Kevin Cassidy The Cassidy Chronicles

CHAPTER 21

  The Starship Project; and The Burning Pants.

  When I arrived back at the house Jessica told me her father had returned with another load of copper ore. He’d called in to top up the hydraulic fluid before heading back to the mine-side to tip it off and Zack had gone with him. Apparently Jasper was heading back out to the mine again tomorrow morning. Zack wanted to go as well, she added, but only if I was allowed to join them.

  “Gees, that’d be great,” I said. “I hope I can go.”

  Because of his circumstances Zack had been excused most of the school’s itinerary, should he wish, but my going would need Father O’Long’s approval. Ma Reiff said she’d give him a ring, and explained that if Father did agree it would mean a really early start, as Jasper wanted to be back in town by evening the day after.

  She set aside the potatoes she’d been preparing then wiped her hands and showed me into her bedroom, to a small desk with a telephone in one corner. A short time later she was talking to the housekeeper at the presbytery. Half a minute’s silence followed, and when Father O’Long answered Ma Reiff explained the situation to him.

  Certainly I could go, he told her. Tomorrow’s excursion was to a fossil locality but knowing how interested I was in mining agreed that it was too good an opportunity for me to miss.

  “Looks like we’d better roll you a swag then,” Ma Reiff said as she put down the hand piece.

  Back in the kitchen I sat at the table and watched as she finished dealing with the potatoes. Following this she opened the oven and turned a roast. And it was huge – the biggest piece of meat I’d ever seen. After adjusting the flue she poured herself a mug of black tea and joined me at the table. Half a minute later I became aware of a loud banging and clattering sound approaching – the sound of an empty tip truck.

  “You two had better get an early night,” she said. “Jasper will want to be well away from here by daylight.”

  Then the screen door slammed open and Zack ran in yelling “Hey Casey! You allowed to go?”

  “Yeah, mate. Father said it was too good to miss.”

  “Beaudy! What are the others doin’?”

  “Going to a fossil place somewhere. Beetle Creek or something it’s called. I’d rather go with you though.”

  Ma Reiff was certainly right about the early start. When Jasper hammered on the caravan door next morning it was still dark.

  “Hey! Come on you blokes!” he shouted. “Are y’gunna sleep all bloody day?”

  “All day?!!” yelled Zack. “Gees Dad! I musta gone blind! I can’t see nothin’!”

  “Just get y’selves into the kitchen if you want any breakfast an’ don’t be so flamin’ smart,” he advised as he walked away.

  Zack turned on the light and I started getting out of my pyjamas. “Your trouble, Casey,” he said, snuggling back under the bedclothes, “is that you don’t think ahead.”

  “…Dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” I replied as I pulled on my shorts. “I got my clothes and everything ready last night.” He made no move to rise, so as soon as I’d finished dressing I grabbed my bag and went to the door. “See youse when I get back,” I muttered.

  “Wait up,” he yelled. He threw off the bedclothes and jumped out of bed. Except for his shoes he was fully dressed. “Let’s go,” he said as he jammed them on.

  I couldn’t believe it. “Aren’t you gunna do ‘em up?”

  “Yeah! At the table!” He pushed past me and sprinted toward the house. “Come on, Casey. Don’t just stand around criticising.”

  I took off after him. “Your dad’s bloody right, y’know! You’re too smart for your own bloody good. I didn’t see you get into bed with your clothes on.”

  “Like I told you, Case,” he shouted back without turning around. “You gotta think ahead.”

  “Hey! Come on you two,” Jasper snapped as we stormed into the kitchen. “The day’s already half buggered and we’re not even out of the yard.”

  “It’s Casey’s fault,” Zack replied. “He couldn’t find his brain, ay.”

  “I told you not to get too smart,” his father said – as I tried to cuff the fool’s ear. “At least there’s evidence he’s got a brain.”

  We piled our breakfast bowls high with Weet-bix and disposed of them in them record time, manners not being of any particular concern. And before we could congratulate ourselves Jasper produced three large plates of sausages and eggs, a mountain of buttered toast and tea in mugs big enough to be washbasins.

  “Get that into y’s,” he said as he sat down. “It’s a slow trip out to the mine and the last thing I want is you mangy buggers getting hungry before we’re half way there.”

