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CHAPTER 1

A lone sheep, until it no longer has strength to stand, will seek to return to its flock.

THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

Longhope Railway Station, New South Wales 10 January 1945

The train carrying the prisoners of war was overdue. Kate sheltered in the shade of the station shed, wary, and watchful of her father, who stood along the tracks with the other graziers. Beyond them, pepperina trees flanked the road. The train tracks ran on across the valley bed with its handful of myalls and eucalypt gums, climbed up into the low hills at the edge of the tablelands and disappeared in a glint of summer heat on the southern horizon.

With her gloved hand Kate brushed away a fly. A drop of sweat ran between her shoulder blades and caught at the waist of her good frock, the wool crepe prickly and damp. Her father had asked Kate to come with him today and she’d worn her pink striped dress when he’d asked, her pearls too: it was easier to do as he said. But she felt like a barber’s pole in the dress.

Down the tracks, her father, Ralph Stimson, stood ramrod straight, his grey hair short and neat. He wasn’t concerned about the prisoners – glad to get them, even. But Kate was worried. To take in soldiers? Men who’d fought Australians in North Africa, fought her husband, Jack? To her, these POWs were still the enemy, even if Italy had changed sides.

She scratched at the nape of her neck. Kate had her plait up to come into town, pinned in place under her hat but keen to escape. Her wayward hair always reminded her of her mother. At fifteen, Kate had cried in her arms, cried that she was stick-like with a head of No. 8 fencing wire. Her mother had hugged her. ‘But you are pretty,’ she’d said. ‘Just in a different way. And anyway being fair-haired and curvy doesn’t get the washing in.’

A pair of black cockatoos watched from a branch of a dead pepperina tree. Kate felt the sweat gathering in her nylons between her legs and shifted her feet apart a little. It made no difference. She moved deeper into the shade and glanced again at her father. She loved him dearly but he was volatile – excitable, her mother had called it. He should be all right for the moment, though, as he stood with his men, Ed Storch and Keith Grimes. Grimes was their manager. In his fifties, he was about the same age as her father, and they were both returned servicemen from the First War. But Grimes looked younger, not yet grey and without her father’s weariness. And Grimes was taller and broader, with heavy eyebrows and a firm mouth. The other man, Ed, Kate liked. At twenty-one he was younger than Kate by two years. He had arms the size of tree trunks, but with his gammy foot he wasn’t fit for service. You’d never know about the foot once he was on a horse, though. He’d been their head stockman since the war started. He was dark, with olive skin that went black in the sun, and Grimes reckoned he must be part Aboriginal. But her father liked Ed, and respected him, so Grimes kept quiet.

Ed waved at her and pointed towards the horizon. A shape expanded from a dot into an engine and carriages, smoke and dust trailing behind. Soon she felt the first vibrations in the ground under her feet. As the tremors welled, the din merged into a swell of steam and power. The train’s engine, an outsize bottle-green drum, pulled two passenger carriages and a long, long line of empty cattle wagons, ready for stock to feed the troops.

The vibrations, the funnel of the train and its black smoke brought it back to her, the time a bit less than two years before when Kate had been there at the station to farewell Jack. Met and wed and then he was gone, all in just five months. Her mother wanted to see Kate settled before she died, and Kate was glad to do that for her. She loved Jack too, of course, and wondered what he was doing right at that moment, whether he was out in the heat of the afternoon. Probably shouting orders at new soldiers, cranky to be in Sydney training men instead of fighting.

A blast of the train whistle jolted her, and steel shrieked against steel amid fumes and heat. Coughing lungfuls of thick air, she put her hands over her ears as the train screeched to a stop. Through the smoke and steam, she saw an Army staff car coming in from the main road.

The smoke drifted away to show weary soldiers standing guard on the end platforms of the first carriage. Garrison battalion, to guard the POWs. The windows of both carriages, heavy with soot, had been fixed shut but for a slit of two inches at the top. The carriage next to the graziers looked empty except for a small shape moving along inside. But the first carriage, the one stopped close to Kate, was full, the inside a solid block of plum colour. She’d read that the bright colour was chosen to make it easy for the public to spot an escaping prisoner of war. Magenta, the Tablelands Clarion had called it.

Her face hot, Kate had a narrow view through the gap between the shed and the tank – of a soldier on the dirt by the carriage – but with luck the POWs couldn’t see her.

Key in hand, the soldier waved his clipboard for attention. ‘Afternoon, all. I’m Corporal Boyle.’

Oil, the locals had christened him. He checked his clipboard and then called into the crowd, ‘Amiens!’ He pronounced it properly, the s silent. Kate’s father had named their property for the First War battle in France, where he’d lost so many friends.

‘Yes,’ Keith Grimes replied, curt. The big man went through the crowd, in his uniform of sorts: riding boots, moleskin trousers and blue shirt. Shotgun in arms, Grimes stopped in front of the corporal, his face set. Grimes had been a POW of the Germans in the First War, one of the few Australians to have that honour. He had no time for enemy of any kind.

