‘Okay.’ Tilly piled cup and plate together and carried them to the sink. ‘Your lunches will be ready in ten, boys. Luke, you didn’t bring your thermos back.’

‘Sorry. I’ll get it. It’ll be in the vehicle.’ He folded his last slice of toast about the rest of the bacon and took a large bite as he left the room, calling, ‘Back in a tick, oh slave driver.’

When they had all dispersed, the men to the vehicle shed and Sophie to the office, Tilly cleared away and washed up, then moved on to the morning’s tasks, the first of which was feeding the injured animals. Mickey’s mince had thawed by then. She had a margarine container of diced carrot and apple for the possum, and another of cubed meat for Harry the brolga, whose injury was permanent in that he had somehow managed to snap off the front half off his top beak.

‘Like he’d stuck it in a dog trap,’ Luke had said angrily when he’d brought the young, malnourished bird back to the homestead soon after Tilly’s arrival. ‘I can’t see how else it could’ve happened.’

Traps were illegal within Binboona’s boundaries, of course, but there was little the rangers could do about enforcing the rule. They would have needed to find proof first, and then the culprit – something they all knew to be impossible. Lacking the ability to dig or even to drink properly, Harry would certainly have starved if it hadn’t been for the ranger’s intervention. He’d be a permanent guest, Tilly mused, tossing him his breakfast, one piece at a time. She’d tried letting him take it from her hand, but his enthusiastic lunges hit her fingers as often as they did the target, as if the damage done to him had also addled his judgement. The possum, being nocturnal, required no effort beyond removing last night’s empty container from the cage and replacing it with the full one. It was almost ready for release, the injury to its front paw having healed and the fur almost grown back.

The garden was her next chore. Wearing a wide straw hat and gardening gloves, Tilly entered the netted enclosure, methodically watering her way along the rows, picking a lettuce for lunch and, when the hose had been coiled out of the way again, filling the crown of her hat with beans. It was a productive piece of ground and she enjoyed the work. In Cairns she had grown tropical shrubs and African violets, but since taking over the plot from the men’s hit-and-miss efforts, the vegetable garden had prospered.

‘You’ve got a natural green thumb, Till,’ Sophie had said admiringly.