I had almost caught up with the car and was actually reaching for the door handle, a quarter of the way up the mount, when my left foot snagged on something in the tall grass and I went sprawling to the ground.

Cursing as I pulled myself to my feet again, to my surprise I saw that I had fallen over a long, white weatherboard.   “Well, I’ve found part of a house at any rate!” I thought as I started off after the Mitsubishi again.

A few hundred metres further on I saw a hint of white.   But this time I was astute enough to jump over the white weatherboard concealed in the long native grass.

As I continued up the mountainside, still loping along without any sign of fatigue, every few hundred metres I saw one or two long weatherboards hidden in the tall grass.

I had almost caught the car again at the top of the mount, when to my shock I saw a tall, rambling white weatherboard house, three-storeys high, complete with seemingly a myriad gables, gambrels and square bay windows as described by my Uncle Lindsay’s executors and thought, “The mansion!   It has to be the mansion that was supposed to be at the base of the mountain!   Some lawyer you are Thomas J. Holland Esquire!”

In stopping to ponder the sudden discovery of the missing mansion, I had, however, allowed my car to race out of my grasp again.   “Oh well, that’s the end of that!” I thought as the Mitsubishi topped the peak of mountain and started down the other side.

After one last look at the weatherboard mansion, I set off again expecting to find my car racing down the other side of the mount — if it wasn’t already smashed to pieces at the bottom of the mountain.   To my astonishment though, when I topped the peak of the mount, I found my car at last stopped, just beyond the crest of the mountain.

Although it had already come to a complete stop, taking no chances I leapt inside the car and pulled on the handbrake.   Then I set off back to the other side of the mount to have a closer look at the mansion.   It was a three-storey, weatherboard house with loose planks hanging half away from the sides, and gaps where planks had previously fallen away down the years.   “Well, that explains the loose boards all the way down the side of the mount!” I thought.   Although I knew it didn’t explain how the boards had got themselves spread all the way down the side of the mountain.   “Gravity works in mysterious ways!” I joked, recalling how effortlessly I had raced up the mount, unaware just how prophetic the thought would turn out to be.