2009
A hundred and seventy-three lives were lost in one of the worst bush fires in Australian history. Over four hundred wildfires were recorded at this time, which left damages totalling twenty-three million dollars. Police suspected that the fires were deliberately lighted by arsonists. Red, who hadn’t been in touch with anyone for years, popped up on the news bulletin. His catering company had donated food and resources to help the State Emergency Services feed the hundreds of volunteers helping to rescue survivors and clean up after the devastating wildfires.
Clusters of tornadoes ripped through Oklahoma in the US, killing and injuring many.
President Obama declared a state of emergency in Minnesota, as flooding of the Red River caused widespread damage to homes in Fargo and North Dakota.
Twenty-six towns in Italy were affected by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, killing more than two hundred people, and injuring thousands.
In Brazil, the worst aviation disaster since 2001 occurred when a plane crashed into the north-east coast, and two hundred and twenty-eight passengers and crew were lost. No mayday signal was sent before the crash. The speculation was that electro magnetic field interference had affected instrument readings.
Rioting erupted in Urumqi Province, China, between Muslim Uyghurs and Han Chinese, resulting in one hundred and fifty-six deaths. Riot police locked down the Uyghur part of the city, allowing army generals to quash any opposition and restoring order to the streets. Mob leaders of the riots and insurrection were rounded up. Next they were transported east by rail for trial by China’s central government.
Typhoon Morakot caused a mudslide, and buried schools, homes, and more than six hundred people in southern Taiwan.
Indonesia experienced a 7.1-magnitude earthquake in Java, which is in the most populous region of the country.
Tropical storm, Kestsana, poured down seventeen inches of rain in twelve hours.
Floods in Manila were the worst in fifty years.
Following an underwater earthquake at a magnitude of 8.0, a tsunami hit Samoa, killing more than a hundred and fifteen people.
Indonesia was hit by an earthquake again, with a 7.6-magnitude quake in Sumatra leaving over a thousand people dead, and thousands trapped under collapsed buildings in the city of Padang.
Dust storms blanketed the eastern seaboard of Australia for days.
Record-high temperatures were recorded through Australia in November.
Wildfires erupted in Western Australia, destroying homes.
Flooding brought drought-breaking rain to central New South Wales, but also damaged homes, farms and roads across an area the size of Tasmania.
A ‘heads of government’ meeting in Copenhagen failed to bring forward a binding agreement that would reduce carbon emissions, believed to be the cause of global warming. Some scientific dissenters argued the status quo, but did not mention global dimming. The yin and yang of the problem.
Governments agreed to focus attention on stopping deforestation, at the rate of one hundred thousand football fields a day being logged or burnt. They also continue to support the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, nicknamed the Doomsday Vault, deep frozen in the middle of a Norwegian mountain. The noughties were creating a sense of déjà vu, bringing back memories of the late 60’s and early 70’s war in Vietnam, and communist insurgency in Malaya. The government changed from right to left wing politics, and weather patterns returned to what they were like in the early 70s. The war on drugs still went on after forty years. There was a mining and share market boom and bust, similar to ‘73. Terrorism by IRA and Black September was replaced by Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.
Cyclones, wildfires, terrorism, tsunamis, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not enough to shake the resolve of LP and the others, who still believed New Year’s Eve would be a fitting tribute to George, if nothing else. However, financial turmoil on the share markets throughout the world continued to have an impact throughout 2009.
Bear had done the best of all of them financially, and was highly geared with his property developments. He had ridden out the downturn of 2001, but now his luck had run out. All lines of credit had dried up. He phoned LP for help just days before New Year. LP’s answer to Bear’s problem was not what he wanted to hear. LP was also cash strapped, and so was everybody else. They were all in financial survival mode. However, there was a long shot.
LP reminded Bear about the dreadlocked, sandy haired hippy with a glass eye, named Billy. Red had shared a joint with Billy on the beach back at Bells, while LP had been winning the contest.
“Think hard, Bear. What did Red tell you about that day?”
Bear replied, “Red said the guy got his glass eye from a pool room brawl with a bunch of bikers, and was unemployable. He spent his time either surfing or prospecting for gold at a place he called Big River. Red said Billy had found a gold nugget weighing three point six kilos, but was unable to get it out for fear that the other gold diggers would hear of the find and kill to possess it. Those prospectors had been looking to strike it rich, but luck was not on their side.
“Billy, the hippy, had described how he planned to get the gold out when he went back to the old mining site, which had slowly been swallowed by forest re-growth. He said that, down on the river embankment, several canoes lay unused. His plan was to retrieve the nugget and paddle downstream at night to the next town. If all went well, Red would read about it in the newspaper in the following couple of days. If that didn’t happen, the hippy said he would either be dead or the local mining prospectors, who had been there for many years, would have the nugget.”
Bear hadn’t heard anything in the media about a gold nugget, but he considered a third possibility: that the gold was still where Billy had said it would be. In a wombat hole under the dirt road, after a sharp bend, two hundred yards from an old A-frame, makeshift hut.
Bear thanked LP for jogging his memory, and wished him good luck for 2010, as he would not make it back to Queensland in time for New Year’s Eve. If Bear didn’t find the nugget, it would be another financial black hole for him and his company. This time, there was no escape; his plan had to work.
He checked the Melbourne Age newspaper archives for any report of a major gold nugget find. There was no reference to the nugget.
Bear booked the earliest flight possible to Melbourne, and arranged a rental car for pick up at the airport. He arrived at 6 p.m. and carried his hand luggage through the airport terminal. Bear picked up the keys for his rental car – a VW Transporter, the modern day version of a Kombi. However, this vehicle was even better than the guys’ old Kombi. It was called a Tracker, and was fitted for off-road camping. Bear headed towards Bells Beach. It felt just like old times, with luxury. After a bit of a drive across Melbourne and out to Bells, he arrived at Red’s house.
