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"Might Have Been," she said to herself. "It'll be Can Be after all." (Titty, PP15)

Camp Might Have Been or, simply, the camp, which featured in Pigeon Post, is close to High Topps and near the farms of the Atkinsons and Tysons, so a handy campsite for the prospectors of the SADMC with a beck for water nearby.

Nancy says (PP9) "This is the place I as thinking of, close to the Topps, close to Atkinson's, no time wasted anywhere, and if only it wasn't for the drought, there wouldn't be any dead sheep, the beck would be full ..."

The camp site is a round piece of cleared and levelled ground, where rock and earth had been scooped away from the steep side and used to build up the other side. The platform was bare of anything but dead leaves, moss, and some tufts of thin grass. There was an untidy heap of larch poles remaining from a former charcoal burners hut. The camp is hedged in by trees and bushes, so that it is not visible from a few yards away. There is a tall ash at one side from which John can see Atkinsons and a lot of the Dundale Road (PP8,9).

As there is no water in the beck, the SADMC cannot camp there until Titty dowses and finds water. They sink a well with a spring-fed pool at the bottom (PP15,16). The land is probably not part of Tyson's Farm, but the miners need Mrs Tyson's agreement to move there as she will supply milk.

When they move to "Camp Might Have Been", a camp of their own, they have their first meal: Plain pemmican, followed by bread and marmalade and apples was perhaps quite as good as Mrs. Tyson's farmhouse suppers, but somehow it seemed much better worth eating, washed down with tea of Susan's brewing made with water from their own well (PP27).

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