Josh Richards was an Aboriginal activist, a walking reminder of the conflict that had existed between the races since white men had first come to this part of Queensland a hundred and fifty years before. Josh had made a name for himself all along the tropical coast. He called himself a freedom fighter and there were plenty who agreed with him. To others, he was a monumental pain in the neck. In Goorapilly most people never thought about him at all, but those who did were evenly divided between the two points of view.
His twin specialities were publicity and land claims, and while there were plenty who favoured giving the Aborigines a fair go, or at least a fairer go than they’d had in the past, not many liked the idea of handing over large tracts of land to them. In particular, not land that for a hundred years or more they had regarded — and still regarded — as their own.
No one doubted that lots of Aboriginals were genuine blokes whose only concern was to put right the wrongs of the past but there were doubts aplenty about Josh Richards. To the local population, it didn’t help that he knew how to play the media like a violin. Sometimes it seemed they couldn’t turn on the television without seeing his face. He had stirred up trouble in Cardwell, threatened to make a claim on the whole of the Whitsundays region; anywhere prosperous and Josh Richards was in like Flynn, yelling his head off. Or so some said.
Even Arthur, in general sympathetic to the Aboriginal cause, had doubts about him. ‘There are times when he seems to me more interested in his own image than the people he claims to represent …’
Not that it had ever made much odds in Goorapilly. Josh Richards prowled the coast like a cyclone but Goorapilly had never interested him. As far as anyone knew, the district had no place in Aboriginal history; certainly, no one had ever come up with any artifacts to support a convincing land claim and the area, while prosperous, was not rich enough to attract the avaricious. There were many more promising trees in the orchard than Goorapilly and until now the town had been left to itself.
No longer. With the word out about the tourist potential of Mount Gang Gang, all that had changed: the advent of eco-tourism could mean money by the bucket. There had still been the problem of previous occupancy but the discovery of the paintings had changed that, too.
While professors of this and that were booking their air tickets to fly to the district to check out what had been discovered, Josh Richards appeared in the Goorapilly high street with his entourage and a full media contingent in tow.
Josh had made sure there was ample notice of his arrival so there was a reception committee waiting when he stood in front of the town war memorial and a howitzer-park of media cameras and announced to the world his intention of registering a formal claim for the entire Mount Gang Gang region.
In two twos the battle was on. People who’d never thought about the mountain in their lives were ropeable at the idea that anyone should be planning to pinch it from under their noses. Five minutes of rabble-rousing by Josh and there was a proper barney, with blokes on both sides of the argument — if that was what you could call it — getting stuck in.
Some of Josh’s mates were thugs who liked nothing better than a punch-up. A few of the locals were the same. Between them, with Josh stirring the pot for all he was worth, they caused a riot. There was stone-throwing, windows were broken up and down the street, and two blokes ended up in hospital. Judy, doing her weekly shop in town, got out with inches to spare.
The cameras filmed the lot and that night, when the pictures spewed across the nation, the name of Goorapilly was being trashed in every politically correct household in the south-eastern States.
‘Brick short of a load, that’s what you are.’ Warren had really spat the dummy this time. ‘What’s the point bringing the roof down now, when half the world already knows what’s up there?’
Warren had entertained serious doubts about his brother from the first. It was all very well standing up for family but this bloke was an accident waiting to happen and Warren certainly wasn’t in the market for any more accidents.
‘Mate, I reckon you’ve reached your use-by date.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Luke all over: one word and he was as toey as hell. Lazy bastard, too, or so reports from the mill said. Warren was sick of it.
‘It means it’s time you pissed off some place else.’
‘Why? Not my fault those kids spilled the beans about them paintings!’
‘If you hadn’t opened up that old shaft, they’d never have found them in the first place. Next thing, the media’s going to be over us like a rash. I want you out of here before that happens.’
Luke fancied the idea of being interviewed by the media. ‘I was the one found them, after all …’
Exactly what Warren had been afraid of. ‘All I need, you shooting off your mouth to some bloke with a television camera.’
