With the Farrer by-election on 9 May approaching, an independent campaign is challenging decades of Coalition dominance by turning up, listening and building support town by town.

A team of warriors drove 1,500 kilometres through the western edge of the Farrer electorate in recent weeks. Deniliquin. Balranald. Wentworth. Gol Gol. Hay. Darlington Point. Narrandera and back to Albury. Door-knocking for Michelle Milthorpe, the independent candidate trying to do something that hasn’t been done since 1949: take this seat from the Liberal/National Party. The deficit is about 600 votes. The race is statistically tied. But numbers don’t knock on doors. People do.

His nose had been introduced to a few brick walls in its time. Flat as a tack. His cheeks – you could read the whole Murray-Darling Basin in them. Creeks, tributaries, the odd billabong. A landscape that’s seen floods and more than a few droughts. Up top, a few scattered strands of hair still put up a fight. They had a go at being blond once. Now they just hang on out of sheer habit.

We’ve still got real characters out here. Earthy. Legitimate. They’ve copped a few blows – some self-inflicted, most not – and they’re still standing. Working pedigree: shearing, dam building, excavation. But the certainty. That’s what got me. He’s not angry at me. I’m just the furniture. But the governments? The institutions? He’d line them up against a wall if he could. The urgency is there. Like an army general waiting too long for........

© Pearls and Irritations