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Emily.’
    â€˜But the sons you so craved …’
    Disappointment ran deep, it was true; he would very much miss having sons. But he would teach Emily to ride like a man … He would imbue in Emily the thrill of adventure … ‘Emily is family enough,’ he said firmly, ‘now go to sleep: we need you strong.’
    Although his intention had been merely to placate his distraught wife, the years proved James right. All of the love he might have lavished on a large family he focused upon his daughter, who became the very centre of his existence. Emily was not mollycoddled or spoilt though, for that was not James’s way. From a very early age she was treated as an adult and shared in his life, in his very dreams and expectations. Father and daughter quite simply adored each other.
    To many, James McQuillan appeared a somewhat contradictory man. He was personally wealthy and lived a lavish lifestyle, yet the speeches he made at legislative council meetings were invariably in opposition to what he considered extravagant government spending. He was practical and conservative, his public addresses short and to the point, yet on social occasions, particularly as host in his own home, he was flamboyant and could wax lyrical with the best. But the most contradictory elementin James McQuillan’s make-up was something that would have been beyond the comprehension of his desk-bound city colleagues. James McQuillan was an adventurer, a man whose love of the outback was so fierce it bordered on passion.
    Even Edwin Moss, James’s friend and business partner, did not know the degree of passion he felt for the rugged beauty of central Australia. Certainly the two had shared excitement over their ventures into the wilderness of Alexandra Land. Certainly where others had seen nothing but dry desert James and Edwin had seen endless possibility. But Edwin had not bonded with the land as James had, and James had not seen fit to share his feelings about something he regarded as intensely personal. He did, however, share them with his thirteen-year-old daughter, painting vivid pictures of giant gorges and fiery-red escarpments and huge gum trees growing from the centre of dusty, dry riverbeds.
    â€˜A primitive land, Emily,’ he told her, ‘a land so spiritual you cannot help but feel at one with it. A person is closer to God out there, I swear. You can feel His very presence.’
    So enthralled was Emily with the images her father painted of a landscape foreign to the green hills of Adelaide that she made him promise to take her to see his newest holding, a cattle station many days’ journey from anywhere.
    â€˜I don’t see why not,’ James agreed, much to Eleanor’s consternation. ‘Perhaps in a year or so when the homestead’s living quarters are completed and the station is running smoothly.’
    â€˜Not until she is sixteen, James,’ Eleanor insisted. ‘I will not hear of it. Not until she has turned sixteen.’
    â€˜Very well,’ James acquiesced good-naturedly, ‘sixteen it is. The homestead will be finished altogether by then.’
    â€˜And we’ll travel up by camel?’ Emily asked excitedly.
    â€˜We will indeed. You and I will be in a cart drawn by a camel pair-in-hand, and a camel train will follow withsupplies. Splendid animals, splendid – this country would be lost without them.’
    James McQuillan, like a number of adventurous businessmen, saw the camel as the answer to the transport problems of the outback. Recently, with the help of Thomas Elder, a fellow aficionado of the camel and first to introduce the animals to Australia, James had imported a batch of breeding dromedaries, together with Afghan cameleers to manage the beasts. He intended to breed sturdy stock at his pastoral property in Alexandra Land. An area of well over one thousand square miles, the property’s border lay just twenty-five miles southwest