This (Rocky) Life

Written for the 'This Life' section of The Weekend Australian, which calls for contributors to write a 600 word first-person account of some aspect of their life.

‘Bloody geos,’ the driller yelled the other day, over the roar of his phallic machines. ‘Give a group of ‘em a rock and they’ll argue over it for hours.’ A common anecdote in the mineral exploration industry, but a false one.

Now, I sit on the polished rubble of a pathetic low outcrop, one of the few God has delivered me in this remote quarter of Western Australia’s goldfields. Somewhere under this silent landscape there lies an economic accumulation of gold. I have to believe that. The prospect of there being no needle in the haystack – of this physically and mentally and financially expensive effort being not just fruitless but hopeless from the outset – cannot be entertained.

I will sit here studying the landforms and vegetation and the scarce red-weathered bedrock until I know, until I feel, what was happening here 2.5 billion years ago. Where would the gold-bearing fluids have deposited their treasure? If, indeed, there was any gold-bearing fluid. I shudder, despite the heat.

Contemplation – ‘becoming the rock’ – is a geologist’s most effective weapon. A multinational I once worked for asked that employees code their work time by activity performed. There was no code for ‘thinking’. The exploration department revolted and was made exempt.

The geologist is slow, but the earth is patient. The earth, in fact, is tormenting, showing just enough to bewitch, just too little to embolden. In my mind the geology and prospectivity change with each dusty scrap of evidence I gather, but the reality is that, out here, nothing has changed in a very long time. The earth is dormant, the gold either there or not there. But where? Or not where?

There’s a name for this illness of mine: gold fever. No, it didn’t pass with the 19th century. The only difference is that we have Landcruisers and water. No-one is dying. The lust, the passion, the absence of reason; geologists dragged away from their pet prospects, pleading with the money-men for ‘one more drillhole’. I see it often.

It’s strange behaviour to an observer, because the company geologist doesn’t stand to gain financially. It won’t be his gold or nickel or copper: he is paid good money to find it or, as is more often the case, not find it. But the fever is not driven by greed.

I have no interest in the mining and the money. I just want, once, to defeat Mother Nature. Or, to put it better, to have Mother Nature applaud me as her equal. I just want to find that mother-lode and walk away, vindicated. Oh, for the high that would give me!

It’s a consuming profession. I see life through the framework of geology. I see people metamorphose under heat and pressure; erupt like Krakatoa; settle like silt in the Ganges delta. It’s also intensely individual: just me, alone, versus the 100 km2 or 1000 km2 I’ve been assigned, armed only with a hammer, a magnifying lens and my bare wits. Unless they’re going to sit in the dirt here with me, no-one else need be involved.

There’s no such thing as a group of geologists.

I wander over to the next subtle rise, breathing in the heat and the smells and the flies. There’s no sound but my own. Perfect. I kneel down and lick the dust from the rock.

I am in a deep ocean trench. Sediment pours in from the adjacent volcanic range, hot bombs fizz past from above. The earth cracks and grinds and I know that I am close. Think, Michael. Think.

Letter to Kalgoorlie Miner

In response to:

As a resident of Kalgoorlie for the past 24 months, having come from Perth, I am becoming disillusioned by the current state and attitude by in the 'city of extremes'.

The majority of people here are (let's be honest) only here for the quick cash, and then bugger off somewhere else. I tend to find these types of people (usually identifiable by their apparent desire of material things like big 4x4 vehicles, several beer fridges, a 3 m wide LCD television, and basically a greedy nature without considering anyone else) they lack social skills when communicating with those of us who earn more modest incomes and live a more modest and real lifestyle.

Then on the other hand, you have people who won't lift a finger and find a job! They revel in dire conditions and choose to eat takeaway meals three times a day and wonder why they are obese!

Now before some whinge at me in defence, it is not jealousy or sour grapes, it's reality!

I mean, for a town that is probably one of the best known gold mining locations on earth, so little money is actually put back into developing a decent infrastructure for the benefit of residents! But then again the very roots of 'East Coolgardie' was greed and lust of the yellow metal. Instead we have wasted money on fleshy pursuits and crazy superficial projects that benefit only the wealthy.

What about under staffing at the local hospital, the terrible pot holes in the roads and the most embarassing thing I have ever seen for a supposedly 'rich' city, the third world-like road conditions when the heavy rains were here three weeks ago? I was driving through many a street and was absolutely shocked with the very poor drainage system. I thought I was in India, driving through the Ganges or some canal in Venice.

Sorry, but Kalgoorlie is a laughing stock when it comes to infrastructure and culture. I've lived in smaller towns that actually have a decent standard of living, where people show genuine kindness to each other, have a culture other than sex, beer and money, and where greed is not the be all and end all.

Kalgoorlie and Boulder need revolutionising. It's time many woke up and smelt the coffee! If the much expected worldwide economic crash happens, many will truly be in the poo.

P Walterman, Kalgoorlie



P Walterman, in his thesis (Letters 15th March) dividing Kalgoorlie-Boulder residents, all uncultured, into two further sub-classes – the greedy and materialistic, the fat and unemployed - begs us not to cry “jealousy or sour grapes” in response. Don’t worry friend, I won’t say either.

What I will say is that you are ignorant. What I will say is that you are hypocritical. What I will say is that you belong to that third and most unwelcome class of Kalgoorlie residents: the man who vainly elevates himself to the position of anthropologist upon his arrival in town; who forms his opinions on exteriors alone; who flaps about in the shallow fringes of the river, too weak and insecure to explore the depths.

What I’d really like to know, P Walterman, is what you look like. Honestly. What is it about your exterior image – your body shape, your clothing, your motor vehicle – that will catch my eye as I pass you in the street, and define you as a man of culture and intellect and integrity? Do you have a t-shirt that says “I’ve read Dickens”? Or perhaps it’s your “Free Tibet” bumper sticker?

