’s heat. I tried to recall the sound of her voice, familiarly English, yet oddly different — not harsh, not metallic like the men on the boat, but different all the same: ‘Come in the spring,’ she had said, driving to the station that morning. ‘It’s lovely then with the wild flowers out.’ And she’d gone on to talk about the country, speaking of it as something beautiful, something to be loved as well as feared.

There’d been Australians on the boat. But like the man from Batemans Bay I’d shared a cabin with, most of them were bound for Sydney. They didn’t know the West. Only Wade, who’d boarded the ship at Capetown, had ever been in the Pilbara. He’d worked with a construction gang on the iron ore railway, and the way he described it up here, he and the girl might have been talking about two different countries. I could hear the sound of his voice grating, see the fringe of gingery hair above the long face, the pile of beer cans in the cabin base. He’d hated it.

That had been the night before we’d docked, the Italian immi grants lining the rails, staring out across the heat-still sea, the moon’s path like spilled milk. I stood there with them for a time, all of us staring towards the future that lay veiled in the hot moon-haze. And when finally I had gone below, I had found the cabin packed with drunks, half awash with beer, and Wade perched on my bunk, his long legs dangling, sweat gleaming on his face, his hand trembling as he sucked at a cigarette. ‘You’re there, brother. Back in good old Aussie land. The Big Country.’ His cackling laugh, that grating voice — ‘So you’re headed for the Never Never, up into the Pilbara — the Iron Cauldron, Christ! You’ll fry. You’ll wish you’d never seen the blasted country.’ His drunken words merging with her clear vibrant voice. ‘Come in the spring. It’s lovely with the wild flowers out.’ And Kadek, long ago on that terrace in Spain, talking of the Golden Mile, envying me my degree: ‘If I’d had your education, I’d have been a millionaire by now.’ Dozing, I chased a wisp of molten gold through miles of desert blooms in a flat red waste, the only sound the rattle of the truck and Wade’s cackling laugh, his hatred of the Never Never.

I woke with a jerk, the fallen cigarette burning a hole in my old khaki trousers. I stubbed it out and got to my feet, moving down towards the track. Would she have set out in darkness for the sake of a cooler ride? There was no sound, just the stillness, and the light increasing all the time.

Feeling stiff and in need of exercise I walked down to the junction with the dirt road. The sky was already flaring in the east, the shape of Mt Whaleback showing black on the horizon. It did look rather like a whale, and above it hung a haze as though it had just vented. But it wasn’t moisture; it was iron ore dust, and as I stood there it began to redden with the rising sun. Something moved to my left and I turned my head. But it was already gone, a shadow, insubstantial.

The sun came up and I retired to the shade, a prey to the fear that something might have been discovered in the long weeks I had been travelling out here. The police might accept the evidence of their eyes, but the insurance assessors would almost certainly probe deeper before they agreed to payment, and they’d find no body, no trace of human remains. All through the voyage I had been able to push this thought to the back of my mind. But now that I was thrusting myself on people who knew who I was, I could no longer ignore it.

Everything I had done that night was clear in my mind, fixed there indelibly by knowledge of the risk I was taking. In spite of all I had had to drink, I could remember every detail, and going over it again step by step, remembering the emptiness of the house, my own numbness, the appalling sense of finality as I had lit that candle, I was sure I hadn’t slipped up. It had all been so carefully planned — everything except the sudden decision to involve myself in the destruction of the house. Again and again my mind came back to that and to the absence of the human remains. Not even the fact that I had been allowed to enter Australia without any questions asked could dispel the nagging fear that in time they would catch up with me. Flies crawled with the sun, the smooth bark of the gum I was propped against hard under my shoulders.

About eight o’clock two vehicles passed along the dirt road, but from where I was sitting all I saw of them was a cloud of dust. After that nothing stirred as the heat built up and the sky turned from blue to a blinding white. I was trying to visualize Jarra Jarra recalling vaguely the girl’s young face, the things she had told me. But it was all blurred by time and nothing she had said had prepared me for the wild red desolation of this country, the sense of geological age I had felt on the long oven-lid drive north from Perth. If I hadn’t written to her I could have lost myself in the immensity of it, changed my name. There was Kadek, too. He’d been away, in Kalgoorlie they said, when I had visited his office in Perth, and I had left a note for him, giving Jarra Jarra as my address. If Rosa talked and they started making enquiries in Australia. … I closed my eyes against the blinding glare, hoping to God they wouldn’t think of that.

I was dozing again, my hand brushing automatically at the flies, when I heard the murmur of a truck’s engine, an insect drone in the bush behind me. I was on my feet in an instant, listening tensely to the sound of it coming steadily nearer. Then I caught a glimpse of it through the gum trees, an elderly Land-Rover driven at speed. By the time it was round the last bend I was out on the track, waiting. It slowed at the sight of me, a bare arm waving to me out of the driver’s window, and then it had stopped and Janet Garrety climbed out.

‘Sorry — we should have been here two hours ago, but we’ve no spare and we had a puncture.’

She was smiling, coming towards me, a stocky, practical girl in a faded blue shirt and khaki slacks. The shirt clung to her, dark patches of sweat under the armpits and in the vee of her trousers, her face caked with dust, streaked with runnels of perspiration. But the smile of her greeting had the youthful, exuberant freshness I remembered. ‘Have you been waiting long?’ She shook my hand, a hard, dusty handshake that still managed to convey a sense of excitement. ‘I couldn’t believe it when we got your message. What are you doing in Australia?’ She laughed, a flash of white teeth, freckles showing through the dust. ‘I suppose you’re out here looking for a new Poseidon.’ Laughter bubbled in her eyes, the whites brilliant in the hard sunlight. ‘I’m full of questions, but we can talk as we drive.’

A shadow moved behind her and she turned, ‘Oh, Tom — come and meet Mr Falls.’

