Probably it was much the same as any other summer’s day—the paddocks bleached; the hills blue as grapebloom; the sun burning down through the still, slow afternoon. And the car that rattled past raised a slanting plume of dust that hung over the paddocks—the way it always did in summer.

Della and I were on our way to the swimming-hole. And the swimming-hole was—well, just as it always was in summer—still and rushy-cool, an edge of damp clay above the water-line marking its shrinking.