Tilly had often visited the camp, which was fairly basic, although Sophie had spoken of plans to enlarge and upgrade it by providing cabins. As it was, it consisted of a large semi-cleared spot amid the scrub, dotted with camp sites. A road looped in a wide circle around them, and the ablution block stood in the centre of the space beside a wide shade roof over a concrete floor. There was a tank on a high stand, with a hot water donkey below it behind the shower rooms, next to a small heap of firewood. There were laundry tubs under an open-sided roof with a clothesline stretched beside it. Close to the gate next to another clearing was a weatherproof box where the visitors’ log was kept, along with the various leaflets about the camp listing the birdlife and flora and a warning that the nearby Nutt River was home to estuarine crocodiles. A pile of indestructible old railway sleepers had been converted into bench seats near the box and it was here that a series of slideshows were shown through the season to entertain and educate visitors while spreading the conservation message and the importance of the work done by the sanctuary rangers.

Tilly found the vehicles with the Binboona logo on their doors parked beside the ablution block, Matt’s already loaded high with a supply of wood for the water heater. It would be taken back to the homestead to be doled out daily to the camp, for as Sophie said, ‘You can’t get it through people’s heads that it doesn’t take a raging inferno to produce hot water.’

Looking around, she spotted Luke and her cousin, whipper-snippering in a cloud of grass stems and dust. They wore gloves and safety-glasses with bandanas covering their lower faces, and were working slowly outwards from the centre, the cut grass lying in patterns behind them. There was no sign of Matt. He was probably down at the river installing the pump: the laundry taps when she tried them were dry. Meanwhile, somebody had wrenched the signs from the ground and slung them in a heap under the laundry roof where she could work in the shade. The esky holding their lunches was also there, along with a plastic crate containing brushes, turps and paint tins.

Tilly found a rag to wet from the water container, scrubbed the dust off the top sign whose faint lettering read ‘To the river walk’ and, selecting her paint tin, settled to her task.