There were the correct number of courses, made with ‘receipts’ Maria had gleaned from the Ladies’ Own Companion: soup, usually tomato, or mushroom or a kangaroo-tail consommé, fish from the river (surprisingly good), fowl — often roast duck which had never been hung for long enough — and then a roast, kangaroo jointed to resemble mutton, tough and strong tasting, but that didn’t matter, for the fish itself was enough to sate her appetite. It was the ceremony that mattered, not the food itself.

After the roast ‘whatever’ came the required savoury, almost invariably anchovy toast or sardines on toast. Supplies came in once every six months, and even the Overflow garden and Maria’s ingenuity could not conjure up a respectable alternative, except curried eggs on toast, which Ezekiel complained gave him wind. And then dessert, odd sometimes, like a mock ginger pudding made of spiced pumpkin, or Queen of Puddings made with a native fruit jelly, but invariably delicious. Maria was an inspired cook.

And if breakfast was served on plates, straight from the kitchen, instead of from silver salvers kept hot over spirit burners on the sideboard — fried kangaroo chops in gravy or fried emu liver garnished only with gravy too — there was always a boiled egg when Flora’s appetite quailed at so much sauce, and thin sliced toast with excellent bush not-quite-lemon marmalade.

Yet, sewing with Maria in the dreadful parlour, exchanging stories — Maria’s tale of Cranky Joe, who thought the privy was a dragon and who’d chopped it down, exchanged for her story of the Abbey house farm tenant, Figgins, who had called each daughter Myrtle to save remembering their names — life was peaceful, possible, as long as Flora could repeat to herself every hour, ‘This will be over soon. One day real life will begin once more.’

There were even pleasant times with Clancy, not his hot body over hers at night, of course, but picnics by the river, wearing a hat with sufficient gauze to shelter her from both sun and flies, at the river where Clancy bathed in the shallows clad only in his drawers. He urged her to try bathing too.

But even though the water looked cool, she could not think of exposing her body that way, especially as natives still lurked in camps along the river, despite the orders to the Overflow stockmen to drive them away. Every sheep was precious to Ezekiel and Overflow now, and he would not spare even a few to the native spears.

Yet it was a child from one of those camps who did the most to make life not just possible, but gave it more purpose than drawn thread work or embroidering the tiny dresses Maria made for Clementine.