  The first pale wash of dawn was showing in the eastern sky as we departed the yard. Secured inside its tip tray were the five drums Jasper had loaded for delivery to the mine – three of water plus one of diesel and one of petrol. Moments later we reached the corrugated road I’d survived earlier in the Ford and suddenly everything was shaking violently – mudguards, bonnet, doors, cabin, occupants … so ferociously that I thought the whole thing would disintegrate.

  It continued until we came to the bitumen then abruptly ceased. “Well, that’s the worst of it over,” Jasper announced as he put on some power. “Now we can get going.”

  The streets were mostly empty at this hour but a few cars were moving about. Soon we came to the rise at the south end of the town’s centre, below which lay the little bridge traversing the Leichhardt River’s dry bed. A kilometre or so beyond it stood the giant Mount Isa Mines milling and smelting complex. It was ablaze with lights and looked for all the world like the construction site of some enormous galactic star ship project – complete with its own foundries and factories.

  As we drove down onto the river crossing Jasper explained how we’d be heading south along the Dajarra Road for about fifty kilometres, then we’d turn off and go south east another twenty or so K’s over some really hilly country until reaching the mine. Schraeder’s Claim it was called.

  At that particular time the Dajarra Road was the supposed link between one of Australia’s biggest mining and smelting projects and what was generally claimed to be the largest stock-railhead in the world, yet I was surprised to discover that it was, in fact, nothing more than two rutted wheel-tracks through the rocks and spinifex. These days Mount Isa is a city, the road to Dajarra is sealed … and the great railhead is no more.

  Jasper was right about the slow journey, however. It took us an hour and a half just to reach the Schraeder’s Claim turn off, then another hour to get to the mine.

  After turning onto their track we headed toward a line of high rugged hills. Curiously though, on drawing nearer, instead of heading upward, the track descended into the bed of a dry gully.

  Zack was sitting in the middle. When I asked about this he just smiled and looked out the driver’s side window.

  The gully narrowed and the hillsides steepened sharply and became higher, until ahead, around a bend, they became a vertical cleft, so close it seemed the truck could never fit through it.

  Jasper changed back to first gear. “We had to blast some of it away to make it wide enough,” he explained as we entered the slot, “but it’s still pretty tight.” As he finished speaking the top corner of the tipper-body scraped the wall and a violent screeching noise filled the cabin. Our driver just powered-on, engine roaring, a look of grim determination on his face, and, with a final tortured shriek, the truck ripped free.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he remarked on seeing the look on my face. “We should have popped a bit more off while we were at it.”

  The rest of the ravine was negotiated without incident, with Jasper accelerating and changing up through the gears as the track along the creek widened out.

  “We were lucky there was a gap in the range we could use,” he said as we drove out of the gully. “There’s nowhere to get a track over that hill for miles; it’s too bloody steep.”

&n
bsp; It must have been. The others seemed to consider the hills nothing out of the ordinary, yet some sections of the track were steeper and more precarious than anything I had ever experienced. I just sat there with my teeth clenched tight, grimly hoping the old rattle-trap truck could make it to the top without conking out, then hoping grimly it would descend the other side without the brakes failing. I also hoped grimly that it would stay in one piece until reaching our destination.

  Worrying certainly must have done the trick. We actually arrived at the mine with no trouble whatever.

  The Schraeder’s Claim workings were situated high up on the side of another rocky ridge, but the track continued a short distance beyond there to the living quarters. This occupied the only suitable area available, a patch of ground on the side of the hill where an outcropping quartz-reef supported a small saddle. It was free of rocks and boulders and very nearly level.

  Two men were waiting there to greet us: a weather-beaten old prospector called Nugget Dorado and his son Peter. Nugget was a stocky white-haired man in his mid-sixties who looked tough enough to give off sparks when he scratched himself. His attire consisted of nothing more than shorts, sand-shoes sans laces and a terminally battered hat. And the pipe he was smoking looked so scrofulous it made my father’s seem clinically aseptic.

