Lost Girls (14 page)

Mark had
promised him a half share of anything he found and made a plan to
travel there in secrecy, when the heat of summer kept most other
visitors away. He would reopen the old shaft and clean it out to a
point where he could access the seam. He was told by the old miner
that it was about 30 feet down and the soil was treacherous and
would need careful propping, but if he could manage it the reward
would be great.

So now his
Elfin queen was travelling with him, his partner in this search.
Not only would he share half what they both found with the old man,
they would share the other half equally between themselves.

He had not told
this to his Elfin queen but his mind was set that way. If the
rewards were as promised perhaps they would buy a boat together and
go off and sail the world’s oceans, wherever the fancy took them.
He now promised himself he would be very careful, as her safety
depended on it, and he wanted to share a future with her.

After
Birdsville, where Mark met with old miner locals to get tips about
mining the boulder opal of this country, he cut back east, coming
out onto the Cooper Creek system with its multitude of channels and
flood ways. A New Year cyclone had come down the Queensland coast
and gone inland around Rockhampton a month before. This rain slowly
ran through the river channels and the flow was now filling the
innumerable swamps. A wealth of waterbirds was now starting to
breed in these wetlands.

Mark and Elin
took their time as they came east, stopping to enjoy the isolated
scenery. The days were still hot, but cloud was drifting from the
north east, offering the promise of a storm and this moisture in
the skies eased the baking heat. They were heading for a somewhere
near the channels of the Bulloo River, where it spread out across
its own mass of swamps south of Quilpie, a small town in far
western Queensland.

Mark realised
his knowledge of this country was not a strong suit, but he bought
the best maps available and matched them to the miner from Coober
Pedy’s hand drawn document. As they travelled he explained his
mission to Elin. He made her promise that, if she came to help him,
she would follow his directions with care as it would be dangerous
work. She agreed though he doubted she really meant it.

At last, five
days after Birdsville, with a few missed turns, they came to a
place that matched his map. It was several abandoned mineshafts in
a rough area of scrubby hills that lay between fertile channels and
swamps fed by branches of the Bulloo River and used by the
surrounding stations. There was a waterhole on the river about a
mile from the old mines which still ran water from the same rain
which had run the Cooper. The mine area was fenced to stop cattle
from the surrounding stations wandering into a disused shaft.

It was a messy
place of broken machinery, abandoned timber and hut remnants and a
scattering of mullock heaps and other mining detritus. The mine of
interest was abandoned decades ago when a big rain storm drove a
wall of water down the gully it was in, destroying the mine and
filling the shaft up with rubbish and silt.

At that time
the former miner was the only one on site. He had told Mark that by
then the other mines nearby were deserted. It looked like, in all
the time since, nobody had done anything here. Now it was just one
of many old abandoned mine sites, a memory long lost.

There was
little food for cattle here on a barren ridge, and with the danger
from old shafts to man and beast, the nearby stations avoided this
place. In the world of prospectors opinion was that these mines had
never yielded much of value. So only a few people ever came to this
place. Even fewer came in the summer heat.

Mark had
stocked up with provisions, enough for a month, when in Birdsville.
They could add to this with birds and animals from the hunt. Mark
marvelled how quickly Elfin had mastered the skills of a bushman,
snaring birds, shooting or spearing a kangaroo, anything he did she
would attempt too. She mastered things much faster than anyone else
he had seen, with a mix of intense concentration and fearless
desire to improve.

Once at their
destination they built a bower shed of branches to shelter in along
with a second rough structure to cover the car, making it nearly
invisible from air or the ground unless someone came close. Mark
wanted no one disturbing them should their mining find good
results.

On the second
day after their arrival, with all their above ground preparations
done, they started work on the mine. They knew the shaft they were
after, by its description and location. But, after almost four
decades, there was little to show for it. Just some remnants of
broken head timbers, marked the top, part buried under a pile of
refuse, branches, old tin, soil and the like. They started by
clearing this all away taking care that the ground below them did
not collapse. Even though it seemed safe to Elfin, Mark insisted
they both wear a harness which was tied by rope a solid tree in the
gully. As they began to clear away the rubbish they found a portion
of the side wall had collapsed and most of the shaft was filled
with debris. Despite the water flowing down the river channel
nearby it had not rained here for a long time. So the surface soil
was dry and crumbly, with parts breaking away under their feet as
they walked near the mine edge.

They took
turns, one excavating in the shaft while the other stayed above and
hauled the rubbish to the surface and carried it down slope out of
the way. For the heavy items Mark rigged a block and tackle. If
required he would use the Toyota winch but this had not been
required to date. They scouted for new straight and strong pieces
of timber to shore up the wall and roof once they were fully down.
Mark had come prepared with a chainsaw for this purpose, but they
would await what they found below before they started cutting. The
first ten feet was done in a day, the next ten feet took two days
and the final ten feet took three days, as they painstakingly
cleaned everything away until they both stood on the solid floor at
the bottom of the old shaft. It was a long way up to the light.

They built a
bush timber ladder to make the coming and going easier. The uphill
wall of the shaft was the part which had fallen in, whereas the
down side seemed solid and safe to work from. So they put the
ladder there and hauled away the fill from this side, avoiding the
upslope side where the soil was very crumbly, with small parts
continuing to break off and fall into the shaft.