‘That’ll do, thank you, Corporal.’ A captain had come out of the staff car and through the crowd. He was older, with a handsome face ruddy from the sun. He climbed the ladder to the carriage-end platform, the khaki cloth of his uniform jacket taut across his back.

‘Afternoon, gents. I’m Captain James Rook, head of the new POW Control Centre. A few words. First, we expect you will find these men willing and inexpensive.’

A voice floated from the back of the crowd: ‘They’re costing us Australian jobs.’ Frank Jamieson, the editor of the Tablelands Clarion. He was at the back of the crowd, his unlit pipe in his mouth as always. Jack’s crude description of him popped into her head: Big temper, small dick.

Jamieson moved his pipe about like a horse with an uncomfortable bit. ‘We should ship them home now. Before the Eye-ties switch sides again,’ he shouted.

Kate sympathised. His son Doug was in a POW camp in Singapore, a prisoner of the Japanese.

‘Your paper’s reported it, Mr Jamieson. Italy might’ve joined the Allies but all Italian POWs remain prisoners. We are putting them to work, here and in other districts, to relieve the labour shortage in essential industry.’

‘All POWs will be shipped back to Italy when the war’s over.’ The captain kept his eyes on Jamieson, and the editor said nothing more.

‘Most of these men were conscripts – they’re gentle and easily led. You’ve been issued the Army phrase book for talking to them, yes? And you might find the words “Hai capito?” handy. They mean “Do you understand?” ’ He repeated the words for the crowd. ‘ “Hai. Capito.” You should expect a lot of handwaving too. Normal with these blokes when they talk. All right?’ Speech over, the captain dropped to the ground from the first rung of the ladder. ‘Get on with it, Corporal. Get em outta there. That carriage must be hotter’n Hades.’ He moved a few feet along the tracks.

Up on the narrow platform, the corporal unlocked and slid open the door. ‘Orright, you blokes. Step lively when I say your name. Canali,’ he called into the carriage, his eyes on his clipboard. ‘Luca Canali. Get your boots out here.’

A man appeared, compact and neat in the plum-coloured POW uniform. But he was most foreign-looking, with a very dark complexion, black, black hair cut close to his head, and a five-o’clock shadow under a substantial nose. Kate had seen foreigners before, of course: Chinese vegetable growers and Indian hawkers. She knew Aborigines too, lots of them – their stockmen and Daisy, their half-caste house help, the other little ones at the Domestic Training Home. But this man was different. Young, in his mid-twenties perhaps, the only evidence of his long journey was the sweat ringing the armpits of his uniform and the battered portmanteau he gripped in one hand.

He set the case down next to him on the transom, and moved straight to attention, eyes front. He seemed to rest on the balls of his feet, ready, sinew and force. More soldier than prisoner, he didn’t seem ‘gentle’ or ‘easily led’. Then with shock Kate realised that he was looking at her. She pulled back, embarrassed.

Unhurriedly, the POW climbed down the ladder. Grimes moved forward at the same time, shotgun in arms. Still facing the train, the POW lifted his case down. He turned and looked into the muzzle of Grimes’s shotgun, pointing at his chest from three feet away.

Half a head or more shorter than the man with the gun on him, the POW didn’t flinch. He stood, locked still, his eyes on Grimes, though his knuckles were white on the suitcase handle.

The captain moved towards the two men, carefully, purposefully. ‘You can put the shotgun away.’

Grimes stayed where he was, the muzzle aimed at the POW’s chest until the captain stepped between them. He reached for the muzzle and steered it dirt-wards. ‘You’ll put it away,’ he said again.

A second prisoner appeared on the carriage-end platform, clutching a grey duffel bag against his bright uniform. This man had a thick beard but was swarthy and skinny like the first.

The man hesitated, looking at Grimes. The captain waved him along with a frown and the POW dropped his bag over the side, climbing down after it. When he turned towards the crowd, his head was drooped and he clasped shaking hands together.

The officer reached up for the clipboard. ‘Mr Stimson? Ralph Stimson of Amiens?’ he said to Grimes.

As her father went forwards, Kate shuddered. That first man would surely come to Amiens.

‘You got these two, Mr Stimson.’ The captain flipped over a page on the clipboard, and pulled a thin file from under the list. He opened it. ‘Basic information. Canali’s a sergeant, twenty-four. Bottinella, the one with the beard, is a private. He’s twenty-one. He arrived here in ’41 from a camp in India. The Canali chap’s only been in Australia since last year.’

‘Any English?’ Kate’s father asked. He frowned, knocking one boot against the other to shift some manure.

The captain looked again at the file. ‘You’re in luck. Canali – no beard – he’s got some. Guard at the Hay Camp taught him, apparently. Not the other fellow.’

