The Underground Lake.
Tom Jones went to stay with his uncle at Mount Gambier during the Christmas holidays, and, as he said when he wrote to his father, “he was enjoying every minute of his visit to the land of lakes.”
The people who lived in and around the Mount were arguing about the Blue Lake. Was it really part of a great underground river, or was it just the crater of a worn-out volcano that had got filled up with water? They had argued about this for years, and Tom liked to listen to both sides, although he knew that all the arguing that would ever be done could never make him believe anything but the underground river belief.
There was the beautiful blue water, shut in by high banks which made it look like a big basin, half full of blue water. The water was always fresh and sweet, no bottom could be found in the middle of the Lake, there was always a strong current too, oh, of course it was one of the wonderful underground rivers!
One day Tom went down to see the man in charge of the pumping station, with whom he was a great chum. They had been friends ever since Tom, soon after he came to the Mount, had helped to clean the boat that was wanted in a hurry to take a visitor across the Lake. There was only one boat kept, and it had to be as clean as man could make it before it could go on the Blue Lake, as the people of the town used the water for drinking.
Tom went very often to the Blue Lake. He meant to be an explorer when he grew up, and he was trying to fit himself for that work because he believed that whatever you meant to be as a man you should train yourself for while still a boy. On this special day (a day Tom never forgot because of what happened later through something he heard then at the pumping station) he had been exploring the country as usual, and on his way home called in to see his friend, the man-in-charge. There were several men talking to his friend, and just as Tom drew near them he heard an old man say—
“Well, I tell you what I know, not what I’ve heard; the Blue Lake is an underground river, and when you hear my reason for saying that, you’ll agree with me. Let me see, it was about twenty years ago, when, instead of being a grey-headed old fellow as I am now, I was a black-headed young fellow, and I had the best pair of grey horses in this district. I didn’t believe in the underground river theory then, because I didn’t know then what I did a little while after. One day I was driving my pair of greys along the edge of the Blue Lake, when one of them slipped down the bank, fell into the water and sank. I soon got some men to help me drag the Lake, but no horse could we find; so I sadly set off for home with my one grey horse. I hadn’t got very far along the road towards McDonald’s Bay when a friend of mine met me, leading my lost grey horse. ‘This is yours, is it not?’ said my friend. It was mine, I knew it by the brand on him. Now, where do you think my friend found him? Why, in the water, on the other side of the hill that separates the Blue Lake from McDonald Bay. So I knew that if my horse got underground in that way from Blue Lake to McDonald Bay, there must be a river flowing under there.”
When the old man finished telling his story, he went away chuckling to himself, and every one laughed at his joke, every one, that is, but Tom, who went towards his uncle’s house slowly, thinking, thinking, thinking about the underground river.
When Tom reached home tea had long been over, and to explain why he was so late he told them the story of the grey horse as it had been told by the old grey-headed man. Tom’s uncle said he also thought the Blue Lake was part of an underground river, and Tom then determined to explore and find the hidden openings where the river entered and went out of the big basin.