THE MEMORY STONES

“Why do you keep these old stones in your garden Nanna?.

Bill waved him small six year old arm in the vague direction of the fish pond, and an adjacent concrete slab on which lay a random collection of stones and a few shells.

“They’re my memory stones, very precious stones indeed Bill”.

“They’re not precious stones Nanna. Precious stones are diamonds and rubies and stuff - they taught us about them at school. Those are just ordinary old rocks”.

“Ah, but these are precious to me. Not because they’re worth a lot of money but because they help me remember some of the wonderful places I’ve been”.

“See that one there for instance - that creamy pink one with the sharp edge and the little brown swirls through it?” “Yes, that one. That’s a piece of agate from Brunette Downs in the Northern Territory which I picked up one day when I was going to he Brunette Downs races. I’d flown from Darwin to Tennant Creek, and picked up a vehicle my colleagues had left at the airport for me. I’d expected a car but found a four-wheel drive truck!”

“It was a fairly long drive - well over four hours I think - first for a couple of hours along the Barkley highway then turned left and another long drive heading north towards the Gulf of Carpentaria. The only sign of civilisation or other vehicles was when I stopped briefly at the Barkley Homestead”

“As I drove north, the landscape got more and more desolate until I realised that to the horizon in all directions was a totally flat and featureless brown landscape. Nothing to be seen except a water mirage in the far distance ahead of me. I stopped the truck and got out to experience the nothingness. It became totally eyrie because there weren’t any sounds at all - except when I walked the mass of sharp stone fragments which covered the whole landscape cracked and ground together under my feet”.

“I stooped down and picked up that stone you’re holding Bill. Then I drove on to the race track in the middle of nowhere and had a great afternoon watching the races. The night was freezing cold and after the bush dance I slept in the cabin of the truck, huddled in a sleeping bag”.

“For reasons I don’t remember now my camera film was ruined, so that piece of agate helps me remember the trip”.

“Gee. What about this heavy gold looking bit Nanna? What is it?”.

“That’s some sort of ore Bill. I don’t know much about minerals but I picked that up at the bottom of the Prince Lyall mine in Tasmania. Not many women get to go down into mines because the miners are superstitious, but I was very fortunate. I think they said the last woman to go down the Prince Lyall had been Queen Elizabeth when she’d visited a few years before”.

“Anyway it was great fun. I had to get dressed in a white boiler suit and wear a miners helmet with a lamp on the front of it. I was driven down into the mine in a jeep which drove through a spiral tunnel round and round inside the mountain. At various levels there were huge horizontal shafts radiating out from a central open shaft which went vertically through the mountain”

“The miners recovered ore from the ends of the tunnels and huge noisy trucks drove the ore to a central shaft. There it was tipped out to fall into the bucket cars of a slow moving train which travelled through a tunnel at the base of the mountain. It was an incredible adventure Bill. Most of all I remember the noise and the speed of the trucks. A condition of me going down was that I wasn’t supposed to get out of the jeep. But the driver agreed I couldn’t see a lot that way and let me get out to walk along one of the tunnels where ore was being moved”

“It seemed like every few seconds we had to press ourselves back against the tunnel wall to allow another ore carrying monster with its blazing headlights to go thundering past us in the darkness. It was in one of the brief intervals between trucks that I picked up that ore fragment from the tunnel”

“Gee, they’re beaut stories Nanna. But there’s lots of stones here - you can’t have been to that many places?”

“Well nearly, but not quite. A couple of them were your great grandmothers memory stones and she told me her memories the same way I’m telling you mine”.

“But most of them are mine. I won’t tell you the full stories now. But that rough sandy brown stone is a piece of Ayers Rock. The tiny brown and white pebble is from a beach in Darwin. Some are from New Zealand, like that unusual faded pink and white crusty looking stone - that’s a fragment of the Pink silica Terraces which are glassy formations resulting from enormous volcanic eruptions. That piece of pumice stone is also volcanic, found floating on the surface of lake Oraki Korako”.

“What about this one, where’s it from” said Bill with an impish grin. “Let’s have a closer look at it? No…I really can’t place that one, and I was sure all my stone’s were like old friends”. Bill laughed gleefully. “I tricked you Nan - I just put it there, it’s not one of your memory stones at all”.

I smiled and hesitated. “Are you sure Bill? If you leave it there it can be a very special new memory stone. In years to come I can look at that stone and remember you and how you played a happy trick on me”.

“Come on” I said taking his hand. “enough for today. Let’s go for a walk on the beach. Maybe I’ll find a special pebble or a shell that I can give to you to remember your Nanna by”.

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