by Annie Seaton
John’s profile was in shadow as the late morning sun streamed through the window but Connor saw the tension leave his shoulders as he stood and reached over to shake the CEO’s hand.
‘When do you want me to start?’
Chapter 2
Early October
Matsu Diamond Mine—East Kimberley, Western Australia
Apart from soft music from the radio in the kitchen as the staff prepped for the day, the only sound interrupting Drusilla Porter’s solitary breakfast was the occasional clang of a mop in a bucket as the cleaner washed the hall leading to the mess room.
‘All by yourself, Dru?
Dru jumped as the chair beside her slid across the floor with a high-pitched squeak. As she looked up she bit back the groan that rose to her lips. ‘Hi Jennifer.’ Dru reached back and rubbed her neck to ease the tight muscles. After she finished her coffee and checked her emails she planned on heading to her room to crash for a long sleep. Talking to Jennifer—an administrative assistant in the security section—was the last thing she felt like doing.
After a twelve hour night shift out in the heat on the perimeter of the diamond mine, the cool and the solitude of the staff mess had eased her inner tension but her muscles were still taut. She had come straight to the mess after she’d signed off, hoping to avoid the rush of the night workers from the processing and crushing plants after the changeover of shift and get back to her room more quickly. The day shift staff had already been through for their breakfast.
Like the rest of the mine, the staff mess was run like clockwork, although the workboots of fifty day staff had already wreaked havoc on the shiny floor tiles. A fine layer of East Kimberley red dust covered most things at the mine, both inside and out.
‘Early breakfast for you, Jennifer?’ Dru gestured to the empty chair across from her; one thing their mother had instilled in her three daughters was good manners. Tiredness tugged at her muscles and she yawned, but ten minutes chatting was a small concession to make; maintaining a pleasant relationship with a nosy staff member didn’t take much. She knew Jennifer would keep the conversation—and the site gossip—going while Dru drank her coffee and listened. The occasional nod and sympathetic murmur would keep the young woman happy and then Dru could make her excuses and get away.
‘I’m on early start today. Night shift for you, was it?’ Jennifer’s smile was sympathetic as she took in Dru’s face. She’d had a quick splash in the washroom outside the mess but hadn’t worried about the streaks of red dust where she’d wiped away the perspiration through the night. A long hot shower would clean that up when she got back to her room.
Dru nodded and sipped the steaming hot coffee as she looked over Jennifer’s shoulder through the huge glass window to the low foothills of the Matsu Range. Even though it was only seven-thirty, the blue shimmering heat haze formed a distinct line at the base of the range. Scrubby trees and hundreds of termite mounds, small and large, dotted the flat plain that stretched between the mine and the hills. Nothing moved in the morning air; the nocturnal creatures had retreated for the day, and the kangaroos were hidden away, lying in the meagre patches of shade provided by the occasional boab tree. Here and there, patches of yellow grass soothed the eye as they broke the monotony of the red dust.
‘How come you’re not flying out today? Everyone’s headed to the airport. Bus just left.’
Dru turned her attention back to Jennifer as the young woman pierced her egg and the bright yellow yolk ran over the plate.
‘Oh, gross. I’ll be so glad to get out of this place and back to civilisation.’ Jennifer turned her lips down in a pout.
This time Dru’s murmur was noncommittal. Jennifer always found something to criticise; the food here at the Matsu Mine was excellent. Dru had her pegged as a short stay staff member. It took a certain personality to make it on the fly-in fly-out jobs, so despite the rugged and isolated location, management made sure that workers had the best of everything. The perks and the excellent salary ensured that staff turnover was lower than other mining companies.
Although the salary was nowhere near what she’d been earning in Dubai. A cold shiver ran down Dru’s back as she thought of her previous workplace. Pushing the feeling away, she smoothed back the loose strands of hair and picked up her spoon, using it to gesture to her bowl of muesli. ‘Muesli’s good if the eggs don’t suit.’