He was an aborigine. I had seen pictures of them of course, but I hadn’t expected anything quite so black, so primitive looking — the face broad-nosed with a low brow and ridges of heavy bone above the eyes. ‘Tom is as much a part of Jarra Jarra as we are.’ He came forward and shook my hand, a soft, limp touching of the palms, his thick lips spread in a yellow-toothed grin. The eyes were dark brown, the whites yellow against the wrinkled black of his skin. He was short and broad, and the only part of him that wasn’t black was his hair; his woolly hair, that sat like a skull cap over the low brow, was grizzled, almost white. The thick lips moved below the broad spread of the nose, soft words, guttural in a strange tongue.

‘He’s bidding you welcome,’ she said. Her quick eyes had found the tree where I had sat waiting. ‘Is that all your gear?’ She nodded to the aborigine and he went to get my suitcase. ‘Gosh! This is marvellous — to see you here. When that message came through — the news that you were in Perth and coming up to see us — you’ve no idea — it’s what I dreamed, that some day you’d come out here.’ It came out in a rush of words and then she added, ‘You’re the only mining man I ever met I’d trust a yard.’ She was laughing, bubbling over with excitement, as though my arrival was some great event in her life. ‘How did you come out? Did you fly?’

‘No, I came by ship.’

‘Yes, of course. You wrote me from Capetown. I thought perhaps you’d been having a look at the South African gold mines. But I suppose it’s the nickel boom. Was it the Botany Bay you came on?’

I remembered then that she’d got herself to England working her passage as stewardess on a passenger ship out of Fremantle. ‘No, it was an Italian boat,’ I said.

‘And you hitched a ride up from Perth. You certainly believe in doing things the hard way. That’s real Australian.’ She turned back to the Land-Rover. ‘Come on. It’s hot enough now, but if we stand here talking you’ll be fried before I get you home. You can tell me all about it as we drive.’

My gear was already in the back with Tom. I climbed into the cab beside her and she drove down the dirt road, turned at the junction and headed back up the track, talking all the time as she twisted between the gums, her foot hard down. The track wasn’t really a track at all, it was just a way through the bush that followed in the treadmarks of the first vehicle that had passed that way. It wandered in and out of the scrub, twisting endlessly in a flat plain with glimpses of Mt Newman. I wasn’t really listening to what she was saying. She seemed oddly nervous, talking for the sake of talking — about the dry being worse than usual, a drought and cattle dying. It was as though she were trying to prepare me for something. ‘For near on a month now we’ve been mustering, driving them in bunches through the Robinson Gap, down into the Watersnake.’ She changed down for a stretch of dust. ‘Coming to pick you up is a real break. Tom and the other two boys have hardly been out of the saddle for weeks.’

‘And you?’

‘Me? I’m sore.’ She grinned, wriggling her bottom on the seat. ‘Riding Cleo every day — I must have ridden that damned camel a thousand miles this last month. Feels like it anyway. And Daddy out in the Land-Rover every day. We’re just about all in, both of us.’

The country was more broken now. We were climbing imperceptibly. Mt Newman close and lower hills to our left, a gap opening up ahead. ‘The Ophthalmia Range,’ she said. ‘It’s all iron country here. Dry as a desert.’ And then, abruptly — I’m sorry, I haven’t asked after Rosalind. How is she?’

‘All right.’

‘You haven’t brought her with you?’

‘No.’

She didn’t pursue that line. She hadn’t exactly hit it off with Rosa. ‘So, it’s a business trip.’

‘An exploratory look at Australia, shall we say?’

‘And that includes Jarra Jarra.’ She laughed, a trace of bitterness in her voice. ‘The only thing we have to show you is an old abandoned mine. Not much for you there, I’m afraid.’ And then she looked at me, a quick, searching glance. ‘What really brought you out here? Or shouldn’t I ask?’

This was the moment. I should tell her now if I was going to tell her at all. And I would have done if she’d still been staring at me with those perceptive, rather prominent eyes. But her gaze was back on the track as it snaked through an arm of larger gums. ‘Rosa,’ I said. ‘We’ve separated.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t sound it and there was no surprise in her voice. ‘So you’ve come out here — to forget her?’

It made sense, and that way I didn’t have to tell her anything more. Not yet, anyway. ‘I suppose so,’ I said.

‘And what about Balavedra?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I expect it’ll get along without me.’ I glanced at her, my mouth dry, wondering whether she’d guessed I was telling her only half the truth. My damned pride, of course, but what else could I say? What the hell else? If I told her the mine was bankrupt, that I was in debt and that was why Rosa had left me, then I’d have to tell her the rest. And I couldn’t do that. Not now, before I’d even seen Jarra Jarra or met her father.

But all she said was, ‘I remember that morning — you showed me where it was, the engine house standing above the cliffs and the Atlantic beyond. You’ve chosen a damn silly time to exchange Cornwall for the Pilbara. Oh, well…’ She laughed. ‘Hitching a ride up the Great Northern at the beginning of summer sure is one way of getting it out of your system. What was it you rode up in — one of the iron ore company cars?’

‘No, a refrigerated truck — a cousin of one of the Italians I met on the boat fixed it for me.’

She didn’t say much after that. The going had become more difficult and she had to concentrate. Here, between the Ophthalmia Range and Pamelia Hill, we were into a narrow strip of flattish country, the track winding. Later it straightened out and our speed increased again. The air was oven-hot, the scrub thinner, and in the distance I could see a hill, brown like a sugar loaf, rising out of the flat plain.

‘Mount Robinson.’ There was sweat on her face, flies crawling and dark shadows under her eyes. ‘The Gap is just to the left; that’s where we’ve been sweating our guts out this past month.’

I asked her whether she’d like me to give her a spell, but she shook her head. ‘I’m not tired. Not really. And in about twenty miles we begin to hit dry watercourses. You need to know the track then. This poor old Landy’s over six years old. You have to nurse it.’

Half an hour later we turned a bend and dropped into a gully. I saw her point then. We were into an area of small hillocks, the track winding through them and the surface rough. No sign of Mt Robinson now, though we were within a few miles of it. More gullies and the white boles of ghost gums among the boulders.

We had been driving steadily west, but now the track turned north. We came to an old fence line, the gate sagging on its hinges, the wire rusted and broken, the posts leaning. ‘Welcome to Jarra Jarra.’ She said it with a wry smile, sitting tight-faced and very still as she waited for Tom to close the gate behind us. And shortly after that we passed a heap of bones bleached by the sun, the flies hanging in a cloud over the remains of the hide.

