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It was an advertisement in the
Sydney Morning Herald
: a Positions Vacant ad. It read:

‘Young man wanted to assist in general exploration work; some mineral and geological knowledge welcome, an acceptance of cattle advisable since location is on a cattle station, but most of all common sense essential. Ability to ride motorcycle an advantage, also to fend for self, as cabin provided is secluded and away from homestead. Successful applicant if a student would have ample time for study as actual work would be only intermittent. Enthusiasm necessary, good health essential, and a tolerance of the inland very important. Apply ’

There followed a telephone number, by the figures a Sydney connection. After the number there was a name and a place; the name was Roper, and the place was Lucy River.

The Lucy River! The Big Lucy! Lucy had been another of Stepfather’s ‘enchantments’, that is enchantments for Georgina. Stepfather had worked up there once and had done a paper on his findings, and his explanations as to how a river could grow from sixty yards to sixty miles, as with his account of mirages, had been both scientific and romantic, both practical and yet the stuff of dreams.

Georgina dreamed now as she re-read the advertisement that Joanne had sent in contempt.

Young man wanted.

If only, she moaned, and Joanne would have chalked up a success, I were a man instead!

She slept on it ... only she didn’t, not really, for she was awake for more than half the night. The Mirage Country, she kept on turning over and over in her mind, the Lucy River. Big Lucy, that could rise in a few hours to an inland sea. How could anyone sleep when they thought of that?

She thought next of Sydney, mean, hurried, dusty and discouraged as all big cities are now, under washed-out, grey-daubed skies. She thought of typing, not jumping on to her motorcycle and going out to look for ‘signs’ or for gossans, putting coloured ribbons on the finds so she could go back to them the next day.

She thought of mornings, new as mornings in cities are never new. She thought of the violets and reds and terracottas that the west, even only as far as the back of Bourke, puts on at evening.

Most of all she thought again of the Mirage Country, of Big Lucy; Lucy shrinking to a few feet in the Dry, then in the Wet spreading as far as the eye could stretch.

I can’t, she told the little caravan, I
can't
go back to the coast.

She was bleary-eyed at dawn, and just as it had been when she had been a child, emotion robbed her of her voice. But that wasn’t going to stop her, she was still going to apply. By phone. There had been no indication on the advertisement as to what date it had been lodged, so Georgina was taking no risk with time; she would telephone at once. That she had no voice didn’t deter her, either. She would stand beside Bill at the store and prompt him in every word.

Bill ran the last remaining business in Windmill Junction, a petrol station outside and an emporium within. At least an emporium had been intended, though a trading post had eventuated, and now even that was breaking up. Bill listened to Georgina’s hoarse proposal without enthusiasm until Georgina picked up a pair of smallish boots he was stuck with, and promised to buy them if he would if

While Bill turned over the proposition, Georgina looked around her and knew the same magic as she had when she . had first arrived here at Windmill. Who on earth could not be enchanted with a frontier town store?

The unbelievable confusion still intoxicated her .. . the muddled dress materials, the toppling tins of fruit, the billycans, the rugs, the ties, the ten-gallon hats, the perfumes. Bacon hung from rafters, and there was a solemn sausage that Bill wiped over every day with a damp rag. There were handkerchiefs, fish paste, chocolates that lost their colour at once, and strawberry jam.

‘Dunno,’ demurred Bill, but Georgina knew he wanted to make sure of his boot sale. Those smaller boots had certainly hung fire, and the way things were now ... She put down the money and whispered huskily to him:

'I'll dial, listen, then write down for you what I want you to say.’

‘All right,' said Bill.

Georgina dialled and connected almost at once. When the voice came from Sydney it was very clear, but she shuddered to think what the sound from this end must be. Bill’s store was never a silent refuge and now that he was selling out it had become a rowdy market.

She scribbled down:

‘I’m ringing concerning your ad.’

Bill recited it.

‘Oh yes,’ said the male voice from Sydney ... no, drawled, really ... ‘it’s still open.’

‘I’m speaking for a lady.’ Again Bill followed Georgina’s writing.

‘A
what?'
shouted the voice quite violently, no drawl now.

