by Tony McKenna
‘You know a lot about opal mining then, Ishmo?’ Harry asked.
Shrugging his shoulders, an expression he had perfected to aid his limited command of the language, he said, ‘No, no. Little bit, yes.’ The boys knew this meant practically all there was to know.
‘How did you learn, Ishmo?’
‘Come Coober Pedy many trip. I watch, I listen.’
‘Have you ever found opal then?’ Jack asked.
‘Small chip, off ground.’ He acted a charade, walking around eyes searching the sand then stooping to pick up an imaginary stone and examining it. ‘Ahhh good, yes.’ His theatrics almost had the boys believing he had actually found a stone there in the dunes.
‘So you’ve never been mining, you know, digging for opal?’ Jack was suddenly embarrassed when he found himself imitating digging with a shovel.
‘No, no, no mine. Well yes, yes, small mine.’ He looked confused unable to explain clearly then became agitated. Ishmo could understand English but command of the spoken word had eluded him all his life frustrating him incredibly. It was at this point that people usually thought he was an imbecile and walked away so he was surprised when Jack continued patiently.
‘Go on, Ishmo, you haven’t done any digging for opal you say.’
‘Yes, no digging.’
‘What about the small mine you mentioned? Harry asked.
‘Small mine? No, no digging.’ He shook his head in frustration breaking out in his native tongue.
‘Well, Ishmo, you’ve done better than us,’ Jack said. ‘You can understand and speak our language but we can’t speak or understand yours at all.’
Overwhelmed by the wisdom of this young Australian boy and his acceptance of Ishmo’s speech difficulties without ridicule quite humbled the Afghan. ‘We stop now. Tomorrow I talk better.’
The following night sitting around the small fire with mugs of tea Ishmo put the pannikin down on the sand and went to his bedroll returning with a worn chamois leather pouch secured with a thong. Untying the knot he withdrew some dog-eared pieces of paper and leafed through them. Squinting in the dull flickering firelight he selected one page that he handed to Jack, nodding for him to read it.
Jack examined the document for a minute without understanding but then it dawned on him what it was. ‘This is a claim on a mine at Coober Pedy,’ he said, looking up at the Afghan.
‘Yes, yes!’ He bobbed his head smiling. ‘Yes, small mine, no digging.’
‘You have a claim on a small mine?’ Jack spoke slowly as he thought it through. ‘But you haven’t mined it yet. Is that what you mean, Ishmo?’
‘Yes, no mining yet.’
Communicating was difficult so there were a number of times when the boys misunderstood Ishmo’s explanations and collapsed in fits of laughter but Ishmo didn’t get upset at these times and instead he laughed with them . You have not laughed like this in many years, Ishmael, he said to himself. This is good.
Before they turned in for the night they had established that, some years ago, Ishmo had done some prospecting after learning all he could about the opal fields over many trips to the area. Fossicking around he had found chips and ‘floaters’, faded surface opal that indicated stones were present. He had filed a claim but never mined it for many reasons, least of which was the racist attitude he knew he would encounter. The claim was still legally his though and he had the document to prove it.
They talked every night about opal mining, Ishmo animated and interspersing his explanations with many charades and shrugging of shoulders.
On the last night before reaching Coober Pedy they sat cross-legged around the fire, a million stars suspended in the heavens above them, listening to the crackle and hiss of the fire and feeling the cold desert wind on their backs. There was little conversation, each one of them reliving the trip and the boys wondering what the new day would bring.
Jack stretched and yawned and got to his feet but Ishmo held up a hand to indicate that he should sit again. Jack squatted between Harry and Reynold and the three of them looked intently at Ishmo waiting for him to speak.
‘Jack. Harry.’ He nodded to them as he spoke. ‘I think much. Mine no good you no dig. You dig yes?’
‘I don’t quite understand, Ishmo, we want to dig, yes.’ Jack was unsure of what the old Afghan was trying to say.
‘No, no! You dig little mine.’ Ishmo pulled the mining lease from the folds of his shirt. ‘You, Jack, you, Harry, you dig Ishmael mine.’ He tapped the mining lease with a grimy finger.
