The waves splashed and the wharf creaked under the waiting crowd, mostly ex-convicts in faded drab, watching for families they had not seen for the decades it had taken to save enough to bring them across the world. Of course the steerage passengers would not be allowed on deck until the First Class passengers had disembarked.

Clancy watched as Flora turned to give instructions to the black-clad woman who held the parasol over her head. That must be Sarah, her maid.

If the sky fell now, he thought, he would still be smiling, not just at the sight of Flora, but from knowing he had at last achieved his father’s ambition. The grandchildren of Ezekiel Clancy, ex-convict, would be aristocrats.

Ezekiel had endured a long journey to this marriage: saving enough for a mob of drought-thin sheep back in the dry 1840s, when you could buy a barren holding for the cost of a pair of trousers; herding the creatures across the mountains, half of them dying on the way; finally following the track of Cecil Drinkwater, who’d persuaded a native girl to show him where a river ran, despite the drought.

Drinkwater had politely suggested Ezekiel keep moving his mob downriver, beyond his own claim, to ‘the Overflow’ — a plain below the hills with a dozen channels where moisture seeped even in the dry times, and the river filled every time it flooded. In an uncharacteristic burst of imagination, Ezekiel named it ‘Overflow’.

Ezekiel grew rich when gold was found nearby, selling mutton to the miners of Gibber’s Creek. The rush soon ended, but Overflow grew wealthier with the British demand for wool to make uniforms for the Crimea. Finally the influence of squatters with far better connections than Ezekiel Clancy — but with similar vast fortunes from the high prices for wool and mutton — had ensured he and they legally owned the vast estates they’d claimed.

Ezekiel planned a dynasty. His son would be a gentleman. His granddaughters would be presented by their aristocratic relatives to the Queen.

The gangplank was secured. Clancy waited, top hat in hand, as the passengers slowly made their way down to the wharf, followed by maids and valets carrying portmanteaux. The heavy trunks would be delivered later.

His gaze was not able to move away from her, her delicacy, the vividness of hair and clothes. But what should he say? No one had ever taught him what to say to the aristocratic bride he had never met.

Ezekiel had not made the mistake of attempting to send his son to an English boarding school; none would have accepted the child of an ex-convict. Clancy’s mother had taught the boy his basic letters and, when Mary died at Maria’s birth, Ezekiel hired a tutor. ‘Gentleman Once’ held a degree from Oxford, though he all too often held a bottle of rum as well.

Even before he was sent to board at the King’s School at Parramatta, Clancy could read Latin, speak like a gentleman, and write with a gentleman’s hand. He even rode like a gentleman too, not with the relaxed slouch of a drover.