Wilderness End

A story of an incident early in my career where I came to understand that not everything you are told is the truth and what you see can be an illusion.

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East of the basalt towns scattered along the high divide in the New England lies the fall country - rough, steep, inaccessible and lonely, dissected by the rivers as they run towards the coast with its wide rivers and coastal plains and lots of people. The high country and the coast are tenuously connected by a few ridge hugging highways and narrow meandering routes, barely roads, which track the rivers carved deep into the landscape. Between the connections lie vast areas almost untouched by humans. The populated east coast of Australia hides wilderness forested to the horizon.

We met up in Glen Innes and climbed into his shabby old Nissan scarred loudly with bush experience, and headed east; an hour on the asphalt and the another hour and a half on the track which rose and fell, twisted and turned and carved a convoluted path from the high ridges to the river lying far below. Glances through the trees brought nervous gasps as from the narrow path all that could be seen were the tops of trees hundreds of feet high and then distant mountains.

Our driver was entirely at ease. He oozed rough country demeanour -his skin tanned and leathery and his hands gnarled and etched with embedded grime. They had seen many a shovel, axe, tyre and chainsaw. His clothes were utilitarian to a fault, solid soiled boots with folded socks, boxer shorts with scattered tears and a stained tee shirt which barely held together over his wide shoulders. Three score and ten was my guess and most of it spent working for tin, while dreaming of sapphires and gold.

His reputation had preceded him.  This was a man who wanted to do things his way. Government, which my colleague and I represented, was all just unnecessary rules and restrictions. So to hell with it. Do it anyway and, if they find out, then worry about it later. Deep in the bush you can often do that.

We bounced and bumped down the increasingly steep track to a point where it forked. “The old track was no good” said John, “so I dropped the dozer blade and slid it down”. I nervously looked down the hill and said “I’ll walk a bit (or scramble as it turned out) and have a look at the rocks on the way” as I quickly swung out of the cabin. Low-range was engaged but the vehicle continued a semi-controlled slide for 50 metres down the rubbly path til it was brought to rest on the narrow alluvial flat covered in casuarinas next to the river.

“This is one end of my lease application area” said John in his slow country growl. “There’s gold everywhere”. It was hard to believe that this now gentle stream had carved its way through a kilometre of rock to create the amazing spectacle before us.

A sharp eye could pick up that we were not the first to reach this wild place. Traces of water races tracked along the banks and piles of stones were scattered amongst the trees. The old-timers rarely missed anything.

“But they left so much” said the prospector offering to wash some dirt from the river bank in the gold pan he pulled from the back of his truck. My National Parks colleague and I stood and watched as the slow and steady swirling on the river’s edge reduced the pan of dirt and rocks to a thin string. “There, just look at that” he said emphatically. The twinkle of gold in a pan is unmistakable and it was there in abundance. Throughout the long day we were ushered to several more sites each with bountiful gold. We were impressed by the gold, the scenery and the stamina of this rugged bushman. His offers to wash the dirt, gave us opportunity to mull over what impact this bonanza might have on the enveloping wilderness.

But it did not end there. In the weeks following I drafted a glowing report recommending approvals but others who visited the site without the bushman could not duplicate our experience. Perplexed I withheld my report and gradually the truth emerged like the gold from the pan. We had been taken for mugs by this wily rogue. It’s amazing what you can do with raised expectations and a few sprinkles of gold dust from your boxer pockets into the pan. Before his applications had been formally refused John had on-sold his rights for a handsome sum, telling some starry-eyed investors of the wonderful results that were soon to be reported by “those blokes from the government”. His fortune made, the bushman disappeared, as if into the forest, no doubt believing in due government process.

The area is now lies undisturbed in the centre of one of the largest wildernesses in New South Wales and the little gold that is there slowly migrates to towards the sea.