Golden Soak

TWO

I woke shortly after six to the sound of horses. It was cooler now, a slight breeze reaching me from the shutters. And my mind was made up. Somehow I had to get myself to Nullagine. The decision was a subconscious one, made while I had slept.

I got up, had a quick wash, and when I was dressed, I went out through the French windows to find Tom and two other blacks unsaddling their mounts, the camel watching them and the galahs flocked in the trees above. The horses were thin and very tired, their heads drooped, their bodies covered in sweat and dust. They were turned loose and I followed them as they moved dejectedly to join the others up among the ghost gums.

From this higher ground I looked down at Jarra Jarra, the house and outbuildings golden in the slanting rays of the evening sun, and sitting there among the white boles of the gum trees, with the horses browsing near on the hard, dry vegetation. I realized how much effort had gone into the building of this settlement deep in the bush. Now the eagles kept voracious watch; I could see three of them circling slowly on stiff-spread wings, and everywhere I looked, from the hills behind me to the long brown plain with the track winding through it, it was all brown, an arid, burned-up, waterless brown.

I sat there for a long time, nothing moving, only the wedge-tailed eagles in the sky and no sound except the horses behind me. The sense of solitude was immense. It was difficult to picture it in the old days with the bunkhouses full and the distant boundaries of the property a week’s ride away. The sun set, the sky flared, a flame of fire slowly darkening to the colour of blood, and the land reflecting the sky’s violence. A shiver ran through me. I was gazing eastward, the endless vista of the dried-up land turning to purple, the purple and the red divided by a hard line where land met sky. I was thinking of McIlroy again. A gambler. I was a gambler, too — both of us desperate. Somewhere out there, beyond the sharp line of the horizon, his bones lay white in the emptiness of the desert. And beyond his bones, still deeper into the emptiness. … I was thinking of the Monster, seeing in my mind’s eye the curved back of a hill shimmering on the edge of visibility.

I got suddenly to my feet. I must be mad even to think of it. I was a stranger in a strange land, alone, with no money and nobody to help me. The Monster was just a dream.

I went quickly down the slope, back to the house, knowing it was crazy, yet still under the spell of its fascination. Mt Isa, the biggest copper mine in Australia, way over on the other side of the country — somebody must have discovered it. And if there was a mountain of copper in the trackless wastes of northern Queensland, why shouldn’t there be one in the empty quarter between Great Sandy and the Gibson?

Janet met me, her pale frock glimmering in the dusk as I came between the sheds to the little patio. ‘I was getting worried about you. Tom said you’d gone up on to the Windbreaks.’

‘I went up to see the sunset.’

‘I suppose you thought it beautiful.’ Her voice sounded flat and weary. ‘But you’ll get used to it. It’s like that night after night here in the dry. In the end you’ll feel as I do — you’ll hate it.’ She turned and went inside. ‘Would you like a beer while we’re waiting for Daddy? He’s listening in on the radio. Port Hedland. It’s the evening schedule. Soon as he’s finished we’ll have dinner.’

The cool house was cosy now, the light on and a generator humming in the distance. There was a white damask cloth on the table, silver candlesticks and wine glasses of cut crystal. ‘Do you always dine like this?’ I asked.

She laughed. ‘No, of course not. We’re usually going to bed about now. Saves running the generator, and anyway this last month we’ve all been away by first light.’

‘You shouldn’t have altered your routine for me.’

‘Why not?’ her eyes were bright, a glow of excitement. ‘Besides, it’s New Year’s Eve. I do believe you had forgotten.’ She gave a little sigh. ‘We might have forgotten it, too. We haven’t much to celebrate, have we? But you’ve given us an excuse. And we’ve earned it. Oh, my goodness we have.’

Sitting there, drinking ice-cold beer and seeing that girl, so young and gay — it was hard to realize that they and the station, the whole world her grandfather had created, was on the brink of final disaster. ‘What exactly did McIlroy do?’ I asked.

But she didn’t seem to know. ‘I could never get Daddy to talk about that. Y’see the world he grew up in was so different to the world he inherited after the war. Before the crash, Jarra Jarra was the centre of the social life of the Pilbara — they had race days here and balls, a way of life that is quite unbelievable now.’

‘And you don’t know anything about Mcllroy’s Monster?’

She shook her head. ‘I’d never even heard of it until you mentioned it today.’ She was staring at me, her eyes wide in the harsh glare of the naked light bulb. ‘Why? You’re not taking it seriously, are you?’

I slid away from that, asking her instead about the Journal. But apparently the Journal she had typed didn’t refer to it. ‘It doesn’t mention McIlroy either. There’s a reference to closing the mine, but only because it was running at a loss. The mine was closed long before the crash, about a year I think. And there’s no mention of financial difficulties. It stops before then, y’see.’

‘So it’s not complete?’

‘Oh no. It goes up to October 1938. Then it stops. The last entry is about a trip he made out of Port Hedland in a pearling lugger. He was very interested in pearling and the coastal fisheries and owned a number of boats operating out of Port Hedland and Broome. The last words are: Picked up the news about Munich on the wireless as we were coming into Pan Hedland — and that’s all. It just ends there, abruptly.’ She bent to light the candles and I was suddenly conscious of her femininity. ‘I’ll show you after dinner. A lot of it isn’t really interesting at all, not to you at any rate — about the family and the people round, life generally. But it does give a picture of what it was like living here on one of the biggest stations in Australia, and there are bits that are really quite graphic, particularly the early pages. How he discovered Golden Soak, for instance. I thought at one time of sending it to a publisher. But that’d mean Sydney, and though he was a great figure here in the Pilbara, I doubt whether anybody’s ever heard of Big Bill Garrety over in the East.’

