Chinese Gold

By Brian V Taylor

An Adventure story of the recovery of lost Chinese gold, that came from the Palmer River alluvial gold fields in Queensland.
Vince Cousins was a happy contented man. After serving over 20 years in the RAAF he retired to Cairns and now spends every fine weekend on his
Boat 'Friday'; cruising, fishing or diving on the Great Barrier Reef. An encounter with a Chinese academic was to change his idyllic lifestyle into the most dangerous thrill ride of his life.
Against his better judgement, he and his crew are pitch forked into a search for lost gold. On the way, they have to battle enormous sharks, cyclones and Triad killers.
After retrieving the gold they then have to outwit the Australian customs, fight pirates, and run the gauntlet of Chinese customs; and finally fool the Chinese secret police.
The end has an unexpected twist to the story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Jan 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781742842851

Brian V Taylor

Brian Taylor, born in western Queensland, left school at 13 and went to work to assist his mother with the expenses of keeping their home.Realising he needed a better education to get anywhere in life he joined the RAAF and was trained as an aircraft electrician. Whilst in the RAAF, he went to night school to obtain his senior certificate. In those days you had to pass in four subjects in the one year to be credited with a pass. Because he was continually posted around from state to state he took four years to gain his senior certificate. He has the dubious distinction of passing senior English four times.After leaving the RAAF he became an Air Traffic Controller. A serious heart condition meant the end of that career. He went to University and later TAFE and was awarded Diplomas in Business administration and Travel. He owned his own Travel agency and has traveled extensiver the world.On retiring he took up golf at the age of 60 and is now a hopeless golf ’tragic’.Chinese Gold is his first novel to be published.

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Chinese Gold

Brian V Taylor

Smashwords Edition

Chinese Gold

Copyright © 2012 Brian V Taylor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication.

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN: 978-1-742842-85-1 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal

www.bookpal.com.au

Foreword

Australians have always prided themselves on how well they treat their fellow man, and have been very vocal against apartheid and the way that some other countries treat their minorities. Well, the Australians should hang their head in shame for the way the Chinese were treated on the goldfields in the early days of our settlement.

It is no wonder then that the Chinese miners would go to any length to thwart the authorities to increase their profit margin. On doing the research for this book, I discovered many ruses the miners used to smuggle gold past the Australian customs, which gave me some of the ideas for this tale.

The effect the Chinese people have had on the Australian economy and lifestyle is often overlooked. The Chinese started coming to search for gold, but they soon branched out into other fields of endeavour.

In 1861, the Chinese made up 3.3% of the Australian population. Today over 4% of the population was born in China or have Chinese ancestors.

The change the Chinese have had on the eating styles of Australia is significant. I doubt if there is a town of any size in Australia that does not have a Chinese restaurant. Not only the restaurant trade but the different foods introduced to Australia by the Chinese have changed the way we eat in so many ways. The Kiwi fruit was a Chinese gooseberry. I grew up eating Chinky apple (Chinese apple) jam, Bok Choy, Purple beans and rice. All of these things were not a normal part of the Australian diet, but having a Chinese aunt, (married to Mum’s brother) we soon learned to enjoy her cooking.

The Chinese were involved in agriculture, not only as vegetable farmers but also in the sheep industry. They moved into the hospitality industry, and in every town there would be at least one hotel owned and managed by a chinaman.

The Chinese have always respected education and that is shown in the fact that 31.9% of Chinese/Australians have bachelor or higher education compared with 14.8 % of the Australian population.

I think it is about time we recognised the part the Chinese have played in developing this country instead of just thinking of them as restaurant owners.

Chapter 1

It was stinking hot, the end of November in Cairns, North Queensland. The 'Wet' hadn't started yet but the humidity was already very, very high. I do not know what the actual figure was, but believe me it was too high for comfort.

The ‘Wet’ had not started but the occasional afternoon thunder storms gave the town a new life, the grass was green, the mangoes were beginning to ripen, the stone fruits were coming on to the store shelves from the farms down south and there was an expectancy of something about to happen.

I had seen it all before, what was about to happen was torrential tropical rain that washed the gutters clean and made the city look neat and tropical. The prawns in the bay were growing at a prodigious rate, the barramundi were going crazy and the local doomsayers were telling everybody that this year we would have the biggest cyclone ever seen in North Queensland history. Nothing new there, it was the same every year.

Cairns is an unique place, smaller than Townsville its rival city four hundred kilometres to the south, but much more sophisticated and cosmopolitan. It has an international airport, some of the smarter upper class shopping in Queensland and the best restaurants in a town of under two hundred thousand people in the world.

The other side of the coin was, it attracts more nut cases than its fair share and more dole bludgers than the unemployment officers can handle. I heard they had over twenty unemployed lion tamers on their books and heaps of glass blowers looking for work. The rule as it stands is, you are entitled to collect unemployment benefits if the government cannot find work for you in your trade.

