The first man Ross met who knew sheep the way a gambler knows odds was named Arthur “Blue” McInnes, though his hair hadn’t been blue for thirty years. It was the washed-out silver of an old coin and framed a face that looked like it had been carved out of leather, then left on a fence post for a few seasons.

Ross found him at the Echuca stockyards late on a Wednesday afternoon, sitting astride a gate, smoking a cigarette that had gone out halfway and never been relit. He wasn’t watching the sheep so much as judging them, the way a priest sizes up a congregation and knows who’s sinned before the first hymn.