There were the stairs. They must be the ones down which Jane Wiseman had fallen. Mum pointed and marvelled, and I peered. To my short-sighted eyes the flight of steep and narrow steps seemed to stretch up forever into darkness. It was easy to imagine the argument, the angry shove, and the woman tumbling down step after step, head over heels, skirts tangling.

Mum made a tsk tsk noise and shook her head, the way she did when she disapproved. ‘You can see how it happened, can’t you,’ she whispered. ‘Poor thing wouldn’t have had a chance.’

I’d never been clear whether the story implied that Wiseman killed her accidentally or on purpose. Mum’s tsk tsk could have meant either. I remember squinting up at the stairs and choosing not to ask.

I didn’t ask, partly because I’d heard the story so often that I should have known. If I asked now, it would be obvious that I hadn’t ever been paying attention. And partly I didn’t want to know. The idea of a dramatic death in the family was all right, the idea of a ghost even better. But I wasn’t sure I wanted a murderer for a great-great-great grandfather.

Plus I wanted to get outside. The bar was right beside us. Any moment the publican would come out and there’d be a scene. He’d go, ‘Now what do you think you’re doing,’ and Mum would say, ‘Look we’re not doing any harm,’ and I’d stand there trying to be invisible.

Outside, Mum showed me the stone lions on the tall gateposts. ‘He brought them specially from England, they cost him a hundred guineas.’

The lions were invisible to me, but I nodded. I may not have been able to make the lions out, but I was close enough to the stone gateposts to see the way each block was pecked and pocked with grooves.

‘That’s where they worked it with the picks,’ Mum said. ‘The convicts he had, assigned servants.’

That was real to me: that close-up detail. Each block of stone had a hundred pick-marks, two hundred, five hundred. I could picture it: a man standing in the steamy sun, swinging the pick again and again to square off the lump of sandstone. And, when he’d got it right, he’d have to start straight away on the next one.

I remember running my fingers into the grooves, wondering how anyone could have put up with it.

Later we went off in search of the graveyard. The story included something about Wiseman having been buried with a box of sovereigns at his feet. That sounded interesting, but finding the graveyard was a matter of driving along dusty yellow roads through dusty grey bush. Every time Mum saw a person, she’d pull over. ‘We’re looking for Solomon Wiseman’s grave,’ she’d say. ‘He was my great-great grandfather.’

I’d see their faces open out in surprise, they’d stare extra hard at her, they’d peer into the car to have a look at me, and point away up another road.