Georgina scrawled:

‘A lady. She has all the qualifications and she’s interested.’

Bill complied.

‘Then tell her,’ said the Sydney voice very distinctly, ‘no go. I am
not
interested. I don’t want a female. Do you get that?’

Georgina wrote urgently:

‘Please let me explain.’

Bill mouthed it.

‘No woman. Final.’

To make sure of it, the receiver at the other end went definitely down. Down with a bang.

‘What else, Georgina?’ asked Bill.

‘Nothing,’ Georgina whispered bleakly.

‘Bad luck, but you’ll still buy the boots?’

‘Yes, Bill.’ Georgina paid up. Then a thought struck her. ‘I’ll also buy a writing pad.’

‘Thanks, Georgina.’

‘And an envelope and stamp.’

‘I can even supply you a postman,’ Bill grinned, ‘there s a character going through tonight, and if you’d like to pen your message now he’d post it in Sydney.’

Georgina did, only she typed, not penned, it. She had brought the typewriter in with the intention of selling it, and now she blessed its unrevealing print, for she had, she knew, a distinctly un-male hand. It was a bit of luck, too, losing her voice, she thought as she straightened the paper in preparation; for if the ruse did come off, he, that man, wouldn’t be able to remember her, since she had not spoken a word, only written down what Bill had to say. Though, as Joanne would no doubt have scornfully pointed out, Georgina’s was a deep, rather husky male tone, no feminine trill.

She ran her tongue over her lips. She must make good sense. If she didn’t, she grinned privately, it could be put down to the atmosphere of a frontier store, to bacon, lingerie, dolls, boxes of rivets and a crowd of big brown bargaining men all mixed up together. Rowdily together.

‘Dear Sir,’ she duly began.

‘I hereby apply,’ she tapped on, undeterred by the noise and by Bill telling her to step on it as the ‘postman’ was leaving, ‘for your job. I am not yet a mining graduate, but I do have a good working knowledge of what you appear to require, and also I like cattle. I am young and can ride a cycle, and I can fend for myself. I am working on a thesis’ ... well, Stepfather’s uncompleted book in a way was a thesis ... ‘and I have a lot of common sense. I am enthusiastic, I have good health, and as you see from my address, Windmill Junction, I am tolerant of inland conditions.

‘Assuring you of my good faith,

‘George Brown.’

Well, she thought, Joanne had called her that, declared her to be George and not Georgina.

She put the letter in the envelope, typed the address, applied the stamp. The ‘character’ took it from her, and he must have made good time going south, for a wire came for Georgina three days after, and that, for Windmill Junction, was as fleet as sound.

The tone of the wire was genial; even the promise of a friendship sounded in it. Evidently this Roper person had no objection to men.

‘The job is yours, Mr Brown,' announced the telegram. ‘You appear the right type, even though only one other applicant got in touch—a woman. Definitely no woman apart from my housekeeper allowed here. Find your way to Roper’s, Lucy River. Mrs Willmott will brief you. I will be away for several weeks yet. Looking forward to a good association. L. Roper.’

‘I reckon,’ said Bill, looking at the length of the wire, ‘at what the post office is charging these days, that bloke must be on the right side of the ledger, Georgina.’

‘I reckon so, too,’ Georgina smiled back. She could have added: ‘But so am I, Bill.’

For though she was leaving here she was not going back to Sydney; instead she was going to Stepfather’s country, the fabled Mirage Country, the Lucy River country where water could spread from sixty yards to sixty miles overnight. She was going to desert that could break your heart one day then fill it with joy the next day, to sand and gibber and everything dead that could change before your eyes to grass and flowers.

I think, thought Georgina, almost achingly happy, that although I haven’t been there before, I’m going home.

It
took Georgina three days to wind up her stepfather’s, now Joanne’s, affairs. The amount she managed to coax out of the Windmill Junctioneers was so meagre that she knew Joanne would be enraged, but as the locals were all as she was, getting ready to move on, she couldn’t blame them for not wanting to buy; or if they did buy for giving as little as possible, as they would probably have to leave the loot behind, when they finally took off. Under the circumstances she considered that Joanne had been lucky to sell anything at all.

