My life story, Henry J Macey [books for 20 year olds .TXT] 📗

keep them. We replaced the tin when we left, just in case the finder returned for them.

 

Sometime much later we were driving somewhere between Mt Magnet and Meeka when our oil light came on. We pulled over to check the engine for oil and found it empty. Pouring a gallon in we check it again to find it still did not show on the dipstick. Looking under the truck we saw a puddle of oil under the engine and found we had lost the sump plug.

 

Not far from the road maybe a mile we could see a homestead, I decided to see if they had anything we could use maybe an old tractor sump plug might fit. If not I could radio for help, from Meeka. As I walked across the bush I picked up some coloured stones similar to the ones Don had found in that tin.

 

By the time I had gone halfway to the station I had a pocket full. I had on a pair of tight shorts and the stones were chafing my leg so they had to go. Keeping one large bluish stone I discarded the rest. The owner of the station could not help me, and we could not get through to Meeka but he did run me back to the truck.

 

I had forgotten all about the stone and did not find it until Jane went to wash my shorts. She liked the colour of it saying it would make a fine pendant. We had a friend who polished stones for a hobby, so I took it to him to see if he could do anything with it. He took the stone from me and looked at it, then at me saying do you know what this is. I answered no he then informed me I had a blue sapphire and a good one at that. I never found that spot again but I can assure you I looked.

 

What I did find in another place much later, was what I thought was a large piece of gold? It turned out to be a piece of iron pyrites or to use its common name fools gold. It was about a foot by six inches we used it as a doorstop in the end and had some good comments about it.

 

Later back in England Jane and I was down in Dartmouth looking around the shops, I spied a piece of fools gold no bigger than two inches it had a double-figure price tag. It just goes to show, what's rubbish in one place is money in others.

 

HOLIDAY IN GERALDTON

 

Ron and Sue Grieves invited Jane and me up to Geraldton for a two-week holiday. We jumped at the request, for we liked the family very well. Ron was now running a daytime restaurant in Geraldton, for he was a fine chef. The first week we were there he and Sue had to work, as his relief had come down with something. So we had to fend for our self, Ron’s oldest son also called Ron showed us around the town.

 

Jane liked Geraldton from the start saying she would like to live there. We gave Ron a hand in the restaurant to get him finished at night, and then we would go fishing at flat rocks ten miles south of Geraldton. That weekend Ron took us and his family out to a swimming hole near Walkaway, called Allendale pool. As we approached the place a small river run from it lined with trees. In the branches of these trees, there seemed to be hundreds of large white flowers.

 

Jane commented on this to young Ron who was riding with us, he laughed and leaned over pressing my horn. Immediately the sky was filled with the wings and calls of hundreds of the flowers that were white cockatoos. It was an amazing sight, the birds wheeled about making an enormous amount of noise. They seemed to fill the air about us.

 

As we rounded a bend the pool was right in front of us. On this side it was flat ground, the other side a sheer wall of rock rose from the pool fifty feet. You could see from the rock formation it had been coursed by an earthquake in the distant past. The earthquake had fractured the aqua-flow and the pool had formed.

 

I asked how deep is it, but no one knew. The water in the pool was surprisingly cold but very refreshing it was also freshwater. On Wednesday Ron hooked up his trailer, packed his tent, cooking and sleeping gear. For we were off to Kalbarri one hundred kilometres to the north, for a three-day fishing trip.

 

Jane, Sue and Ron's daughter would not be going they had other plans. We were to meet a friend of Ron’s who had a twenty-five feet fishing boat moored there. Kalbarri is on the mouth of the river Murchison that has a twisty narrow entrance; the reef outside protects the wide safe anchorage.

 

But to get out into the open sea you have to run the reef, you must wait just inside the reef for the swell to break over the reef then power out on the crest of the wave. Once outside and away from the shore, the deep waters of the Indian Ocean roll south in long gentle swells. The water here as in all the coast of Weston Australia is crystal clear, which means you not only see the bottom you see the fish you have caught before they reach the boat.

 

 And what fish they are, you all know the joke. “Nice fish?” “No that’s the bait.” Well, its no joke, I was putting on bait fish I would be proud to catch in England. That afternoon we caught some pretty impressive fish, grouper queenfish, yellowtail jacks, sharks, and Spanish mackerel. Spanish mackerel looks the same as mackerel you catch in England, only there five feet longer.

 

E. S. P.

 

I have never believed in anything I could not touch or see but I now believe there is a bond between two people that can tell you something is wrong. A sense of foreboding, a need to get in touch. So let me explain why I feel this way.

 

Don and I were in Meeka delivering to Bell's depot there. I suddenly had the feeling I had to ring Jane. I could not then or now explain the overwhelming urge to get in touch. In those days you had to ring the operator to get you through, and I was making a reverse charge call.

 

As my wife answered the operator, I heard her start to cry. I could get no sense out of her, just sobs and mumbles. Telling her to put the phone down and have a cigarette and a cup of tea to calm her down and that I would ring her again in half an hour.

 

The same operator put the second call through. I heard her ask my wife in a concerned voice if she was all right to take the call, then she put me through. Our car was a ford falcon five hundred, with a column gear change. The reverse was back and up second forward and up. There was a slope down to our carport from the road.

 

Jane had gunned the engine to reverse up it but had shot forwards instead. There was a four-foot drop at the end of the carport and the car ended up with its back wheels on the drive and its nose on the patio below. I had rung seconds after she had crashed !!

 

The sceptical would say, coincidence, and I would have been inclined to agree with them. If it was not for the fact of what happened, many years later when we had returned to England. In 1989 Jane and I were in Exmouth, Devon on my boat for a long weekend. Friday night we had taken the boat out to the deep-water mooring, cooked a meal and slept. Saturday was a fine hot day, so we spent most of it just offshore, fishing. Returning to the mooring in the evening, we rowed ashore to have a meal and drink and we were back on board before dark.

 

About ten o’clock the wind started to pick up and the sea got rough. I turned on the radio just in time to hear the gale warning for the lime bay area, it was too late to get off the gale was already on us. We sat out the force eight storms, being tossed about like a cork until four in the morning. Suddenly the wind dropped and the sea calmed. It felt strange after six hours on a roller coaster. Having checked out the boat to make sure we had not sprung a leak, Jane and I got some well-needed sleep. Dead on seven Jane sat up and said I have got to go home. I looked at her saying “the storms over.”

 

“It's not the storm” she replied, “something is wrong.” There was no way I could stay with her in this frame of mind. The tide was too low to return to my inner mooring, so the boat would have to stay where it was. I would have to row ashore. By the time I secured the boat, rowed ashore, tied up the dingy and got my car ready to leave, it was well past eight.

 

As we approached the roundabout by the car park in Exmouth we spotted Nicholas my number one son in his car coming towards us. I flashed my headlights and sounded my horn to attract his attention. He followed us around and parked behind us on the straight.

 

As Elaine, my son’s wife stepped from the car we could see that she was crying. She ran to Jane sobbing, wrapped her arms around her, saying words of comfort. Nicholas came to me with tears in his eyes and told me Richard (my number two son) had gone to see his granddad (Jane's father) and had found him dead in his kitchen. Would anybody like to guess what time that was?