With the reef close to the coast, the overseas tourists flock to Cairns. They can have a holiday in Cairns, go diving on the reef and buy up big in the duty free stores for half the price of a holiday in Honolulu or Tahiti.

Cairns is also the best place in the world to catch a sail fish, and in the season, fishermen from all over the world come to Cairns to chase the mighty black marlin. The word about how good the marlin fishing is in North Queensland was spread by the author Zane Grey. The practice of catch and release has ensured the stocks of quality fish are still there.

The biggest danger to the game fish industry is the Japanese, Indonesian and Chinese fishermen who plunder the waters off the Australian coast, taking everything not thinking about the future.

All of this, combined with a real laid back life style, makes Cairns a great place to live.

Friday, nearly midday. I was half asleep dreaming of a big fish on my line and a cold beer to keep me company. I was sitting in my taxi waiting for the midday plane from Sydney to arrive. I would pick up my last fare, give the car a quick wash and cleanup, hand it over to my relief driver for the weekend and then I would be away to the reef.

The plane from Sydney arrived and it was nearly empty, so there was no chance of getting a fare from the few passengers that came out of the terminal. They were mostly locals and a few tourists, although the tourist season was well and truly over.

Suddenly my attention picked up. Two very blond females came out of the terminal and they drew the attention of every male within one hundred metres. The girls were in their early twenties and very tan. The tallest was wearing a pair of denim shorts that just needed to be ten percent smaller to be classed as a bikini; she had a very tight tee shirt on and no bra. I swear I could see right through that shirt. Maybe I couldn’t, but my imagination was enough to think that I could.

The shorter of the two had a skimpy skirt with a split in the side that showed she was either wearing no pants or only one of those new thong things. This one did not have a tee shirt on but a cheese cloth top that was cut so low I could see her nipples when she bent down to put her bag in the taxi two ahead of me. I don’t know what was bigger, her nipples or my eyes. Thank God I had sunglasses on otherwise my eyes would have popped out onto the dashboard.

The next flight, due in about twenty minutes, was an international flight from Kuala Lumpur. I had read the local paper so I started to think about the two blond girls that had got off the Sydney plane. They reminded me of the only time I had taken backpackers on as crew.

I had bought Friday, my boat, in Melbourne. It had been owned by a group of fishing friends who wanted to own their own boat so they could go fishing whenever and wherever they liked. The one thing they overlooked was that owning a boat of this size takes a lot of work, and a lot of that work is dirty and greasy. Very soon the boat started to look and smell like a garbage scow and no one wanted to clean it up. The maintenance did not get done and so things started to break down. Eventually someone, after an oil change, forgot to replace the sump plug correctly, and they blew the motor and had to be towed back to Port Phillip Bay. The embarrassment and ribbing they received from their friends and workmates was a lot worse than the inconvenience of being towed back to port. The result, the only thing the group wanted, was to sell the boat and go back to going fishing on charters. They did not spend any time or money making the boat presentable, so by the time I flew to Melbourne to have a look at the boat, they were ready to give the boat away. This allowed me to bargain the price down to well below its real value.

I had a new Lister motor fitted coupled to a ZF gearbox and an overhaul of the electronics. The previous owners had fitted good electronics so all they needed was maintenance. I had the outside painted and anti fouled. I wanted to paint the inside myself to save money.

I flew to Melbourne at the start of winter and decided to motor Friday back to Cairns by myself, but after speaking to some of the more experienced skippers at the St Kilda Marina, I decided to get some help. I did not want to pay for crew so I advertised for help in The Age newspaper. I said in my advertisement that it was going to be a slow cruise along the Great Barrier Reef.

The next morning at about eight o’clock, four people arrived at my mooring saying they would like to be my crew for the trip. The four were Danish backpackers and they said they all had experience in sailing.

The backpackers were two couples. The men were in their late twenties and surprisingly fairly dark complexioned. They spoke reasonable English and looked fit and able. Their names were Jens and Mikkel. The girls looked to be about the same age but were what I would describe as honeycomb blond. One of the girls, Kristen, was tall and willowy, the other, Semine, was shorter, not plump but strongly built with a very generous bust. The girls also spoke English with a slight accent.

Not wanting to waste time, I said they would do and to get their gear aboard as soon as possible as we would leave the next morning. I spent the rest of the day refuelling, buying charts for the trip and with the help of the girls, stocking the larder.

That night I thought I had made a big mistake, for, as soon as the last of the stowing of gear was finished, the four of them started to pour alcohol down their throat as if prohibition was going to be declared tomorrow. Before dinner, which I cooked, they drank vodka and during dinner and afterwards they drank wine.

The next morning they were all up and ready to go. We left harbour just after daylight and as soon as we were clear of the dock one of the men, Jens, came and relieved me of the wheel. I watched him for a while to make sure he knew what he was doing and I soon discovered that he knew more about boat handling than I did, not that I knew much.

