Australia

Australia enters the story as more than a distant destination: it is a place where pastoral land, family inheritance, international business, and intimate relationships converge. It offers Adam Fairley a possible source of wool and investment, represents the wealth and responsibilities Paul McGill inherits from Bruce McGill, and becomes a recurring part of Emma Harte Lowther and Paul’s shared life. Its distance also gives it emotional force, especially when Paul’s travel plans threaten to separate him from Emma as war approaches.

A Pastoral Investment and Source of Supply

In conversation with Adam, Bruce describes a life and business far from Yorkshire. He invites Adam to visit Dunoon and explains that he and his son Paul live at a sheep station in Coonamble, with station hands and a housekeeper. Bruce’s wife has been dead for three years. The invitation is personal, but it also opens into a commercial proposal: Adam could buy Australian land, establish a small sheep station, and rely on Bruce to find suitable workers and supervise it in his absence. Bruce presents ownership of a station as a way for Adam to become his own supplier, linking an overseas investment to the needs of his existing business.

The proposal has a specific industrial context. The account of Fairley’s wool trade emphasizes how local geography shapes textile production: the West Riding has sheep suited to its coarse grazing, and streams whose soft water is kind to fibres. Bruce’s suggestion points toward a second, overseas route to securing a supply of wool. The story does not establish that Adam buys land or that the proposed station is created; its significance lies in making Australia imaginable as a practical extension of the family’s manufacturing interests. The invitation also reflects how easily commercial planning crosses distance: Bruce offers not just a place to stay, but local knowledge and management that might make an absentee investment workable.

Family Wealth and Inherited Responsibilities

Australia is also the setting through which Paul’s family position becomes clearer to Emma. Bruce is described as a millionaire and one of the most powerful men in Australia, and Paul, his only son and only child, stands to inherit a vast sheep ranch, mineral rights, mining interests, and coal fields. His background therefore connects pastoral property to other forms of resource wealth. Paul’s importance in the story is not limited to his inherited position, however: the fortune and businesses that surround him bring practical obligations that repeatedly shape his movements.

After returning to Australia in 1919, Paul intends first to see his father and then to return to Emma as soon as possible. Instead, he arrives in Sydney to face pressing family and business matters. His father is seriously unwell, and Paul must take over the reins of the business. In that unsettled period, he depends heavily on Marion Reese, his father’s trusted private secretary, to guide him through his new responsibilities and bring him up to date. Australia is thus the place where Paul’s personal hope of rejoining Emma meets the demands of succession. His return does not simply carry him home; it puts him at the centre of a business inheritance at a moment when his father’s health is failing.

A Shared Destination Across Years

Australia gradually becomes part of Emma and Paul’s life together. Paul takes Emma there on two of his annual trips, alongside journeys to European capitals, New York, and Texas. The country is one destination in a wide-ranging business and social world, but it is also a place Emma comes to know through repeated visits. Their travel reflects the scale of Paul’s interests and the wealth they share, while their time there allows his family life to extend beyond London.

When Daisy is five, Paul insists that she accompany him and Emma to Australia. After a week in Sydney, they travel to Coonamble and spend four weeks at Dunoon. There, Daisy forms an unusual bond with her half brother Howard, whose life is restricted by intellectual disability. Daisy’s affection reaches him in a way no one else has managed, and her attachment, alongside his dependence on her, moves both parents. The visits become an annual practice: Paul does not want Howard deprived of the joy Daisy brings him. Australia therefore serves not only as the location of Paul’s business interests, but as a family destination where a relationship between the children takes shape and is sustained through return.

Distance, War, and the Threat of Separation

The same distance that makes Australia a place of opportunity also makes it a source of anxiety. As the prospect of war in the Pacific grows, Paul decides to leave for Texas and then Australia, where he wants to attend to his interests and confer with the people running his companies. He believes he must act quickly rather than wait until later in the year, because Japan’s threat to the Pacific makes delay risky. He expects to be away for no more than two months, perhaps eight weeks, and reassures Emma that he intends to return to England before conflict begins.

Emma fears that the journey could become an involuntary separation lasting years if war breaks out before Paul can come back. She kneels at his feet and pleads with him not to go; he responds tenderly but maintains that he must attend to his businesses and ensure that they can operate if he is absent for longer than usual. The scene gathers the location’s central meanings into one decision: Australia is where family wealth and commercial responsibility require Paul’s presence, but its distance places strain on the life he and Emma have built together. Its role in the narrative is therefore double. It offers land, inheritance, and repeated family connection, while also making clear that an international business empire can draw its owners away from the people they most want to remain beside.