Gwyneth Davies was twenty and feeling stifled by her parents’ ever-pressing desire to see her married off to a man they thought could elevate their position in Brisbane society. Her resolve was beginning to weaken when she literally bumped into Rhys Morgan on the boardwalk outside the drapers’ shop. In the time it had taken to gather up her packages and accept his offer of a cup of tea in a nearby cafe, Gwyneth had fallen in love.

Despite her genteel upbringing, Gwyneth was of tough Welsh stock, and not easily daunted by the prospect of living out her life in the back of beyond and, with this exciting, driven man at her side, she knew she was in for an adventure.

Yet she was a woman of strong opinions, and when she caught her first glimpse of the brushwood and tin hovel her new husband expected her to live in, she’d made it very clear that she had no intentions of doing so. Rhys, rather awestruck by this forceful young woman he’d married, quickly realised that if he was to keep her, he must build her a proper home. Gwyneth had overseen the work with a judicious eye to detail, and when she was satisfied that it suited her she’d moved in the furniture she’d brought with her, rolled up her sleeves and got on with her new and challenging life.

Over the decades that followed, Gwyneth worked at Rhys’s side, tending the sick and comforting the dying. She endured the flies and the dust in this most primitive of surroundings, and learned to survive fire, flood, heat and drought as she raised her six children and bullied the School Board into sending a teacher to the small school she’d had built in the centre of town.

Rhys had become close to three of his grandchildren, Millicent, Rebecca and Terence, and had lived long enough to meet his great-grandson, Danny. He’d reached the grand age of ninety when in the spring of 1939 he finally succumbed to the harsh environment and the pressures of his far-flung practice. Gwyneth had lost not only a husband, but her dearest, closest friend, and she mourned him still. Yet she gave thanks that he’d gone in peace, safe in the knowledge that his eldest son, Hugh, would carry on his lifetime’s work, and that Hugh’s wife, Jane, and daughter, Rebecca, would be at his side.