Chapter 3

Ophir:

“You’re not a bad dad ... and I know bad dads. I saw them nearly every day after school.”

“And?”

“Girls who are terrified to walk out because Daddy is here to pick them up. Girls who stay in the bathrooms because Daddy is here waiting. Girls worried Mom will find out and blame their daughters for trying to steal their man. Girls who won’t invite their friends because Mom is working and Daddy is home ... usually sitting in his underwear watching porn on the Telly and drinking or smoking.” She said... “Believe me, you’re not a bad Dad.”

“I don’t know much about you,” I said.

“There are girls whose Dad knows too much about them.”

We were out of Orange and on the Ophir road. Nice road. As we entered the stream cut there were more very slow moving cars. All along the route cars were stopped and families were reading monuments and maps on posts. It started out pretty ... then the mined area began ... and that was awful. Piles of debris, gorge walls washed away ... holes in cliffs and junk ... junk and more junk ... but it’s historical and can’t be removed. When I noticed men digging in the river and panning or running high-bankers I realized what the signs meant: Ophir Recreational Reserve.

Fossicking was okay.

“Erm ... Dad ... you missed our turn,” Abby said.

It took awhile to find a place to turn around ... but we managed. We had to go all the way out or the gorge to get organized and on our way back.

Central Mines Trail was a two track with more cars coming out than going in. It’s a four-wheel drive path and not suitable for cars.

She was watching the odometer.

“Stop.”

I did.

“Look for a two track to the left.”

“I see it.”

Left it is. We broke out of the trees following a narrow wagon path. Below, several meters, was a broad stretch of bedrock encompassing a couple abrupt bends of the creek.

“I’ll bet this is a doozy in the spring,” I said.

“What’s a doozy.”

“American slang for a frightful mess.”

“There’s our mine.” She pointed across the bedrock to a narrow notch in the far side.

It was deep in shadows. It looked like hundreds of other eroded places along the side of the opposite cliff. Then I noticed that it exactly lined up with a gap between the tilted bedrock.

How could they have missed it? The old timers chased two kinds of gold; veins of gold imbedded quartz and alluvial. Alluvial is what Jim and I had mined.

I knew, in my heart, that the alluvial gold we found year after year had to come from somewhere because the farther we fossicked up stream the rougher the gold got. Rough gold hasn’t been hammered by rolling rocks. The rolling tumbling spring runoff moves some really big boulders; rocks weighing tons shoved along by rushing torrents of water.