‘And you wouldn’t believe what he said then,’ Tom Berry whispered to his enraptured audience. ‘He said he and his family saw no value whatsoever in all that gold. He said real treasure was a freshwater spring. He said the real jewels of the earth were gooseberries that grow on trees. He said a good dig in his world is when you stick your fist down a bubble in the mud and find a long-necked turtle to grab hold of. He said true wealth isn’t havin’ your pockets filled with coin but your belly filled with white turtle flesh cooked in its juices, shell down, on a bed of coals. He said the only use for gold was to glitter, and he said the glitter of gold was like the glittering smiles of us white men he’d seen in town dressed in expensive clothes. He said that gold can’t be trusted. He said we all got the gold disease and it rots our hearts. It poisons us. He said it changes who we are, how we behave.’
‘Too right it does!’ said a liquored prospector also from Halls Creek, raising his beer glass. And the other gold diggers raised their glasses in agreement.
‘He said the long-necked turtle didn’t do that,’ Tom Berry said. ‘He said the turtle was a gift from the earth that kept on giving. He said he rubbed turtle fat on the chests of sick infants to make them strong again. He said the oil and meat from a single turtle could keep a dying elder alive to see an extra month of sunrises. And then he asked me if I thought a month of sunrises was worth more or less than the box of gold that rested in the hole below us. I said it depended on how you spent the gold and how you spent the month of sunrises.
‘And Longcoat Bob smiled at that and he pointed again at Tom Berry’s chest and said, ‘Good heart, Tom Berry. You speak of good things that can come from gold.’
Then he gestured towards the gold vault. ‘You may take what you can carry in your hands, Tom Berry,’ he said.
And in the public bar of the Hotel Darwin, young Aubrey Hook felt as envious as he did sceptical as he watched Tom Berry finish his tall tale of gold lust and gold rewards.
‘But then Longcoat Bob placed a hand on my arm,’ Tom Berry said. ‘And he told me something I will never forget for all my years because it sent a shiver down my weary spine. He said, “Carry all you own, Tom Berry. But own all you carry.”’
And the men across the public bar sipped their drinks in silence and confusion.
*
On the red dirt track far south of Darwin, Aubrey Hook brings the Model A to a stop once more. By the side of the road he can see two sets of shoe prints. One set bigger than the other. Further on he can see the snaking track left by something that was dragged carelessly behind the smaller set of footprints. A large stick, perhaps. Or a tool of some kind, he considers. A shovel.
He kneels down by the shoeprints. He traces his forefinger along the shovel’s line. The gravedigger girl, he tells himself. The miserable legacy of Tom Berry’s long walk into the wilderness.
He remembers the looks on the faces of every man in that bar that day when Tom Berry told his fabulous story of Longcoat Bob and the mystical vault of gold. Disbelief. Disregard. And just the slightest glow of gold envy.
‘So how much did you take?’ asked Albert Strudwick, eyes alight.
‘I’m not gonna tell you lot,’ he said. ‘But rest assured it’s enough to buy you all another round.’ And he raised his whisky and triumphantly downed another shot.
‘Go on Berry,’ Strudwick urged with a treacherous gleam in his eye. ‘Tell us how much you took!’ The greatest supply in the prospector’s kit is reliable information and Albert Strudwick wanted more of it. ‘We know you want to tell us, Berry!’ Strudwick urged. ‘Go on. Tell us how rich the most hapless prospector in Australia has become!’
Tom had promised himself he would not reveal the weight of what he’d carried from that natural vault that day, but he felt the pride of his glittering achievement welling up inside him, and he was going to burst if he held it inside any longer, the molten-lava eruption of his good fortune. There was something that always trumped wisdom in any conversation among gold prospectors and that was luck. The brightest, shrewdest prospectors – and Albert Strudwick was one of them – knew well that all the planning and information and hard graft in the world were nothing against the all-conquering force of a stroke of good luck.
‘We’re about the same build, Albert,’ Tom Berry said. Both men were short and thin. ‘How much can you lift in pounds?’
‘I once carried two seventy-pound bags of flour in my arms,’ he said. ‘Reckon I could carry more on me shoulders.’
Tom nodded, sipped a newly arrived whisky shot. ‘Reckon you could carry a couple pounds more, too, if you knew you was carrying pay dirt.’
The men in the bar were silent then. Some scratched their heads. Some slapped their knees in awe, some shook their heads in disbelief. Aubrey Hook was only young, but his father, the late Arthur Hook, had taught him how to find a hole in any surface. And he knew the surface of that grand and miraculous story of Tom Berry’s was like the surface of any gold country – full of holes.
*
On the dirt track, Aubrey Hook follows the two sets of footprints and he eventually comes to a short bridge crossing Candlelight Creek. He and
