How often would a single young woman be left in sole charge of a derelict mine in wild country?
Sarah is a geologist, and she seems to be taking it all in her stride, dealing with the failing generator, a malfunctioning freezer, occasional brown snakes and, worst of all, the recurring presence of the blokes: shift workers who come, complete their tasks, and disappear, leaving her to re-establish her solitary status.
Sarah has a history of incidents involving the transient maintenance crew. She likes a beer and keeps pace with the end-of-shift drinking sessions, but the past is the past and she is glad to resume her solitary life when the crew leaves. But what happened between her and big Joe, and what will happen with the unfathomable Cole?
'Hollow Air' proceeds at several levels, most obviously in the secondary story of the two miners Samuel and Tom. At first, all we know is that there are two bodies, never recovered, somewhere in the tunnels that were being excavated a century ago.
Gradually we learn who they were, and just what they were doing in the black depths – and what will be the consequences in today’s world of computerised profit and loss accounting.
Cole, it turns out, is a cave diver as well as being a geologist. He almost persuades Sarah to share his enthusiasm for a system of caves in the Tasmanian wilderness, but she is horrified by his description.
“She could see it, his body twisting beneath the ground, rock pressing on either side, tiny spaces, just enough to admit a lithe body, black water and a stream of silver bubbles.”
Isolation, suggests author Verity Borthwick, can have unexpected consequences. What gives this story a sharper focus is the climate. Set somewhere in the far north (Queensland?) there’s a monsoon on its way. But until it arrives, there’s no escaping the heat, the sweat, the mine dust, the constant craving for a cold beer.
The monsoon breaks, the creek become a flood, the mine site becomes an island. The plot twists like one of the familiar snakes.
Added to this is the nagging tension between the single woman, alone, and the single woman and the transient mining crew, made worse by Sarah’s unravelling relationship with her Sydney-based fiance.
It’s a ripping yarn, but a yarn set in a totally unfamiliar landscape.
And will there be gold at the end of the rainbow?
'Hollow Air' by Verity Borthwick is published by Ultimo Press, Sydney.