Luke tried to argue but Warren had decided the time had come to get tough. ‘I got you the job at the mill and I can get you the chop, just as easily. What I been hearing, you’d have been out of there a month ago if it hadn’t been for me. I reckon it’s time you moved on.’
Luke was outraged. ‘Ya dipstick! Fine bloody brother you turned out to be!’
Warren was shouting, too. ‘I want you out of here in a week! You hear me?’
Luke went at a run, furious with a world that had never given him a fair go. While Warren, with the problem of Luke finally out of the way, turned his mind to other things.
That Josh Richards … Regular three-ring circus, that one. Never mind; with a bit of luck, he knew what he had to do about Josh Richards.
‘Not that flash.’ Josh Richards shone a white grin in Warren’s direction. ‘The best we could find in this dump, can you believe? We’re used to a good deal better, I can tell you.’
He did not say he was lucky to get it; they both knew that ten years ago he wouldn’t have got through the door. As he said, the Imperial Hotel — like its normal patrons — was not in the least flash. The rooms were small, too: a steel-frame bed, a rickety wardrobe of stained plywood and three big men took up most of the floor space. With Warren’s arrival, four big men. It was a squeeze; the walls enclosed them like a fist.
‘To what do we owe this pleasure?’ Josh Richards asked. ‘A visit from the Goorapilly king, in person?’
‘We need to talk,’ Warren said.
‘Mebbe you need to talk. What makes you think I do?’
‘Because you’re not a bloke turns his back on a business opportunity without finding out what it is.’
Josh’s eyes ran over him like a measuring tape. ‘Business is different.’ He nodded at his two colleagues. ‘Nip down to the bar, see if you can rustle up some cold beers. Room service ain’t the best,’ he explained to Warren.
They went, closing the door behind them.
‘Talk,’ Josh Richards said.
‘These pictures my brother discovered —’
‘The way I heard it, it was a couple of kids. One of ’em an Aborigine.’
Warren wasn’t getting into a who-did-what argument. ‘I just wanted to say you’ll have no problems from us about title to that part of the mountain.’
‘Big of you. Given the fact that the paintings exist, you think you could stop me if you tried?’
‘You got rid of your blokes. There’s no one here from the media, unless they’re hiding under the bed. That leaves the pair of us. What I think is we’ll get along a lot quicker if you cut out the bullshit.’
‘That right?’ Josh grinned crookedly. ‘So what’s your offer?’
‘I’ll make sure there’s no opposition to you guys having the gallery. And access, of course.’
‘And what do you want in return?’
‘Your approval of the resort we want to put on top of the mountain.’
Josh Richards stared at him, shaven head shining in the light, arms bulging from his white singlet. When he laughed, gold glinted somewhere in his teeth. He laughed now.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
Warren sat on the end of the bed, feeling the mattress sag beneath his weight. He smiled at Josh cheerfully.
‘Damn right I would.’
‘Well, you can forget it, okay? Forget it altogether. That clear enough for you?’
‘A man of principle,’ Warren said. ‘I like it.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Josh looked wary, principle not part of his brief.
‘I naturally don’t expect you to give us open slather. You’d have responsibilities to make sure things were done right. We accept you would need to be a director. It’s a funny thing,’ Warren said, ‘but investors always seem more comfortable if the directors have a financial interest themselves. They think it motivates them.’
They looked at each other.
‘What financial interest are we talking about?’
‘Five percent is usual. But a man with a position to keep up … Shall we say seven?’
‘And a half.’
Warren smiled. ‘And of course you’d be willing to say on television that you welcome the resort.’
‘It would be in the national interest, after all. One thing, though. That Harley Woodcock … I hear he’s got an interest too. What’s he going to say about our new arrangements?’
Warren smiled, at peace with himself and the world. ‘What can he say?’
The two men came back, carrying bottles beaded with sweat.
‘Damn right,’ Josh agreed. ‘Fancy a cold beer?’
‘Well, hi there!’ David Hobbs spoke with the complacency of a man who knew that the world in general, and Judy in particular, loved him almost as much as he loved himself. ‘How y’going?’
