Not a flicker of the colourless lashes. ‘Okay. Gone up the coast for the weekend.’
‘Oh, yeah. Where’s that again?’
‘Dugong Beach.’
‘Right. You get up there much?’
‘Nah. Dead place. Good golf course, but. I bloody near parred it once.’
‘Good on you. Thanks.’
I went home and made an omelette to blot up the Houghton’s. The Leichhardt library hadn’t had anything on the law relating to treasure trove and there was nothing useful on my shelves. A year ago I could’ve phone up Cy Sackville, my lawyer and friend, and asked him to look it up for me. He’d have abused me and given me a brilliant summary of the matter at the same time. But Cy had been shot dead a year ago. I missed him and felt depressed when I thought about him. These days I try to keep my wine consumption down to less than a bottle a day, but the Houghton’s was a dead soldier by the time I went to bed.
I was on the road by eight and reached Dugong Beach about eleven. Most of the vehicles that held me up seemed to be towing boats or carrying surfboards-it was that sort of a morning. At least I had swimming togs, snorkel and flippers in the boot and sunblock in my bag. I was part of the great tribe of Sydneysiders that heads for near and distant beaches when the sun shines, as if drawn by some kind of ritual or ceremony. If I knew Bert Russell, there’d be a barbie and some wine that slid down your throat like a perfect oyster. Ceremony.
After getting off the highway past Newcastle I went north on the old coast road and eventually hit the hamlet of Dugong Beach. I followed the sign to the golf course and wound down an unmade road with sandy edges towards the water. The fairly substantial houses up near the road started to give way to fibro and weatherboard places as the street narrowed, swung left in line with the coast, and petered out at a solitary stand of mangroves. Bert’s house was opposite the mangroves behind a thick screen of casuarinas, but I got a glimpse of a tin roof and a galvanised iron water tank.
I bounced down a rough track, brushing the trees on both sides and then drove up a slope to the house. It was a double-fronted weatherboard with a verandah running along the front and one side. A section of the verandah was protected by shadecloth and that’s where Bert was sitting in a deckchair, reading the paper.
I got my bag and took a look around before approaching the house. Bert’s 4WD Land Cruiser with trailer and dinghy attached was parked under a tree. I could see a shack of some kind, almost hidden in the bush a good hundred metres from Bert’s house and another building away to the right behind more she-oaks-a pole house with a flat roof. Newish.
‘Gidday, Bert. Thought you’d be fishing.’
Bert carefully folded the business section of the Herald. I wondered if he’d been checking the price of gold. ‘Cliff. Been out, hours ago. Got a few flathead. We’ll have ‘em for lunch. Good for the heart, or so they reckon.’
‘Heart?’
‘Yah. They say I’ve got a crook ticker. Feel all right, but.’
I mounted the steps and moved out of the sun behind the shadecloth. The temperature dropped immediately. ‘How much land’ve you got here?’
‘About three acres, give or take a few rods and perches. That dump back there went up in the Depression.’
I jerked my thumb to the right. ‘What about the house on stilts?’
Bert laughed. ‘They reckoned they’d be able to see the water if they went up like that. Might be able to see it from the roof.’
‘No other close neighbours?’
‘Yeah, there’s another place like this further back. Can’t see it from here, but. Jeez, my manners’re ratshit since Jessie died. Have a seat.’
I dropped into a deckchair and heard the sand crunch under it as the legs moved. Great sound.
‘Not too early for a beer, is it, Cliff?’
‘Got a light?’
‘Coopers, only one I’ll drink.’
He went into the house, heavy-footed and slightly bandy in thongs and flapping grey shorts, and returned with two stubbies. We uncapped them and drank, toasting the Australian way of life for those who were lucky enough to get a piece of it.
‘How’d you come to be digging holes?’
‘Planting a few vegetables. Jessie used to do it and I just thought I’d… Anyway, I hoed up a patch and started to turn it over. Not too sandy just there. Shovel went in and hit the box. I cleared the dirt off and opened it. Then I put everything back and finished making the vegetable patch. Want to take a look?’
‘No time like the present. But I’ll have to take a sample of the gold and get a good look at the gun and the photo. I can’t do it crouching in the dirt.’
Bert rubbed the grey bristles on his chin. ‘The box can stay put though?’
‘For the time being, yes.’
‘That’s all right, then.’
‘Sure no-one’s around?’
‘Stan, the derro in the shack, sleeps it off till noon. He’s a useless bastard. I don’t have anything to do with him, but Jessie said he had some kind of a right to the place. The yuppies in the stilt house’ll be staring out to sea. Can’t see the spot real well from the other place. Oh, there’s some boatsheds on the beach and a couple of blokes live in them sometimes. Dunno what you could see from there, but they sometimes wander through a corner of the place to get down there. ‘S all right by me as long as they don’t drop their rubbish.’
I was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, sport socks and sneakers, good digging clothes. I followed Bert around the back of the house and waited while he reached under the back porch for a shovel. I took it from him and checked the shaft for splinters. ‘Let me start earning your money.’
He laughed. ‘Tell you the truth, I’m glad of your company. Tom never comes up here when I’m around. Brings, his mates from time to time. Here we go.’
The area behind the house was thick with kikuyu grass that needed slashing. There were a few shrubs and flower beds that had become weed-choked. Jessie, the gardener, was sorely missed. The vegetable patch was in full sunlight near the stump of a wattle. Bert pointed to the left.
‘Jessie grew the vegetables over there, see. But those bloody wattles grew up and the place doesn’t get much sun now.’ He kicked the stump. ‘This bugger rotted out and blew down and I reckoned that was the spot. Lucky, eh?’
‘We’ll see.’
Bert had cleared away a few square metres of matted grass and turned the loamy soil. He had tomatoes and beans on stakes. That is, the packets were thumbtacked to the wood. No sign of the vegetables. The pumpkins were doing well though, the vines snaking over the cleared spot and off into the kikuyu.
‘Right in the bloody middle,’ Bert said.
As a reflex action, God knows why, I spat on my hands before I wielded the shovel. The earth had been recently disturbed and after taking out one big shovelful, the blade hit the box on the next thrust. I worked for ten minutes shovelling it to the sides and scraping it away until the oilcloth came in view. I scraped away the earth and pulled at the wrapping until the lid was clear. It was a medium-sized sea chest that had once had a thin leather veneer over the metal. Moisture had got in under the oilcloth and this had long since rotted away, leaving a pitted, rusty surface beneath. That was encouraging; it looked as if the box had been in the ground a fair while. Two heavy clasps held the lid down. I cleared the dirt from around them and prized them open without much effort, using the screwdriver attachment on my Swiss Army knife.
‘When did you find this thing, Bert?’
He removed the old hat he had put on and scratched his head where hair hadn’t grown for many a long day. ‘I dunno. Couple of weeks ago?’
The lid opened easily and there they were- bars of dull, yellowish metal the size of cigarette cartons. They were irregular in shape and it was no use looking for serial numbers-this wasn’t bullion in the accepted sense. I hefted a bar and couldn’t guess at the weight.
