Stivvy’s cousin is nominatin’ them, I said, an’ even puttin’ up a loan to get them goin’. Ye canna begrudge them for havin’ a better start than ours.

No, never, of course not. That’s not what I mean … But Meggie, ye know where they’ll be going? Ta the wheat. What do Stivvy Ratter know about farming wheat?

Not a thing, but then what do any of them goin’ to the east know about farmin’ wheat on land like that?

Well, that just made everything sound bleaker. But it was true. Most of those who’d gone out to the just-opened Wheatbelt at least had some farming experience from the old country, and still they were struggling to make a go of it. Stivvy was a fisherman—what chance did he stand? But I wanted to believe it would be all right, and Magnus wanted the same. Of course we would write and bid them welcome, but we decided on a few words of what we’d heard, too: barren land, lack of rain. The bitterness towards the people trumpeting this new scheme.

Neither of us remarked to the other that if anyone—anyone—had tried to talk us out of emigrating, no matter what tales of warning they told, we would have thanked them truly but scoffed to ourselves, certain our excitement for a new beginning would see us through anything.

~

Clementina, Stivvy and the children came home with us to stay until Stivvy’s cousin Matty wrote from Merredin. Mrs Laskon grumbled about extra lodgers, but it was all show, I knew, nothing more. Another shilling a week we’d agreed to give her, and nothing she needed to do for it, no. And Clementina would keep the children quiet and out of the way. Good little things, they seemed to be, Haldane and Jessie. We didn’t have a lot of space, but we managed, aye. Sugar bags and blankets folded up for mattresses, old ganseys for pillows.

On that first night, I thought we would never sleep, would still be talking at breakfast. Stivvy’s pitiful accounts of the food on board ship—dreich an’ dismal—gave way to the plans ahead. He bubbled away, boiling over with new words: wheat strains and per acre, ringbarking, superphosphate. He was keen to hear about the Castlemaine Brewery, but Magnus always managed to steer things back to Stivvy. Nothing ta tell, I heard him say. Kegs for beer instead of barrels for herring.

Clementina needed no questions from me to get her started. The news of every gutting girl and cooper we knew came rolling out, and it gave me a pang of the heart to picture them. Catches of herring still were high, seasons still strong. A thought strayed into my mind that Da would be getting on in years now—would he still be on the drifters with the boys? But I tossed my head like Kitta used to do, shaking Roanhaven thoughts away.