Each man labouring under forty pound of packweight in a rambling single file. They walked gentle park that morning, country far removed from the tangle and suffocation of Ben Lomond’s foothills. Everywhere they looked across that wooded grassland leapt boomers by the hundreds, great bounding beasts like cattle gone mad, and John Batman made a sport of potting them over great distances by firing from one knee or on the move, it mattered not which. The wounded roos made strange moans and they kicked their legs like dogs deep in dream and scores of crows descended from the sky to gather about the dead, tail feathers in the air, gobs of ruby-red meat flapping in their beaks. Around noon the company found themselves on a stark plain. It rolled away to the hills south and east and was barren of everything save sheep. They passed through flocks of ewes fording the road and through a cloying fleece stench as that broad white river opened and closed again behind them. Bigboned meat sheep of the sort Batman ran on his own farm as feed for the government stores and the chain gangs.
