My great-grandfather had teams of men in this country: fencing, clearing scrub, shearing sheep, running water points. It must have been a village in itself. They probably shot the local Aborigines, too, but not surprisingly there’s no record of that. Many of the people indigenous to the area worked on our place when there was no other way to survive. When I think how much this farm is a part of me, and mine after several generations, I don’t like to imagine what it must have been like for them to be forced off it when they had been here forever. The best way to deal with something like this is to not think about it. We are masters of that. We’re careful never to write detailed histories. Even my great-grandfather’s notebooks hardly mention those original people.

My father had several men working full-time for him, with their families living on the farm. The wives often helped Mum with the house and garden, and someone had to milk the cow, kill sheep for meat, and look after the chooks. There were plenty of others that came in when there were big jobs to be done. Large machinery and then smart machinery replaced those workers, but I could still justify a couple of station hands if I was running the place the way it should be. Maybe I’ll get back to that sometime. I still get old Lenny and his son Trevor to help me out now and then. I know they won’t talk about what they see. Lenny worked for my father when he was a young man, and his father worked for my grandfather. In those days you inherited a farm, and its stock and working families.

Sunday is the day I think about James. Actually, I think about James every minute of every day, but Sunday is the day I allow myself time with those thoughts. Not today. I’m making sure I think about money, burglars, how Elaine and Mick must both feel, and what Elaine might be doing. Of course she has a boyfriend, and it wouldn’t be strange to refer to him as her husband in that sort of circumstance. And she probably wasn’t that badly hurt, so it makes sense to go home.