‘—then he is sure to take up a seat at the new federal parliament—wherever that may be!’

There was laughter now, but also a rumbling of discontent.

Alasdair stood up and the mayor sat down.

‘My fellow New South Welshmen,’ he began. ‘My fellow Australians!’

And as the men surged closer and the cheers followed, the minister settled into his speech and Eleanor watched her husband’s shoulders go back and his chin come up and his chest puff out and she remembered the early days. She remembered campaigning for his first seat in places just like this, or worse, where the men came just so they could have an excuse to stand around and drink a bottle of beer, and if a fight did not break out it was only because not enough men had come. Town after town, speech after speech, and she had stood at his side and afterwards cleaned the blood and the spittle from his clothes and from his face. There had been an untamed, frontier feel to the colony in those days. On election days they had witnessed voters being beaten, they had seen drays filled with people paid to go from one polling station to another to vote, changing their clothes and voting sometimes more than once in the same place. There was nothing to stop them. Alasdair had lost. Time after time Alasdair had lost.

And she had stood at his side.

‘This is our time!’ said Alasdair. ‘History is ours for the taking!’ ‘It is a sellout!’ came a loud voice from the front of the crowd and a man lunged forward, a settler, a huge man but hollowed out and weather-worn and crushed by years of drought and taxes and hard work. The crowd surged and swelled around him. ‘You think you can come here from the city and tell us what is good for us? What is good for our families? You know nothing of us!’

The man swayed drunkenly and the fury swelled in his veins so that the beer bottle he grasped shattered in his hands. The crowd opened up around him.

‘I know enough to know when a fellow is drunk and needs his wife to take him home,’ retorted Alasdair and the crowd laughed, though some did not. Some muttered angrily and went to the assistance of the man who may not be their friend but who was their neighbour, nonetheless, and whose drought they had shared and whose funerals they had attended.

‘And why was the Premiers’ Conference held in Melbourne?’ called out another man. ‘Why behind closed doors in secret? What were they hiding?’

‘The bill is the same as it was last year and we rejected it last year!’

‘What about our rivers? There is no protection for us New South Welshmen to control our own rivers!’