Dee changed gears and the gearstick struck Melinda’s leg. She tried to shift closer to Dave. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised.
‘Always a bit of a tight fit in here. That’s another reason for the couch,’ Dee said, crunching gears again.
‘Great idea,’ Melinda agreed, smiling. ‘There is something about this country. I don’t know what it is, but it’s so picturesque. Even with the heat.’
‘I know what you mean. Gets under your skin. I fell in love with it the minute I came here.’ She veered off to the left, throwing Melinda against Dave’s shoulder. ‘Mine’s down this way,’ she pointed, following a track that didn’t look like it’d been used in years.
‘What brought you here in the first place?’ Dave asked.
‘My mum and stepdad owned the pub. My stepdad won it in a card game. I’d had a marriage break-up and didn’t really know what to do with myself. Tried living in Perth and didn’t like that, so I moved to a little country town called Wickepin and liked that even less. Caitlyn was off my hands—had her young—so one day I jumped in me car and drove up here to see the olds. Haven’t left since. Don’t want to be anywhere else. Enjoy talking to the people coming through. Met some interesting ones, I tell you. When it’s tourist season, the hustle and bustle of this joint is more than enough for me. Here we are.’ She pulled up with a jerk and threw open her door before Dave and Melinda could say anything.
Melinda looked at Dave. ‘A card game? Hustle and bustle? There isn’t any of that out here!’
Dave shrugged. ‘That’s probably what she means. She doesn’t like hustle and bustle. And this is the wild west. Card games and gambling are normal.’
Dee was already a way in front of them by the time they tumbled out of the ute and got their footing. Dave felt his feet sink into the dirt a couple of inches and once again marvelled at the softness. Good soil to roll a swag over, he thought.
‘This way,’ Dee called. ‘Watch your step. There’s no rails or anything flash out here to stop you from falling in.’
‘I reckon occupational health and safety would have a field day with you,’ Dave called as he realised Dee was wearing thongs.
‘I’d be the least of their worries,’ she laughed. ‘They’re more concerned about the mines and the workers than a little Contiki tour that I don’t charge for. Here you go.’ She pointed down.
It took Dave a moment to see what she was pointing out. A tree root had grown over the entrance and it was clear this shaft hadn’t been used in years.
‘Wow,’ muttered Melinda, getting out her camera. ‘And people used to go down these?’
‘Still do.’ Dee walked along the top of the ridge and looked down. ‘If you come up here, you’ll be able to see it follows the line of rock.’ She held her hand out in the direction the shaft ran. Dave took a couple of steps and jumped up.
‘I see,’ he said half to himself. ‘The shaft is long rather than deep.’
‘This one runs for about one hundred metres along this ridge. If you go up a little further, you’ll be able to climb in a way. Dunno how deep it is. See, in the old days the miners would put false floors in their shafts, so even if you chucked a rock down, you could never be sure when you heard it drop whether it was the real bottom or not.’
‘Why’d they put false floors in?’ Melinda asked, shooing away the flies which kept clustering around her eyes.
‘They’d know if someone had been there. If there was nobody to stay and guard the mine, people would come along and have a go at seeing what they could find, even if it was registered to another miner. If someone was at the bottom of the mine when they came back, they’d either be dead or badly injured, depending on how deep the shaft was. It made people think twice about raiding someone else’s property.’
‘Severe.’ Melinda grimaced a little.
Dave walked ahead, loose stones scattering under his feet. He could hear them tumble down into the darkness and thought about the old blokes, the ones who’d lived out here in the heat and flies, without water and company, looking for that one piece of gold which would make them rich.
Coming to the crevice where Dee had told him he could climb in, he looked down and saw the clear lines of quartz running through the rock. He clambered down and ran his fingers across them, feeling the coolness of the stone. Had a miner stood here decades ago, with excitement in his belly? Filled with equal parts hope and fear? Had he wondered, as he climbed down into the darkness for the first time, whether he’d be going home that night, or had that thought never entered his mind? Did it even bother him? Was he prepared to die trying to find the prize?
Dave tried to conjure up the sounds of the gold rush. Men laughing and calling to each other. The tinny noise of pick on stone and the groans as they shovelled the soil into buckets and tied the rope to the handle and called up for their partner to pull it out and comb through it.
Hearing it all in his head, he had flashes of men, filthy with red dust across their faces and sweat lines across their brows. The smell of campfire smoke and chatter of children laughing as they hauled buckets of water back to their tents. The sobs of women who were burying their men or children, and the silence of men grieving.
Taking a few deep breaths, he became aware
