He isn’t a religious man but whenever he enters that particular piece of country he always feels like crossing himself. He stops, his hand hovering in front of his chest. Three steps forward and he will forsake the dry, familiar slopes of Tarrengower for the other country; a strange promontory of rock jutting out like a witch’s chin on the northern side of the mountain. The entrance is unmistakable. Two boulders squat on each side of the track, their features obvious even in the faint dawn light. Eye sockets beneath high brows. Finely chiselled noses. Horizontal seams of rock for mouths. He can’t believe the random hands of wind, rain and time could form such faces. Even a stone mason, a genius in the trade, could never have created such power and presence.

He strides forward and the hairs on the back of his neck spring to attention. The sensation is always the same, as if someone or something is stalking him. Any day now those blokes from the pub are sure to follow him. He knows their game. Their curiosity is up. He can tell by the way they keep pestering him about where he’s digging and whether he’s had any lucky strikes lately. He always tries to brush off their questions with a vague wave of his hand, saying how he’s just scratching around, taking things easy. But it’s obvious they don’t believe him. He can tell by the looks they give him over the rim of their beer glasses.

He picks his way between the granite rocks, his ears straining to catch any give-away noises but all he hears is the crunch of twigs under his own boots and the occasional sound of bird wings rivering the air. He smells the moss, the damp cold earth. At the high point of the trail he stops, crouching behind a scrubby wattle bush, peering back through the branches. He watches the track, half expecting the whole gang to appear. Like leeches they are. Too lazy to search out their own lodes, they loaf around until some bloke discovers a lead, then around they swagger, wanting to put in a claim only metres away. He’s not going to let it happen to him though. He’s no fool. Months ago he set up decoy diggings at the base of the mountain - dirty great holes with winches and buckets. And just to be safe, he keeps it looking fresh, hauling up new dirt every day so the blokes will think he’s working the site. He even sometimes boils his billy there.

Five, ten minutes he waits, hiding behind the bush, just in case. The individual leaves of the stringy barks are visible now as the dawn evolves into day. He sees orange light spill over the horizon, hears the magpies carolling in the valley below. What with the mountains, the light, the trees, the birds - the place is like a cathedral on a grand scale. Not that he ever goes to church. He can’t come at the idea of a God, not when children suffer like they do. This thought makes his jaw tighten. The mountain is a bloody beautiful place without the need of a God.

No one comes. He stands up, the muscles of his thighs stiff and complaining as he steps out. He feels it again, the weirdness of this particular piece of country, the way it demands his full attention, insisting he notice every rock, every patch of lichen, every purple isotoma blooming like a star. Sometimes he thinks his attentiveness protects him from the strangeness of the place. And occasionally he gets this other queer idea, how it matters enormously where he puts his boots; as though the placement of every footstep, the formation of every thought, carries great significance, affecting all that is to be. He shakes his head. The other blokes would think him a raving nutter if they knew what had been going on in his mind lately. He never used to think like this - only since he started coming up to this part of the mountain a couple of months ago.

The sight at the edge of the promontory still has the power to make him suck in his breath. Rising up like a foam-crested wave is a reef of white quartz running directly North-South. Today, like every other day, he perches himself on the rocky tip and takes out his stepfather’s compass from its circular tin case. He watches with satisfaction as the black needle hovers over the bold ‘N’ with an immaculate precision. A north facing quartz reef equals gold. He had read about it in the Mines Department library when he was only thirteen years old. It was after he’d finished unloading the late apples at the market. Early winter. He remembers how the frost on the vegetable scrap heaps looked like sugar icing, the way he’d chewed his finger tips to try and ease the itchy agony of his chilblains. There’d been hours to kill before he could get a lift home in the truck, so he had wandered the few blocks towards the chime of the Post Office clock.

The words were printed in gold lettering above a wooden panelled door. MINES DEPARTMENT LIBRARY. There were no thoughts, no hesitation as he gripped the knob, slippery with polish, and pushed. He remembers the air pressing against the bare skin beneath his shorts. And the smell, a lovely dusty sweetness he associated with the bottom of his mother’s wardrobe. The woman at the counter asked him why he was there. He told her he wanted to see some books. He didn’t say library or look because he knew his tongue would get tricked by the L. She said they only had journals about mining but he didn’t care, he just wanted to rest in the warmth and the quiet. She set him up at a table in the corner where bars of light slid through the windows. The books were very big and old with hand-drawn maps. He spent a whole winter’s worth of mornings there learning about minerals, the discoveries, and the lay of the land. Sometimes the woman brought him sweet milky tea in a red plastic cup.

