What the shearers quarters in Silver Clouds, would have looked like.
If you have read or are reading, Silver Clouds, you may have got up to page 257 (also the start of chapter 23). In this chapter, Tessa is rummaging around in a set of shearers quarters, which are over 100 years old. The building has thick walls and they are whitewashed with a lime solution.
See the wall in the top photo? It’s nearly 20cm thick and this is exactly how the bedrooms in these quarters would have looked back then and how I imagined it when I was writing this scene. These are even whitewashed too.
The grove of Mallee Trees I thought the old cemetery would have been in
This is also the chapter that Tessa finds an old family cemetery, hidden in amongst a grove of Mallee trees. Her forefathers had chosen this spot as their final resting place and I imagined it, just like this photo above.
By the time Tessa found it, their graves were neglected and overgrown. But she did find the plot she was looking for marked by words etched into a fence. “Forever yours, forever mine”. This phrase was the same as was engraved on two wedding rings, she had found hidden at her Aunty Spider’s house. And it is these rings which are at the heart of the family secret, Tessa had been asked to solve.
