Kevin Cassidy The Cassidy Chronicles

CHAPTER 43

  The Heart Of A Draught Horse; and The Sheltered Life

  We arrived back at Gower Abbey about four o’clock on the Monday afternoon, first stop being the storeroom to unload our camping gear. That done, it was around to the grass area at the back of the dormitory to give the old ute a good clean up. This fell to Sash and I, as Rocky and the others had duties to attend.

  Sash headed off to the kitchen for some dish washing detergent and a couple of buckets, and I began hosing the mud from its underskirts and wheels. On his return we gave it a thorough wipe down and then a rinse-off with the hose, all of had the old dear looking like...

  —Well, not new, exactly; more the way a valiant old Holden utility should look. That is to say, all grey and chalky in the afternoon sun, with scratches and scrapings here and there and patches of paint worn through to the undercoat.

  Everyone at Gower Abbey had a great deal of affection for this old car, as it had served Father O’Long and the school faithfully for many years. Sometimes this service would have better suited a truck, tractor, bus or four wheel drive mud-buggy, and sometimes a job would even required two or more of these attributes be employed at the same time.

  It had been bogged, bashed, battered and bent but never had it been beaten, because it had the heart of a draught horse. Whatever the task, despite its age, this mighty heart just kept on beating. Sometimes it had required the odd bit of surgery to keep it beating, but beating it had kept.

  On occasions the surgery had been drastic, resulting in many of its parts being replaced over the years – along with the usual tyres and batteries. So much so in fact, that not a great deal of the original car remained. I can vouch for this, too. During its latter years it invariably fell to us boys to make these replacements.

  When new it was serviced in the Ingham Holden dealer’s workshop, but as time went by its maintenance and repair bills grew. As it happened the Holden dealer was a generous person, who supported a number of local charitable organisations. For reasons of his own, though, he always arranged these matters privately.

  Gower Abbey College was one such beneficiary. Being the proprietor meant he could manage selected accounts himself and arrange their billing as he wished. As a result any school business going through his works was heavily discounted.

  I’m sure Father O’Long would have been aware of these things. I’m certain, too, he would have kept such knowledge to himself.

  What Father O’Long didn’t seem concerned about (the proprietor mistakenly imagined), was that keeping the old ute on the road running and registered was beginning to cost them both a bit of money, so one day he suggested that Father should give some thought to replacing the old dear completely instead of doing it a few parts at a time.

  We boys had made good use of it, too, over the years. Our trips were always authorised, of course, though an occasional unplanned “detour” was found um...

  —Well: “necessary”. Vital, even.

  There was a rumour, too, which seemed to crop up occasionally, concerning another alleged excursion – if you could believe the gossip (which you couldn’t, of course. I mean I checked it out myself. Baseless it was. No evidence whatever.)

  Just as we finished washing the car Father O’Long appeared in our midst, catching us by surprise throwing buckets of water over each other. “How did the camping trip go, lads?” he asked in a friendly manner.

  We stopped what we were doing and stood there with the water running off us. “Um er ah good Father yeah good thanks Father,” we replied sheepishly.

  He didn’t seem to notice our embarrassment. “Mrs Finnegan is away for the weekend visiting her mother,” he continued, “and I’m not very busy at the moment. Why don’t you come to the presbytery after you’ve finished here and um ... dried yourselves off a little. You could tell me about your adventures over a cup of tea.”

  That had us packing up smartly. Mrs Finnegan always left something special whenever she went away for the weekend. After a quick shower and some clean clothes we put the ute back in the presbytery garage then knocked on Father’s door.

  Father was in the dining room writing letters. “Come on in,” he said as he stood up. “The kettle’s boiling. I’ll make the tea.”

  He strode off toward the kitchen. “Let’s take command of Mrs Finnegan’s domain,” he added over his shoulder. “I’ll be in trouble, of course. I can never seem to get things exactly as she would have them when I’m done.