The significance of Ishmo’s statement rocked Jack. ‘We can’t take over your mine, Ishmo, it belongs to you?’
‘Yes, yes, me. But you dig and we share, yes? Ishmael not dig, too old now.’
‘How would you know if we found any opal? When would we see you?’
‘Yeah. How would we pay you your share?’ Harry asked.
‘Dig first, share later. Ishmael much happy you dig.’ He looked to Reynold who sat silently staring at the fire. ‘Your friend dig too. He work with you, you pay?’
‘Yes, Ishmo, Reynold’s our mate and he’ll certainly get some pay if we find opal.’
‘Not if, you find opal,’ He stated with confidence. ‘Then it … how you say? Deal, yes?’
‘A deal.’ Jack and Harry said in unison and looked at Reynold who nodded enthusiastically, a huge grin on his face.
Having left the civilisation of comfortable Perth living to travel through some of the remotest country on earth Jack and Harry had experienced first-hand the barrenness that the Australian outback can present. Its wide gibber stone flats, the endless shifting red sands, vast salt claypans devoid of vegetation and deserts where the shimmering horizon was indistinguishable from the sky were beautiful yet daunting, but nothing prepared them for the desolation of Coober Pedy.
It wasn’t that the natural geography of the place was so foreign to them as they had crossed similar country before. Here, however, in the centre of the treeless Gibson Desert, with its endless undulating plains broken now and then by twisted dry creek beds lined with dead, spindly mulga, the terrain looked like it had been attacked by swarms of giant ants.
The hot wind unceasingly clogged the air with dust, whipped from the blowers and hundreds of white mullock heaps where miners had sweated and cursed to sink their shafts as they burrowed drives into the stony earth in search of the precious gemstones. As they approached the town along a rutted red ribbon of track flanked by flat-topped sandstone ridges, they passed many diggings where roughly built sheds and corrugated-iron shelters sat forlornly in the intense heat beside a warren of gaping shafts.
Whatever Coober Pedy was imagined to be in the boys’ minds over the past weeks as they progressed towards their magical dream, this was not it! This looked more like some devilish nightmare that you wake from’ shaking and sweating.
Dear Father,
Got to Coober Pedy yesterday. Water is scarce and the dust blows all the time from the wind. We got here with a camel team. Ishmo, the Afghan camel driver has a claim he said we could mine on. We saw it this morning and it’s just a piece of dirt with a tin shed on it so we have to start from scratch by digging a shaft.
Ishmo knows a bloke here who has a mine and we met him too. He’s going to give us a few tips to get started. It will mean a lot of hard work but Reynold is with us so the three of us will dig. Uncle Warri got real crook and we had to leave him at Anna Creek station.
It’s really exciting here with mines everywhere. There are a lot of people but they seem a bit strange. There are shops and everything so we will buy some tools and stuff. We got paid by Mr Cooper, the drover, so have a bit of money to go on with till we find opal.
We had a beaut Christmas even though we missed our families. I got a new rifle as a present and Harry was given a cattle dog pup called Anna. We also got the three horses we were given along the way.
Will write again soon. Say hello to Paddy when you see him. Thanks for sending our letters on.
The priest read the letter for a third time. A rifle for goodness sake! What sort of person gives a kid a rifle for Christmas? He shook his head in disbelief. Taking the folder from his desk drawer he placed the note inside, reading again the newspaper clipping. One day they must see this, he thought to himself then put the folder back. Standing up from his desk he left the office, the two envelopes addressed to the boys’ parents in his pocket, and walked to the shed to get his car started for the drive to the post office.
‘We’ve got them this time Alice!’ Jack tapped the letter on the table with his index finger.
‘What do you mean, dear?’ Alice wiped her eyes after reading the letter. She still burst into tears every time she saw Jack’s simple handwriting but had begun to accept the fact that her son was all right or surviving at least. This acceptance didn’t alleviate the pain of not seeing or talking with him face to face. There was an ache in her heart she knew would not go until she could hold her little boy in her arms once more.
