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At last she dragged herself out, mopped herself dry with Willy’s fluffy white towels, and got into some crisp jeans and a shirt that Joanne had insisted on providing for her, and that Georgina had decided should be safe on this occasion, seeing there were no men about.

Willy was there, of course, but Willy’s attention as usual was on other things, mainly Joanne.

‘Milady’s not here,’ she told Georgina when Georgina, scrubbed and refreshed went into the kitchen, ‘she went out as she was, all stained and dirty. Not like a princess. There’s something doing, if you ask me.’

‘Did she go out to the road?’ Surely Joanne had not gone looking for Craig, dishevelled after a day’s ride; that didn’t sound like Joanne at all.

‘She just went out and got in her car and went down your track,’ replied Willy.

‘To the hut?’

‘Yes, George. Ah, here she is now.’

Perhaps, thought Georgina, watching Joanne pull up at the homestead steps, poor Joanne couldn’t stand being dirty any longer, so had gone and had a bath in the basin rather than hurry me up. In Joanne’s present wonderful mood she might do that.

But Joanne was still dishevelled. She was also a little excited, but Georgina did not take any notice of that.

‘Finished?’ Joanne asked. ‘Then I’m for it.’ She went along to the bathroom, and Georgina did not see any more of her that evening.

She had a cup of tea with Willy, then, pleading tiredness, she refused dinner, saying she would have an early night.

It was dark when she reached her hut, but the kerosene lamp soon saw to that. She looked at the little room fondly. I believe I’ve come to love it, she thought. It was masculinely sparse, deliberately so on Georgina’s part, for every woman can add a female touch. But its neatness pleased her, and she frowned slightly over her report papers that were not stacked as she should have stacked them. She must have gone out in a hurry. She tidied them now.

Mrs Willmott’s tea had taken any edge away from her appetite, but bed called.

She decided to turn in at once; after all, she had not slept well last night. She had watched the camp-fire, listened to the men’s voices; she had heard someone singing the cattle. Larry had, and the song had been ‘Always’. I’ll be loving you always.
I'm all for always. Are you?'

‘Yes. Yes, Larry.’

Georgina said it, but she did not know she said it. She was asleep.

Something
had happened to Joanne. She was so nice to Georgina that Georgina should have been suspicious, but, just as when she had been growing up, Georgina melted again at a kind word from her stepsister. There had never been many kind words, in fact only when Joanne wanted something, but it made no difference to Georgina now. She reacted at once, and warmly. I guess you could say, she told herself in one of her clearer moments, that I’m just a sucker for love. Always she had wanted to be friends with Joanne; she had yearned for closeness, for confidences, for ‘girls together’, for affection without competition, and now that Joanne offered all these she accepted them gladly.

‘You’re being so, nice, Joanne.’ Georgina simply could not help saying that.

‘Well, it came to me very forcibly on that ride home how awfully sweet you are, Georgina. I’m afraid it’s taken me a long time to find out.’ Joanne hung her head. ‘But that’s Joanne for you. Spoiled, a real brat.’

‘Oh, no!’

‘Well, thank you, darling, for denying it. I must say it’s lovely having a sister instead of a stepsister.’ Joanne actually caught Georgina’s hand and pressed it, then she kissed her—the first time, Georgina realised, they had kissed in their lives. Even when Stepfather had brought his daughter to meet her, and Mother had pushed her own daughter to meet Joanne, there had only been blank stares. Oh, Georgina had been ready with her love, over-ready. That had been, and was, a bad point in her really, she had too much love. But when Joanne had repulsed her she had caught on quickly, and been quite as adept as Joanne at poking out a hating tongue the moment the adults’ backs had been turned.

But now everything was different. Joanne slipped her arm in Georgina’s. She came down to the hut every day; she was a changed girl.

She was determined to help Georgina, and though Georgina could have done without that help, Joanne’s disappointed face undid her, and she allowed Joanne to take over the typing.

‘But only until Mr Roper comes back, Jo. My goodness, what would he think of me giving my work out like this?’

‘Oh, yes, I wouldn’t do it then,’ Joanne agreed.