He runs his hand over the quartz beside his knees. Tarrengower quartz. It feels smooth, like chiselled ice without the cold. It was just this year, the first week of spring, when he’d found the reef’s pure white head surfacing here the northern side of the mountain. He looks down at the compass again and studies the four cardinal points penned with red ink. Really, he should toss the thing away, the only memento of his stepfather’s life - unless he counts the scars on the back of his legs, the pale ridges of puckered flesh. As he clicks the tin case shut and a longing rushes through him, a deep ache to touch that part of himself alive with the memory before Clive. B.C. he calls it. A time when the sky was awash with a milky light, when cowpats smelt sweet, when his mother’s fingers were forever floating over yellowing piano keys. B.C. Before he knew about jealousy and rage and alcohol. Before he was forced to leave school. B.C. A time before stepfathers.

It was the stammering that used to infuriate his stepfather, especially at the dinner table. Clive would sometimes ask: ‘And how’s the little Mummy’s boy made a pest of himself today?’ And the answer wouldn’t come, just the first sound bouncing out of his mouth over and over like a ball on a string. He would watch as his stepfather pushed himself up from the table, his hands the size of dinner plates spread over the white linen cloth. Even now he can hear the noises and he hates the noises most of all. His mother begging and whimpering. Fingers fumbling with the silver belt buckle. Chair legs being dragged along the waxed linoleum floor. The sound of air being sliced by a thin leather strap. Even now he can remember looking into his stepfather’s eyes, how the emptiness had been far more terrifying than the promise of pain.

Three greasy crows caw at him from the skeleton of a tree. His flannel shirt clings to his back and his arse is numb. He wipes his sleeve over his eyes feeling pathetic and drained. He knows he should start work: get digging, set up the winch. But he doesn't move. Over the last few weeks he’s been doing less and less. It’s because a thought keeps nagging at him, a ridiculous thought, how he’s somehow violating the country with his shovel and pick. And there’s another problem - he should have registered the claim at the mining office by now, but he knows when he does, the other blokes will hear about it and probably set up near by. He imagines the drinking and cursing, the throb of generators, the sprawl of beer bottles and cans. The feeling of the place would be ruined for sure.

He stares at the cleft of rock a few metres off to his right, close to the cave he uses to stash his tools. At first he thinks he’s seeing things, that his mind has become unhinged. And then he realises that the thin plume isn’t smoke but vaporised breath. His chest tightens at the thought of the gang following him up the mountain, of them listening to him moaning and crying over his memories just before. But the feeling soon passes. There’s a quietness about the morning air, a peacefulness those blokes could never have maintained.

Sitting there on the quartz, he doesn’t feel fear, just a curiosity about the source of the breath, the only witness to his pain about Clive. Suddenly a wallaby emerges from the slit of darkness and begins to hop in his direction, its gait unhurried, almost nonchalant. He notices how the animal’s eyes are like brown pools, the way the dark fur is tipped with gold. The compass slips from his hand, the glass face tinkling into pieces on the granite below. But the wallaby keeps bouncing towards him, on and on, so close he can feel the thump of its tail through the soles of his boots before veering off and away down the slope.

He crouches down and collects the pieces of his stepfather’s compass, every shattered shard. He hums as he works, placing the tiny fragments in his white square of handkerchief, then ties the four corners in a double knot. There are no thoughts, just a free, floating feeling as he tosses the bundle down the shaft he started months ago at the side of the reef. A hawk hovers. He waits. It’s as if all his old reference points have now disappeared.

For the rest of the day he returns the soil back where it belongs, filling the hole he’s dug over the year. Hour after hour he works, the rhythm of his shovel singing against the stones and the dirt. The day dissolves into dusk and he scatters layers of soil over the quartz, camouflaging the whiteness. He wants that particular piece of country to be left undiscovered, untouched. As he collects his tools together, the taste fizzes about his tongue - just faintly, but it’s there - that round, full part of himself. He doesn’t know if it’s the end or the beginning when he walks down the mountain with a spring in his step.

- Julie Gittus