McCullock's Gold

by Lindsay Johannsen

  * * *

  After becoming a Young Man Jack Cadney’s father taught him a great many things. Besides tribal lore and legends he heard about Tom Hanlon, the early days of mining at Jervois and the silver Hanlon found by the Unka Creek.

  He also heard about the miners who’d worked at Jervois in the late nineteen-forties, including the two that took up Hanlon’s old copper claim – Les McCullock and Wilbur Johns.

  Others told him more. McCullock was supposed to have found some gold, they’d said. It was “…down in the desert somewhere, buried under the sand.” Lasseter’s Reef was nothing, they’d assured him. This was bigger.

  As Cadney mulled over Tyler and Watts’ plans the stories all came back. “I know what’s happened,” he announced. “Someone’s wound up those two whitefellas with all that bullshit about McCullock’s gold and the mad buggers are out here trying to find it.

  “But those dungy old yarns died out years ago, didn’t they? I mean it was all just rubbish, ay. If there’d been anything to it then someone would have found it by now.” He looked to his father for some sort of confirmation, a chuckle or a nod of the head, but nothing came.

  “—I mean they’re just stories, aren’t they? It’s only...”

  Twofoot grabbed his crutch and lurched to his feet. “Where’s Angelica?” he demanded.

  Cadney was confused. “Well, she’s ... over at the clinic doing health work. Why?”

  “Come inside and lock the doors,” the old man ordered. “What I’m going to tell you is secret business and I don’t want to be disturbed.”

  As the pair went inside Twofoot began qualifying his last sentence. “This is not about secret ceremony stuff and it’s not Tribal Business story either. In fact it has nothing to do with any of that. It’s secret Appoota Mbulkara business all right, but it’s my own secret Appoota Mbulkara business. Nobody knows about this except me. It’s...

  “—Well, me and one other,” he added, correcting himself. At the kitchen table he sat down and passed Cadney his crutch to deal with. Cadney joined him but held onto it.

  “You see, son,” Twofoot continued, “the stories about old McCullock were right; he did find some gold. Quite a lot, in fact. And me and this other bloke are the only ones to know the truth of it, like exactly where it came from.”

  The statement left Cadney speechless and for a moment he just stared at his father in astonishment.

  He soon found his tongue. “So what did you do about it and who is this other person? —And what’s it got to do with Appoota Mbulkara anyway?”

  Sudden realisation hit. “Bloody hell! You don’t mean that...”

  But Twofoot had started chanting the Appoota Mbulkara Spirit Song. Cadney just sat there staring at him, thoughts churning, questions piling up.

  Suddenly he leapt to his feet. It was obvious he would have to wait! He leant the crutch in the corner, put some water in his billycan, set it on the gas, went to the cupboard for mugs, got a spoon from the drawer and put the sugar tin on the table – all very noisily.

  Angelica was always at him to use the kettle but he preferred the billycan. To him the tea tasted better. His father kept on singing.

  From outside came the sound of children laughing and squealing. Through the kitchen window and beyond his back fence Cadney could see three young boys playing in a car, recently broken-down and temporarily abandoned. As he watched they climbed onto the roof. Soon all three were trampolining on it in unison.

  Twofoot’s eyes were closed. Without being aware of it his chanting fell into time with the “wunka-wunka-wunka” coming from outside.

  The water boiled. Cadney threw in some tea leaves then took the billy to the table and sat down. After a couple of minutes he banged the billycan with a spoon to settle the leaves, and a little while later he filled the mugs. A dessert spoon of sugar was added to each and stirred vigorously. One went in front of his father.

  The singing continued. Time drifted on.

  Then the car’s owner unexpectedly arrived on the scene and a burst of angry shouting came from over the fence. The rhythmic thumping ceased abruptly, only to be followed moments later by shrieks of hysterical laughter. Its volume diminished rapidly with increasing distance as the boys made their escape.

  Twofoot stopped singing. He opened his eyes and looked at Cadney. “When the first whitefellas came out to prospect this country they had a young blackfella with them,” he said. “This was so they could talk to the old men and ask about different looking rocks – especially rocks with shiny yellow stuff in them.

  “My father was only a weiye then, he told me, three maybe four years old. They were living down from the Elua Ranges at the time, not far from the soakage.

  “His father was Old Man for all our land in those days – Arkarnina, Jervois, Marshall Bar, Appoota Mbulkara... Right through.

  “He’d heard about the white men long before they came to prospect our country, though. Plenty of stories had been going around about what they did and how they worked.

  “It was a little bit dry-time when they first turned up. They camped downstream from the Elua soak and next morning rode out and shot a kangaroo to give my grandfather as tribute. Then they told him what they were doing and asked their questions.

  “Our people didn’t know about different looking rocks, ol’ Grandad told them. ‘Rocks are just rocks,’ he said. ‘They all are different.’

  “He knew about unusual rocks all right but he didn’t let on about them, see.”