She glanced at the carcase, then at me. ‘You’ll see plenty of them around the station. About the only things that thrive at the moment are the carrion-eaters — we’ve enough wedgetails here now to start an eagle reserve.’ She said it angrily and with bitterness, staring ahead of her, her face clouded. ‘All the years I’ve been growing up here,’ she said, ‘it’s been one long struggle.’ Her voice was barely audible above the noise of the engine, the rattle of the aged vehicle. ‘And now this. If we don’t get rain soon …’ She gave a little shrug.

‘Haven’t you got any water on the place at all?’ I asked, appalled at the implication, beginning to wish I hadn’t come.

‘Oh yes, we’ve got water all right — if we could afford to drill deep enough.’

‘But at the house I mean. Surely you could bring the cattle — ‘

‘Don’t be bloody silly.’ Her eyes flashed angrily and for a long minute after that she was withdrawn inside herself, her jaw set and that upturned nose of hers lifted as though in rebuke at my stupidity. Then impulsively she reached out, smiling, and touched my arm. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve lived here all my life, y’see. I’m apt to forget there’s any other world.’ She took the hill ahead in a rush, her foot hard down. ‘The home bore’s still working. Of course it is. My grandfather knew this country better than I shall ever know it — driving his cattle up to the gold camps at Nullagine, opening up new territory, prospecting, mining, fishing. Before the crash came his leases ran to almost a million and a half acres. I’ll show you his Journal some time. It’s an incredible story — overlanding cattle from Queensland to the Ord, then down across the edge of the Great Sandy to settle in the Pilbara. That was in 1899. He was twenty-one years old and eight years ahead of Canning in opening up that section of the great Stock Route. All through the North West he was known as Big Bill Garrety.’ She looked at me, the track easier now, and her eyes alight with a sort of hero-worship. ‘Last year, after I’d fallen off my camel and broken a leg trying to race a motor bike cross-country, I learned to type, copying the whole thing out — four hundred and twenty-seven pages of it. I knew that Journal almost by heart. There’s a wonderful description, very sparse, very factual, of how this country was when he first saw it. And the site he chose for his homestead … of course there’s water there, always.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘But cattle need food as well as water and there isn’t much for them to feed on in the gullies of the Windbreak Hills.’

She shifted into four-wheel drive as the track followed the dry bed of a stream. Away to our left a black cloud of smoke billowed skyward. ‘One of the boys signalling. Maybe he’s found another bunch.-‘ And she explained, ‘When we want to call to each other in the bush, that’s how we do it — set light to the spinifex. The turpentine in it gives off that oily black smoke.’

‘Isn’t it dangerous?’ I asked, thinking of bush fires and the brittle dryness of the vegetation.

She laughed. ‘In this country? There’s nothing here to sustain a fire. In the old days, yes. They’d burn off whole tracts. It got the young green going in the spring. But it also burned up the seeds in the ground. In the end they destroyed all the grasses. That’s what happened here, sheep tearing the young grass out by the roots and no seed to replace it.’ And she added, a note of bitterness in her voice, ‘If we’d known it was going to be taken from us, we’d never have concentrated all our efforts on the Watersnake. But twenty thousand acres was a manageable size, about all we could afford to keep fenced against the neighbours’ sheep. We sowed new grasses, improved the waterholes, even got a bulldozer in and had them construct a reservoir.’ Again that little helpless shrug. ‘But it’s progress, I suppose, and they were offering employment, roads, a railway line to connect with Tom Price, all the infra-structure the politicians down in Perth are so keen on.’

We were getting near now, for she went on, ‘Meeting Daddy, you must remember what it has meant to him — make allowances. He had to rebuild Jarra Jarra virtually from scratch, everything against him, money owing, the land dead and nothing that worked, all the machinery, the bores, the vehicles, the generators, the shearing equipment, everything rusted with neglect. Grandfather …’ She hesitated. ‘He was an alcoholic. He was also mad — quite mad at the end.’ She laughed, a brittle, bitter little sound. ‘I think maybe I take after him. I’m a little mad myself sometimes.’ She gave me a quick, sideways glance. ‘Poor Daddy’s had a lot to contend with, y’see.’

A flock of parrots burst in red-green brilliance from a tree beside the track. ‘What about Golden Soak?’ I asked, remembering the bright enthusiasm in her voice as she had talked of my coming out and opening up the mine again.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘There was a time when all Daddy’s hopes were centred on it. But then …’ She gave a little shrug. ‘Sometimes I think the only thing right about that mine is its name. It soaked up all the money Jarra Jarra produced when wool was booming.’ And she added, ‘Daddy’s taken the ute up to the Lynn Park homestead to get our stores and mail today. He may not be back yet. But when you meet him …’ She glanced at me, something pleading in her eyes. ‘Just make allowances, that’s all.’

And after that she didn’t say anything until we breasted a rise and caught a glimpse of hills ahead. ‘The Windbreaks,’ she said and ten minutes later we were into a flat area at their feet and there was the homestead, a huddle of tin-roofed buildings, backed up to the hills, ghost gums white in the gullies either side and the skeletal metal shape of a wind pump lifeless in the torrid heat. We passed through a gap in a fence line, wheels drumming on a cattle grid made of rusted sections of old piping. ‘I wish you were seeing it in the spring,’ she said, her eyes creased against the glare and her voice wistful. ‘Not all burned up like this. It was one of the first things Daddy did, sowing the home paddock with special grasses. A sort of pilot operation to see what the station could be like. I’ve walked through here after the wet with grasses knee-high and the whole paddock a riot of flowers.’ And she added, the wistfulness deepening into sadness, ‘You’ve no idea — this place can be so beautiful.’

I had a momentary picture of her walking bare-legged through lush green grass picking wild flowers, but then it was gone, killed by the ugly reality of what my eyes saw. The track was dusty, the grass sered brown, the hills shimmered in the burning sun. And the buildings all dilapidated, the woodwork starved and flaking paint. It was almost a settlement, but as we drove into it I could see that most of the buildings were empty and unused. Horses stood among the ghost gums away to the left, nose to tail, brushing at the flies, and two dogs, one an Alsatian bitch, the other looking like a dingo cross, ran towards us barking. A cloud of grey and pink birds rose screaming from the branches of three great trees. We stopped in their shade, the leaves hanging listless and a camel couched by the furthest bole, a lather of froth on its rubbery lips.

