‘THIS IS HOW it was, when I saw you for the first time.’

When Mackenzie Lachlan butted up against the side of Australia he was twenty-five, with nowhere in particular to go and no one in particular to be. Walking up from his ship’s anchorage on the too-bright, too-blue harbour, he turned at the sound of a Glaswegian accent – more angular than his northerly Scots, but still friendly for being familiar – and found himself talking to a rosy man called Ewan who’d been ashore a month and found a job on the railways. ‘It’s way away, laddie,’ he’d said to Mac Lachlan, ‘out in the space where your family must be from,’ and he punched at his shoulder and laughed as Mac frowned. ‘A river called Lachlan, man; I’m taking engines out there, out to the plains.’ And Mac Lachlan, who liked a good story, thought he’d like to see the river that ran along in his name.