Her father came in then with a bottle of wine, holding it carefully. ‘I don’t know whether it’s still drinkable,’ he said. ‘It’s been here a long time now — one of the few bottles left after the old man died. It’s from the Barossa Valley in South Australia.’ It was a red wine and I looked at the label as he poured it — St Emilion 1942. ‘A lot of our wines have been given French names — silly, when they’re quite different.’

Janet had cooked the meal herself, steaks with salad and chips. ‘Quite like old times,’ her father said. He was smiling, his face younger and less careworn in the candlelight. ‘Well, here’s to you and the success of your visit to Australia.’ He raised his glass and I saw it was less than half full.

Janet nodded and she too raised her glass. ‘I have a feeling …’ She hesitated, smiling at me over the wine — ‘I’ve a feeling now you’re here things will change. Here’s luck — to us all.’ And she drank, quickly.

A shadow moved in the patio entrance behind her and in the darkness outside I saw Tom standing, squat and black. Ed Garrety had seen him, too, and he rose and went outside. He stood talking there for a moment, then he came back and sat down again, his face sombre as he started in on his steak.

‘What is it?’ Janet asked. ‘Couldn’t they shift that bunch out of the gully?’

‘They shifted them all right. Got them through the Gap.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘A vehicle of some sort. Down by the old shearing shed. They saw the lights when they were on the Robinson slope.’

‘Heading for the mine?’

He nodded. ‘That Toyota I wouldn’t wonder.’ The twitch was back at the side of his mouth. ‘I’ll go down there after dinner and rout them out. Those damned prospectors think they own the country.’ And he added, his face darkened with anger, his voice trembling. ‘That’s the curse of this mineral boom. Having a mine that’s marked on every map — you might just as well put a notice up in the highway saying ‘Prospectors Welcome’. They don’t realize it isn’t a lease. We own Golden Soak and the flat land to the east of it, the mineral rights as well. That was one thing my father did get out of the government.’

We ate in silence after that, the mood changed, all the pleasure gone out of the meal. It made me realize how isolated they were, how vulnerable to intruders.

Later, when we had finished and were sitting over our coffee, Ed Garrety began to talk about the old days when he was a boy and there were over a dozen men working at the mine and some twenty blacks with their families living around the homestead, anything up to a hundred thousand sheep roaming the station. I think he was just talking to put the thought of intruders out of his mind, and he went on to describe what it had been like when he took over, after he had come back from Java at the end of the war. That was when I learned about his son. It was his room I was occupying and he had been killed in Vietnam. ‘Perhaps it’s as well,’ he murmured. ‘Henry loved this place and I wouldn’t have wanted him to see it as it is now.’

‘D’you think I like it?’ Janet snapped.

‘No. No, of course I don’t. But it’s different for a girl.’

I saw two spots of colour flare in her cheeks and I said quickly, ‘He was in the Australian forces then?’

‘That’s right. Infantry. He was a real fighting boy. At eighteen this place wasn’t big enough to hold him. He wanted to see the world, wanted action. Then we got ourselves involved in Vietnam. He was one of the first casualties.’ He drained his glass, but didn’t refill it, only ours. And then he got to his feet without a word and went through into the passage. He came out a moment later with a rifle in his hand. ‘Be back in time to see the New Year in with you,’ he said to his daughter. And then to me, ‘We listen in to it on the wireless, y’know. Makes us feel we still belong to the world outside.’ He nodded. ‘Back inside of a couple of hours.’

‘Would you like me to come with you?’ I asked. But he shook his head. ‘They’ll go as soon as they know we own the mineral rights. The entrance to the mine is boarded up anyway. It’s unsafe, y’see.’ He went out then, calling to Yla, and a moment later we heard the Land-Rover drive off.

‘I’m glad you didn’t press him,’ Janet said, adding with an impish gleam, ‘I know you’d rather be driving down to the mine than sitting here with me.’

‘I’m sorry if my disappointment showed.’

‘Oh, don’t worry.’ She was grinning, a flash of white teeth. ‘I’m used to men who think mines are more important than women.’ And then, suddenly serious again. ‘Daddy’s quite hopelessly possessive about that bloody mine. Won’t let anybody go near it.’ She got up. ‘I’ll get you the Journal. Then at least you can read about it — how it all started.’ She came back a few minutes later with an old box file full of typed pages. She opened it and placed it on the table in front of me. ‘You’ll learn more from this than you would from Daddy. Sometimes I think he’s scared of Golden Soak.’

‘Because it’s unsafe?’

‘No, it’s more complicated than that — a love-hate feeling he has.’ She was turning the pages of typescript. ‘I can’t explain. I don’t really understand it myself. But when he was a young man, think how exciting it must have been for him. Going down there, working with the miners — it made a change from riding fences and working sheep in the heat and the dust. And the miners themselves, he always says they were a different breed. He got a great kick out of the fact that we had a mine on the station.’ Her fingers smoothed a page. ‘There you are. December 22nd, 1905, and a drought every bit as bad as we’ve got now. Start reading from there.’

‘But why should he hate the mine?’

