Gathering up her dark hair into a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes, Tilly tidied the bathroom and then went through to the kitchen to start the day. It was a large room, bearing the old-fashioned stamp of its 1960s origin in its furnishings; Binboona’s available funds were spent on the land and the fauna they protected, not the lifestyles of those doing the protecting. Thirty years on from its inception, the large double-ovened wood-burning range still dominated one end of the room, while the original kitchen cabinets and the long pine table, whitened from years of elbow grease and sandsoap, served the rangers as it had the stockmen of earlier years.

Some things had changed, of course. The kerosene fridge had been replaced by a coldroom and freezer, and Tilly cooked with gas. These days the old stove served as a planter stand and a place to stack the nature magazines Luke was addicted to. The homestead held five bedrooms and quite a comfortable living room where the television lived, but, especially in the cooler months from now, May, through to September, everybody tended to spend their free time in the kitchen.

At first she had wondered if Sophie was behind this, an organised effort to keep her from brooding on her loss, but she had come to see that the banks of louvred windows above the sink and either side of the door provided a good view of both the Nutt River fronting the homestead and the bird basin that Luke had erected near the old gate posts. A pair of binoculars rested permanently on the rickety cane table next to its matching chair, and her own idle moments were frequently passed there absorbed in the avian life of the area.

Placing the kettle over the gas ring, Tilly peered through the window at a cluster of tiny finches flitting about the basin’s rim. They took off as the screen door slammed behind Sophie.

‘Morning, Till. I was up early, thought I’d do the joeys for you.’ She set the empty feeder bottles on the sink, then removed the long thin teats to rinse them under the tap. A quick sideways glance and she frowned. ‘You look a bit peaky. Bad night?’

Tilly’s hands stilled on the bacon packet. ‘Not really. I had the dream again, that’s all.’ It embarrassed her to admit it; she wasn’t to wallow, Sophie had said, but who could help their dreams? ‘But listen, I just now saw a Gouldian finch on the basin! It was only there for a second or two among the others, then your coming scared them off.’

‘Are you sure?’ Sophie peered in turn. ‘You couldn’t have been mistaken?’

‘Not unless there’s a thumb-sized parrot out there. What else is that colour and size?’

‘We’ll count it as a sighting then. Mind if I borrow your kettle to scald these bottles?’