The Golden Soak Read online

  ‘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 Balavedra. 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 Garrety’s 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 McIlroy’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

  McIlroy’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 his 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 corner 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. Incredible that it could remain unexplored all these years. But anything was possible … anything at all in this extraordinary country.

  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 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 bro
wn.

  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 McIlroy’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 Port 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 but 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 on 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.’