Dust clung to everything in Coober Pedy by 1912.
The water boreholes were running dry, and the
mine shafts yielded less each day. Tom Riley, a
wiry twentyyearold with a back full of scars
from the railways, arrived in the ghost town
seeking work. He had left Broken Hill with
nothing but a tin of bully beef and a letter
from his brother, who’d vanished months earlier.
The town was quiet, save for the occasional bark
of a dog or the groan of a windmill. It wasn’t
until he crossed paths with Yaraŋga, an
Indigenous elder whose presence felt older than
the hills, that things began to shift. She spoke
little, but her eyes followed him like a hawk
tracking prey. When he asked about the water,
she pointed to a cracked clay pot near the old
cemetery and said, “You dig here, you find truth.
”
Tom ignored her at first. Work was scarce, and
survival meant swallowing pride. But when the
mine collapsed under a foreman, burying three
men, the town turned on itself. Rumours spread
of cursed land, of spirits angry at the drilling.
Yaraŋga watched from the shadows, unshaken.
Then came the storm—black clouds rolling in from
the west, thick with rain. The town’s water
tanks overflowed, and for a moment, it seemed
the earth had answered the prayers of the
desperate. But Tom found the pot Yaraŋga had
pointed to, buried beneath a cairn of stones.
Inside was a bundle of bones, wrapped in red
ochre, and a carved wooden charm shaped like a
kangaroo.
He took it. That night, the storm stopped. The
next morning, the water ran dry again.
Yaraŋga found him at the edge of the dunes,
staring at the sky. “You took what was not yours,
” she said, her voice low and steady. “Now you
must carry it.”
The town blamed him. They called him a thief, a
jinx. The mine owners offered him a deal: leave,
or be thrown into the pit. He refused. Instead,
he walked the salt flats alone, the charm around
his neck, searching for answers.
By the time he reached the edge of the Simpson
Desert, the sun was setting in a blaze of orange
and red. The desert had always been vast, but
now it felt endless. He sat down, exhausted, and
looked back at the town one last time.
It was then that he understood. The test had
never been about water. It had been about choice.
About knowing when to hold on, and when to let
go.
He left the charm in the sand. And walked on.