‘I think you’ll understand when you read some of the later passages.’ Her hand was on my shoulder, her breath on my cheek, and I heard her sigh. ‘He won’t talk about it. But I know he does hate it.’ She straightened up. ‘You’ve got to remember what a drain Golden Soak has been. It never made money, not after the first few years. And yet, owning a mine like we do, there’s always the hope at the back of our minds — that one day it’ll turn out beaut and make our fortunes and we’ll be rich and live happily ever after.’ She was laughing, a note of wistfulness. ‘You read that while I clear the things away. Then you’ll understand how my grandfather must have felt, why we all have this stupid, quite illogical feeling that we’re sitting on a fortune, a sort of Pandora’s box, if only we knew how to open the lid.’

‘The official price of gold hasn’t changed in thirty years,’ I said gently.

‘I know that. But it doesn’t make any difference. I still dream dreams that one day….’ She shrugged, turning quickly away and beginning to clear the table. ‘Maybe after a few days, if you can spare the time, Daddy’ll get used to you being here and I’ll be able to persuade him to take you down. Actually, I’ve never been down myself. The ladders are gone and the winch gear broken. He always said it was too dangerous.’ She went out then and by the light from the single bulb and the flickering candles I began to read Big Bill Garrety’s account of driving cattle from the Turee Creek area to the goldfields at Nullagine:

22nd Dec: Two more soaks gone and the last bore run dry. Buried a dozen carcases and started driving the live beasts at sundown. About 60 head. Maurie told me two days back they ‘re short of meat at the goldfields now and the miners paying high prices. But these poor beasts are skin and bone and I doubt I’ll get more than a score of them through. Camped at dawn where some eucs gave a little shade for us and the cattle. Made only 9 miles during the dark and still another 12 to Pukara. If that waterhole is dry, then there’s nothing between here and the Fortescue, unless I take them into the gullies below Coondewanna and up through the homestead. But Pukara should be all right — it’s one of the blackman’s sacred waterholes inhabited by the ghosts of two Watersnake men of the Dreamtime. They sprinkle penis blood there. I’ve seen them do it. But not my two jackaroos — they’re from down around Kunderong.

23rd Dec: Left 7 dead, stoning again at sundown. The sky a dying furnace, the sun a monstrous flaming ball. Could almost pray for a cyclone. But no cloud. Just burnished sky, and the cattle so weak they ‘re sinking in their tracks. Thank God we ‘re riding camels, not horses. Have called a brief halt having pushed the animals hard and made 8 miles. Good flat going, but too much spinifex, too little pasture. I’ll have to complete the change-over to sheep. I’m about the only station up here that still runs cattle. But I hate sheep — they eat out everything, ring bark the trees in a drought. Another twenty years and I reckon the Sandy will have moved into this country…. Hurrah! We made it and there’s water — not much and brackish, but it’s water. Trust the blackman — the sacred soaks never seem to run dry. Reckon that’s why they ‘re sacred. You don’t make a gash in your John Thomas and scatter blood around for nothing! But looks like we ‘II have to go the long way round by Coondewanna. 24th Dec: Below Coondewanna now and just before sundown took a stroll up a gorge between Coondewanna and Padtherung to see whether the blackmen have made any of their funny drawings here like on the rocks behind the homestead. Found several, very faint, in a little ravine. Red country this, red like it is all to the west of JJ, but only a thin layer of iron rock. Where storms have eroded it I can see quartz, or maybe it’s jasperite like at Marble Bar — it’s coloured a sort of dirty grey and right under the overhang, where they’ve painted a rather odd-shaped roo, there’s patches of it that glitter faintly. And at the bottom of the gully, there’s another soak, carefully shielded by a slab of thin quartz stuff. The ground very moist underneath it and the dirt around it marked by roos urgent for water. Odd country this — very wild, [broke off a bit of the quartz and stuffed it — in my pocket, more for curiosity than anything else. I think it’s Pyrites, or maybe a form of mica, but even now in the firelight, waiting for the billy to boil, I can see the specks glittering. This was the beginning of Golden Soak and all my troubles. (Note: This last sentence was obviously added much later. Instead of an indelible pencil, it is written in ink with a fountain pen, probably in 1944. J.G.) ‘That was the year my Grandmother Eliza died.’ I hadn’t even noticed she’d come back into the room. ‘He was alone then. Daddy was the only one and still a prisoner of the Japs. I suppose the old boy had nothing better to do but to relive his life through his Journal.’ She was leaning over my shoulder again, her voice gentle. ‘The handwriting is very shaky, so I imagine he had already taken to the bottle. There are quite a few comments like that, all added about two years before he died, including four or five pages on the mining techniques and problems peculiar to Golden Soak. They might interest you.’ She refilled my coffee cup and began turning the pages. ‘You’ll probably have difficulty in following the sequence. I certainly did.’ She found what she was looking for. ‘There. I’ll leave you to browse through it. I’ve got to go and see to the chickens.’