‘This bit here where he says they are on the way to making their fortune.’ Jack picked up the letter and read. ‘ We bought some mining gear and are working a claim that belongs to a mate of ours.’ He held the page up flicking it with the back of his hand. ‘By God Alice, I’ll find them this time.’
Alice, in her haste to devour every word of the letter, had missed what Jack had picked up. The letter received that morning was much the same as the others, giving no clue to their whereabouts only telling them not to worry and that they were both well, but there seemed to be a buoyancy in this one that had not been evident in the others. There was no mention of Billy Munse or the bike and, seemed more positive, a confidence apparent in the writing.
‘The Goldfields cover a very big area, Jack; how can you narrow it down?’
‘ They’re working their own mine somewhere on the fields so that eliminates checking the big operations out. That still leaves a lot of areas to cover, Alice, I know, but the miners are a close knit group so someone is sure to know of two young kids working a claim.’
Neither of them was to know that the claim their son was referring to was many hundreds of miles from Kalgoorlie in the heart of the desolate South Australian desert.
Chapter Twenty Six
The parcel of land where Ishmo had pegged and registered his claim was roughly nine miles west of the town in an area that was known as either Larkin’s Folly or the Nine-Mile. Ishmo had pegged a claim there about four years previously after good quality opal was found in the region, just past Geraghty Hill, but had never worked it. He only had one friend in the area, a swarthy, solidly built Italian man with broad shoulders and bulging biceps developed from hours on the end of a pick and winding buckets of rock and clay from the bowels of the earth with a hand windlass.
His name was Bruno and the boys wondered how these two unlikely characters, one a tall wiry bearded Afghan, the other a short thickset Italian would ever have become friends. They learned that one day when Ishmo had been prospecting the areas around Coober Pedy he came across Bruno in the middle of a rough stony track cursing loudly and kicking a lopsided, heavily loaded wheelbarrow stacked with mining equipment and supplies. The axle had snapped on the barrow and Bruno was furious with it, his only means of transport now useless.
Ishmo, to the Italian’s surprise, had stopped to offer assistance. Suspicious at first Bruno waved the Afghan away, stubbornly refusing help but common sense eventually prevailed and the load was transferred to Ishmo’s camel and carted to where Bruno had his small mine. In return for this favour Bruno had helped Ishmo register his claim with the Department Of Mines.
Each time Ishmo transported a camel train of goods from the railhead at Marree to Coober Pedy, he would visit Bruno. How they communicated was a mystery to the boys as Bruno’s English was as broken as Ishmo’s was but somehow they managed it. The day Ishmo took the boys to meet Bruno the two of them moved off some distance, leaving the three boys by the open shaft beside the mullock heap, and with much waving of arms, charades and loud voices they struck a deal. The boys would help Bruno work his mine three days a week in return for Bruno teaching them the basics of opal mining.
The boys decided that it was important that one of them stay at the Eight Mile to look after the gear, make the shed more secure and start digging the shaft. Bruno also said his underground drives were low with limited room to work so Reynold readily volunteered to stay at the nine-mile claim, happy to be alone for three days of each week and not have to go underground, the prospect of which unnerved him.
‘You laik rabbit diggin’ burrow, eh? Rennol ’e work on top. No laik goin’ inta ground.’
‘What about diggin’ our shaft, Reynold?’ Harry asked.
‘Rennol dig ’im up to ’ere?’ He held a hand up to the top of his head. ‘Then Rennol ’e wind handle for you bloke,’ he said, meaning the windlass.
‘Righto, Reynold.’
Ishmo stayed for one night with them beside the tin shed that was to become their home until something more suitable could be established.
It was very basic, constructed of rusty corrugated iron nailed over an assortment of timbers scrounged from dumps. It had a dirt floor and one window that was just a square of tin that swung outward, propped open with a stick. The door was made from discarded packing crates but was solid enough and secured with a heavy padlocked chain. There were numerous rips and old nail holes in the iron but that was of no concern as rainfall was minimal, but it did let the white powdery dust in.
