Mix 13¾oz SR flour (or plain flour and wood ash water) with ¼pt buttermilk. Add 2½oz raisins, chopped dates, sultanas, grated lemon rind, bush cherries, or the pulp of native lime if available. Grease inside the camp oven. Put the lid on the oven. Scrape away the coals from the fire. Place the oven where the coals were. Scrape the coals back over the top of the camp oven — all around and on top as well. Leave for 45 minutes and scrape off. The damper will be light and brown on top.

Eat warm with butter or golden syrup.

NEW SOUTH WALES, 1884

CLANCY

They rode through leaning trees sculpted by the wind, skinny tops, leaves pointing down to evade the sun. The sky changed the further north they rode, from a soft to a semi-tropical deep blue. The shadows deepened into black.

‘By George, what’s that?’ McIntyre pointed.

‘Wombat,’ said Clancy wonderingly, looking at the great beast, snuffing at a tussock a hundred yards or so away from the mob. One of the dogs barked sharply. The wombat galloped into a hole big enough for a man to crawl into. ‘Never knew wombats grew that big.’

‘Hey, Bruiser, Pinkie, heel!’ roared McKenzie. ‘Big wombat can squash a dog like that in its burrow,’ he added more quietly. ‘Dog goes for the neck, and hup! It’s dead meat up on the ceiling.’

‘Reminds me of the goanna that chased my horse last time we was up here,’ said Tiger. ‘Fair cow of a thing, long as me horse. Reared up to bite me and we was head to head.’

‘So why’ve you still got a head now?’ asked Clancy.

‘Missed me,’ said Tiger. ‘Everything grows too big up here, my word they do. Pythons that can swallow a pig. Reckon nothing gets a rest over winter. It all just keeps growing.’

‘Good eating on a python,’ said McKenzie reflectively. He grinned. ‘The wife thinks I don’t know what she puts in her stews, sometimes. But you don’t get a chicken with a backbone like a python.’

‘Anything your missus cooks, I’ll eat,’ said Tiger fervently.

And Clancy realised he was happy, after all these months of lazy riding through shadow-flickered timber. The clouds danced, small white bundles that held no promise of rain; lyrebirds strutted, then sped away in an ungainly style to not-quite-hide behind a tree. The cattle slowly ate their way across the thin pasture in front of them.

And he liked these men, respected McKenzie and his wife deeply, even found it easy to be in Rose’s company now.

Most drovers took their mobs in the most direct route possible, to get the money paid for the delivery. These were McKenzie’s own beasts. He’d bought them cheap and starving, fattened them, then sold them where there was feed enough to get good prices. He owned no land, but had more cattle than most squatters, at least in times like these.