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‘We’re lucky, we get a good connection. That’s a T-class engine and we now move to narrow gauge, so it’s a smaller train. Life’s about to get rattley,’ he warned. ‘I know that’s not a word,’ he added with a smile.

‘Maybe not, but I understand exactly what I’m being warned about,’ she said. ‘You eat the rest,’ she urged and he did like any twenty-year-old with a bottomless stomach would.

‘It’s quite flat from here to Orroroo, but then you’ll hear our engine struggle through the higher country before we drop down into Hammond and onto Quorn.’

Normally Fleur might have tuned out to this sort of conversation, but the truth was that she rather enjoyed listening to John making polite chitchat. If she remained engaged, it prevented her from allowing her mind to drift to Tom and whether they still had a future.

The Ghan was the name of the train that would take them to Farina and John hadn’t lied; the carriages were smaller and filled with hard, sit-up seats, although in First Class they were padded. Fleur and John were both lucky enough to be in that compartment.

‘I never usually travel First Class,’ John told her. ‘But finishing my training and becoming a qualified pilot felt special, so I treated myself.’

Fleur grinned. ‘Well, I’ve never taken such a long train journey and I purchased a first-class ticket because I had no idea what to expect. For instance, what’s all that noise at the back?’

He laughed. ‘They reserve the last carriage on these trains for the gangs of fettlers and railway workers. They’ve all done a week or probably more, hard at it on the tracks, so now they’re heading home to their families. The train will stop at every tiny, far-flung railway station to let them off and the further we go, the drunker they become.’ As he finished saying that, they heard a crash of glass. ‘Another longneck shatters in the dust,’ he explained. ‘They’re all pretty rough lads. You’ll never get their names. They go by the nickname of Lefty or Jacko, Crow or Budgie.’

Fleur chuckled. ‘Tom used to work in a shearing shed and explained it’s much the same.’

‘Yes, exactly. All characters. Some staying out of the way of mainstream life, others dodging the law, but all of them drink and smoke a lot.’

They heard more bottles shatter beside the slow-moving train as it continued its journey into the late afternoon.

They crossed some bridges and the train started to rattle loudly, the chairs squeaking, and Fleur began to feel her body bouncing in a way it hadn’t previously. ‘Where are we now?’ she asked.

‘Coming into Quorn and onwards to Hawker,’ he said.

It meant nothing to her, though she recalled that Jamie Wren had mentioned the town of Quorn. She told John.

‘Ah yes, all the new recruits from stations all over this region would have left for their training, and perhaps for Europe, from Quorn Station. It’s where east meets west in railway terms,’ he said with a grin. ‘Great romantic train journeys that cross the vast continent, and all the young men of our state gathering at Quorn to defend their King.’

It did sound romantic and so brave. Fleur wondered if John would have to defend his King soon. She gazed across the saltbush plains where, in the far distance, she could see a blue outline of hills to the east.

After their stop at Quorn, the sun was dipping low and the temperature was falling. The train began to pick up speed as it strained to get over the hills to reach Hawker.

She pointed and John craned his neck around to see. ‘That’s the start of the Flinders Ranges,’ he explained. ‘Soon you’ll see that blueish line become a purple range. They’re incredibly beautiful at sunrise or sunset.’

Pulling into Hawker at around six thirty, Fleur was beginning to feel the hours of the journey tugging at her eyelids, and her body no longer sat pertly upright. Sagging into the evening, she hoped it wouldn’t be a long stop but it was another half hour to take on water and the railway gang at the back had become increasingly rowdy and raucous.

‘They’ll start to thin soon. We’ll be dropping them off regularly from here on,’ John assured her. ‘Do you want anything from the refreshment room? It’s my turn.’

‘Nothing, thank you.’ She yawned.

‘I might get another tea,’ he said and while he was gone, Fleur wandered the platform in the other direction from where all the singing and explosive laughter emanated. She looked back over the train with its maroon paint, now covered in the thick rust-coloured dust of the landscape they wended their way through. It was twilight; there was still just enough light to enjoy the scenery but Fleur felt a true sense of the day ending by the time they stepped back on the train. The climb began north into the Flinders Ranges proper now, towards a place that John called Hookina.

All these curious names, like Parachilna and Beltana; she’d never heard of them. John pointed out places called Devil’s Peak and Willow’s Halt. Wilpena Pound, which John mentioned with a note of awe in his voice, was not something she could pick out, but she nodded as he gestured at a tall range that looked to be on fire from the way the setting sun lit stripes of craggy mountain tops, a burnished glow of orange reflecting its furnace.

It was beautiful enough to win a sigh from her. The response was pure and primitive, bathing her heart, it seemed, with an emotion she couldn’t name other than a sense of reverence. The fiery ranges made her feel small and inconsequential, a mere mote in time for these giants who had guarded the land, looking down upon it for millennia. Curiously, the surge of sentiment made her want to be in Tom’s arms even more, and she hadn’t thought her passion could run any harder or deeper for him. This was Tom’s country; the Flinders Ranges had held him in their wrinkled, encircling ruggedness for his whole life, and then they gave him to her.

As far as Tom knew, she’d rejected that gift. Irma’s cruelty knew no bounds. I have to make this right, she repeated in her mind and cast a thought to the rough, stony mountains that she would make good on her promise. The train frequently slowed to a halt but barely paused longer than a minute, and Fleur guessed this was to drop off the now drunk and disorderly fettlers in all the small towns along the way as John had warned.

After a mighty rattle and shake winding up through the ranges past Beltana and onto Leigh Creek, she got the nod from John.

‘It will be flat to Lyndhurst, and then Farina is next.’

‘Will anyone be waiting for you, John?’

He laughed. ‘Probably the whole family.’

And John had not lied. By the time the train sighed with a great bellow of steam into what was apparently the station at Farina, there were plenty of people standing alongside the equally small hut that served as the platform and ticket office.