Remember my mentioning that we’d left London on the coldest day in recorded history? Well, we’d boarded the plane dressed accordingly. Seasoned transcontinental travellers know that that’s not how you do it. You are supposed to so juggle your wardrobe that you leave in clothes appropriate to the one climate and arrive in whatever is appropriate to the other. I knew all that myself, but I was keen to circumvent the weight restrictions on our baggage by packing everything that was light and wearing everything that was heavy. ‘We might be a trifle uncomfortable on the plane,’ I’d said, ‘but we can change the minute we hit Darwin.’ I still don’t think there was anything wrong with my reasoning. I wasn’t to know that the airline would misread our labels and confuse Darwin with Java.

We were directed to a lost property and general mishap and balls-up clerk whose offices were located around the side of the sweltering tin terminus. In order to get to him we had to pass empty-handed through customs and out into the night. Already the airport was deserted, all our fellow passengers having been whisked away in their lightweight floral shirts by waiting friends or taxis. Only a few officials remained, looking at their watches and wanting to close before the sun came up.

‘No worries,’ the clerk said as he filled in ‘don’t knows’ to such questions as, ‘Place and date of manufacture of missing suitcase.’

‘Big, blue, and heavy,’ was the best description I could give him.

He nodded absently and a trifle sceptically, as if he’d heard big, blue and heavy a few too many times before. He was a young, ferrety fellow chosen for his easy charm and lack of sympathy for the sufferings of others. He possessed that twinkling callousness which passes in Australia for calm.

‘So you reckon there’s a fair chance it will turn up?’ I asked him.

‘Ah yeah. Should do.’

‘Soon?’

‘Aw – eventually.’

I had a vague sense that I ought to be demanding firmer assurances, but I was unable to take a harsh tone with him. It wasn’t his fault that it was 105 degrees in the dead of night, that the humidity was 100 per cent, and that my wife and I had nothing to wear but the arctic woollens and thermal underwear we stood up in.

I thanked him for his help. He seemed already to have forgotten who we were and what our problem was. But he remembered his manners. ‘No worries,’ he said.