They thought of
trying to shore up the vertical shaft walls but it was a big job.
So they decided they would work carefully and not disturb the place
where the soil was loose. After a couple days the crumbling of the
soil stopped and their concern about it collapsing into the shaft
abated. They made a lever structure, allowing them to swing the
buckets of soil away the from the edge of the shaft as they hauled
them to the surface with the block and tackle. They each took a
turn about, alternating between the top and bottom. It was good to
break the drudgery of working in the near dark of the pit with
standing in the fresh air and hauling the soil away, though this
was heavier work. A few times they used the vehicle winch to haul
up heavy objects, but mostly by keeping loads small they could do
it by hand. After a week of work they had an accumulation of debris
on the down slope side of the shaft. They piled it up a starting a
couple metres back from the edge.

After working
nonstop for the week they decided they were due for a rest day. It
was a Sunday, just coincidence, but they both laughed and joked
that God had worked six days and rested the seventh and now after
seven nonstop days they had outdone God and were having their own
day of rest on God’s day of rest.

This day they
swam in the river waterhole and hunted ducks for dinner. They would
have started back the next day but they had enjoyed their day of
rest together so much that neither wanted it to end. So they both
agreed, over roast wood duck, that time was not of the essence and
they would treat themselves to a second day off as well.

Elfin had an
idea for a boat to use on the waterhole, made from some old tin
sheets and a timber frame. Mark grumbled at first that it was
pointless to build a boat for a river in the desert which only ran
one year in three. However Elfin was at her persuasive best. By
lunch time of their second day they had built a serviceable boat.
It was not pretty to look at, made with old, rusted sheets of iron,
nailed to a timber frame with old rusted nails. The seams were
stuffed with wet clay. But it floated and together they poled it a
hundred yards along their waterhole and back. Elfin announced that
for today, as they were on the ocean not the desert she was the
ship’s captain, Queen Elfin and King Mark of the Desert was her
loyal servant. She named their boat “Ran, Goddess of the Sea,”
which Mark painted on the bow in wet white clay.

In this manner
they passed an afternoon of play, followed by a night of love
before they awoke in the morning to start their work again.

The next week
they started on the side tunnel, by description it was about as
long as the shaft was deep before it came to the place of opals.
Now they shored the walls and roof as they worked. They would dig
out a small amount, no more than half a metre and then place a two
wall pieces and a roof piece of bush timber, cut to length by the
chainsaw and jammed tightly into place. The soil down here was also
mostly dry and crumbly, predominantly sandy, with mixed pieces of
mud stone, sandstone and ironstone. In some places it seemed to be
packed solidly together but in others it seemed like old seepage
down the gully had hollowed out spaces and places which were a
mixture of air and loose bits. The shaft ran away from the line of
the gully into the side of the hill, sloping gently downwards. As
they progressed there was moisture in the soil, not wet but damp.
It seemed to be more stable and less prone to collapse. There were
also tree roots to cut away which seemed to have found this new
place of soil and debris more to their liking.

It took five
more days until they had reached the end of the old tunnel and came
to the face which the miner had described. Here the ground changed
into densely packed mudstone with layers of heavy ironstone nodules
running through it. This was what they were seeking, nodules
accumulated as this gully filled with the soil washed away from the
surrounding hills. Miners said these were the best place to find
the boulder opal for which these Queensland fields were
renowned.

Now they
started working together, side by side on the face, chiselling away
the pieces. Once they had a good pile they would bring them above
to sort and examine properly. It was late in the day when they
first came above with a hoard to sort, two bucket loads of heavy
nodules, with flashes of colour, under a patina of soil. They
rinsed it off and stared to chip surface encrustation away to see
what lay below.

Elfin was
working with a nodule of stone about a handbreadth across, lightly
tapping with a hammer to flake off the surrounding rubbish. She hit
a little harder and the rock split through the middle, along a
natural fault into two similar sized pieces. As they fell apart she
held her breath.

It was the most
perfect summer blue, a Nordic summer sky tinged with flecks of gold
and red as the sun lit up the highest clouds. She gasped as she saw
what she had found and called Mark over. He was sitting with his
own pile a few feet away He whistled with excitement, saying. “A
stone truly fit for an Elfin Queen. It is marvellous to behold and
alone makes our whole trip worthwhile. As you are the first finder,
this one is for you and you alone. It will be yours forever.

Now they both
felt the excitement of a wondrous discovery flowing through the
veins. They brought their collection together and by the light of a
gas lamp worked through what they had found. It was extraordinary,
another ten large pieces that all had wonderful opal colour
scattered through them. They cleaned off the best of them and
placed them underneath the end of the bed mattress they shared.
They worked for three more days before this patch of colour ran
out.

By now they had
several buckets full of wonderful opal pieces. Neither could grasp
the true value, though Mark knew more from his work in Coober Pedy.
The best he had found before was far below anything here. These
best pieces were each worth tens of thousands of dollars, maybe
even more.

Both knew this
stuff was fabulous, it was worth more than anything either had ever
owned or held in their own hands before. They placed all the best
pieces in a steel box that Mark owned and place a lock on it, to
deter any casual observers. It took a lot of effort from both of
them to lift this box and place it on the back of the truck. Then
they took all the inferior pieces and brought them to a hole they
had dug near the swamp. After that they removed all the things they
could find that indicated their presence from the site. Lastly they
started to refill the shaft with rubbish.

There may be
more to find here and they did not want to make it easy for any
visitors in their absence. They discussed what to do now. Mark knew
a gem trader he trusted in Brisbane, a thousand kilometres to the
east, on the coast.

So the decided
that they would make their way from here to there, following a
leisurely and circuitous route, to ensure that the place of their
findings was difficult to trace. Then once there they would work
out what to sell and what to do with the rest. Mark had suggested
they should not market it all at once as this much material of high
value was bound to raise lots of questions. Instead they should
store it safely and slowly release pieces for sale. Once they had
sold sufficient they could decide whether to recover the remainder
or just to bless their fortune, cash to their chips and go and
travel and enjoy the world together from here.