But in spite of our isolation, our unglamorous life, I loved being a rural. Other kids couldn’t wait to get away to the city. It was like, the moment they finished school they’d be at the bus depot with their bags packed. They wanted crowds and noise and fast food stores and huge shopping centres. They wanted adrenalin pumping through their veins. I liked those things, in small doses, and I knew that in my life I’d like to spend good lengths of time in the city. But I also knew where I most liked to be, and that was out here, even if I did spend half my life headfirst in a tractor engine, or pulling a lamb out of a barbed-wire fence, or getting kicked black and blue by a heifer when I got between her and her calf.

At that stage I still hadn’t come to terms with what had happened. That’s not surprising. We knew so little. All we had were clues, guesses, surmises. For instance, I wouldn’t allow myself to really consider the possibility that Mum or Dad – or anyone else – had been injured or killed. I mean, I knew in my logical mind that such things were logical outcomes of invasions and fights and wars, but my logical mind was in a little box My imagination was in another box entirely and I wasn’t letting one transmit to the other. I guess you can’t really comprehend that your parents will ever die. It’s like contemplating your own death.

My feelings were in another box again. During that walk I was desperate to keep them sealed up.

But I did let myself assume that my parents were being held somewhere, against their will. I pictured them, Dad, frustrated and angry, like a bull in a pen, refusing to accept what had happened, refusing to accept anyone else’s authority. He wouldn’t let himself begin to try to understand what was going on, why these people had come. He wouldn’t want to know what their language was, or their ideas, or their culture. Even through my shock and horror I still wanted to understand; I still wanted answers to those questions.

Mum would be different. She’d be concentrating on keeping her mind clear, on not being taken over mentally. I pictured her staring out over the bare hills, through the fence of a prison camp maybe, ignoring the petty distractions, the background voices, the deliberate irritations.

Then I realised I was just thinking of both my parents as they were at home.

We’d reached the end of Racecourse Road. I’d fallen a little behind Kevin and Corrie, and they were waiting for me. We formed a little dark huddle between a tree and a fence. Anyone seeing us might have mistaken us for a strange black growth that had sprouted from the ground. It was getting quite cold and I felt the other two shivering as we crouched together.

‘We’ll have to be extra careful now that we’re so close,’ Kevin whispered. ‘Try not to get so far behind, Ellie.’

‘Sorry. I was thinking.’

‘Well, what’s the plan?’ he asked.

‘Just to get close enough to have a look,’ Corrie said. ‘We don’t have all that much time. The main thing’s to be careful. If we can’t see anything then we just go back to Robyn’s. If there’s anyone there the dumbest thing we could do would be to have them see us and come after us.’

‘OK, agreed,’ Kevin said. He started standing. That annoyed me. It was typical Kevin not to ask me what I thought. I pulled him back down.

‘What?’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get a move on El.’

‘That doesn’t mean rushing in like idiots. For example, what if we do get seen? Or if we get chased? We can’t just run back to Robyn’s place. That’d lead them there.’

‘Well I guess, separate. It’d be harder for them to chase three different people than one group. Then, if we’re sure we’re not being followed, make our own way back to Robyn’s.’

‘OK.’

‘Is that all?’

‘No! If we’re being strictly logical, like Homer was before, we shouldn’t all sneak in close to the Showground. One of us should go and the other two stay here. Less chance of being seen, and less loss if one gets caught.’

Corrie gave a little cry. ‘No! That’s being too logical! You’re my best friends! I don’t want to be that logical!’

Neither did I, when I thought about it. ‘OK then,’ I said. ‘All for one and one for all. Let’s go. The three musketeers.’

We slipped across the road like shadows and moved around the corner. The light from the Showground reached even here, faintly, but enough to make a difference. We stopped at its edge, feeling nervous. It was as though a single step into that light would immediately make us visible to a whole army of hostile watchers. It was frightening.

That was the first moment at which I started to realise what true courage was. Up until then, everything had been unreal, like a night-stalking game at a school camp. To come out of the darkness now would be to show courage of a type that I’d never had to show before, never even known about. I had to search my own mind and body to find if there was a new part of me somewhere. I felt there was a spirit in me that could do this thing, but it was a spirit I hadn’t known about. If I could only find it I could connect with it and then maybe, just maybe, I could start to defrost the fear that had frozen my body. Maybe I could do this dangerous and terrible thing.

A small single movement was my key to finding my spirit. There was a tree about four steps away, in front of me and to my left, well inside the zone of light from the Showground. I suddenly made myself leave the darkness and go to it, in four quick light steps, a dance that surprised me, but made me feel a little light-headed and proud. That’s it! I thought. I’ve done it! It was a dance of courage. I felt then, and still feel now, that I was transformed by those four steps. At that moment I stopped being an innocent rural teenager and started becoming someone else, a more complicated and capable person, a force to be reckoned with even, not just a polite obedient kid. There wasn’t time then to explore this new and interesting me, but I promised myself I’d do it later.

I still felt light-headed when Kevin, then Corrie, joined me, moments later. We looked at each other and grinned, proud and excited and a little disbelieving. ‘OK, what’s next?’ Kevin asked. Suddenly he was looking to me for directions. Maybe he recognised how I’d been changed in those few seconds. But then surely he had been too?

‘Keep heading left, from tree to tree. We need to get to that big gum. That’ll put us opposite the wood-chop area. We’ll get a bit of a view from there.’

I took off as soon as I’d finished speaking, so psyched up that I didn’t realise I was doing to Kevin what I’d objected to his doing to me, moments earlier. From my new vantage point I could see human movement three men in uniforms emerged slowly from the shadows behind the grandstand and walked steadily around the perimeter of the wire fence. They carried weapons of some kind, big rifles maybe, but it was too far to see them clearly. Despite all the evidence that we’d had already, this was the first confirmation that an enemy army was in our country, and in control It was unbelievable, horrible. I felt my body fill with fear and anger. I wanted to yell at them to get out, and I wanted to run away and hide. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

After they’d faded out of sight again, behind the trotters’ stables, I heard the quick rush of light feet as Kevin and Corrie reached me.

‘Did you see the men?’ I asked.

‘Well, yes and no,’ Corrie whispered. ‘They weren’t all men. At least one was a woman.’

‘Really? Are you sure?’

She shrugged. ‘You want to know the colour of their buttons?’

I took her point. Corrie does have good eyesight.

We kept going, making our little dashes from tree to tree, until at last we were gathered, panting, behind the big river gum. From there we peered out cautiously: Corrie, kneeling, looking around the base from the right; Kevin, crouching, looking through a low fork; and me, standing on the other side, peeping around the trunk. We were in quite a good spot, about sixty metres from the fence and able to see a third of the Showground. The first thing I noticed was a number of big tents on the oval. They were all different shapes and colours, but they were all big. The second thing was another couple of soldiers, with weapons, standing on the trotting track. They weren’t doing anything, just standing, one facing the tents and one facing the pavilions. It was obvious that they were sentries, guarding whatever was in the tents probably. One was a woman, too; Corrie had been right.