‘Orright,’ Kate heard her father say. ‘These blokes’ll come in handy. Amiens carries eight stockmen plus a manager usually. Now I’m down to four men and I’m counting two Abos in that. Better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick.’

She hoped there’d be nothing worse from him today, with so many people about. But her father took the file he was offered, and walked away towards their truck. Grimes motioned for the POWs to move along as well. He cradled his shotgun in his arms, ready enough.

When Kate could no longer see the Amiens men through the gap, she followed but round behind the crowd. She hoped her father remembered they were collecting a boy, too, off the train: a distant relative of Grimes’s from Wollongong.

The calling of the POWs went on and another pair of grim, skinny men jumped down onto the dirt by the train.

At the second carriage, Ed Storch pulled himself halfway up the ladder, hopping his good leg up one rung at a time. He yelled, ‘Harry Grimes! You about?’

A boy of ten or so appeared, mostly hidden by an old suitcase, with a scruff of fair hair visible above and skinny legs below. He lowered the suitcase, and Kate could see he needed to wipe his nose.

She wanted to think his frown was a squint against the sun. This boy’s mother had died when he was born, and his father was killed at Tobruk. The grandmother was too ill to look after him, which left only Grimes. Grimes might have his hands full, and he had no experience, no wife or kids of his own.

The suitcase slipped from the boy’s hands and landed on his foot. ‘Bugger,’ he said.

Kate’s father raised his eyebrows and looked across at Grimes, but the manager had not heard; his eyes were on the POWs. The boy shoved the suitcase off the edge of the carriage platform and it hit the dirt next to Ed with a hollow thud.

‘Hullo, Harry. I’m Ralph Stimson from Amiens. That’s your uncle over there. Great-uncle, is it?’

Grimes nodded a greeting but the boy kept his eyes down. Kate’s father went off towards the Amiens car and truck. Ed followed, then the POWs, with Grimes behind.

He reminded Kate of a baby magpie, never still; peck you soon as look at you. She watched the POWs and the others walking towards the truck.

‘What’s that?’ She was distracted. ‘There’s a water bag at the truck.’

Above them, the cockatoo pair wheeled off, black dots on the cloudless sky, but they turned south. East would have been better, east towards the coast. Black cockatoos headed for the shelter of the seaboard before a big wet. They needed rain, as the drought was in its fifth year.

The suitcase banged against the boy’s leg as they walked. Kate was surprised to see Addison, the local bank johnny, speaking to her father at the truck.

‘I will be clear. You must —’ Addison stopped. ‘Mrs Dowd,’ he said. He looked back at her father. ‘We’ll take this up again, Ralph.’

Grimes usually drove, but today Ed got behind the wheel, as Grimes stood guard in the truck tray with his back against the cab, the prisoners at his feet. Up close, the two POWs looked sullen and dusty, the younger one with a piece of grass caught in his beard. Canali, the other one, wiped at the sweat on his brow with the back of his hand and stole another glance at Kate.

CHAPTER 2

As to Australia’s proud place as keeper of so much of the world’s sheep, it may safely be said to spring from the arrival, in 1796, of the first Merino to these shores.

THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

Kate was glad to be with her father and Harry in the safety of their Hudson. She kept her eyes on the side mirror, watching the Amiens truck as they went through Longhope, past the houses, the pubs and the churches, the stock and station agents and the sapphire buyers. They crossed the dry creek bed that wound through the town like a snake, and then her father turned the vehicle onto the main road running west. ‘Now, off to Amiens,’ he said, settling into the driver’s seat. The drive home was nineteen miles, at least an hour, of mostly straight dirt road, at this time of day directly into the western sun.

‘Harry, you’ll have the time of your life on Amiens.’ Her father was not much of a talker, but for some odd reason he seemed to have taken a shine to the boy. Harry was lost in the bench seat, eyes on the bush spinning by.

‘Four-hundred-odd head of cattle, seven thousand or so sheep. Merinos, all of em. Best wool in the world.’

‘Merino’s the finest. Makes the best cloth. And it’s all Merino in this district. And us? We’ve got a lot of country. Fourteen thousand acres.’

Her father laughed. ‘A good bit of dirt, as they say in the bush. Weren’t always, of course. I built her up from a soldier settler block after the First War to the biggest in the district.’

In the driver’s seat Stimson smiled. ‘You know, an Abo fella – a stockman – he said to me once, “We don’t own the land, boss.” Well, of course Abos don’t own land. But you know what he said then, this old bloke? “The land owns us. The land owns us.” I think that fella might have been onto something. Amiens? It owns me. Have to look after it.’

