And it wasn’t an opal at all, it was a piece of old bubblegum.
Keith tossed it away.
OK, he said to himself, be sensible. You’re not going to find opals lying here by the side of the road. Any opals here would have been picked up years ago by people driving to the shops who remembered they’d left their money at home and needed a couple of precious stones to pay for the groceries.
Keith stood up and looked around.
Now the dust from the truck had settled, he could see he was in the middle of a vast, flat plain with hardly anything sprouting out of it.
Anything green, that is.
There were other things, brown things, most of them taller than Keith, dotted over the landscape for as far as he could see.
Piles of dirt.
Keith had a horrible suspicion he knew what they were.
Keith decided to check out the town first and buy some cans of drink because he’d seen a movie once where some prospectors had run out of water in the desert and had got dehydrated and started seeing piles of gold that were really donkeys.
All he could see were two buildings and a caravan park.
‘Excuse me,’ he said to a man climbing into a four-wheel drive, ‘where’s the town?’
The man grinned and knocked some dust out of his beard with his hat.
‘You’re standing in it,’ he said.
Keith looked at the buildings.
One was a pub with cement brick walls and a corrugated-iron roof and a wooden verandah and a huge dirt carpark.
The other was a shop with fibro walls and a corrugated-iron roof and a wooden verandah and a huge dirt carpark.
Over the shop door was a sign saying Curly’s Store.
I hope Curly sells cold drinks, thought Keith as he went in.
When his eyes got used to the gloom, he saw that Curly sold everything. Food, hardware, clothes, make-up, camping gear, kitchen utensils, dog-care products, and that was just on the first shelf Keith looked at.
Curly also sold newspapers.
Keith held his breath while he checked to see if any of the headlines said NATIONWIDE SEARCH FOR BRAVE OPAL BOY.
They didn’t.
Keith felt relieved, but with a twinge of disappointment. Then he saw that the papers were three days old.
‘Can I help you?’ said a gruff voice.
Standing behind the counter was an elderly man wearing an off-white T-shirt with Curly printed on it. He was completely bald.
That’s a bit rough, thought Keith, giving a person a nickname just cause he’s got hairy arms.
Keith bought three cans of drink and a meatloaf sandwich. Once the sandwich was in his mouth he realised how ravenous he was and bought two more.
Then he got down to business.
‘Those piles of dirt,’ asked Keith, ‘are they . . . ?’
‘Mullock dumps,’ said Curly, slapping a piece of meatloaf onto a piece of bread, ‘from the diggings.’
‘How long does it take to dig an opal mine?’ asked Keith, dreading the answer.
‘If you’ve got a diesel drill and some gelignite,’ said Curly, ‘you can get a decent shaft down in a day. By hand it takes weeks.’
Keith felt a lump in his stomach that wasn’t meatloaf.
‘You don’t happen to know of any spare mines around here, do you?’ he asked. ‘Ones where the owners have struck it rich and gone to Disneyland.’
Curly gave Keith a look that made him think Curly must have once had a bad experience at Disneyland.
‘We’ve got a rule out here,’ said Curly. ‘You never touch another bloke’s mine. Never.’
‘What happens if you do?’ asked Keith in a small voice, hoping he sounded like he was doing this for a school project.
Curly reached under the counter.
Keith wondered if he was going to produce a school-project kit.
But it wasn’t a cardboard folder that Curly thumped down onto the counter.
It was a big, black, double-barrelled shotgun.
Keith stood on the store verandah, swallowed his last bit of meatloaf sandwich, and looked around for a good place to fossick.
When Curly had first mentioned the word fossick, Keith had feared it was a technical term meaning to dig up opals with a bulldozer and a dump truck.
Then Curly had explained that it simply meant picking up opals by hand on the surface rather than digging down for them, and that just as many opals were found by fossickers as by the crazies who sank shafts halfway to Belgium.
Keith spotted a good place to fossick.
Keith looked at his watch and sighed.
Ten forty-three.
He’d been on his hands and knees in the pub carpark for twenty-five minutes in the scorching sun and all he’d found, apart from a few thousand stones and rocks and a few hundred cigarette butts and beer bottle tops, was a bleached bone from a small animal or lizard.
He sighed again.
When opal miners got drunk and spun their tyres, they obviously jumped out of the car afterwards to check for opals.
He looked at his watch again.
Ten forty-four.
He’d planned to find all the opals he needed by twelve-thirty so he could organise a charter plane to get him back to Orchid Cove in time for dinner.
He looked at the bleached bone again.
Maybe it wasn’t part of a lizard.
Maybe it was part of a BBQ chicken.
Or a fossicker.
Keith decided to try somewhere else.
Keith looked at his watch and sighed.
Eleven twenty-seven.
He’d been on his hands and knees in the caravan park for thirty-eight minutes in the scorching sun and all he’d found was a shoelace and a plastic hose nozzle.
It wasn’t much of a caravan park, just a square of dust with a dozen or so battered caravans, but he’d hoped the van wheels might have stirred up the odd gem or two.
Nothing.
A voice broke into his thoughts.
‘Scuse me.’
