He stepped into the meagre shade of an isolated stand of eucalyptus, dropped his kitbag, drank some of the water from his leather pouch and looked along the two iron rails. Some might call this a lonely place, for the nearest settlement was many miles away. But these rails were the link between the wide open spaces of the Outback and the rest of Australia.

He tipped the slouch hat brim over his eyes as he sat on the kitbag and chewed on some of the dried beef jerky he kept in his shirt pocket. These rails had taken him to boarding school in the city when he’d just turned ten, and had brought him back briefly as a young man. And then the war had come and another train had carried him far from home and everything he knew to the military barracks where he’d had to forget all he’d ever stood by and learn to kill.

He tugged at his hat brim and absent-mindedly waved the annoying flies away from his face as he continued to gaze out at the expanse of red earth and bleached grass. The ache for all that he’d lost was still there, buried deeply until moments like this, and it took him a while to regain his composure.

Once he felt ready to move on he reached for his kitbag and began to follow the railway lines northward, his boots now crunching on the red gravel that lay strewn across the parched earth. He needed to find some decent shade so he could rest during the worst of the day’s heat, or he’d be fit for nothing tonight. And if he remembered rightly, there was a shepherd’s hut a few miles from here, where, as it wasn’t lambing season, there would be no one from Wilga Station to stop him bedding down until sunset.

And then he smelled something that made his heart skip a beat and his skin crawl with fear.

He stood very still and keenly surveyed the area, his senses alert as he sniffed the air and listened. His sharp eyes trawled over the rusting windmill that was screeching as it turned in the warm wind, and caught the wisps of smoke curling up from a clump of spinifex that grew close to a barbed-wire fence. There was the flicker of flames licking at the fence-post and more racing through the grass, spreading to other clumps.

He began to run, the kitbag bouncing against his back, his boots thudding across the hard ground. Yanking the bag open, he tipped everything out and unrolled the greatcoat. The flames were catching a tighter hold on the post and the nearby grass, their tentacles reaching out greedily for more fuel. But the fire must have just started. It was still manageable – but only if he was quick.