Chapter 7
Tingo was only an eight minute drive from Journey’s End. According to the sign, it boasted an official population of 330, although someone had clumsily changed the 0 to a 3 with a paintbrush. Whether this was in her family’s honour or not, Kim didn’t know.
She was waiting with Jake and Abbey on a rough-hewn timber bench outside the historic schoolhouse. The entire township of Tingo was historic, every building, all five of them: the general store-c*m-post office, school, garage, sports club and memorial hall. Picturesque Cedar Creek wound its way through the centre of town; a perennial water-course that rose in the Comboyne Plateau, eventually meeting the Manning River at Kilawarra, west of Wingham, eighty kilometres downstream.
The schoolhouse had gabled eaves and window boxe
