I kept out of the emotionalism of this brief reunion, building up my strength with tea and biscuits, and trying not to look too startled by the arrival of Lurline, the daughter of the house, and her husband Dewey. Lurline had a red face and wore a peaked cap with bird badges on it. It was clear at once that Lurline didn’t only love birds but actually wished she’d been one. In the same way, Dewey clearly hankered after marsupiality. He laughed unexpectedly and patted his stomach at regular intervals. A few months later the world would rejoice over photographs of the Pope in Melbourne, holding a creature just like Dewey. He was balding but he swept the sides of his hair up into a sort of crest, so that he looked permanently startled. According to Lurline, Dewey was a real bushman, the last of his kind. ‘Dewey could tell you a few stories,’ she told me. ‘Dewey can follow the track of any bird or animal. He can deal with anything in the bush. We call him our own bushie.’

Dewey laughed at this, patted his stomach, and lowered his crest.

I’d noticed that, when she wasn’t talking to me or leafing through an illustrated bird book, Lurline watched Ros intently from underneath her cap, her head cocked to one side as if listening for danger. When Ros reminded her of how they used to play together as children out there in that very garden, how they used to climb trees and build hideaways, Lurline closed her eyes. ‘No,’ she said, as we rose to leave, ‘no, I’ve never seen you before.’

Dewey the tracker gave his wife a little confirmatory twitch of the nostrils. He too reckoned that Ros had left no abiding scent hereabouts.