dirty, dishevelled looking miner, ‘Hello there, do you have any water to spare, or do you know where I can get some?’
He just completely ignored Dad and kept scratching and scraping in the dirt. It looked like this bloke had been there for years and hadn’t washed in all that time. His foot-long beard released small puffs of dust every time his half-sized army shovel struck the hardened ground.
Dad moved a little closer and then asked the bloke again, ‘Any water, mate?’
Well, the tirade that followed is one that, if dissected, wasn’t that imaginative. I’d heard all those dirty swear words before, just not in one single sentence. It was ugly yet eloquent and very, very Australian. Anyway, Dad got the message and, feeling a little like the stupid Pommy bastard that he was just called, slunk away to explore another option. After driving about the trackless gem fields for thirty minutes, Dad was finally able to buy enough fresh water from a prospector. It wasn’t much, but enough for breakfast at least.
That night was a whole new experience for us. We had pitched our tent adjacent to a huge gum tree for shade, which was fine during the day, but as soon as we lit our small lamps at night all hell broke loose – like something from an evil nursery rhyme:
Down came the spiders.
Some of the biggest huntsman spiders I have ever seen decided to call our tent home. They were bigger than a lumberjack’s hand, very hairy and when spreadeagled, could cover a human face with ease. In the light of our little tilley lamp, Mum was trying to keep us calm by reading stories from our one and only children’s book, but every second sentence was interrupted by one of us screaming, ‘There’s another one, look over there!’ or ‘Quick, kill it!
I’m not sure how long it took for us to get to sleep but the morning sun was truly a welcome sight. Interestingly, the hairy freeloaders had crawled back up into the tree before the daylight arrived. At least that’s what we hoped, but as we couldn’t be sure our sleeping bags were checked time and again before being rolled up for the day.
We were advised by the people in the mining office to pick a site in or around an existing, abandoned, dig site. This meant less work and made it easier for the novice to find decent gems. We all set about scraping, scratching and digging in and around our site and, to our surprise, we actually started to unearth a few sapphires; nothing huge, but enough to keep us interested. Maybe? Now this was our first full day of fossicking. And it would also be our last.
We had driven over 1,700 kilometres to spend one full day in the gem fields of Anakie. The lack of water, the heat, the terrain and the bloody huge spiders were enough for us lily-white, under-prepared and overambitious Scottish adventurers to handle. The biggest gems we found were by the side of the gravel road as we were leaving Anakie.
Although we didn’t strike it rich, we did have a few tales to tell. So, with his tail tucked between his bowed, sunburnt, Scottish legs, Dad put the little Morris into gear, and we were out of there. We were convinced that the best thing to be found in the Anakie dust was the road home. We headed off on the long journey south, buoyed by the fact that the small amount of time we spent scraping around in the gem fields meant more time at the coastal camp grounds dotted along our route home.
As they say, the destination isn’t important; it’s the journey that counts.
We all survived the great sapphire hunt of 1966. Well, nearly all of us. The poor, ‘brand-new’Morris 1100 found the distance and the excessive load a little too much and she was eventually put out to pasture somewhere in the car yards of Parramatta Road. She was traded for a second-hand beast, but her memory lives on in the Bruce family.
Goodbye DNJ 208. Lest We Forget.
~
During our years at Greenacre, Dad worked as a bus driver for a short while but he always seemed to gravitate back to what he knew best; furniture removal. He would sometimes be on the road for weeks, leaving Mum to look after us and the house. She would be working her day job then come home to a house full of neighbourhood kids, homework, washing, ironing, cooking and cleaning. My parents were definitely not afraid of hard work, I’m just not sure if they utilised their drive and enthusiasm to their best advantage. I’m now convinced they brought with them the ‘British Council House’mentality. In their world, only the rich owned their homes, it wasn’t for people like us. The best we could do was put our name on the register for a government Housing Commission house. The list was long and the wait could be years, but Mum and Dad saw that as our only option.
With primary school over, I had been attending Punchbowl Boys High School for three months when a letter arrived from the NSW Department of Housing. It was 1969 and we had been offered our first permanent address since arriving in Australia. Dad was on shift work at the time so he was home. He was over the moon because our new residence was in the same street as one of his best mates, Paddy McHugh. He and his family became lifelong friends after meeting at East Hills Hostel. Mum wasn’t so sure about our prospective address. I remember how her face went an awful shade of grey when I ran up to the bus stop to greet her.
‘Mum, guess what? We’re moving to Green Valley.’
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
