THEN

LIKE SO MANY human faculties that had been tested and failed in that new colony, the retrieval of accurate collective memory had been tried and found sorely wanting. Nevertheless, any tattered scraps of recollection salvaged about the day’s events coalesced around the point that the journey had started smoothly enough. Although the familiar wharf, the steamer, the excitement of the passengers and the promise of unimagined pleasures suggested adventure, there were no indications about the extent to which each of those involved would be transformed. It was November 1889, and in the settlement of Brisbane the weather was behaving itself – hot, but not so hot that it was stifling. Yet.