The Opal Desert

by Di Morrissey

  Shirley was shaking. ‘I’m sorry, but there was a truck that lost its load of sheep. Held me up. As if I wouldn’t come,’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘Come and sit down, have a cup of coffee. Where’s the car? You must be tired after such a long drive.’

  She nodded, suddenly feeling shy, though she knew that was ridiculous.

  He ordered coffee and sat back, holding her hand across the table. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Nervous. Silly, I know.’ She gave a small smile. ‘But I’ve never run away with a man before.’

  ‘Not any man. This is me, Stefan.’ He squeezed her hand.

  Shirley shook her head. On the drive out, she’d wondered if she’d made him up, whether he really was too good to be true. Yet here he was, impossibly handsome, strong, gentle and with an expression of joy as he looked at her. As the coffee and a sandwich were placed before her, she realised how hungry she was.

  ‘I’m starving. I was so anxious to get here, I left at dawn and I didn’t stop for lunch. And now here I am.’

  She sipped the coffee, took a bite of the sandwich and looked around the town. ‘There are a lot more buildings than I remember when I was here before as a little girl. I’m looking forward to exploring the place. Where are you living?’

  ‘Where are we living,’ he corrected her. ‘Two streets away. It’s a pleasant walk. I hope you’ll be comfortable. It’s a simple house, but I think it’s better than living out on the diggings.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ said Shirley. ‘How’s the mine going?’

  ‘I’ve cleared out the rubble. Got things working again, and it’s all propped up, so it’s safe. I’ve had a bit of a scratch around, but I have found nothing, yet. I’m waiting for my lucky girl to be with me.’

  ‘I hope I am lucky,’ said Shirley. ‘Dad always thought I was.’

  ‘Well, shall we go home?’

  The words made Shirley feel excited again. ‘I hope I settle down and get used to this,’ she chided herself, as Stefan took her hand.

  It was a small house with a dusty front yard filled with Stefan’s mining equipment and an old truck. Inside, the one-bedroom cottage was spotless, and Shirley was touched when she saw a vase filled with sprigs of gum leaves and flowering wattle.

  ‘I think we will be comfortable here,’ said Stefan. ‘We can go to the bowling club for dinner tonight, if you’re not too tired.’

  ‘I’m just fine . . . now.’ Shirley held out her arms and they embraced, then he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.

  Within a week, Shirley couldn’t imagine her life being any better than it was now. It was as if everything that had gone before had just been waiting for her real life to start. To wake each morning and find herself cuddled up to Stefan, to hear the music of a butcher bird in the tree outside, to feel the warmth of the sun and know the day was theirs to fill as they wished was bliss beyond her imaginings.

  Before they went to the mine, Stefan tidied the house while Shirley walked to the shops. She was now on nodding acquaintance with the people who seemed to be always seated on their small front verandahs watching the world go by. The woman who ran the little supermarket had quickly accepted her as Shirl, Stefan’s lady friend from Sydney.

  ‘People are friendly,’ she said to Stefan.

  ‘Perhaps for someone like you, but for a migrant like me people are not always so friendly.’

  ‘You don’t feel you belong here?’ she asked.

  They were sitting on the bank of the Narran River, fishing, having driven out to the small township of Angledool for the afternoon.

  Stefan cast his line and sat down. ‘In Australia? Or Lightning Ridge?’

  ‘Both I suppose,’ said Shirley slowly. ‘I’ve never really thought about what it must be like to have left your family and your country. Surely it doesn’t mean that when you come to a place like this, that’s peaceful and friendly, and where you have a future, that you can’t embrace it?’

  ‘I know people who have married and started their own family in Australia. But it’s not always easy. You want to share your culture, your faith, your family and your childhood friends with people who have similar ties. The people who know who you are.’ He suddenly leant over and put his arm around Shirley’s shoulders. ‘That’s not to say I can’t share my life with you,’ he added quickly. ‘Since being here at the Ridge I’ve found we are a community, but of strangers. Maybe it has something to do with the landscape. It is so enormous. This space can be frightening. At home people know each other’s family history but here friendships seem more superficial. We prefer to drink beer together, laugh and slap each other on the back and talk about the weather and call everyone mate.’

