Barraworn took the lantern from him and began to cast back and forth. He worked quickly, pausing every now and then to squat and study a piece of ground by the yellow light. Eventually his path brought him to the edge of the bush where he stopped and called McTavish over.

‘Five horses. They went bush here.’ He pointed at a hoof print in the dusty earth. ‘This horse got a big fella on him.’ Barraworn looked up and gave his sergeant a huge grin, his teeth brilliant in the lantern light. ‘This the fella make the trouble, boss.’

Trouble, Toby thought. My ma and pa are shot dead and he calls it trouble.

McTavish looked at the hoof prints and then at the bushland, a wall of darkness beyond the light of the lantern. ‘We’ll sleep here tonight,’ he said. ‘At first light we’ll see if we can’t track these fellows down.’

The Charlotte Elizabeth had dropped anchor three hundred yards offshore from a pristine white beach. Above the high-tide mark was a ramshackle hotel where Frank Hocking had paid an exorbitant price for lodgings for his family. Annie stood with her sister and mother in the shade of the hotel verandah as they waited for her father to return from the ship. The crew had wanted fifteen shillings to bring their belongings ashore, but Frank had been advised by the hotel owner that his son could retrieve their two chests in the morning for no more than sixpence, as long as Frank was willing to lend a hand. It would cost a further shilling if he wanted the trunks and his family transported the three miles to the migrant camp on the south bank of the Yarra Yarra.

Her first footsteps on Australia had not been the romantic affair Annie had imagined. She and Betty had leaped from the rowboat the moment it grounded on the beach, both wanting to be the first to touch dry land. Their shoes had immediately filled with sand and their father forbade them from taking them off in public, insisting they wait until they were inside the hotel room. Now, both girls were content to wait on the boards of the verandah, not wanting to repeat the mistake of yesterday.

‘I believe this is him now,’ Maree said, pointing to where a small rowboat neared the beach. She spoke loudly enough to be heard over the rhythm of crashing surf.

‘Yes, that’s Father,’ Annie said, using a fan to shield her eyes from the glare and to chase away the swarm of flies that seemed intent on getting up her nose.

At that moment a two-horse team pulling a wagon came from the far side of the hotel and made its way onto the beach. Annie watched as her father and a young man hauled two trunks out of the rowboat and up onto the load bed of the wagon.