It was towards the end of the typescript, a semi-technical account that constantly referred to the high cost of treatment due to the presence of antimony and the inconsistencies of the reef. Faulting had apparently been a major problem. On page 324 he gave the date of closure — November 21, 1937. But on the following page he referred to the final blow — a cave-in and the mine flooded at the lower level. No indication of when this had happened. The writing here was very vague, mostly an angry diatribe against the absence of any increase in the price if gold and the collapse of the Australian gold share market. It concluded abruptly with these words: The end of all my hopes — the effort of half a lifetime wasted. I wish I had never discovered that Soak. And then, without a pause, he went on to deal with the problems of maintaining the wool clip in country that was deteriorating year by year. This, too, seemed to have been written at a later date, but it was much less vague, probably because he knew more about the land than he did about mining, had in fact a strange affection for it; and unlike other graziers around him he realized what the effect of overstocking must be:

I remember when I first came to JJ. It was so beautiful at times it took your breath away — saltbush, bluebush, a whole world of native shrubs and grasses, all tough enough to exist in the harsh arid heat of this outback country, and the mallee and the ghost gums shimmering their leaves in the wind, shading the ground from the sun. But now — my God! when I look at what I’ve done to keep that bloody mine going and those blasted miners in booze and women. The land is desert. It’s shagged out. Maurie and Pete, they both say I should burn off like they do to encourage new growth in the spring. They don’t see that that’s the last straw in this poor unhappy land. I’ve tried it, seen the young growth come, and then there are more lambs, more hungry sheep-jaws champing, and before you can say knife the green that should have grown lush and big in the wet, the seedlings, that might have been trees — they ‘re all gone. It never has a chance to seed. And you burn again and it burns the seeds in the ground. Pete’s mentally retarded, a grown child, not caring. But Maurie ought to be able to see it. Betty does, I know, but he’s a pig-headed bastard. Eighteen years I’ve been running sheep here, more and more every year. Quantity to offset the steady decline in quality, and now I look at the place and I can’t recognize it. Even the mulgas are dying with no vegetation to shade their roots in the heat, and this year in the dry those damned sheep were stripping the bark they were so famished for food. And Ed — what will Ed make of it when he comes home? Thank God he ‘II never know what this country was like when I first came to it. There’s nothing left to show him by comparison what I grabbed and what he ‘II inherit. But my heart bleeds for him. One thing he must do is get rid of the blasted sheep, get back to cattle — a small herd, and give the land a rest, a chance to recover if it can. I turned back to the early part, reading entries here and there, oblivious for the moment of anything but the world Big Bill Garrety had lived in. There was a lot about Golden Soak in the entries for 1905 and 1906 — the first tentative shaft, the establishment of a mining camp, and then the adit driven into the side of Mt Coondewanna, the sinking of the main shaft to 200 feet, the difficulties of getting machinery to the site, the problem of supplies. The first cross-cut from the shaft into the quartz completed on April 4, 1907, and on April 6: This day we brought up the first bucketful of ore from the 200-foot level — the booze-up went on all night, the men singing by the camp fires, four sheep roasted whole and the camels scared to death. There was a lot about the camels after that — camel trains took the ore to Nullagine, coming back with the crushing machinery, all in pieces, and sleds for the heavier parts. Money pouring in, and all of it ploughed back into the development of the mine. And then, suddenly, the entries became shorter, more widely spaced — Perth, a troopship, Gallipoli, finally the trenches and the mud of Passchendaele, all told with stark simplicity, just the facts, nothing more. Even the period in hospital, when he’d lost an eye after a sniper’s bullet had grazed his head, only rated three short entries — the last dated June 9, 1918: Invalided home. Arrived Fremantle feeling quite fit after voyage though ship very crowded. Can’t wait to get back to JJ.

‘You’ve let your coffee get cold.’

I looked up, startled, to find Janet standing across the table from me and my coffee cup still full.

‘Sorry, I hadn’t noticed.’ I was still in the past thinking of his wound and how he’d died an alcoholic.

‘Shall I heat it for you?’

‘No, it’s all right.’

‘I had a little argument with a goanna — that’s why I’ve been so long. Didn’t you hear me shoot it?’

I shook my head. I couldn’t remember hearing a shot.

‘One of those big lizards — they’re always trying to get into the chicken run.’ She came round the table. ‘You’re back on the early part now.’

‘You didn’t tell me he’d been wounded.’

‘He only mentions it that once. He doesn’t refer to it again — not once in the whole Journal.’

‘And you say he went mad in the end. Was that the cause of it?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. I never knew him, y’see. And Daddy’d never discuss it with me.’

‘Then how d’you know he went mad?’

‘It’s what I’ve heard, that’s all. The older people, those who knew him, they don’t talk about it in front of me, but I’ve heard it all the same.’ And she added, ‘He must have been a most extraordinary man. It wasn’t only that he was tough physically. It was his personality. D’you know, even those who lost their money because of him — they still speak of him with a sort of hero-worship as though he were a man quite beyond the usual run of men. Did you read that bit where he described what he’d done to the land to keep those blasted miners in booze and women?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I read that.’

‘To think that he knew. … I was so appalled when I was typing it that I burst into tears. He knew what he’d done — the problems Daddy would have to face.’

I turned to the last page, to that abrupt ending with its reference to Munich. ‘It’s strange,’ I said, ‘that he kept this Journal all those years and then ended it here.’ I looked up at her. ‘Are you sure there isn’t some more of it?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve searched the house — everywhere. The same thought occurred to me.’

‘Then why did he stop at this point? Was he afraid of another war — that your father would have to repeat his own experience?’

‘No, I don’t think it was that. Though it’s what happened, of course.’ She was silent a moment, her brows wrinkled, gazing into the candles. Then she said, ‘I think myself he came ashore from that pearling boat, went up to the bank and was suddenly faced with the news that the company was broke.and owed money all over the North West. It must have been a terrible shock. I think if I were keeping a Journal I’d stop there myself. All the rest was disaster — the sheep and the leases being sold off, the fishing boats, the bank building, and the mine a sort of golden elephant that nobody wanted. It was the end of an era, everything he’d worked for …’ Again she shook her head.

