‘You’re the ranger – for now I’m just the help.’

Jane grabbed his arm. ‘Oh, let’s climb up. It’ll make a marvellous photo.’

‘After I’ve had a dekko maybe,’ Luke squinted upwards. ‘I don’t want either of you falling.’

‘While your natural male superiority is going to see that you don’t?’ Tilly teased. ‘Get over yourself, mate. Let’s go.’

The view from the top proved to be worth the effort. The back of the cliff rolled downwards studded with snappy gum, boulders and spinifex, for all the world like a huge mound that had been sliced in half. The path they found was relatively easy; the exposed rock lay in broken sheets that made for steep but safe climbing.

‘Like a neverending staircase for giants,’ Jane panted, as they neared the top. She wiped sweat from her flushed face and paused to snap a quick photo. ‘Whose mad idea was this?’

‘Well, not mine,’ Luke said. His breath, Tilly noted, was annoyingly under control. ‘You okay, love? You want to stop?’ He took Jane’s arm to help her on.

‘Course not!’ She flashed him a grin. ‘We’re almost there.’

A cool blast of wind hit them as they made their last steps, and Luke whistled as they all stared about at the distant range and the pewtery gleam of the river glinting far over like a fugitive thread between the trees. Below, the ground debouched into a valley carpeted with red gravel from which the sunlight glinted.

‘They look man-made.’ Jane pointed down at shrunken, straight-edged sections of ground, their edges marked by lines of yellowed feed.

‘Mining tracks,’ Luke said.

Tilly shot a covert glance south-east but the pinnacles of the Lost City were little more than a smudge on the horizon. ‘They’re everywhere. They go to the old camps and, I suppose, prospecting sites.’

‘Sometimes you see overgrown pits beside them,’ Luke added. ‘Dunno why – too big for rubbish pits – so maybe they were testing the ground, or digging up specimens.’

Making the whole network a boon for poachers, Tilly thought, wondering who had first seen the possibilities it presented. Was it Matt? He had been here three or four years, Sophie had said. But if he’d worked long in the north, he could well have known about the roads and applied for his job because of them. She must mention the idea to Connor when next they spoke.

Luke was getting restless; he was always conscientious about time. ‘Seen enough?’ he asked. ‘Let’s go down.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We might have lunch, then head on for a quick look at the caves before we start work.’

Tilly groaned. ‘I think he likes pulling down fences,’ she confided to Jane. ‘Are there any more after this one?’