In the mirror, Kate saw Harry’s head drop back, resting in the corner between the bench seat and the car door. The drive would put him to sleep, no doubt, after nine long hours on the train from Sydney. The miles went by, Kate’s eyes shifting between her father, the side mirror with the Amiens truck behind them, and the horizon. POWs or no POWs, she liked this time of day, the late afternoon turning the leaves and trunks of the gums pink. These colours leaked into the sky, soft pinks and reds creeping up into the clouds from the horizon as the sun dipped. But with a pink sky, there’d be no rain the next day.

Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. She’d grown up with the saying but always found it odd. It must have been an English shepherd, a shepherd with too much rain rather than too little. A red sky here made no one happy.

‘Here we are.’ Her father turned the big Hudson off the main road. He slowed the vehicle to a crawl to cross the stock grid, and they shuddered over it, coming to a stop just beyond. ‘It’s land like this, Harry,’ her father said of Amiens, ‘land, or somethin y’can hold in y’hand. Not money in the bank. A bank’ll take your money and pull the rug out soon as look at you.’

Her father put the vehicle into gear. ‘An there’s a lot t’be proud of. Forty-odd-thousand reasons.’

‘Dad!’ Kate looked back. Fortunately, Harry was asleep. ‘Dad, please don’t mention money to Harry.’

Kate looked out to her right at the dam. At least that was a constant. She loved the dam, even in a drought and even with its history; it had been built when her father had cut off the creeks from the neighbours below. Tonight its surface was graveyard-still in the dusk light, broken only by the bare trunks of drowned trees. As much dried mud as water now, it still ran at least a hundred yards across, and they were so lucky to have that water.

She looked up the hill to the line of bunya pines, the tall evergreen conifers hiding much of the squat homestead. As the car came out of the gully, a lorikeet shot up from the track ahead and then the dogs were upon them, barking and leaping.

Her father brought them to a stop outside the double gates. ‘This is the homestead, Harry,’ he said.

Her father ignored her. ‘She’s got a beaut garden, even in this dry. And a bowerbird. Kate’ll show ya.’

Out of the car, her father stretched and rubbed the base of his neck. Kate leaned over to the backseat to nudge the sleeping Harry awake. The pup, Rusty, jumped up and put his head and paws in Kate’s open window for a pat. Ed thought Rusty wasn’t the full quid but Kate had a soft spot for the pup. She got out and Harry unwound from the car slowly, like a possum from a hole in a tree.

‘What’s that then?’ he said, pointing to a fenced area away beyond the homestead.

Rusty and the other dogs, Puck and Gunner, lost interest in the men in the truck and came back. Rusty took a sniff at Harry’s privates, and the boy backed away and the pup chased, thinking he was on for a game. Harry was stuck up against the car, the dogs hemming him in.

‘They’re just being friendly,’ Kate said. ‘The pup, the one with the patch on his ear and his eye, that’s Rusty. Puck’s the big one, the blue heeler with the piece out of his tail. The third one’s Gunner.’

‘They won’t hurt you, truly. Let’s get you over to your uncle. C’mon.’

Harry frowned but followed her across to the truck, trailed by the dogs. There Kate nodded a hullo at the two men, Johnno and Spinks – Amiens’ only remaining stockmen – who’d appeared from the yards. They’d worked on Amiens since the war, when the white stockmen had all joined up. Aboriginal men could not enlist, officially anyhow. But that was the silver lining for the graziers. Grimes had them working out in the paddocks or cutting feed and fixing fences, though Kate suspected they preferred to be in the bush by themselves and away from Grimes. She knew she would.

Kate laughed. Both lanky, the men were in identical get-ups, ration-issue clothes bought with Amiens’ coupons – the same straight brown dungarees, big-buckled belts, white shirts rolled up to their elbows, and ten-gallon hats.

She glanced across at the POWs. The bearded one, Bottinella, had climbed down from the truck. Canali hadn’t moved, was standing in the back of the tray, looking about with his odd pale eyes.

Harry was staring at the two stockmen. ‘I never seen boongs up close before.’

‘You shouldn’t say that. Boongs, I mean. It’s not nice. Aren’t there lots of Aborigines in Wollongong anyhow?’

‘Nuh,’ he said, his eyes on the stockmen. ‘They cleaned em out years ago.’

‘This is Harry,’ Kate said. ‘This is John Banning – but everyone calls him Johnno – and Billy Spinks.’

Johnno’s hand went to his mouth and worry creased the stockman’s face. ‘Spinksy hit me agin this mornin, eh.’

‘I decked im. I got a short fuse, like ole Grimesy.’ Spinks loomed over the boy and Harry shrank back.

‘Cut it out, Billy. Y’scarin im,’ Johnno said. Billy grinned and the pair of them faded back to the truck.

‘Johnno’s always stirring for a laugh,’ Kate said. ‘Your uncle’ll be finished soon, and then he’ll take you to the manager’s cottage. You want to come with me, for now?’

He followed her across the house paddock and through the white wooden gates. A black chook picked its way up the inside of the house fence. Kate went past it, round the circular drive in front of the homestead and up the short verandah staircase at the side, near the big veggie garden. She had to step over the black-and-white cat lying across the middle rung.