  According to Zack, Nugget worked it in a continuous cycle, either knocking it out, stuffing it full, lighting it up or puffing on it. “He only puts it down for meals and to sleep,” he added. “We reckon he even smokes it in the shower,”

  As Jasper told me later, when Nugget was away from the camp: “You mightn’t be able to see him but you can always see the smoke he’s makin’.

  “I really shouldn’t tell you this, but a couple of years back he’s in the old brush dunny, see, and decides to light up his pipe. But the match-head flies off and goes straight into the leaves. Everything was dry as buggery, too, so the whole thing just goes up like it was doused in petrol. Hell! He never even had time to pull up his strides properly!

  “Me an’ Peter are sittin’ out the front, see, havin’ a quiet beer after work. Suddenly we hears ol’ Nugget yelling ‘SHIT!’, and when we looks around there he is flyin’ out of the burning dunny. He’s tryin’ to pull up his strides and get away from the flames at the same time, except that when he does he burns ‘is arse ‘cos they’re smolderin’ like a smoke bomb. Next thing is ‘e’s jumpin’ around tryin’ to rip ‘em off again before anything else catches fire – him not bein’ too worried about wearing underpants, see.

  “But it wasn’t the burnin’ pants that hurt him; no bloody fear. It was the walk back past the workers. Bloody laugh! We were bloody cryin’.

  “He’s still pretty touchy about it, too,” Jasper warned, “so don’t you go sayin’ nothin’ about it, will you.”

  Nugget Dorado

  22. The Self-Collapsing Hay Stack; and Saving A Life

  Nugget’s son Peter was about thirty-two. He stood a little taller than his father and had short black hair and brown eyes. His clothing was much like Jasper’s, however – old shorts, a shirt with the sleeves torn out and a pair of gaping boots. He had nearly as many muscles as Jasper, too.

  Peter and Jasper did all the mining – the drilling, blasting and shovelling-out. Peter also did any mechanical work that was necessary on the machinery there, such as the winch and compressor. Jasper looked after the ore transportation and maintained the truck.

  Up at the workings Nugget was the shaft superintendent. His job was to run the air compressor and ventilating fan, operate the winch when required and maintain the jackhammers and lamps. Otherwise he was camp manager / chef de gourmet.

  “I’m just a cook-engineer,” he’d say, “…or is it engineer-cook? Ah, it don’t matter anyway. It’s ony temp’ry. I’m so bloody hopeless I’m gunna sack meself.”

  The mine itself was operated by Jasper and Nugget on a fifty-fifty basis, it was explained to me. Nugget owned the mining lease and Jasper supplied the machinery and transported the ore to Mount Isa. Expenses were shared equally – including Peter’s wages, which to some extent were tied to production and grade levels.

  The mine itself comprised a forty-five metre shaft with a drive at the bottom to access the adjacent orebody. A six metre headframe of heavy angle iron stood astride the shaft with, at its foot, a belt driven winching mechanism with clutch levers and a brake pedal.

  On top of the headframe a large pulley carried the cable from the winch and centred the bucket (kebble) over the shaft. Nugget worked the winch when they were hauling-out, the haul being either mullock (waste), or good stuff (ore), depending on what the firing had brought down.

  The kebble emptied into a four-wheel skip truck, which ran on a light tramline between the shaft and a loading trestle. Mullock was detoured to the waste dump via a dinky little set of points and a spur line.

  The tracks went across the shaft on a trap-door shaft-cover, while the trestle had a span under which the truck was parked for easy filling. The rail gauge of this affair was quite narrow – somewhere between my old wind-up Hornsby and the sugar mill’s cane trains.

  At that time the Mount Isa Mines Company encouraged small private mining operations. The Company needed silica as a flux for their copper smelting process and the “gougers” (as the small mine operators were called) supplied a goodly percentage of this. They paid the gougers the going price for whatever copper their ore contained, less crushing and smelting costs.

  This fell far short of their requirements, however, as a result of which MIM operated several outlying quartz-rich copper mines of their own – deposits too low grade to mine on their own account but almost revenue neutral compared to quarrying barren quartz.

  As a result everyone benefited. The Mines attracted a helpful portion of the fluxing silica they required without cost, while the gougers had the opportunity to operate small copper mining ventures with a guaranteed sale for their ore.

