The Golden Soak Read online

  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 shoulders.

  ‘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 buildings. 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 back 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 prominent 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 invit
ed 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 now. ‘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 up 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 selfconfidence 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 ski
rted 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 at 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 the 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 femininity 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, naïve the next, the odd mixture of old-fashioned Victorianism and down-to-earth frankness.