Take 3½oz of wattle blossom, without stalks. Mix in an egg, 4fl oz of light cream, 2oz plain flour, 2 beaten eggwhites. Spoon onto a hot buttered frying pan, brown on both sides, sprinkle with sugar and lemon juice and serve hot.

OVERFLOW, 1901

CLANCY

My dear Clancy and Rose,

I hope you will both be glad for me when I tell you that I have married again. Pamela is an anthropologist. She has made close friends with several of the native women of this district — though I admit I took her for a man on our first two meetings, for she wears boots tougher than mine. But she loves this land, as I do, and our home never lacks conversation.

We would both be very glad indeed if you, and your friends the McKenzies too, would ever care to visit. Pamela is eager to meet you, though hers are not entirely social reasons. But I am sure you will like her, or even love her as the friend she would so much like to be.

Please do not think I am betraying your sister’s memory. Maria will always be in my heart, and in my sight as I gaze at the country we explored together. Pamela knows this, as she knows that one love does not replace another but makes life richer. I have been blessed indeed with two such wise women in my life, and with the friendship of others, just as wise.

Yours, with deep happiness,

Ethelred

In other places in this new nation, men and women and children with flags on sticks celebrated the Federation of Australia. At Dirty Butter a man with a tie, dress coat and briefcase dismounted then knocked on the door. Clancy recognised him — Babcock, who’d been the most junior member of the firm of solicitors his father used, junior no longer, with a comfortable paunch and a look of distaste. Babcock glanced at Rose, then looked firmly back at Clancy. ‘Mr Clancy?’

‘Yes. Babcock, isn’t it?’ He wouldn’t put Mr in front of the name of a man who did not lift his hat for his wife. Nor did he ask him inside.

‘I am afraid I have . . .’ Babcock hesitated ‘. . . sad news for you. Your father died six weeks ago.’

‘I see,’ said Clancy. Rose came through the door and took his hand. She knew, even if he had never said, that every Christmas or birthday, he had hoped Ezekiel might come riding down the track, might at least send a letter or a card, to see the only grandson he might ever have, for they had not been blessed with another child.