She became intensely interested in the rocks. She even begged Georgina to let her stay with her whenever Georgina worked on their samples. As Larry Roper had shown her the lab previously, Georgina saw no harm in it, and was rewarded with Joanne’s rapt (if un-understanding) pretty face. The mighty Roper, thought Georgina a little sadly, is going to get more than he thinks, for Joanne is quite absorbed in it all, naively so, but nonetheless gratifyingly interested.

‘What are those ducky coloured ribbons?’ Joanne asked childishly.

‘They do the same as flags do in offices, Jo, they show where the action is—or, in this case, where it will be.’

Joanne clapped her hands. ‘It’s quite thrilling, and they do look pretty.’

She was sweet and innocent and Georgina’s heart went out to her. After all, she had lost a parent all those years ago just as the young Georgina had. It was simply a case of different reactions to a bereavement that Joanne had had animosity in her all these years. Now it was a thing of the past.

The girls really enjoyed themselves; the only flaw in that week before Larry Roper returned was the loss of the lab key. But barely had the loss been discovered than the key turned up again, so everything was all right.

All right, that was, as far as Joanne and Georgina were concerned. When the thought of Larry Roper intruded, it was a different story for Georgina. She wondered how Joanne felt. Perhaps—and Georgina felt a sharp stab—it was because of Larry that Joanne had changed like this. Love did change people. Well, it was a good thing, a wonderful thing, but

The next evening the first roster of overlanders returned.

The second relief had left previously, taking more supplies as well as more stock. For more babies had been born during the week, and being four-footed and able to run within hours, they travelled, too.

The baths ran hot and long that first night. After that food was next on the list, food as Willy or Cooky presented it, for though they had been well fed on the track, there had been no frills, and no pudding. It was amazing how these big, tough cattlemen looked for sweets.

Roper came down to the hut after he had soaked and scrubbed. He was now, he told Georgina, a different colour. Also, he grinned, the bath was as well.

‘Yes, I know,’ laughed Georgina. ‘It happened to me.’

‘Don’t tell me that Joanne allowed you in the bath, George! Oh, I know she would eventually, but not that first night.’

‘That first night,’ confirmed Georgina. ‘What’s more, I was the first.’

‘You amaze me. So does Joanne. Well, Brown, are you ready to push off?’

‘On the check-ups?’

‘Where else?’ he inquired.

‘Of course I’m ready, but aren’t you tired?’

‘Not tired, but even if I were I’d still go. You don’t postpone things like these’ ... he waved an arm to Georgina’s table of papers ... ‘and already too much time has been lost. We’ll leave tomorrow. It’ll be a brief trip, just that double check, no new exploration. No need for any change of clothes, no need for anything but sleeping bags and tucker. We’ll do it tough.’

‘Yes, Mr Roper.’

It occurred to Georgina that the new Joanne might like to come, and she asked Larry Roper.

‘She was all against it before,’ he said, ‘she couldn’t even last out the overland.’

‘She’s different now,’ she averred.

‘How different?’ He looked at her keenly.

‘She’s—co-operative. She’s nice. I thought it must be ’ Georgina broke off.

‘Yes, George?’

‘Love. She’s a changed person.’

‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘All right, you can ask her.'

‘I thought it should come from you.’

‘If it came from me it would come falsely, Brown. I don’t want her. I don’t want any females on this trip.’

‘No,’ gulped Georgina, ‘but ’

‘Oh, yes, I agree with you she would look very pretty under the stars of a night, but by that time I—and you— will be so dead beat we’ll have hit the hay, crawled into our sleeping bags and be lost to the world. It’s strictly business this time, but if you like, mention it to Joanne.’

Georgina did, and for the briefest of moments Joanne’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. But it was quite infinitesimal, the next instant Joanne was saying: ‘What a lovely thought, but I know it’s only going to be a rush trip, Georgina, and I would be in the way. I wouldn’t want to be but it would happen, me being silly little me, and Larry would be irritated.’

‘So you won’t come?’

‘Invitation declined regretfully. Perhaps some other time ’ Joanne gave yet another of the sweet smiles she flung around like so much largesse these days.

Roper and Brown—Larry had laughingly tagged them that—left early the following morning. Larry drove the jeep and Georgina sat with her map and compass and kept her eyes peeled for their marking ribbons.