  Living quarters at Schraeder’s Claim comprised an unusual-looking structure called the Palace. This stood on the side of the ridge in isolated splendour, the only building there on the only bit of “level” ground available.

  From a distance it looked not unlike a self-collapsing hay stack, as its gently-sloping corrugated iron roof had been covered with thick tussocks of spinifex. The spinifex prevented the sun from heating the roofing iron, considerably reducing its inside temperature. If a whirlywind or storm removed a few clumps Nugget simply tossed up some more.

  The Palace’s “frame” was bush timber posts and rails, while the walls were of fencing wire and well-packed acacia brush. The brush allowed ventilation but at the same time gave shelter from storms and gusty winds.

  Aside from the roof, the only iron used was at the corner comprising the kitchen. Here the sheets were fixed horizontally, the two second from the ground being fastened only at the top. This arrangement allowed them to be either propped open or wedged shut, as desired. The interior was a single room.

  Inside was a wood-stove, a kerosene fridge, three cyclone stretchers, an assortment of chairs and an old pine table. The table had turned legs but at some stage one had been replaced with a piece of bush timber. Each leg was standing in a fruit tin filled with water to keep it free of ants. The floor was packed earth.

  Three of the steel stretchers had bedding. Three more leant against the wall, legs folded, ready to cater for visitors. Kitchen cupboards were made from gelignite boxes, each stack of five set on a footing of flat rocks. (Gelignite boxes were good quality pine with comb-jointed corners; in the bush they had a great many uses.)

  On arriving there we had mugs of tea in the Palace –an earlier than usual morning smoko for Nugget and Peter. Following this the men unloaded the truck then went about their business.

  Zack decided his first job would be to show me around Schraeder’s Claim. The tour would commence at his private retreat, he said, a place he often frequented when visiting here. Past the shower and toilet he
led me, then southward across the rock and spinifex covered hillside. This took us along the general trend of the geology and away from the workings. After three hundred metres or so we came to several large boulders, two of which were separated by a handy space.

  A drystone wall had been built across one end of the gap and the ground between them cleared of rocks and grass. Saplings placed across the open top supported a roof of leafy branches.

  Despite its being unattended since the previous Christmas it all seemed in good repair. Inside I could see a couple of gelignite boxes and a sturdy-looking metal tip truck about thirty centimetres long.

  My first impression was that Zack had made himself a little bush cubbyhouse, yet something about his manner suggested otherwise. When he told me to wait by the entrance I knew I was right: there was more to it. Inside he began scraping away dry dirt from the middle of the floor.

  This soon exposed two flat rocks. The were lying end to end and each was about the size of a large chopping board. Lifting them revealed a shallow trench, created where he’d excavated a vein of high-grade malachite in the hill’s weathered schist. The trench was a hand-span wide; in its bottom was more of the green copper ore.

  I was amazed. Zachariah Reiff had his own little mine.

  One day when he was eight he was wandering around exploring, he explained, and came on this outcropping seam of copper ore amongst the boulders. He’d told his father in confidence but no one else. Later he’d constructed the brush-roof shelter and then started his secret mining operation.

  He’d chipped out the soft malachite using a hammer and the shaft of a large screwdriver, both purloined from up the hill. A badly-worn tablespoon from another place up the hill was used to load the tip truck. The ore was then delivered along a track to where he’d made an ore bin from an old billy-can. The ore bin, too, was concealed. When the bin was full he’d take it up to the workings and give it to his father to empty into the ore truck.

  The other children thought he’d built a cubby to play in while visiting the mine. “I had to let ‘em play here,” he said. Trying to keep them away wouldn’t have worked ‘cos they’d have come here anyway if I wasn’t around. That’s why I hid it all, so they wouldn’t wreck my little mine.” He then replaced the flat stones and covered them with dirt again, following which we wandered a little farther along the ridge.

  “I dunno, Casey,” he suddenly said. “I used to enjoy all this, but now that I come to think about it... Well, you know, it all seems a bit childish. I’m sorry mate; I shouldn’t have dragged you down here. I hope it wasn’t too boring.”

  “Boring?!! What are you bloody talkin’ about, Zack? You were a kid; it must have been beaut to find your own little copper mine. I mean nothin’ like this ever happened to me. And anyway; like you said before – with your tree house. Things change, ay; you’re older now.”

