With the gold gone, families were forced to scrape an existence on land that was as harsh to them as it was to the animals they tried to raise. That was the way it remained for nearly forty years, the town barely breathing. Then the iron ore and blue asbestos was discovered beneath the scarred earth. A new rush started, the mining corporations buying large swathes of land, at prices too good to turn down. What followed was a rapid expansion and the erection of the town’s first brick buildings. Then as before, yields suddenly collapsed, and the companies, without sentiment or remorse, shifted operations a few hours along the road to Portman like a moulting snake, leaving the thin shell of waste skin behind.

Chandler and his family lived in this empty shell and despite its flaws he was proud of the town. His town. He was the sergeant and in effect the sheriff of it; apt given that the town retained the look of one stuck at the turn of the 19th century. The wide main street boasted tarmac where packed dirt had once laid, gleaming almost white in the sun, and a concrete island down the centre offered unnecessary solace from the rare traffic. Colourful verandas arched over the footpaths providing shelter from the sun if not the unforgiving heat, the ornately crafted metal poles unmoved for the last century, the last bastions of a time long gone.

As he pulled up to the concrete sweatbox that constituted the station, Chandler glanced in the mirror. The steadily rounding face that stared back at him was of a handsome man tumbling towards his mid-thirties. A face battling late nights and life as a single parent, his blond hair losing volume if not territory as yet. The blondness plus the light tan he sported afforded him the look of an ageing surfer, though nothing could be further from the truth. Chandler stayed out of the sea as much as he could. At least on land he could see what was coming to kill him.

Bill Ashcroft, the old senior sergeant, had retired last June, leaving Chandler to assume temporary command. Not that there was much for the five of them to do: a few traffic violations and domestic disputes, or an occasional assault in one of the three pubs in town that didn’t so much compete for business as welcome those temporarily barred from the others. Still, five was the quota assigned to the station and the Western Australian Police Force fought to keep the full complement in position, afraid that losing one would let the others fall, like dominoes.