His intonation was amused, overly familiar, hinting at the existence of shared secrets. She resented it but knew she would have to play along.
‘You in town?’ he asked.
‘No. Goorapilly.’
An indulgent laugh. ‘Wherever that might be.’
‘Davey …’ Honey could not have flowed more sweetly. ‘I want a favour.’
‘Ah …’
She could hear the shutters, not yet raised but prepared.
She ploughed on quickly.
‘It’s a question of planning permission for a development project.’
She could almost hear his frown. ‘You want to obtain permission? There are procedures —’
‘I want to stop it.’
‘I see …’ Caution was no longer a shutter; it had become a sword poised to amputate folly. ‘And where is this development?’
‘A place called Mount Gang Gang.’
Silence on the other end of the phone; screams could have been no louder.
‘I thought, since you have the ear of the minister —’
A deprecatory laugh. ‘Where did you get that idea?’
Clearly David had forgotten, or chose now to forget, how he had boasted about it interminably at one time. Ministers changed, he had said, but influence, like the public service itself, was eternal.
Even now it was hard for Judy to believe he was prepared to do nothing for her.
‘It is a political matter, you see.’ Regret oozed. ‘Outside my province.’
She had always known how self-focused he was; it was humiliating to have spelt out what she should have understood without telling: that dead passions deserve no favours.
‘There are appeal procedures,’ he said kindly, yet with finality.
A waste of time …
Both of them heard what had not been said.
‘Any time you’re in Brisbane …’
Yeah. Right.
Judy heard Arthur trying to explain the situation to Jacqui. By the sound of it, he wasn’t doing very well.
‘Ecological vandalism,’ she told him ferociously.
A phrase she had obviously picked up at school, which did not make it any the less true.
‘I’m afraid it’s an irreversible trend,’ Arthur told her. ‘We’re just going to have to live with it.’
‘And that’s it, is it?’ Jacqui was spitting.
Again Arthur trotted out the tired excuse. ‘They’re doing nothing illegal.’
‘So that makes it right? We just let it happen? Even though we know it’s wrong?’
‘Things aren’t that easy,’ he said apologetically.
She was clearly having none of it. ‘They look easy enough to me.’
Judy listened no more. She got to her feet and went out onto the verandah. She shaded her eyes from the westerly slanting sun and looked up at the mountain’s dark mass. Along the summit ridge, the tops of the Cloud Forest were etched black against the apricot brilliance of the sky.
Arthur was right, she thought. Of course he was. What could they do, after all?
So why did she feel this sense of betrayal?
‘The sleepy North Queensland town of Goorapilly is making news tonight, on two counts.’ The television commentator’s teeth would have put a concert grand to shame. ‘For over a hundred years the town of Goorapilly — situated between the mountains and the Coral Sea — has been the centre of the local sugar trade.’
The camera panned to bring to the viewers a vista of sugar cane stretching, it seemed, forever. Back to the teeth.
‘Now all that has changed. Goorapilly is set to step onto the stage of international eco-tourism. With me now,’ the commentator spoke in the solemn voice of one confiding momentous secrets, ‘is the chairman of the local shire, the man whose vision of the future has been firmly behind this daring project from the first.’
The camera pulled back to reveal Warren Shaughnessy. His grin might be unable to compete with the commentator’s gnashers but his boulder-like chin threatened susceptible viewers most delightfully.
‘Councillor Shaughnessy, tell our viewers about the inspiration that lies behind Rainforest Rendezvous.’
‘Cash,’ Judy said. ‘That’s what lies behind it. Enough to make you puke.’
‘You want to turn it off?’ Arthur asked.
‘Yes. No. Oh God. I suppose we’d better hear the worst.’
Yet she could not bear to listen properly and shut out most of it, picking up a phrase here and there, like someone reading a book only because she believes she should.
