The bush hospital that Rhys had so proudly expounded upon turned out to be a one-roomed wooden shack on stilts with a veranda and a sagging roof – and their proposed home wasn’t much better. There was no door or window, the floor was compacted earth and she’d been expected to cook on a camp oven which had been set outside next to a washtub and mangle. It was a far cry from the comfortable home she’d had in Brisbane, and she’d told him in no uncertain terms that she wouldn’t live there.

Gwyneth chuckled. Poor Rhys. He hadn’t quite realised then how strong-willed she was, but over the years he’d come to admire her spirit, and she could look back on a long and happy marriage.

Morgan’s Reach in those days had a tiny church, a pub and a general store which stood beside the single dirt track that had been widened to accommodate the mobs of cattle and sheep the drovers brought through to water at the spring on their way to market and the bullock teams that passed through laden with bales of wool and supplies.

It had been a rough sort of place, especially for the few women settlers, for the itinerant shearers, ringers, bullockies and drovers would come in to drink their wages and fight among themselves before they moved on. The small local tribe of Aborigines had been suspicious of everyone, and very few ventured into town, preferring to keep to the old ways by living in their traditional camp in the bush and often disappearing for months on walkabout.

Gwyneth’s expression was wry as she thought about the changes that had been slowly wrought over the last fifty years. The drovers and shearers still came into town to drink and fight, but it had become quite respectable now, for there were more women, and the sturdier houses that lined the main thoroughfare had picket fences and painted fly-screens.

The simple one-roomed church that stood at the northern end of the street was the same, with a few battered pews and an old kitchen table for an altar. But the vicar no longer had to live in a tent, for a fine house had been built by his parishioners just next door to the cemetery. It was just a shame that the Reverend Algernon Baker, the latest incumbent, was a dour, unsociable man whom no one liked, despite the best efforts of his timid little wife, Frances, and the impish charm of their twin boys. But then that charm often led to trouble, and the boys were fast earning a reputation for mischief.

Gwyneth turned her thoughts to the schoolhouse which sat in the next large plot, and was ably run by young Emily Harris, who lived in the small cottage behind it. The old church hall had long burned down, so the school doubled as a dance hall and meeting place at the weekends.