  “Yeah, I reckon you’re right. I think I’ll tell Brian when we get home. It can be his secret.”

  Just then we noticed fresh smoke issuing from the Palace chimney. It told of Nugget’s stoking the fire, meaning lunch was being prepared, so we started back.

  Following a quick meal and mugs of tea the men returned to the workings. Zack and I went too. He said I’d be interested in what they were doing there but in the event they weren’t doing much at all. Nugget started the winch engine, Peter and Jasper climbed into the kebble and Nugget lowered them into the mine – to drill the workface for the next firing.

  Once they were safely on the bottom Nugget was no longer required, so we returned to the Palace with him – Nugget not letting us hang around the workings unsupervised and his offer of tea and some fruit cake our most appealing immediate option. There, instead of joining us, he began preparing dinner. When he was satisfied all was in order he poured tea for himself and came to the table.

  My first impression of Nugget was that of a gruff old bloke, but it turned out he just seemed that way when he was busy. In a relaxed mode he was really quite friendly. And I think he took a shine to me, too, because before long he was reminiscing at length about his prospecting days and his life as a gouger.

  He’d originally worked at Schraeder’s Claim for wages, he explained, but later won it in a game of cards. It seems the owner, a man called Sullivan, had wagered his mine against the pay owing.

  “An’ bugger me; I ony goes an’ wins the bloody thing,” he said, “except that next mornin’ him an’ th’ Missus bloody clears out together. …Werl, I dunno. Endin’ up wifout a brass razoo again wus prob’ly the last straw for her, ony by then y’d reckon she’d of been used to it.

  “An’ Sullivan wus a flash sort of joker – always seemed to have a quid in ‘is pocket. ‘E just caught ‘er eye, I suppose … you know, and ...” The words petered out as Nugget drifted into the misty realm of his memories. Unseeing and unaware he stared at the scratch-marks on the tabletop.

  On and on the silence lingered, the only sounds disturbing the vacuum being the soft throbbing of the engines up at the shaft and the buzzing of a perplexed blowfly as it tried to fathom the mystery of the fridge’s door-seal. In embarrassment for Nugget I pretended to watch the blowfly; when I looked back Zack’s expression told me to hold my tongue.

  The “Missus” Nugget referred to was not Peter’s mother; she had died when Peter was twelve. This person was in fact an attractive and big-hearted woman of European, Chinese and Aboriginal descent, about twelve years Nugget’s Junior.

  She’d accompanied and worked with him faithfully at one half-worthless mining prospect after another for eleven or so years, living from hand to mouth in shacks and shanties and making do with what little they could afford. And then, when the wages owed them were exchanged for what she could only see as yet another worthless mine, she’d simply had enough.

  At the time Nugget readily admitted the Schraeder’s Claim surface workings to be less than promising, and by unanimous acclaim the Argent Hotel’s front bar patrons agreed.

  “Schraeder’s bloody Claim wouldn’t be worth two bloody bob. Nugget should know that.”

  “Course he should, the silly old bugger. That Sullivan’s a real con-merchant. There’s no copper there.”

  “He must’ve got a touch of the sun. Been up the side of that hill too long.”

  “A touch of the grog, more like. I heard ‘e was on a bender there, hittin’ the two-forty volt Cummins and Campbell rum.”

  In an effort to confirm his belief there was good ore further down (and unable to consider drilling because of the cost) Nugget had decided to sink a shaft. He’d enlisted both Jasper and Peter to handle this back-breaking job, the whole project being conducted while the price of copper was low.

  At that particular time Nugget and Peter were working for Mount Isa Mines and the work had been done over a lengthy period during weekends and holidays. And eventually Nugget’s faith was rewarded: at forty-five metres they’d cut a drive westward; twelve metres in they came on the ore horizon. It was almost wide enough to work and nearly rich enough to pay. They tested it southward. It widened to the north.

  Nugget eventually drifted back to the present. “...Ah well,” he said quietly. “These things happen I suppose. ...I heard she left ‘im in the end, though.” Then he suddenly straightened and added firmly: “By hell, but! I reckon I got the better of the deal.” (...more for himself, I believe, than for us.)

