After a morning of herding his mother's milking cows with Paddy, Joe, dressed in his town clothes, begins his journey up to Beechworth along the rain corrugated Woolshed road. As usual, Joe had made sure to slip away while Margret was in the dairy, he found it easier to leave quietly than to explain himself. Aaron would mock that this was because Joe was frightened of his mother, but the reality was far less simple. He sought to be understood by her, he wished for her to see him as he was and not merely as the son she wanted him to be. Joe had no desire to be chained to life on the farm, he wanted to savour all that was around him, but that came at a cost. Looking up at the overhanging clouds, which again threaten rain, Joe hastens his pace passed Thomas Lloyd’s Eagle Hotel, where the Chinese cook, his queue braid wrapped around his head, kneels beneath the veranda scrubbing a cast iron pot.