It belonged to a middle-aged woman in a fluffy dressing gown.
Keith thought she must be melting. He was wearing a T-shirt and he felt like a chip in oil.
‘While you’re down there, love,’ she said, ‘could you do me a favour? Keep an eye out for a filling. Merv threw up on his way back from the pub last night and lost one.’
Keith said that normally he’d be happy to, but he’d just decided to try somewhere else.
Keith looked at his watch.
He didn’t have the energy to sigh.
Nineteen minutes past twelve.
He’d been on his hands and knees by the petrol pumps at the side of Curly’s store for nearly an hour in the scorching sun and all he’d found was a tyre valve and three pieces of old bubblegum.
So much for his theory that when truck drivers stopped for diesel and jumped down from their cabs, the heels of their cowboy boots would gouge out opals.
Keith pulled the knotted T-shirt off his head and wiped the dust and sweat off his face.
This is hopeless, he thought.
Not just this spot, the whole trip.
Coming all this way had been a stupid waste of time, thirty-two hours of worry and discomfort and knots in the guts, all for nothing.
The only good bit had been painting Col’s truck.
Keith looked round for a phone box so he could ring Mum and Dad and tell them he was coming home as soon as a truck came past that would swap him a lift for a painting.
He had a vision of Mum and Dad’s faces glowing with relief at his safe return.
Then he saw the disappointment gradually furrowing Mum’s forehead and drooping Dad’s mouth as they realised he hadn’t brought any opals.
Disappointment closely followed by migraines and upset tummies and crosswords and solitary bushwalks and arguments and . . .
Keith stood up and went into the store.
9
‘Noodling,’ said Curly, slappin
g a piece of meatloaf onto a piece of bread.
Keith lowered his lemonade and stared at him.
Noodling?
What did spaghetti have to do with finding opals?
‘Sifting through the mullock dumps,’ said Curly. ‘Picking up bits of colour the shafties have missed. Best way to fossick.’
Of course, thought Keith, his body suddenly tingling and not just from the lemonade or the sunburn. That’s where I’ve been going wrong. No noodling.
‘One important thing to remember when you choose a dump,’ said Curly, handing him the sandwich. ‘If there’s someone working the shaft, make sure you ask their permission. And even if a shaft looks deserted, don’t go down it.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Keith through a mouthful of meatloaf, ‘I won’t.’
What was the point of going down a mine, finding opals worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and then spending most of it having shotgun pellets surgically removed?
‘You won’t find big stuff like this in the mullocks,’ said Curly, thumping a big dirty rock onto the counter, ‘but you might pick up some of these.’ He rattled a jam jar half full of tiny dirty rocks.
Keith stared at the dirty rocks to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.
Yes, they were definitely dirty rocks.
So that’s why Curly was called Curly. It wasn’t his arm hairs, it was his brain.
‘Thanks for the advice,’ said Keith, backing towards the door, ‘and they’re great-looking rocks, but I’ve only got room in my bag for opals.’
Curly grinned for the first time since Keith had met him.
Oh no, thought Keith, here’s where he grabs his shotgun and runs amok.
But instead Curly rubbed some of the dirt off the big rock and held it up in front of a window. Colours flashed out of it.
‘Never looks much till it’s cut and polished,’ said Curly.
Keith went over and took the rock from him and ran his fingers over the rough sandstone and the smooth ribbons of flashing opal running through it.
Suddenly he didn’t feel exhausted any more.
He couldn’t wait to get out on the mullock dumps and start sifting through the dirty rocks and sorting out which ones were opals.
‘Thanks very much,’ he said to Curly, handing him the rock. ‘You’ve made a troubled family very happy.’
He headed for the door.
‘Just a sec,’ said Curly. ‘Talking about families, where’s yours?’
Keith froze.
He forced his mouth open to tell Curly the story he’d made up earlier that morning, the one about Mum and Dad being kidnapped by Taiwanese pirates who were demanding a ransom of opals and potato scallops, but suddenly it didn’t seem like such a good story.
He tried to make up another one, but his brain had turned to dust.
Helplessly he pointed in what he thought was the direction of Orchid Cove.
‘Good-o,’ said Curly, ‘they’re in the caravan park. Just checking they’re not camped on my claim.’
Keith looked at his watch and sighed.
Two thirty-three.
He’d been squatting on this mullock heap with the scorching wind blowing dust into his eyes and mouth for over an hour and a half.
He must have sifted tonnes of dirt through Mum’s plastic strainer.
He’d smashed hundreds of dirty rocks with Dad’s hammer.
Nothing.
He looked across at the next heap where an Aboriginal family were systematically sifting the dirt and chatting and laughing.
‘How ya goin?’ one of the women called across to him.
‘Not very well,’ Keith shouted back.
‘Don’t give up,’ yelled the woman, ‘we found heaps in there last week.’
Keith looked at his watch and coughed.
Twenty past four.
This second dump was no better. He must have sifted just about the whole thing, most of it in the plastic strainer and the rest in his mouth, and he hadn’t found a single opal.
Plus there was the whine.
The opal fields were noisy enough with generators and drills clattering away, but coming from behind the next dump was a high-pitched whine that made concentrating on finding opals impossible.
