THE SEAFARERS

IN SUMMER, a south-easterly blows across the Recherche Archipelago and stirs the canopy of the giant tuart trees on the mainland near Esperance, Western Australia. Beyond the dunes, sheltered in a hollow, is a small 1910 miner’s cottage, surrounded by mallee and scrub heath. When Allira Henderson sits on the front porch of the cottage and watches the tops of the trees sway, she thinks of her husband, Christian, in the wind offshore, as he spends up to 12 days at a time at