Everything went well. They had checked more than half of their estimated ‘signs’ by the end of the day.

Dinner was the same iron ration as last time, brisket on bread, and bed came the minute night descended.

The following morning they did so well with their checks that they could have turned round and made for Roper’s and arrived there, work completed, by night. But something stopped them. It could have been the herby tang of the desert, the quiet that you could almost feel, the inverted blue bowl of sky, the warm gold sun ... it could have been anything, but somehow neither of them was inclined to turn back. It was purely instinctive, and it happened to both of them.

Georgina did try weakly with the reminder to Roper that he had wanted to waste no time over the claims, but the prompting was taken as weakly as it was given. The west had entrapped them both.

They just wasted time for the rest of the day, examining the bush, trying to remain as still as a gecko lizard, looking for the occasional smooth lucky stone among the sharp gibber, sometimes just drowsing on sun-warmed rocks.

Then it was brisket and bread and the sleeping bags again, but this time, because their work was over, they had a moment to talk before they slept.

Georgina told Larry how mirages had always fascinated her, and how her stepfather had believed that water scenes being enacted elsewhere were created a second time, as in a mirror, and that it wasn’t just imagination on your part as some people believed.

‘I can back him up on that,’ agreed Larry Roper, ‘I saw something once that had been repeated faithfully.'

‘What was it?’

He did not answer.

‘Sir?’

‘You’re too young, Brown.’ Georgina could not see Roper, but she had a suspicion that he was grinning.

She left that subject and told him that her only regret so far up here had been her very restricted view of the fabled Lucy.

‘I only saw an anabranch before,’ she reminded him, ‘but I would have liked to have looked across its sixty miles.’

He grunted. ‘That would be a long look, Brown. Anyway, it’s not sixty now, more like a mere thirty, and still dwindling.’

‘Yet I would have liked to have looked.’ Georgina could not help adding that.

‘Persistent boy, aren’t you? Very well then, tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow? But ’

‘But I want to get back? Yes, Brown, I do. But as it happens I want to look, too. Goodnight, George.’

‘Goodnight, boss.’

The next day, the charts put away now but the compass left out, they set straight through the bush in a north-west direction which Roper said should bring them to the main wide section of the strange river. Big River Country. Again Georgina heard Stepfather telling her about it, telling of its greatness and its lowliness, its eternal mysticism. Her excitement grew.

The Lucy did not let her down. They rounded a clump of sage and there it shimmered as far as the eye could reach. It was the bluest bluebell blue that Georgina had ever seen.

Forgetting she was supposed to be a male, she clapped her hands at it, ran down to its edge to look closer at it, to put in a toe. This then was the fabled river that dwindled to a trickle, sometimes disappeared altogether, but now it was a weaving expanse of water. Gulls flew over it. There were even waves crashing to the shore.

They spent the day there, with no thought of returning now. They explored the beachy edge, and even found a variety of crab. It was weird and wonderful, but most of all it was beautiful. More beautiful than Georgina could have dreamed.

‘Thank you, Larry.’ In her pleasure she did not hear herself say his name. If he noticed, he gave no sign.

They camped by the river, and every time Georgina woke that night she heard the waterbells of the Big Lucy. I think, she said a little deliriously to herself, I have never been happier in my life; I don’t know why, but I am.

The next morning they knew they really must start back, so after breakfast—bread, brisket and tea again—they set the jeep eastwards once more.

It was not until mid-morning that Roper stopped the waggon and said: ‘Trouble.’

‘The engine?’ Georgina asked.

‘No, thank heaven. It’s not our transport that’s letting us down, it’s the direction.’

‘Have I read wrongly?’

‘You’ve read it very well, George, but something has happened. Something like an upside-down creek that’s decided to right itself at the wrong moment. Do you recall a sticky patch yesterday?’

‘Yes,’ she said promptly.

‘That,’ and now Georgina noticed quite a large creek in front of them, ‘is the patch.’

‘It couldn’t be!’ she exclaimed.

‘Yes it is.’

‘It didn’t rain last night.’

‘That’s nothing to do with it, Brown. Somewhere it rained some time ago, and last night the water hit here, and our sticky patch, fed underground, changed to this creek.’