Shades of Brown

Barry set off from Perth in early February 1976. The heat that bore down on him was fire comparative to the misery of the English winter he had abandoned. Sun scorching the white skin of his arm pink as it rested on the open window frame of his 1952 Ford F Series ute. Three hundred Australian dollars he had paid for the rusting metal beast to become his. A relatively large chunk of the measly two thousand pounds he had crossed the oceans with, but the freedom it offered was worth every cent, overpriced as it was for its condition.

            As the air filtered through Barry’s fingers out the window, his cares were far away. He no longer intended to play life on the safe tightrope he had always walked. Thirty-five years he had conformed to the straight and narrow. And in Thirty-five years, he had very little to show for it. The tiny apartment he occupied in London’s East End was as brown as the suit he wore to work every day. The bank he worked in, day in day out, was itself a dull shade of umber mixed with highlights of beige. The walls, the floors, the brown-orange chairs. All of it as dreary as the London skies would be all through winter. Summer’s arrival only lightening the shade of grey.

            Routine saw him at the same pub every Friday evening. Surrounded by the same crowd in the same cycle of conversation, remaining forever unchanged. If it weren’t for the grey beginning to seep into the shadows of his black hair, he would have believed himself in a never-ending time loop. Time blended and years pasted in mundane continuity.

            One Friday evening a stranger’s voice, thick with a vulgar colonial accent, wafted over the pub like mist. Souls usually there to drown sorrows in beer were instead alert. Their gaze drawn to the man telling tales of the land down-under.

            “Seems those convicts actually made something of that place.” William nudged Barry. They watched the animated stranger whose beer often spilled as it was thrust time and time again into the air with a triumphant cheer to emphasise some part of his utterly fanciful tale.

            “Very civilised,” Barry mocked the man’s lack of decorum.

            Despite it though, the stranger in his red and black checkered flannelette shirt over a dark blue singlet captivated him. A small tuff of hair daring to creep over the singlet, worn boots and jeans finishing off his attire. A crass working man’s uniform. Skin battered with sun, wrinkling it into old age before it’s time. His vitality would have indicate he was Barry’s age. However, he looked almost ten years older.

            Hours later, when the crowd subsided alongside the stranger’s exuberance, Barry approached him, offering another beer before nestling into the booth beside him.

            “Tall tales for a man so young,” he said eyes still searching for an ounce of truth to them.

            “Each word is fair dinkum,” the stranger replied, his beer held up in thanks.

            “How it is then,” Barry asked. “That a man of your age has the means to travel so far on merely a working man’s wage.”

            “Shearers earn alright,” the stranger, who introduced himself as Kevin said with a nod. “But fortune has shone on me.”

            “How so?” Barry was intrigued. An hour ago, he had considered leaving the pub. Returning to the grey-brown dreariness of his life. But this man might, even if only fleetingly, hold the most excitement he had experienced in a decade. So, he had stayed. Observed. Watched Kevin as he downed more beers than any other man he had seen yet still be able to stumble around with vague coherency.

“I found the holy grail.” Kevin’s words began to slur into one another.

“The cup of Christ?” Barry had heard the fabled myth. But in Australia, and by this man? Even that was more fanciful than the existence of the cup itself.

“Christ? Huh!” Kevin’s laugh echoed through the almost empty pub as he slapped a hand on Barry’s shoulder. “No, my friend. Gold!”

“Gold?”

“Yes, gold. The outback is still full of deposits. Kick the ground in the right spots, and you can see it. A small dull glint. Not like the shiny crowns your Queen rests upon her head. Just another rock really, unless you know what you’re looking for.”

“And you know?” Barry attempted to hide his enthusiasm under his practiced hat of scepticism, but his heart beat quicker in his chest then he could tame. 

“I know.” Kevin attempted to wink but almost fell sideways in the seat instead.

“I think you’ve had enough frivolities for one night. Where are you staying?”

“Haven’t a clue.” Kevin let out a short, sharp laugh. “More worried about finding a beer than a bed.”

“Come,” Barry offered. “My apartment is two blocks from here, if you can walk it. I only have a couch, but it is better than a park bench.”

“Thank you, mate,” Kevin replied with a nod.

Barry helped Kevin through his front door, attempting to take no offense to Kevin’s stench of beer or comments on the drabness of his brown walls, carpet and matching shade of furniture. Kevin’s thunderous snores soon echoed around the small space shortly after his head hit the soft brown fabric of Barry’s weathered couch. Barry dropped Kevin’s duffle bag by the couch, along with his own briefcase that blended like a chameleon into its surroundings.

