There was dust everywhere; it was a red-hot world of dust. It lay upon the roads where the labouring wheel tracks marked them out; but the whole long plain was dust as well. Neither grass nor any green thing showed, and dead, dry salt-bush, eaten by the sheep till it looked like broken peasticks, was dust colour to the dancing horizon of that world of thirst. For seven months and a week, by Wilson's almanac, there had been no rain, and what dew had fallen the hot air drank when the fierce sun rose. And now not even the little fenced garden at Warribah showed any sign of verdure. Water was precious, and each day the north wind drank the water-holes drier and drier yet.
But, though the world of desolate Warribah was brown, in the roots of grass and the mere sticks of salt-bush was sufficient nourishment to keep life in the sheep who moved across the burnt paddocks of the station; what they needed, and what they began to suffer for was water, and the cloudless sky, luminous and terrible, bent over their world and breathed fire upon them.

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