Chapters 7-8 Summary

Paget makes three pair of shoes in her room before she gets a pair she can wear. Tim Whelan measures her to make mulga wood "lasts"; Pete Fletcher provides tanned cow skin for soles and bull-skin for building up heels and shoots and skins, a wallaby, and tans its hide for lining. Burns and Don Duncan join the team and Willstown is enlivened for weeks. Paget's first pair reflects the fact that she has never done something she well understands from observing. They would work for someone who happens to have the right-shaped feet. She buys better equipment and supplies for the second attempt. Annie watches her with great interest and declares the results as good as those in the shops. They are better but still uneven, lumpy, and finger-marked with sweat. The third pair is "creditable" but ugly and stained...