‘Not for me. Chook food, my dear old grandpa used to call it.’ Jennifer stirred the runny egg with the tines of her fork and looked at Dru. ‘So you didn’t say why you’re not on the morning flight out.’
‘I’ve got an extra seven days on this work block.’
Dru gave up on any chance of a peaceful breakfast as Jennifer settled in for a chat.
‘Me too. I only said yes because I’m going to Bali with my boyfriend for my next two weeks off. Apparently there’s a new work safety guy who needs to learn the system, and the overtime I get will pay for our flights.’ She let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘Always, work, work and more work here.’
‘Yep.’ Dru uttered the monosyllable and tried to look interested.
Jennifer went on. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll last here. I might go back to Perth soon. There’s plenty of work there. You’ve been here a while now, haven’t you? How long do you think you’ll stay? Rooms in the dongas are tiny, aren’t they?’ She fired off a volley of questions and Dru concentrated on slowly chewing her breakfast, and flashed her co-worker an apologetic smile. It wasn’t too difficult to talk to Jennifer but Dru knew she’d seize upon any information that could be embellished and passed on. Life was pretty tame on site most of the time, and the gossip machine loved to run with stories.
‘Never mind. I think we started the same month. About nine months ago.’
Dru nodded as Jennifer drew breath and waited for the next barrage of questions to avoid.
‘It’s so crazy that I have to fly to Perth and then go north again. I did think about getting to Darwin but it’s too hard.’
‘North?’ Dru frowned. She’d lost the thread of the conversation.
‘To get to Bali.’
‘Oh, of course.’ Dru gave another sympathetic nod. ‘Yes, it’s a long drive.’
Jennifer put her knife and fork down and stared at Dru. ‘What about you? Where do you go for your time off?’
‘Just home.’ Dru’s phone pinged with an incoming message and she glanced down at it. ‘Excuse me for a second.’ She picked the phone up from the table and glanced at the screen.
Probably Emma or Ellie trying to do the family thing and set up one of their lovey-dovey family chats. God, she hated it, but no matter how much distance she tried to keep, her sisters insisted on keeping her in the family fold.
Sweet. It was Megan, not her sisters. But Dru’s relief was short-lived when she scanned the text.
You have to come to our wedding. NO EXCUSES. Read this and think about it. SERIOUSLY. PLEEEEAASE. xxxxxxxx
The rest of the message filled the screen. She turned the screen off and put her phone back on the table; she’d save it for when she was back in her room.
‘So where’s home for you?’ Jennifer persisted as Dru picked up her coffee mug.
‘Darwin.’
‘Darwin? So that’s why you don’t ever get the Virgin flight back to Perth. I wondered why I hadn’t ever seen you on the plane.’ There was a brief pause in Jennifer’s inquisitive chatter as she screwed her face up in a frown. ‘So how do you get to Darwin?’
‘I drive to Kununurra and fly from there.’
‘Wow, you’re brave.’ Admiration filled the young woman’s expression. ‘You drive out over that?’ She gestured to the wide expanse of desert that surrounded the mine. Red dust, scrubby trees and heat haze as far as you could see in every direction.
Dru nodded and put her spoon down, forced a false yawn and covered her mouth with one hand. But she wasn’t quick enough, and Jennifer moved closer and lowered her voice. There was nobody else in the room with
them apart from the kitchen hand singing along with the radio.
Here we go. She wasn’t going to get away without the latest gossip. Dru resisted rolling her eyes.
‘Did you hear? There’s another two new staff coming in on the flight today as well as the new work safety guy.’ Jennifer looked around before she spoke. ‘Big changes are about to happen here.’
Dru raised her eyebrows. ‘Like what?’
‘Big changes.’ Jennifer sat back and folded her arms. ‘Apparently they’re talking about drilling a second underground mine.’
Dru sat up straight and stared at Jennifer who was now smiling, obviously pleased that she had her attention. As much as she hated gossip, she was interested in the mine and its future. Her future.
