Maybe I was six, not seven, that morning when my father said in no more than a dozen words: “Come on, son, we’re off to Queensland. Better check Nerang.” My little sisters and the baby would stay at home with Mum. I see now how she may have planned it— the four of us in just five years across a width of war. Already I had done the gates on trips to outer paddocks, my father even then insisting I do the getting out-and-down their opening required. A day-long stretch of gravel waited … with only here and there a…