‘Good,’ said Clancy again, and tried to keep the tightness from his voice. He had maybe two months to make the first major payment on the mortgage. If they couldn’t sell a mob of cattle for five times what they’d paid for them, they’d lose the whole of Overflow. If it didn’t rain, the rest of the stock would be worthless. Or dead.

The air filled with damp the next night, just as the flying ants had predicted, too thick for mist, but not enough to wet the ground.

Eight days later, it rained.

Soft rain, mist that hung over the thin tops of the gum trees, slowly dripped down the skeletons of ringbarked trees and those that had decided to die without human intervention as the moisture in the soil vanished.

The rain thickened during the night. He could hear it patter on the corrugated-iron roof. By breakfast it had stopped.

But the world was wet. The cattle looked surprised, the sheep gloomy. Life was hard and even worse when you were wet. The wombat who lived under the house wandered by, looking accusingly at the humans as if it knew they at least were dry — or possibly had caused this unaccustomed dampness.

It rained again that afternoon.

The rain on the tenth day brought a flood: not a channel washer, just a metre-high wave of logs and leaves and animal skeletons, the water growing higher behind it. It dropped slowly during the night, flowing sluggishly through head-high banks of debris.

And then it rained again.

By then the world was a green fuzz, then grass, then finally lushness that gave the sheep the runs and meant every hand had to be employed penning the cattle in a single paddock lest bloat kill them even as they escaped starvation.

Within six months, green was again normal; the cattle glossy, the sheep growing the wool that had once made Overflow a respected name in the industry. Their first sale of cattle — culls not wanted for breeding, but still fetching fifteen times what they had been bought for — paid off the mortgage.

By the second wool clip, McKenzie officially retired, to yarn with visiting mates as they sat on the Dirty Butter veranda, eating date scones laden with butter and strawberry jam, sponge cake with cream and passionfruit, trifles rich with raspberries and custard, all sourced from the newly planted vegetable gardens, the revived orchards and the Overflow dairy, as Mrs McKenzie put her feet up too, and instructed the two maids hired to help her.

By the third wool clip, Overflow was again one of the wealthiest estates in New South Wales and Horatio Clancy — far wiser than his father in how to arrange direct sales with overseas buyers and with no emotional need to waste his money on maintaining the appearance of being a gentleman — spent enough on good fences, new equipment and the best people — black or white — to work his land.