‘Which direction?’

‘West.’

So he’d used a compass to find west and we’d set off, down Lanark Avenue, Pop counting each step. 671, 672, 673 … We’d stopped in front of the primary school. Then he’d showed me the map again. ‘What now?’

‘Seventy one east.’

He’d found east, started walking, and counting. 68, 69, 70, 71 … We’d stopped again. The map, again. I’d said, ‘North, twenty-one kilometres.’

Compass. Turn. March. Stop. We were in the milk shed. I’d said, ‘What now?’

He’d indicated. ‘See here, a few valleys, a river, this seems to be a path.’

‘This is Lasseter’s Reef?’

He couldn’t see that I couldn’t see. ‘This is how we’ll do it. We have to practise. See, that’s where this fella in the pub went wrong. He didn’t prepare.’

Then, he’d taken out a piece of chalk and started drawing the topographical features from the map onto the ground. I’d waited, and watched, wondering how any of this might help.

As I wondered now, watching him do it all again.

‘Val and Peter and Anne and John are all looking.’

He just kept working. ‘John’s home, eh?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good-o. We can go in a minute. When we’re sure.’

‘And Mum and Jen are driving round. Mum’s gonna be crook at you.’

‘She’ll be okay. But you mustn’t tell her, Clem. She’ll put a stop to all this.’ He held my arm, and fixed my stare. ‘Promise?’

‘I promise. But we better go, cos if we’re not back Mum’ll call the police.’

He was drawing what could’ve been a mountain, although the gold was in a desert. ‘She won’t call the police. She’s not that stupid.’

There was nothing to do but wait. I sat down and said, ‘That all to scale, Pop?’

‘Bloody oath.’ He held up the map. ‘Here, seven kilometres east.’ And he took seven steps, to make sure.

‘You scared the shit out of us. We thought you were lying dead on a road somewhere.’

‘I’m not that far gone.’ He drew a yellow cross in the middle of the floor. Stood back, smiled and said, ‘There she is.’

Happy, he sat down beside me. ‘You think it’s there, Clem?’

‘I reckon.’

‘Not just saying that?’

‘No, of course not. But you gotta tell us when you go off. You know, with your forgetfulness.’

‘Don’t worry about me.’ He was surveying his sketch. ‘I don’t need a map, I got it memorised. But we’ll keep it so we can give it to a museum after we find the gold.’ Then he turned away, staring out across the oval. ‘It’s important you believe, Clem. Nan never did. She thought I was an idiot.’

I waited. Same story, but it had to come.

‘That night I went home and showed her, and she laughed at me. I said bugger you, I’m goin’, and she said, No, you’re not, you got work in the morning. And next week. Next year. And she kept me at it, Clem. Like whatever I wanted didn’t matter.’