She took me over and introduced me. ‘Her name’s Cleo. Suits her don’t you think?’ She was laughing, her hand in the animal’s mouth, between its huge yellowing teeth. ‘She loves having the roof of her mouth tickled.’ The long neck stretched, the strange reptilian head lifted in ecstasy. ‘Beaut, isn’t she?’

‘Where did you get her?’ I asked.

‘Why here — on the station.’ She was bending down, brushing the flies away from its eyes. ‘We’ve got at least five or six hundred roaming the place. Wild — like the brumbies. But she isn’t wild. I’ve had her since she was a baby. We’ve grown up together, haven’t we, Cleo?’ The supercilious head turned, the pale amber eyes staring distantly as though searching some dimly remembered desert horizon. There was a deep rumbling, the noise exploding in a belch that blew a bubble of foam from its lips. ‘She hasn’t moved since we left this morning. I wish I could stay motionless like that for hours on end.’ She straightened up, her sweat-stained shirt moulded to the swelling line of her breasts, and wiped her hand on her trousers. ‘Come on in where it’s cooler and I’ll get you a drink. What would you like?’

‘Tea,’ I said, ‘if there is any?’

‘Yes, tea of course. It’s what we mostly drink anyway.’

She led me through between two buildings, past an old hand-operated petrol pump and a wooden barn containing an elderly Morris Oxford tourer and the remains of a model-T. And at the side of the house itself there was a sort of patio of quartz slabs half-buried in red dust. There was a sundial in the centre of it, the bronze plaque set on a great block of stone, the white of the quartz shot through with reddish ochre, so that it looked like marble. Around the edges of the patio were the pitiful vestiges of a flower border. A deck chair stood forlornly, the canvas hanging bleached and rotted from the starved wood frame.

The house was a single-storey building with a verandah facing south across what had once been a lawn. It was built partly of reddish stone, partly of wood, and was separate from the kitchen and domestic quarters. She swept a beaded curtain aside and we were in the gap between the two buildings. It was walled off like a tent, with ragged hessian stretched over a double layer of wire mesh that was packed with fibrous vegetation. It was roughly furnished with cane chairs and a scrubbed wooden table. ‘Come on in. We practically live here during the summer,’

‘Ingenious,’ I said, and she nodded.

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it. It’s a design based on the Coolgardie safe in which the old-timers of the gold rush kept their food. The outback station owners adapted it for their own purposes and called it the Bough Shed — I suppose because it was a pretty rough job in the early days, rather like the humpies the aborigines build for shelter. Up here in the Pilbara we call it the cool house.’ She smiled at me. ‘I guess it’s a bit hotter here, that’s why Cool sounds nice. I’m sorry the sprinklers aren’t working, and there’s no breeze today. Phew!’ She made a face. ‘Expect you’d like a wash. I know I would.’

Tom brought my suitcase in and she told me where to go, along a dim passage — ‘The second door on the left, and your room’s at the end.’ It was a single room, the shutters closed over the fresh windows and an air of spartan masculinity. The bathroom was almost as big. It was panelled in patterned zinc sheets painted green, the bath rust-stained, the enamel peeling, and the wood of the lavatory seat bare of varnish, the glued sections beginning to pull apart. The bathroom was a museum piece, the product of Golden Soak in its heyday, I thought as I stripped off with a trickle of water running brown and tepid. Refreshed, I had a shave, put on a clean shirt and went back to the cool house. It was empty except for the Alsatian bitch, who stared at me, hackles raised, but made no move as I seated myself in one of the cane chairs.

I could see the glare outside through the hessian and the wire mesh and furze walls, the room itself dim and relatively cool, the slightest current of air funnelling through the gap between the buildings. An aboriginal girl came in with a tray of tea, silent on bare feet, her cotton dress hanging like a shift. Her big brown eyes darted at me, shy as a wild thing, and then she was gone.

I poured myself some tea and drank it scalding hot, feeling relaxed and at ease, savouring the atmosphere of the place, the sense of continuity. There was a bookcase against the wall to my right. I lit a cigarette and sat staring at the titles. Old editions of Kipling, Galsworthy, Shaw, Forrester’s African Queen, Shute’s A Town Like Alice, Henry Handel Richardson, George Johnston’s My Brother Jack, a battered Shakespeare, Poe, an anthology of Coleridge’s poems, Morris West. It was a window into the personalities of three generations of Garretys. And in a lower shelf there was a row of. books on mining.

The Alsatian got up from her guard post by the entrance, her ears pricked. Then she was gone and I heard the sound of an engine, outside in the glare. I poured myself another cup of tea. Hoover’s Principles of Mining. It was an old book. Presumably it had belonged to the first Garrety, purchased when he began to operate the mine. Truscott’s Mine Economics was more recent. The Alsatian’s barking ceased abruptly and the silence of the bush crept into the room again. Chamber’s Encyclopaedia and the Oxford Dictionary filled the bottom shelf. I pulled out the battered, much-thumbed Shakespeare, glanced at the flyleaf — For Bill: This is the best companion I ever had. Take it with you — and my blessing too. It was signed: Your loving father, and underneath, in the same careful faded hand, was written: Emerald Downs, 9th March, 1897.

I sat back, the book open on my lap, smoking and thinking of the man who had settled here seventy years ago, who had discovered the mine and built this house. And all the time this Shakespeare with him, a gift from his father. It surprised me to discover that Big Bill Garrety must have been an educated man. And he had passed his love of good books on to his son, and he presumably to his children. Had Janet any brothers, I wondered? I couldn’t remember her mentioning a brother.

I was still thinking about this when I became uneasily aware of a presence in the room. I turned slowly and looked over my shoulder. A figure stood framed in the rectangle of the entrance, dark against the glare from the patio. He didn’t say anything, just stood there, motionless, staring at me. His stillness was very strange. I put the book down on the table and got to my feet. ‘Mr Garrety?’

