After breakfast we got ready for school. The only benefit of being a girl was that I got to use the washhouse first. I scrubbed my face and hands and combed my hair, plaiting it so it swung heavy to the small of my back. Then, back in the house, I changed from my milking clothes and nightdress into my school clothes, the chemise and stockings, the pinafore and blouse, everything grey from having been washed so often and coarse and scratchy. An hour after the sun rose we were saddled up and on our way to the Yatte Yattah school, around a three-mile ride to the south, across Yackungarrah Creek and through Myrtle Gully. Blackie came as far as the creek most days, then sat on her haunches and whined when I told her to go home. She was always there, waiting, in the afternoon. I rode Big Bill, who was called that because he was the smallest of the three but thought himself grand. He had a way of striding with his head high, his step quick, as though he were leading a parade. The kids nearest the school walked or cycled, and a few from larger farms came in cars, but there were still many of us who rode horses and ponies, and there was a long post to tie them to in the shade and a trough for their water.

I had been going to that school since I was seven, and the teacher only changed once in that time. There was possum-faced Mr Buckland, with his hard metal ruler and lunchtime flask, and when he left we had pudding-faced Miss Wren. She could not control the older boys, but she would read stories to us and showed me how to write in a beautiful hand.

The school had one large room, the youngest pupils sitting closest to the coal stove while the eldest sat at the back. It smelled of damp socks and pencil shavings, chalk dust that made me feel on the verge of a sneeze. We washed the chalkboard, cleaned the erasers, used our pencils until they were just nibs and filled every blank space on a piece of paper. After lunch we were allowed outside for half an hour to feed and water the horses, play cricket on the grass; the little ones played hopscotch or swung from the lowest branches of the trees. Then a fly-drowsed afternoon of trying to keep my eyes open while the others droned their recitations. For the first four years I sat watching the creases of dirt on the back of Thomas Ryan’s neck. Then he drowned at sea, swept off his father’s fishing boat, and only when he was no longer there did I wonder how it was he sat in front of me for four years and we never once spoke.