She holds court by the door, barking orders at her youngest daughter, arms folded across her bosom-belly, cackling at her own vulgar jokes. Stray, mangy dogs snoop about hoping for scraps, until a stone in the backside sends them back to their bone-dreams in the shade. As the 25th approaches, the men start trickling back into the village from the myriad creeks they've been panning. The general store becomes a hub of activity. The ancient scales come out of their box and preside over the once-blue table outside.
Arguments break out.
Curses are exchanged, tall stories elongated and beer bottles emptied. The name of Tambara's store translates as 'The Fight for the Fiver'. The miners extract hollowed tubes of bamboo from inside their trousers, and delicately decant their gold dust onto the dish. A tense silence rules while all eyes follow the listing, tick-tock motion of the apparatus. Tambara had some electronic scales at some point, but no-one trusted them.