For a moment I thought he hadn’t heard. But then his head moved, a slight inclination. ‘You’re Alec Falls, are you?’ He had a slow, very deliberate way of speaking. ‘I thought for a moment…’ He pushed his hand up through his iron-grey hair and then came slowly towards me. He was a big man with bushy eyebrows, the eyes themselves of a startling blue, slightly prominent. ‘The way you were sitting — and that book…. My father’s Shakespeare, isn’t it? Henry was very fond of that book.’ He shook my hand and waved me back to my seat. ‘Is that tea you’ve got there? Goodo.’

He poured himself a cup, added three spoonfuls of sugar and stirred it vigorously. ‘I would have stayed to welcome you, of course, but the month’s supplies came up from Perth yesterday. We have an arrangement with some people on the Highway. Aah! That’s better.’ And then, as though at a loss for conversation, he added, ‘Hot today. Very hot. No wind, y’know.’ Like his daughter, he had a strangely old-fashioned way of speaking.

He sat himself down and for the first time I saw his face clearly. It was dark like old leather, the skin dried and creased by the sun, but a bloodless, almost sick look, with lines of care etched deep and the lips a thin, compressed line. It was a stern, uncompromising face, yet somehow touched by sadness as though the outback hardness was a sneer concealing an inner sensitivity. Perhaps it was because the eyes were hooded now, the eyelids drooped in their dark sockets, but I had a strange impression of vulnerability.

‘Jan tells me you’re a mining expert. Tin, I think she said.’ He drained his cup. ‘Well, there’s no tin here, young man. Up north of Nullagine, yes. But not here. The Hamersleys, right on down to the Ophthalmia, it’s all iron country.’

‘I appreciate that.’

‘There’s some copper, but none of it workable. Our mine down by Coondewanna is the only worthwhile discovery ever made in this area, apart from the iron.’ His voice sounded tired. Times have changed. All anybody wants now, it seems, is iron ore for Japan. They’re no longer interested in gold.’ He put his cup down, staring at me. His blue eyes had an extraordinarily penetrating quality. ‘What brought you here?’

‘Your daughter invited me.’

‘I know that.’

He seemed to be waiting for some more definite statement and I said, ‘I think she hoped I’d be able to find some way of re-opening the mine.’

‘The mine’s finished.’ He said it abruptly and with unusual emphasis. ‘It was abandoned years ago. Didn’t she tell you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why did you come?’

I didn’t know how to answer that, the directness of the question disconcerting.

‘You’re a married man, I believe.’ The blue eyes under the bushy brows were watchful. ‘Where’s your wife?’

‘In England.’

‘England’s a long way away.’

I was conscious of hostility in his voice. ‘We’ve separated,’ I murmured.

‘I see.’

He didn’t like it and I realized then how dependent he must be on his daughter’s company, the threat of loneliness tangible in every visiting male. I wondered what had happened to his wife as I sat there at a loss for words, the silence growing. Finally I sought refuge in the book I had been looking at. ‘Your father must have had this with him when he settled here.’

He nodded. ‘I should have had it re-bound.’ He said it without conviction. That book’s had a hard life — all across the north of Australia and on down here. He had it in his swag.’ He leaned forward, peering at the inscription. ‘Emerald Downs. That was my grandfather’s place in Queensland.’

‘An unusual book to give a youngster starting out on a long trek.’

‘No, not really. The old boy had been a Shakespearean actor, y’see.’ His eyes were friendlier now, the ice breaking a little as he explained why his grandfather had come to Australia. ‘In those days it wasn’t considered quite the thing to be an actor. Not in his family. They were Army people. I don’t think he was a very good actor though he claimed to have played in the same company as Irving. Then he got mixed up with an actress. There was a court case and the family got shot of him — shipped him out as a remittance man and he settled in Queensland.’ He was smiling now, a dreamy look and his eyes no longer staring at me, but far away. ‘We’ve all inherited that odd acting streak. I used to know those plays pretty well off by heart. Henry was the same. He could spout whole speeches.’ And he added, still smiling quietly to himself, ‘We’ve read a lot. The same old books, but it helps to keep us sane: Isolated as we are, out here on the edge of nowhere.’

A door banged and Janet came in bringing a welcome freshness into the room. She had changed into sandals and a gay tent frock and she had some make-up on. ‘Oh, good, you two have met.’ She tossed a bundle of newspapers on to the table and turned to her father. They forgot to include any rice, so no curries this month. They always seem to forget something.’

He was looking up at her, smiling fondly. But the smile faded as he took in the make-up and the dress. ‘You look as though you’re headed for some motel swimming pool.’ There was an undercurrent of censure in his voice.

‘I wish I were.’ And then she pirouetted gaily, the tent skirt swirling. ‘Anyway, I’m on holiday today.’ Her eyes were dancing and she looked very young.

‘Have you had tea?’ he asked her.

‘Yes, I had some while I was checking the invoice.’ She was looking at him, and beneath the make-up and the gaiety, I saw her tiredness, the skin white below the eyes. ‘Anything in the box for us?’

‘Just the usual.’ He produced a few letters from his hip pocket. ‘And one for you,’ he added, handing it to me. The address was typewritten, the postmark Kalgoorlie.

She had taken the envelopes from him, and after glancing at them cursorily, she placed them with a pile of others under a piece of polished stone on top of the bookcase.

‘We’ll have to do something about them soon,’ he said awkwardly.

‘I told you, today I’m on holiday. I’m not even going to think about them today.’ She laughed, a flash of even white teeth. But I could see it was an effort. ‘And we have a guest. We haven’t had a guest here for — oh, ages.’ She smiled at me. But then she was looking at her father again and the smile vanished. ‘Anything else?’

I could see him avoiding her eyes.

‘It’s Andie, I suppose.’

He didn’t say anything and she turned to me. ‘We’re broke. Gloriously and absolutely broke.’ She was trying very hard to make a joke of it. ‘You may as well know the sort of company you’re keeping.’

‘Don’t be silly, Jan. It’s just a cash problem.’

