Topic: I discovered oil!

[piersdad]

 

Years ago I was at a remote camp during the school holidays. Dad had a large caravan parked near a steep ravine some 100 meters deep.
The ravine was covered in small bushes and dense undergrowth all along the very steep sides.
The rock wall were of the sand stone   and  small trees clung to the sides of it.
There was dense bush all around us and a road from the town 30 miles away snaked past the camp site.

We loved to explore the ravine and climb down the very steep walls clinging to the branches  till we descended to the slowly flowing pools below where we often swam.

One night we were all sleeping soundly when a tremendous noise woke us all up.
It sounded like the most frantic fight on top of the caravan roof.
We realized that it was two opossums  in a really life and death fight and after a few minutes there was a great crashing of tree branches as one of the opossums leaped of the roof and descended down the ravine walls at terminal speed.
We listened  as the noise of the  breaking branches disappeared into the depths of the ravine.
As we wondered about the fate of the retreating opossum we heard the remaining one  make a  snarling noise  almost like a laugh.

Next day my brother and I explored the area where the poor animal fell and with great caution mixed with fear we descended  the ravine wall.
As we neared the bottom I noticed a funny smell and thinking it might be a dead animal we studied the ground carefully where the smell came from.
It was not really a bush smell and not really a dead animal smell.
It was sort of coming out from the ground and we took a sample of the smelly mud and after a precarious climb reached the top and asked dad what he thought of the smelly mud.
Well he thought it might be a sort of tree that smells bad   and later we explored the area again but only smelly black mud was found..
We lost interest in the mud and carried on with our holidays.

Next year the survey camp was shifted to another part of the bush land and    my brothers and I  spent another school holiday exploring the bush land and having a great time. 
 One day after a long trek we were having lunch in a deep ravine entrance and I again smelt the funny smell and again it was just some smelly mud and thought no more about it.

A few years went past when I saw an article in the paper about some exploratory oil wells being dug in New Zealand bush and as I idly looked at the article I  recognized  that  the giant drilling rig was  placed exactly where we had once parked our caravan and the drill would have passed right through the spot where I had years before found the smelly black mud.
Coincidence I thought till some months later another article showed another drilling site  and yes it was right next to our picnic lunch site where I had found the smelly mud.

Nether of the drilling sites  found  commercial quantities of oil but one day they may be worth exploring again as the world oil supplies dwindle