  We followed him. On the stove a kettle was simmering gently. “Sit down and help yourselves, lads,” he continued, “I won’t be long.”

  Everything else was on the table, including one of Mrs Finnegan’s glorious passionfruit cream sponges – untouched and begging for attention. Large pieces materialised on our plates.

  Father poured scalding water into a teapot. “So you had a good time, eh?”

  We couldn’t answer. Speaking with a full mouth is very bad manners.

  “…I’m glad to hear it,” he muttered to himself. “And how did you find old Angus. Well, I hope? But I don’t suppose you stayed there very long.” He came to the table, set the pot on a trivet and joined us.

  Sash finished his piece of cake first. “Don’t worry about Angus, Father,” he said as he helped himself to a second slice. “He’s all right. He gave Casey a raz about driving the old Blitz around up in the hills, but he didn’t ask us to do anything.”

  “Yeah, and he’s had the radiator fixed too, and got some more tyres,” I added – mainly to distance the hills-driving business. Father showed no interest in probing the issue. He probably knew about it anyway.

  “So tell me what you discovered,” he said. “I’m anxious to hear.”

  “Well...” I said hesitantly, “Zack found some cave paintings...”

  “Yeah Father,” added Sash, who’d postponed starting on the new piece, “and Peter Abbot found some nice quartz crystals.”

  “No, lads,” Father replied, a look of earnest curiosity on his craggy face. “I mean what did you find in the pit?”

  Sash and I glanced at each other. How could Father know about the pit? He and Angus might have spoken on the telephone, but Angus certainly wouldn’t have dobbed us in.

  “Surely you investigated the tunnel, Kevin?”

  “Well um... Yes Father. We did.”

  Sash looked bewildered. “How did you know about the tunnel?”

  “Ashley. I spent all night down there, remember, and it was impossible to sleep. There was nothing I could do except pray and doze fitfully while watching for further rock-falls. While I was praying I surveyed the place with the torch and thought about what had happened.” Father picked up the pot and began pouring the tea.

  “When I saw the tunnel I climbed down there and shone the light into it. It went a long way, too, and what I could see of it appeared in fairly good condition, but I was in no mood to explore it further, I can assure you.”

  “Did you tell anyone about it?” I asked.

  “No. But I thought about the tunnel and what had happened, then formed a few conclusions of my own. You boys might be able to tell me if they were correct.”

  “What conclusions, Father?”

  “Did you succeed in following the tunnel or was it blocked as Angus said?”

  We looked at Father O’Long in astonishment. Not only had he worked out the whole business, but it would seem he did it while he was waiting to be pulled from the pit. Most likely he could give an account of our own recent movements there into the bargain.

  “Angus was right,” I explained. “A large section of roof had come down. But Angus didn’t realise there was a crawl-space through to the other side. You can’t see it until you get right to the top of the rock-fall.”

  “And so you went through.”

  “Yes Father.”

  “And did you go ahead and explore the old mine workings?”

  “Yes Father. Me an’ Sash...”

  “And were there signs of more-
recent activity? ...something not in keeping with the original mining operations?”

  “Yes Father. You see, we...”

  “Indeed! May I ask what you saw?”

  I looked at Sash as if to say, “Well you found it so you should tell him”.

  After a few moments Sash murmured quietly: “We found where old Ebenezer Gower was getting his gold, Father. Casey’s got a couple pieces in his pocket.”

  “Is that so! ...May I see them, Kevin?”

  I pulled the samples from my pocket and put them on the table – the two I’d flaked from Gower’s reef and the piece of quartz I’d found in the drive.

  Father picked up the larger of the Gower’s Reef specimens. “Hell’s Teeth!!!” he exclaimed, his eyebrows halfway up to his hairline. After looking it over in amazement he checked the smaller piece, then replaced it and reached for the third sample. A few moments of dubious silence followed as he turned it over, then he put it back on the table.

  “So why do you believe it was Ebenezer Gower who’d been there?”

