The Opal Desert (26 page)

‘Where would you like to go? To Sydney? To the beach and see your friends?'

Shirley shook her head. ‘After being out here, I don't want to go back to Sydney. That's my old life.' She suddenly smiled. ‘I know just where I want to go. A place I want you to see.'

‘And that is . . . ?'

‘Opal Lake. Dad's old mine. I've been thinking about it lately. We can camp there, but I want to take you out to the lake, too. It's a magical place. There won't be any water there but once, as a child, I saw it full and I've never forgotten it.'

‘A lake with no water. You mean it's a desert lake?'

She shook her head. ‘Well, yes, but no. It's an opal lake. Anyway, that's how I think of it. It's where the rainbow ends, in melting colours. It's just special. Let's go, Stefan! Get away from this sinister place where such awful things happen.'

‘Okay, we will. Opal Lake sounds lovely.' He kissed her. ‘And you're right. It was a terrible thing that happened to Viktor. But we might be wrong, looking for conspiracies around Viktor's death. His murder might just have been done by greedy ratters looking for the main chance. Anyway, I think it's time that we made some decisions. Should we sell some of the roughs so we have a bit of a nest egg?'

‘Yes, but the good firsts of black opal we'll take to Roth Cameron, later,' said Shirley firmly.

Shirley didn't talk much as they drove towards Opal Lake. Stefan hummed quietly, occasionally breaking into song. After a while he glanced at Shirley and reached over and squeezed her knee.

‘You look nostalgic. Are you thinking about your father?'

‘Yes, I was,' said Shirley quietly. ‘It was a happy time, coming out here.'

‘Opal Lake will be happy for us, too,' said Stefan.

Shirley truly believed that to be so.

They set up a tent by the edge of the lake and camped there. Both felt that they had come to rest in a very different, gentle and magical world.

As the sun set on the second evening, Shirley lifted her face to the crimson sky and sighed. ‘I needed this. Soul balm. It's good to know there's a place you can come where it will be soothing and special.'

Stefan gazed at her lovely face, washed in the warm rosy glow of the sunset. ‘I'm glad you've shown me this peaceful place. We can come here again if you like.'

‘Hmm. That's nice. Nice to have someone to make plans with,' murmured Shirley. Then, after a moment, she asked, ‘Just what are our plans?'

‘Shirley, stop thinking ahead for a bit and enjoy this sunset. Tell me what it was like when you were here with your father.'

‘It was wonderful. When I first saw this lake, it was filled with shallow water and covered in birds. Just a wonderland. My dad showed me the constellations, and taught me a bit about geological history and of course I was swept away with the idea that once there were ancient forests and dinosaurs here.'

‘Hard to imagine. And no opals under the lake?'

‘No, wrong sort of rock. So hardly anyone comes here, which is how I like it.'

The sky was molten red as the full silver moon rose over them.

The few days she and Stefan spent at the lake were forever cemented in Shirley's memory. Not only had she returned to the place she'd visited with her father all those years ago, but she'd done so with the man she loved, and it all seemed exquisitely appropriate. Now, out here, alone together, there was a poignancy to their passion, and an uninhibited and childish freedom. This was a place where they could run and laugh naked in the moonlight, calling out to the stars in ecstasy. Stefan sang to the lake, his tenor voice reaching across its empty surface, while Shirley imagined that his beautiful notes would sink into the silver sand, to be there always and if, in years to come, she dug into the lake, she would retrieve the sound of his voice. Oh, yes, these days would forever be in her heart.

One day they drove into the town of Opal Lake. Shirley wanted to see her mine, while Stefan wanted to visit the little township, which he found intriguing. He stood at the mouth of Albert's mine atop the hill and gazed at the few dwellings and buildings below, and the empty russet and olive landscape melting into the horizon.

‘You would always feel safe here. It's as though the last survivors of a catastrophe could shelter in their mines and when the disaster was over they would quietly emerge from their holes in the ground and start over.'

‘What nonsense. You talk like the end of the world is imminent. Don't be so depressing.'

‘Slavs are known for the black dog. Woe is me!' said Stefan cheerfully.

