A family of four, Dad, son, Mum and daughter, strode along the jetty into the setting sun. There was a purpose in their stride and the set of their shoulders. Father and son marched ahead, while mother and daughter brought up the rear. All were laden with crab-nets, fishing rods, buckets of food, bait and bags.

Tea&Whiskers Newsletter for the Month of September

We found him sitting in an experimental shaft dug into the wall of an opal mine. It was just above the water level of an abandoned cutting that had flooded when the miner excavated for opal. The hydrologist was reading the paper; several books lay strewn beside him.

Children ran every which way, many of them in just their birthday suit. They were to sit on the floor at the front of the hall so they could see but none took any responsibility for them, and they ran amok. Crocodile Dundee was showing, and the whole town attended. The building, a tin shed, was called the Progress Hall. The noise level was rising; soon, the roof would lift off.