  “We found a carbide lamp, Father, with his initials scratched on the bottom,” Sash replied.

  “We found where he was dollying the quartz too,” I added, “and where he was tipping the waste rock. It’s no wonder he was able to keep the whole thing secret, Father. His whole operation was underground in the tunnels of the old mine.

  “But the old timers were mining alluvial gold. They never found anything under the alluvials, in the weathered bedrock – or if they did, decided it wasn’t worth following.”

  Father O’Long was listening intently. In light of our recent discovery I’d been giving the alluvial gold business a good deal of thought, so when he made no attempt to interrupt I continued with an explanation of my ideas.

  “But the Sherbert’s alluvial gold had to come from somewhere, Father, and that somewhere had to be upstream from the cave-in. Maybe there was an ancient source-reef up there that surrendered its gold to the river as the river wore it away.

  “But what if there was no one big reef? What if the alluvial gold all came from small rich veins like the one Gower found? Perhaps there were lots of them feeding into the old river system.

  “I found some gold-bearing quartz too, remember, so we already know there’s more than one vein. Certainly my piece doesn’t have much gold, but it backs up my argument.”

  “So … what you’re suggesting, Kevin, is that Ebenezer Gower went into those old workings out of curiosity, much like you pair. And, just as you did, Kevin, he found some gold – except the vein he discovered was extremely rich.”

  “That’s right Father. I’ll bet there’s a lot more gold veins under the workings, too. And I’m certain there’ll be more upstream from Hell’s Pit.”

  “You don’t have to tell him,” muttered Sash. “Father’s got it all worked out.”

  “Not quite, Ashley. I’d made a few deductions but there was no guarantee they were in any way correct.”

  “So how come you never went back to see if you were right?” I asked

  “Oh, it was hardly my place to do so. Besides, Angus’ later information that the tunnel had collapsed quickly tempered any such notion.”

  A short silence followed “Well Father, what happens next?” I asked. “And what about the gold? Is it finders-keepers or does it belong to the government? Sash and I agreed to go fifty-fifty if it’s ours, or if we get anything for it. But what do you think will happen?”

  Father O’Long picked up his mug of tea and took a few sips, all the while regarding us thoughtfully. “You boys may not remember this,” he said, after putting it on the table again, “but the day following our return from that fore-shortened camping trip, Brother SanSistez and I went into Ingham. Brother returned to school that same afternoon but I continued on to Townsville, where I remained for a couple of days having my teeth seen to.”

  “Nah, we remember that day Father. That was the day the old shower block collapsed on top of Li’l Titch ... I mean, Peter Tischler, Father.”

  “Yes, so it was. Anyhow, while I was there I attended to some other business. I went to the Mines Department and lodged an application for the prospecting and mining rights to that whole area, on behalf of the school. It’s still in effect.”

  This was the proper moment to show our amazement and we both obliged. He did have it all worked out.

  Father O’Long stared across the table at us. “...Dear heavens,” he murmured. “The things you see when you don’t have a camera.”

  Before we left Father explained to us the probable course events would follow. He knew a number of people in the mining industry, he said. (Yeah – surprise surprise.) After the prospecting rights had been secured he’d made contact with them and invited them to explore the area.

  This would be done via a program of drilling and sampling to determine if enough tonnage and grade existed there somewhere to develop a profitable mine. And while Gower’s little reef was certainly rich, Father explained, it was not the stuff of big mines. There would have to be a great many more little reefs for a mine to be developed, he said. Either that or a very large one.

  But no agreement had been reached with them as yet because the Company had been proceeding very slowly. “This should encourage them to speed things up,” he added.

  Father had some very definite ideas about Gower’s Reef, as well. It should be separated from any agreement with the Company, he said, and a new operation started there owned by the school – one where Sash and I would receive a royalty from the gold produced. Such a royalty agreement should cover any bigger operation the Company might develop as well.