‘No, I don’t think I’d want to continue my Journal after that.’ It seemed reasonable enough. ‘Could I see the original?’ I was thinking that the handwriting might give some indication. ‘I’ll get it if you like. D’you want to see it now?’ ‘No, it doesn’t matter.’ I was running backwards through the pages, searching for some reference to his partner. But I couldn’t see anything about McIlroy or his Monster, and when I commented on this she said, ‘They were business partners, nothing else. And he was nearing sixty, his mind harking back to the old days.’ She had moved to the patio entrance. ‘All that last part of his Journal is about the social life here and the old-timers round about. I don’t know much about McIlroy — only that he was a much younger man and that he was brought in, from Kalgoorlie I think, to run the bank.’ Her hand was holding the bead curtain back and she half turned to me so that the shape of her body was clear against the patio light, her face with the upturned nose in silhouette. ‘I thought we might walk down as far as the paddock grid and meet Daddy coming back. The heat’s gone off now.’ She came back, smiling, and blew the candles out. ‘Come out. Do you good. It’s lovely at this time of the evening and I could do with some air.’

I got up and we went out into the starlight together, the air hot and dry, but the day’s heat done and a breeze stirring, the buildings a black complex of substance and shadow. She didn’t talk and there was nobody about as we started down the dusty track through the paddock. It was very quiet, the old moon riding low so that I could just see our shadows like twins stretched out ahead of us. She took my arm and at her touch a spark leapt between us.

I didn’t dare look at her — not then, not until I had myself firmly under control. And when I did it was to see her eyes gazing up at me, the whites bright in the tanned darkness of her face, and urgent excitement in the gleam of teeth between parted lips. The spark was stronger then, electric in the dryness of the atmosphere, and I looked away, quickly, to the black hump of the Windbreaks rising high to our right. ‘No dingoes tonight,’ I murmured, and I wondered whether she would detect the tremor in my voice.

She didn’t answer, only the pressure of her hand on my arm conveying the message of her need and my blood throbbing in response. It was the heat. Man and woman alone in the quiet cruel beauty of the land’s emptiness. Christ! I thought. Don’t be a bloody fool. She’s just a kid and I was remembering Rosalind, how urgent she had been, her long slender body soft beneath me. I bent down, pretending to take a stone out of my shoe, and after that we walked on, the contact between us broken.

‘D’you miss her?’ she asked, a tenseness in her voice.

‘No,’ I said. But I think she knew it was a lie.

‘I never told you why I came to England.’ And she went on to explain that she’d come over in the hope of raising a loan — the ‘wind’ she called it — from the Mann-Garrety branch of the family. ‘It was a waste of time and Daddy would be furious if he knew.’

‘You saw Rosalind’s father then?’

She nodded. ‘He didn’t want to know he had Australian cousins, with a cattle station in the outback. Rosalind was the same. I can remember that night you came back from the mine — you must have known something was wrong between us. We were like two cats with our fur up. And you were so nice to me. I could have hugged you.’

‘You didn’t ask me for a loan.’

‘No. I sensed you had troubles of your own.’ And she added, ‘I’m glad you’ve separated. There was something about Rosalind …’

‘You didn’t like her.’

‘No.’ And she added almost in a whisper, ‘She was a bitch. Oh, she was beautiful — all the things I’m not and would like to be — but underneath that lovely velvet exterior …’ She looked up at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t talk like that. But you’re too nice, too real a person.’

I didn’t say anything, knowing what I’d done, the lie I was living. The sooner I got away from here. … I was hoping to God she wouldn’t take my arm again — touch me here in the hot night with the track and our shadows running away into emptiness. She had been riding for a month, fit and full of energy and no men around other than her father and the blacks. I recognized her need and it matched my own. ‘You’re very different from Rosalind,’ I said, thinking again of the golden skin, the soft dark hair falling to the shoulder.

‘Yes, I realize that.’ There was a note of resignation in her voice, a touch of sadness.

It was a cruel thing to have said, but it had the desired effect. After that she talked of other things and in a little while we came to the cattle grid at the end of the paddock. We waited there for almost half an hour, watching the track, but no lights showed and she became increasingly restless. In the end she turned suddenly and started back. ‘I’m going to get the ute and drive down there.’

That drive in the starlight was beautiful. And with a girl — even a stocky, snub-nosed kid like Janet — it could have been idyllic. But the spark was gone now. She was only concerned about her father and she drove with hard concentration, the tinny vehicle bumping and slithering on the loose surface. In less than half an hour we were under the shadow of Mt Robinson, with The Governor to the west of us, and looming up ahead the twin shapes of Padtherung and Coondewanna. Golden Soak was at the foot of these two, in rough hillocked country with the stony beds of dry watercourses and nothing much growing there but mallee and spinifex. We came to it over a rise, round a big outcrop of red rock, a single tall chimney sprouting from a huddle of tin roofs and a gully that ran back up into the gap between the two mountains.

That was how I saw it first, at night, with Janet beside me, taut-faced and anxious, both of us staring urgently through the fly-specked windscreen. No sign of lights, the place deserted and the corrugated iron hanging in rusted sheets. She drew up beside the main building and we got out, standing there uncertain what to do. ‘Perhaps he took another route back,’ I suggested.

But she shook her head. ‘There’s only the one track.’