  ‘You’re making me feel sad that I can’t give you the depth of friendship you’re looking for,’ said Shirley.

  ‘But you do! You have filled my life, my new life. I have never been so happy.’

  ‘Stefan, why don’t you tell me more about your life in Croatia? Everything you can remember, your family, your grandparents, stories your mother told you, what you did at school, your first job. Everything. Then I’ll know you better and will understand you better, too.’

  He smiled. ‘And I also want to know everything about you.’

  ‘I’m really boring. I haven’t escaped from an oppressive communist regime or had the adventures you’ve had. I’ve told you about my father and me coming out here. Really, mining for opals with my father when I was a little girl seems to have made the biggest impact. When you are the first to see an opal after it has been buried for millions of years it’s a defining moment. You must know what I mean.’

  ‘I do, and in spite of what I have said, I do like this place. I love the space and freedom,’ said Stefan.

  ‘And the fish!’ cried Shirley as her fishing rod suddenly bent and she concentrated on reeling in a good-sized yellowbelly.

  ‘Good girl! Now we have something for our dinner!’

  ‘I was hoping to catch one of those big old elusive cods. But this will do nicely,’ said Shirley.

  Late in the afternoon, they lit a campfire and Shirley cooked the fish while Stefan tied a tarpaulin between the side of the truck and two poles, to act as a shelter over their sleeping bags. Both found that they liked sleeping outdoors, and it amused Shirley to think that although they lived in a shack, they preferred to be under the stars.

  The mine was a fifteen-minute drive from their house. Shirley enjoyed the familiarity that swept over her the minute she climbed down the shaft to the cool quiet chamber where Stefan was digging. The huge underground area was now safely supported by wooden props, and Stefan had started a new drive. Shirley enjoyed working with him, labouring as hard as any man.

  ‘You don’t have to work so hard,’ Stefan told her as he kissed her dusty face.

  ‘I know that. But I love being here with you. Shall we have a bet on who finds colour first?’

  ‘You Australians love to gamble! You’re on!’ he laughed.

  After a few weeks, Shirley felt she’d been with Stefan for years. They worked together from early morning into the evening, often losing track of time. They shared the cooking and household routine and rarely saw anyone else. They could work in different sections of the mine, because Stefan had rigged up an automatic self-tipping hoist. After the bucket was filled, the cable that pulled the bucket up the ladder onto the framework at the top of the mine could be tripped, so that the dirt was tipped to one side while the bucket fell back into the mine.

  ‘When I think of the number of times my father had to climb up and down the mine ladder to get rid of the dirt, he would have loved a contraption like this,’ said Shirley.

  And then Shirley won their bet.

  ‘Stef! Come here!’ As he hurriedly joined her, she pointed her small pick at the face. ‘See, colour! Beautiful colour.’

  ‘Clever, darling. Go slowly. It’s good blue-green,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope there’s more of it.’

 
After the initial show there was nothing till Stefan found a narrow seam of black opal above the sandstone layer. It took them an hour or more to gently dig out the small channel of opal.

  ‘I think we both win the bet,’ said Shirley. ‘I suppose it’s hard for you to tell how good it’s going to be till it’s cut.’

  ‘Let’s keep going,’ said Stefan.

  For the rest of the day, and lying together in bed that evening, with the rough opals carefully hidden, they talked and talked. They discussed cutting and selling and the what ifs.

  ‘If we find a big patch do we travel? Buy a house, buy shares? What do you want?’ Stefan asked Shirley.

  ‘Buy better equipment. A digger and a front-end loader,’ said Shirley briskly.

  Stefan laughed.

  They told no one about their find, but to celebrate they decided to go to the bowling club the following night for dinner. There they were stopped by Bosko, the self-styled leader of the Yugoslav community. Stefan had pointed him out to Shirley on an earlier occasion and told her how much he disliked the loud and aggressive Serb.

  ‘So this is why you have been keeping away from us,’ exclaimed Bosko, shaking Stefan’s hand while looking Shirley up and down.

