Toby drew breath to protest, but the look in his father’s eyes made him think again. He was nineteen years old and his father was punishing him as if he were twelve, but he knew there was nothing he could do but accept the punishment and wait out his time.

‘Go and wash your face, Toby. Then I want to hear that axe ringing for an hour or more.’

Toby nodded and turned away, but his father’s voice brought him up short.

‘So, the first time Paddy fires the gun, he drops a dingo with a chest shot. At what range?’

Toby turned to see his father holding the pelt again, his finger through the hole. ‘Must’ve been all of eighty yards, Pa.’

‘Eighty yards, hey?’ Sean looked at his finger and shook his head in wonder. Then he gave Toby a look that said he had better get moving.

Toby was at the wood heap behind the tack shed when he first noticed the riders. They were still high on the ridge, but coming steadily along the outside of the house paddock. It was the direction they came from that made them a curiosity. The O’Rourke place was the last of a string of properties that followed a narrow valley into the maw of the mountains. There was nothing north until the settled areas of the Goulburn valley and the only paths through were east at the Kilmore Gap, or at the Mount Alexander road, a day’s ride to the west.

The riders rounded the corner at the far side of the house paddock and paused beside the two-rut track that led into the settlement of Bunyong Creek, five miles down the valley. Toby saw an arm or two gesture back and forth as they discussed their options. After a few moments they turned towards the slip rails at the bottom of the paddock.

Toby gathered up an armload of wood and walked around the shed to the front of the homestead where he climbed the verandah steps and dropped the wood into a box beside the open kitchen door. Careful to shake any woodchips from his hair and clothing, he went inside.

The heat in the humble little home was stifling and sweat prickled the skin on his arms. His mother stood stirring a pot in the shimmering air around the oven. A pile of peeled potatoes sat on a plate on the table.

‘I cut a good load, Ma. Enough for a couple of days at least.’

Ellen O’Rourke finished her stirring and tapped the wooden spoon on the brim of the pot a few times before setting it down. ‘You’re a good lad to be sure,’ she said in her bubbling Irish brogue.

‘Where’s Pa?’