Kurrajong is a native name for several species of native trees. The seeds may be roasted, or ground into an excellent flour for general use, and I have been told the roots are also eaten. The name derives from the native word for ‘fishing line’. The bark is soaked for several weeks so the long fibres can be separated and woven for many purposes. It has great potential in agriculture as I have been told its foliage may also be cut and fed to cattle.

NEW SOUTH WALES, 1888

CLANCY

It was an odd habit for a man to enjoy writing letters, though men enjoyed reading them or getting a mate to write them for him.

But these needed more than the brown paper he’d saved when he purchased his last pair of boots. He travelled in to the next town they passed, bought proper writing and blotting paper and envelopes at the stationer and tobacconist’s, and even a pen, a few spare nibs and ink. Ink was provided by post offices, but it was usually so thick with shreds of blotting paper that it left smudges across the page.

Dear Father,

I am afraid this is not news that you will like at first, but I hope you will accept my decision and my wife.

You will remember Rose, who worked at Overflow as a maid. She has been travelling with Mr and Mrs McKenzie since then, and I have worked with them too. I like and respect the McKenzies, and I have also grown to love Rose. I have asked her to be my wife.

I know this is not what you would have chosen, but it is the only marriage I can have and so the only way there will be children for Overflow, when you and I are too old to run it. I do not underestimate the problems they will have as half-castes, but the status of Overflow will do them well and any child of Rose’s would be the best person possible to take on all you have achieved.

I hope you will accept this marriage and wish us joy, and welcome us back to Overflow.

Your loving son,

Clancy

He wrote to Ethelred, a brief note, explaining that he had proposed but that Rose needed assurance from his family that she’d be accepted. On impulse, he also wrote to his only other regular correspondent, Andrew Paterson.

She is a girl who reads the patterns of the stars to tell when the emus will lay their eggs, or the giant moths migrate in their thousands. She can see a hundred different colours in a sunset or sing a lyrebird’s alarm call. You, of all people, must appreciate the wonder of a girl like that.