‘You have heard my reasons, gentlemen, and I will summarise them for you. Federation will remove these absurd custom barriers between the colonies. It will mean a uniform railway gauge and new railways traversing our continent; it will finally open up the interior for settlement. Settlement for Australians—for Federation is the only possible way of preserving Australia for the white races. It will engender confidence in British investors. It will mean improved defences. For make no mistake, gentlemen—’ and here Alasdair paused just long enough to allow each man in the room to lean an inch closer ‘—should there be a European war, disunion would mean disaster for Australia.’

And they all, to a man, liked what they heard.

Well, perhaps not to a man. Alasdair spotted the fellow a moment before he spoke:

‘We cannot trust ’em! We all know we cannot trust the Victorians.’

The speaker, a storekeeper or an artisan in shabby Sunday best, jumped to his feet and a chorus of voices followed him, agreeing or not, and some of the other men now also got excitedly to their feet and their wives pulled them down again to their seats.

Mr Dunlevy held up his hand, but before he could reply the heckler, red-faced and sweating despite the cool night, spoke again:

‘If you believe the Victorians will willingly give up a federal parliament—not once they have got their hands on it—and let us build a brand-new capital someplace else, you are a fool!’

‘They want Ballarat for the capital—the Premier hisself admitted it!’ called out a man in a bowler hat standing towards the back of the room. A further chorus of calls followed and some applause, a fair amount of derision too, but the tenor of the meeting had changed.

For the man had a point—could the Victorians be trusted? And, yes, the Premier had indeed said that about Ballarat, for all that it had been an unwise and unpropitious thing for him to concede.

A ripple swept through the hall, and the mood that a moment earlier had been one of high-minded camaraderie infused with a heady dose of patriotism now became something else entirely.

‘He’s right—how can we trust ’em?’

‘S’not just parliament—they want to take our money and put it in their own coffers and leave nothing for us!’

‘What’s the good of a Federation anyway? We managed for a hundred and ten years without one, why d’we need one now?’

And, yes, the arithmetic was wrong (for it was actually a hundred and eleven years), but the point was made and it was greedily swallowed up, for ill forebodings are more easily gorged on than fair ones. On the dais the mayor and his councillors shifted in their chairs. Their frustration at the ill-informed truculence of their fellow citizens—whose opinions seemed to them belligerently dogged and also, somehow, fleetingly changeable—was clear.