‘Yeah, it’s about time for that. I must ring him,’ said Pearly. Richie and Natalie welcomed them anytime, but Pearly wondered if things might be different when Matt returned from Aussie to run the place. Pearly no longer had any formal claim on the farm, but continued to feel entitlement. He was tied to it by childhood memory, which is the most tenacious and sharply etched of all.

His father had a double-barrelled 12-gauge shotgun, a .303 rifle and a single-shot .22 with a bottle-top set into the stock. The ex-war rifle was never used, and there was no ammunition for it. They employed the shotgun on the dam in the hunting season, with No.5 cartridges, but the mallards weren’t plentiful in that dry country. The .22 was the weapon that got the use because there were always rabbits on the farm. His father taught him to shoot when he turned twelve and did the same for Richie. They would walk up to the clay bank behind the sheds and shoot at tin cans because the sound of a hit was unmistakable. Take your time and stop breathing before you pull the trigger, he used to tell them. And never shoot at something you can’t see clearly. Their father was a good shot but happy to leave it to Pearly and Richie once they were old enough. Rabbits competed with the stock for grass, so the fewer the better, but they were good eating and that was important too. It was pale, flavoursome meat that made tasty stew. His father didn’t mind how many they shot, but he expected a rabbit for every round fired. As teenagers Pearly and Richie would go into the hills together and take turns to shoot. Richie became better than Pearly in the end: one of the few skills in which Pearly had to admit his younger brother’s superiority. ‘Tinbum,’ Pearly used to say, but he didn’t like being shaded in anything by Richie. Didn’t like being shaded by anyone. After Pearly left home, Richie joined a gun club and for some years showed his skill as a clay-bird marksman, but when he took over the farm he thought the time and the money better employed in other ways.

Pearly didn’t go shooting any more. He hadn’t eaten rabbit for years. They were controlled by introduced disease now, and that put people off eating them. Pearly and his brother used to take the dead rabbits to the chopping block, strip the pelts off, disembowel and decapitate the bodies, chop the legs off and hang the corpses in the wooden safe with its sides of fine netting. Richie had become better at all that too. Game needed to be hung before being eaten Pearly’s father said, but that convention was long gone.