I tell her everything. And my super-mouthy cousin says not one word in response. Guilt for how I spoke to her tries to fill the quiet, but I won’t let it. My reasons are important. We drive that way for a good bit until I realise a fatal flaw in my plan – I have no idea where the Potters’ place is other than a general sort of direction. I feel like a total idiot asking but there’s nothing else to be done.

‘Umm, Sam? Do you know where we’re goin?’

Rhi’s snort of disgust gets ignored. Sam flicks a glance at me and there might’ve been a slight lip twitch.

‘Dad goes out tordonin near there sometimes, but Mum won’t let me. Says she doesn’t want me out there at night. But we’ve been out to drop stuff off and that for im so I know the way. But are you sure …’

I know what he’s asking. If we really want to go not just to Potters’ but out to the worst part of it. I nod and turn to stare out the window again. Silence descends again as we turn off the paved road and onto dirt.

The land is like most others around here – calf-high grass that’s so brown it probably will poke through all your clothes and scratch you ten ways to Sunday. The cleared paddocks are mostly empty, just a few groups of cattle here and there, not looking that healthy. Whatever trees there are stand silent and alone, tiny remnants of what once would’ve been pure bush. It didn’t used to be this bare. They cleared it for the cattle, sure, but not like this. Ever since the government said property owners had to stop chopping down trees, then gave them a few years to get used to the idea, the property owners have been going insane. Poisoning whole areas for no other reason than they could before that new law came in. You could drive anywhere around here and see the mass graves of gums and ironbarks, their bodies stretched out into neat piles to be torched later.

Something inside me hurts every time I see those plumes of smoke rise above the town or drive through a haze on the road. Mum and Dad grew up on separate stations around here and they both talked about the magic of the scrub. The food, the creatures, the hunting. I can picture the little animals that call the scrub home, their bodies lying unmourned and forgotten among all that flame and inside I cry. For them and what we are losing. Every time.

It makes no sense, this mass slaughter. The scientist in me is equally appalled. I’m only sixteen and I know about soil erosion and habitat loss. White people are supposed to be better educated. So why do they keep doing this?