August 1973

In 1910 we emigrated to Western Australia, a young colony in an old country. They wanted hard workers, wanted skills such as Magnus Tulloch had.

Every fisher and cooper family seemed to have a third or fourth cousin who had forged the way there before us, so we were busy, Magnus Tulloch and I, finding out what we needed to know. How to apply. What to take. Making our preparations for a journey of one way. Such a long way, lambsie.

In that flurry of months came a day that Clementina Slater would always after call The Madness. I have been thinking about this a lot lately, lambsie, how strange it is that sometimes we manage almost to erase the memory of pain to spare ourselves, and other times it’s as though we’ve taken to it with a polishing cloth. That day in August 1909 is one of those memories. I can pluck it from the past, brutally whole and clean. All those years and I can still feel the sun on my skin when I think of it.

Many years later, Clementina would press, try to get me to talk about that day. Ach, I would say, I was only eighteen, I canna remember, can I?