Longcoat Bob subsequently ordered Tom to eat fourteen billygoat plums each day for a week to fight off infection. And soon Tom’s strength was restored, but he did not rush to climb onto Samson and clip-clop his long way back to Darwin. He had developed a fondness for Longcoat Bob’s people and they had developed a fondness for him.
Longcoat Bob enjoyed sitting by the fire at night telling the wayward traveller stories of how the land around him came to be, and in thanks for those stories Tom Berry recited descriptions of landscapes penned by famous English poets. Then Tom Berry told Longcoat Bob the story of his life. He told him of his love of the written word, from which he had been distracted by the glowing of gold. He spoke of how hard he had toiled for nothing, and the terrible cost of that fruitless toil to his wife and children, and how every gold-empty rock and cave and dugout he ever climbed down into was another reason to feel bitter and angry at the spinning earth. But, alas, he had felt like a changed man sitting by the fire with Longcoat Bob. He’d come to the deep country to dig up a gold lease, he said, but he’d dug up a new lease on his own life. Were he to strike a gold run of any significance now, he told Longcoat Bob, he would return the grace shown to him by God and Longcoat Bob in those recent days by creating a school where Darwin’s children of all colours and creeds and religions could study both the wonders of the written word and the wonders of Longcoat Bob’s creation stories. And Longcoat Bob stared at the goldminer across the fire and he stood and he moved closer to Tom Berry and he reached a long arm out and pointed at Tom’s chest. ‘Good heart, Tom Berry,’ he said, tapping Tom’s chest twice. ‘Good heart.’ Then Longcoat Bob turned towards the forest. ‘I must talk to the stars for a moment,’ he said. And he disappeared into the night.
The next evening, before sunset, Longcoat Bob met Tom at his hut. ‘Sunrise tomorrow, Tom Berry and Bob go for a long walk,’ Longcoat Bob said.
‘And that surely was a long walk, my friends,’ Tom Berry said to his audience. ‘We walked for six days. The land was Longcoat Bob’s kitchen. He turned grubs into fire-cooked delicacies. He reached his hands into rivers and long-necked turtles seemed to come to him willingly. And that land he showed me, my friends, was like no land I had ever seen. He led me through the most treacherous and deep country. He took me through ancient galleries and across crocodile-infested waterholes and through cave systems that felt like portals into different dimensions in time and space. I saw things in that country, gentlemen, that I’d never dreamed existed. There were tests, I tell you. I had to show my courage. I had to show my faith in Longcoat Bob, and faith in things beyond my understanding, and I believe he was testing me. The more worth I showed, the closer he took me to his secret place.’
‘And where exactly was this secret place?’ shouted Albert Strudwick.
‘Well, I’m sure you’d like to know, Albert,’ Tom said. ‘But Longcoat Bob’s secrets will remain safe with me. Though, make no mistake, dear friends, I am, at heart, a scholar, and a good scholar always takes notes.’
Tom Berry laughed and tapped his temple and he did not speak then of how the closest thing he’d had to a pencil on the long walk was a pocket knife and the closest thing he’d had to notepaper was the back of a goldminer’s pan. But then he did speak of how Longcoat Bob’s long walk ended at a miracle. A place of pure impossibility.
‘It was a vault,’ Tom Berry said. ‘A vault of gold in the heart of the deep country. A vault built by the earth. A safe room beyond my wildest imagination, housing more raw gold than I could have carried home on the backs of ten horses.’
‘Step inside,’ Longcoat Bob said at the entrance. And Tom Berry stepped cautiously into the vault and his dark brown eyes were lit up by a blaze of raw gold. Too many fat and raw gold nuggets to count. Gold nuggets the size of apples. Finds the size of oranges. Nuggets shaped like tree stumps as long as Tom’s hand. Triangular nuggets. One nugget as big as an eggplant and so heavy that Tom needed two hands to hold it.
‘These are all yours?’ Tom asked Longcoat Bob.
Longcoat Bob shook his head. ‘Not mine,’ he said. He told Tom the gold belonged to the land. He said his people had been finding gold nuggets like the ones in that vault for centuries. But in all his years, he said, he was yet to come across a single gold nugget that brought any real happiness to the person who held it. Longcoat Bob said his family had found one large nugget long ago – centuries back – that resembled a human hand and it became so coveted by members of his family that it caused fights between brother and sister, sister and mother, father and son. During one dispute, an old woman struck her nephew over the head with the gold hand. The nephew was struck dumb and his mental capacity was like a waterhole that could never be more than half full after that, and the old woman was so ashamed by her actions that she begged Longcoat Bob’s grandfather, the oldest living member of the family, to
