Why are there more highland games and pipe bands outside Scotland than within?
It's the highlander's lament to yearn to return home, according to Highland Rose president Lachlan MacPherson.
He and the historical re-enactment group were in full rebel dress at the weekend, setting up camp at Saltire Estate for the Hunter Valley Highland Games.
The group collects, preserves and keeps alive the history of the Scottish Highlands and its connections to Australia and the world.
Many of those connections have their roots in the diaspora of the Jacobite risings and Highland Clearances of the 1700s and 1800s.
"For various different reasons, including the Jacobite risings, there were so many highlanders, there were kicked out of the highlands and forced to go to the colonies," Mr MacPherson said.
"There were tons of Scots who came to Australia, and many of them retained their culture in Australia, the US and Canada, and New Zealand."
The weekend's gathering welcomed clans from across the country among the Lovedale vines to celebrate that culture.
Events included feats of strength and skill in the barrel and caber toss, pipe band performances, and highland dancing, clan and historical displays.
Just outside Highland Rose's Jacobite camp, where members spun thread on old spinning wheels and gave demonstrations of historic weaponry and medicine, Robert Savage and Reba Sepulveda were catching up between pipe band performances.
Ms Sepulveda has been playing the pipes for about a year, she said.
Mr Savage has been at it for more than 30.
The pair met at another of the region's highland gatherings in Aberdeen and had bumped into each other again at Saltire.
It was a community thing, they said. Many players would often moonlight with other bands when they had the chance, or sit in on rehearsals.
There are only nine notes to the bagpipes, Mr Savage said, but infinitely more combinations and embellishments.
At the edges of the central ring, where feats of strength took centre stage, sisters Jane Harris and Isabel Jarman were enjoying a piece of slice and the afternoon's entertainments.
Ms Harris had an almost flawless Australian accent, like her sister's, but it went away after she returned to Scotland for two years.
Now her voice lilts and deepens when she mentions a cup of tea or growing up in Glasgow.
The family had emigrated to Australia when they were girls.
Ms Harris spent her 10th birthday on the ship that carried them to Newcastle after shipbuilding jobs moved from Scotland into England, and their father sought work and better prospects on the other side of the world.
They arrived in Newcastle on New Year's Day in 1960.
It was a hard childhood, they said.
The schoolyard could be an unwelcoming place for two young migrants, in unfamiliar clothes, with unfamiliar voices.
Children could be cruel, but Ms Harris said there was a tenacity among the outcasts.
These rebellious Scots would not so easily be crushed.
"We all stuck together," Ms Harris said.
"If you took on one, you were taking us all."