The only item that could be described as ‘furniture’ was a rickety table roughly nailed together from planks, also scavenged from old abandoned diggings. It was unsteady, leaned to one side and had wide gaps between the planks but to the boys it was a luxury. Apart from the Christmas dinner at Anna Creek station, there had been no table on the drove and everyone ate their meals from tin plates resting on their knees. The only other items in the shed were a shovel, two picks, a sieve and an old, wooden-wheeled barrow, equipment that Ishmo had collected over the years for his mining venture.
The boys decided after Ishmo left, saying he would be back ‘Sometime, yes,’ to use the shed for storage only, opting to set up camp outside and sleep as they had done on the drove, under the stars. They felt a sense of permanency, though, able to unpack their blueys and hang spare clothes on nails driven into the shed frame. They also hung the swags inside each day, as the area was inhabited by poisonous scorpions and spiders that would slip into bedrolls, boots or clothes and were known to inflict painful, possibly life-threatening, stings on the unwary. There were also deadly snakes that hunted in the cool of the night.
The first day they went to Bruno’s claim to begin their opal education they were excited yet apprehensive, unnerved by the prospect of going underground and not knowing what to expect. They had heard of cave-ins where unstable earth had collapsed, entombing miners beneath tons of rock and rubble, of snakes lurking in dark crevices poised to strike an unsuspecting hand and of stale, suffocating air.
Bruno was waiting for them, welcoming them with a broad smile and leading them to the shaft that was framed by a flat, timber headwork with a windlass that had a rope attached that descended into the blackness.
‘I go downa first. When I calla you name, you come.’ Bruno expertly swung his thick legs over the edge of the shaft onto the rope ladder and disappeared into the gloom.
Neither boy spoke as they waited for Bruno’s call and when they heard his faint muffled voice Harry nodded and Jack stepped up to the shaft. Imitating Bruno he swung over the edge, his feet finding the rope rungs, and he began to shakily descend the ladder, swaying from side to side. The shaft was quite narrow and he didn’t look down as he climbed, darkness rising to meet him. He glanced upwards and could see Harry’s head diminishing in size as, holding his breath, he lowered himself down the ladder.
When his feet finally touched ground he realised he had had his eyes shut for the last few feet and, when he opened them, to his surpris
e he was standing in what was a large, circular shaped, high roofed cavern. There was a lit lantern hanging from a divot driven into the wall and as his eyes adjusted to the gloom he could make out four cave-like tunnels or ‘drives’ as they were called. They ran off like wheel spokes from the central hub of the bowl-shaped dugout at the bottom of the shaft.
Harry came next in much the same awkward swaying manner that Jack had. He was breathing fast and his eyes had a fearful look when he reached the bottom but he soon recovered, fascinated by the cavern and the beckoning dark mouths of the drives.
Bruno took two candles from a shelf carved into the wall and, lighting them from the lantern, he handed one each to the boys. Taking two small picks he beckoned them to follow as he stooped and entered one of the drives. It was some twenty feet long and came to an abrupt end, a wall of clay facing them.
Bruno reached up and tapped the roof with his pick, ‘Good solida roof,’ he said, ‘sandastone.’ He explained that opal-bearing dirt was usually beneath the layer of sandstone and that when they dug their own shaft at their claim and broke through the layer they should then start a drive off from the base of the shaft.
They spent the day digging and wheeling loads of rubble and clay in a barrow to a pile at the shaft base then shovelling it into the windlass bucket. They took it in turns to climb up the ladder and wind the heavy handle to haul the bucket from the depths. Bruno told them to always stand clear when the bucket was going up or down; a snapped rope he said could send the bucket hurtling to the bottom and was very dangerous.
They found no opal that day and were exhausted by the intense and constant physical labour when they finally ceased work late in the day. There was an added bonus though to being in the drive because the aboveground temperature was many degrees hotter than below the surface. This was why most of the permanent dwellings in Coober Pedy were underground, protected from the heat by the natural insulation of tons of earth.