The open pit mine had closed down three years ago and the diamonds were now extracted by underground mining. Dru was working on the rehabilitation of the land to the south of the open pit. This job had been tailor-made for her and it ticked all of her boxes.
After two years living and working in Dubai, the isolated outback of Western Australia’s East Kimberley was heaven.
And it was a place to hide out for a while until she felt safe again.
‘Another underground mine. That’s good news.’ This time the interest in her voice was genuine. Her main worry had been that the mine would wind up before she was ready to move on. But how much factual information Jennifer was privy to was a matter for debate. Nothing had been mentioned at the staff engineers’ weekly meeting last week, so any changes that were in the wind were either confidential—or purely gossip.
‘Apparently the block cave thingy has been so good, another one is in the wind. I was doing some data entry the other day and I overheard the boss talking about it in his office.’ Jennifer was whispering, although there was no one else in the dining area. ‘So don’t tell anyone, it’s all hush hush.’
A block cave thingy, for God’s sake. This time Dru couldn’t help her eye roll. ‘I won’t say anything but if that’s true, it could mean a lot to our jobs here.’
‘How come?’ Jennifer stared at her.
‘Block caving is the underground version of open pit mining. Undermining an ore body, allowing it to progressively collapse under its own weight.’ Dru nodded slowly. ‘I was reading an article about that just the other day. The new technology means we can do real-time monitoring of sensors in the block cave. It really would make a second mine feasible.’
Jennifer’s eyes widened. ‘Wow, how do you know all about that?’
‘I’m an engineer.’ Dru tempered her short response with a laugh.
‘An engineer? I thought you just looked after the gardens and stuff.’
‘No, I’m an environmental engineer.’
‘What’s that?’ Jennifer screwed up her nose and frowned.
‘Rehabilitation. I look after the mine site. In a nutshell I make sure that everything we do will eventually be put back the way it was before we mined.’
‘And you had to go to uni to do that?’ Jennifer’s voice was loud and the kitchen hand looked up with a grin. ‘It must be deadly boring. Is that all you do out there?’
‘I also liaise with the local Indigenous groups to make sure the mining doesn’t impact on their culture.’
Jennifer’s eyes were wide. ‘Out there? What culture? None of them even live near here.’ Once again a dismissive hand waved at the arid landscape.
Dru suppressed her irritation. ‘It is traditionally owned land and there are settlements close by. Some of our Indigenous workers live out there and drive in each day—or night—for their shifts.’
A few days ago she had received a personal call from John Robinson, the CEO of the mine, asking her about the mood at the weekly meetings she held with the local Aboriginal community. She’d been surprised at the time, but maybe it was because of a proposed expansion. The mood at the meetings hadn’t been good and she’d passed that onto John. But a new underground mine would make a lot of the permanent staff happy. She focused her attention back to Jennifer.
‘And the cultural stuff is really interesting too. One of the cultural considerations impacts on this site very much.’
‘Oh?’ There wasn’t a lot of interest in Jennifer’s tone as she wiped the egg from her plate with a crust of toast.
‘Did you know we’re not allowed to take diamonds from within a two metre circumference of the boab trees on site, even with the mining lease?’
‘No. Why not?’
‘The tree is important to the Aborigines of this region. They call it larrkardiy, and they believe it has a strong spiritual presence.’
‘God, you do know a lot, don’t you. And here I was wondering why you gardened on the night shift. You can’t see much out there at night!’
‘You can, you know. I was lying on the dirt watching termite mounds last night,’ she said drily. ‘Even though it was stinking hot, it was quite beautiful out there in the moonlight.’
‘Even hot out there at night?’
‘It averages thirty-eight to forty-two in the day at this time of the year. If you leave a metal tool in the sun for more than a minute or so, it gets burning hot.’ Dru held her right hand up to show Jennifer the blister that was healing on her palm. ‘That’s why we work mainly night shift through the spring and summer.’