Bear walked up to the front door and pounded on it. “What are you doing here? This is a surprise; you could have phoned first.” Bear’s old mate looked angry and agitated.
“No time, mate; you’re coming with me to Big River. Remember that story you told LP about a hippy and a gold nugget? Well, we’re going to find it. Pack some camping gear, and we’re out of here.”
Bear and Red carried the camping gear to the van, then headed north-west to the old gold mining site, Big River.
As they drove closer to their destination, the van crossed a large bridge. Bear and Red looked down to see a fast-flowing river wedged between a steep gorge. They were not far now from the remnants of the old mining town. After the bridge, Bear took a sharp right-hand turn. The gravel road led into dense forest re-growth from mines abandoned over one hundred years ago. Red pointed out old mining shacks, most abandoned, but a few still liveable. Bear stopped at an A-frame shack built of timber logs and rusted iron.
A few old prospectors came out to greet them, asking how long they would be staying and what they were prospecting for.
Red answered, “We are looking for a guy who’s gone missing. You guys look like you’ve been around here a long time. Did you know a hippy called Billy? He had long, sandy dreadlocks and a glass eye.”
One prospector answered, “About forty years ago, there was a guy like that, but he stopped coming up prospecting. We haven’t seen him since then. Why are you interested in him now?”
“Just following up on a cold case. We have some new information that might help find him. Tomorrow, we’ll see if we can find any remains or his belongings,” replied Bear
Red had brought some food from his catering business for dinner. His favourite meal in a can was beef stroganoff. Not just a normal-sized tin, but a four-litre can; enough to feed a company battalion. He placed it on the fire’s edge to warm up.
The prospector named Coxie was a bloody Pommy who wanted to be addressed as Lord Coxie. The most conversation you could get out of him was ‘er, rather’. His mate, Gazza, translated for him when he spoke. Red and Bear picked up that these prospectors knew more than they were saying about Billy, and that they should watch their backs.
They were right. Before long, Lord Coxie came up behind Bear with a shovel, and cracked it across his shoulders. Bear went down onto the fire edge, knocking the stroganoff can into the fire. Bear turned and grabbed the shovel, shoving it right between Coxie’s legs. This bought him to the ground with a loud ‘er’.
Bear and Red decided to get out of there. Before they left the campsite, he picked up two rocks, walked over to the old bush dunny, and grabbed a roll of toilet paper. Bear handed Red a rock, and they each started winding toilet roll around the rocks about twelve times.
“We’ll make sure those guys don’t follow us,” said Bear.
As they left the ramshackle miner’s huts in the distance, Bear turned and pulled out his lighter. He lighted the rock rolled in toot paper, and did the same to the one Red was holding. Twenty metres back, Bear and Red had passed two abandoned mine shafts on either side of the road. Bear knew that these holes in the ground would be full of methane gas. In unison, they both bowled a perfect line and length, and both flaming rocks landed exactly where they wanted them: down the shaft. All you could see were two giant flames shooting to the sky as the explosion destroyed the road.
As they ran further from the campsite, down the dirt road, they heard another loud explosion go off.
“There goes dinner; they’ll be picking tin and strog. out of their skin for the rest of the night,” said Bear.
Bear and Red eventually caught a bit of shut-eye leaning against a couple of trees. It wasn’t exactly the way they wanted to camp out. As morning light filtered through the dense rainforest canopy, they stood and stretched their legs, then started walking until they came to a sharp bend. They were looking on either side of the dirt road for the wombat hole.
Bear yelled, “I’ve found one. Go down and see if it opens into a larger cave.”
Red slid down the embankment and shone his torch in, and, yes, there was a larger cave under the roadway. Together, they started digging to make the opening larger, then squeezed their way through. They were both able to crouch in the small cave. There were two smaller wombat tunnels that continued on. Bear shone the torch up the first one, and could see some white bones. This could be Billy. He started digging with his small shovel, and made it through to the next cave. There it was! The gold nugget rested on the parched bones, and Billy’s glass eye reflected light as though he was looking at them with approval.
They quickly crawled out through the tunnel; the air was becoming harder to breathe, because they were inhaling a mixture of air and methane that had no smell. With their vision becoming blurred and their strength weakening, they just made it out of the wombat hole in time, gasping for breath. The gas explained what had happened to Billy.
Bear carried the impressive nugget. Red pointed down the road to the river’s edge, where two canoes lay on the embankment. They ran towards them. Bear put his nugget in one canoe and climbed in, pushing himself away from the embankment, and Red followed in the other small canoe. They didn’t have to do much paddling, as the river was flowing pretty fast, but there was a reason for that! On the next bend, the river dropped in depth, exposing rocks and rapids.
Bear made it through, but Red was nowhere to be seen as his upturned canoe floated past Bear. Several minutes passed, but there was no way of going back; the steep gorge on either side of the river was impassable. Bear’s only option was to paddle on downstream under the bridge they had driven over earlier, to reach the next town, twenty kilometres away. Once there, he pointed his canoe towards a small jetty and reached for his phone, which now had reception. Bear rang ‘000’ to organise a search for Red, hoping he was still alive. Next, he phoned LP to let him know he had found the gold, but had lost Red coming down the rapids. He said he would wait till the search party found him, dead or alive.
Bear would not be back at the beach house for New Year’s Eve, nor would Red.
Bear, now with time on his hands, made a few phone calls to find a buyer for his nugget. He was put in contact with a bloke in Las Vegas who operated the Golden Nugget Casino. He was willing to pay three and a half million dollars for the three point six kilogramme nugget. It would be showcased in the casino’s grand entrance for all to see.