  ‘I’m just working. I have to go slowly since my accident,’ replied Stefan.

  ‘But not so slow that you don’t have a woman working with you?’ Bosko chortled heartily.

  ‘This is my friend Shirley. She is a nursing sister.’

  ‘You now have your own private nurse to look after you! Lucky man, looks like she is doing a good job, eh?’

  Shirley held out her hand. ‘Good evening. I’m working with Stefan. We are partners.’

  Shirley’s cool demeanour and tone of voice momentarily silenced the big man. He shook her hand, then, dismissing her with a curt nod, immediately turned back to Stefan.

  ‘Why do you not come to the baths? We are all missing you. Come tomorrow. Just because you have a woman you shouldn’t turn away from your friends. Your compadres, eh?’

  Stefan felt Shirley stiffen with annoyance, so he said, non-committally, ‘I might do that. Dovidenja, goodbye.’

  As soon as they were out of earshot he said grimly to Shirley, ‘This is a man’s town, and he thinks he is king. Bosko’s always going on about how hard migrants work while Australians are lazy but in fact Bosko is – what is your expression – a sponger?’

  ‘You mean he lets other people do the hard work and he takes the credit and, I bet, the spoils?’

  ‘There are a lot of rumours, but no one says anything openly. Anyway, ignore him and don’t let him spoil our dinner.’

  ‘Are you really going to the bore baths tomorrow?’ asked Shirley.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I might. It’s a tradition and although I rarely go, I don’t want to alienate all my countrymen; some of them are good people. And I might find out news from the old country.’

  ‘If you think you should go, then of course, go.’

  Shirley had heard about the open-air artesian hot-water baths. Locals congregated there to ease their aches and pains, gossip and get spruced up as many working in the bush camps had little access to water.

  ‘I would invite you but when all the Yugo men are there together they tend to take over. The baths are a bit like the pub bar. Everyone boasts and talks too much. Probably that’s because people live and work in isolation when they’re mining,’ said Stefan. ‘There are more philosophers, poets and politicians out here than anywhere else I’ve been.’

  ‘What do you all talk about in the baths?’ asked Shirley.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s a chance for them all to speak their language and that way no one else understands what’s being said. I like it when someone reports recent news from home but they all just want to rehash the old days. They sing the old songs and talk about the old country. They have no curiosity about Australia or interest in its history or culture.’

  ‘It takes more than buildings and a succession of wars to make a country,’ said Shirley. ‘They might be surprised if they opened their eyes and their minds. Our history comes from the continent itself, the landscape, and the opportunities for people to carve their own paths, using their skills and knowledge. Surely working out here they’d see that,’ she said tartly.

  ‘Exactly. Australia has taken them in, given them opportunities that they can’t get back in Yugoslavia. Yet here they stick together as a group with their old prejudices and disputes, the same hates and grievances and, I am ashamed to say, I don’t trust some of them, either.’

  ‘But you don’t want to alienate them,’ said Shirley.

  ‘No. So I suffer their criticisms of Australia as being a cultural desert, while they elaborate on the greatness of Europe and forget that many of them came from peasant villages.’

  ‘It must be stultifying being lumbered with thousands of years of history,’ said Shirley. ‘Here, in Australia, you have the opportunity to be creative and original without the burden of the past. This country is like a clean slate and I’ll tell that to Bosko if he starts to criticise Australia to me.’

  Stefan smiled at her. ‘You are clever, and I love you, but please, never argue with that man. He’s not only arrogant, he’s dangerous. Now let’s forget about him and go and order dinner.’

  Shirley sighed. ‘Opals brought us together, and . . . well, that’s the end of the story.’ Her expression hardened, her mellow look was gone in a flash.

  Kerrie flipped a page and began sketching the change in Shirley’s face. ‘That’s the end of the story? Surely not. You and Stefan were in love, working together in Lightning Ridge. What happened?’

  Shirley didn’t answer for a moment and turned away, staring at the wall where a map of Opal Lake hung.

  ‘I wish I knew. I really wish I knew.’

