Sandstone, October 2020 - part 4
A Crystal Cave and one of the Seven Dwarfs - a modern day fairytale.
If you need to catch up on this particular thread, here are links to previous parts: 1, 2, & 3.
Part 4:
“Mal, I had a nightmare last night.”
We’d woken at sunrise in the swags beside the kangaroo shooter’s campfire, rattled into consciousness by another drone of kamikaze flies. I’d given up caring about their persistent attacks, so was laying back with my arms under my neck cradling my sore head, flyscreen open to the sky, open-mouth breathing as the flies dove into the fumes emanating from the noxious orifice. Many of them perished, the stronger ones performed aerobatic manoeuvres to avoid certain death. Mal lay quietly, trying to avoid the conversation. We were in the middle of the Goldfields Outback; who was going to come save him from me? Where could he run?
“What was it,” Mal finally groaned.
“I was attacked by a flock of wild bush-geese!”
I heard him sigh. He too then moved his arms under his neck to cradle his head; but, he did not open the flyscreen. Perhaps he knew it was a trap. He lay there motionless and silent for a long while. It was clearly a standoff. I soon ceded.
“What do you think it meeeeaaaans?” I drawled.
Mal sighed heavily. “Dave,” he said firmly, “last night, when I was ready to hit the swag, you looked in the esky and made a deal with me. You said ‘there’s only one iced-coffee left, and if you let me finish all the Bush Chooks tonight, you can have it in the morning’. Do you remember making that deal?”
My eyes widened as the memory gasped an unwitting fly into my oesophagus. “Oh yeah!” I exhaled as the fly jetted itself back out and into the stratosphere to escape the poisonous gas. “Is flock even the correct plural for bush-geese, Barry?”
Mal got up and unfairly helped himself to the sole remaining iced-coffee. We ate three boiled eggs each, a muesli bar, and doused the campfire with water then dirt. It was time to leave the kangaroo-shooters camp.
With the Landie packed, we bushwhacked the track back west to the Sandstone to Payne’s Find gravel road, past the Breakaways, past the kangaroo and goat carcasses that had threatened our hearts a day prior, and past any logical conclusion I had hoped for on this third trip to Sandstone. All sensibility was lost.
“Where are we headed?” asked Mal as he took a swig of his iced-coffee. It was clearly a power move, and I couldn’t help but feel proud of this new nasty streak of his.
“I reckon we go back to Ray and Jennie’s camp, have a bit more of a look-see, then head into Sandstone town and catch up with Scruffy.”
“Sounds good,” said Mal, passing the iced-coffee over my way for a swig. I declined, pushing it back, not able to handle that he was still being a good-guy.
We reached the Bell Chambers camp area and entered via the northern track. This entrance was now thoroughly worn since having being the entry point for all traffic following Ray and Jennie’s disappearance five years prior. More recently, it had also been used for drilling equipment. We made our way to the region surrounding Ray’s HOLE, parked up then wandered around inspecting the other mine shafts, and …well… nope, that’s all that there is there: mine shafts. The deep shaft with the pepper-spray in it. The shallow protrusion that contained a dead kangaroo. The horizontal shaft with the fabled crystals. All the other HOLES from the search and rescue reports. We had a look-see at and around them all.
When we found the horizontal shaft, we took a moment. “This is the one old mate Grumpy claims they were headed for on the Mud-Map, Mal!” I guffawed.
“Yeah, right,” Mal correctly summised.
“Coincidence that it’s just up here, huh?” I said.
The Crystal Cave, as it shall be now known forever more, is a mere minute’ walk, or less than thirty second by any form of vehicle—car, truck, or quad—from the mine shaft Ray was found in. It is easily distinguished by a high collar of old weathered timber, and when you look inside the entrance, the shaft quickly turns from a short vertical opening to a long, horizontal path leading to inky darkness. If the rumours are true, along this pathway bright quartz crystals exposed from the old mine digging glint in your head-torch light.
Mal and I were both looking down the shaft, trying to see the crystals without having to climb down. “It’s a nice story, isn’t it?” I said. “Climbing into a cave full of crystals with a head torch on. Very romantic.”
“Not sure I’d drive all the way out here for the experience though,” said Mal.
“It makes a good story, though. A great story.”
