A young Englishman, Harry Heathcote, had leased 120,000 acres of bush from the Australian government, on which he ran 30,000 sheep. With him at Gangoil lived his wife, two small sons and his sister-in-law Kate Daly. Giles Medlicot was his nearest neighbor, but the two men had not become friends. Medlicot had purchased land that lay between Gangoil and the river for a sugar plantation and had erected a sugar-mill. The loss of the river frontage was...