‘That’s the house cat, Peng. Peng for penguin because she’s black and white.’

She nodded, feeling the familiar pang of failure. It had only been a few months though, that she and Jack had been together as a married couple, just while his hand wound healed, before he got classed as fit again. He’d taken to her and to the district like a duck to water. Met, courted, married, gone off to fight again, all too fast. But no baby.

Daisy, the Aboriginal domestic, appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was sweet and gangly with a big head, a skinny body and long legs, hidden today in a shapeless brown dress, government issue, a remnant of the Home.

The girl nodded a hullo but she didn’t look at the boy. Harry ignored her too.

‘Daisy? I’d stay out of sight for a bit, away from those men. You know?’ Kate said.

Kate paused. ‘She doesn’t. She’s from Broken Hill, way out west. But she goes to the Mission once a month on a Sunday. For church.’

Kate’s father came in through the gate. ‘Cuppa tea, Kate? Bet young Harry’d like a bikkie too.’ He didn’t wait for her answer and went up the steps.

Bikkies for Harry, no less. Kate wondered whether she would have to look after this odd little boy.

Outside, Grimes was shifting the POWs. ‘Move out,’ he called. Ed went first and the bearded POW followed along the track towards the single men’s quarters, a chook hurrying out of their way. The other POW took his time but there was efficiency in the way he moved; nothing was without forethought.

‘Gorn!’ Grimes shouted and Kate looked back, surprised that Grimes would use a command for the dogs on a POW. But it was for Rusty. The pup was chasing sheep, a wether, in the paddock just beyond the house, just for the fun.

‘Git im!’ Grimes shouted again and whistled up the other dogs. They went after the pup and cut him out and away from the sheep. With no dog behind it, the wether slowed to a stop, its fleece brown with dust after months without rain.

Rusty was lucky it had not been a ram he picked on; a ram would have a go at a dog. Kate made a note in her head to tell her father that Rusty might be a chaser. Then she thought better of it – she didn’t want to trouble him. But Rusty had better learn.

A half hour later, Kate, her father and even Harry were seated in the wicker chairs on the house’s eastern verandah, having tea. A blue shirt appeared over the rise from the single men’s quarters: Mr Grimes. When he got close and saw Harry sitting up with his boss, his brows set with disapproval. Kate agreed. There was a strict hierarchy in the bush, and the children of the stockmen, even of the manager, did not take tea with the grazier’s family.

With Grimes just below them on the mostly dead lawn, Kate poured the tea, offering him a cup by convention. He, in turn, shook his head.

‘We’ll take the Italians out first thing tomorrow so they get the lay of the land,’ her father said, a booted foot jiggling as he spoke. ‘Get em into the routine – checkin fences, cuttin feed for the sheep and for the cattle, too.’

‘Got em settled in at the quarters?’ Her father stirred two spoons of sugar into his tea and reached for one of Daisy’s scones, spread with a little precious butter and some jam.

‘Yeah. Ed’s camped out up there to keep an eye on em, with a shotgun. But I tell you, I reckon —’ Grimes stopped and frowned at Harry as he licked the butter and jam off his scone.

Kate was distracted by her father, who was scratching hard at his groin. ‘Dad,’ she urged, a half-whisper, and he stopped.

Grimes either hadn’t seen it or chose not to. ‘Anyhow, I reckon we need a few more blokes up there tonight. In case they go on the run.’

Her father laughed. ‘Where they gunna hide? Here?’ He waved a hand out across the property, its miles of bare paddocks.

‘That first fella? Canali? Don’t turn y’back on im. An they might come after us, if you get my drift.’ Grimes looked at Kate. ‘She should know how to use your revolver, boss.’

‘I’m tellin ya. Not dangerous.’ Her father was starting to get annoyed. He stood up, brushing the crumbs off his hands at the edge of the verandah.

Grimes changed tack. ‘Another thing, boss. I need the cheque for the men’s pay.’

‘I’ll get the cheque-book,’ Kate said. She ran to the kitchen, got the cheque-book then put it down, open, in front of her father. She held out a pen. ‘I can write it if you like,’ she said, reaching for the book. She’d seen him do it. ‘I make it out to Cash, don’t I?’ She went ahead, finding the amount of the previous week’s pay on the stub and writing the figure well clear of the Amiens Pastoral Company signature line. He signed and she handed the cheque down to Grimes on the lawn below. He slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

‘Orright. See ya at first light, then. C’mon, Harry.’ Grimes put his hat on and went.

The boy stood up but stayed put, with one small hand on the armrest of the wicker chair.

‘C’mon.’ Grimes’s tone was brusque from the gate. Harry grabbed an extra scone on his way and ran to follow his uncle’s march across the flat. He caught up and fell in, and blew raspberries in time, one for each step marched, until Grimes gave him a filthy look and Harry stopped.