The morning welcomed sore heads and black tea in olive green mugs. The sky was thick with rain, stealing any remaining heat out of the apartment despite the oil heater on the wall desperately trying to warm it.

Barry again questioned Kevin about his drunken ramblings from the previous night.

“True as I am here now,” Kevin confirmed. “Most people know about Victoria’s goldfields. Almost run them dry. But out west, that’s where to look. So much uncharted territory.”

“So, you can go anywhere and find gold?” The question had been running through Barry’s sleepless mind all night.

“Not just anywhere. And it’s very arid land. Hard to come by water. If you are unprepared and not careful, the sun will cook you before you reach somewhere with a supply. Lesser men have befallen that fate.”

“Yes, yes.” Barry brushed all caution to the wind. “Where are the best spots to go?”

Kevin pulled a tattered map from his duffle bag. The pale yellowing paper a contrast on the dark oak coffee table. “Perth.” He tapped on the southwestern area where the country met the ocean before tracing a finger along the thicker black lines leading inwards in a north easterly direction. "Kalgoorlie.” He tapped another cluster of lines before racing the map further north. “Up around here. Menzies. Leonora. Laverton. They have set up a few mines there, but there is still lots of prospecting.”

Kevin sat back a moment as Barry begun to inspect the map, occasionally consulting the code key before returning to the spot Kevin had pointed out.

“Here?” Barry asked.

“Yep. Right there.”

Before Barry could look up again, small rocks fell like rain onto the map. Contorted shapes with smooth edges, others with jagged spikes. From only a few millimetres wide, to the size of a five pence coin. One had been polished, glistening like the gold he had seen in the tower of London. The others easily mistaken for rocks.

“This is?”

“Gold, my friend. Gold.”

With a nod of approval form Kevin, Barry collected and inspected a few of the pieces. His fingers tingling at their touch. His whole body running on a new form of electricity. His bones once again feeling alive. All at once colourful under the dull brown fabric of his clothes – the only colour his wardrobe currently recognised as respectable attire. A laugh, sharp and shirl escaped him. Kevin just smiled, recognising the twinkle in Barry’s eyes that he had discovered the first time he had found gold.

“Here?” Barry pointed at the map again.

“Yep. Right there.”

Barry sat back a moment as thoughts barrelled through his head, careening into one another. Hard to keep track of. Hard to tame. Yesterday Australia had been a distant colony on a map halfway around the world. Now, Barry was cataloguing his life to see what he would trade for a chance of a slice of it.

“Then,” he paused a moment turning to Kevin. “Why come here of all places. If you have access to that level of potential wealth, why travel to London?”

“What is money worth if it’s not spent on something meaningful?” Kevin shrugged. “My mother came from London. On a boat. Ten pounds in her pocket and the clothes on her back. Promised a better life in Australia. Travelled far and wide searching for it too. But she would always speak of this place like it was still home to her. She never got the chance to return. Died a few years back.”

“I’m so sorry.” Barry’s excitement tempered itself.

“Thanks mate. She was a good woman. I just wanted to come and see the places she always talked of. Gold can’t replace that. But it can get me there. So, here I am.”

“In that case.” Barry sat up and brushed his shirt sleeves. “It would be my honour to show you around, if you should like. Is there is anywhere in particular you mother mentioned that you would like to see.”

Kevin’s face grew wider than it had been when telling tales in the pub the night before. By noon the rain had eased, and they found themselves at Mayesbrook Park. Kevin’s body resting effortlessly by the lake as he pulled at pieces of bread and threw them to the waiting ducks, just as his mother had described. He sat there a long time, Barry watching from a respectable distance. His stiff upper lip holding despite the warmth growing in his heart.

“Just north of Leonora,” Kevin said quietly as they walked back to Barry’s slate grey Morris Minor 1100. “There is a line of trees, straighter than the bush normally scatters them, and a rocky outcrop that sits a little too high on the horizon. Two kilometres due west of that you will find a shaft. Abandoned, but where gold is still plentiful.”

Barry looked at the man, stunned.

“You have given me something more precious than gold, my friend. It was the substance that brought me this happiness. This moment I could never share with my mother. May it help you find the thing that is missing in your own life.”

Barry stiffened, adjusting his tie. “Well, I…”

“It’s alright mate. It’s plane as the nose on your face.” Kevin clapped his shoulder. “I’ll leave you here, my friend. I thank you for your hospitality.” He pulled his duffle bag from Barry’s car and waved to him as he wandered off down the street.

If it were not for the swift breeze that cut at Barry’s face, he was sure the encounter would have been nothing more than a dream. A momentary splash of colour in his brown monotoned world. Upon returning home, the excitement of the encounter drained from as the sun filtered itself behind another rain cloud. He was surprised to see Kevin had left behind the map on his coffee table.

