Scene Two: The Creek.

Late afternoon; the rocky waterhole where children have been gathering these past few months when other amusements were out of reach, or banned, or closed. Dogs wheel and race; children splash. The angelic man from the church is there with assorted family; grandchildren in the water, knots of adults on the bank. After a while wife and daughter depart with two grandchildren, leaving him with the youngest, a boy of about four.

The child ploughs the water, and for a time the man darts along the bank, following him up and down; seems unfamiliar with the technique of calm supervision. The child is crying, must have slipped or stood on a sharp rock. The grandfather shouts at him; the quavering alto now with a hint of wheedling menace. The boy ignores him and gives little soliloquised sobs, face cast downward as if looking sorrowfully for a lost fish. He nears the edge of the water. The man seizes him and shakes him. ‘Stop crying!’ he commands. ‘Why are you crying? You are a boy! Boys never cry. Girls cry! You are not a girl!’ He drags the sad child away from the water and up to the path that runs behind a line of old eucalypts, and they disappear.