The treasure hunt
Stop dad there’s another one.
We were on the way home from a wonderful holiday in the country where we had all sorts of adventures making a raft too cross a river from a plastic sheet and swimming, fishing all the things boys of that era dream’s of.
We 3 boys were sad to be going home but the excitement of finding the treasure beside the road was the final fling of the trip home.
Along the 80- miles of rough country road we knew from the previous trip that many treasures lay forgotten on the side of the road,
Dirty and to us quite valuable.
Many times the cry would go out as the 3 pairs of eagle eyes spotted yet another treasure and some times more than one.
As the miles grew, on the way home, we collected some 40 treasures and counted up their value .
“How much do we get for them dad”
“Well at two penny's each we will get eighty pence that’s 6 shillings and eight pence”
We all laughed as we realized we could get to go to the pictures for 6 pence many times for our efforts.
After all who wants to pick up beer bottles from the side of the road
The holiday was some thing any boy would love to have a mixture of today's holiday camps and personal attention from a dad in the areas that even the farmer/owner was only vaguely aware of.
After a couple of days swimming in the local river dad said we were to go fishing at the Otoi river where he had seen a good fishing hole and it should have many large eels to catch.
We packed some food in our back packs and started to follow dad in what seemed narrow dirt tracks that were eroded by the many cattle that traveled to the remote parts of the scrub land to graze on the sparse grass the grew under the few bare patches of land not covered with tea tree bushes or native trees.
We followed a river till the going was too hard and then went cross country for a while.
As we got to a rise in the track dad said to turn around and look where we had come from and remember the view so that we would know the way home.
As we gazed at the picture of scrub land hills and tracks I though what a sensible idea and to this day can still picture the scene in my mind.
5 miles later and we were ready to stop when we arrived at an absolutely beautiful scene were a small creek joined the river and there were small grassy flat area were we could set up a fire and boil some water for tea.
Billy tea is some thing different, after a long trek, the billy is boiled over an open fire till it is frothing with bubbles and a hand full of tea is thrown in and the billy taken off the fire.
The result is the strongest tea ever.
After lunch we set up a fishing line in the deep hole below a water fall that belonged to the small creek and left it there tied to a branch
Then we went to the river where another deep hole was.
Dad explained that when during his treks he knows that these deep holes often lived large eels.
So the second line was baited and dropped over a bank and dad said that as it was a little way from our picnic spot we had better tie the line to a stick as well as a branch so that when an eel struck the stick would fall over and we could see the line had some thing on it.
Well we all trekked back to the deep pool for a swim and my brother turned around to look at the river and said
“dad the sticks fallen over”
We returned to the river and sure enough the stick was fallen and the line was tugging about.
Dad pulled on the line and exclaimed there some thing big here.
Soon the eel appeared and we all held back as this monster appeared 1.5 meters long and at least 100 mm across the head.
We had never seen such a huge eel and soon it was landed and humanly killed.
Proudly we returned to the pool where we were to swim and my brother skirted the pool to check the other line and an excited yell told of yet another eel on the line.
Dad went to the line and pulled it in while us 3 boys stood well away as we now knew that very large monsters lived in this pond.
Soon we had two huge eels the second one as big.
“Any one for a swim” said dad.
There was a collective cry of “no thanks dad”.
After a bit of exploring we started to prepare for the long trek home.
Dad found a long stick and tied the eels to it and the 2 eldest of us boys put the stick on our shoulders so that the eels were strung on the pole between us as we walked home.
The tails of the eels were dragging on the ground and the rear person had to avoid the tails if they bounced over the rough ground.
We took turns at being the last person.
On the way home we stopped and dad would ask which way home and we would collectively decide the way home with dad approving if we were right.
Finally we arrived home and displayed our prizes to the farmer who’s land we were on and, as the fridges were full the next day we set them up in a smoke oven and for the rest of the holiday we have smoked eel when ever we wanted
Even Horse, the tabby kitten, was fed a few tasty bits and if he was eating you dare not get within a meter of him as the most amazing growl would emit from his tiny throat.
check out how we met this amazing cat
i met horse 
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