  It didn’t take long to get the old gouger talking again. Zack wanted him to show me his mineral collection but he seemed in no hurry to do so. Eventually, after some further coaxing, he stood up from the table and went to his bed. Most of his belongings were in a stack of gelignite boxes alongside the bed-head, but the specimens he kept in a box underneath.

  After dragging it out he lifted the lid, then sat on his bed with the box at his feet and invited me to inspect the contents. Each time I unwrapped a specimen he would ask what it might be – firstly me, then Zack. If I was able to venture an opinion he’d enquire why I thoug
ht it so. I don’t think I gave a particularly good account of myself but he seemed pleased I was not a complete ignoramus.

  Zack had seen the collection on previous occasions and Nugget would chide him if he couldn’t remember what each mineral was called. Then, when the nature of an item had been settled, he explained to us where it came from and why it had been kept. It wasn’t long before I realised each specimen held a chapter in the story of his life: set one before him and out would come its story.

  And the stories he told were of hard times and hard work, of battlers and swindlers and of failed dreams of wealth. How a mate was entombed in a rock fall. How a fortune was won in a day from a freakish pocket of gold; how another was lost in a drunken binge and a crooked card game.

  There was wolfram from the Wauchope sills and copper from the failed Home of Bullion smelter. There was aquamarine from the Atherton Tablelands, scheelite from the Sainthill Fault and tantalite from the Finniss River. There was pitchblende from Rum Jungle, azurite from Jervois Range, native silver from Cloncurry, opal from Andamooka and gold from Gympie and The Granites.

  From the Harts Ranges came a book of Mount Mary mica, lavender zircons, pink corundums, an ebony tourmaline and, from the Spotted Tiger Mine, a glorious green beryl, some blood-red garnets and some others like honey.

  Finally, right at the bottom of the box in an old tobacco tin, were some concentrates from the Edith River tin field. The tobacco tin was so aged that all of its paint had gone.

  I recognised the copper, opal and a couple of the Harts Range specimens, but most of the others were new to me. The last item however (the material in the tin) seemed the least interesting of all – just a few spoonfuls of a heavy, dark-coloured gravel. None of its grains were more than eight or ten millimetres in size.

  Nugget stirred the contents gently with a finger then picked up one of the pebbles and put it on the palm of my hand. “What do you reckon that might be?” he asked. He rummaged in a trouser pocket then offered me a hand lens.

  A sudden feeling came: he was testing me! I took a deep breath and tried to focus on the stone’s properties.

  Its size was similar to the other material in the tin but that was all. Otherwise it was colourless, fractured and vaguely octahedral looking in shape, with an odd, almost oily-looking sheen about its finely frosted surface. I held it up and peered at it through the hand lens. “This looks different to the other stuff in the tin,” I said. “That’s a much darker mineral, Nugget; this is like a piece of glass that’s been rolling around a beach for a hundred years.”

  Nugget was watching me closely through a cloud of smoke. “Well, you’re right about that, he puffed. I found it in the Edith River, north of Katherine. But what about its shape; what does that tell you?”

  The sly grin on Zack’s face told me more. It had to be something special.

  “It wouldn’t be a diamond, would it?” I asked. And even as the words came out I knew it was about the dumbest thing I could have uttered.

  Nugget stared at me incredulously. “A diamond?!! Why on earth would you think it’s a diamond?”

  I stole a quick glance at Zack but Nugget must have nobbled him while I was concentrating on the stone. “Don’t look at me,” he said straight-faced. “I never seen it before in me life.”

  “—Well, it’s ... I mean, it’s...” I mean what did I mean. Then I remembered Nugget’s question. Suddenly in my mind’s eye there appeared a black and white photograph of a gravel-worn diamond crystal, probably seen in some long-forgotten text book. “It’s the shape,” I said. “It has the shape of a diamond crystal. It’s got eight sides.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  “No,” I said, gaining confidence. “It has that odd sort of shine, too.”

  “So you’re pretty good at pickin’ a rough diamond, are you?”

  “No, course not. I just remember reading about ‘em.”

