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And Clara was nothing if not decisive. Wrong sometimes, yes, but she’d decided she’d rather do things than just worry about them. Mother kept saying it would land her in trouble.
    Well, it might. But still she swung herself into the nearest carriage. The men sitting on the wooden benches with their swags gaped at her as if she’d crawled out of a piece of green cheese.
    â€œHere, Missy,” said one finally. “You can’t get on this clanker. She’s going up north.”
    â€œSo am I. I am going to find my brother. He’s at Power Station 1786, Dajarra,” she said airily. “I have to talk to him about our father, and seeing as he’s on a contract, he can’t come to Ceduna. Or that’s what he said in his letter.”
    The audience stared at her. Finally one said, “Are you sure he’s your brother, Missy?”
    Clara surprised herself by starting to cry, having her carefully constructed story come apart before she’d really even started on it. She put it down to being dog-tired and over-worried. “My mother is unconscious in hospital. And my father’s a prisoner in Queensland. I need to get to Tim.”
    It took a few seconds for the sandy-haired fellow—the one who’d asked if she was sure if Tim was her brother—to react. “Eh. Simmo. Davo. Gimme your swags. We’d better tuck you under the bench, Missy. Conductor will be here in a few minutes and he’ll chuck you off if he sees you.”
    Hidden behind bedding rolls, Clara heard the conductordemanding, “Where yer all goin’?” The men sang out various numbers, then the clanking started as the carriage rattled and rolled away into the darkness toward the hot red center of Australia.
    â€œOrright, Missy. Yer can probably come out now,” said someone.
    So Clara crawled out from under the bench into the dimly lit, swaying, low-roofed carriage and the stares of the men there. She felt rather like telling them it was rude to stare so, but they had helped her, after all.
    â€œUm. Good morning. So, er, where are you all going?” It was, in a way, rather like the submarine in the carriage.
    She could see teeth in the answering grins. “G’day to you, too. North, I reckon. Nowhere else the clanker goes,” said one of them. “So where are you from, Missy? Never heard of no nice girls catching the clanking white ant.” He seemed to be implying she was a “nice girl,” so that was all right.
    â€œUm.” There seemed no real point in pretending she was a local girl. Her accent betrayed her. “Ireland.”
    â€œMe da came from Ireland,” said the sandy-haired one, smiling and nodding. “Best thing he coulda’ done, he said to me.”
    â€œMe mam, too. You came in with the submarine?” asked a fellow with a handlebar moustache. “The one they blockaded the harbor with half the Royal Navy to stop? I heard there was some women on her.”
    That simplified things nicely. “Yes. My mother and I came on the Cuttlefish .”
    â€œAye. Wish they’d bring more girls. It’s a good country for men is Westralia. But even in Ceduna there’s two men for every woman. Up north, it’ll be about two hundred to one, I reckon. I’m gunna earn some money and go back to Dominion I reckon. It’s crook there, but there’s girls. What’s it like in Ireland, Missy?”
    So she told them. From there it was a short step to telling them of her adventures leaving Ireland…and basking in their adulation because her father was in jail for fighting against the British Empire. That was a new experience. She stopped short, though, oftelling them about the message. About the fact that, for some reason, the British Empire had sent her father to Queensland. In the meantime she talked to them about places they’d never see and heard about the hot, bleak interior, and of why the coaches were