Was the Imperial Hotel Really Fire Bombed in 1969?

 Gillespie's Gold:     Chapter Forty-Nine 

 

Sam went with her father to shift the pivot irrigator. She knew it was a ploy to talk about mining and something she would rather do than grocery shopping with her mother. There was something about being on the farm that eased her mind, the rattle of tools on the tray of his four-wheel-drive was comforting and the incessant barking of the farm dogs riding in the back reminded her she was home.

‘I’ve been thinking about the Gillespie place,’ her father pointed for her to open the gate.

‘Yeah?’ Sam climbed out and waited until he drove through. There was no stock in the paddock so she left the gate open and ran back to the vehicle.

‘I remembered something an old scratcher told me back in the seventies, reckoned he’d been done out of a claim, years before. He bragged about a reef that would make Lasseter envious.

‘Scratcher?’

‘Something my dad called people who scratched a living out of prospecting.’

‘Where was this claim? And who was he?’

‘I just knew him as Mad Charlie,’ he eased the irrigator over the pivot point, ‘here, jump out and pull the drawbar pin, eh,’ he rocked the vehicle back and forward until he felt the pin loosen, ‘then it would be a big help if you could give me a hand to set up.’

As they worked, Sam’s father told her the scratcher had worked a claim at Waukaringa in the early days and asked Les Gillespie to back him. For years they combined to make the claim work and, like everyone else around there, they sent their ore to the battery in Peterborough. Rumour had it there’d been a card game at the Imperial Hotel the night it burnt down. Les Gillespie and Mad Charlie were the last players standing and the stakes were high.

‘Everything had been fine between Gillespie and the scratcher until the night of the pub fire in Orroroo. It was around September ‘69 and the licensee often promoted a card game to boost his takings. However, that night was a big one, a poker championship, something he wanted to become an annual event.’

‘I can’t see how that would have been legal,’ Sam said.

‘It wasn’t, and his idea was scotched by the local copper and most of the town’s wowsers, but he got around this by putting up stake money for the people who objected.’

‘Yeah,’ Sam knew her dad loved a story, but the mix of truth and fiction in his yarns could always be called into question.

‘Two hundred dollars was a lot of money to most in the district, but Bert saw it as an investment that would pay dividends after the tournament. Five percent from each winning pot meant his plan couldn’t fail and commercial travellers who were regulars at the hotel would soon spread the word.’

‘So how did it work?’

‘Bert capped the number of players at sixty and on the designated evening, thirty serious and twenty-six novice gamblers registered for the championship.’

‘That many?’

‘Yep, professional players deposited ten thousand dollar stakes, amateurs gamblers put up two thousand. Mug punters, for whom he had a waiting list, thrust their two hundred dollars at him.’

‘You’re making it up,’ Sam said, ‘that would never happen in a place like Orroroo.’

‘You can scoff young lady, but I’m told at the gala dinner that night a red pyramid of notes built on the table as each gambler pressed forward to register their stake and before the soup arrived two hundred and ninety thousand lay before them. Bert and his wife stood behind the cash and as a photo was taken to record the occasion, Bert held up another ten grand.’

‘A photo, really?’

‘Yes,’ Clive sounded indignant, ‘I even had one somewhere.’

‘Bet you can’t find it now,’ it felt good to laugh.

‘It’s in the wardrobe at the back of the motor-shed, I think.’

‘That’s lost then,’ they both laughed this time.

‘Anyway, he puts the ten thousand on the pyramid, declaring this the richest poker tournament in the State’s history. After dessert, he puffed himself to full height and rapped on his glass. When he had the attention of the diners, he told them the games would begin at nine o’clock and asked the players to open the envelopes in front of them. He waited and they fidgeted. Each envelope held a card, a red number to tell them their table and the blue, their seating position. He wished them luck and said the match steward would call them at eight forty-five pm and the doors would close at nine until the first refreshment break at midnight.’

‘It’s a good story Dad.’

He passed her a couple of spanners and pointed at the toolbox. ‘The mug punters took to their rooms where some tried to sleep while others flexed their fingers with a card deck and at eight fifty-five, the dinner gong sounded, and players were called to take their place at the tables.’

‘And they had to stop at midnight?’

‘Yes,’ he rocked on a tyre and watched a wave of movement ripple along the irrigator’s length, ‘anyway, when tournament master called time, the gamblers returned to their rooms and the mug punters who’d lost went home to explain the unexplainable. Others sat outside in their cars and cried like babies. Only the winners were happy and twelve hours later those left in the tournament gathered again in the dining room, a scene more sombre than the night before.’

