We slipped down to the restaurant below and ate buffalo steaks conspicuously. By which I mean that we were conspicuous by virtue of how much we wore – I like to think that we made every effort to compensate for this by eating like normal people. But there is no escaping the attentions of Australians, who are shameless starers at any time. The heaving expectancy under which the whole nation labours means that it is perpetually on the look-out for whoever might come to make it all better, or alternatively whoever might come to take it all away. Messiahs or Antichrists. I don’t think we fitted into either category. We just looked bizarre. It is a humiliating experience to be found risible by the worst-dressed people in the world. A girl in a rainbow-coloured tinsel frock almost choked on her pavlova when we came into the restaurant; a fat man in a lemon safari suit laughed off all his buttons. And on top of that the buffalo was no good. Buffalo are a problem in the Top End of the Northern Territory. Brought in by European settlers in the 1830s and subsequently abandoned, they now wander free, damaging vegetation, upsetting water systems, polluting billabongs, rubbing out Aboriginal cave paintings, and disappointing the palate. The toughness of the steak is the snag; unless you pulverize or teriyaki it (in which case you might as well not be cooking with buffalo in the first place), it is likely to turn out tasting like your own footwear, in this instance a heavy winter Church’s shoe.

By the time we were back in our room the free electrical entertainment had started. In a cold climate most things that can be called weather happen over your head; in the tropics they take place before you as on a screen. We carried our chairs out on to the balcony to watch. As ever, the Gods proved that their strong suit is not morality but set design. They lit up the sky. They rolled clouds. They sent as many as five lightning strikes at a time sizzling into the sea. Sometimes you could even smell the waters scorching.