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headwaters of the King River and found commercial gold on Bullock Creek. Then cut and shaped thirty cartloads of quarry stone – using my Point Gellibrand experience – for a squatter’s homestead.
    Also had some honest paid fun, you’ll be pleased to hear, trick-riding around the country shows and boxing for fair purses. You’re speaking to the unbeaten heavyweight boxing champion of northeastern Victoria.
    Thank you, thank you, very kind.
    I CAN bend from the saddle at full gallop and snatch a lady’s handkerchief from the ground. I can stand and lie on the saddle at full gallop. I can jump fences kneeling on the horse’s back.
    Beat Wild Wright in the yard of the Imperial Hotel, Beechworth, in 1874. Twenty rounds, bare-knuckle. Officially organised – timekeeper, seconds, referee. Wright six-one and fourteen stone, me one inch and two stone less. Knocked him out in the twentieth. Anyone can look it up. Teach him to lend me that postmaster’s mare.
    Some women, not the youngest ones, like such shows. Like to see a strong younger man wounded but prevail, bending easily to snatch their handkerchiefs.

S he packed a generous wicker basket; she’d been on many picnics. She laid a woollen rug on layers of pine needles and angled between two pine trees so the sun divided it. Explained that this way we’d be both warm and cool. Then she smoothed it, laying fingernails lightly on my wrist, my upper arm, in passing. Like a lorikeet’s claws, soft but serious. You knew they rested there only momentarily and could scratch if they wanted, but were grateful for the favour. She pecked at this, nibbled at that, peered at me intently from time to time with her face half slanting away to look at me better, like a brilliant rare bird on a stump.
    ‘All that cutting stone and so forth, no wonder you’re so hungry,’ she said. ‘Won’t it be a lovely house?’
    I’ve always liked the sighing sound air makes in a pine tree, like wild women’s whispers. One side of her mouth turned up, the other down. A small mole above it got pursed up when she hummed opera.
    ‘Indeed,’ I said, unable now to imagine her ever indoors. I gulped down every foodstuff, couldn’t stop from eating.
    Shapely lips started things. Then I did.
    She dismissed the picnic with a wave. She brushed aside the bread and gammon and satsuma-plum jam, the sliced muskmelon, the lemon barley water, and lay back on the rug. The crickets paused, the breeze dropped dead. Never seen such sights in daylight. Never seen such keen foam down there before, and the colour on her cheeks and neck went pink, then scarlet, like those inland salt-lake parrots they sell in town. Lost in herself like younger women never are – a little pressure here, just there, oh, yes. Isn’t that a funny place to feel such sensations, the artery running smoothly into there, pumping like a honeyeater’s heart.
    Little grass-ticks scurried up my legs and burrowed in my thighs and I let them. Sunshine on her alabaster belly and her birdcalls.
    J ESUS , PICNICKING gives you an appetite. Buttering another crunchy bun and munching fast – crumbs exploding from my lips – I say, ‘It’s probably not the time to mention that I once took a thoroughbred or two of his. For his own good your husband ought to change his brand. I didn’t even need to burn it out and brand them again.’
    Explained how easily I plucked the hairs and pricked the skin with iodine, made the C into a perfect Q for Quinn, my mother’s maiden name – and my rowdy relatives’. ‘Now they’re cantering happily in New South Wales. The horses, I mean.’
    She frowned, then rolled her eyes and laughed. Her little finger traced our silvery snail-trails on her thigh. She dabbed me carefully dry with her silky petticoat, pushed it deep into her face, caressed her nose and cheeks, inhaled the silk, then slowly unrolled it, shook the creases out and put it on. This side of her was newly strange again. Her eyes and smile while