Being a trust they can't retain earnings like a company can and...

Being a trust they can't retain earnings like a company can and have to pay out all gains, and they had some cracking gains during that period.

I have found it is important to monitor total returns rather than SP movements or distributions in isolation because they both vary a lot due to building up of realised gains within the fund, then paying them out twice yearly as distributions.

If the NTA continues to increase I expect the next distribution will be healthy (this is assuming they have a decent amount of realised gains which they usually do because they are so active buying and selling)