The wedding cake was three tiers high and probably modelled on a cake Mrs McKenzie had seen made in the Government House kitchens, though if he knew her, Mrs McKenzie would have made this one richer and even higher for the girl she thought of as her daughter. There were bowls of punch (fresh pineapple juice, cold tea, chopped ginger and passionfruit); the table was laden with cold chicken, baked fish, stewed tomatoes and choko, baked choko with tomatoes, stewed choko with ginger, tomato pies, pineapple pies, banana cream tart, and pear and ginger pies that looked somewhat like stewed choko.

Father Nichols had not even blinked at the colour of the bride’s skin. He had been more concerned that Clancy would bring up his children in a Christian manner. ‘Are you a Christian, Mr Clancy?’ he asked bluntly.

‘I was baptised,’ said Clancy cautiously. ‘Though I’m not sure in what faith. Don’t know about Rose.’

Father Nichols sighed. ‘Will you and your intended agree to be baptised again? Just to be sure.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Clancy. He didn’t object when told what he was promising to believe in. Some of it was like Rose’s bunyip — you might not believe, but you didn’t not believe, and you showed respect too. The rest, well, whatever he felt on the plains at night with the song of the gum trees and eternity above was more than humans could properly comprehend. He reckoned God was like that too, and the rules laid down by Father Nichols were mostly good ones to live by.

‘You may kiss the bride.’ For the first time he felt her lips. Father Nichols had to cough several times before the new wife and husband parted.

He had expected virginity. A bride — unless a widow — should be a virgin. And Rose was. He had expected timidity. Rose had learned to be wary of men.

She was not wary of him.

He had not expected laughter, enthusiasm, teasing, as if this was a game as well as a passion, nor a bride who after three hours in the marriage bed — a tent by the river, well away from the house and workers’ quarters — would dive into a waterhole and yell at him, ‘Come on, you great fool! Wash the sweat away!’

And as he dived after her, a talent he had learned from her, and swam up in the clean cool water, he found her next to him, her body only slightly warmer than the water, and realised this marriage was not going to be what he expected at all.

He had stepped into paradise.

They stepped out of their Eden now and then too.

A two-week stay at Mount Hebron, then the newlyweds, proud best man and the McKenzies headed south again to buy yet another mob of starving cattle. They detoured to stay with Ethelred, who questioned Mrs McKenzie as eagerly as he did Rose.