I was looking up at the gaunt decayed building. The roof had partly fallen in and there were gaps in the tin walls, the iron framework showing through. She had left the headlights full on and it was still possible to read the faded lettering on the board above the gaping doorway — GOLDEN SOAK MINE; OFFICE. A piece of loose corrugated iron was tap-tap-tapping in the breeze. Otherwise, there wasn’t a sound. She had a torch in her hand and she shone it in through the open door — a long bench desk, a high-backed chair lying broken-legged and the walls lined with shelves full of rock specimens, everything covered in a thick layer of red dust. The floor, too, and the dust undisturbed, no footprints.

She got back into the ute and we drove right round the building and out as far as the old shearing shed. But the Land-Rover wasn’t there. She started searching for tracks then, found where a vehicle had turned and headed east. ‘That must be the Toyota.’ She was peering down at the treadmarks.

‘So they’ve left.’

‘Looks like it.’ She was standing, undecided, with her back against the door of the utility. ‘We can’t have missed him.’

‘What about the mine?’ I said. ‘Where’s the shafthead?’

‘Up there.’ She nodded towards the shadowed flanks of Coondewanna. ‘Halfway up the gully. There’s a tunnel driven into the mountain.’

We drove back then, past the mine buildings, picking up the rusted traces of old tramlines half-buried by dust drifts, following them up the gully till we came to a series of shallow trenches or costeans. It was here, where the outcropping quartz had first been mined, that we found the Land-Rover standing empty.

That was when I discovered she had a gun with her. She was scared and she got it out of the back of the ute. It was an old-fashioned repeater with the gleam of silver on it and the sudden click as she worked the breech was disturbingly loud in the hot stillness of the gully. We started to walk then, skirting the open mine pits, still following the old tramlines, and halfway up the quiet was shattered by the sound of somebody hammering on wood.

I don’t remember climbing the rest of the way. I only remember that we were suddenly at the entrance to the mine, an arched cave-hole between two outcrops with the tramlines disappearing under a door of rough boards. The bolt with its big padlock had been forced and Ed Garrety was hammering a piece of axed timber across the entrance of the adit. The Alsatian moved towards us, a gliding shadow, her tail waving.

He jerked round, the axe gripped like a weapon. ‘Who’s that?’ Blinded by the torch, he couldn’t see us and his voice was sharp and high. The beam of the torch dropped and Janet spoke. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, his voice still strained, but a note of relief in it. And when she asked him what had happened he said, ‘Two of them. They’d forced their way in and the — ‘ He checked himself. ‘One of them was just about to lower himself down the shaft.’

‘Who were they, do you know?’

But he didn’t answer, standing very still, the axe gripped in his hand. ‘He had a rope ladder.’ His voice shook with anger. ‘If the boys hadn’t spotted the Toyota, he’d have been able to explore the lower levels without anybody knowing.’

‘I thought the lower levels were flooded?’ I said.

‘Who told you that?’

‘I’ve just been reading your father’s Journal.’

‘I see.’ He was staring at me, and even now, when I know the cause, it’s difficult to describe the expression on his face. It was a shut look, the blank stare of a man on the defensive, and there was a strange intensity about him. He stayed like that for a moment, staring, and then he turned abruptly, without a word, and began hammering again with the back of the axe until the timber was wedged firmly across the adit entrance. ‘I’ll fix it properly in the morning.’ He bent down, picked up his rifle, then turned to his daughter. ‘Why did you come? I told you I didn’t need any help.’

‘I was worried. We walked down to the paddock gate to meet you. We waited there about half an hour and when you didn’t come …’

‘Quite unnecessary.’ He slung the rifle over his shoulder and then, with a quick jerk of his head in her direction, he turned and led the way down the tramlines to the vehicles. When he reached the Land-Rover he held the door open for me. ‘You’ll ride with me, Janet, you follow us in the ute.’

We were out of the shadowed confines of the gully now, starlight pale on the rocks and Janet standing there like a rebellious child, her mouth sulky and those rather promiment eyes brilliant with anger. But she didn’t say anything, just turned abruptly, calling to the dog and getting into the ute. The slam of the door was loud in the stillness.

Ed Garrety backed the Land-Rover, turned and drove down to the mine buildings, swinging left and climbing to the rock outcrop and the track leading back to Jarra Jarra. He didn’t speak, driving furiously and in silence. I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was the mine he was worrying about or his daughter. ‘You were a long time,’ I said.

‘We had a bit of an argument, that’s all. And then they had to break camp and load up.’

‘You knew them, did you?’

He didn’t answer, the silence stretching uncomfortably between us. Suddenly he said, ‘What are your plans?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You’re a mining consultant. Golden Soak’s finished. It’s not only worked out, it’s dangerous.’ He glanced at me quickly. ‘There’s nothing for you here.’

‘In the present climate of Australia there’s always the possibility of some mining company taking a gamble on it.’

‘No.’ His voice, hard and flat, had an undercurrent of violence.

‘I could at least give you an opinion.’

‘No,’ he said again, his voice trembling. ‘I’m not having anyone risk his life down that mine.’ And he added, ‘Jan should never have invited you. She knew very well how I felt about it.’ He looked at me again. ‘I think it would be best if you left in the morning. Jan’s got work to do, and so have I.’

So it was his daughter he was worrying about. ‘As you wish,’ I said.

He nodded and I could see he was relieved. ‘I’m sorry, but with this drought and the cattle … we’re in no state to entertain visitors.’

He relapsed into silence then, his driving erratic and a barrier of tension between us. He didn’t speak again until he nearly turned the Land-Rover over avoiding a kangaroo caught in the beam of the headlights. ‘Silly buggers,’ he muttered, adding, ‘That’s why we have roo guards on our vehicles. You get a damaged radiator in this country …’

‘What do they find to live on?’

