A crowd had gathered now about the Premier: local businessmen, landowners, half-a-dozen pressmen, the entire town council, and a not insignificant number of ladies, who had come down from the gallery and were fluttering their fans in his direction as though it were a summer’s evening and Mr Reid a dashing young nobleman at an assembly ball and, frankly, there was something undignified about the whole thing.

Alasdair turned to the mayor and he shook the man’s hand and said something appropriate; he stood at the Premier’s side as the explosion of a photographer’s flash-lamp momentarily blinded them; he dashed through the rain to the waiting carriage; he sat opposite the Premier and talked of great and important things as they made their way back to the hotel. The main street was turned to mud in all the rain and quite deserted, the bunting and the flags sodden now in the deluge.

‘This town will not be our nation’s capital,’ said Reid, speaking in a low, measured voice quite different to that of the great orator of an hour ago. He leaned back in the carriage and peered out of the window at the darkened, deserted streets.

‘You think not, sir?’

‘Not one of these places will be our capital, Dunlevy. A new place will be chosen, virgin soil. A new town for a new nation.’

It sounded good, statesmanlike even, and Alasdair nodded, but he was thinking of Ottawa.

‘A British journal has proposed our new capital be named Britannia,’ he said.

‘That will happen over the dead body of myself and every other true and right-thinking Australian man,’ Reid replied, not turning his gaze from the window.

And on that they could agree.

They would not be staying overnight at the hotel. It was merely a place for refreshment, to wash and change their clothes. They were to travel on to Junee that night.

It was a small party that made its way to the station an hour later, the mayor and the lady mayoress riding in the carriage to officially see the party off, a small crowd of well-wishers gathered on the platform and those of the press who were covering the tour and would be boarding the train with them. Reid was in high spirits, offering farewells and accepting thanks with all the bonhomie and triumph of a man who has already won an election. But once on board he disappeared into his sleeping compartment and was seen no more. Alasdair had a compartment next door and before the train had long left the lights of Albury behind he heard the Premier’s roaring snores through the wall.

Was that the secret then, an ability to shut off and sleep at a moment’s notice? An ability to clear one’s mind of all troubling thoughts?