I was still dreaming of Rosa when the gums fell back and I saw the pockmarks of old mineworkings in the red soil either side of us. The truck slowed. A car passed us and through a haze of dust I saw the wood facade of an hotel, empty and desolate. We were in a wide dirt street then, flanked by empty buildings; an old concert hall, and opposite it, on the other side, more empty buildings - a meat factory and the words Ora Banda Dining Rooms on a faded noticeboard. Two or three homesteads, and that was it. A ghost town, the buildings all of wood, tin-roofed and surrounded by a rusty litter of discarded household equipment and old abandoned vehicles.
Up the slight rise we passed the State Battery with its crusher and a small tailings dump. It looked as though it were still in use. Shortly afterwards we turned off the dirt road on to a track that wound haphazardly through the bush, the red gravel overlaid with black drifts like the scatterings of a coal cart, and everywhere mounds of earth marking the shallow shafts of departed gold diggers, the rusted debris of their camps. We swung round the end of a trenched line of diggings and stopped beside two abandoned tip trucks that lay on their sides flaking in the sun. The track on which they had run was rusted, half buried under a thin layer of windblown sand. We were in a grove of bronze-barked gums.
Culpin climbed out, looked up at me, his eyes squinting against the glare. ‘Hot enough for you?’ He grinned at me. ‘Do with a drink, eh?’ He reached into the cab and tossed me up a can of beer. I opened it and took a long swig, then climbed out and joined the others. They were standing in the shade drinking beer and eating sandwiches, looking across a flat area cratered with old workings to a timbered shaft head standing above a gaping hole, and Culpin was saying, ‘I remember it before the war, when the Three-eight was opened up. It had a cricket team and a football team then, and that hotel was fair humming with life.’ He was talking about Ora Banda. ‘Wouldn’t take much to start it humming again - just a nickel strike, instead of gold.’
Kadek didn’t say anything. Nor did Freeman. They were looking towards the mine with its poppet head and the rusty drag-wires coiled above the tailings dump. Flies crawled and it was furnace hot, the beer too warm and sweet. There was black grit under my feet and small pieces of quartz glistening white in the sun. I bent down and picked up a handful of tiny pebbles, dull black with a metallic look and smooth like well-Ducked lozenges. I had seen specimens very like them only that morning in the glass cases at the School of Mines museum. Australites?’ I asked, holding them out to Culpin.
But he didn’t know. ‘Meteorites, they say - debris from outer space. Ground’s thick with them all round here.’ He looked at Freeman. ‘You want to have a look at the mine first? Then I’ll show you where Petersen’s man picked up the dirt that showed traces of nickel.’ We left our beer cans winking in the sun and walked to the mine in a cloud of flies. But for the flies and the sun, and the rusty litter, it would have been an idyllic spot, the gum leaves flickering to a breeze and the boles silver through to bronze.
Freeman might not know very much about mining, but he had a shrewd business mind and he asked the right questions. Kadek played it very cool and quiet, as though he didn’t much care what the outcome was, deferring all the time to me and leaving Freeman with the impression that bigger fish than his little company were after the bait.
The mine itself had been abandoned in 1959, and though the shoring timbers around the top of the shaft were still sound, it had collapsed in on itself about thirty feet down. The area that had yielded nickel-bearing samples was about five hundred yards north-east of the mine shaft. It looked no different from all the rest of that country, except it was slightly higher, on a ridge that ended at the mine. ‘It’s all part of the property,’ Culpin said. ‘They called it Blackridge because of the Black Range, which is all the higher ground north of here.’ It was the australites, of course, that had given it its name. They lay very thick here, black drifts that emphasized every slight undulation of the surface.
Kadek, standing beside me, mopped his brow. ‘Remember I wrote you about my Newsletter? It’s launched now and all I need is a first-rate geologist. You interested?’ He gave me a quick sidelong glance. ‘You’d make a lot of money backing the shares we tip.’ He smiled, a conspiratorial smile as though we were already in it together. Then he turned to Freeman. ‘Just telling Alec about my Newsletter. Maybe I’ll do something on Lone Minerals in a month or two.’