Jennifer pulled a face. ‘I forget when I’m in this air con all the time how hot it gets in the desert. I don’t know how you do it. It’s such an ugly mess out there. How can the land possibly be put back the way it was? It’s been dug up for years.’
Dru forgot how tired she was as she gave Jennifer a potted version of her role on site. Her team’s brief was the restitution of both flora and fauna and landscape features that preserved the value of the site for the Aboriginal community. Dru loved her job at the mine. Rebuilding an ecosystem that blended with the undisturbed landscape was challenging, and immersing herself in her work had helped put the fiasco in Dubai behind her. Even sitting watching termite mounds in the middle of the night was preferable to being back there.
And a hell of a lot safer.
‘I heard something about you finding a big diamond on the ground your first week here.’ The young woman narrowed her eyes as she interrupted. ‘Or was that just goss?’
‘No, it really happened. Rocky Cardella was showing me the boundary line of the mine and I spotted a big one on the ground lying near a boab tree. It was a pretty exciting start to my job.’ Dru smiled as Jennifer’s expression filled with interest. ‘Rocky took it into the plant.’
‘That’s way cool. Rocky’s an Aboriginal, isn’t he?’ Jennifer asked curiously. ‘Is that why he was allowed to pick it up?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ Dru pushed her chair back. ‘It wasn’t a fine quality gem . . . the clarity and colour were lacking. It was just a cognac but you’re right, it was pretty cool. Anyway, time I got some sleep.’ Dru forced a smile to her face as she stood, and then looked down at Jennifer. ‘Enjoy your trip to Bali. See you around.’
She could talk environmental rehabilitation for as long as Jennifer could gossip, but if the glazed look in the young woman’s eyes was anything to go by, she’d been more interested in diamonds than the description of restoring the land. Besides, this morning’s text message from Megan about the wedding was forefront in her mind, and her stomach was churning.
She stepped outside the air-conditioned staff mess and paused on the verandah that looked over the pool. Her gaze settled on the mountains in the distance and she drew a deep breath.
Each time she drove from Kununurra towards the mine after her rostered two weeks off, she always arrived with the same feeling: safe and secure away from the frantic pace of civilisation. Not that you could call Darwin frantic after Dubai, but it was still full of wide, open spaces and even in her luxury apartment on the harbour she felt exposed. But once she entered the vast red bowl of the Kimberley and drew closer to the huge open-cut mine halfway between Lake Argyle and the beehive monoliths of P
urnululu National Park—known for a long time as the Bungle Bungles—the sensation that she had cut ties with the rest of the world filled her with a satisfying sense of being invisible and untouchable.
Even though the arid wind from the mountains rendered the site a dust bowl in the dry season, and the dumping of the torrential rain turned it into a hot humid pool in the wet, Dru had appreciated every minute of her nine months at the mine. Her small staff apartment was one in a long row of dongas on the side of the hill above the mess building. It was tiny but she still preferred being here than in her three bedroom, two bathroom apartment overlooking the beach and recreation lagoon at Wharf One on Darwin Harbour. The dongas at Matsu were small box-like rooms with a king-single bed, a desk and a small en-suite bathroom. A coffee table and a television were the closest things to luxury items.
Dru had spent the past months out on the mine site or in her room and if she felt like conversation—which was rare—she’d wander down the hill to the staff mess. With two weeks on site and then two weeks in Darwin, the time had passed quickly. Last time she’d spoken to her sisters, Ellie had made some smart remark about her being antisocial and Dru had shrugged it off. So what if she preferred her own company? So what if she didn’t particularly like spending time with her family? That was her choice and that’s the way it was.
To her mother’s incessant hints that there was plenty of work for a environmental engineer in Queensland mines closer to the family—not that there was much left of that after Dad died and the sisters had scattered to the winds—she would always reply that the excitement of working in a diamond mine was unbeatable. Maybe she was a loner, but Dru was much happier away from Ellie’s intense looks and Emma’s need to control everyone; family wasn’t necessary to her. She was an adult and forging her own independent life. She was in control now.