Jamming the lid on the paint tin, Tilly stalked from the shed, forgetting the brush in her hand, and was brought up short by the sight of a totally different four-wheel drive parked near the house. The driver was standing with his back to her at the foot of the verandah steps gazing upwards. ‘Hello, the house,’ he called. He was tall and lanky, clad in the sort of multi-pocketed khaki that Luke wore, with a felt hat topping blond hair that curled over his shirt collar. He wore flat-heeled boots of the type that Bruce Hansen, manager of Spadgers Creek Station, used for driving, and one of his tanned forearms sported a bandage.

‘Were you looking for me?’ Tilly asked.

He wheeled about in surprise and she made a small grimace. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. Are you him – the botanist who rang? Sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I didn’t get your name.’

‘Oh, it’s Connor. Connor Doyle, and you must be Ms Barker?’ He looked momentarily confused, apologising in turn. ‘You don’t – I mean, I was expecting someone older.’

‘She is. Older. I’m Tilly, not Sophie. I’m the cook housekeeper for the ranger station. We didn’t know what day you were coming, but I made up your room in case – there is just you, I take it?’

‘Just me,’ he agreed. He had a pleasant-enough face, somewhat long-nosed, she thought and his brown eyes seemed incongruous with his light hair. He was very tall – what her mother would have described as ‘six foot up’. ‘What were you painting?’ he asked and Tilly glanced down in surprise at the brush she held.

‘Oh, just some old tyres for the airstrip, but I’ve finished. Come in and I’ll make you a cuppa. There’s nobody else home, I’m afraid. They’re all out at the camp, setting things up for the early tourists, you know.’ She gestured towards the house and he followed her up the steps. ‘Here we are. Make yourself at home, Connor, I’ll be back in a tick.’ She went out to the laundry to slosh water into an old feed tin and dump the brush. There was paint on her hands and her jeans; she scrubbed the former, decided there was nothing to be done about the latter, and feeling strangely shy, for it had been a while since she’d entertained visitors, returned to the kitchen.

Connor was standing at the window with the binoculars to his eyes. He turned as Tilly entered, saying, ‘Brilliant idea, the bird basin. The little ’uns’ll feel so much safer there than drinking from the river.’