iron hut's access track branched to the south-east.
Johnny’s lonely wanderings were quite aimless. One Sunday his aimless wandering took him to a very particular, average-looking hill near the edge of the ranges. There Johnny started climbing, without any real purpose in mind and, at the summit, made a surprising discovery. A break existed in the bigger range nearby, a notch through which he could see the iron hut. It was no more than five or six hundred metres away. And even as he stood there he thought he saw Angelina and his poor heart nearly burst.
He remained there until sundown, sitting on the hill's topmost rock, watching intently, hoping to catch sight of Angelina again. At that distance the figures were tiny, but he could make out who was who. Mama came and went a couple of times and he caught sight of the men, but not Angelina. Reluctantly, with the light failing, he set off down the hill and began making his way home.
Each Sunday after that, after washing his clothes, helping with the wood and water and having a quick lunch, Johnny would walk the three kilometres to his hill. Sometimes it was only after helping Sergio with the flat tyre, too, because the tyres were thin and the rocks were sharp. And if he saw Angelina he would take off his shirt and wave it.
One day Johnny had an idea. He tied his shirt to a stick, like a flag, and every time Angelina appeared he'd wave it from side to side over his head.
Late in the afternoon Angelina appeared to wave back. At first Johnny couldn’t believe it, and when she went back toward the hut and disappeared from view he knew he was mistaken. But she had noticed and she'd realised who it was. She'd been looking in that direction, watching an eagle circling in a thermal, and the movement had caught her eye.
A few moments later Angelina came into view again and began waving a large cloth.
Johnny was overwhelmed with joy. He jumped about on his boulder waving and shouting like a man possessed. He knew Angelina couldn’t hear him, but the nature of her response was as clear to him as if she had whispered her acceptance in his ear.
She then returned to the hut, and a few moments later came out again. Following this she began to fuss about in front of the iron hut – raking or sweeping, Johnny couldn't make out which. Whatever the case, every so often she would stop as if taking a breather and stare in his direction.
Every Sunday after that, around mid afternoon, Angelina would take out Mama's tablecloth or have something on the clothesline which she would give a good shake. She would also spend time raking and tidying the area in front of the iron hut – where they often sat out in the twilight at the end of the day.
Meanwhile, back at the Wildcat Mine, Sergio Domenici was beginning to wonder about Johnny Doss' regular Sunday wanderings. One day, wood and water replenished, camp duties attended to and with little to occupy his mind other than stare at the camp fire and reflect on life, Sergio decided to follow him – out of simple curiosity, really, just to discover where it was Johnny kept going. He made sure he was not observed, however, and he took great care to leave no tracks that Johnny might later find.
What Sergio saw that day puzzled him greatly, but, being wise in the ways of life, he kept his thoughts very much to himself.
So all through winter and right up to the last week of November, this was the state of affairs. Every Sunday afternoon Johnny would walk to his lookout and wave to Angelina. And every Sunday Angelina would wait to see him and have something handy to "give a good shake".
Now, in the normal course of their mining, Sergio and Johnny would drill blast holes in the softer rock next to the mica-bearing pegmatite, then set their explosives and fire it out. By this means they could expose the reef itself, allowing them to fracture the host seam with smaller ‘gentler’ charges. They could then extract the mica without damaging it too much, a factor critical to its value.
Late in November they came on a section of the pegmatite containing some exceptionally large books of mica. It was clear, clean muscovite and the best looking mica either of them had seen.
There was a problem, however. At an earlier stage of the mine’s development Sergio had encountered a change in the geology, where the hard gneiss of the hanging wall had given way to a slick looking schist of some sort. Unbeknown to Sergio, the pegmatite beyond that point comprised the underlying side of a major shear-zone. It was some of this weaker rock that had fallen in the previous accident.
For the next three weeks mica mining at the Wildcat Mine was like money for gum leaves, and during this time Sergio and Johnny extracted a greater amount of better-quality mica than had been produced over the whole of the previous year. But, as the workings advanced, the rock adjacent to the mica-bearing formation became softer. Fracturing the pegmatite and recovering the big books became easier as well. The only other problem – if indeed it was a problem – was that they had fallen well behind with the cutting and sorting.
