TWENTY-NINE
Twenty-nine
‘Any news from Area Fifty-one?’ Cher asked over the phone a week later.
Lottie gave a dry chuckle. The dig had a film crew following along to document the entire thing for a future TV documentary, which put a shroud of secrecy around the project. ‘Nope. Apparently, things move very slowly.’ First, there was all the red tape, heritage and council approvals to go through. Then it was marking grids and evaluating the area, checking maps and records and research, which was where Damian’s expertise came in. Once they actually started to dig, it was more uncovering than actual digging, so the process was clearly not going to be completed in a matter of days.
‘Have you been up there yet?’
‘Not since the day we located it. I’ll probably wait until something exciting happens. It’s one hell of a hike just to go and watch them do nothing much,’ she said.
‘How’s Damian going?’
‘Fine. He’s been camping up at the site. There’s a lot to oversee and it really doesn’t make sense to come all the way back here every day.’
‘Why does that sound like you’re trying to convince yourself that it’s fine?’ Cher asked, sounding sceptical.
‘I mean, sure, it’s not great that I don’t see him as much, but it’s to be expected. He’s working.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Of course,’ she said, forcing some enthusiasm into her tone.
‘Really?’
Oh, for goodness’ sake, Cher was like a damn dog with a bone sometimes. ‘It’s not exactly how I thought things would be going,’ Lottie conceded. ‘I guess we’ve been inseparable for the most part and now, suddenly, he’s never here. I just need to get over it.’
‘This excavation stuff will be over soon, right? And then life will go back to the way it was.’
‘Absolutely. Anyway, enough of that. How’s the tour going?’ Cher predictably, warmed to her favourite topic, and Lottie was glad to have the subject changed. She was being a big sook when she needed to be a mature, supportive girlfriend. She decided then and there: no more complaining.
Damian hunkered down beside the campfire near the dig site and breathed on his cold fingers as the sun crept its way slowly into the sky. It was freezing, thanks to the fact the camp was in the middle of the bush with tall trees forming a dense canopy above them and blocking out much of the sunlight.
Mike emerged from his tent nearby and wandered over to join him by the fire.
‘How are you coping?’ Mike asked, reaching his hands out towards the heat of the fire.
‘Bit disappointed in the accommodation—I expected a superstar like you to have motel rooms and room service,’ Damian joked.
‘Not on the budget we have for this one, mate,’ Mike said, shaking his head with a chuckle.
As excited as Damian was for this whole thing, he missed waking up beside Lottie every morning. He missed her more than he’d ever missed anyone before—and it wasn’t just because she would have warmed him if she had been sharing his sleeping bag. He just missed … her .
‘You’ve been a bit quiet lately—what’s going on?’
Damian dropped teabags into two tin mugs as he considered his answer. Usually, once he was on a site, he was completely focused and barely thought about anything other than the job at hand. But this time it was different. Sure, he was focused when he had to be, but slowly it had been dawning on him that this wasn’t the most important thing to him. The thought had shocked him. Up until now, his work had been everything.
He was also feeling slightly unsettled because this dig wasn’t like any he had previously been part of. This one was being filmed—and not just for posterity. There was a producer and a camera crew, and others with roles that were a mystery to him, yet here they were, hanging about, waiting for a big break. Mike was a good bloke, but he was also a businessman and a celebrity. His projects were backed by TV companies and investors and there had to be a worthwhile outcome. There was extra pressure driving the project forward, and he was beginning to notice how everyone was looking to him for results. It was unpleasant, and he knew he had risked ‘selling his soul’ by going to Mike with this idea, but it had been the only way he could get the project moving. By himself, the timeframe would have stretched out who knew how long. He knew Mike’s work, and trusted him to be true to the project, but there were different agendas, and—despite the fact he had equal control with Mike over the dig and anything they uncovered—he was finding it difficult to relinquish control of the research. It had been his baby for so long.
He gave Mike a half-smile and a shrug. ‘It’s all happened so fast—it’s taking a bit to get my head around it. It’s been a lot to juggle.’
Damian lifted the kettle off the coals and poured the teas, his mind jumping back to a conversation with his eldest sister a few days earlier.
‘How’s Lottie taking it all?’
‘She’s great about it—she understands.’
‘Really? Weren’t you making plans to move in together?’
‘Well, yeah. But then this all happened. She gets it.’
