We’re pleased to announce the winner of the May WWWC: Amanda Lee! Amanda’s response to the prompt ‘history repeats’ is a story of discovery, of sorts. In ‘Potch’, a woman travels from Canada to Coober Pedy, trying to make sense of her ageing father’s past. But answers, like the opals the miners search for, are harder to come across than it seems.
Read Amanda’s winning entry below.
Potch is easy to find. It’s milky white and has none of the spectacular colours of opal. If you’re going to be scientific about it, potch is a hydrated amorphous form of silica. Common opal. When mining for opal, traces of potch are considered a good sign. Potch is an indication that opal could be nearby. But it’s no guarantee.
***
Flying into Coober Pedy from Adelaide, I stared at the unfamiliar landscape from my window seat. I expected to feel an instant emotional connection to this place. Like finally meeting a lover. Sandstone pyramids dotted the landscape, embellished with black pinpricks. From the air, the sandstone reminded me of the pipis my brother and I hunted as children in the wet sand as children. The black pinpricks looked like the bubbles they made as they burrowed into the sand to escape. History repeats, though I didn’t know it then.
When I was young my dad stored uncut opals in the pantry, wrapped in old plastic bags he’d recycled from loaves of bread, then tucked away behind tins of fruit and packets of dried peas. Those stones represented the decade my dad spent burrowed underground seeking his fortune. They were the only evidence of a life he kept hidden from me and rarely spoke of. Now that my father was in his nineties, macular degeneration had robbed him of his eyesight, and frequent hospital stays had taken his strength. I flew to Coober Pedy from Toronto, where I now lived, in search of answers.
‘Jimmy the Runner might remember your dad,’ said the hotel manager at the underground hotel. The manager told me Jimmy earned his moniker because he always ran marathons. Mad bugger.
I stopped by the local pub for a drink. I imagined it might be like something out of Crocodile Dundee: dusty, dingy and filled with colourful locals spinning yarns. Instead, it was modern and brightly lit with fluorescent lighting. A pool table in the corner, poker machines and bistro tables. I was the only woman there.
I wasn’t exactly sure what – or who – I was looking for at the pub. Perhaps some remnant of my dad’s time living here some 50 years ago, some understanding of what drew men like him to Coober Pedy. I was thinking about leaving when I noticed an older man sitting quietly at the bar.
‘Excuse me, are you Jimmy the Runner?’ I asked. He looked up at me, a handsome, deeply lined face. Skin tanned from decades in the sun. A prominent nose and long, dark eyelashes like the camels that once ferried the first miners to the opal fields.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘I’ve heard about you,’ I said, then realised how my words must have sounded. ‘My dad mined opals here in the 1960s,’ I hastily added.
‘What was your father’s name?’ His Greek accent was thick, punctuated with traces of an Australian accent.
‘Harry Lee.’ I waited to see if there was a flicker of recognition. My wine glass was empty, and Jimmy insisted on buying me a drink. I didn’t remember my dad mentioning mining with a Greek man named Jimmy, but took the seat next to him.
‘I only came to Coober Pedy for a visit, and I forgot to leave,’ he chuckled. Jimmy told me how he came to Coober Pedy in 1963 and spent his first two years living in a tent on an opal field, while learning to be a miner. ‘But the luck wasn’t good for me,’ he said.
Jimmy was gregarious, used to entertaining tourists. I realised I could probably ask him just about anything, questions I felt uncomfortable asking my dad.
Jimmy the Runner was full of stories. He was like a hero in a World War II flick, recounting tales of a different life you could never understand unless you were part of the battle. He told me how once upon a time, miners bought boxes of gelignite from the supermarket, which they used to blast out the red earth.
‘But that stopped because of the terrorists,’ he said. ‘The terrorists spoil everything,’ I replied dryly.