  8

  SHIRLEY AND STEFAN SAT beside their shaft in the sunshine, bent over the bucketful of ‘possibles’ they’d washed in their puddler, which was an old cement mixer. Filled with water, it tumbled the dirt from the stones so that any colour in them was more noticeable. While a lot of the stones were just potch, worthless colour with no gem-quality opal, Shirley still found it fascinating to turn each one over and examine it closely.

  The two of them were so deeply involved in what they were doing, the sun warm on their backs, birdsong in the distance, that they didn’t hear Bosko coming across a mullock heap until he greeted them. Shirley dropped a cloth over the top of the bucket to cover the roughs. Even after five years she still didn’t like the loud Yugoslav and remained suspicious of him.

  ‘Where have you sprung from?’ she asked.

  ‘Just doing the rounds. Greetings, Stefan.’

  ‘Hello, Bosko. How’re things?’ Stefan stood up and stretched, reaching for a cigarette pack in his pocket.

  ‘Depends on what you mean,’ he answered. ‘Here or there.’ He turned away from Shirley and said briskly, ‘I want to talk to you, Stefan.’

  Shirley shrugged. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘There’s something I want to discuss just with you, Stefan,’ said the big Serbian.

  Shirley watched them stroll a short distance away and light up their cigarettes. Although Stefan’s back was to her, she could tell that Stefan wasn’t pleased with what he was being told. Several times he shook his head and folded his arms across his chest as if to ward off Bosko’s flow of words.

  After a while the two men turned and retraced their steps, but they were speaking Yugoslav so Shirley did not know what they were saying. Finally, Bosko slapped Stefan on the back.

  ‘So, I will see you at the bowling club or the baths, yes? We must stick together out here.’ He glanced at Shirley but didn’t bother to say goodbye. Giving Stefan a meaningful look, he walked away.

  Shirley watched him weave between the mullock heaps to his parked car. ‘What was all that about, Stefan? What’s he after?’

  ‘It’s all to do with the old country. I’m not sure how much to be
lieve. He’s such a big talker.’

  ‘You don’t look very happy. Is it bad news?’

  ‘Back home? There’s agitation in Yugoslavia among many of the Croats, Serbs and Macedonians, so Yugoslav Intelligence is getting more ruthless. Bosko tells me that there is a big push by many people opposed to Tito’s dictatorship, both in and out of Yugoslavia.’

  ‘Support? You mean Yugoslavs here in Australia are supposed to help fight against Tito?’

  Stefan nodded and sat back down. ‘That’s the idea. People like Bosko think that Yugoslavian loyalty should always be to the old country, whether we live there or not.’

  Shirley looked hard at Stefan. ‘I gather you don’t feel quite like that. I mean, what does he expect? Does he want you to rally the troops and go back to Yugoslavia and help?’

  ‘Bosko says that he is part of a group prepared to fight in Yugoslavia. He expects the rest of us here to help them by giving money or opals.’

  ‘You’re kidding. Bosko is certainly taking a lot upon himself, and even if people give him their hard-earned cash how do these fighters use it?’

  ‘Bosko likes to be important. He says that he is sending money back to Yugoslavia to the right people, but I suspect he takes a fee for doing so.’

  ‘Is that how he gets his money?’ asked Shirley. ‘He said he mines for opal, but I’ve never seen him work. He always just appears to be part of a group.’

  ‘According to him, he owns some big claims and he says he has people working for him, but I don’t think that’s true. He makes demands and I think people are afraid of him and they pay up.’

  ‘That’s called being a standover merchant,’ said Shirley. ‘He’s a bully. Don’t you give him a penny and not a single stone we’ve worked hard to mine. There must be other ways to send help back to Yugoslavia, if you want to.’

  ‘Shirley, it’s very complicated. Yugoslavia is made up of so many different nationalities, and many want to go their own way. Maybe, if I knew for sure that the money Bosko collects could be effective, I might help a little, but I don’t trust Bosko. Whenever any of the Slavs hit opal, Bosko is always there to put pressure on them to share their finds, but there is really no way of knowing who’s doing the sharing.’