Then, a week before Christmas, the pair once again drilled the soft rock adjacent to the mica bearing reef and lit the fuses as they knocked off for the day. The following morning Johnny went up to the mine early, while Sergio and Juggler finished off the camp duties. When Sergio arrived up at the workings he lit his carbide lamp and walked into the portal. There he met Johnny coming out. Johnny was carrying a large windowpane-like segment of mica which he handed to Sergio. It was part of a huge book that had been exposed by the blasting.
Sergio looked it over with approval, then put it to one side and went to continue in to the work face. Johnny stopped him. It didn’t look good, he said. Water was issuing from the new section where they’d fired-out the schist. A couple of rocks had even come down while he was in there.
Sergio said it was nothing. They’d hit pockets of water before. It was all right to go in.
Johnny said that he really didn’t like the idea, arguing that it might be worthwhile to leave everything settle for another hour or so before starting work – in case there was more movement. Sergio maintained that it’d had all night to settle and if Johnny didn’t get out of the way and let him past then he’d knock him out of the way.
Johnny said it would take a number of men better than Sergio to make him move aside and as far as he was concerned no one would be going into the mine for at least an hour.
The two glared at each other in silence for a moment. Suddenly Sergio lunged with a powerful right hook. Johnny shifted balance and deflected the blow. Sergio tried to bulldoze through. Johnny’s ham-like fist slammed into the side of Sergio’s head as he went by. Sergio stumbled against the wall then quick as a cat he spun around and grabbed Johnny in a bear hug. Johnny had the same idea. Down they went, kicking and wrestling on the ground between the tracks of the skip truck.
Inside the mine things were becoming critical. The last firing had left more rock suspended in the roof-arch than there was strength to sustain. Despite the generous number of supporting pillars left in developing the stope, it chose that exact moment to crumble.
Half the mountain seemed to fall in with it.
The compression created in its coming down shot Johnny and Sergio from the mouth of the mine like rag dolls from a cannon and hurled them, helpless, out over the edge of the mullock heap.
Down the rocky waste slope the pair tumbled, their descent overtaken by the skip truck. That had a slightly different trajectory and missed them both by centimetres as it plummeted by.
Sergio was the least dazed of the two. He lay amongst the rocks at the bottom of the waste slope, every part of him in pain. After a while he struggled to his feet. A couple of metres away Johnny was trying to sit up. Both were covered in cuts and gashes, their faces bloody, their clothes in tatters. Sergio helped Johnny to his feet then took him in a powerful embrace.
Johnny was amazed. He thought Sergio wanted to continue the fight.
But Sergio wasn’t fighting. He’d realised what had happened, even as he flew over the end of the mullock heap. But for Johnny Doss he would now lie entombed under a mountain of broken rock.
“Johnny!” (Kiss) ?
??Johnny!” (Kiss) “I love you like my brother!” he shouted. “You have saved my life!” (Kiss) “An angel of the Lord, you are!” (Kiss kiss) “Sent to protect me from my own stupidity.” ...and so on, along with a great deal more flowery, over-emotional sentiment. And all Johnny could do was try and get himself to arms length.
They never went back into the Wildcat Mine. Instead they moved their camp to a site about seven kilometres south of there, near a fresh mica deposit that Sergio had come across some time before.
The new prospect was near the top of a steep ridge and Sergio decided they should call it Christmas Tree Mine. This was not exactly going out on a limb: only two days remained before Christmas, the ridge abounded with native pines and it was already known as Christmas Tree Ridge.
It was a good prospect, however, for it carried many large books of outcropping mica. Others had known of the occurrence but no one had taken it up because the ridge was steep and lacked any access. Even climbing to the site was difficult. When Johnny Doss was shown the deposit's difficult circumstances he had a clever idea.
Close by the mica occurrence lay a second, lower ridge, with a steep gully separating the two. Making a track to the summit of the second hill would not be difficult, he realized, and from there they could suspend a cable