‘Usually busier than this,’ Spencer said, as if reading his mind. ‘But school went back today and the mums will be breathing a sigh of relief at not having to be out in the heat, trying to entertain the kids. Town is always quiet the first week back to school.’
‘It’s fierce, isn’t it? Different heat to Perth. Dry and…’ He tried to find a word to describe it. ‘Like the air wants to crackle. And the flies! They weren’t this bad when I lived out in the wheat belt.’
‘You’ll know what crackling is like then when you see the lightning! Man, some of the thunderstorms that come through, I tell ya…’ He went on to describe how the clouds would start to build up about three in the afternoon and before long they would turn inky black. ‘The first thunder crack always stops the town. Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen lightning split the sky the way it does here. So bright, I tell you. Sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t. But, when it does, the drops are about as large as a fifty-cent piece and the air smells so sweet. You know that rain on dry ground smell?’ Spencer smacked his lips. ‘Mmm, I love it!
‘You know, lots of things about Barrabine can take a bit of getting used to, for sure,’ Spencer continued. ‘But I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else now, and Kathy loves it too.’
Dave wanted to ask him how long it had taken Kathy to settle here. To find friends and be happy, but he wasn’t sure he wanted his work partner to know that Melinda had cried herself to sleep last night, thinking Dave hadn’t heard her. But he had and his heart had hurt the whole time.
‘And the kids, what do they do? Why weren’t the ones we saw back there in school?’
‘Probably playing hooky first day of term. We’ll keep an eye on them. As coppers, we work hard at having good relations with the kids in town. Some are more well known that others, as you would know from Perth. We’ll head up here,’ Spencer said, flicking his blinker on and driving up the winding road to the top of the hill. ‘Finders Lookout.’ Parking the car under the lone tree, which didn’t offer enough shade, he pulled on the park brake and indicated the steel structure with a spiral staircase leading to a platform. ‘Too hot to walk to the top, but there’s a nice spot around here you can look out over the town. Come on.’
Together they stood, hands in pockets, and surveyed Barrabine. The silver roofs threw off the glare of the midday sun and there was a continual line of cars on the highway. Further out, Dave could see the red scars of the mines, slashed across the earth. There were large, heavy machines moving in the distance. The railway line glinted in the sun but remained empty of carriages.
‘What’s that noise?’ he asked. The hum had been a constant since he’d arrived. He caught a glance of the main street, lined with heritage buildings, and the tall structures, all different heights. Spencer had told him these were mine shaft headframes.
‘That’s the mines,’ Spencer said softly. ‘The noise is there all the time. Day and night. They work round the clock to harvest the gold.’ He continued to stare straight ahead. ‘This is a hard town, Dave. One where fellas would rather put you in the ground than give up where they’ve found the yellow stuff. Where some blokes would rather take the gold from others than look for it themselves.
‘The miners work hard, especially the ones underground. And they play hard too. In a sense, Barrabine is like the last frontier.’ He turned and looked at Dave. ‘I hope you’re prepared.’
Chapter 2
Waiting to greet Dave on his arrival home from his first day at work was a swarm of small black bush flies at the front door. Waving his hands around, he tried to swat away as many of them as he could and then make a dash inside with only a few following him.
‘Shit,’ he muttered, nearly tripping over a cardboard carton and having to grab the wall to save himself. The lounge was filled with half-unpacked boxes and furniture was pushed up against walls. Loud music was blaring from the stereo.
‘Hello?’ he called out. ‘Melinda?’
‘Down here.’ Her reply was muffled, as if she had her head deep in a box.
Stepping cautiously around the mess—he was sure they hadn’t packed so much when they’d left Perth—he made his way down the passage, looking in each room, curious to see what changes had happened while he’d been at work.
They hadn’t lived together before they’d got married—he’d been in a little one-bedroom unit, not far from the police station, with nothing but of bit of cooking gear, a bed, TV and fridge. He’d taken his washing to the laundromat. He liked living minimally; it was part of who he was. Having lived in the shearers’ quarters on his father’s farm for five years, he’d always managed to fit everything he had into one small room. This house full of furniture and things Melinda said they needed was quite foreign to him.
Melinda, on the other hand, had shared a house with three of her friends from uni and had slowly been collecting everything she would need to move out on her own. Most of the furniture was either hers or what they’d been given through the gift registry for their wedding. Walking through a department store picking out items for the new house and then asking people to buy them as wedding presents had made his toes curl, but he
