Jock glanced at Zac. ‘Out the back. There’s no feed at all out there. Ava tell you?’

He nodded.

‘Good. I want to look at all the trap yards. I’ve been making them with a plan in mind for the future – the future when the cattle aren’t dying.’

Zac looked from one sibling to the other. ‘What’s a trap yard?’

‘A set of cattle yards in the bush with a one-way entry and a one-way exit for cattle,’ Ava answered. ‘You can put the yards around a water source and they come in, drink and leave again. But if you want to catch or work with particular cattle, you lock the exit and they come in for the water and can’t get out until you let them out. Technically,’ she added, then glanced at her brother and they both smiled.

It was all fascinating stuff. ‘Technically, eh?’

Jock nodded and steered around an ant’s nest that was bigger than a grown man. ‘If you get a mean enough scrub bull in there, he’ll just carry on and demolish the place until you let him out. It’s better to give in to him than take him on.’

‘So you can muster cattle like that?’

‘You can. Though you end up with pockets of cattle near water sources as opposed to a mob at the house yards if the muster crew bring them in and get them loaded onto trucks from the same place. But an overall control system with remote taps could nudge the cattle towards the yards by turning off consecutive troughs and making them search out the next one. It’s no good for now as the cattle are too weak, but when the season is good I reckon it would work well.’

He glanced at his sister. ‘I’ve wanted to move to that way of mustering for a couple of years now, but Mum is old-school. And Mim even older. If we went that way, we could look to the future of just using the yards and lose the expense of the stock contractor.’

Ava didn’t seem sure because she frowned.

‘Muster’s a lot of work for us,’ Jock added. ‘And we’re too few. But the contractors wouldn’t like that and might not back us if we needed them later. If we still have a station when I’m finished with it.’

‘Your ideas will work,’ Ava said, but Jock’s labile mood had plummeted again. She frowned.

‘What are you thinking?’ Zac slipped his hand across and took her fingers. He decided she needed comfort. She flashed him a grateful glance which made it all worthwhile.

Jock looked away. ‘Maybe we should just sell. Like they did over at Dreamtime.’

Ava and her brother exchanged an unhappy look.