‘How?’ Before Joe could answer, Matt barrelled on. ‘I always lose it. When people go for me, I’m like—boom!’ He punched the air. ‘This guy at school took my bag once and tried to run away with it and I just went off. I didn’t even think about the teachers or nothing. I crash-tackled him right into a rubbish bin and then I picked up my bag and started thumping him in the head…’

At this point I wandered away. The boys were spilling their guts to the veterans, not to me. Matt Spiteri hadn’t signed up to have his personal problems exposed to some middle-aged stickybeak who just happened to be walking by. This camp was all about male bonding.

I went back home, opened a bottle of beer and sat out on the front veranda with my feet up on the railing. From there I could see down the road to the jetty, where a single light burned. There were lights beyond that, too—distant lights on the water. Oddly enough, because of those lights, I felt less isolated at night than I did during the day.

Not that I was really isolated. Hemmed in, perhaps; the complex was surrounded by thick bush and mangroves, not to mention Moreton Bay itself. But I was only half an hour from Cleveland. I didn’t have to deal with generators or shortwave radios; we’d had power on the island since 1954 and a submarine phone cable since 1930. And though I still had to cope with ADSL and copper lines, at least I had the internet. However slow it was, it kept me connected.

‘Hey!’ I’d spotted a scuttling shadow near the old matron’s quarters. ‘Who’s that?’

The shadow froze.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Hearing a muffled giggle, I said, ‘Is that you, Nathan?’

He sidled into a pool of light near my front steps. ‘I was just going to the toilet.’

Oh, no you weren’t. ‘The toilets are back that way.’ I pointed. ‘As you know.’

He giggled again before heading off. I watched him until he disappeared into the men’s bathroom. Christ, he was a creepy kid. All the same, I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for anyone who ended up on Finch Island. Not the Quandamooka people—they belonged here—but the exiles. The outcasts. The rejects who were shipped over and dumped.

I thought about the lepers. They hadn’t arrived by ferry; they were towed on dinghies behind the government launch. If travelling any distance by rail or sea, they were nailed into boxes. And then, at the end of their journey, they were stuck behind two-metre fences, with visitors just once every six months. No visits from children. No private bathroom. A hill to climb and fish to catch—that was all they had, in the early days.