Bea’s uncle was coming back. We heard his tread on the verandah. Having come from around the side, he hadn’t seen Benny’s pool, but it wouldn’t take him long.

‘Come on,’ Bea said to me, ‘let’s go wait for your mum.’

Not hanging around to hear the ominous clanking of the pipes, which would be Mr Noffey attempting to wash his hands, we slipped outside to wait for my mother’s car. Mercifully, it was then that she arrived to pick me up, bumping over the cattle grate and looking relieved that she’d found the house. I was relieved as well. I was spared Mr Noffey’s wrath on this occasion, but even in the abstract the prospect was terrible.

To my mind, Mr Noffey was like the troll under the bridge in the fairytale. He was a foe, an opponent. He owned all the land, all the places I wanted so much to explore, and he didn’t want to let me pass. When he lost his temper it was like a roar from under the bridge: Who’s that walking on my bridge?

I wasn’t the only one to take a dark view of him. He was considered a bad farmer. He allowed footrot to persist in some of his stock when he should have put them in quarantine or slaughtered them straight off, and it was said he’d let it spread to a neighbour’s farm. In selling off some of his land, he’d divided up the parcels without a thought to the future owners, leaving sections stranded without proper rights of way. He didn’t go to Landcare meetings, didn’t nominate for the committee, as secretary or treasurer, and this was at a time when Landcare was the de facto support group for drought-stricken farmers. Much later I heard he knew the site of a mass grave where Aboriginal people had been killed by his forebears, but never reported it or had it investigated.

He was the eldest son of the eldest son. He hadn’t wanted – hadn’t asked for – any of it. The odd thing was that he had the talents farmers were meant to have. He was a crack shot, for example. At that time there was a lot of talk about gun accidents on farms, which was code for suicide. Mr Noffey was too good with guns for anyone to believe him capable of an accident, and maybe that was what saved him from giving it a go. But more likely he didn’t care what people thought and he kept going because he had to, because he had Benny.