‘There all night, she said.’ Kennie had to shout to make me hear above the roar of the engine, the rattle of the aged chassis. ‘Must be pretty tired by now.’
I nodded. ‘Maybe we’ll meet him coming back.’ He had told Janet he wouldn’t be long. I hoped we would meet him.
‘What is it he’s looking for if he’s already found the reef?’ But I didn’t answer. I was tired and though I was driving as fast as I could on that lousy track, the nearer I got the less I seemed to want to arrive. It wasn’t premonition. It was just that driving was in itself sufficient activity for my depleted reserves. In the end, I drove in silence, and as we left Mt Robinson behind us, I found myself dreading the moment when I saw the mine buildings again with that thin, solitary chimney towering black against the blinding white of the sky. A sound of thunder rumbled in the distance. But no sign of rain, the whole oven vault above empty of the smallest cloud.
It was eleven minutes to twelve when the mine buildings came abruptly into view round that red outcrop of rock. But everything was obscured, the iron chimney a blurred pencil-line, half lost in a haze of dust. It hung over the gully and plain below, a red miasma that had both of us choking with our handkerchiefs across our faces as we drove into it. ‘Dust storm,’ Kennie yelled.
But I knew it wasn’t a dust storm. ‘No wind.’
‘Mebbe wind out there.’ He nodded east towards the Gibson. But if this was Gibson sand, driven and suspended over miles of bush, we would have felt the weight of the wind and we’d have been in the sand all the way. Whatever it was, it was entirely local, and with my heart suddenly pounding I drove past the tin-tattered buildings wrapped in dust and swung the Land-Rover up the track towards the dark shadow of the mouth of the gully. I was on headlights then, everything choked with fine red dust, and where the old workings began it was pouring out of the ground, red boiling smoke billowing up and a great pit just in front of us. If I’d been going downhill I wouldn’t have had a hope, but because of the gradient I was able to stop the Land-Rover dead. Even so the front wheels were on the very edge of that enormous boiling unbelievable cavity.
An eruption? A crater?
‘What the hell’s happened?’ Kennie was staring.
But I think I knew. I think we both knew as the dust smoke veered and the ragged nature of the pit showed in the headlights.
‘Christ! It’s a cave-in.’
We got out, handkerchiefs pressed tight over our mouths. It wasn’t just one pit. It was a series of pits. All the old workings opened up into gaping holes that vented dust. The whole mine must have collapsed internally. I was thinking of Ed Garrety then as we climbed towards the entrance, wishing to God we’d met him on the track. Down there he hadn’t a hope. Even if he were still alive, I didn’t think there was a chance of a rescue team reaching him.
The entrance, when we reached it, was still there, the rock mouth gaping and billowing dust, no sign of the wooden door. It was impossible, so soon after the cave-in, to reach the shaft, and I just stood there, gazing about me, too appalled to do anything but wonder how I was going to break the news to Janet.
‘That the door you spoke about?’
We had started back and he was pointing to a heavy rectangle of wood lying on the far side of die gully. It has been blown there by the force of the air rushing out of the mine. I was thinking of the two lower levels, the dangerous sloping: the whole thing must have come down like a pack of cards.
The dust-boil had lessened by the time we got back to the side of the old costeans, the headlights of the Land-Rover dimmed by the strange fluorescence of sunlight on dust, a glow that hurt the eyes after the darkness of the gully. We climbed in, not saying a word, and I backed and turned and drove into the brightness, the mine buildings growing ghostly in the iridescent light. ‘The noise,’ Kennie said. ‘Remember? Like thunder. It must have been a hell of a collapse.’
‘Yes.’ I was out of the gully now, following the tramlines down.
‘Couldn’t be anyone alive down there, not after that. We must have been two miles away when we heard it. And it was his own fault really. He must have known it would collapse at any moment.’
Kennie’s face was white below the dust film, his eyes scared.
I said: ‘I’m going back to the homestead now. Janet has to be told. And then she can get the authorities on the radio. We’ll come back when the dust has settled and see if the shaft is still intact.’
He nodded, but reluctantly, his long-fingered hands clasped tightly about his knees.
‘Then there’s Westrop. If we can find out where the other entrance …’ A figure appeared in the red haze at the corner of the crusher shed. I had reached the bottom of the tramlines then and had just turned left past the mine office. I didn’t recognize him at first. He jerked to a stop as though shocked into immobility at the sight of us. The iron grey hair, and stooped, slightly rounded shoulders — I hardly dared believe it. But as I slowed to a stop the Alsatian joined him and I knew it really was Ed Garrety.
‘What’re you doing here?’ His voice shook, his eyes seemingly half afraid, his body literally snaking with nervous exhaustion. He looked at the point of collapse. ‘Were you here when — ‘ His Adam’s apple worked as though the dust he’d absorbed had clogged his throat.
‘No — about two miles away.’ I said. ‘Thank God you weren’t in the mine.’
He nodded vaguely. ‘Two miles away. You heard it?’
‘Like thunder,’ Kennie cried excitedly. ‘And then all the dust. We thought you were a goner for sure.’
He nodded slowly, seeming to relax a little. ‘You saw Janet?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s back at home then.’ He seemed relieved. But when I told him about Westrop and how he’d learned of another entrance to the mine he went still as death.
‘You say — they’re down there now?’ He seemed to have difficulty getting the words out.
‘I hope not, but I don’t know.’
He shook his head as though unwilling to accept responsibility for others getting themselves involved. His face grey beneath the stubble, his breath short, his eyes desperately weary.
‘Do you know where the other entrance is?’
He didn’t answer. He seemed completely dazed.
‘Do you know where it is?’ I repeated. ‘Can you show us?’
He nodded slowly. ‘That explains it.’ He was speaking to himself, the words coming in a whisper.
‘Explains what?’
‘The other vehicle. An old Chev. I’d only just seen it, down by the shearing shed!’ And then he seemed to pull himself together as if he had suddenly reached a decision. ‘You follow me.’ He called to the Alsatian and walked slowly passed the mine office, his head bowed and moving slackly, uncertainly, a man near the end of his tether living in a nightmare. He disappeared behind the building that housed the crushing plant and a moment later the ute appeared. He drew up beside me, the Alsatian leaning her head out of the window, her tongue lolling. ‘Have you got helmets?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ He nodded, and I followed in his dust stream, round the comer of the building, out on to a track that skirted the scrub-grown mounds of the tailings dump, running out into the flat land beyond. We stopped beside the Chev. It had Oration Downs Tin Mine painted on the side, and beyond it, the tattered tin of the old shearing shed stood blistering in the sun, gaps torn in the roof and the door hanging drunkenly on broken hinges. Ed Garrety led the way inside and it was like an oven, the wheels and belt drives for the clippers dim in the darkness above the shearing platform. The big wooden clip bailer had been pushed over on to its side revealing a hole in the ground with rough-hewn steps. ‘No dust in here, so we’ll probably find the gallery blocked by a fall.’ Ed Garrety’s voice was bleak. ‘Three of them you said, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right. Westrop, a Kalgoorlie miner named Lennie, and the native who used to work for you — Wolli. You saw them last night.’