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what chance would they have in their bark crafts? I daresay more than one has killed or been killed.’
    'Dear me,' Mama said.
    Days passed and were marked by nothing but the daily tasks of cleaning and washing and lessons and work, and by the flocks of birds, which shrilled upwards, their opposite selves, black shadows, swarming across the ground and water faster than anything could travel on those fissured surfaces. The weather was cooling and they were preparing to leave, and the weight I felt while watching them was as much of the body as the spirit. We saw no one. Yet wherever I went I could not rid myself of the uncanny sense of someone temporarily absent or recently departed, as if I were exploring a strange and empty house.
    One day I took an old bone-handled knife from the kitchen – seldom used and not valuable – and placed it among the fallen seed cones beneath the she-oak trees. I hardly knew what I hoped for walking the lagoon path next morning – some sign, perhaps only of life other than ours, though who would bother coming out to our point I could not imagine. We were so far from the stock route that we would never see any white person unless they happened down our track. The moment I entered the shade of the she-oaks I knew it would be gone, and so it proved to be. I searched in the needle leaf fall. No creature would take it. I wondered whose hands were touching it now, and the thought made them feel close. At luncheon I examined everyone’s expressions again for signs of concealment, but saw nothing unusual: only Addie pining for company, Hugh and Stanton wishing to go hunting for kangaroos, and so on. What need would they have of a blunt old knife? And how could I say what I had done without becoming an object of ridicule or censure? I repeated the experiment the next day leaving an old tablespoon and a battered enamel bowl with the same result. What could such things mean to a savage?
    I had no way of knowing whether there was a connection between the knife and the spoon and the bowl and the appearance thereafter of one or two natives, seen by us all. Perhaps it was only that they had become accustomed to our presence and saw that we were no threat. They walked the tracks ‘quite as if they owned it,’ Hugh said. ‘It will not end well, Papa.’ But Papa tipped his hat back and scratched his beard thoughtfully and said, ‘I think not, Hugh. There is land enough. Consider how useful they might become to us. I have seen them working very willingly in the hills and at the lakes. Why not here too?’ and he clapped Hugh on the shoulder and went on his way. Mama stayed indoors.
    One morning we found a dead kangaroo, still warm, at the veranda steps, which, kangaroo meat having become so expensive in town, was very welcome. Another day there were three ducks.
    Papa was delighted. ‘See, Bridget,’ he said to Mama. ‘They wish to be friendly. When we see them, we must reciprocate.’
    By degrees as autumn deepened the natives drew closer, as if our lives were aligning. Early one morning while I was letting the chickens out there were two canoes at the lagoon’s centre and poised figures as lean and black as arithmetic spearing fish over the side, perfectly still until the darting strike, and then the impaled fish was flipped aboard. My impulse was to run for home, but they were at such a distance and had not even noticed me so I could not see the harm in watching. Another day, Fred and Albert were passed by some blacks out with hunting equipment: spears and clubs and curved sticks which the boys observed them throw great distances and which curled in the air most ingeniously, returning to the person who had released them. I had heard of them in Adelaide but never seen them demonstrated and envied the boys.
    â€˜They were so close, you would not believe it,’ Albert said.
    â€˜Were you frightened? I would be,’ Addie said.
    â€˜They