The property was vast but barren, a bald patch in the otherwise lush farmland of Taree, near the Queensland border. A few years of camp fires just off the back porch, cattle wandering here and there across the dirt, and the regular crisscross of trucks and cars had deadened anything green that might have braved the immediate surrounds of the small house. Where there might have been flowers in ancient wood-lined beds along the side of the building, there were discarded beer bottles, an old tire, a milk crate full of rusting engine parts. I glanced over at the phone on the passenger seat of my car, checked the address I had been given was exactly right, before creeping steadily to a halt beside a corrugated iron carport.

The morning sun was making the iron tick. I got out, and immediately a cloud of wriggling, writhing chocolate-colored bodies swirled around my legs. Border collies, six of them, barking, snuffling my shoes. He’d been expecting me, had calmed the dogs as my car breached the distant front fence. Had held them back only long enough for me to get out, at which point the dogs came rushing, sniffing, barking. He was standing at the edge of the porch wearing flip-flops, black and white. His toes were dry and cracking, his face broad beneath a faded cap.

“Ted, eh?” He jutted his chin at me as he came down the steps. I smiled, offered my hand, braced for recognition of my face. There was none.

“That’s me,” I said. “Thanks for seeing me, Al.”

“No problem, mate.” He scratched his chest. He was ruddy faced and sunburned, what looked like a homemade haircut hidden beneath the cap. “Bit of a weird story, I gotta tell ya. I half decided you were havin’ me on.”

“Nope,” I said. “God’s honest truth.”

“Right.” Al slapped away the nose of a border collie who was snuffling at his crotch. “Well, she’s round ’ere, mate. Wouldn’t expect her to greet you at the car, that’s for sure. She’s a lazy bitch, I’ll give her that.”

He led, and I followed, up onto the porch, where the shade was a relief. There was a small plastic child-safety gate to keep the border collies off the stairs. A coffee table made from old pallets sat before mismatched cane lounges sunken with the shape of bodies now gone. At the very end of the porch, lying on its side on a hair-covered blanket, was a pure white dog.

She lifted her head, got to her feet as we approached. She was fat. Sadly fat, the sagging belly and thick neck of an unhappy creature who gorges on whatever passes beneath her nose. The dog had a cheerful face, though. Pointed at the nose, broad at the forehead, a mingling of perhaps dozens of breeds. I smiled at the triangular ears pricked, sharp, like two cupped hands.