The Golden Bird
From Wild Southwest Wiki
The Golden Bird is a legendary crashed aircraft supposed to lie deep within the Desert. Claimed to be filled with treasure, is is fabled to be protected by a curse that dooms all that dare to seek it.
The Legend
The Golden Bird legend is said to have begun in 2070 or 2071 when a somewhat less than sober Scav drinking in a bar in Capel produced from his pocket a handful of gold coins, claiming to have recovered them from a crashed aircraft deep within the Desert.
As the tale is usually told, the Scav claimed to have stumbled over a wrecked aircraft "as big as a whale" half buried in a sand dune somewhere beyond the salt lakes east of Corrigin. The plane was mostly intact and the Scav was able to enter the fuselage - past the skeleton of the pilot still slumped in the cockpit - and found it full of crates stamped with the words "Western Australian Mint". Prying open several of these revealed a fortune in gold and silver, in the form of both bars and coins.
The Scav was almost out of supplies and was unable to carry more than a pocketful of coins back to civilisation, but assured his audience that he was going to use those coins to fund an expedition to recover the rest of the treasure. He then left the bar and disappeared into the night.
His body was discovered the next morning in a back alley with a slashed throat and the coins missing - the first victim of the alleged curse.
The legend of the Golden Bird remains a favourite of tale spinners throughout the Southwest, and is particularly popular in Capel where several drinking holes claim to be the location where the story began - despite the majority of them only having opened within the last decade.
Sceptical Assessments
While the existence of the aircraft and its golden cargo is an article of faith for many, others are more sceptical. A common theory is that the Scav had stolen the coins, and made up the story of the plane in an attempt to cover his tracks - an attempt that failed when the legitimate owners caught up with him in the alleyways of Capel. Another theory is that the entire tale was the setup for some kind of scam which went horribly wrong when the Scav was ambushed and robbed of the bait. Regardless of any explanation, many point out that air travel would be the worst possible way to transport a commodity as heavy as gold, although others suggest that in the chaos of the Great War almost anything might have been possible.
Expeditions and Sightings
The legend of the bird and its golden treasure have fascinated many over the last quarter century. At least two major expeditions have been organised to find the wreck, but both met with disaster before even reaching the dry bed of Lake Dumbleyung. The exact number of Scavs lost to the Desert while seeking the plane is unknown, but it is certainly several dozen. No sign of it has even been found - as long as one discounts the stories of the notorious Conrad "Kalgoorlie Jack" Wandi who claims to have spotted it from afar in 2087 but was unable to reach it due to a sudden (and rather convenient) sandstorm.