Then, why don’t you go and see Joe Davis? That’s what banks are for, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve never run an overdraft or a mortgage in my life, not since I paid off all the debts here.’

Her eyes went to the pile of envelopes. ‘Andie’s got drought problems same as we have.’ But then she saw the shut, obstinate look on his face. ‘Well,’ she said resignedly, ‘the pump’s full and we’ve got stores for a month anyway.’

‘You must excuse us,’ he said to me. ‘We only have one bank, and that’s our cattle. When we get some rain …’

‘When!’ she cried. ‘When, when, when…. One of the boys just came in, told Tom they’d found a dozen head up in Red Rock Gorge. He’ll take the ute down this evening with water and try to shift them through the Gap.’ She was gripping the table, her knuckles suddenly white, her face turned to the glare from the patio. ‘A Cock-eyed Boz, a cyclone, anything. I don’t care — But God give us some rain.’ It came from the heart, a cry of despair almost.

Her father leaned forward and put his hand over hers. His hand was long and thin with bony fingers, the skin marked with the brown blotches of sun cancer; hers was small, short-fingered, the palm, as she turned it up to answer his touch, hard and calloused.

‘It’ll rain,’ he said.

‘But when?’

‘In God’s good time.’

‘Damn God! I want it now.’

I could see him framing the words to reprimand her. But instead he said quietly. ‘It always has, y’know — sooner or later.’

‘But it’s never been as bad as this.’ She saw he was about to contradict her and added, ‘Well, not in my lifetime anyway.’ She turned her freckled face to me, her eyes a little wild. The trouble is, when it does come, it’s so violent.’ And she added wistfully, ‘I remember that night at Drym, the softness of the rain. It’s never like that here.’

‘Perhaps not.’ He leaned back, frowning at the tin roof.

‘Rumble thy bellyful … how does it go? Lear, y’know.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Spit, fire! Spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters. I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.’

‘But I do,’ she cried. ‘Our elements are unkind.’

‘It’s a hard country,’ he admitted.

‘Then why not sell the mine?’ She turned to me. ‘Golden Soak must be worth something surely? It’s got mine buildings, machinery, gold — it wasn’t worked out, you know. And this mineral boom — ‘

‘It’s nickel they’re after,’ he said gently.

‘I know it’s nickel.’ Her voice sounded edgy. ‘I read the papers, same as you do. I know about Poseidon and Western Mining. But with all these companies being floated, they’re after anything they can get, and if we could sell Golden Soak — ‘

‘No. ‘He said it flatly. ‘We’ve been over all this before, Jan.’

‘Well, it’s time we went over it again,’ she said tartly. ‘Alec hasn’t come all this way for nothing. At least he can tell us whether it’s worth anything at all.’

‘I think I am the best judge of what it is worth,’ he said stonily.

‘This letter may be of some help,’ I told him. ‘It’s from a company promoter who specializes in West Australian shares. I asked him to make some enquiries about your mine.’ And I slit the envelope.

‘You’d no right to do that.’

I looked up, the letter open in my hand. He was leaning forward, staring at me, the long leathery face hard and a muscle twitching, anger blazing in those big eyes — anger, and something else, something I couldn’t place.

‘The mine’s closed,’ he said, speaking very slowly, very emphatically. ‘If it’s ever opened again, it will be opened by me. Is that understood?’

‘But he’s only trying to help,’ Janet cried. ‘And if it’s worth anything at all …’

‘Daughter, please.’ The sharpness of his voice, the edge in it — it was as though he’d slapped her in the face.

‘Oh well, to hell with it then,’ she said brightly, and began to talk of other things while her father sat there brooding in silence and I read Kadek’s letter, my hopes dashed in the first paragraph. No offer of a job, only the vague outline of a proposition that left me with a feeling of helplessness. And then I was reading the last paragraph, scanning it quickly, absorbing the information with a sudden sense of excitement, wondering what it meant. I read it through again, slowly this time, and as I read I heard Ed Garetty’s voice saying, ‘Only this morning there was a Toyota through Lynn Peak with two men in it asking about Golden Soak.’ And he added, ‘It’s bad enough having a mine that’s marked on every map, but if we put it up for sale we’d have half the prospectors in the State tramping over the property, driving their trucks through our fences.’ And Janet saying, ‘Well, it wouldn’t make much difference — our fences are in pretty bad shape anyway.’

There was a sudden silence and I looked up to find her staring at me. ‘Well, what does your friend say?’ she asked with frank curiosity.

‘He’s not interested in Golden Soak.’

I saw the light fade from her eyes and I turned to her father. ‘Do you know where Lake Disappointment is?’

He didn’t say anything for a moment, a stillness settling on the room, his eyes watching me. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What else does he want to know?’ The bleakness of his voice was chilling.

I hesitated. But his reaction, my own curiosity — I felt impelled to ask him. ‘Does Mcllroy’s Monster mean anything to you?’

The silence deepened, his face frozen. It was as though I’d dropped a bomb hi the room.

‘McIlroy was your father’s partner, wasn’t he? Does his Monster exist, or is mis talk of copper just a prospector’s dream?’

He shook his head, frowning, a puzzled look in his eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly.

‘Is it true he was searching for it when he disappeared?’

The stillness was absolute then, a silence so complete that I could hear the sibilant sound of the Alsatian breathing in her sleep as she lay sprawled by the entrance.

‘But that’s ages ago,’ Janet said.

‘Before the war — hi 1939.’ His voice was controlled now, very quiet. ‘McIlroy was lost on an expedition into the ulterior.’ He leaned a little forward. ‘What’s the name of your correspondent?’

‘Kadek.’

‘Why does he want to know about McIlroy?’

‘It’s just bar talk,’ I said. ‘A rumour he’s picked up.’ I folded the letter and put it away in my pocket. ‘I imagine Kalgoorlie is full of rumours right now.’

He nodded slowly. ‘It was all hi the papers at the time. A lot of speculation — most of it nonsense.’ And he added. ‘All our troubles here stem from that man McIlroy. His expedition was a desperate, hairbrained attempt to make good all the money he’d lost.’

‘Gambling?’ I asked.