Jobs … Opportunity … Knowledge …
Enough to make you puke, indeed. And then …
Warren aimed his grin at the commentator, tooth to tooth, like a graveyard of slaughtered elephants. ‘I am very proud to be able to announce to your viewers tonight that Josh Richards, spokesman for the local Aboriginal community, has given the project his full support.’
Judy turned to stare open-mouthed at Arthur, her display of ivory less imposing than some, perhaps, but still quite impressive. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said.
The commentator was cross. He hated his thunder being stolen by anyone but made the most of it, using the mention of Josh Richards to move smoothly to the second item on his agenda.
‘Now, tell us about the exciting discovery that has been made recently on the mountain behind the town …’
First thing in the morning the house in Gallipoli Street was always quiet. Never silent — always there were the creaks and susurrations of a wooden house warming little by little to the coming of the dawn, the conversations and squabbles of birds — but quiet with the slow gathering of energies for the day.
Not that day.
Was it instinct or an unnatural intensity in the silence that brought Judy out of her bed that morning? She never knew. What happened was that she was one minute asleep, the next tiptoeing on apprehensive feet across the bedroom and down the corridor where the first coin-bright patterns of sunlight lay upon the wooden floor. She reached the door to Jacqui’s room. The door stood open. She looked inside, knowing what she would find: the room empty, the bed used but, when she rested her hand upon the undersheet, cool to the touch.
Jacqui was gone.
Judy crossed to the window. The western sky was pearl-coloured above the mountain. The lower slopes lay in shadow but near the summit the first rays of the rising sun brought to life a glitter of leaves, rocks, the silver hint of water.
No prizes for knowing where Jacqui had gone.
She returned to the bedroom where Arthur still lay in uneasy sleep, the events of the previous day perhaps haunting even his dreams. Moving silently so as not to disturb him, she collected her clothes from the chair on which they lay and went into the bathroom to dress. The question was whether she should follow the child or leave her to come home when she was ready. Anxiety for her safety urged Judy to go after her but instinct said no. Pursuing her would be likely to make Jacqui more hostile than she was already; she would wait.
She made herself a cup of coffee and went and sat on the verandah. It was an anxious time for them all: Arthur stripped of self-respect; Jacqui dismissing Arthur and herself as traitors, sell-outs to expediency; herself determined to hold together the tattered components of her happiness, the man and the girl damaged by what was happening.
Judy waited silently, the empty coffee cup at her feet.
She will be back. When she is ready, she will be back.
She knew, only too well, how little joy there would be in Jacqui’s return. She thought about the two individuals who were more important to her than anything else in her life: the one damaged by perceptions of his own inadequacy, the other by betrayal of trust. Judy did not believe she was overstating the dangers. The empty paddocks stretching away in front of her, the mountain’s dark face, the invisible child walking despairingly amid the trees, all told the same story. If the situation were not resolved, the damage suffered by Jacqui and Arthur would become permanent. Permit that, and she would in some measure have lost them both, and what was most precious in her life.
Determination grew like a fire within her. No, she would not permit it. It was not right. She would fight. God willing, she would win but what mattered was not so much victory but knowing she had refused to acquiesce feebly in what she knew was wrong.
Yet the question remained. David — her only hope — had failed her. What else could she do?
Warren had given his brother a week to get out but even Warren couldn’t get rid of Luke Shaughnessy as quickly as that. He’d paid rent to the end of the month and was damned if he was going a day earlier. There was a problem as far as his job was concerned too: quit before payday and he wouldn’t get paid. Hell could freeze before he’d work for nothing. Or even pretend to work, which in Luke’s case came to the same thing.
‘I’ll go when I’m ready,’ he said. He wasn’t in the business of handing out favours; he was steaming at how he’d been treated, by the brother who had used and then chucked him, by the town that had despised him from the first, most of all by that sassy little Mandale brat who’d caused all the trouble in the first place.
‘Fix her wagon, given half a chance …’
Brett, a chip off the old block if ever there was one, thought red thoughts. He, too, had no wish to go back to Western Australia, or even to the Isa, a possibility his father had also suggested. He wanted to stay right here but that no longer seemed a prospect. All because of bloody Jacqui.