The bait was so obvious I couldn’t believe Freeman would rise to it. But that sort of talk interested him a lot more than the geological theory of ultrabasics. He’d seen the assay figures, read Peterson’s guarded letter, but the ground on which we stood was much the same as the ridge, red gravel interspersed with quartz and drifted with the black australites. ‘What’s your opinion?’ he asked me.
I shrugged. ‘I’ve told you what I can about the geology of the area. Beyond that I don’t know any more than you do.’
‘But you’ll be sending a report in to your firm.’ He seemed to take my silence for confirmation. ‘Anything else you want me to see while I’m here?’ he asked Kadek.
‘No. Don’t forget this isn’t a claim. Whoever buys Blackridge owns the land, everything - a total of over a square mile. It’s a point to bear in mind.’ Kadek smiled. ‘Look well in your next report.’ And he nodded to Culpin and they started back towards the ute.
That left me alone with Freeman. ‘You’re looking over a number of prospects, I take it?’ I didn’t answer and he added, ‘In fact, Blackridge isn’t of any great importance to you.’
‘I can’t answer that,’ I said. ‘Not until we’ve run either a geochemical or an IP survey. Then any anomaly we struck would have to be proved by drilling.’
‘Of course,’ He was silent for a moment. And then he said, ‘I’d like to put a proposition to you.’
The others were out of earshot and I still can’t make up my mind whether Kadek put him up to it or whether it was his own idea. What he offered me was the option on 5,000 Lone Minerals shares at their present price of 29 cents if I’d sign an independent report setting out in geological terms the prospects for his acquisition of Blackridge. In short, he was suggesting that I act as mining consultant for his company. ‘In a private capacity, of course.’ And he added, Ferdie’s Newsletter already has an influential following. If the prospect looks good on paper and he tips it, the shares will move up sharply the way the market is right now.’ Those were his exact words, the offer made quite openly as though it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘Well, what do you say?’
What could I say? There was no point in refusing when I was already in deeper than he knew. ‘Where do the shares come from?’ I asked.
‘From my own holding. I’ll give you a letter, of course.’
I must have been out of my mind. If I hadn’t accepted his offer … But what the hell! It put money in my pocket when I needed it, and you can’t have it both ways. ‘Okay,’ I said, and he nodded as though it hadn’t occurred to him that I might have moral scruples.
We got back to Kalgoorlie just after four and I wrote my report in the stuffy little room that had been booked for them at the Palace. It was at the end of a rambling corridor that ran the whole length of the building and the single window looked out on to a yard and the sound of pigeons drowsing on the rooftops. Kadek came up and read it through, then he had me change one or two phrases, add a paragraph or two. ‘That should clinch it,’ and he peeled off the cash he’d promised me from a wad of notes he had in his briefcase. ‘You invest that in the shares I tell you and you’ll have no difficulty in maintaining yourself out here.’ He wanted me to move into the Palace Hotel as soon as possible and mail him a weekly report on the information I picked up. ‘Got anything on that copper deposit rumour? No? Well, I’ll let you know from time to time the prospects I want you to take a closer look at.’
I suppose I should hate the man. But I don’t. It’s difficult to hate a man who has the drive and energy, the sheer guts to try and build a finan
cial empire on nothing more substantial than his wits. Clever, selfish, cold-bloodedly ruthless - he was all that. And the mess I am now in was of his engineering. Yet I don’t blame him. He was part of the rawness of that part of Australia.
He had the report typed on hotel notepaper by the girl in Reception. This guaranteed that it would be all over the Palace bar within the hour, which was probably why he went back up to his room to make a phone call.