You won’t know me, because I’ll be in a dirty orange shirt or a blue singlet or a pair of footy shorts or, from time to time, nothing at all. I’ll have a patchy beard. I’ll be driving a rusted out Valiant. And yeah, I’ll be eating Hungry Jacks.

You are the shallow and judgemental one. You are the one defining people by the money they have the good fortune to earn. But you are not only defining the people by their exteriors – you are doing the same for the town itself.

I urge you, P Walterman, to look for depth in Kalgoorlie-Boulder and in its people. It’s not hard. The only people I know who leave town bitter and untouched are those that refuse - they are not unable, they refuse – to look past the trucks and hookers and pubs and spoon-drains. Some are the greedy, some are the lazy, but many are the P Waltermans.

You need to stop observing town and become a part of it. Leap through that window behind which you sit and lament, my friend. It will only hurt for a bit. And Kal chicks dig scars.

Harvey's Odyssey II

Startled by the heavy slam of the door behind him, the coach turns quickly, his dress shoes spinning on the sweaty white tiles. The shouts that lured him in die quickly to a murmur, and quicker again to nothing. Twenty-five pairs of taps screech, and the hiss and roar of twenty-five hot showers fades into the empty depth of twenty-five cold silences, one on top of another. The only sound remaining is the padded thump-thump of panicked hearts.

He can see nothing: some meddling immortal – that spiteful earth-shaker Poseidon, he supposes - has conspired to create a thick steam haze. His eyes scan the whiteness. It’s futile. He clears his throat and speaks sharply.

“What the hell is going on in here?”

The white-tiled walls return the query, unanswered. He can sense the bodies surrounding him, and opens his mouth to force the question, but a single faint drip interrupts. Biting his lower lip in contemplation, he surveys the mist again: nothing. Ten seconds later there’s another drip, a little bit louder now. It’s coming from the doorway. A long minute later, and the drip is beating at presto tempo in unison with the now-vibrating hearts.

The mist begins to thin. As his eyes begin to serve him, the coach is horrified by the sight of a swirling pink rivulet of diluted blood, sliding into the drain at his feet. Like prospectors chasing some cursed treasure, his eyes follow the trace upstream to the headwaters, slowly revealed by the mocking mist. Then Poseidon, with an impeccable feel for dramatic timing, sweeps the remaining cover away in an instant, revealing the source with stunning effect. Its form is unmistakable.

Minutes earlier, it had all been good fun. But convention dictates that after any period of good fun, somebody must lose an eye. That somebody was:

“Sandi?”

The 211 cm chunk of flesh now guarding the door had been the innocent victim of a twisted-towel whip fight between the two Johnsons: a typically-reckless Mark had missed a typically-agile Michael, lashing the eyeball of the typically-omnipresent ruckman. Several small midfielders now lay writhing on the floor as testament to the sickening violence that followed.

Sandilands now licks at the blood streaming from his bubbling right socket, savouring its thick metallic tang and salinity. His good eye peers up from under his brow, fixing on the coach, and a growl escapes from his cavernous chest. The men, now visible and pressed against the walls, await direction from their leader. Their leader awaits direction from above.

Bright-eyed Athene, Olympian advocate of the great purple chief, rushes to the scene from her mountain-top day-bed and sets about her task with urgency. She works first on her favourite’s appearance: browning his skin and making it lustrous with olive oil; broadening his shoulders and filling out his biceps; adding tasteful blonde tips to his mullet and smothering it in top-shelf product. Seeing that the men are now looking upon the coach in awe, as if he were some immortal god, the goddess sets to work on his mind, granting him cunning and craftiness over and above that for which he is already renowned. Pleased with her intervention, she whisks back to Olympus to spectate.

With the blissful knowledge that Zeus’ daughter has blessed him, the coach hesitates no longer, darting behind a low partition while the one-eyed giant stands frozen by a strangling mixture of admiration, fear and agony. Finding himself face-to-face with the sheepish Johnsons, he takes them into his counsel with a wink and, with a whisper, lays out his devious plan.

Slithering across the floor now, he grabs one of several soaps that lie conspicuously around Luke McPharlin’s feet, and flings it at Sandilands with godly dexterity. Atop Olympus, Athene hurriedly dons a panama hat and lobbies the archer god Apollo, who agrees, for a reasonable price, to vouchsafe the soap’s passage straight and true into the good eye of the terrible beast. Apollo is a man of his word.

The impact and sting of the soap blinds and enrages Sandilands, but his woes are far from over. The two naked Johnsons leap forth and begin slapping him in turn. Meaty thwack after meaty thwack batter his face and torso. Bang! Slap! Crash! Who has ever seen such furious Johnsons! They swell with pride at every blow, knowing they are serving their god-like leader with honour.

While the tormented giant spins and howls, the coach now opens the door and leads his troops out, like a simple shepherd boy leading his fattened-lambs from the woods. But unlike the shepherd boy, he strides before the pack glowing and surging and electrified by the motherly labour of bright-eyed Athene. The exhausted Johnsons bring up the rear of the pack, leaving Sandilands crying and staggering and crashing into the walls. As a final act of fury, the wounded giant throws great handfuls of loosened tiles towards the fading sound of jiggling buttock cheeks. But his tormentors are too far gone.

The coach lets the group pass him by. He looks back and sees Sandilands framed by the doorway, curled up in a ball amongst the dust and the rubble, wailing like some huge dying cat. It makes a sorry sight for his eyes but he’s certain that, with the goodwill of the Olympian gods, the ruckman will return to health in good time – if not by the time Dawn paints the sky with crimson, then certainly by Round One against Collingwood.