The gum grew tall and broad in the middle of a field of wheat. It was at least a hundred years old, ancient well before human settlement, when there had been no wheat and no farm, only bush, thick with gums. But now these were gone, felled to make way for crops, for sheds, for the farm house. For the property where the boy lived with his mother and father.

The boy did not like living there, although he preferred it to the months that he had spent aboard ship, coming over. If he had been given the choice – which he was not, being just fourteen years old – he would have stayed in London. He liked the city, but his father did not, nor his mother, so they had brought him here, against his will, to the infant colony of New South Wales.

‘You'll get used to it,’ his father said one morning as they ate cold mutton on the rough porch of their cabin. ‘Bit of sun will do you good. You already look better than that pasty-faced kid you were back in London. You and your books. I know that you're a quiet one, a scholar and all, but there's more to life than sitting by a fire, reading, let me tell you.’

And the father looked out over the bush that he had cleared, at the field of wheat that he had planted. And the mighty gum tree.

‘Your father is right,’ the boy's mother said, sipping tea from a blue enamel mug. ‘I know that you like the scholar's life, as your father says, and your books, and your own company, but you could do well here. You could make a go of it, like we have. When we're dead, remember, this land will be yours. You could clear more bush. Extend the farm. The orchard. The house. And raise a family. Start your own family tree in the colonies. A new beginning, like.’

And she looked out over the land, well satisfied, except for the gum tree, growing tall and broad in the very centre of the wheat field.

‘Why don't you get rid of that tree?’ she said to her husband. ‘It will be a nuisance in that field of wheat. Come harvest, you know.’

‘I will, woman,’ the father grunted, hating to be reminded of his many jobs about the farm. ‘I will, when I get the chance.’

‘But the birds,’ the boy said, ‘what will happen to the birds?’

His parents turned to look at him. This was a boy who rarely spoke. Who cared little about the farm, or the bush, or anything to do with their new lives in the colony.

‘Birds?’ his mother said. ‘What birds?’

‘They come every night, on dusk,’ the boy replied.

‘Eh?’ his father said.

‘I watch them from here,’ the boy went on. ‘I see them when I'm sitting here reading. Right on dusk.’

‘And what do they do, these birds?’ his father asked.

‘They come sweeping in from the west,’ the boy said. ‘Hundreds of them. They fly around and around. Around and around the big gum tree, right there, in the wheat field, until finally, they settle in it. The entire flock. To roost. Making the tree white all over. Like there's been snow.’

‘Snow?’ his mother repeated, thinking the boy mad. ‘Snow? Like in the old country?’

‘Yes,’ the boy said, ‘Snow.’ He felt like he had spoken an obscenity. ‘But quivering. Snow that quivers, when the birds’ wings shake. Or flutter.’ He could not think of the right words to describe this phenomenon.

His parents looked at each other, over his head.

‘What sort of birds are these?’ his mother said, frowning.

‘Cockatoos,’ the boy said. ‘White cockatoos. They have yellow feathers on their heads. Like cocks’ combs. So they are called sulphur-crested cockatoos. Or so my book says.’

‘Your book?’ the father croaked, incredulous. ‘Your book? Where did you get such a book?’

‘From a man who came by. A man who ran a travelling library. He was no tramp. No swaggie, as men who walk the roads are called in this country. He wore a good hat and coat. And his boots were well-heeled. I didn't think it any harm to borrow a book from him.’

‘What?’ his father said. ‘From a man in a hat and coat. And where were we then? Your mother and me?’

‘You were in the fields,’ the boy replied, feeling tears start. ‘But he was not just any man. I have told you that. I am not daft. He said he was a librarian. He said he ran a travelling library. So I took a ha'penny from the box in the dresser where you keep the small coins, Mother, and I paid it to him to borrow the book. For a week.’

Shocked, the mother said, ‘You gave a man – a stranger – a ha'penny to borrow a book? And you say that you're not daft?’

‘A book about birds of all things,’ his father huffed, then added, for good measure, ‘and cockatoos at that. Noisy, screaming things they are.’

‘Ah!’ the boy cried, brightening. ‘So you have seen them.’

‘Of course I've seen them,’ the father answered. ‘I've seen them strip a corn field of every kernel on every cob within an hour. Or even less. They swoop down in flocks, screaming, then fall silent while they gorge. They can destroy a man's farm in minutes. Take his whole crop. Like that!’ and he snapped his fingers, hard.