While he was gone I had a couple of drinks with Freeman and he wrote me a note covering the option. ‘That was a good report,’ he said. ‘Just what I needed - especially that bit about Blackridge being in an area of singular promise with a built-in infrastructure.’ This had been suggested by Kadek, a whole paragraph elaborating on the cost advantages of its proximity to Kalgoorlie with an experienced labour force, water, highways, the railway, every facility, in fact, for bringing a mine into production without the enormous expenditure involved in equivalent prospects deep in the outback. ‘I think you’ll find the option I’ve given you will more than repay you for any trouble you may have with your firm.’
I should have been warned by that, but he was already asking me what other prospects I had been instructed to examine, and I was thinking of Golden Soak. ‘You find something good, then let me know. Lone Minerals is a new flotation. We’ve got the cash and you won’t be the loser. Okay? And he gave me his card with the Company’s address in Sydney.
Kadek rejoined us, smiling and ordering drinks. ‘Well, Les. here’s to Blackridge being a bonanza.’ And he raised his glass He knew the deal was as good as settled. ‘And I meant it about doing a piece on Lone Minerals.’
We had more drinks, then he told Culpin to leave Freeman and himself to sort the details out. ‘Come back about eight. We should be through by then.’ He looked at me, ‘See you in the morning maybe. We’ll be catching the seven-fifty flight back to Perth.’ Then he turned to Freeman and suggested they had some food, dismissing both of us from his mind.
Culpin drove me back to his home in silence. All down the Golden Mile he never said a word and it wasn’t until we were through Boulder that I realized what was on his mind. ‘Ferdie said you’d be moving into the Pal. Gonna act as his scout, eh?’
‘Something like that,’ I murmured.
‘An’ what about me? Where do I come in?’ He was glowering at me. ‘Two thousand he gave you, right? Jesus! I don’t make much more’n that out of the deal and it was me wot found Blackridge for him.’ He was working himself up into a rage, afraid I was muscling in on the partnership. ‘Well, I’m warning you. Ferdie’s a ruthless, bloody bastard. And I’m not being edged out just because you’ve got a better education, see. You’ll get your ruddy neck broken one dark night if you try that sort of thing out here.’
You don’t have to worry,’ I told him. But I don’t think he believed me. He was a mean bugger and nursing a grievance was like a drug; it deadened the pain of failure.
‘Now if you’d got a line on that fellow McIlroy.’ He was eyeing me shiftily, an ingratiating smile on his coarse face. ‘You told me you were in Nullagine an’ you saw that abo.’
‘Yes.’
‘And he told you nothing?’
‘Nothing that meant anything. The man you want is Phil Westrop and you won’t get anything out of him.’
‘A prospector, eh?’ He peered at me, then slammed the gear lever into second as we turned on to the loose grit track. He didn’t say anything more, nursing his grievance in silence. That sense of grievance would have been difficult to stomach all evening if his son had not been home. He was sitting on the verandah steps and he looked up as we drove in, the face a little thinner than the face in the photograph, and peeling from the sun, the hair longer, but still the likeness to his mother clearly stamped.
‘You just got in?’ his father asked.
”Bout an hour ago.’
That was their greeting, and neither in their faces nor in the tone of their voices was there any sign of affection. ‘You’ll have to bed down on the sofa. Alec here’s got your room.’
The boy nodded, staring at me very directly out of pale greenish eyes. ‘So I gathered.’ He smiled and held out his hand. ‘I’m Kennie.’ The smile stretched the scab of a sore at the corner of his mouth, his eyes crinkling, a depth of interest in them that was very personal.
‘Have you had your tucker yet?’
‘No. Mum said to wait for our guest.’
Culpin grunted and pushed open the fly screen, calling to his wife. Then he turned back to his son. ‘See anything interesting up there? Any likely prospects?’
‘We were doing an aerial magnetic. You don’t see prospects from a whirly bird, not when you’re watching the instruments all the time.’ His mouth twisted in an impish little grin. ‘Saw a lot of roos though. Reds mainly.’
