Throughout year 9, his father had closely policed his homework and monitored his grades. He had moved from one of the lowest positions in the order of class merit to one of the highest. Now, on the Monday night of the first week back at school, and a new school at that, his father told him that he had to take his school certificate year even more seriously and study hard in his bedroom every Saturday afternoon, for the whole year around, not merely wait until a few weeks before the exams at the end of each term.

Lewis was heartsick with the secret loss of his only chance to see Lynda again. It seemed that school work, with all its daunting demands, was going to take over his life. He decided that Friday afternoons had to be his own special time, away from school, and away from home. Instead of alighting from the train at Lindfield after school, he would alight at the next station, Killara, and take a longer walk home, giving himself more time to daydream about his hopes and dreams for life in general.

He walked from Killara station, to Stanhope Road and along that road, until he came to a driveway with a large sign:

SWAIN GARDENS

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC SEVEN DAYS

TEA ROOM OPEN ONLY ON SUNDAY AFTERNOONS.

He walked along the driveway and passed tall bamboo, and came to beautiful footpaths leading over narrow bridges and streams, up slopes, around curves, past trees and the loveliest gardens. It was the most serene enclosure he had ever seen. There was something about this place, which calmed the awful sense of unfairness he had felt all week, since losing his chance to see Lynda. He had moments of daydreaming that Lynda would walk into the Swain Gardens too and say something lovely to him, but it was not to be. Yet this place was like a sanctuary. It seemed to promise to him, that Year 10 would hold many pleasant surprises to come, not a dead end to his newly discovered dreams of being with a special girl.

He was so taken by the beauty of the scenery, that he took his camera, a recent Christmas present, out of his schoolbag and walked around the gardens, carefully selecting locations to shoot from, to make the 24 available photographs on the film last. Soon there were 11 shots left in the camera. He saw that, on the far edge of the gardens, there was a one foot high stone wall, with steps on either side of it. On the far side, the step led down to the start of a long bushwalk pathway. He decided to stand on the far side, in the middle of the pathway, and take a wide angle photograph which would capture as much of the gardens as possible in a single long distance shot.

Yet the pathway was curving out of sight, only metres from the wall. There was no way to get the scenery of his choice framed properly if he stayed on the path.