Inside Kate could hear Daisy in the kitchen, the clang of a saucepan. She tried to think of a way to ask her father about Addison and the bank. But they sat, silent, in the dusk. A flash of green and blue caught Kate’s eye over the drive. A rainbow lorikeet swooped across from the big Californian pine to join two others in the black-branched wattle by the side gate. On the fence line with the stringybark paddock something moved. A rabbit, foraging.

‘Mebbe.’ Her father rubbed his hand backwards and forwards over the salt and pepper stubble of his short back and sides. ‘He’s had a bad trot. Which reminds me,’ he said. He got up and went along the verandah and into the office, boots and all. Boots came off at the door in the bush; it was universal in homesteads in case dirt or spiders or ticks were onboard. But her father was forgetting now, sometimes.

She could hear him shifting things about in the office. ‘What are you looking for, Dad?’ He reappeared carrying her old draughts box and a dusty jigsaw puzzle, a map of Australia. ‘You want to play?’

‘Well, they’re not for you. For Harry. He can do the puzzle on the end o’ the kitchen table.’

She tried not to be annoyed, about the kitchen table or about Harry. They sat in silence for a time, with the soft backdrop of Daisy moving about in the kitchen. Kate needed to get on with it.

‘Nothin. Had his facts wrong.’ He stood up and went inside, boots on, leaving the games.

Kate stood too and hurled the dregs of her tea onto the lawn, aiming for one of the yellow clumps. By now, the sky had turned a deep pink as the last of the sun slipped behind the blue-black of Mount Perseverance, right on the edge of Amiens. Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Pommie bastard shepherds, her father would say. She stacked the cups and saucers onto the tray and went in. She needed to find the keys. They never locked the homestead doors, but she would now.

CHAPTER 3

While boldness in a ram may portend vigour in its offspring, belligerence means danger for all.

THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

Just before half past six the next morning, Kate and her father sat at the kitchen table eating their way through a wordless breakfast, the plip-plop of Daisy’s shoes against the lino the only sound in the house.

Kate looked hard at her father. Embarrassed, Daisy turned away to the sink. She was only fourteen. But she was skinny, as skinny as the POWs – that was the truth, no matter how much Kate encouraged her to eat. She hoped the girl wasn’t still pining for her family.

‘Mornin, boss.’ Grimes tapped on the frame of the gauze door. As he came in, Daisy disappeared into the laundry.

Grimes had the Amiens pay ledger tucked under one arm and he put it on the end of the kitchen table.

Grimes started to laugh, scratching an eyebrow. ‘Here’s the bloody thing,’ he said. ‘The dagos. They can’t ride.’

‘I swear. The young’un – Bottinella? I sent im out to catch the horses about an hour ago. But he doesn’t know a horse’s arse from its fetlock. Sorry, miss.’

Kate nodded. She reminded herself that with her father more and more unreliable, she was lucky they had Grimes.

‘Not sure y’can learn these buggers.’ Grimes went out, letting the door bang behind him. Peng shot away into the corridor as the blue of Grimes’s shirt disappeared off towards the yards.

Her father stood. ‘I’ll be off then. Back for lunch,’ he said. He blew his nose on his napkin and rolled the fabric into the silver-plate ring. Kate retrieved it and put it aside for the dirty clothes. He pulled his boots on at the back door and was gone.

Kate spotted her father’s forgotten hat on the bench. And mixing her up for her mother? She frowned, picked up the hat and went through the hall onto the back verandah. The hat was old but still in one piece, the rabbit felt soft in her hand, with a broad brim and a hole at the top of its pinch crown. He wore it so much he looked undressed without it. But now he was hatless, already halfway to the yards.

She went back to the kitchen with the hat. ‘You know, Daisy, you need to be careful of the POWs. They might try to do a line for you. You’d have to go back to the Home if anything happened.’

Daisy nodded over the washing, unsmiling. Kate returned to her toast, glad the girl understood. By all accounts, the Home was strict. It probably had to be, with dozens of girls, all half-castes like Daisy. They had to be fed and clothed, taught please and thank you, and stopped from speaking their own languages.

Kate put the tin basin inside the sink and ran a little water into it for the washing up. Before the war, she had never washed up, as they’d had more house help. Now Daisy was all they could get so the two of them did everything between them.

As she scrubbed the chop pan, Kate thought about what Addison, the bank manager, might have meant. With her father off at the yards, she was tempted to go into the office to see what she could find in the way of bank statements. Then again, Addison was a drongo, as her father put it. She put the pan on the sink to dry, wiped her hands and collected the broom from the cupboard.

On the verandah, she started in the corner nearest the kitchen, sweeping her way backwards and forwards, past the beans in the veggie garden, heaping the leaves and dust into a neat pile up against the house wall, always with one eye on the office door, fighting the temptation to look. A gust of wind threw leaves hard against the corrugated iron of the homestead roof and blew her pile of swept leaves about as well. She cursed it and started again.