‘Chrissakes! You bin having a dekko at the nickel country north of Leonora and all you can talk about…’ Culpin checked himself, eyeing his son suspiciously. ‘Well, when you weren’t observing the wild life,’ he said sarcastically, ‘mebbe you found time to have a drink with some of the Poseidon boys.’
‘Sure.’ The boy nodded, standing there, not volunteering anything.
‘Well, what did they tell you?’
‘Nothing. They were drillers, that’s all.’
The hostility between them was obvious, and it wasn’t a generation gap — this was a conflict of personalities. Culpin hitched at his trousers. His back was towards me, the dark leathery skin of his neck a network of creases ingrained with red dust. The anger that had been building up in him all the way from the Palace would have broken out then if his wife hadn’t appeared at the flyscreen door to say that supper was ready ‘What happened today?’ she asked. ‘Did that man Mr Kadek brought with him buy Blackridge?’
Culpin nodded. ‘They’re sorting out the details now.’
‘Well, that’s something,’ she said tartly, and I glimpsed how tight things had become in this dilapidated house.
We went into the kitchen then and all through the meal Culpin hardly spoke a word. It was Kennie who did the talking, his mother listening, the two of them obviously very close. It had been the first aerial survey and he was very full of it. After the meal, when his father had gone back to the Palace, he came out and sat with me on the verandah in the fading light and for a while he talked about his survey, not as he’d talked about it over the meal, but as one geologist to another. They had been searching for nickel and copper over a lease area of nearly 300 square miles, and when I asked him whether they had found anything, he shrugged:
‘One area that’s possibly anomalous. That’s all. But we won’t be pegging. Not yet. There’s a strong rumour the government intends to clamp down on all new claims. If that happens the Company will have more time to complete the survey. They’ll be starting geochemical work as soon as the magnetometer results we got on this trip have been analysed.’
He picked up a stick and began drawing an emu in the black grit. He wanted to get a job up in the North West next. He’d heard a lot about it from his father and now geologists were Baying it would be the next area to attract the attention of prospectors. ‘You’ve just come down from there, haven’t you?’ And because he was the sort of boy he was, bubbling over with theory that he now desperately wanted to put into practice, I told him a little about the Garretys and how Golden Soak had been discovered.
That’s the mine my father was making enquiries about.’ He looked up from his drawing. ‘You trying to buy it? Is that why you were up there?’ And when I asked him why he thought it was for sale, he said, ‘Just something I heard last night. We were at the Hotel in Leonora, celebrating the end of our survey, and this bloke I was talking to - he was from Marble Bar, some sort of property dealer, I think - he was talking about it. I don’t remember all he said, I’d had a lot to drink by then, you see, but it’s antimony, isn’t it?’
I suppose I should have realized that people up in the Pilbara would know all about the mi
ne, but it still came as a shock to hear him refer to the antimony content so casually. He knew about the price of antimony, too, even knew the reason for the sharp rise in the mineral’s value: ‘The main source is China and they’ve cut off supplies to the West, stockpiling against the possibility of war with Russia.’ And then he asked me again whether the people I was acting for were going to buy it.
‘I’m not acting for anybody,’ I said. ‘And anyway it isn’t for sale.’
He began tracing the outline of a kangaroo, his head bent in concentration. ‘You’ll be going up there again.’
I didn’t answer for a moment, thinking of Jarra Jarra and what it could mean to them. ‘That depends on the analysis.’
He looked up, a quick movement of the head that tossed his fair hair back. ‘You’ve got samples then?’ His voice was eager, his eyes shining with genuine interest. In the end I took him into his room and showed him a piece of the Golden Soak reef quartz. He had a cheap students’ microscope and he took it out on to the verandah, where the reflector could catch the last rays of the setting sun. His excitement when the specks of gold showed as minute chunks of metal embedded in the quartz crystals was infectious. But even under the microscope the grey smudges of the antimony still showed only as smudges. ‘If the analysis is good and you do go up there again, can I come with you?’
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