AT DAWN, THEY wake to squabbling. Shrikes flap and peck on the upturned carcass of a sheep, a cornucopia of wet guts spilling free. Mira wonders why there is any need to fight. She drags herself from the tent and hunts around for a thick branch to see if she can nudge the body off the bank where it’s snagged, back into the laminar flow.

Rude awakenings like this have been the exception. Most of the time it’s the sun cresting over the plains and magpies warbling tunefully, before punk cockatoos remember to shout. As a rule, it’s Mira who rises first, with Kim persisting in foggy denial for another fifteen or twenty until he stretches his limbs, fumbles around for his glasses and crawls out to join her. The dawns here feel like limbo, the night winds having subsided, and the air carrying none of the whelming heat that will arrive by mid-morning.