‘Autumn’s later,’ said Flinty slowly. ‘Spring is later. I haven’t even put it into words before. Frogs are vanishing too, and the native mice. There should have been a plague of them this year.’ Flinty smiled wryly. ‘I’ve been trying to ignore it, I think, and just be glad we have rain again. But speaking to you . . .’

‘Another Ice Age?’ asked Nancy facetiously.

‘I think we’d have noticed the cold. No,’ said Flinty, ‘I think it’s just too many humans changing too much of the world. Land cleared or trodden by the hard hooves of sheep and cattle and cities paved and covered in roads, car parks and roofs so water flows directly to the sea instead of soaking down into the soil. All those cities sending up heat too.’

‘Cars,’ said Nancy. ‘Two billion stoves. Factories. How long before you think the boffins in cities will notice what their graphs and stuff are saying, and see what we see here?’

‘And maybe we’re imagining it. Two old women on a rock who think we know the bush.’ Flinty looked sideways at Nancy. ‘Rose taught you more than she taught me. I was too old by the time I met her, too preoccupied with my family after that to ever learn enough.’

‘What is enough? I don’t know how much more there was. I learned a lot before I went to Malaya but I didn’t know it mattered then. It was just Gran’s stuff, not as interesting as the new David Jones catalogue. After the war, Gran taught me more — I’m not sure I’d have survived the nightmares, sometimes, if it hadn’t been for . . . for knowing, who I was, where I was, so that memories of the internment camp could never really take me back.’

She looked out over the valley, the paddocks of cattle, the fields where Flinty’s late husband’s relatives still grew potatoes and apple orchards. ‘I wish she was here now. Gran would know what’s happening.’

‘Yes. She knew a lot, your gran. One of the best friends I ever had, eventually, even if we only saw each other a few times a year. No freeway back then, of course, nor the new bridge.’

The ‘new’ bridge is thirty years old, thought Nancy.

‘I was so much in awe of them both when I first met your grandparents. Clancy of the Overflow! I’d never have captured Snow King if it hadn’t been for him, probably would never have walked again if it hadn’t been for Rose. I still use her liniment. Best stuff in the world for arthritis.’

‘I know it.’ Nancy used it herself every day now, which meant she moved in a small fug of slightly bitter plant scent. Michael was used to it — she hoped.

‘Flinty — were they happy?’ she asked suddenly.