She saw the dogs shoot off down towards the gully. It was mail day. Kate left the broom in the V of the verandah’s Isabella grape vine and went in. In the kitchen, Daisy was making scones on the marble end of the table. It still sometimes caught Kate by surprise to see Daisy preparing food, and she was careful not to tell anyone the girl cooked for them. Aboriginal girls weren’t ever to touch the food, for fear of contamination. But Kate had decided when Daisy arrived that was silly. And no one had got sick either.

Daisy was dividing the scone dough, cutting delicate circles with a floury upturned glass.

‘Hold still,’ Kate said and wiped flour from Daisy’s cheek with a tea towel. ‘You’re good at scones, Daisy.’

Kate turned away, mad with herself. She shouldn’t be talking about family with Daisy. The matron at the Home had warned her against it.

Peng was curled up on the seat, unworried by the barking. ‘Siddown, Rusty,’ a man called. The barking stopped, and Daisy disappeared with the egg basket, escaping to the chook run.

‘G’day, Mrs D.’ Mick Maguire filled the kitchen doorway. A whisker over six foot, and round too, although his girth was partly hidden today by the Amiens weekly bread order. He also had a rolled up Tablelands Clarion and the week’s post. ‘There’s a letter in there for yez, Mrs D, from that handsome man o’ yours. On top.’ Maguire winked at Kate. She pounced and put the letter from Jack in her apron pocket, desperate to open it, just not in front of Mr Maguire.

Kate took Daisy’s scones out of the stove. But there was only a little sugar in the bowl and, rationing or no rationing, Mick had a sweet tooth.

‘Back in a jiffy,’ she said, holding the sugar bowl. She picked up the post and pushed open the hall door.

Kate pulled the rubber band off the bundle and flicked through the envelopes. There were nine, all addressed either to her father or to Amiens Pastoral Company. Four were stamped Overdue; one from Mr Babbin, their stock and station agent; one from The Pastoralist, the periodical that her father liked, although less so of late; the third from Darcy’s, the engineering shop in town; and the last from Nettiford’s, the haberdasher-cum-general shop in Longhope. Kate held these four, two in each hand, and stared at them. It didn’t make sense. Her father was scrupulous about paying bills on time.

‘Yes.’ She got the sugar and went back to the kitchen. ‘As soon as his hand healed, and he managed to get it working again, the Army posted him to train new recruits. He’s been at Kogarah since, chafing at the bit to get back to the fighting.’

‘Good thing he’s safe here, eh. You seen that plane stuff in the paper? The Japs is usin planes as bombs again, crazy pilots blowin emselves up in the Philippines.’ Maguire put his mug down and pulled the rubber band off the rolled-up Tablelands Clarion.

‘It’ll take years, they reckon. To beat em.’  That’s what she had heard too. ‘I’ll take a quick look at Jack’s letter.’

Kate pushed open the verandah door to step outside. His letter was just one page, the usual. A letter from him at all was rare as hens’ teeth: he was busy with his work. This one was not too much blacked out by the censors. And it had only taken a month to arrive.

Dear Kate,

I hope you and the Boss are well, and that Longhope is holding up in the drought.

Funny that he mentioned the district, rather than Amiens. Jack had taken to the locals; made some mates. He was different from her father, who didn’t give a hoot what people thought.

Kogarah is still full of conscripted blokes. Wheelbarrows, they call them, because they have to be pushed. We train Borneo of them a month now, more troops for the Islands and even maybe Japan one day.

I’ve had a gutful of playing soldiers, teaching these blokes. It was my bloody luck I didn’t get back to the fighting in ’42, as soon as my hand got better. But not long to wait now. I’m trying to swing a posting back to the fighting. I hear I Borneo or maybe even Batavia later this year, up into Asia.

The tucker is still bad, and the Yanks’ rations are better than ours. Once in a blue moon I’m off and I get a lift into the centre of Sydney for a good feed. We got the news that General Rommel is dead. Cheers here, I can tell you.

Love,

Jack

He was never one for flowery words, but Kate was glad to hear from him. She hoped he was still training wheelbarrows, not back in the islands on the front. She reread the few lines then folded the letter, put it in her apron pocket and went back into the kitchen.

Maguire took two scones, one with each hand, and put them on his plate. ‘How your POWs gettin on, then?’

‘I’ll walk you out,’ she said; he was angling to see the POWs. She set the tea things in the basin and gave him her weekly letter to Jack to post. Then she went for her hat on its peg at the gauze door. She liked the hat. It had been a hand-me-down from her mother.

Kate paused, looking at her hat in her hand, and she took her time in turning back. If they were short of money, it would not help to have Maguire know that. ‘Dad’s been here since the First War. I’m sure we’re all right. But with a place as big as ours, people will always talk, don’t you think?’ She smiled at him and put her hat on.

