.

      Captain Collet Barker was pleased with his successful expedition. The fertile plain looked promising for future settlement, which his military commanders in England had asked him to investigate. They were a jot tetchy about the French increasingly nosing around this southern part of New Holland – ‘Even devising dictionaries of the language of the inhabitants, you know – awfully worrying, by Jove!’ Barker had seen very few of these inhabitants on his exploration so far, but was pleased with the brief contact he had made. The man he had shaken hands with by the river had a good strong grip and friendly eyes. He was reminded of Mokare, a Noongar man he had befriended in Western Australia. But Barker’s assignment was not yet over. He was also charged with finding the mouth of the River Murray – a possible harbour for this potential colony. The inlet into the Pooke-Parringa was unsuitable, and another a few miles north looked swampy.

      Anchoring his ship further down the coast, he and his party set out overland for the river. On reaching the Murray mouth, Barker noticed a high sand bar on the other side and decided to swim over to have a better vantage point. He ignored the remonstrations of his companions, ‘The river is dangerously high!’ and ‘Surely this is taking duty too far.’ Or ‘Captain Sturt has warned that the natives are unfriendly!’ Barker felt totally confident in his relations with natives, having befriended Mokare and many other black men during his last post at King George’s Sound. He stripped, and jumped into the fast-flowing river, his trusty compass strapped to his head. His companions timed his crossing, nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds to be exact, and then watched him disappear over the sand bar. A couple of hours later they thought they heard a cry. Exceedingly anxious by now, they made a large fire and waited. Nightfall came, bringing with it the ominous sounds of a native dirge. A chain of small fires lit the sand hills.

      ‘All night did those dismal sounds echo along that lonely shore,’ wrote Barker’s batman. What he did not yet know was that a trio of Ngarrindjeri had spotted Barker’s tracks in the dunes. All three men had lost women to brutal white-skins who had shot their clansmen with their ‘crack-a-backs’. And now here was a loathed white-skin on their territory! Naked. That was puzzling. Was he carrying a ‘crack-a-back’? He held something round and suspicious which glistened in the sun. They approached cautiously. One threw a spear that went through the white man’s thigh. Barker turned in horror, and staggered forward, shouting,

      ‘No, no, stop. You don’t understand. I am a friend! I have no gun. Stop!’

      Another spear entered his left leg. Barker ran for the water.

      ‘No, no! For the love of God, I implore you!’

      The next spear went through his back.

      Svitochka begged her mother to let her out the front gate to play. Tatiana, overwhelmed by all her new chores, snapped. ‘Play out the back!’ Svitochka, hearing the shouts and screams of the children, persisted. Tatiana relented and opened the front gate latch, which the child couldn’t reach.

      Blinking in the bright sunlight, Svitochka saw a pretty girl with ringlets coming towards her. She smiled shyly. The children stopped playing. Sudden silence. She pressed back uncertainly into the gate. It didn’t budge. The girl with the ringlets approached threateningly. Svitochka’s smile faded. A torrent of words rained upon her. She didn’t understand them, but knew they were unkind. Her plaits hung heavily. She wished they would transform into ringlets. Then she caught the glint of metal at the other end of the street. Border guards on motorbikes flashed before her eyes. A big boy with guns strode menacingly towards her. A frozen scream rose in her throat. Chillingly, she knew this was her execution.

      Kirrila ached to be back on her pangkarra; to laugh and squabble with the women; to gather kangatta berries; to dig for roots with her katta; to sing the songs associated with each fruit of the earth. Even the humble radish, the kandara, had its own special song. She missed her husband, who had been away hunting when she had been dragged off. Their joining had been a sparkling one. She remembered with fondness how she had to carry her own fire-stick from her family group, and join it with that of her intended. And what a ‘kindling of fire’ their marriage had been. All danced under a pregnant moon, happy faces flickering in the conflagration of the joint fire-sticks.

      Enough was enough. She had to leave this bad place. She had swelled with child too many times, and had just strangled another at birth. She knew she couldn’t do it again. She waited until the moon was full, weather signs favourable, and her captors full of rum. She made up the fire as usual and heated up stones for the evening meal. She wrapped the wallaby she’d caught in leaves and placed it in the freshly dug kanyayappa containing the hot stones. After feasting on the wallaby, the men stretched out and drank copious amounts of a new consignment of rum.

      Kirrila slipped away to the water’s edge. She trembled with exhilaration and fear; exhilaration that she was leaving this miserable existence, and fear of the arduous swim ahead. She doubted that anyone had ever made it, and moreover, she was not a sea person. Her people were of the land and that is where she longed to be more than anything else in the world, or at least die in the attempt. A light west wind nudged her gently as she struck out through the vast sea. The beautiful Kakirra was welling up in the east, her radiance flooding the waters. Kirrila swam slowly and steadily into her light.

      Svitochka’s screams pierced the leaden stillness of Adelaide suburbia. Tatiana rushed out the front gate, grabbed her child and unleashed a torrent of Slavic abuse. The children scampered. She guided the sobbing Svitochka into the house, not noticing the ravaged face at next-door’s window. Jeanette, who had witnessed the whole scene, desperately attempted to stand on her leg irons, but had crashed forward on to the window ledge. Heidi, smiling in blonde plaits on the book cover, hurtled to the floor. Jeanette let out an agonised shriek as pain pierced her body. Tears rolled helplessly down her face.

      Inside Number 48, Svitochka cried uncontrollably. Tatiana tried to shush her, as old Mrs Bressler was trying to rest. Svitochka sobbed as if her heart would break.

      ‘Don’t take any notice of them; they’re just stupid kids,’ pronounced Miss Bressler briskly, as she made a pot of tea.

      There was a knock at the back door. It was Jeanette’s mother. She held out a tray of cakes to the weeping child.

      ‘These are from my daughter Jeanette. She invites you over to play.’

      Svitochka didn’t understand the words but was arrested mid-sob at the sight of the cakes. They were all in the shapes of frogs. Two green, two white and two pink. She was instantly enchanted, and let her hot face and injured heart be soothed.

      ‘Zjaba,’ said Svitochka, smiling through tears, pointing at one. ‘Zjaba.’

      ‘Frog,’ corrected Miss Bressler, gently. ‘Frog.’

      ‘Flog,’ copied Svitochka, trying to get her tongue around the word. ‘Flog.’

       1830, Newgate Prison, London

      Edward Gibbon Wakefield was dreaming of a model British colony in Australia, where gentlemen capitalists would buy land at a good price even before they left Britain, and live in a ‘paradise of dissent’, freely practising whatever religion they pleased. Proceeds would pay for passages of labourers, thus not tarnishing the colony with the convict troubles plaguing other Australian settlements.

      While most inmates were crammed together at the notorious Newgate Prison, Wakefield commanded a commodious cell, and even a serving maid. His habit of marrying or abducting a series of young heiresses had, as well as landing him in gaol, made him rather wealthy.

       1830, Bedlam Lunatic Asylum, London