I read: montacute, and saw its woods; inglewood, and smelt the wattle; hermitage, and lost myself in a dark garden. (And there are others just as lovely: Piccadilly and Longwood; Gumeracha and Golden Glen. There are Stirling and Crafers, with their mists and dripping rains, their holly-trees and hawthorn — more English than England. There is Basket Range, where it is always autumn: the sky a crumpled ivory, the old houses cowled with creeper, the russet apples fallen in the grass; Cherryville — a froth of lacy bridesmaids, Mount Lofty — where we watched the lightning from the Obelisk, Chain of Ponds — a necklace of mottled blue.)

The bus roared off — the driver snatching lustful side-glances at girls on bicycles. Soon we left Adelaide behind, and the asphalt of the suburbs became grass. (The bus driver sat on a red seat. His hair was black against a cinnamon neck; his shirt had wet patches under its arms. A yellow towel flapped from a rail.) I saw olive-trees and a horse and a donkey. We passed little towns that clung to the foot-hills: just a church, a jumble of roofs and cast-iron porches, clumps of lilies and beds of smouldering pinks. The sky was hung with a mosquito-net of heat; the trees stood perfectly still. The road slipped on and on before us, threaded constantly with a line of wavering white.

Then we were deep in the hills. The side roads dwindled to tracks under shadowy trees. I saw sheep dotted on a slope like the bumps in Reece’s knitting. I saw stone houses — some like Swiss chalets, some peeping through ivy curtains — half hidden in thickets and purple valleys.

Suddenly the bus wavered dangerously close to a sea of rippling leaves. The crisp waves whispered all about us; we faltered, then hurried on. And were pursued by a restless company of the stone houses. I saw fowls pecking under almond-trees, and far away the humps of other hills flung with paddocks: silver and sage, mustard and yellow-green.

We passed iron gateways; a face at a window; children’s fingers waving us on. Someone behind us put on perfume, and the bus was flooded with sweet voluptuous scent. Nan complained about the curve and said she felt sick.

Aunt Poll and Uncle Will met us at the bus stop; we walked with them through the eucalyptuses to the house with the balcony. The house lay in a hollow; it looked like a boat amongst the glistening morocco leaves.

The golden spaniel leapt forward to greet us; I dodged Uncle Jack’s prickly chin, and he looked relieved — scurried to the safety of his room and his tanks. Poll and Will told me I had grown, and called Nan ‘Iris’, and exclaimed over Reece. There were cups of tea to drink, and I sat on the lavatory and scattered the same grey ashes I did before. I played in the husk of an abandoned motor-car, charted the depths of the septic tank, ate a large lunch, and then it was time to walk with Uncle Will.