On an early-autumn day in 1912, Clementina arrived from the top of the world. She and Stivvy had twins now, a girl and a boy. She struggled down the gangplank at Fremantle with a toddler’s hand in each of hers, none free to swat the flies beading her sticky face. And so my abiding memory is of her squinting and scowling at Fremantle, her lips furiously puffing air.

Stivvy, in front, pushed and jostled to clear a way for his family through the crowd. He nearly stumbled, nearly fell, so eager he was to leap free of the gangplank and onto the earth of his home-to-be. Imagine that—and Stivvy a man of the sea! Magnus Tulloch and I called to them through the wire fence but they could not hear us. We watched the Immigration officers herding them into the big tin shed where they would be questioned and stamped as the latest in a trail of immigrants to this small, struggling foothold of the Northern Hemisphere in the south.

It would be hours before they were cleared to go, but I told Magnus Tulloch that I had been waiting a long time to see Mrs Clementina Ratter and I would put up with the dust and sand to wait a while more. And besides, it was Sunday, and a mild autumn sun was warming my skin, sparkling the ocean harbour and burnishing the sky blue and gold and silver. Wherever else would anyone want to be?

Finally they were through, the four of them with blinking eyes and a cluster of bags—their kists would follow later. Stivvy heard rather than saw us first, and then he ran, and he and Magnus clutched each other like men drowning. Clementina stood back for a moment to roll her eyes at their hand pumping and shoulder slapping, and then she thrust the wee ones forward and clasped us all to her in a lopsided huddle. I was weeping shamelessly in a mixture of great happiness to see her again and a breath-punching sadness that was something to do with all we had been through together.

Hush, quinie, she whispered, releasing us, ye’ll be scaring the bairns, ye great daftie lassie. Just the same, she ran a sleeve across her eyes and cheeks and either side of her neck, and I did not think it was just to mop the sweat or send the flies on their way.