Opening it up, Barry traced the lines through to Leonora. A circle seeming to have appeared out of nowhere to its left. Barry looked closer. It would be the exact spot Kevin had described. No. It was madness. He couldn’t just follow the word of a stranger. A drunken stranger at that. It was a con. It had to be. Those Australian’s all started out at convicts, right?

But as day faded into night, Barry sat staring at the map. His eyes adjusting to the darkness until they could see it no more. His eyes finally closing as sleep consumed him.

Sunday morning saw him awaken again to routine. Kevin a fleeting spark in his return to reality. Barry prepared his morning cup of tea: bland. The sky outside: bleak. His closet: brown. A cloud followed him even indoors. He yearned for the strange man to be in his presence again. He wanted to feel alive. The map on the coffee table, both a mockery and an open invitation.

Monday morning saw Barry awake to another grey morning. He dressed in his finest brown suit, collected his brown briefcase and climbed into his slate grey Morris Minor 1100. The bank beckoned him with routine. Repetitive and predictable. But he entered not to work, but to withdraw his meagre life savings. In his thirty-five years he had only been able to save two thousand pounds. He handed in his resignation in exchange for the money. His car sold for the price of a ticket to Perth. His fingers tapping on his knee the whole way, the map tucked tightly into his jacket pocket.

He had known the scruffy old man in threadbare overalls had overcharged him on the old Ford F Series ute. But he assured himself he would make that money back, and more. And what did he care it he didn’t? Barry had achieved more in the past week than he had in all of his dull thirty-five years. And he finally felt alive for it.

Refuelling in Kalgoorlie, Barry checked the map in the service station, they friendly older woman with thick glasses nodding that he was heading in the right direction. She thought him crazy for heading out unaccompanied but sold him a second-hand gold detector anyway. Another two hundred dollars gone.

Barry barrelled up the highway until the radio again lost reception, the hot desert air rushing in around him was music enough to his ears. A rattling noise started coming from the engine. Barry pulled over, smoke billowing out the sides of the rusting bonnet. Being as naive about engines as he was about the Australian outback, Barry brushed away at the smoke until it finally subsided.

Managing to get the engine to start again, Barry noticed a sign head. Goongarrie Station. There he might find someone more mechanically minded and a place to rest for the night. Limping into the station, Barry was greeted by the station manager, a man who reminded him in spirit of Kevin, although much further past his prime.

“Engine’s blown,” the station manager informed him. “Not gonna get another one of those up this way anytime soon.”

“Then how will I get to Leonora?” Barry let out a long breath, feeling part of his hope and enthusiasm leave with it as he slumped into the swinging chair on the station porch.

“Truckers come through every so often. You could hitch a ride with them. Me and the missus aren’t planning to go back into town for two weeks yet.”

The idea of hitching a ride felt more dangerous to Barry than the decision he’s made to pack up his life and travel there in the first place. But two weeks was two weeks too long to fall into old habits and comfortable routine. Time would always fade like that if he weren’t careful. So equipped with nothing but a backpack, Kevin’s map and his gold detector, Barry set off for the highway again in the hope to hitch a ride to Leonora. His old life abandoned in London. His ute to freedom abandoned in Goongarrie. His future, uncertain and unchartered, laying in the bright red dust ahead of him.

He had been a foolhardy man in those days. Heading west into the bush, a blissful smile on naive young face, sun baring down on his skin. Skin that was now sundrenched and weathered by age. Sunspots darkening in his lifelong search of the golden pay day. Kevin’s secret had served him well enough, finding enough gold to settle himself nicely in his newly adopted country. But the itch it created under Barry’s skin was not as easily satisfied as it had been for Kevin. Not that Barry regretted a second of his life since they had met by chance that Friday night in 1976.

As Barry’s grandson Darren pulled on his steel capped boots over drill pants with a reflective stripe that echoed the ones lining his high-vis shirt – all standard issue these days – Barry chuckled. Just as Barry had found himself a lifetime ago in a sea of brown, Darren lived in a sea of yellow and orange high-vis shirts. Rules now heavily governed any skerrick of gold that was in the grown, most of which was owned by large mining conglomerates.

In some ways, history always repeats itself. And it would have here too, if not for Kevin’s words echoing through Barry’s life and becoming mantra for his family. Money, whilst great to have in abundance if you could get it, was only ever a means to something more meaningful. Today he donned steel capped boots, but tomorrow they would be thongs as Darren loaded up his young family into their Ford Ranger on a camping trip. Back to Goongarrie to visit the ute which had transported Barry that far, and to pass on the mantra to his own young family.