  I handed it back and he returned it to the tin. “Well, that’s not too bad me boy, cos you’re dead right. And y’ reckon I didn’t waste some time lookin for all its mates. Possessed I was. It got so bad I couldn’t think about nothin’ else and finished up livin’ in the bush like a half starved hermit.

  “Me clothes was in tatters – what was left of ‘em – an’ me boots was all wore out. Me hair was down to me shoulders an’ me beard was like a bloody bramble. Every moment I possibly could from daylight till dark I spent diggin’ out the traps around the boulders and in the bends and under the rock-bars. And I never found a single nother diamond.

  “It got so bad it was terrible. In the end a couple of me Tennant Creek mates got to hear about it and came up in their old truck to git me out of it. Course th’ cunnin’ buggers knew what I’d be like, so they turned up at night when I was asleep an’ bloody shanghaied me!

  “I musta been in the horrors be then, too, cos I don’t remember nothin’ about it. Accordin’ to them I tried t’ fight ‘em off. They were yelling an’ screaming at me, too, they reckoned – tryin’ to let on as to who it was. And I was yelling an’ screaming back like all the demons from hell’d got me.

  “I was tryin’ to have a go, too, they said, but I was too weak t’ do any good. Soon as they got me down they tied me up in what was left of me swag then chucked me on the back of the truck and headed for home.

  “I don’t remember nothin’ about this, mind you, but according to them I was screamin’ an’ swearin’ at ‘em all the way back to Katherine. They just ignored it, they reckoned, and this turned out to be a mistake, cos when they drove through town it woke the ol’ sergeant and he come out after ‘em.

  They’d ony got a coupla miles down the track before he pulled em up. He wanted ‘em to explain just what was goin’ on, but first he made ‘em untie me.

  “Accordin’ to them, soon as I was free I tried t’ flatten ‘im. Course at this time of night the sergeant wasn’t takin’ no nonsense. He just king-hit me. Then he made ‘em chuck me back on the truck and told ‘em to piss off. He said if ‘e ever saw ‘em again he’d lock ‘em up so quick it’d make their heads spin.

  “He never noticed the ol’ wreck ony had one headlight and he never asked ‘em about it bein’ unregistered. Course they just got away as quick as they could.

  “Later on I realised it was the best thing they ever could’ve done for a bloke. Saved me flamin’ life I reckon.”

  23. Universal Symmetry; and The Prisoner In The Stone

  Nugget shut the box and slid it back under his bed, then pulled out a decrepit looking Gladstone bag. Zack and I returned to the table.

  “There’s something else I want to show you, young Cassidy,” he said. From the bag he retrieved an object wound in cloth. After unwrapping it with his back to me he came to where I was sitting and thrust it into my hand.

  “What have you got to say about that?” he asked for dramatic effect.

  He needn’t have bothered. The goose-pimples that raked me head to foot on first holding it are as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday, for in that enlightening moment it was revealed to me that within its sublime form lay a profound truth about the universal symmetry of matter and the direction my life must take in pursuit of those truths.

  What Nugget had put into my hand was a quartz crystal, half as big again as my fist. I had never seen anything like it. It was just glorious.

  Yet size was its secondary attribute, for it was utterly colourless and totally transparent. In form it was almost perfect, though two of its opposing prism faces were somewhat wider than their companions. This lent its hexagonal shape a flattened appearance and the pyramid at each end a chisel-like shape. And apart from one tiny chip its points and corners were all perfect and undamaged.

  Nugget was sucking on his pipe, watching me closely and waiting for a comment, but holding a thing of such fundamental perfection had left me for the moment without words. Overcome with awe I explored each face, comparing the subtle variations of their different surfaces.

&n
bsp; All were highly reflective. Some were etched with fine three-cornered pits while others seemed layered with thin, barely discernable triangular plates. A few – including the two large prism faces – were mirror perfect.

  Then came a sudden movement – seemingly from within the stone. Quick as a mousetrap it had been, yet I couldn’t be sure what it was. At the time I’d been turning it to catch the light on one of the pyramid faces. Perhaps it was just an internal reflection, I thought.

  Nugget must have seen me twitch because he asked what was wrong. “I dunno,” I muttered. “I thought I saw something move – inside the crystal.”

  He sucked his pipe and glared at me. “Yeah, right,” he scoffed. “In a solid rock.”

