‘Ask me what?’

‘Clem wants to do up Peter Donnellan’s old Jag.’

John almost laughed. ‘God, Clem, get a Valiant. Something worth the effort.’

Pop held his shoulder. ‘Good advice.’

He’s not what he seems, I wanted to tell Pop. He hits people. His own mother, probably. But Pop wouldn’t have listened. He led John over to the stash and said, ‘This lot, to get you started.’

John didn’t get it. ‘What?’

‘This lot. You can have them. You’ll need them.’

‘Right.’ He picked them up, admired them. ‘Thanks.’

No attempt to say no, or make it difficult. Just a pair of beady eyes.

Pop had been generous: wire strippers, piston-ring pliers. ‘Somethin’ to put ’em in.’ He opened his cupboard, found his toolbox, brought it over to the bench and emptied the contents. Then he loaded it with John’s new tools. ‘That’s yours.’

John wasn’t concerned, but made a show of it. ‘I can’t take yer toolbox.’

‘I got another.’

‘No, you haven’t,’ I said.

‘Well, I can get another.’ He picked up his map, lost in the mess of tools. Sat down, flattened it on his knee and studied it.

‘He’s a bit confused,’ I said to John, and he emptied his tools from the box. Then he put them in a plastic bag. ‘Good of you to do this,’ he said to Pop.

Pop was following directions, driving through the desert.

‘This is what he does when he’s confused,’ I said.

John said, ‘So I shouldn’t take them?’

‘Course you should,’ Pop called. ‘Don’t listen to him.’ He glared at me, before returning to his map. ‘Somewhere round here.’ Finding the cross with his finger.

No, don’t do it, I thought. But it was too late. John was over, sitting beside him. ‘What’s that, Doug?’

‘A reef.’

‘What reef?’

‘Gold. Seven miles long. In the outback.’

‘And this is where?’ He moved his head to get a better look.

‘You’ve never heard of Lasseter’s Reef?’

There followed the story: the map’s origins, his attempts to look for it, Nan’s reluctance, and a philosophical treatise on how a man never stopped searching. I just stood at the bench, listening. ‘Pop, he doesn’t want to hear all that.’

But John said, ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Harold Lasseter was seventeen,’ Pop said. ‘He was riding from Queensland to the Western Australian goldfields and somewhere near the WA—Territory border he stumbled on it.’

‘Just sittin’ there?’ John asked.

‘Yep. He kept on towards Kalgoorlie, but got lost, and a camel driver helped him. Took him to this camp, and a surveyor named Harding. Lasseter told Harding about the gold, and he believed him, so they back-tracked, looking for it. Anyway, their watches weren’t good enough and they couldn’t get a proper fix, but they got close enough and Lasseter wrote it down.’

They both gazed at it.

‘Then they returned and tried to get people interested, but folks were making good money on the goldfields. Lasseter spent thirty years trying to convince people to fund an expedition. So this friend of mine, he came across it …’