‘Yeah, but then I remembered he’s gone away on holidays. To Canada.’

‘He’s been around?’ Zara looked towards the west, where the deep blue was beginning to sink into the last of the sunset.

The dust and wind, which had raged so severely earlier in the day, had now settled. The gum tree leaves hung heavily towards the ground, as if the dust weighed them down. The sheep were beginning to come out from under the trees and bushes and slowly walk towards the trough, one after the other.

‘Yeah, he helps if I ask. I try not to ring too often, though. I’m going to get to the point where I have to do it by myself, aren’t I? The footy club boys have been fantastic—Karl, in particular, comes out and checks on us. Takes Will for a drive now and then. But I can’t rely on people’s good will and charity forever.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you can,’ Zara agreed, feeling a slight twinge of guilt seep through her. Maybe she should think about staying to help out. It really was a big job for her mum, who was going to be turning fifty-six this year. She changed the subject. ‘I wrote a story about drones today. Have you seen or heard of any around?’

‘Drones? No!’ her mum’s head swivelled around sharply to look at her. ‘Doing what?’

‘Flying over farms. I wondered if you’d seen it happen.’

Lynda gave a little laugh. ‘Darling, I’d be lucky to recognise a drone.’

‘An oversized mozzie, according to one of the blokes I talked to.’ Zara smiled as she said it. The thought of a mozzie on steroids made her want to laugh uncontrollably. It really wasn’t that funny. Must be all the emotions running around inside of her.

‘Hmm, I worry about the future of farming. What some people don’t understand is that without us there isn’t any food, whether you eat meat or just salad and veggies! Both lots come from farms.’

‘Yep, no arguments with any of that from me,’ Zara said as the dam came into view. ‘So, three bogged?’

‘Yeah. If you can slip out on the sheet of tin that I’ve laid across the mud, you can attach the rope and I’ll pull them out.’

‘Should’ve brought my rubber boots.’

‘Huh,’ Lynda hurrumphed. ‘I wish it wasn’t just the slop in the bottom of the dam, rather than inches of rain.’ She reversed the ute onto the edge of the dam and then got out, passing Zara a rope.

Zara took off her boots and rolled up her jeans, before testing the tin to see how stable it was and crawling out to the first ewe, who was only stuck to the knees.

‘I reckon you could have got yourself out of here, if you’d tried a little harder,’ Zara said as she fastened the rope to the ewe, who threw her head back and tried to jump through the mud. ‘Stop it! You’ll just make yourself sink in further.’ Zara crawled back across the wobbly tin and onto solid ground, before shifting the tin and giving Lynda the thumbs-up so she could hook her end of the rope onto the ute and pull the sheep out. When she was on dry ground, Zara went in and took the rope off.