She had decided to defy her stepsister and retain the typewriter. If she finally got into the employ of Mr Roper of Lucy River (and the more she thought about
that
, the less resolved she became) she would need, the machine for his reports. Her writing, if not her deep voice, would give her away at once. As soon as she was settled wherever Fate decided her to settle, she would drop a line to Joanne and tell her she would start paying her so-called debts from any salary she received. Joanne was not entitled to the money, but it was the easiest way out.

The caravan, she soon found out, was a white elephant. No one wanted a shabby little caravan; these days the prospectors went in for fitted motor vans, for the roads were bad enough for four wheels, let alone more wheels again that had to be towed behind.

Disheartened after putting it to a dozen sympathetic but hard-up prospectors, suddenly it came to Georgina. Bill. Good old Bill.

‘But I don’t want a caravan, Georgina,’ Bill objected.

‘Free,’ enticed Georgina, ‘gratis. Not a single cent.’

‘Where’s the catch?’

‘No catch.’

‘Then ?’ He looked suspicious.

‘Simple. You tucker me.’

‘Tucker you!’ Bill looked at her indignantly. ‘It’s more than the caravan’s worth. I’m winding up, Georgina, you know that. What do I want with a van?’

‘A van at the price of a ration of flour, sugar, bacon and bully beef! ’

‘And
the rest,’ groaned Bill. 'I know women.’

‘Only I won’t be one.’

‘What?’

‘Only I’ll accept whatever you give me,’ Georgina changed it adroitly, and Bill gave her a suspicious look, then scratched his head.

‘Well, I suppose someone could come along to buy it,’ he said dubiously.

Georgina grinned. ‘They will. They’ll need a caravan and you’ll make a handsome profit.’

‘I haven’t said I’ll take it yet.’

‘Put in some tinned fruit, too, Bill, some nuts, some ’

‘All right, Georgina. When are you pushing off?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Where to? I’ll need a forwarding address for your letters.’

She shook her head. ‘No letters. I’ll write to my friends myself.’

‘I don’t know if I ought to be in on this; you’re a very young girl and it’s a very big country.’ Bill frowned. ‘You’re not going to that bloke who sent you the telegram, are you? What was in the telegram, Georgina?’

‘No, I suppose when it comes to it I’m not going there.’ For the more Georgina thought about it, thought
sanely,
she knew she couldn’t go. Masquerading as a man was magazine stuff, it read well, but it couldn’t happen. There were too many traps. She thought ruefully that even when she applied for the job she had known in her heart it couldn’t happen; that things like that simply didn't come off. But the very act of applying, even of thinking about it, had been stimulating when she needed stimulation ... and from it sprang another idea. She would make for the Lucy River, and on the way she would strike something. It would be very unusual if none of the homesteads she stopped at did not make an offer of a job; they invariably did. Then if they didn’t, she could still go on to the Lucy, to Roper’s, and remain there, until just before the big boss got back—he had said he would be a few weeks yet—then get out.

‘Wherever you’re going,’ grumbled Bill, ‘you seem pleased about it.'

‘You should be, too, gaining a free caravan. Make it a beautiful tucker bag, Bill. I’ll call tomorrow morning.’ Leaving Windmill Junction might have tom at Georgina if she had been returning to Sydney, but hitting further west instead only lifted her spirits. She waved to everyone she passed as she went into town the next morning to collect her tucker bag, then when she reached the store she rewarded Bill with a kiss.

‘So long, old-timer,’ she said, ‘if you haven’t tuckered me well, I’ll haunt you.’

Bill scowled. ‘Just watch your step, young Georgina, the west isn’t what it used to be.’

That was true. These days people did not camp at night just where they found themselves, as in the old days; they sought shelter, and they locked up.

Georgina nodded back at Bill. Travelling in her casual outfit, she had no intention of camping. She would put up each night at a station, a usual thing out here. Homestead wives were always eager for female company.

‘Got your survival kit?’ Bill grumbled.

‘Yes, also essential repair tools and a first aid box,’ she confirmed.

‘Don’t take a wrong road—it’s easy out there, wind blows the sand so you can see a dozen roads.’