‘But you have not seen them here,’ the boy said. ‘Have you?’

There was a silence while the father thought. ‘No, I have not seen them here,’ he admitted. ‘And that's because I have better things to do at sundown. Better things to do than read a book. I have the horses to secure in the shed. Your mother has the hens to feed. It's only you who has the time to sit and read – to sit and watch birds – when we are working.’

‘But that will stop,’ said the mother. ‘As I say, this is a new land. And you need to make a new life. It is not the ha'penny that you stole to give to this library man that I care about. It is the fact that there's no time for books here. No time for watching birds. Neither at sun-up nor sundown. So there will be no more of it. Like it or not, your books will go. And that tree.’

‘And with it the birds,’ the father declared getting up. ‘I will do it as soon as I can,’ and he walked off towards the tool shed.

‘And don't you forget, neither,’ the woman yelled after him. ‘We don't want them cockatoos eating that field of wheat,’ and wiping her hands on her apron, she went into their cabin.

So the boy sat alone, wondering what he had done.

At dusk, since his parents had not taken his book, nor stopped him from sitting on the porch to read, the boy looked towards the west, waiting for the cockatoos. And presently, they came. Just one or two, at first, then dozens, then hundreds. Around and around the tree they circled. Around and around.

Go away, thought the boy. For your own good, go away.

But the birds were not about to go away. They had been returning to this tree – night after night – for a hundred years before the boy arrived. Nor did they care for the boy's parents’ field of wheat. They had found plenty to eat in the bush before the colonists came. It was the tree they returned for. Tall and broad, its branches were their home, the hollows in its trunk their nesting places. The homes of their offspring. For like the colonists – the human intruders they chose to ignore – the cockatoos had futures, too.

Not that the colonists cared.

‘Fly away!’ cried the boy, throwing his book aside and running into the field. ‘Fly away!’

But the cockatoos ignored him, too. Why should they be worried about what some human child told them?

When the boy reached the tree, and stood beneath it – a thing that he had never done before – he looked up at the chattering birds. They were truly beautiful. Their feathers so white. Their crests so yellow. Their grey beaks stripping and tearing at the bark, the cracking and clacking as they kissed and canoodled, so powerful yet so gentle. And their great black eyes, all hooded and wrinkled, so ancient, so wise.

So the boy's lonely heart went out to them.

And so he loved them.

And so he left them in peace.

But not his mother, who was determined not to forget.

The following afternoon, as the sun began to dip towards the west, the mother appeared in the yard, her hands cupped to her chapped lips, calling, ‘Hey! Hey! Where are you? You said you would cut that tree down!’

From the shed the man's voice answered, ‘I know. I know. Give me a chance here.’ And within minutes, to the boy's horror, he appeared with a farm hand – a yokel with little brain – bearing a cross-cut saw between them. ‘Have some faith in your husband, woman. I said that I'd do it and I will. I didn't forget.’

As he spoke, the first of the cockatoos appeared, lazily circling the gum in the wheat field.

‘There they are now,’ the woman yelled at her husband. ‘See? Go on now and get it done.’

So the husband and the yokel went into the field and taking off their shirts, began to saw.

But still the birds returned. Circling and circling, a great flock of them. Returning home.

The gum was very old, its branches wide, its trunk thick as a man's body. It was not easy to fell. But the men worked at it, sawing backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, their sweat mingling with the fallen twigs, the fallen bark, the fallen flowers, until at last, the tree cried out. Until at last, the tree groaned in agony, in the slow creeping pain of death, and began to shudder, then sway, then with a sigh that rent the sky, that shook the earth, it fell slowly into the field, its mighty limbs crashing beneath it.

Until, in death, it lay silent and still.

But the birds were neither.

Not the circling cockatoos.

Around and around they flew, crying out in confusion. Screaming in anger. Their tree was gone. Their home.

Hour after hour they cried. Hour after hour they circled. Not that the man watched. Not that his wife cared. They paid the yokel for his good work and went into the darkening cabin to eat mutton.

But seated outside, on the porch, the boy both saw and heard. Because the night was moon-lit and the cockatoos white, he saw them circling the empty space where their tree had stood a hundred long years. More than a hundred years. Worse, he saw the birds fall from the sky in exhaustion. He saw their silver bodies plummet to the ground, worn out with searching. Worn out with returning to what could never be. To a place no longer there. To a time lost forever.

So the next day, when the travelling library man came to collect his book, the boy went with him.

Like the cockatoos, he would never return.