The boots were beginning to suffer a bit. Stan had lost part of his sole and it flopped like the mouth of a politician at election time. Steve’s sturdy boots began to give way and the old Blundstones were beginning to look like something you give to teething dogs.

A( last, we saw a pine tree in amongst the forest and we knew we were near Wangarabelle. Underneath the pine were the relics of one man’s broken dream. A fallen post and rail fence, a patch of cacti, broken stone pots, old rusting butter churns and his pastures which once ran down to the river’s edge, all covered in kunzia tea tree scrub. All that effort to come to nought except one pine tree gradually being besieged by rot. The forest recovers its own. How men’s dreams fade.