‘Don't you go getting mournful and negative on me,' said Shirley. ‘I like happy people.'

‘That's me. You make me happy. Come on, show me round inside.'

Stefan took Shirley's hand as she showed him the dugout, pointing out what her father had done. ‘He made it big enough so we could shelter inside, but we cooked outside. Dad and I always dreamed of making this mine into a decent living area.'

‘And staying here?'

‘Originally it was just for holidays in the winter season. But things didn't work out and we were only here the once . . . So here it sits.'

‘We could make it liveable.' Stefan glanced around. ‘There could still be opal in here. I mean, your father must have thought so, or he wouldn't have claimed it. What's that pile of rubble in that drive down there?'

‘There was a fall-in. Dad decided to leave that section where the ground slopes away because he said that it was unstable.'

‘We have better machinery now. Maybe we could dig it out and prop it up.'

‘So this would be our holiday home?' Shirley laughed. ‘We work in your mine and then come over here and work in my mine. When do we get a break?'

‘When we go to Sydney to sell our fabulous collection of opals.'

‘I wonder when that will be,' said Shirley. ‘But it's the search, the living in hope, and the enjoyment of what we do that keeps us going. Right?'

‘Never give up, Shirley, on anything or anyone. That's what I believe.'

After they returned to Lightning Ridge, Shirley remembered their stay at Opal Lake as the most romantic time she had ever experienced. But she couldn't help an occasional niggle about the future. She didn't want to push Stefan but, in her practical forthright way, she hoped that they might formalise their relationship. Moreover, it worried her that the mine at the Ridge was not proving as fruitful as it had been.

‘Stefan, do you think it's time that we moved on from here?' she asked while they were taking a tea break after a very unproductive morning.

‘There have been some big finds on the new field at Grawin,' said Stefan. ‘The opal's light green and good quality. I wouldn't mind staking a claim there.'

‘And selling this claim? How do we find a buyer?'

‘Spread the word. Notify the miners. There're more people coming here all the time.'

‘What about Opal Lake?'

‘I think that we'll need more money to set us up for that, Shirley. We would have to fix up the dugout before we can get down to serious mining, and that will cost us. Unless we hit a seam while digging out the bedroom.' He laughed.

‘I've got a bit of money saved and I'm never going back to Sydney to live, so I could use it for the Opal Lake mine,' said Shirley.

He kissed her. ‘People will say you're a crazy woman. Maybe that's why I love you. Let's give it two more weeks here and then we move.'

Perhaps because they were both thinking about moving on, their efforts to clear out the final section of the mine were somewhat distracted. Shirley still felt uneasy in Stefan's mine because Stefan's partner had been killed in it. While the opal they had found had been welcome, it did no more than pay for their living expenses. It was not a payoff for their hard work. And ever since the murder of Viktor, Shirley felt slightly claustrophobic and apprehensive underground, and she was glad that Stefan was close by.

‘I can't wait to have our claim together, away from here,' she said.

Stefan, working further down the drive, merely hummed and nodded.

Shortly afterwards, Shirley shouted to him over the noise of his small jackhammer. ‘Stef! Come and look at this.'

He peered over Shirley's shoulder as she gently crumbled the clay away from where she'd been digging. She was rubbing dirt and clay from a small piece of oddly shaped rock.

‘What is it?' she said. ‘It's not like a regular nobby at all and it's quite an unusual shape.'

‘Let's try and clean it up,' suggested Stefan.

He carefully began to remove the outside dirt and Shirley cried out. ‘It's a piece of vertebra. I know one when I see one. It's an opalised vertebra. That's just amazing.'

‘Let's see if there are any more.'

With their small gouging picks, they both gently scratched into the soft sandstone and clay, and found another odd-shaped piece of rock. Stefan cleaned it up and it, too, proved to be another small piece of a backbone.

‘Have you any idea what this could be from?' asked Stefan.

‘No, not really. Hold the light on it.' Shirley held the fossil against the light beam and they both saw the surface translucent with a faint hint of rainbow colours like a water slick on oil.

‘Since it's a fossil it must be very old. Maybe there's more of whatever it is.'