  Twofoot took a careful sip of his tea but it was still too hot to drink. He put down the mug and continued. “After they’d gone my grandfather started to worry. He knew the yellow stuff they were talking about all right, because he’d seen some. At Appoota Mbulkara!

  “It was only in one place there and to him it didn’t seem like much, just some speckles in a band of rock on the sundown side of the hill and in the dirt washed down from it. ‘…like seeds in a starry seed cake,’ he told my father.” He held up his hands about a metre apart. “Wide like this,” he added, “maybe twenty-five steps long.

  “See up till then my grandfather had never thought much about it. He’d known for a long time the yellow specks were there but he’d always reckoned they were part of Appoota Mbulkara’s being special. —You know, isolated place, white side-by-side quartz reefs, secret cave... Yellow sand in the rocks.

  “He now realised that the hill was in jeopardy, because the efforts the white men were putting into chasing the yellow sand had shown him how much they valued the stuff. He also realised that their finding it was inevitable – and sooner rather than later, more than likely.

  “He’d heard stories about how they worked, see. They went everywhere; they looked on every hill and dug in every creek. No one was happy about it but there was nothing they could do.

  “He’d also heard that most times they went away again, but if they did happen to find something they’d stay. They’d set up camp and start turning over the creeksand or digging their holes.

  “—And whitefellas walking around on Appoota Mbulkara?!! YACKAI!!! Even thinking about it makes me angry, so you can imagine old granddad’s feelings. And then to imagine them mining there! Only gold in the initiation area between the quartz reefs would have been worse...”

  And so the old custodian came to realise: the yellow sand would have to be hidden from the white men and its whitefella value kept from those knowing it was there – the old men to whom it meant nothing, whose failing memories and mortality would save word of it being passed down. It would mean having to go out there secretly but that was no problem; hiding it from the white-eyes would be harder as he had no means to stop them from visiting the place. Plenty could be done to hamper their chances, though, and with nothing more than bushcraft and ingenuity.

  Knowledge was a comfort: no word had ever come to him of other heavy yellow grains, from either his own tribal country or the lands immediately beyond, so prospectors arriving at Appoota Mbulkara may w
ell have weeks of unrewarded effort behind them. And with the desert country so vast and its outcrops so few, they’d most likely arrive there all weary and saddle sore.

  Tiredness, failing enthusiasm and flagging hopes might lend this desolate little two-quartz-reef hill in the spinifex the same air of hopelessness as all the others they’d come across; a different looking hill, certainly, but one just as barren. Then, finding nothing, they’d move on.

  Three months were to pass before rain came and the old man could move. One moonlit night a couple of weeks later, when bush tucker was abundant again and Appoota Mbulkara’s reservoir would have filled (and when the others at Elua Soak were asleep), he took up the blanket some early explorers had given him and the jam tin they’d discarded and set out walking – first down the river to Marshall Bar, then south into the desert.

  And there, on the hill’s gentle western slope, he worked for many days, chipping away the top of the soft gold-bearing seam with a sharp edged slab of quartz and scraping up the thin layer of dirt from anywhere the yellow specks showed through.

  The coarse gold-bearing soil went on his blanket, to be carried southward one load at a time and buried in the sand of the old men’s area. And one load at a time the wily old custodian returned with barren dirt from the hill’s far side to replace it.

  Fresh-broken rock still showing was stained with fire and red ochre from the special things in the old men’s cave. And so that everything would look natural and untouched he rearranged all the pieces of white quartz he’d collected before starting the job, carefully making sure they all went clean side up.

  Next he moved the secret men’s things to a second, smaller cave, one where he could secure the precious articles from wandering whitefellas. It was long and narrow, not unlike a rabbit hole, and was hidden from casual view under a rock overhang, right at the foot of the southern-end cliff.

  After arranging everything inside the little fissure he jammed a rock inside its entrance, then sealed the opening with a plaster of coarse sandy dirt from up the hill mixed with clay and water from the soakage pit. The colour was just right; it looked like part of the hill itself.

  To complete the job he dragged some desert sand up to the overhang. Then, with a feeling of satisfaction at having done everything possible, he took up his blanket, filled the jam tin with water and set off walking – west toward the Plenty River and Arkarnina Soak.

  In time rain fell on the hill and the wispy desert grasses returned – and later, Cassia shrubs and red flowering Eremophila. And when the prospectors came they saw nothing, for there was nothing there to see.

  Before departing they dollied and panned a little quartz from the reefs, carefully, so as not to waste their precious water.

  But the tall white reefs were barren…

  The old man tried his tea again. By this time it had cooled, so he settled back in his chair to enjoy it. Cadney just sat there, picturing in his mind the things his father had told him. He wanted to ask questions but knew instinctively not to speak.

  Twofoot took his time, sipping his tea and humming quietly to himself, eyes closed. Eventually he sat up and put the empty mug back on the table. “And now I can tell you my own Appoota Mbulkara story,” he said.