Keith couldn’t stand it any longer.
He threw down his trowel and strainer and stormed over the next dump towards the whine.
As soon as he got over the top he saw what it was.
A small generator strapped to a tent on legs.
Keith went over and tapped the tent on the shoulder.
A flap opened and a man’s face, eerily lit by a purple light, peered out.
‘Excuse me, but do you have to make so much noise?’ said Keith.
‘Sorry,’ said the man. ‘Ultraviolet light. Shows up the opal.’
‘Have you found any?’ asked Keith.
‘Absolutely,’ said the man. ‘Last week.’
‘Well it’s nice to know there’s some around,’ said Keith. ‘I’d just about given up on that heap over there.’
‘You won’t find any over there,’ said the man.
‘Why not?’ asked Keith.
‘Because,’ said the man, ‘I did that yesterday.’
Keith dropped his school bag and wiped the sweat off his face.
At last he’d found one.
A mullock heap that hadn’t been noodled in the last week.
In fact this one had wisps of dry grass growing on it so perhaps it had never been noodled at all.
Fat chance.
But he had to keep trying.
There was an old caravan by the dump so Keith banged on the door and called out to see if anyone was home.
No one was.
He went over to the shaft and yelled down it.
No one answered.
Then he noticed the sign.
Keep Out. Private Claim. By Order Of C. Kovacs, General Store.
Blimey, thought Keith, this must be Curly ’s mine.
Then another thought came to him. With Curly back at the store, this was his chance to check out an opal mine without getting shot.
He shone his torch down the shaft, but couldn’t even see the bottom.
Keith knew he had to go down.
Just for a look.
Above the shaft was a winch with a coil of thick wire. Keith uncoiled the wire and it slithered down into the darkness.
When it went slack he knew it had touched the bottom. He put the torch in his mouth, gripped the wire with both hands, planted the soles of his feet against the sides of the shaft and half climbed, half slid down in a shower of dirt and rock fragments.
The bottom of the shaft was cool and dark.
He shone the torch around. There was a tunnel running off to one side, high enough to walk along.
Keith didn’t.
He gazed for a while at the walls of the tunnel, at the bands and seams of rock running along it. Some looked hard, some looked crumbly, and any one of them could have been stuffed with opal.
But he didn’t touch.
He didn’t want to be a thief.
He wanted to be a miner.
Curly stared at Keith, the lump of meatloaf and the slice of bread in his hands forgotten.
‘Paint my store?’
‘That’s right,’ said Keith. ‘I’ll paint your store in return for a day down your mine. As long as I can keep everything I find down there.’
Curly thought about this for a long time.
‘There’s not much down there,’ he said. ‘I’ve given up on it.’
Oh yeah, thought Keith, so why have you got a big Keep Out sign plastered all over it?
‘I’ll pay for the paint,’ said Keith.
He’d already seen a paintbox for eleven fifty on the stationery shelf and a big drawing pad for three dollars. That was nearly all the money he had left but it was worth it.
‘Are you any good?’ asked Curly.
‘I did a truck on the way here and the owner
was delighted,’ said Keith.
Curly thought some more.
‘OK’, he said, ‘it’s a deal. Paint this place and you can have full use of my claim for twenty-four hours.’
They shook hands.
‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ said Keith.
‘You’d better buy the paint now,’ said Curly, ‘because I’m away on business most of tomorrow.’
Keith went to the stationery shelf and grabbed the paintbox and pad.
When he got back to the counter he saw that Curly was over the other side of the store doing a sum on his fingers.
‘I reckon,’ said Curly, ‘you’ll need about twenty litres to do the outside of this place. That’ll be a hundred and eighty-five dollars please.’
10
The first half-litre was the hardest.
Keith knocked on the door of the first caravan and a man in off-white underpants appeared. He looked like he’d just woken up.
‘Sorry to disturb you so early,’ said Keith, ‘but have you got any old paint to spare? I’m painting Curly’s store.’
The man stared at him.
‘Not a picture,’ Keith added, ‘the store itself.’ He thought he’d better get that straight as it could be a bit confusing.
‘Why doesn’t Curly supply the paint?’ growled the man.
‘He’s supplying the stepladder and the drip sheets,’ said Keith, ‘and I’m supplying the paint.’
‘Why?’ growled the man.
‘It’s a long story,’ said Keith, ‘but it involves raising money for a very worthy cause.’
‘What worthy cause?’ growled the man.
‘Well,’ said Keith, ‘my Mum and Dad have got this fish-and-chip shop way over on the coast and the hotel has just started up a snack bar and the new resort round on the headland has got three restaurants and . . .’
‘Hang on,’ grunted the man.
He went inside the van and Keith heard him clattering about. He came back with a litre tin of paint, handed it to Keith and closed the door.
‘Thanks,’ Keith called out.
He opened the tin with the claw end of Dad’s hammer. The tin was half full of dull red antirust paint.
Nice one, thought Keith. Only nineteen and a half litres to go.
The door of the second caravan swung open and the middle-aged woman in the fluffy dressing gown smiled at Keith.