I’ve got a secret!

/ Glen Donaldson

 

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It’s no secret I’ve got a secret and I’m gonna tell it to you.

You’re finally going to learn where I hid the money.

I know. I know.

You’ve heard this all before because I’ve been dropping teasing hints for some time.

No more hints. No more games.

The moment has arrived.

I grew up in the leafy green Brisbane suburb of Toowong.

One of the steepest hills of my old childhood stomping ground was the million-dollar views-once-you-were-on-top Miskin Street. Anyone looking to develop the bulging legs of an Olympic cyclist could do worse than make travelling up it’s God’s-gift-to-steepness bitumen a part of their regular training routine.

Near the top of this street, just before it connects to Sherwood Road, is a little tucked away laneway called Fewings Street. In the backyard of the 2nd house along, stood a wooden cubby house. Incredibly, it’s still there today, four decades aged, blanketed in green moss and barely visible amongst the overgrown thicket of vines and shrubbery.

Few

Somewhere over that rickety hill-side fence is the loot.

Back in the late seventies, four pre-teen mates and I stored an air rifle inside a gap under the floor boards of that cubby house. It proved to be such a perfect, undisturbed hiding place that I returned some years later and placed a quantity of money enclosed in an old off-white hessian bankers coin bag in the same spot. And I can honestly say, to the best of my knowledge, that money is still there today.

How do I know? ‘Cause I checked. Only a little over three months ago. It wouldn’t be enough to retire on but with inflation over 40 years factored in it might just be enough to buy a new fishing rod. Or cricket bat. Or cheap electric leaf mulcher.

cricket bat

Overseas readers have hopefully worked out by now unearthing this long hidden ‘treasure’ probably wouldn’t be worth the trip. I say this with the tragic yet fascinating case of Japanese office worker Takako Konishi in mind. Back in 2001 she was found frozen to death in a snow-covered field in Minnesota U.S. It was reported at the time she had died while trying to find the money buried by actor Steve Buscemi‘s character in the 1996 film FARGO. Though the truth of her death was somewhat less bizarre, this story grew legs and eventually grew to the status of urban legend.

Fargo

I’m mentioning this now because having at last spilled the beans as to the location of the buried money, I wouldn’t want to be held in any way responsible for someone who, blinded by sheer greed and ruthless determination to get there first and claim the untold riches, ends up becoming entangled in a backyard jungle of thorny caterpillar vines and is never heard from again.

Nothing’s worth that fate. Especially not this nothing.

Ps. This week’s bonus read is the real story behind the urban legend of the Japanese woman who went in search of the money buried in the snow by Steve Buscemi’s character in the 1996 movie FARGO.

READ IT HERE

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Pss. And then there’s these…

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Pss. Don’t think my little stash over in leafy Toowong would have made it into any of these volumes but you never know… (ok, you do know but I’m gonna say that anyway).

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Psss. This week’s book recommendation is the 2014 published memoir of active professional treasure hunter William Carl Jameson (1942 – present). This guy’s encounter’s with rattlesnakes, drug runners, park rangers, mine-shaft cave-ins and poisonous centipedes all while on the hunt for hidden treasure is the stuff of Indiana Jones’ movies and all reputed to be true.

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And one more thing…

Next week treasure of a different kind will be unearthed on SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK.

In just seven more sleeps a true one-of-kind revolution is set to unfurl on these humble pages that will force readers to bring into question everything they thought they once knew about SWS.

Spoilers aside, it’s no exaggeration to say the changes to the site set to be unveiled next Friday will have more landscape-altering effect then the 291–306 War of the Eight Princes, the 782–785 Saxon revolt against Charlemagne and the Cornish Rebellion of 1497 – combined!

That’s quite the promise I realise.

But I’m confident once you lay eyes for yourself on the head-spinning Beverly Hills style make–over, you’ll agree all the pre-launch buzz was worth it.

Until next week…

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12 thoughts on “I’ve got a secret!”

  1. Many years ago when I was a uni student I had a part time job caring for a young boy very near your hidden treasure. I have been looking at google maps and I think it was 1 Dean St. This was a very old house converted into 3 flats. I think it still is given the number of rubbish bins on the footpath in the photo. This boy and his mother lived on an enclosed veranda closest to Miskin St.

    I recall one day when I discovered my own treasure in the same vicinity as yours. The young boy had scrapped his knee and wanted a band aid. He told me they were in a this old wooden first aid box at the top of the cupboard. I opened the box and to my amazement it was full of carefully bundled money. I just put it back and replied , “Nope. No band aids in here’. To this day I have never seen so much cash.

    This discovery confirmed my suspicion that my employer was ‘ a lady of the night’. Suddenly the fish net stockings,lingerie, high heels,endless towels and satin sheets left for me to wash made sense. She was a lovely lady and I worked for her for at least four years.She paid me very well. I got scared off when she wanted me to sign a document agreeing that i would take on the custody of her child if anything was to happen to her. I was only thinking of all this a few days ago and this young boy would now be at least 40 years old. Oh my, where have all those years gone.

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  2. This story is 100% shimmering gold.
    It’s also possibly the best personal anecdote ever to grace the comments section of this blog.
    I definitely remember Dean Street as well.
    Huge thanks for this contribution Cathy.
    This true account gem of yours has everything bar the kitchen faucet – money, intrigue, sauciness, child custody entanglements, bandaids…

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  3. I am tempted to go for a drive and see if I can see the treehouse. As a boarder I think I visited somene’s house in that street. You don’t want to be scared of heights driving down it.
    So no big windfalls if money?
    Maybe it’s not worth it or curiosity killed the cat.
    We will see…….

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    • Curiosity could indeed do damage to any cat that dared try to work it’s way through that ground level spider’s-web-canopy of spiky acacia vines and bouganevillea guarding this now made-public ancient hidey place.

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    • Yes I know , I have no idea how much was there. However, a box 30cm long,. 20 cm wide and about 30 high stashed with $50 would have to be a sizable sum. Add to that 40 years inflation .Easy to see why I am a poor school teacher and not a multi millionaire. Maybe I could buy your cubby house.

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  6. That many $50 notes back in the day sounds like a veritable pineapple farm of ‘goldies’ as they were once called.
    I think the ‘ol ‘money stored in the shoebox’ trick may be the modus operandi of a person who didn’t trust banks.

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  7. You are sounding as naive as i was Glen. I’m now thinking bank robbery, or more likely, the lovely lady was claiming a single parents pension while having a lucrative, but then illegal occupation on the side. I am at Ashgrove Monday to Thursday this week so will be travelling the big dipper each day. May stop off and look for the first aid box.

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  8. I left the ultimate teaser for the guy who bought my childhood home in Lindfield, Sydney. I had a tunnel system dug in my back yard, which I guess explains why I eventually became a Mining Engineer. We used to extend it every summer from the age of 12, till the house was sold when I was 16.

    Years later I visited the house and was quite a celebrity when the owner realised I was the one who dug the tunnel system he discovered some time after buying the house when he uncovered one of the hatches I’d made at one of the 2 entrances. Knowing too well how many Funnel Web spiders can set up shop in such a locale, I was somewhat amazed he went in there, as an adult would have found it quite confining.

    I wish I’d left him something exciting to find in there, and am only glad he never met a Funnel Web. The capstone of the story for me was learning he had to bring in a bobcat to destroy my fledgling engineering masterpiece.

    I must have made it well to deserve that kind of treatment. 🙂

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