Two more years of drought, the drought that finally forced a handful of colonies to become a nation rather than collapse alone. The final year was the worst so far: mere miserable dribbles grudged by the sky, except for a single miracle thunderstorm in spring that let them grow a crop of corn and pumpkins. Always, always pumpkins. When the drought was over, he was never going to eat pumpkin again.

The river became a glaring stretch of white sand, smeared here and there by stretches of dead algae. The men dug deep holes that slowly filled with water overnight, enough for the stock they had left as well as the animals who had always been there.

It should have been a desperate time and was for much of Australia. More than half the sheep and cattle in the nation died that year. No one counted the deaths of wildlife, their feed and water stolen by the stock, nor how many people died of heat, crammed in smoky slums or outback runs where the water failed or turned putrid.

But at Overflow the land still provided most of what they and their employees needed, including breezes up from the remnant river and down from the mountains at their back. The inheritance paid for the rest.

In the autumn of that second year, the third year Australia had been called a nation, Rose and Clancy sat on the veranda watching the night. Benjamin was asleep at last. ‘Look, a shooting star!’ said Clancy.

Rose said nothing. Her face was lifted, her eyes shut. She breathed deeply, nostrils flaring.

‘Rose, what is it?’

‘I can smell something.’

Sheep, thought Clancy, the two hundred that were all the vast acres could support these days. Or wombat. He sniffed. Yep, there was a particularly pungent wombat pong that night.

Rose opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘It’s going to rain,’ she said.

‘Enough for a bit of grass?’

‘Enough for twenty years of grass, maybe.’

He had lived so long with drought that it was hard to accept it might end. His hair had still been brown the last good season. ‘Real rain? When?’

‘Spring. When the wombats need new grass for milk for their young. That’s the smell of mating wombat, the first for years. I can smell river-gum blossom too. They don’t come out if there won’t be water for their seeds. Trees don’t waste their flowering.’ He didn’t ask if she was sure. ‘I’d better have a talk to McKenzie,’ he said instead.

Rose nodded. ‘Yes. I think you’d better.’

He rode over to Dirty Butter the next morning. McKenzie was taking it easy, eating drop scones with prickly pear jam in the kitchen in his socks. ‘Glad to see you hard at work,’ said Clancy.

‘Cattle are eating. I’m eating too.’