  But there was something we had to understand, he added. By percentage our share would seem very small, probably no more than a percent at best, yet the sums of money would be considerable. He would recommend to our parents that trust accounts be set up, he said, with the funds only being available to us in the interests of our education until we turned twenty-one.

  The following afternoon Father rang the Company and told them of our discovery. When he mentioned his plans to exclude Gower’s Reef from any agreement and develop it separately they were not happy at all. Instead they insisted on their senior geologist coming out to investigate matters. Ansen dePance was the fellow’s name.

  Ansen arrived early the following Saturday in his well equipped Land Rover, his intention being to visit the old workings and inspect Gower’s Reef. Sash and I were already at the presbytery ready and waiting, having been summonsed to Father’s office and given our instructions the previous evening. Following a brief meeting the four of us then set out for the Hell’s Pit Mine (as Sash and I were now calling the old workings) – Ansen and Father in front and us two in the rear acting as guides.

  Ansen was a huge man: a big affable Boer, all fair-hair and fair-skin. There was no fat on the fellow, however; he was just several sizes bigger than anyone I had ever met. He came from Johannesburg and had migrated to Australia with his wife and two sons on being appointed Chief Exploration Geologist with Auriferous Gold – the company with which Father was negotiating.

  Besides workboots and a belt, Ansen was wearing khaki shorts, a khaki shirt, khaki socks and a khaki hat. Except for his boots and hat everything looked about two sizes too small – including the Land Rover, as there wasn’t much leg-room when he was behind the wheel.

  His driving was good, though, despite the cramped conditions, but his tracking skills were better. The trail beyond Angus Cross’ property was easy enough to follow, but I soon realised Ansen was tracking the ute – and so far hadn’t missed one of our detours.

  During that earlier trip we’d come on a soft looking wet patch a couple of kilometres from the Hell’s Pit mound. There seemed no obvious way around it, so after pulling up we began poking the ground with sticks and arguing about where might be firm enough to cross.

  It certainly looked chancy, particularly in view of the deep tracks left by Angus’ Blitz. Eventually I decid
ed to attempt it by going straight ahead, but to lighten the load had the others wait on the far side.

  Flat-out in first gear was the order of the day, speed and the car’s relative lightness helping it across without breaking through the crust (and also keeping the driver’s side wheels between Angus’ Blitz tracks). I’d let the tyres down, too – waaay down as a matter of fact, so as to lower the ground pressure. Except that once on the other side we had to pump them up again – a bit, anyway.

  A light shower since then had not improved things. Nor was Ansen taking any notice of the advice coming from the rear seating. He just tootled sedately around the corner and floundered straight into it.

  Down we went as the Land Rover heaved to a halt. It wasn’t far to the ground when we stepped out.

  “Gees, it’s right down to the guts,” muttered Sash. “We’ll be here all bloody day, now. What the hell was he tryin’ to prove?”

  We were both pretty disgusted. Ansen and Father were mucking around at the front talking about something, so we found a shovel and began digging mud away from behind the rear wheels – reversing out of the mess being the only option we could see. Then unbeknown to us the Geo returned to the driver’s seat ... and suddenly the Land Rover unexpectedly jerked forward! – with no door-slamming or engine revving that might have alerted us.

  Sash was leaning against the Rover’s rear door making derogatory comments about my getting-the-shovel-stuck technique and the sudden movement took him by surprise.

  Arms flailing, he attempted to regain his balance and stay upright. But his feet had become anchored in the mud and in desperation he grabbed at me, nearly pulling us both in.

  “What are you bloody doing?!” I yelled, trying to defy the laws of inertia and gravity while at the same time attempting to wrestle him off.

  We steadied ourselves quickly enough but Sash clung on to me a moment longer than necessary. “Oh, Kevin; you dance divinely,” he murmured in my ear. “…I’m all aflutter. Let’s step out onto the terrace for some air.”

  I tried to push the fool into the mud for this but he’d anticipated the move. The Land Rover, meanwhile, continued its relentless progress through the mire.