***
I’d been in Coober Pedy a couple of days, asking random strangers if they might remember my dad. Already Waffles and Gems had become something of my local. The cafe wasn’t exactly inviting from the outside. A large red and white ‘open’ sign hung on the metal grate, a couple of tables topped with ashtrays placed in front. A plump woman wearing pink Crocs followed me inside to ring up my Diet Coke. The only other customers, two men, were a study in the art of doing nothing.
‘Where are you staying?’ asked the large Scottish man, also called Jimmy. He turned out to be the owner of the cafe. I told him the name of my hotel.
‘The posh side of the street,’ he scoffed. Next to him sat Rusty, a wiry man in his fifties. His auburn hair jutted out from under a black beanie, despite the heat. His blue heeler, Kip, laid at his feet. Rusty invited me to watch the sunrise with them the next morning.
‘We’re usually here by 5:30,’ he said. ‘Will there be coffee?’ I asked. He smiled. ‘We’ll make you coffee.’
On my third day in Coober Pedy, it rained. I felt restless, directionless. It felt like my life back in Canada no longer existed, replaced by this small town surrounded by miles of red earth pockmarked with holes.
I laced up my running shoes. The rain was like alchemy. The air smelled earthy, punctuated by the soothing smell of nearby eucalyptus trees. I jogged away from the main street and alternated between the paved road and the russet brown earth. My feet squelched in the mud, staining my pink and red running shoes. I felt more grounded. The urge to flee Coober Pedy abated as I breathed in the cool air. I imagined tiny particles of red earth entering my body, melding with my blood, my bones, my muscles.
I’d promised to visit Waffles and Gems before I left. I’d called my dad the night before to let him know I was safe, but I hadn’t met anyone who remembered him. He mentioned mining in the Olympia Fields with a man called Rudolph from Austria. Everyone called him Rudy, he said. As I ate my breakfast waffles, I asked Scottish Jimmy if he knew of an old miner named Rudolf. He snapped to attention.
‘Rudy? There’s a Rudy who still lives here,’ he said. Jimmy called over Rusty, who was making cappuccinos for a pair of tourists who had stumbled across the café.
‘You know where Rudy lives?’ Jimmy asked Rusty. ‘Take this young lady to meet him.’ I only had 45 minutes before I had to leave for my flight, but Jimmy assured me Rudy lived nearby.
Rusty opened the door to his old ute and apologised for the mess. As we travelled along Coober Pedy’s main street, I fantasised about meeting this stranger, a man who might have known my dad when he lived here in the 1960s. How poetic this would be: after days of searching, I’d finally found someone who knew my dad, just as I was about to depart.
Rusty recognised a car in front of a dugout built on the side of a hill as Rudy’s, and pulled into the driveway. I climbed out of the dusty ute and walked up to the front door. I knocked and waited. Finally, an elderly man answered. Slightly stooped, he was neatly dressed in a dark green work uniform, a hearing aid visible in each ear.
‘I think you mined opals with my father in the 1960s. Harry Lee.’ I said as a way of introduction. The man shook his head.
‘He’s English. You and he mined together on Olympic Field,’ I said. In a thick accent, he said he didn’t remember. I started firing questions at him, in desperation. ‘Is your name Rudy? Are you from Austria? Did you come to Coober Pedy in the 1960s?’
He responded yes to each question, then said he needed to leave.
I thrust a black-and-white picture of my dad, taken in front of the dugout he’d blasted out of the red earth before I was even born, toward the old man. Rudy squinted at it. He told me he didn’t recognise the man in the picture. How could there be two men called Rudolph from Austria, both in this tiny town at the same time? Is this man lying to me? Why would he lie?
‘I have to leave for work,’ he said. But I didn’t want to leave. I wanted him to invite me across the threshold.
There would be no emotional moment at the eleventh hour. No hugging a complete stranger like we were family. I apologised for disturbing Rudy, climbed into the passenger side of the ute and headed back to Waffle and Gems to collect my luggage.
There was no seam of opal. All I found was potch.
What a rollicking adventure and a great ending. Love it.