Alasdair read of the disaster in the dining room of a hotel, on a train, in the dining room of another hotel. The city was being washed away but the referendum would still go ahead. Polling arrangements were advertised. Whole pages were given over to the debate, the speeches, the nightly meetings held in hotels and town halls and council chambers across the city and in country towns the length of the colony. The Premier was here and he was there—six thousand heard him speak at Newcastle, a smaller number at Darlington, his speeches were reprinted in full, with almost as much space given to Mr Barton. A tally was kept of how many attended this meeting and how many attended that. Was the spirit in the colony for Federation or was it against? The anti-billites could be dismissed, said the newspaper, the motion was sure to carry. The anti-billites were a growing force, said the same paper, and nothing was certain, they could yet spoil the day. The editorials were daily more imploring, the letters to the editor ever more impassioned. An effigy of the Premier was set alight outside the meeting at Darlington and the local constables had to act promptly to put it out.

Mr Dunlevy, the Secretary for Public Monies, reported the Herald, had attended a meeting at Marrickville and at Drummoyne, he had been at Waverley and Ashfield, he had been at Parramatta and Camperdown and Waterloo, and now he had left the city to accompany the Premier on his tour of the southern townships. It was a wonder, the paper said, that the people still came out, night after night, in all this rain.

Alasdair stood beside the Premier on a stage at Albury that was built for three, four at a push, but the Premier was so generous of girth there was barely room for the two of them and when the Premier took a step forward or used his arms to make a point, which he did repeatedly and expansively, Alasdair was obliged to duck and step back and the stage shuddered and threatened to collapse altogether.

‘I have this day received word that our colleagues in Queensland have carried the Federation Enabling Bill!’ the Premier declared, holding in his fist this very telegram and the people cheered. ‘It is a Major Step Forward!’ he added, thus securing a further cheer.

The Premier had been handed this same telegram three days earlier and he had given this exact same speech at Newcastle that evening, but the people of Albury were not to know this. He knew how to play a crowd, did Reid; he knew how to use a prop.