‘The roos? They don’t need much to keep them alive. Another month without rain, when the heat really hits, and you won’t see them at all. They’ll be lying up in rock holes, preserving their body moisture. And when it’s over they’ll start to breed again.’ He was more relaxed now and driving slower. ‘You can have a young joey running beside its mother, still suckling, while she’s got a youngster in the pouch and another embryo forming in the uterus. What’s more, that embryo can go into a state of suspended growth, so that a female doesn’t necessarily need to mate in order to continue the reproductive process.’

It was extraordinary, this ability he had of distracting his mind with talk. It was as though by talking he could exorcize whatever devil it was that had been tearing at his mind up there at the entrance to the mine. ‘The wren goes to’t, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive…’ He smiled thinly. ‘A strange play, Lear. And I can tell you this, copulation needs to thrive in this wretched land. That’s if the animals are going to have any chance of survival.’

I stared at him, wondering at his fascination with Lear. Had he cast himself in the role of that sad, tragic figure? His face, limned in the glow of the headlights, seemed less tense, and there was a note of almost boyish enthusiasm in his voice as he added, ‘It’s a bloody marvel, the kangaroo.’ He shook his head, actually smiling how. ‘You’d think God had created the creature just for the sort of conditions we’ve got here in the Pilbara right now.’

I asked him how he knew so much about the kangaroo, and he said, ‘A professor from Sydney, Zoology. He’s dead now, but he was an authority on marsupials and monotremes, and a lot of his field work was done here at Jarra Jarra. That was before the war, when I was young and full of wild extravagant plans.’

One of his plans had been to fence off a big slice of land and run it as a sort of nature reserve. He gave a weary, rather cynical laugh. ‘What my father never told me was that Golden Soak was bleeding the station to death.’

‘Surely you must have known?’

‘Mebbe I did,’ he answered vaguely. ‘But I was a youngster then, riding all day, fencing, putting down bores, drinking and having fun. The old man dealt with all the financial side, y’see — wouldn’t even allow me into the mine office. I thought things would go on like that for ever and that one day I’d be able to put my plans into operation.’ Again that tired, cynical laugh. ‘It didn’t work out like that, of course. My whole world suddenly fell apart — and then the war.’ Reliving it in his mind, his face became clouded and his voice suddenly sad. ‘Afterwards — when I got back … well, I was grown up then and Jarra Jarra no longer the place for dreams. We’d lost so much.’

The rattle of the wheels on the cattle grid was a reminder to both of us that we were almost back at the homestead. ‘Jan can run you in to Mt Newman first thing in the morning,’ he said. ‘If that’s all right with you.’

I didn’t say anything for a moment. It was Nullagine I wanted to get to, but he couldn’t be expected to know that. ‘How far is it to the Highway?’ I asked.

‘Forty-three miles. That’s to Lynn Peak. But you’d much better go to Mt Newman. You can get a plane from there. Or you could hire a car. The road’s reasonable from there to Perth or Kalgoorlie, whichever you want.’

‘I’ll go to Lynn Peak,’ I said. ‘I can hitch a ride on from there.’

He drew up beside the petrol pump, and when he had switched off the engine, he turned and looked at me. ‘You going to Nullagine then?’

‘Probably.’

‘I see.’ He sat there for a moment, not saying anything. And then he nodded. ‘As you wish.’ He got out and stretched himself, the two of us standing there in the dust by the pump, waiting for Janet. And when she arrived he told her, curtly and without any explanation, to take me in to Lynn Peak in the morning. He turned back to me. ‘I may see you before you leave, I may not.’ He was staring at me, or rather, he was staring through me at something that was in his mind, and there was a bleak look in his eyes. ‘Sorry we missed seeing the New Year in together.’ And then he turned abruptly, a shadow moving round the side of the house, his footsteps hollow on the bare boards of the verandah.

Was this what I really wanted — this sudden dismissal? And Janet standing there, saying, ‘So that’s that. You’re going, and you’ve hardly even arrived.’ I could just see her eyes, the whites brilliant and the stars shining pale behind the loose halo of her hair. In that moment she looked almost Beautiful. Abruptly, she turned and went into the cool house, sitting herself down at the table and staring straight in front of her. ‘Can I have a cigarette please?’

I offered her the crumpled packet from my pocket. She grabbed one quickly, and as I lit it for her I saw she was on the verge of tears, the cigarette trembling in her mouth. ‘You’ve no idea what it’s meant to me — having you here.’ She paused, looking away and blinking her eyes. ‘For months now I seem to have had the whole place on my back. The times I’ve wished Henry were alive.’

And then she was looking at me, the tears ignored: ‘I suppose you thought I was tough. Well, I am. I’ve had to be. Just as my grandmother had to be. But underneath …’ She shook her head, the sadness showing through, all her self-confidence ebbed away. ‘The fact is, I can’t cope — not any longer.’ She suddenly put her head down and started to sob uncontrollably.

I touched her shoulder, but that was all. ‘We’d better leave about dawn,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘Hell of a way to start the New Year.’ She smiled at me through her tears, and then suddenly she was her normal practical self again as she got quickly to her feet, her voice firmly under control. ‘We’ll have to take the Landy. Daddy told me our track’s all right, but on the Highway the bulldust’s bad all the four miles to Lynn Peak. Driving through bulldust’s like riding on water; you need a four-wheel drive.’

