Then, as suddenly as they had passed into the seeming barrier, the car shot out on to a wide treeless plain, a grey plain which was fringed along its far side with dark timber. Before them milled a slow-moving mass of cattle, moving like a wheel, and driven by four horsemen. A fifth horseman, leading a spare saddled horse, came cantering to meet them. When they stopped he brought his animals close to the car. Off came his wide-brimmed felt hat to reveal straight brown hair and the line across his forehead below which the sun and the wind had stained his face. Above the line the milk-white skin made a startling contrast.

“Morning, Mr Nettlefold! Morning, Miss Elizabeth!” he shouted, before dismounting to lead the horses closer. To the girl he added with easy deference: “I thought you would have gone to Golden Dawn and had a flip or two with those flying fellows. All the boys were going to ask for time off to go up and look-see the bush from above if this muster hadn’t been ordered.”

“Somehow I just couldn’t be bothered,” she said, smiling, and not unmindful of his lithe grace in the saddle. “Anyway, the eggs in the incubator were due to hatch yesterday, and while they were hatching I could not be away from home.”

“A good hatching?” he asked, with raised brows.

“Yes. Ninety-one out of the hundred.”

“How do they weigh up, Ted?” interrupted Nettlefold, his thoughts running on more important things than chickens.

“Fair. Ought to average eight hundred pounds dressed. There’s eight hundred and nineteen in the muster. Will you look ’emover?”

“May as well, now that you’ve brought the spare hack. Who have you got with you beside Ned Hamlin and Shuteye?”

“Bill Sikes and Fred the Dogger.”

Nettlefold nodded and then, telling Elizabeth he would not be long, he swung into the saddle of the spare hack and rode away stiffly towards the milling cattle. Ted Sharp waved his hat to the girl. Elizabeth smiled and waved back. He was the most cheerful, life-loving man she had ever known.