He was northwest of Limberlost, floating through a patch of sea that lay off a coastline busy with cliffs, coves and dry forests. With him were Jackbird and some other friends from the valley, including a young woman who’d lately been distracting Ned at all hours of the day, even when he wasn’t near her. They had driven to where the road ended, before walking across the cliffs, through thick stands of she-oaks and scratching bracken, until the track fell down a slope and ran to a narrow inlet. This hidden cove was bordered by steep walls of craggy dolerite. Beyond it, the ocean gathered in a vast, shining plain.

Ned was snorkelling over a reef, looking for abalone. Blacklips were abundant here—their swirling, rust-patterned shells disguised among the weed and rock, but eventually discernible if you stared hard enough. Fish flicked across the reef, mostly grey-yellow wrasse, but also toadfish, orange gurnard, banded morwong. Every now and then Ned spotted the shifting pattern of a cuttlefish, tickling through the weed. Where the rocks gave way to pale seafloor there were schools of cocky salmon, flitting just below the surface. Beneath them, huge black discs glided across the sand: hunting skates, their barbs trailing on long tails behind them.

Down to this reef Ned dived. His eyes moved fast, skittering across the weeds, the textures, the splashes of colour that crusted the rocks. Soon his lungs began to tighten, and he was forced to resurface. The Letteremairrener women who lived on this coast would dive for long stretches of time, filling woven bags they carried around their necks with as many abalone as they could find. He’d heard the old people of the valley talk about them, the ones who remembered such things. Ned could only stay underwater for a single minute. When he felt the urgent burn for air he thought of those native women, smeared warm by seal fat, prising shell after shell free with clever wooden chisels. He could barely capture one at a time, and used a rusty flathead screwdriver to do it. A hollowness echoed through him when he made these comparisons; he became aware of his lack of skill, his dearth of lessons, of old knowledge. He felt the looseness of his connection to the place. How tenuous his grip on the world was.