Brian was puffing from exertion when to his relief he saw Ernie’s Range Rover parked slightly uphill from a great boulder about halfway up the mount.   He stepped back behind the cover of a fir tree and was dumbfounded to see Ernie take a crowbar from the roof rack of the Rover.   As he watched Ernie went across to the boulder and started to strain against it with the crowbar, trying to lever the boulder away.

Ernie struggled against the great boulder for nearly twenty minutes — while Brian felt increasingly guilty staying behind the tree watching while his friend almost gave himself a hernia.   He was about to break cover to offer his assistance, when finally the boulder fell over backwards…and started rolling down the mountain, crunching Mulga bushes and small ferns to pulp as it thundered down the mount.

Recalling the state of his father’s Jeep, Brian remembered that his Holden was parked at the base of the mountain and thought, ‘Oh, no!   Not the Premier as well!’   But the boulder rolled more than twenty metres away from the car when it finally reached the bottom of the mountain.

‘Thank God!’ thought Brian from relief.   Looking back he saw Ernie entering a large cave in the side of the mountain, which the boulder had concealed.

‘Now how the Hell did he know that was there?’ wondered Brian racing across to the cave entrance as soon as Ernie had disappeared from sight.

Standing at the entranceway Brian peered into the darkness for a moment, wishing he had brought a flashlight with him, then tentatively started after Ernie.   He followed Ernie through the dark tunnel for what seemed like hours, forced to find his way along by touch, never knowing whether Ernie was still ahead of him or had branched off in another direction.   ‘Or worse stopped!’ thought Brian, half expecting to crash into the back of Ernie at any time.

Finally, however, the previously impenetrable darkness began to lighten.   ‘But we must be deep inside the mount?’ he puzzled.   ‘How can there possibly be any source of light down here?’

*      *      *