There’s a huddle of garden gnomes on the gravel strip outside the roadhouse. A huge hand-painted red sign advertises: Sale: Nomes. 2 for 1. Sandy hauls the heavy steering to the right and shudders the Holden off the red dirt highway. Maybe they’ll have urns. It’s midday but she doesn’t need fuel or food, not yet, so she pulls up just outside the window of the pre-fab hotbox that houses the sole cashier, presumably the procurer of the nomes, and yanks the handbrake up.

From the veranda of her house on the hill, Maria watched the sun rise from behind the ocean. The air was cool and wet and the bare rolling hills beneath her cradled the remainder of the mist. Going up the hill behind the house, the property was wrapped in bush – mostly gums. They seemed to her, swaying and impatient, like a brutish, sieging army.

Joe Crow never imagined he would live to see a day like today. The love of his life turned into an echo. The emptiness in his future overwhelming. Shan gave away her capacities to endure. He started back-tracking in time. Complexities of events. How did it come to this?

It shocks them to discover the sun is not a thing of beauty. The mother and the boy venture outside and though it is morning, the heat thrashes their skin. Hats are pitiful protection – little wonder the locals don’t wear them. They hurry back inside. This house was built in the 80s and retains its orange lino kitchen and ineffectual fans.