Hammond Innes - Golden Soak

Her father came in then with a bottle of wine, holding it carefully. ‘I don’t know whether it’s still drinkable,’ he said. ‘It’s been here a long time now — one of the few bottles left after the old man died. It’s from the Barossa Valley in South Australia.’ It was a red wine and I looked at the label as he poured it — St Emilion 1942. ‘A lot of our wines have been given French names — silly, when they’re quite different.’

Janet had cooked the meal herself, steaks with salad and chips. ‘Quite like old times,’ her father said. He was smiling, his face younger and less careworn in the candlelight. ‘Well, here’s to you and the success of your visit to Australia.’ He raised his glass and I saw it was less than half full.

Janet nodded and she too raised her glass. ‘I have a feeling …’ She hesitated, smiling at me over the wine — ‘I’ve a feeling now you’re here things will change. Here’s luck — to us all.’ And she drank, quickly.

A shadow moved in the patio entrance behind her and in the darkness outside I saw Tom standing, squat and black. Ed Garrety had seen him, too, and he rose and went outside. He stood talking there for a moment, then he came back and sat down again, his face sombre as he started in on his steak.

‘What is it?’ Janet asked. ‘Couldn’t they shift that bunch out of the gully?’

‘They shifted them all right. Got them through the Gap.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘A vehicle of some sort. Down by the old shearing shed. They saw the lights when they were on the Robinson slope.’

‘Heading for the mine?’

He nodded. ‘That Toyota I wouldn’t wonder.’ The twitch was back at the side of his mouth. ‘I’ll go down there after dinner and rout them out. Those damned prospectors think they own the country.’ And he added, his face darkened with anger, his voice trembling. ‘That’s the curse of this mineral boom. Having a mine that’s marked on every map — you might just as well put a notice up in the highway saying ‘Prospectors Welcome’. They don’t realize it isn’t a lease. We own Golden Soak and the flat land to the east of it, the mineral rights as well. That was one thing my father did get out of the government.’

We ate in silence after that, the mood changed, all the pleasure gone out of the meal. It made me realize how isolated they were, how vulnerable to intruders.

Later, when we had finished and were sitting over our coffee, Ed Garrety began to talk about the old days when he was a boy and there were over a dozen men working at the mine and some twenty blacks with their families living around the homestead, anything up to a hundred thousand sheep roaming the station. I think he was just talking to put the thought of intruders out of his mind, and he went on to describe what it had been like when he took over, after he had come back from Java at the end of the war. That was when I learned about his son. It was his room I was occupying and he had been killed in Vietnam. ‘Perhaps it’s as well,’ he murmured. ‘Henry loved this place and I wouldn’t have wanted him to see it as it is now.’

‘D’you think I like it?’ Janet snapped.

‘No. No, of course I don’t. But it’s different for a girl.’

I saw two spots of colour flare in her cheeks and I said quickly, ‘He was in the Australian forces then?’

‘That’s right. Infantry. He was a real fighting boy. At eighteen this place wasn’t big enough to hold him. He wanted to see the world, wanted action. Then we got ourselves involved in Vietnam. He was one of the first casualties.’ He drained his glass, but didn’t refill it, only ours. And then he got to his feet without a word and went through into the passage. He came out a moment later with a rifle in his hand. ‘Be back in time to see the New Year in with you,’ he said to his daughter. And then to me, ‘We listen in to it on the wireless, y’know. Makes us feel we still belong to the world outside.’ He nodded. ‘Back inside of a couple of hours.’

‘Would you like me to come with you?’ I asked. But he shook his head. ‘They’ll go as soon as they know we own the mineral rights. The entrance to the mine is boarded up anyway. It’s unsafe, y’see.’ He went out then, calling to Yla, and a moment later we heard the Land-Rover drive off.

‘I’m glad you didn’t press him,’ Janet said, adding with an impish gleam, ‘I know you’d rather be driving down to the mine than sitting here with me.’

‘I’m sorry if my disappointment showed.’

‘Oh, don’t worry.’ She was grinning, a flash of white teeth. ‘I’m used to men who think mines are more important than women.’ And then, suddenly serious again. ‘Daddy’s quite hopelessly possessive about that bloody mine. Won’t let anybody go near it.’ She got up. ‘I’ll get you the Journal. Then at least you can read about it — how it all started.’ She came back a few minutes later with an old box file full of typed pages. She opened it and placed it on the table in front of me. ‘You’ll learn more from this than you would from Daddy. Sometimes I think he’s scared of Golden Soak.’

‘Because it’s unsafe?’

‘No, it’s more complicated than that — a love-hate feeling he has.’ She was turning the pages of typescript. ‘I can’t explain. I don’t really understand it myself. But when he was a young man, think how exciting it must have been for him. Going down there, working with the miners — it made a change from riding fences and working sheep in the heat and the dust. And the miners themselves, he always says they were a different breed. He got a great kick out of the fact that we had a mine on the station.’ Her fingers smoothed a page. ‘There you are. December 22nd, 1905, and a drought every bit as bad as we’ve got now. Start reading from there.’

‘But why should he hate the mine?’

‘I think you’ll understand when you read some of the later passages.’ Her hand was on my shoulder, her breath on my cheek, and I heard her sigh. ‘He won’t talk about it. But I know he does hate it.’ She straightened up. ‘You’ve got to remember what a drain Golden Soak has been. It never made money, not after the first few years. And yet, owning a mine like we do, there’s always the hope at the back of our minds — that one day it’ll turn out beaut and make our fortunes and we’ll be rich and live happily ever after.’ She was laughing, a note of wistfulness. ‘You read that while I clear the things away. Then you’ll understand how my grandfather must have felt, why we all have this stupid, quite illogical feeling that we’re sitting on a fortune, a sort of Pandora’s box, if only we knew how to open the lid.’

‘The official price of gold hasn’t changed in thirty years,’ I said gently.

‘I know that. But it doesn’t make any difference. I still dream dreams that one day….’ She shrugged, turning quickly away and beginning to clear the table. ‘Maybe after a few days, if you can spare the time, Daddy’ll get used to you being here and I’ll be able to persuade him to take you down. Actually, I’ve never been down myself. The ladders are gone and the winch gear broken. He always said it was too dangerous.’ She went out then and by the light from the single bulb and the flickering candles I began to read Big Bill Garrety’s account of driving cattle from the Turee Creek area to the goldfields at Nullagine:

22nd Dec: Two more soaks gone and the last bore run dry. Buried a dozen carcases and started driving the live beasts at sundown. About 60 head. Maurie told me two days back they ‘re short of meat at the goldfields now and the miners paying high prices. But these poor beasts are skin and bone and I doubt I’ll get more than a score of them through. Camped at dawn where some eucs gave a little shade for us and the cattle. Made only 9 miles during the dark and still another 12 to Pukara. If that waterhole is dry, then there’s nothing between here and the Fortescue, unless I take them into the gullies below Coondewanna and up through the homestead. But Pukara should be all right — it’s one of the blackman’s sacred waterholes inhabited by the ghosts of two Watersnake men of the Dreamtime. They sprinkle penis blood there. I’ve seen them do it. But not my two jackaroos — they’re from down around Kunderong.