I didn’t see her father again that night. He’d shut himself away in his den and it was she who filled the tank of the Land-Rover and got the spare wheel for me to strap on to the bonnet. The night was very clear, the sky full of stars, and somewhere above us on the Windbreaks a dingo howled. We were standing together on the patio then, a breath of air before going to bed, and she said, ‘I enjoyed that trip to England. It was a change and I met a lot of people. But this is where I belong.’ And then, so quietly it was like a sigh: ‘I hate the thought that we might have to leave.’

‘Where would you go?’ I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t live in a city. Not after this. All my life I’ve had this glorious sense of freedom. I don’t think I’d feel at home anywhere else. It’s part of me, this place.’

The whisper of her words was still with me when I went to bed, her voice, it seemed, the voice of all the countless women who had led solitary, difficult, uncomfortable lives, pioneering the outback of Australia. And lying in her brother’s bed, lumpy now with disuse, I couldn’t help wondering what he had been like, whether he would have managed any better. Would he have succeeded in holding the place together if he had still been alive?

We were up at five, tea and boiled eggs, and with the dawn we drove out across the cattle grid and took the track that skirted the paddock fencing, heading north-east. It was almost cool and in the flat beyond the northern shoulder of the Windbreaks we saw camels grazing. Ahead, more hills stood black against the newly risen sun. Soon we were crawling through the dry gully courses that feed Weedi Wolli Creek and by the damp earth of a dried-up spring Janet seized my arm — ‘Look!’ She was pointing. ‘Did you see it? A dingo.’ But I hadn’t seen it and she said, breathless, ‘Just a flash of cinnamon. Beaut!’

She was like a child on that drive, excited by something one minute, relapsing into moodiness the next. Mostly she drove in silence, radiating an atmosphere of constraint — not hostile, but not friendly either. And then, when the gullies ran out into open country again and the going was easier, she turned to me suddenly: ‘Why are you leaving — like this?’ Her voice was tense, and when I didn’t reply she said, ‘Is it because you thought I was throwing myself at you last night?’

I didn’t know what to say and she went on awkwardly, ‘You’re afraid I’ll do it again, is that it?’

I looked at her then and she was grinning at me. ‘I might it that.’ And she added, still with that impish grin on her face, If you’re worrying about my virginity — then thanks. But I’m quite capable of looking after that myself.’

She put her foot down then and I had to hold on to the bar-grip in front of me as we drove flat out across a plain that was near-desert country, the track running out ahead of us, half-obliterated by windblown dust. Driving fast like that, I felt she also wanted to be shot of me, to end the awkwardness of our close proximity.

The sun was striking her face now, the sweat forming in beads as she fought the bucking of the Land-Rover, holding it through.he dust drifts, the freckles showing and her hair limp, her eyes fixed on the track. My God, I thought, she’d make a good wife for some lout of a grazier — earthy, practical, and with the sort of boundless vitality that could stand up to the harshness of this outback country. In that moment she reminded me of the picture of her grandmother, the feminity of her overlaid by an indomitable strength of character. And remembering the features in that oil painting, I was no longer puzzled by her inconsistencies, the way she could appear mature one minute, naive the next, the odd mixture of old-fashioned Victorianism and down-to-earth frankness.

I was still thinking about this and the strange effect it had on me when we reached the Highway. It was a red gravel road and it hadn’t had a grader over it for a long time so that it was badly ribbed. We hit the bulldust in less than a mile, the Land-Rover sliding and slithering on the fine-ground surface, bucking across the truck ruts like a boat in a lumpy sea.

It was like that most of the four miles to Lynn Peak, the turn-off to the homestead marked by a sign that read:

SHORT OF PETROL? THIRSTY? HUNGRY?

The Andersons welcome you to Lynn Peak Homestead ONLY 400 YARDS.

It was just after seven, and as we drove down the track she said, ‘Andie’s a bit of a mystery. They say he jumped ship at Fremantle, but it’s just a story — nobody knows really. His wife’s from Port Hedland. She’s half Italian. They’ve a couple of kids now, and when she isn’t looking after them, she’s dishing out pasta to the drivers who pull in here for a break. It’s a funny thing …’ She was talking quickly as though to cover our parting. ‘Ten years ago you wouldn’t have got any self-respecting Aussie eating pasta. Steak V chips and half a dozen stubbies — that was the staple diet for the roustabouts and jackaroos, all the odds and sods who bummed their way through the North West. Now you’d think they were half Italian themselves the way they roll in here. Pasta — they love it!’ She suddenly laughed. ‘Mebbe it’s Maria they love.’

We were swinging into the yard then and she blew the horn as she braked to a stop beside the house. It was a poor place, built almost entirely of tin with a flyscreened verandah and chickens scuffing in the dust beside the petrol pump. A small, energetic man appeared, about forty with baldish head, and she introduced me. She didn’t get out. She just stayed there behind the wheel talking to him till I had got my suitcase out of the back. ‘I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.’ She said it brightly, a quick smile and that was all. She didn’t stop to say goodbye; just waved her hand, her face set in that bright artificial smile as she turned the Land-Rover and went roaring off in a cloud of dust.

I stood and watched the dust settle behind her, sorry to see her go. I felt suddenly alone, knowing I’d lost the only person who cared a damn what happened to me.

‘So you’re wanting a ride up to Nullagine?’

I turned to find Andie staring at me curiously, his eyes crinkled against the sun’s glare.

‘What are the chances?’ I asked him.

‘Och, somebody’ll be through. In time. It’s early yet.’ He turned towards the house. ‘Janet said to feed you, so come on in and we can breakfast together.’