Dividing things up seemed to be working, so I split the ‘Australia’ folder into two: one called ‘White story’ and one called ‘Aboriginal story’.

With the meetings with Aboriginal people removed, ‘White story’ flowed much more smoothly.

‘Aboriginal story’ was more difficult. I found the same problem that Sturt did with those different tribes on the Murray. Sometimes the Aboriginal people were friendly to the Wisemans and sometimes they weren’t, and I didn’t understand why.

Still, I tried to make some kind of sequence. The scene based on that event with Governor Phillip, where an old man shows Wiseman a nice cosy cave to stay out of the rain: that went at the beginning, when things were friendly. The scene where the Aboriginal people burn an area of ground near the Wisemans’ hut: it felt like a threat, so it went in the middle when things were becoming tense. The scene where a settler gets a spear through the stomach: that went at the end.

The two stories could be made to go smoothly on their own, but I couldn’t find a way to knit them together. They bucked against each other like some clever bit of postmodernism.

It seemed to be a question of sequence. Should Wiseman discover that William Warner dobbed him in before or after he settles on the Hawkesbury? Should Jane die, and Wiseman marry Sophia Warner, before or after the Darug start the fire?

I made lists, I made lists in columns, I made summaries of each scene and wrote them on sticky notes that I rearranged on the window above the desk. I tried cutting the book into chapters, and gave each chapter a title. In desperation I got out my big scissors and cut the printout into sections. I was hoping that physically moving it might give me a new point of view. Then I stickytaped the bits together in a different order, with handwritten sections in between. This produced a weird-looking thing, bristling with frills and fringes.

I was panicking. I was working on the book at night now, and getting up at dawn at the weekends to rearrange things one more time. I even dreamt about it: myself on a launch on the Hawkesbury River, the water black, someone beside me not listening as I tried to explain that we have to go back, we have to go back. I woke up panting. Go back, where?