The Legend Of The Eastern Brown

• Amelia Taylor-Rose, Grade 3 , St Agnes Primary School
• Short Story
• 2019

Finalist in the 'Just Keep Writing 2019' competition

Lightning Ridge, New South Wales. 1868. The drought was bad and times were tough.
It was another dry and dusty day. Luther Brown was crouching silently in the thick scrub alongside the main road leading into town, waiting for a special carriage to rumble by. It contained the Mayor of Lightning Ridge who was guarding a stash of rare black opals that had been discovered just outside town.
Soon Luther heard the clip-clop of an approaching carriage. He took a peek – it was the one he’d been waiting for all morning! As the carriage came level with his hiding spot, Luther suddenly leaped out of the bush and confronted the carriage with his rifle drawn.
“The opals or your life!” the fearsome old bushranger shouted.
But the Mayor did not give in. “You’re not getting your hands on my opals, you ratbag!” he replied, in a stern voice.
Luther was enraged and yelled back, “You don’t deserve those opals, you greedy old toad! There are hundreds of starving people and hungry animals out there who need the money from those gems more than you” and he fired three warning shots into the sky.
The horses took fright at the sudden explosion and bolted, sending the Mayor flying out of the carriage and leaving it unguarded. This was all part of Luther’s plan. He had stationed his young cousin Luke at the top of a wattle tree further along the road, knowing that the horses would run that way. When the horses raced under Luke’s wattle tree, he dropped down on to the galloping horses, heart beating fast. Luke was an expert horseman and stood with one foot on the back of each horse. He grabbed their reigns then reached around into his back pocket to pull out his knife which he used to slice the harness connecting the horses to the carriage. Luke rode the horses home while Luther jumped into the carriage and grabbed the pouch of shining black opals.
As part of the plan, Luke was supposed to wait at home for Luther. However, when Luther still had not arrived home after two hours, Luke was worried and set off to find his cousin. As he neared the road where the broken carriage lay, there was no sign of the old bushranger anywhere. Suddenly Luke heard a rustling in the grass nearby. He crept towards the sound and saw an enormous Eastern Brown snake slowly slithering away from the bag of black opals!
No-one knows for sure what happened to Luther but after Luke sold the opals and gave the money to the struggling farmers, he told them what his cousin had done and the old bushranger became known as ‘the Eastern Brown’. Even though he was never seen again, the legend of the Eastern Brown lives on in Lightning Ridge.