He grimaced to himself. The conversation had kept replaying in his head ever since, and he was beginning to suspect that maybe Lottie wasn’t as okay with it as he’d first thought. He realised he hadn’t seen her light up in a long time, and it occurred to him that he’d never really gone over everything with her—Mike had needed answers on the spot and there’d been a tight schedule. Maybe he should have talked things over with her first—but this was his career. He had to admit, between the Armidale job or doing this with Mike, it really hadn’t been a tough decision. This was possibly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and he hadn’t hesitated.
‘You’re married,’ he said to Mike as he passed across the hot brew. ‘How do you handle doing all this stuff? Being away all the time?’
‘Lucy’s also in the industry and she’s away just as much as I am most of the time. This lifestyle suits us, but it’s not for everyone. You got problems at home?’
‘A new relationship … it’s been bad timing.’
‘Ah,’ Mike said. ‘Yeah, that would be tricky. I don’t know what to tell you, except that it takes a strong relationship and good communication to work a job like this. It could be the turning point in your career—we’ve all taken a gamble on this thing—but you always have to figure out what things in life you’re gambling with and if the potential gain is worth the risk. It’s never easy.’ Mike stood up and clapped him on the shoulder then headed off.
Damian shook off the reservations that were crowding him. The only thing that mattered was uncovering something that would help piece together his theory about Catherine—at least, he hoped they uncovered something. Otherwise, it was back to the drawing board again, and his book wouldn’t have any of the answers he’d been hoping to find.
They’d brought up a Ground Penetrating Radar machine to help detect areas where the ground had been disturbed at some point in a non-natural way, like if it had been dug up and something had been buried beneath. GPR equipment was used in a number of fields, but he hoped it would help them to locate the gravesites he was looking for. Already it had helped them map out the hut, and a few other areas where structures would have once stood, giving them a clearer idea of how the small holding would have been laid out.
He wondered what Lottie was doing.
He listened to the phone ringing, and felt a small trickle of warmth as her voice filled his ear.
‘I was just thinking about you,’ Lottie said. He wished she were standing up here on this ridge beside him instead of on the other end of the phone. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Not great,’ he admitted, and his earlier disappointment flooded back.
‘But you found graves?’ she prodded.
They had, which had been exciting a week ago, but since then, his excitement had slowly started to ebb away. ‘Unfortunately, not the one we were looking for. All the graves seem to line up with the records from the church register. There’s nothing here. The chimney is the only part of the original homestead. There’s nothing of any archaeological value left to find. It’s been a complete waste of time.’
‘So is that it? They’re pulling the plug?’
‘We’ve got another two days before they shut it down. We were at least hoping to find something remaining from the era, stables or more of the original homestead building. Something connected to bushranger history in the area. But we don’t even have that. If there’s no economic value in continuing the dig, there’s no point in continuing.’ It took a lot of funding to enter a project like this, and ruins had to be able to justify their worth. Maybe if they’d been able to uncover a solid foundation that would have laid out a floor plan of the house or given them something they could have potentially restored for a tourist interest and been able to manage for heritage value, it would have been different. But this was a primitive set-up. The house would have been built of bark and timber, with a dirt floor. Kate and her family had not been wealthy, and with a large family of mouths to feed, they would have been struggling for much of the time they had lived here. Eventually, long after losing her husband, Kate sold the land and moved out of the area, and the little hut was abandoned.
‘I’m so sorry it hasn’t turned out the way you were hoping,’ Lottie said sadly, bringing him back to the conversation.
‘It happens. Unfortunately, we tend to run into dead ends and disappointments a lot in this field.’
‘Well, you still have two days,’ Lottie said. He smiled at the optimistic little lilt in her words.
‘Yeah, who knows? We might get a miracle.’
‘I miss you,’ she said softly.
‘I miss you too.’
They said goodbye and Damian slid the phone back into his pocket. He took a moment to look around his surroundings. From up here, he could see far into the distance across gullies and tree-topped ridges. He breathed in deeply and the smell of the bush around him filled his senses. Eucalypt and warm earth, moss and damp leaf matter and the lingering smell of campfire smoke melted together in a heady, invigorating scent that filled him with solace.
He knew he shouldn’t have got his expectations up. He’d gone through plenty of setbacks in the past while working on different projects, but this one, he supposed, had become a lot more important to him. He’d lost his professional detachment and let it become personal.
The cool air touched his face and he realised the afternoon sunlight was beginning to fade. Time to make a move back to camp. He gave the view one final glance and turned away.