  Still laughing hysterically we glopped our way forward. Something decidedly odd was happening here and it wasn’t just Sash.

  Father O’Long ignored our merriment. “What were you boys doing back there?” he enquired. “We could have done with some help here running out the winch cable.”

  …Winch cable?!! We stared at it stupidly. Neither of us had seen a little winch like this before.

  A number of people in the valley owned ex-army trucks and many of those had winches, but they were brutish things with worn-out steel cables comprising a myriad-broken-wire barbs. They could topple trees, retrieve logs from mountain ravines, pull tractors from bogs and strip the flesh from your hands with equal facility.

  On Ansen’s Land Rover the winch drum was concealed by a protective plate, so explaining why we hadn’t noticed it earlier at the presbytery. Once in the bog he’d simply run out its light steel cable, attached it to a suitable tree, then returned to the driver’s seat and continued on his way – though at a much slower rate.

  Living such sheltered lives was the problem, I explained to Father O’Long on resuming our seats. We’d no idea little beauties like this even existed.

  44. A Limited Choice Of Direction; and The Difference Between A Duck

  Back in the Land Rover we continued along Angus’ track a few more kilometres then stopped at a point roughly adjacent to the Hell’s Pit shaft. There Ansen issued us with hard hats and torches, at the same time instructing us to check their batteries. He was carrying a shoulder-pack as well, to hold samples, plus a geopick and a coil of rope. A hand lens swung from a cord around his neck like a badge of office.

  At the mound Sash and I lifted away the logs covering the shaft and Ansen tied one end of his rope to a handy tree. Next he fastened a short section to a special attachment on his belt, pulled it tight and lay down beside the pit to inspect the ladder and timbering with his torch. Happy with the result, he stood up again and threw the free end of the rope into the opening.

  “I always use a safety-rope,” he said in his pronounced Boer accent. “It’s a long way beck to the top if the ledder breaks.”

  …And, I thought, a pretty fair distance to the bottom.

  Ansen then started down. At the foot of the ladder he flashed his torch upward, signalling that we were to follow one at a time, then waited silently as we descended. When all three of us had joined him he said: “Now, boys. Please listen carefully. There is something important I must ask you.”

  He paused for a second. Sash and I waited respectfully. “Which direction should we go?” he asked with a sudden mischievous grin.

  We had to laugh; the drive only went a couple of metres the other way. It was the sort of thing Doogle would have said. Ansen was one of us; he just had a few more years under his belt.

  We set off along the tunnel in single file, each with his own thoughts and feelings. Soon we came to the little water catchment and, after that, to where Gower had conducted his dollying and panning, and where he’d left his equipment so neatly arranged.

  Father and the geologist were entranced. “This is wonderful,” said Father O’Long. “It should all be saved and put in a museum, just the way it is, just the way he left it.”

  After looking over Gower’s things we continued along the drive. Then, as we turned into the cross-cutting tunnel, I suddenly pictured Ansen failing to negotiate the narrow section leading to the quartz reef. In the event he managed it without any trouble at all. The drive was bigger than it looked.

  On reaching the decline Sash and I stood aside to let Ansen and Father inspect the gold mineralisation in the workface. Both of them were excited and extremely impressed with what they saw – and more than pleased on discovering it was just as we’d said. I’m sure they’d expected to find our claims exaggerated, too, even given the specimens we’d taken back.

  After looking over the vein Ansen chose a spot to take some samples of his own. Father said it was starting to feel a bit stuffy and he would wait for us back in the main drive. Sash and I returned to the top of the decline to give Ansen more room, then shone our torches on his target while he hammered at the quartz with his geo-pick. After half a dozen hits he gave up and reached for the gimpy hammer in the wheelbarrow.

  “I hope the hendle doesn’t break,” he muttered. Once again he started pounding the rock, while at the same time turning his face aside and shielding it from any flying shards with his other hand. Eventually he recovered a couple of specimens similar to mine, but by the time he’d done so he was soaked in sweat. After mopping his face with a handkerchief he produced a field notebook and did a quick sketch of the decline and its geology.

