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.