Our store was off the beaten track but it gave Molly and me a fair living. A few local old boys—Kalgoorlie kids—hung about the store and we allowed them to set up a table in the back storeroom where they played cards and draughts, listened to the races, footy or cricket and sipped mugs of tea or coffee or a beer which we sold to them at a discount. We were all grey and hairy and the red-brown dirt of Kalgoorlie was embedded in our lives. We were never part of the big open pit and mechanised mining at Kal,…