Further along the road, Miki saw Robbo’s truck parked on a recently bulldozed landing. He was supervising as a loader stacked logs onto the tray. Way uphill, where the block steepened, the forest was untouched. Miki hoped the machines wouldn’t make it up there.

Behind the steering wheel, Kurt sat grim-faced, staring at the wreckage. ‘Bastards,’ he mumbled.

‘Why are they here?’ Miki’s voice caught in her throat.

‘Some idiot in an office marks an X on a map, and that’s where they go.’

‘But there were so many old trees. How could they do this?’ She wanted to turn back time and restore the forest. This was vandalism. There was so much forest out there—why couldn’t the loggers go somewhere else? She thought of the eagles; their nest tree wasn’t far away. Would the machines knock that down too?

Kurt drove around the sign, manoeuvring past the workers’ vehicles. Shane’s rusty ute was among them. There he was, in hard hat and safety vest, tinkering with a chainsaw at the back of his truck, a cigarette between his lips. He scowled at Kurt as they passed—it was no secret they didn’t like each other—and Kurt matched the scowl, muttering fuckwit under his breath. As Miki watched, Shane lifted the chainsaw and started uphill, stepping over the chaos of fallen branches. She remembered hearing that he cut trees on steep slopes, so the trees uphill weren’t safe. In a few weeks, the whole place would be wrecked.

Kurt continued on in jaw-clenched silence, following the track through the clearing. The open space was a vast emptiness: sky, logging-slash and dirt. Downhill in a gully, the skeleton of a lonely tree fern waved its battered fronds and three skinny trees stood in a sad cluster, exposed to the wind. Miki saw a currawong eject skywards from the forest edge—at least something was still alive. But it didn’t give her much hope.

As they drove away from the logging site, the shriek of machines gradually faded, but Miki felt bruised. It was only when they slid into forest again that her tension began to ease. They passed the eagles’ tree, and then it wasn’t far until they were in their beloved patch of forest where the trees closed in and shrubs scraped the car as they whipped past. Kurt was still rigid with fury. When they stopped, he leaped out and slammed his door, then yanked out his rifle and loaded a handful of ammunition. ‘Bastards,’ he spat. ‘I wish they’d piss off. I bet they’re going to log through to here.’