I had worked out a roster, but that first day I threw it out the window. The girls were very capable of standing a watch on their own, and the men were better at it than I was. So the new watch read, three hours on and nine hours off. I did not stand a watch, but was on call twenty four hours a day to relieve anybody.

Whoever was free cooked the meals and everybody cleaned up.

When we came close to Sydney they begged me to sail into the harbour and under the bridge. I must admit it didn’t take much urging as I was a bit keen to do that myself. We sailed into Sydney harbour at midday and under the bridge soon after. What a sight. We cruised around until late afternoon, had dinner at anchor and then by the light of the moon cruised out of the harbour again. When we were nearly out of the harbour there was a fireworks display let off from Garden Island. I tuned into a local radio station and was informed that it was some anniversary or other of the Royal Australian Navy.

As we travelled north the weather was getting warmer every day. The Danes had stopped wearing their cold weather gear soon after leaving Melbourne, but I was still putting a jacket on when I went on a night shift.

We had became friendly and I thought the girls were nurses and the fellows either orderlies or radiographers, as they often mentioned a hospital in their stories.

They still gave the booze a good nudge when they came off watch but they were always sober when they went on watch. I never had to mention the eight hours, bottle to throttle rule to them, they just did it naturally.

When we got close to the Queensland border they wanted me to go into the Gold Coast but I refused. In their wanderings they had stayed there already so I did not think they needed to see Surfers Paradise again. I promised we would go into a few of the Reef resorts. But they kept at me, the girls teased me and soon I gave in. I told myself I wanted to check on the fuel consumption anyway.

As soon as we tied up in Southport they all jumped into a taxi and off they went. I didn’t mind as I was glad to be by myself for a while. The fuel consumption was better than expected, the new lister was running better than advertised and there was very little water in the bilge. I changed the oil and did other small maintenance jobs. I was a happy man.

The Danes arrived back with the boot of the taxi loaded with fresh food and enough booze to keep a party going for weeks. They had also bought enough snorkelling equipment, all top of the range equipment, for all of them to have a choice of styles in flippers and goggles. Until then I had thought backpackers were short of money.

The crew decided that they would shout me dinner so we all walked to the pub and had a few drinks then dinner. After dinner the Danes called a few of the other customers over and soon a party was in full swing. I left early and enjoyed the walk back to the boat. I heard the crew arrive home about 2AM and by the sound of their arrival the party was a success.

I wanted to leave early, but the tide was too low for me to risk the sand bar, so we didn’t get under way until nearly lunch time. By then my crew looked a lot better than they did when I called them for breakfast.

The next morning I decided to do the 3AM to 6AM watch and as soon as I was relieved, I went straight to bed. I woke up at about midday and knew we were back in the tropics, it was hot. I got up put on my swimmers and headed for the shower on the back deck. When I went through the wheelhouse there was no one on the wheel, so I knew that whoever was on watch, was steering from the fly bridge.

I had my shower. The water was straight from the ocean, cool and fresh and it always seemed to be fresher than any other shower. I towelled myself off and headed for the fly bridge. I climbed the ladder and the sight that met my eyes nearly blew me away. All of the Danes, men and women, were sunbaking totally nude. Semine, who was on watch, was sitting in the chair with her feet on the rail and all she said when I climbed up the ladder was Good morning Skipper and went on scanning the horizon with the binoculars.

I turned and climbed down the ladder as quickly as possible. I headed for the galley to make myself a strong cup of coffee. I needed it. A couple of minutes later Semine came down the ladder. She had put on a bikini bottom and a tee shirt, not that the tee shirt covered much. I had said before her boobs were large, and without any support they had not dropped an inch. All they did was wobble a bit which made them look sexier than if she had nothing on.

I tried to look into my coffee but my eyes kept being drawn to the massive bust. Skipper, she said, We are sorry if we have offended you by sunbaking without any clothes on.

Look, I don’t care if you like to sunbake in the nude, but I would like you to cover up when I am around. I will always give you notice if I am coming on to the fly bridge and you can get dressed, OK.

I stood up to leave and she came over looked me fair in the eye and said, OK, and gave me a big hug then scampered up the ladder onto the fly bridge. I went and had another cold shower. I was not game to take my swimmers off as I would have embarrassed myself.

We stopped off at Lady Elliot Island, then out to the reef, and cruised along the inside edge, fishing in the mornings with hand lines.

The Danes were not used to fishing with hand lines and I had to show them the way we did it on the reef. The lines were twenty or thirty kilo breaking strain and wound on to a wooden reel. They were rigged with two hooks set about three hundred millimetres apart with the lower hook about five hundred millimetres above the large sinker on the bottom. The reason for this was, if you have the hooks on the bottom you would be continually catching the reef with one or the other