  “No! When I was turning it. I thought I saw a movement.” I tried to repeat what I’d done … and was rewarded by a blink, a tiny will-o’-the-wisp so quick that I barely saw it.

  I rotated the stone once more. “What are you lookin’ at?” Nugget enquired.

  “There’s definitely something in there Nugget,” I muttered “… and it moves.

  “Yeah, now I see it. It looks like a glass ball, a tiny glass ball. But wait up; it’s all wrong. When I turn the crystal it goes upward.”

  “Well, I don’t know, Kev,” Nugget pronounced. “You seem to have some funny ideas. First you reckon there’s something in there, like in a solid crystal fer gawds sake, and then you reckon it goes up hill. I mean to say, it’s all pretty...”

  “What I can see,” I tried to explain patiently, “is something in the stone that looks like a cavity or hollow, and in it is a tiny glass bead. But when I turn the stone the stupid thing...”

  Realisation hit. “It’s a bubble!” I yelled. “The hole’s full of water! And when you tip it the bubble rises!”

  Nugget – I swear – looked for all the world like a proud father. “...And?” he asked, prompting me to think further. “What should be your next question?”

  A spooky feeling went up my spine. “What is the water doing in the middle of a quartz crystal?”

  “What would you say if I told you it was trapped there when the crystal was formed?”

  “But that would mean...” I grasped for words (and understanding), “...that it somehow formed under water. But I thought rocks like this came spewin’ out of the ground and were millions of years old.”

  “Some of them are. That one there’s probably more than fifteen hundred, “millions-of-years-old” – or accordin’ to the geologists it is, anyway.”

  Zack had become bored with the conversation’s academic turn. He was busy at the other end of the table building a monster cold meat and pickle sandwich. But Nugget had not finished the lesson.

  “Let me ask you another question, young feller,” he said. Imagine I showed you a bottle of wine that was over a thousand years old. What would you say to that?”

  “You mean like those big earthenware jars they found in the wreck of that Phoenician galley in the Mediterranean Sea? Gees, that’d be amazing.”

  “Amphorae you mean, but that’s close enough. Now then, just think for a moment about the bottle of water you’ve got in your hand there. Yes, you could say it’s a flash-lookin’ bottle and yes, it hasn’t got much water. But consider this, Kev; for every one year that wine was lyin’ in the wreck, the water you see in that fancy lookin’ bottle has been there for more than a million years: a million years for every one.”

  That certainly made me think, but before I could offer a comment there came six distant clangs from the winch signal up at the shaft, followed a moment later by two more.

  Nugget jumped to his feet. “Sounds like they’ve finished drillin’,” he informed us. “I’ll have to go an’ turn off the compressor now and pull ‘em out, so how about you two puttin’ the billy on for smoko and makin’ the tea for us.”

  He went to the door and then stopped and turned back. “And while you’re at it, young Cassidy, make sure that crystal goes back in me bag when y’ve finished thinkin about it, ay.”

  When the men arrived for smoko I was still looking at the little prisoner in the stone and watching it go back and forth.

  “He’s hypnotised,” explained Zack, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “It’s like one of them watches the crooked psychiatrists use … you know, in the pictures, when they want to find out from the farmer’s daughter where her uncle hid the gold.”

  I returned the crystal to Nugget’s bag then went back to the table. Nugget was pouring tea; the others were demolishing the remains of the fruit cake.

  “You’re still thinkin’ about that stone, ay,” Zack said around a mouthful of cake. Nugget slid an overfull mug of tea across to me without spilling any of its contents.

  “Well yeah,” I replied. “But what I’d really like to do is find out why its shape is so perfect, and I suppose that will mean having to go to university somewhere and doing geology and stuff.”

  “Bloody hell, Nugget!” Jasper said, rounding on the old prospector with an accusing glare “You’ve got a bit to bloody answer for! You should be bloody ashamed of yourself!”

  “What?!! —Why? What the bloody hell have I done now?”

  “Leadin’ the poor bloody kid astray like that.”

  “Like what?!! What are y’ bloody talkin’ about?”

  “Can’t you see what you’ve done? Now the poor silly bugger wants to be a bloody geologist!!!”