1893

1893 is the novel’s central period of converging personal and historical pressures: economic depression strains households dependent on droving, settler development intensifies dispossession, and seasonal weather governs movement and survival. Rather than presenting the year as a single uninterrupted chronology, the narrative sets Molly Johnson’s danger in late May against earlier scenes that disclose the family’s precarious circumstances and the longer history of colonial pressure.

Chronology and Narrative Structure

The narrative opens its principal action in late May 1893, a few hours before midnight, with Molly badly beaten and thinking first of her children and her need to live for them. It then moves back a month, shifting from that crisis to the everyday rhythms of her household. This backward movement makes the opening danger a frame for the later domestic scenes: ordinary family life is shown under the shadow of an outcome the reader already knows is approaching.

Other recollections extend the chronology further. An episode set two weeks earlier places Molly in the Snowy Mountains amid persistent autumn rain, while the account of Waraganj’s earlier life reaches back to the encroachment that reshaped Ngarigo life and the development of the district. These shifts connect present danger to conditions accumulated over time, rather than treating each crisis as isolated.

Household Economy and Droving

The economic depression has reached Molly’s household through the collapse of the sheep industry. The droving work on which the family relies follows a recurring seasonal pattern: Joe Johnson and his companions take sheep brought down from Queensland into the high country for three months, then return them before the first snowfall for sale. This work brings income, but also keeps Joe away for long stretches; Molly describes those absences as time when she can be with her children without him.

The strain is visible in the family’s clothes and in the question of Danny’s future. On their Sunday walks, the children wear their best clothes, which are still little more than rags; the younger boys’ worn boots barely fit, and Danny is barefoot. Molly expects that he may have to begin droving the following year, although she wants him to remain at home. His approaching adulthood is therefore tied not only to family feeling but to the household’s narrowing economic choices.

The downturn also reaches the settlers’ commercial world. Senator Turner’s policy of strict economy and balanced budgets is presented as an attempt to restore public confidence, but whether it will relieve the depression remains uncertain. The Edwards family’s wool enterprise, which sells local wool in Melbourne to overseas markets and has helped sustain farmers and drovers, is losing ground as the depression spreads. Everton’s development is affected in turn, linking local infrastructure and employment to distant markets and the fortunes of the wool trade.

Land, Settlement, and Dispossession

The year’s economic changes unfold alongside the expansion of settler power. District meetings discuss developing the outpost of Cresthill into a town, with Charles Edwards arguing that the stock route and arriving settlers make a town commercially viable. He offers to help finance the project while insisting that Aboriginal people must be controlled. The proposal is approved and implemented quickly, with the consequences falling on the clans of the alpine country.

The narrative links that development to a broader loss of freedom for the Ngarigo and neighbouring peoples. Settlers take land, erect fences, and drive people away from their homelands, restricting the seasonal movement on which their lives had depended. The passage describes a colonial policy under which white men claim a right to shoot Aboriginal people on sight or disperse them. Settlement is thus not simply the growth of a town: it is an enforced reordering of land, movement, and safety.

Everton’s later construction shows the material form of that expansion. Its plans include a jailhouse, former troopers’ quarters, the Stanlow Inn, a general store, a postal house, and new saleyards. The town’s name itself reflects a local decision: the Edwards matriarch’s name, Evelyn, gives way to the more masculine Everton preferred by the all-male council. Development proceeds amid depression and uncertainty, but its institutions and commercial routes take shape on land already marked by colonial dispossession.

Weather, Movement, and Survival

Seasonal conditions are active forces in the lives of the characters. In the mountains, rain falls continuously for a week, and floodwater rises after heavy rain farther north. Delphi’s rag doll floats away in the swelling river, alerting the children to the changing water. Molly wakes to the sound of the flood and sees a boulder more than six feet high being carried downstream; she pulls Delphi away from the river and orders the boys off the rocks. The scene makes the danger of the landscape immediate and shows how quickly ordinary family activity can become a struggle for safety.

Seasonal knowledge also shapes Yadaka’s movement. He explains that his people leave the mountains for the north when the first mist rises in the valleys, so their feet will not grow cold. Danny points out that the first mist has already appeared, while Yadaka says he has tried to leave. The exchange places his continued presence in the mountains against a customary seasonal route, giving the weather both practical and cultural significance.

Winter later turns that danger into a test of the children’s endurance. High in the snow-covered mountains, Danny carries Delphi, whose lashes are forming icicles; Joe Junior helps Henry James rise from the deep snow, and the children continue through snow up to their knees. They are exhausted and close to giving up as Danny searches for the landmarks associated with Yadaka’s cave. The mountain journey therefore joins environmental hardship to the children’s effort to reach shelter and preserve their family.

The Year’s Interlocking Pressures

The several timelines make 1893 more than a date for the central events. Molly’s household faces reduced work and the prospect of sending Danny away to earn a living; the expanding town offers commercial infrastructure while advancing a settlement process that displaces Aboriginal people; and seasonal weather determines when people can travel and whether they can remain safe. These pressures meet in the characters’ decisions about family, work, and movement.

The novel’s shifts between immediate scenes and earlier histories also alter what the year means. The opening crisis in late May is not detached from the everyday scarcity shown a month earlier, nor from the longer history of land seizure and coercive settlement. By placing family hardship, economic change, colonial policy, and environmental danger within the same period, the narrative presents survival as shaped by forces operating at once in the home, the market, the town, and the landscape.