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cerulean sky.
    Tony must have loved this place. The volcanic remnants, the spiky grasstrees; the bushland dotted with palms and soaring river gums, the rolling green paddocks. And yet he’d never spoken of his home, his family, his schooldays, his friends, or the land that had so obviously inspired his life’s work. I couldn’t begin to guess why, but one thing was clear – bad memories lurked in Tony’s unspoken childhood, memories which he’d found too painful to face, even as an adult.
    I recalled the Courier-Mail article I’d found: Human remains discovered in a muddy dam, presumably those of a man who’d gone missing twenty years ago. Back in Melbourne it’d been easy enough to dismiss it as coincidence, but driving through this vibrant landscape so reminiscent of Tony’s paintings, I had to wonder. They found him , Tony had said. They found him . Had he known the man in the dam, after all?
    Unclamping my fingers from the steering wheel, I patted my jeans pocket. The big iron key I’d stowed there was a solidreminder that we were driving straight into the past. Tony’s past. Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a brilliant idea, and if it hadn’t been for Bronwyn I might have turned the car around and gone home.
    Just after two o’clock we entered the wide dusty streets of Magpie Creek. Passing a huge wirework sculpture of a horse, we hooked through a roundabout and entered a tree-lined avenue. An elderly couple sat on the verandah of a classic old pub, but otherwise the town appeared deserted. I counted two bottle shops, a BP service station, a Caltex service station, four tiny cafes, and a quaint little post office. There was even a historic-looking cinema complete with a billboard of curling movie posters and a mangy dog sniffing in the doorway. Flocks of pink rosellas swarmed in the upper branches of an enormous fig tree, their piercing calls the only intrusion in the stillness.
    ‘It’s a ghost town,’ Bronwyn said.
    ‘It’s just too hot for people to be outside,’ I reasoned. ‘They’ll probably come out in droves when the sun goes down.’
    ‘Yeah, like blood-sucking zombies.’
    I smiled. ‘There’s a fish and chip shop over there. Do you want to stop for lunch?’
    ‘I’m not hungry.’ She was staring through the windscreen with obvious impatience, her eyes aglow. I guessed that, hungry or not, she had no intention of delaying our journey with something as non-essential as food.
    Soon the town receded behind us. The map Tony’s lawyer had given me was clearly marked with the name of the road we wanted, but nearly five minutes passed before I spotted the buckled old signpost. It was leaning dangerously low to the roadside, pockmarked with bullet holes, its chipped lettering almost unreadable.
    ‘This is it,’ Bronwyn said excitedly, ‘Briarfield Road.’
    We sped past green paddocks and corridors of thick bush, manoeuvring swayback curves and bouncing over bone-rattlingbridges and cattle grids. At one point we passed a large timber gate – behind it, a gravel track wound up the hillside to a dilapidated dwelling. I drove on, but saw nothing resembling Tony’s old homestead. After a mile or so, the bitumen road turned to dirt, then ended abruptly at a wall of bush.
    Pulling over, I examined the map. Then I twisted in my seat to squint back the way we’d come.
    Trees loomed at the roadside, sparse shade cowering at their feet. Beyond the heat haze stretched a horizon of prehistoric hills. I saw nothing I recognised. No buildings, no familiar rock formations. We might as well have just landed on the moon.
    Bronwyn narrowed her eyes at me. ‘Mum, are we lost?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘Then where are we?’
    I crumpled the map back in my tote, then revved the motor and cut a U-turn into the gravel.
    ‘We’ll head back to the main road,’ I decided. ‘This time keep your eyes peeled. We probably drove straight past it.’

    I sped back along the dirt track, churning up a