  By this time the air in the drive was becoming noticeably stale, so Sash and I retreated to where Father was waiting in the main drive. At least it had some natural ventilation.

  In fact it wasn’t until leaving the crosscut that I realised just how bad the air in the decline had become.

  Ansen arrived moments later. “At first you don’t realise anything is wrong,” he said as he rejoined us, “but soon you begin to feel dopey. This means the air is getting bed and you must straightaway go beck out. If you do not then I am sorry; it is too late for you because the bed air will put you to sleep and kill you. And the terrible thing about it is, you do not even know you are dying.”

  This set me thinking. Big underground operations like Mount Isa Mines have entire shaft, tunnel and ducting systems dedicated to ventilating the workings, while at Schraeder’s Claim Nugget and Jasper used a small stationary engine to drive a fan. This pushed fresh air down the shaft and into the workings via a fat canvas tube.

  But the Sherbert Valley mining took place well before the advent of fans and stationary engines, so what the old timers there had to do on finding a workable gold
deposit was sink a second shaft, usually a short distance beyond where their lead was estimated to go. If closer to the workface than the original shaft (or should it become closest as the workings developed), then that would become their operating shaft and the older one the vent.

  The reason for having a second shaft lay in the fact that a tunnel complex with an opening at each end will always have a draught moving through it. And when a mine is on the side of a hill and the openings are at different levels the effect is more pronounced.

  But the miners at Hell’s Pit had not used a second shaft; had they done so then Sash and I would have found it. Yet their whole mine was a blind-ended tunnel and without some means of exchanging its air the place would have quickly become unworkable. This would have endured for a considerable length of time, too, possibly for months.

  But a second shaft would have given others an indication as to the direction the Hell’s Pit workings were trending. Knowing this, their competitors could peg claims of their own, thus creating a real danger of the syndicate losing access to any extension the deposit may have, as the area a miner or miners could hold in gold claims was strictly limited.

  So their mine had to be ventilated somehow, and in a manner not apparent to a casual observer or a snooper hoping to learn their secrets. This I believe was the purpose of the holes I’d seen drilled down through the roof of the tunnels.

  But they had me puzzled for a time, because without an accurate survey it would have been difficult for them to know just where to drill. And even if it were done at night, any hand auguring activities would have been easily noticed.

  I must have been ruminating aloud on this while Father and Ansen were talking, because Sash gave me a funny look and said, “What the hell are you crapping on about now, Casey?”

  I described the problem to him briefly. “That’s easy,” he replied. “They drilled from the roof up.”

  “…from the roof up,” I echoed, feeling a complete idiot. It was so bloody obvious.

  “You could have been a bit more diplomatic about it,” I told him. “You could have said, ‘Gees, that’s a real puzzle, Casey. I’ll have to think about that for a while, ay’ – instead of just blurting out the answer.”

  “I can’t help it if I’m so brainy,” he replied. “Just ask me anything and I’ll tell you the answer.

  “What’s the length of a piece of string? How many horsepower in a donkey engine? What’s the name of the unknown soldier? How many millipedes in an inch? What’s the difference between a duck? Yep. I’m a veritable mine of information.”

  “...the difference between a duck?!!”

  “That’s easy,” he replied. “One of its legs are both the same.”

  I couldn’t help laughing, it was so inane. Sash joined in too, though he was laughing at me.

  “I hev never met anyone so relexed about being in old underground workings,” said Ansen. “Abendoned mines can be quite dangerous, you know.”

  “We know,” replied Sash. “And the worse it is the more Casey keeps laughing.”

  Before returning to the shaft I showed Ansen where I’d found the specks of gold in the little quartz vein. He worked along the vein with the point of his geopick, scraping and digging until he found himself a good specimen.

  There were more than just a few gold specks in that one, too.