‘How did anyone go to the loo?’

‘They didn’t, anyway it went on just like the night before until time was called. By then the room stank of cigarettes and the sweat of desperate men and the remaining players adjourned to their rooms for a shower and a change of clothes.’

‘Dad, forty hours is a long time and even with scheduled breaks, how did the players rest?’

‘It is a long time but think, everyone would be going over the other players’ faces in their mind, trying to remember flinches, smiles, searching for anything that might indicate their next play.’

‘But what has this to do with the Gillespies?’

‘If you have some patience, I’ll tell you,’ he turned the key and started off again, ‘Mad Charlie didn’t like his last hand and called for a new deck. On the table, over two hundred and seventy thousand dollars in cash and bonds sat before them. Only four hours earlier he’d won the deed to the John Billings’ farm. John sat in the corner drained, he couldn’t go home. He had no home,’ he waved his hands to emphasise the tragedy of it.

'Really?’

‘Yeah, Bill Simpson had folded a broken man and the title to his engineering shop added to the pot. Together these two upstanding citizens owned only the clothes they stood in. Only Charlie, Les Gillespie, two other players and the dealer remained. There was still a lot to play for.’

‘I’ll bet there was.’

In the swing of the story, her father pressed on, ‘Charlie reckoned he had a better gold find than the legendary Lasseter’s Reef and pulled a map out of his jacket and put it into the pot. Les Gillespie called and raised with the deed to his own property and the two other players at the table folded and left. Everything to play for was now between the scratcher and the squatter.’

‘So is that what I am Dad, a scratcher?’

He didn’t answer and pressed on with his story, ‘having matched and raised Charlie’s bid, Les then drew three gold bars from his jacket pocket. The scratcher folded. He couldn’t call or raise. He was out of options and Les had beat him.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Not quite, but yeah. Mad Charlie demanded to see the cards, but Les just laughed. I’d heard he was mean bastard, but mean enough to laugh when he turned over his hand, that’s a whole new level of low. The bugger had nothing and he’d bluffed Charlie out of everything.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Charlie had the better hand, but Les had more to bet. His only gamble was that Charlie had less to play with and it worked. Les Gillespie got everything and it pissed Charlie off.’

‘I’d be pissed too.’

‘That’s how it works with poker, so be careful who you play with.’

‘So, the guts of the story is, Charlie hated Les because he believed a Gillespie cheated him out of his,’ she used her fingers to make speech marks, ‘better than Lasseter’s reef and their farm too.’

‘Yep and that’s why I never play cards.’

Sam loved her father’s yarns but she dismissed it as a myth, something drillers in bush camps tell each other to pass time.

‘Bigger find than Lasseter’s, yeah?’

‘So, the scratcher said.’

‘Which we can’t prove because neither has been found.’

‘Yep.’

‘So, the Gillespies have Mad Charlie’s mine, if the map to its whereabouts didn’t go up in the pub fire, and you believe that?’

‘Nope,’ he tightened the last clamp and straightened up and put his hands in the small of his back and stretched, ‘the only bit I believe is that the pub burnt down.’

‘So, you just told me a whopper to cheer me up?’

‘You used to like my stories,’ he feigned hurt.

‘Of course I love your stories, but what I want to know is why Charles is so dammed positive the Gillespie land has gold on it.’

‘I dunno love. Your former boss and Mad Charlie could be related, still carrying the grudge. Charlie told anyone who’d listen that Les had blown the entrance of his mine to stop people raiding it. He maintained there was an underground rift, or fissure, millions of years old running east west, on a line from Burra to Roxby, somewhere between the Walloway Hills South of Eurelia and as far to the north-west as Lake Torrens. If the reef does exist and is on Gillespie land, then it’s probably on that line.’

‘There’s not much evidence on the surveys to support that.’

‘Well, he was a bit of a crackpot. He reckoned if you knew where to look, you could grow gold.’

‘Yeah?’

‘So, he said. He also reckoned that the inter-plate fault line has smaller fissures, fault jogs he called them. Anyway, these lines can have several mini earthquakes a minute and if you know where they are, you can literally watch gold grow.’

‘And you believe him?’ She wondered if her father was winding her up with another yarn.

‘Nope, and like you, I never found anything to substantiate his ravings,’ he laughed.

‘You bastard, Dad. You’ve sucked me in twice. I come down here for some respite and all you do is take the piss.’

He was falling over himself with laughter, ‘Google it if you don’t believe me. C’mon let’s get Mum and take her to the pub for lunch.’

‘Fault jogs?’

‘Google it.’