My memories of the Coroner’s Court from January that year were playing in my mind. Old mate Grumpy insisted that the Crystal Cave was their sole purpose of any intended travel north from their camp. He argued that they were there to prospect a Three Million Dollar Spot which was coincidentally located in the exact opposite direction. At Ray’s determination, no less... That was his reason for directing the initial search and rescue crews to the south and southeast, in a wild-goose-chase miles from Ray’s final resting place: “Oi was just doin what theys arksed me to doin!” he spat from the witness box.
“Mr Miller,” the State Solicitor’s Counsel stood him to task, “you now say that you did travel north from camp, past where Mr Kehlet was found deceased, yet you did not think to show the initial search team this area?”
“Oi just dids what theys arksed, nuffin more!” he spat again. “They arksed me where was tha free million dollar patch, and I showsed ‘em!”
It was the only time I had to excuse myself from the courtroom. Hear about Ray’s injuries, yeah that was tough. Senior Constable Lee’s description of the body retrieval, well now there are no words for that brief of evidence. But, fairytales? I didn’t have the stomach nor the patience to listen to fairytales. So I politely bowed to Her Honour and left the room.
Mal and I wandered back down toward the HOLE where Ray was found, following the prospector’s tracks. I demonstrated the fairytale scenario, riding an imaginary quad from the Crystal Cave past the HOLE and toward camp.
“So, old mate would have been flying on his quad bike like this, lungdart in his gob,” I said, demonstrating riding with a malevolent frown and wrinkled, pursed lips tightly holding a cigarette to the wind. “Then, when he got to this spot, he flicked his dart off to the side and kept on riding.” I was at the fork in the track adjacent the HOLE, flicking my imaginary cigarette with one hand while still heavy-throttle on the quad with the other, as was suggested in court. “The lungdart somehow, like magic, landed precisely near Jennie’s two lungdarts that she would have smoked two days later whilst at the HOLE alone with Ray.”
“That is a wild story,” said Mal.
“Now, I’m not sure any physics research studies have been undertaken on the velocity and likely aerodynamics of projectile lungdarts, Mal, but I’m fairly sure that’s a one-in-a billion shot from this distance, not to mention the bazillion hectares elsewhere that dart could have been discarded.” We were stood at the fork, looking across at the spot where the butts were found. There was even a small shrub between the locations.
“Geez, some people, hey?” Mal groaned.
“Mal, stand at the fork, I’m gonna get a photo to show in court if someone tries that excuse again,” I said. “Let’s see some fancy lawyer explain those physics.” I squinted and poked my tongue out as the shutter captured the scene. “‘Beyond reasonable doubt’ my arse,” I grumbled.
“What the hell’s going on over there?” said Mal, pointing to a small low-lying plain just east of the HOLE. The ground was pockmarked with cement coloured divots.
“Oh yeah, I haven’t told you that great moment in humanity yet, you’re gonna love this,” I said. “The tenement holder for this area is a company called Vegas or Venus or whatever. They’ve been sitting on it for years waiting for a reason to develop. Get this, during the very first search, when there were planes and helicopters up here, that tenement holder negotiated with the company who were hired for the copter search, and strapped a big F-off sized aerial survey unit on the front of the helicopter. Turns out, this place is loaded with gold, it’s just deeper than the old-timers could have ever possibly found.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope, it’s loaded.”
“No, I mean, they used the helicopter search to survey the area for gold?” Mal corrected.
“Oh yeah, then they released a report a year later, to boost their ASX stocks. I found it while searching for tenement maps. The survey map was a deadset match—date, time and pattern—of the search-helicopter data they showed us in the cop-shop back then. I sent it to the coppers, but I never heard any more about it. The report has now been deleted, too.”
The summary of the survey was described in the report as: "An airborne VTEM survey was flown by UTS Geophysics in April 2015 with the VTEM max system on flight lines oriented 120-300° on 250m spacing." The survey map was an exact match to Ray and Jennie’s search and rescue thermal heat scan.
“So, they’re drilling now . . .to do what?”
“I’m guessing proving the funding for an F-off sized open-pit mine.”
“Geez, some people, hey?” Mal groaned.
"Yep, imagine the arsehole who made that call back then. ‘There’s a helicopter search for two people missing in the area, so let’s strap a big fuck-off gold detector to it—two birds, one stone and all that’. They probably pull wings off flies in their spare time.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Mal, dejected.
We drove into Sandstone town.
Continue to Part 5: The Bush Chook Irresistible Force Paradox
The most expensive land search in WA’s history. At least someone came out on top…