The new year crept in like a thief in the night and already I was back out Traffic Controlling. Yep, got my daily dose of abuse from drivers, marking another effing year of no thanks but how dare you hold us back for five minutes, wasting our days blah blah blah. This time I was doing another one of those roads where there were eff all traffic to control. I was beginning to wonder what was the point when the workers are mostly off the road anyway. I was out at the back of a small rural town whose name I am keeping anonymous, manning just three bloody traffic cones, which blocked this road so they can put in a water duct that connects the town. Yea, three bloody traffic cones was all I had to 'control', no traffic other than the work trucks, which was very minimum since I was on top of the ridge. The weather was crappy as in raining, and there no reception for my phone so no internet searching, just me, my deck chair, and the car. I stupidly forgotten to bring my CD player so bored as batshiat I was, staring at the bushes. Made friends with a Carpet snake though, even found myself talking to it (which shows you how effing bored I was) when I heard what sounded like squeaky wheels of a bicycle coming down the hill. I stood up, as my legs are tired of sitting, and waited until this bloke came into view. He was Asian, smallish, and rode a bike that should've been in the museum, as it was that old. He puffed as he cycled towards me with a small shaggy dog following him and I smiled.
"G'day, mate," I greeted him but he just rode on by me. He wore a suit with matching pants that were clipped so the hems of the pants won't get caught in the chain. The bike itself was old, like I said. He just rode by, no acknowledgment so I radioed (the two way radios sorted off worked) and told him about some cyclist coming down his way, a little Asian bloke I said. He copied and I was about to sit when, again I heard a squeaky wheel of a bicycle coming down the road, and to my surprise, it was the little old Asian bloke whom I saw no more than three minutes ago, rode by me. My mate got on: 'hey, Red, where's this cyclist, mate?'
'He just rode by me. Again.'
'What ya mean "again"?'
'It's same the bloke and he just rode past me, again. Unless there's a loop somewhere, which I know there isn't.'
'That's weird.'
'Yea, no shiat Sherlock?'
Didn't see the wee Asian bloke again. It was knocking off time and I drove down to where the TL (team leader) was and he looked at me strangely. 'What's this about some bloke on a bike, Red?'
I told him what I saw and no one had any explanation. That haunted me on my home drive and decided to have a look at the history of this place. Turns out that the place had a bit of history attached. Around 1890 something, a little bit of gold was discovered by a Chinese gentleman, name unknown. He used to cycle into town, go to the bank, get his gold dust weighed, then buy his products then cycle back to his camp in the hills. One day he went missing. It was about a week or two later they found his remains as well as his dog in a gully. Never found his murderers. I told everyone the next day about it but no one took it seriously. Oddly enough, I was taken off that job and shoved somewhere else. I still think about that little Chinese man I saw, him and his dog, and wondered where they were trying to get to, doing the same routine year in, year out. Somewhere up in them hills there's a hidden gold mine, guarded jealously by a ghost?
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