Those Mythical Tunnels | Stories from the Bond Store

Story: Ian Brown.

I was told this story by an old timer, who swears it’s true.

It concerns a fellow who worked on the trading ships that came and went from the old Port. He had an interesting life, a lot of travel, but the work was hard, and though he’d had a wife earlier in the piece, she’d died young, elsewhere. Later, he was looking for a place to settle, and take it easy. So one time, after unloading a ship, he decides to stay, and give our town a try. 

He worked about the Port, for Customs and the Bond Store, knew all the fellows there, the Gauger in particular he always bailed up for a chat. He didn’t mind a tipple himself, and they talked of the old days, the smugglers, and opium dens, and so on – all true enough this fellow said – but of the tunnels rumoured to run under the town, he’d never found one, and got to wondering why. 

Well, his last job was at one of the sugar plantations, loading the cane. They also made very good rum, just like the fine beer brewed here by the Steindls. This bloke then finally worked out what the Gauger already knew: the local products were far too good to let them go, and the residents were too busy finding ways to keep them here for their own liberal consumption to bother about digging smuggler’s tunnels for imported liquor.