It’s hard to believe I am here. That I have finally returned. As the ship came through the craggy cliffs of the heads and into Sydney Harbour at dawn, I saw before me the distant arch of the Harbour Bridge, the small islands whose names I still recall: Goat Island, Garden Island, Fort Denison. The sandstone pylons of the bridge as we drew closer, the linked triangles of steel. The leering clown mouth and Ferris wheel at Luna Park, the green-and-yellow painted ferries cutting through the water. There was the light bouncing off the water, the little pilot boat ahead of us leading the way. The ship berthed beside Circular Quay, which had far more buildings of a far greater height than I remembered, but most startling were the solid white sails of the Sydney Opera House, which I had seen in photographs but never in person. It sat between the Quay and the Royal Botanic Gardens like tips of cuttlebones poking out of the sand, or a tiled lily. It looked as though it had always been there. I thought it was beautiful.

It took ages to get off the ship, navigating queues of people and luggage and paperwork and passport checks. We were exhausted by the time we caught a taxi to our hotel in The Rocks. I decided to splurge on separate rooms for the night we are in town. Hannah needs her space. Once I have unpacked I call Fred from my room, which has a view out over The Rocks and the harbour, North Sydney beyond.

His voice is familiar from our more frequent conversations these days, rough and crackling with age.

‘Is it really you, Sar? You’re really here?’

‘I am. I’m really here.’

‘I’m on me way. There’s been some traffic, but I’ll be there for lunch. Will I pick you girls up from the hotel?’

‘That’d be perfect.’

‘I’ll call when I’m in the city.’

‘Okay.’

‘Hooroo.’

Fred will stay in the city for a night, then we’ll all head south. He stayed on farming—said the country was the only place his mind was quiet after the war. He even did well, better than Dad ever managed, and bought back the farm Dad had sold so many years ago. Said he did it for Jack.

‘I liked being in the city, but Jack never did. This was where he spent the best part of his short life,’ Fred wrote in one of his emails. There were photographs attached. A new dam. The same wide verandahs. The creek swollen with rain. The wattle blooming yellow in spring. He and his wife—Sharon—had a son, whom they named Jack. Jack was driving Fred up to Sydney, since Fred was in his nineties. Jack had three children—one of whom also lived, with his family, on the property with them.