She walked so fast across the lawn towards the wooden gate and his truck, he had to move to catch her. Out the back of the house, Daisy was at the clothes line, wrestling with a white sheet in the breeze. Above her, two rainbow lorikeets, a flash of bright green and blue and yellow, swooped across, screeching from the bottom of the garden to the jacaranda tree. Daisy stopped, her hands on the sheet, her eyes following them. She loved the lorikeets.

‘See ya, Daisy,’ Maguire called. She delivered a half-wave, bumping the sheet on the line with her hand, then disappeared into the washing.

‘She’s better than she was when we first got her. Took her a while to settle in here after the Home.’ In fact, it was Ed who could make Daisy laugh out loud. She suspected the stockman had a crush on Daisy, but she certainly wouldn’t tell gossipy Maguire that.

After Kate got Maguire into his truck and watched it retreat down the hill towards the creek crossing, she collected her father’s hat and headed for the yards.

Once over the rise, she could see the men, with Harry, and all eyes were on the ring. Grimes had the bearded POW in there with Mustard, one of their young stock horses.

‘You forgot your hat, Dad.’ Kate gave it to her father and turned back towards the house.

Kate stopped, uncomfortable; the only woman among these men. Next to her, Ed had his stock whip as always, coiled and hooked onto his belt. Buffalo Bill, Grimes called him, as most used whips only for cattle work, not sheep. But Kate knew Ed was always prepared, in case he came across a cranky scrubber in the wrong paddock, or a ram that wouldn’t back off.

In the ring, Grimes held the stock horse’s bit but Mustard shook her head unhappily. Not their quietest, she was an odd choice for a teaching mount. The bearded POW, his shirt half untucked now, hung his head but kept a wary eye on Mustard. Kate noticed a scar on his arm that she hadn’t seen at the station: a long scar. Eight or so inches and up to half an inch wide in places, it ran from below his elbow to the back of his bicep. It was purple and white – a wound that had healed badly. He looked scared, and Mustard would know that. ‘Dogs and horses smell fear,’ her father always used to say.

The bearded POW opened his mouth and took a breath. He grabbed the pommel of the saddle with his right hand and hitched his foot up, trying to get his boot into the stirrup. He failed and dropped the foot to the dirt again. Mustard flicked her tail and pulled up with her head, once and then again.

‘Bottinella!’ Grimes yelled. ‘Reins. Pommel. Stirrup.’ He pointed out each item as he went through the list, the reins still hooked round his arm. ‘Up. Orright?’ His voice was loud, as if the man was hard of hearing.

‘Get outta the bloody way and I’ll show ya,’ Grimes said. ‘Watch me. Reins. Pommel. Stirrup. Up.’ In one fluid move, he mounted Mustard. The horse seemed relieved to have someone on her who knew what he was doing. When she made for the yard gates, the manager pulled her round.

Grimes dismounted and held the reins out to the POW. ‘You have another go,’ he said, still loud. He held the bridle strap to keep Mustard where she was.

‘The reins gotta be taut, bit to pommel. Not like this!’ Grimes yelled, flapping them.

The POW’s face was still blank. He managed on the next try to get his left foot into the stirrup but the horse moved off round Grimes. The POW hopped along on his right foot to keep up with her.

With one final push the POW flung his right leg up and got a foot almost over the horse’s back. He hung there like a saddlebag, his head and body against Mustard’s flank, and the horse moved about sharply.

‘Sit down, you idiot.’ Grimes pulled the POW off Mustard and dropped him on the dirt as the horse backed away. The man didn’t move for a bit, and Kate felt sorry for him.

Kate didn’t want to see this. Dislike the Italian as she did, he’d rubbed Grimes up the wrong way at the station, refusing to be cowed, and that was a mistake. This would be his first lesson. ‘Dad, I’ll go back to the house now,’ she said.

As Kate left, Grimes’s voice followed her. She was about halfway home when she heard shouting and hoof-beats, fast and deliberate, with Rusty barking up a row. Was somebody hurt? She ran back to the yards, now alive with dust and movement.

In that dust Grimes dodged the horse and rider that came at him. Canali was mustering Grimes like a calf, forcing him back into the centre when he tried to run or to break for the yard rails. The POW was angry, pushing the horse to muster a man. Grimes would be hurt. Her father and Ed shouted, waving at Canali. He rode straight at the manager again. Kate was sure she would see Grimes brought down, yet at the last moment the Italian wheeled the horse away.

‘Cut it out!’ Her father’s voice came through the dust and the noise. But the POW rode on, and Grimes was trapped in the ring. He knew he was being toyed with; he was red in the face, angrier than Kate had ever seen him.

PART I

CHAPTER 1

Longhope Railway Station, New South Wales 10 January 1945

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3