What happened to my gold - a fling with bling!
Author Alison Lloyd's newsletter #44
This newsletter won’t pay your mortgage, but it will leave your thoughts a little shinier! Scroll down for:
an auriferous read on the glories of gold
pretty pics of Gold Rush bling
what happened to my gold
and a nugget of historical flash fiction
Auriferous: containing gold
As we bask in the post-Olympic afterglow, it got me thinking — why do we like gold so much? I mean actual gold. Instead of, say, platinum, or sapphire, or onyx?
Human attraction to gold is very old. Not all cultures value it — it was no use to Australia’s indigenous peoples, for example. But it rates a mention in the Old Testament description of the Garden of Eden:
A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon. It winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good.
Genesis 2:10-12
Why Gold is Good
If we go scientific for a minute, gold, silver and copper (the main ingredient of bronze) are in one column on the periodic table. They each have a relatively low melting point, around about 1000 deg C (1800 deg F). For comparison, the melting point of platinum is over 1770 deg C (3200+ deg F) . This makes the medal metals easier to work with. Nobody knows for sure how much gold is above ground because banks and treasuries don’t like to publicise their stocks. Maybe enough to fill a 20 metre (22 yard) cube? But it’s certainly rarer than silver and copper.
Why Gold is Yellow
And then there’s that warm, lustrous colour, which apparently is a gift from outer space. Gold atoms are big, meaning they were created under immense pressure. Because they are big, when light hits the atoms, blue photons are absorbed, not reflected. We see yellow, not silver.
The BBC has a longer explanation, if you’re interested in the science.
An Appetite for Glitter
I was given gold when I married into a Chinese family — including a heart pendant on a pretty, wavey chain. Unfortunately I wasn’t the only one who liked it. As a toddler, my younger son had a thing for my jewellery too. (Can you guess where this is going...?)
Once when I was changing his nappy (that’s a diaper for US readers), he kept grabbing at my earrings. He was a tall little fellow, and by then his arms were long enough to reach. It’s tricky to keep your ears out of the way while keeping your eyes on that long pin, making sure you stick it through the cloth and not into the baby. So when the pins were in, I had a quick feel of my earlobes. Yes, the hooks were still there. But the pearl pendant was missing from one ear. I checked under my son. I checked the floor. I undid the whole nappy construction and checked inside.
‘Hmm,’ I said to my son, feeling my bereft ear. ‘Where is the pearl?’ He wasn’t old enough to talk in sentences. But he opened his mouth and pointed his chubby finger inside. I got the message. The pearl had gone down the hatch.
I liked those earrings. And I wasn’t sure what a pearl might do to a toddler’s tummy. So I kept an eye on matters. More exactly, I kept an eye on his nappies. Sure enough, several days later, the earring came through the works. It was none the worse for its intestinal adventures.
The same can’t be said for my wedding necklace. You see, as well as having a fascination with jewellery, my son really liked figuring out how the toilet worked. He could reach the flush button. And he discovered how to reach the top of my dressing table too. My necklace went down — not through my son’s plumbing, but the apartment’s. I imagine it’s still lying at the bottom of a Melbourne sewage lagoon. Moral of the story: do not underestimate toddler ingenuity.
I am sentimental about that necklace. But to be honest, I treasure the story just as much! I remember how my son’s eyes shone with the bright sparks going off in his brain, as he explored the world. That’s a memory that doesn’t tarnish.
I can’t show you my jewellery, but I am sharing some historic Australian pieces I’ve found online.
And Australia’s other gold
Where I am, the weather has turned a bit warmer, and the garden is putting on its Spring bling. The wattles are first out — this is the view outside my writing cabin.
A Nugget of Fiction
Lastly, here’s a quick hit of historical fiction. I wrote this story to a 100 word limit, back in 2021. You might not have read it then, so here it is again.
Leaving the Goldfields
The coach jolted to a stop in dust-speckled forest mid-nowhere. A musket’s black nostril thrust through the window. Ginny clutched her son’s hand, her shawl and the square bundle.
The masked man pointed. ‘What’s that?’
She unwrapped the tea-cloth, offered the burnt block. ‘Fruitcake.’
‘Bloody charcoal.’
‘I can’t afford to waste,’ she said.
He waved it aside, then made her turn out her skinny purse.
Hours later, in the distance, she saw the roofs of town – government, barracks, bank.
Ginny sighed. ‘Now for cake.’
She broke away the black crust. The boy’s wide eyes reflected her secret ingredient, gleaming.
Wishing you lasting treasures!
Until next month :)
The gold never rust and thus it is a symbol of eternal youth and timelessness.
I'm an American who loved the story and the history lessons. Thanks!