‘He was playing the stock market — our money, and a lot of other people’s too.’ And he added, coldly and with an intensity that was almost violent, ‘Pat McIlroy was a crook. He destroyed this station and he destroyed my father.’

‘You never told me that,’ Janet said.

He shrugged and got to his feet. ‘No point. As you say, it all happened a long time ago now.’ He looked down at me, still frowning, his eyes bleak — ‘Lake Disappointment is just below the Canning Stock Route, between the Great Sandy and the Gibson. They found his truck abandoned there, and east of Disappointment mere’s nothing, only desert.’

He went out then, leaving me with questions still unanswered and the feeling that there was more to it than that. Janet also disappeared, and shortly afterwards we had lunch. It was a cold lunch — cold beef, salad and cheese. The bread was borne-made. ‘Lucky your visit coincided with the monthly supply,’ Janet said. ‘We try to be as self-sufficient as we can, but things like cheese and flour, salad dressing — oh, lots of things … ‘

‘And beer.’ Her father paused in his carving. ‘Jan drinks a lot of beer, and we don’t brew that.’

‘I don’t drink much.’ She was opening a can, and she passed it to me with a glass. ‘Help yourself. Anyway,’ she added, reaching behind her for another beer, ‘I need it to keep my strength up.’

He smiled at her. ‘You realize it’s making you fat?’

‘How could it, riding that camel day after day? Just because you don’t… ‘ She stopped there. ‘Besides, it’s good for me. Gives me a fine healthy sweat.’

It was a quick meal, none of us talking very much, and afterwards she took me over the house. Her father had gone off in the Land-Rover to have a look for cattle, over by Deadman Hill he said.

The rooms were larger than I had expected and there was actually a drawing room, not pretentious, but nevertheless a surprisingly stately room with two portraits in oils over the open fireplace and a cut glass chandelier hanging from the centre of the ceiling. The portraits were of a man and a woman. The man was bearded, a heavy, formidable face, the blue eyes large and compelling. The woman wore a high-necked dress, her hair long and piled on her small neat head. But it was the snub nose and the freckles that caught my eye and I turned to Janet. ‘Your grandmother?’

She nodded, smiling. ‘We still have some of her dresses, including that one. I tried it on once.’ She giggled. ‘We’re as like as two peas.’

The furniture, shrouded in dust sheets, appeared to be of good solid mahogany and the walls were panelled from floor to ceiling with that same patterned zinc. It was painted a pale shade of green and the flower pattern was so delicate that it looked like wallpaper.

The bedrooms all led off that same dark passage and had french windows opening on to the verandah. ‘We often sleep out here,’ she said. ‘It’s wonderful when it’s cooler. Daddy won’t have a dogger on the place, so we’ve plenty of dingoes. Sometimes, out here, I’ll lie awake listening to their calls. I’ve counted as many as a dozen calling at one time, all round the house and quite close.’

‘Doesn’t your Alsatian see them off?’

‘Yla? No, of course not — she likes them around. But we have to lock her up when she’s on heat. She got away once and you can see the result, that dingo cross. Butch. We don’t worry much about him. He spends most of his time roaming the Windbreaks, and when he does come back he’s worn out, just skin and bone, and serve him right. He’s a womanizer.’ She laughed, glancing up at me as we moved back into the dimness of the passage, where she opened the door opposite and took me into a room facing north, which was part study, part office. ‘My father’s den,’ she called it. Bookcases crammed with books and magazines, a rack of guns, and everywhere rock samples, most of them tabbed with a map reference to indicate where they had been picked up. There was a big mahogany desk, bare wood showing through the worn leather top, and a black upholstered swivel chair with the stuffing visible in patches. The desk was littered with papers held down with pieces of rock and on the floor beside it was a large steel canister, dome-topped and painted cream. It caught my eye because I hadn’t expected to find such a modern instrument in a house that didn’t seem to have changed in fifty years.

‘That’s Daddy’s microscope.’ She took the dome cover off so that I could see. ‘It’s Swiss.’

I nodded. ‘A Wild Heerbrugg.’ I was puzzled because it was stereoscopic, the sort geologists use for examining core samples. ‘Does he know much about mineralogy?’

‘Only what he’s read.’ And she added, ‘D’you know how much it cost? — over eight hundred dollars. Enough to keep this place going for a couple of months the way we’re living at the moment. And it was only a passing craze,’ she added, the heat giving an edge to her voice. ‘He was down at the mine every day for almost a month, collecting samples, examining them; and then suddenly he abandoned the whole thing.’ She replaced the dome.

‘When was this?’ ‘

‘Oh, about a year ago. It was just after the iron ore company took over the Watersnake lease. They had to pay compensation, of course, and he saw an advertisement for this microscope in a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald somebody’d left at Andie’s place.’ She got out her handkerchief and touched her brow, mopping at the beads of perspiration. ‘He had this wild idea mat if he spent some of the Watersnake money prospecting around Golden Soak he’d make our fortune. For a time he was like a child with a new toy, full of excitement, staying up till all hours poring over the results. He went down into the mine, too, which scared me stiff — the entrance has been boarded up for years. He was quite convinced the Watersnake people would bring him luck.’ She looked at me, smiling a little sadly. ‘It’s sacred land, y’see — sacred to the Pukara, the Watersnake people. Grandfather was initiated into the tribe. There’s a lot about them in his Journal — their rites, their way of life, how they survived in near-desert country.’ She nodded to some paddles of dark brown wood hung on the wall above an old R/T set. ‘Those are from the Watersnake. They’re message sticks given him by the Pukara.’ There were more in a pile on one of the bookcases, all intricately patterned. She said they had been found in a cave in a little rock gorge below The Governor. Then she took me over to a large scale map stuck flat on the wall opposite the window, an aeronautical chart that covered most of the Pilbara. The boundaries of Jarra Jarra were inked in red. ‘Like a billy goat, isn’t it?’ She laughed and I saw that she was right. Jarra Jarra formed the body, stretching away to the east, and the head was represented by the Watersnake, the two leases connected by the narrow neck of the Robinson Gap. The goat image was completed by a beard, a vee of land extending in a south-easterly direction and embracing the peaks of Padtherung and Coondewanna. Near the tip of it was a small hieroglyphic of crossed pick and hammer and the name Golden Soak Mine printed against it.

