Georgie picked bacon from the plate in the middle of the table and then handed some to Matt. “Lilian doesn’t strike me as a foolish woman. She would have known a cyclone can change the landscape, so she would have chosen somewhere lasting.”
“Like the ridge?” Lara asked.
She nodded, smiling. Lara had always been convinced treasure had been buried somewhere on the ridge.
“What about the island?” Amy asked.
“Would she have hidden it where she knew the pearl divers would look?” Brandon asked. “They had the Dutch version of those journals.”
“What do the clues say again?” Matt asked, staring at a spot in the middle of the table.
“Where shelter, food and water collide, you will find the treasure hide,” Lara answered.
“Could she mean salt not fresh water?” He looked at Faith. “We’ve been assuming fresh water because shelter, food and fresh water are what you need to survive, but maybe she meant the ocean. They would have eaten a lot of seafood during the early years as it was more what they were used to compared with kangaroo and goanna.”
“So we’re looking for shelter along the coast?” Georgie asked.
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “There are a few inlets with salt water as well.”
“Or she could be referring to the river or the ridge canyon,” Faith argued. “Water definitely collides there after a storm.”
“Let me get the map,” Darcy said.
They cleared the table while he went to get it. “Let’s assume for now they kept the treasure within view of the homestead,” Darcy said. “We can expand our search after we’ve covered that.” He pointed to places on the map. “That leaves us the riverbed, the wetlands and the ridge.”
“There’s no shelter near the wetlands,” Brandon said, glancing at Matt for confirmation.
Matt nodded. “And they probably would have dried before Lilian and Reginald arrived.”
“I’ve never noticed any shelter near the riverbed,” Amy said from near the pantry where she was putting together backpacks with snacks and drinks for their expedition. “We gathered a lot of rock from there when we made the new sites for the campgrounds.”
“We should walk it again though,” Lara said. “Just to be sure.”
Georgie smiled. “We’ve all explored the ridge as kids and found every cave there.”
“Yeah, but we never really looked for treasure,” Brandon said. “Plus there’s the coin Ed found as a kid.”
“He still can’t remember where he found it though,” Georgie argued. “It could have been anywhere.” They’d covered this ground already. She studied the page of the journal and then gasped. “Maybe Lilian meant a different type of hide,” she said. “We’ve assumed she means it’s hidden in the shelter, but maybe she means a camouflaged hide, you know the types used to look at animals.”
“So it’s a hidden shelter?” Lara asked.
Georgie shrugged. “Maybe.”
“That puts a different spin on things,” Brandon said.
Lara jigged in her seat. “This is so epic!”
“How about we do one more pass along the ridge and riverbed today?” Amy suggested. “For all we know, she might have hidden the treasure in a termite mound.”
Brandon laughed. “That would be clever. Hidden in plain sight.”
“We can’t dig up every mound,” Darcy said, glancing at Lara sternly.
She pouted but nodded.
Matt squeezed Georgie’s hand. “We can do the riverbed.”
“Sure.” It would give them time together alone.
