It hadn’t always been so, as an ambitious young man he’d carefully considered the career options open to someone who’d been born and raised in the Sydney slums and who had little education. He’d been drawn to the Church for the theatrical ritual of the services, the rich vestments of the bishops and the way a clever orator could hold an audience enthralled as he stood in the high pulpit like a biblical prophet. For a man who’d held secret yearnings to go on the stage, it seemed the perfect solution.

Religion had never really come into it, but it was a means to an end, and once he’d taken Holy Orders he actually began believing in the message he preached, but that hadn’t stopped him from meticulously planning how to forward his career. He’d thought that by marrying a bishop’s daughter he would quickly be promoted to richer, more important parishes, where he would be noticed by those who mattered in the church hierarchy.

And for a time it had been so. But his ambitions had been thwarted by those who hadn’t approved of his eloquent, dramatic sermons, and by his father-in-law, who made it clear he despised the way he ran his household. After a particular incident which resulted in Frances sustaining a black eye, he’d been banished from his well-to-do Sydney parish to this hole in the ground called Morgan’s Reach.

After eight years the humiliation still rankled, but today his rage was focused on his sons, on his witless, whining wife, and on Gwyneth Morgan – who’d had the temerity to stand up to him with her aggressive accusations. The weather wasn’t helping his mood either and, as the wipers ineffectually smeared the dust over the windscreen, making it almost impossible to see further than the car bonnet, he cursed this isolated godforsaken place and the people who lived here.

In his opinion, the blacks were little more than savages, the rough men who worked the stations weren’t much better and the townspeople of Morgan’s Reach were an ignorant bunch of country bumpkins who sang out of key on Sundays and only came to his services because it was an opportunity to exchange the latest gossip.

He gripped the steering wheel and peered through the murky windscreen. It was unbearably hot, and he didn’t like the look of those dark clouds which were gathering overhead. Another storm was brewing, and the last place he wanted to be was out here, but he had no choice. He had to find those boys and get them home before they brought any more disgrace to the family – and when he did, he vowed silently, he would beat the sin out of them and lock them in the storage cellar beneath the house until they were suitably repentant.