‘I've heard miners talk about finds like these but even if they have good colour, they won't cut into gems, so they're worthless, Shirley. Just little pieces of curiosity, and I'm not convinced that we should be wasting time searching for opalised fossils.'

‘Stefan, I am really very curious. Dad used to tell me about the ancient animals that roamed this part of Australia millions of years ago, and these vertebrae are obviously the remains of one of them. I think finding fossils is very exciting.'

‘Speculate away, darling, but they're not worth anything unless you can cut jewellery from them.'

Not dissuaded, Shirley was enchanted by her finds. The stories miners told around the fire when she was little came back to her: tales of weird creatures, their bones burning with opal fire and empty eye sockets filled with glittering gems, unearthed from their ancient sleep. Yet most fossils were deemed worthless and were smashed by uncaring miners just to get to the more valuable opal. As she looked at the wild and dazzling patterns of opal that had replaced the living tissue of a long dead creature, Shirley thought that these fossils were magical.

Shirley tried to explain how she felt about them to Stefan. ‘Opal is a piece of silica that is transformed beyond beauty. But when something that was
alive
becomes an opal . . .' She lifted her arms, her eyes shining. ‘It's just something else again.'

He turned one of the small gleaming vertebra over in his palm. ‘I understand, I think. They're part of another world. Animals and plants frozen in time.'

‘And shells, and fish from an inland sea, which is now an ocean of billowing dust,' added Shirley.

Stefan stared at her, then leant over and gave her a kiss. ‘Shirley, you have changed my world,' he said softly. ‘I thought opals were the most beautiful gem in the world. But you are the most precious.' He dropped the shining vertebra into her hand and curled her fingers over them. ‘Because they are so important to you, we will keep these opalised fossils and never sell them.'

‘Thank you, my darling. Anyway, as you have pointed out, we haven't found anything that is of great value. We should be so lucky. But I just love that we found these little fossils.'

Call it luck, or fate, but they did find another rare and beautiful object. Later on that day they unearthed part of an even more brilliant opalised fossil.

‘Look at this,' said Stefan. ‘I've found something. It's solid opal, and I think that it could be part of an animal that's a lot bigger than the other ones we've found.'

Shirley looked to where he was pointing and there, embedded in the wall of the mine, was part of a large opalised fossil.

Her heart began thumping and she couldn't speak. She knew this was a stupendous find. Something she could never have imagined. ‘I think it's a bit of a femur, the thigh bone,' whispered Shirley. ‘It's amazing. Can we get it out?'

They carefully cut the block of clay from the wall and lay it on the floor of the drive. In the light they studied their find, gingerly reaching out a finger to stroke the exposed blue-green opal fossil shot with waves of red and gold lights.

‘This is the best opal I've ever seen,' whispered Stefan.

‘Can we get the fossilised bone out of the clay without destroying it?' asked Shirley.

‘I think so, if we're really careful. Do you know what it came from?' asked Stefan in wonder.

Shirley touched it delicately. ‘From what I remember my father saying, it must be part of a dinosaur. I'm sure it's a femur and it's far too big to be part of any mammal that was around at that time. Mammals were really tiny when these rocks were laid down. Oh, Stefan, as a little girl I always wanted to find a dinosaur, and now we have.'

‘It's beautiful all right. I think that when we get it out of the rock, it will be worth quite a lot of money because it's such a big solid piece of opal. It's the pot of gold we've been talking about. The money we can use to reopen your mine.'

‘No!' said Shirley vehemently. ‘Stefan, I want to keep it. You promised that we wouldn't sell any fossils and this is really important to me.' She couldn't explain it, she'd never felt so possessive, so deeply attached to an object before. She felt as though some incomprehensibly lovely gift had just been given to her.

Stefan looked at her, thinking of the immense value of the opal and how anyone else would sell it for a fortune. Then he laughed.

‘Well, my darling, when I made that promise, I never imagined that we would find something that could change our whole lives, but if you want to keep it rather than sell it, I will stick to my part of the bargain. Of course, when we are living in discomfort at Opal Lake, I might just remind you that things could have been different.' He tenderly kissed the tip of her nose. ‘Shall we give it a name?' he said suddenly.