The iron ore people needed the Watersnake for the new township they’re planning over towards Perry’s Camp. The first thing they did, of course, was to close the Gap, and about five weeks ago, when Daddy found a mob of cattle pressed up against their brand new fence, he had Tom cut the wire. That was when we started driving. She turned towards the door. ‘Well, it’s done now, all except the odd bunch. I just hope nobody finds out till we’ve had some rain.’

‘I’d like to have a look at your grandfather’s Journal some time,’ I said.

‘Of course.’

She was out in the passage now, the door held open for me, and I stood there, looking around at the clutter of things in that extraordinary den, the radio, the paddles of patterned wood, the rock samples — I was thinking of the long hours he must have spent here, worrying about the future. And that incongruous microscope, the sudden burst of enthusiasm. ‘What made him abandon Golden Soak as the solution to your difficulties?’

She shook her head, her eyes staring at me, luminous in the dimly lit passage. ‘I don’t know, I think he just came to the conclusion there wasn’t any point.’

‘Suddenly?’

‘Yes. Suddenly. You do, sometimes. You have a period of wild optimism, working like crazy, then, suddenly, you run out of steam. Haven’t you ever experienced that?

I nodded slowly, thinking of Balavadra. But then I’d only abandoned hope when things had got beyond my control, and I’d found a solution — of a sort. I followed her out of the room and she shut the door. ‘I’m going to have a rest now,’ she said. ‘I advise you to do the same.’

I spent the afternoon on the bed in my room, stripped to my underpants. It was stiflingly hot, but at least I could sweat in comfort, and I needed time to think to sort out my impressions and make up my mind what the hell I was going to do. There was nothing for me here and not much hope that Kadek would assist me financially if I did hitch a ride down to Kalgoorlie. I retrieved the letter from the pocket of my trousers and read it through again:

Dear Alec:

You missed me in Perth by two days. I got here Christmas Day. Hell of a place to spend Christmas, but I’m in on a mining deal near here at Ora Banda and my partner needed me on the spot. I got your letters and I’m sorry to hear you ran out of ore. I think I told you my philosophy — if you do strike lucky, let others in on the gravy before you’re scraping the bottom of the bowl. You should have floated your mine on the market while you were still into high grade ore.

I’ve nothing for you myself. I hire consultants when I need them. Few companies in Australia are big enough to employ experts on the staff, and those that are usually find them within the organization. I suggest you set yourself up as a mining consultant in Perth. There is still a shortage of qualified men out here, particularly those who can produce geological reports for the smaller companies that match the expectations of their shareholders. I can certainly introduce you to some useful people. I shall be here about a week, then back in Perth. Come and see me when you are next there. I have just started a mining newsletter and the services of a man of your qualifications and experience would give added weight to my recommendations. I am sure you realize how mutually profitable this could be.

I lay back, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about Kadek. I had no illusions about the sort of man he was. But though self-seeking, entirely egotistic, he had still made a deep impression on me. Partly it was his enormous vitality. But I think it was also because of his background. He was of middle European extraction, part Slav, with dark, rather saturnine features, black hair, cold, calculating eyes and a mouth like a steel trap. ‘Nobody but a fool works underground.’ There had been a suggestion of arrogance in his voice as he had said that. And then going on to tell me how his father had come out from Serbia between the wars and had ended up as a miner in Kalgoorlie, coughing his lungs out in a tin shack within sight of the Golden Mile. And Kadek had watched him die, with no sense of loss or sadness, no compunction even, only a feeling of contempt for the man who had given him life and then failed to provide him with an education to match his wits.

I picked up the letter again, relieved that he didn’t know my real circumstances….

Finally, you ask about the Golden Soak Mine. Work stopped there in 1937 and it was offered for sale. It was later withdrawn, no buyers. It’s gold, of course, and if it were uneconomic then, it would be doubly so now. Since you’re staying with the Garretys you’ll have discovered all this for yourself by the time you get my letter. But while you’re up there you might care to make enquiries about rumours of a copper deposit somewhere to the east of Lake Disappointment. Big Bill Garrety’s partner was a gambler named Pat McIlroy and when they came unstuck financially McIlroy took off into the interior and was never heard of again. How he knew, of the deposit and whether he ever found it I’ve no idea, but it’s still talked about as Mcllroy’s Monster and there’s an abo up at Nullagine claims his father was on the expedition. Chris Culpin, who is in on the Ora Banda deal with me, picked this up in the Palace bar here from a youngster who had just done a survey in the Nullagine area. The abo’s name is Wally and you’ll find him at the Conglomerate Hotel. It’s a rum story, and even rummer that it should crop up again after all these years. See what you can find out. If there is any truth in it, I can tell you this — right now it would be every bit as good as Lasseter’s Golden Reef. By which I mean it would fire the imagination of punters throughout Australia. Good luck to you!

Ferdie Kadek

Mcllroy’s Monster! I savoured the sound of it, speaking it aloud, my eyes closed against the slatted glare from the shutters. The word Monster conjured visions of a gigantic deposit, a mountain of ore. I remembered Mt Whaleback, huge in the dawn, sprawled dark against the sunrise, and this was copper, not iron. McIlroy was an Irishman presumably. A gambler, Kadek had said. A crook, Ed Garrety had called him, and dead for over thirty years. Yet this Monster still lived, the subject of bar talk in Nullagine. Had he invented the whole thing?

I was thinking then about the country between the Great Sandy and the Gibson deserts, the miles of emptiness, the blinding red heat of it. Christ! it was hot enough here in this darkened room. Nobody in his senses, however desperate, would go out into that, chasing a will o’ the wisp of his own invention.

So the Monster was real. At least to him. Real enough for him to risk his life to find it, and he had died in the attempt. A fly crawled at the comer of my nostrils. I flicked it off, pulling the sheet up over my head, and then I was dozing, picturing that Irishman dying of thirst by the edge of a salt lake and babbling to himself of a mountain of copper somewhere to the east. It sounded incredible that it could remain unexplored all these years. But anything was possible … anything at all in this extraordinary country.