We didn’t get much of a sense of Busselton; we were too busy trying to catch the deep blood burgundy Toyota. But it looked a pleasant town with wide streets, a long pier, and beaches so accessible that you could open your car door and tumble straight out on to them. We might have stretched out on the sand ourselves for half an hour had I not noticed an advertisement for an Angus Bull Sale which was proceeding right this minute, several miles out of Busselton on the Margaret River road. I’d never been to an Angus Bull Sale, or come to that any kind of bull sale, and I thought that since we were in young farmers’ country – one land, one law – it might prove instructive. Unfortunately the sale was just finishing when I got there. The hay bales, which had been arranged like the seats of a theatre in the round, were empty; and the few farmers who were left – some sporting mutton chops, some in stetsons, but most in floppy white cricketers’ hats – were making for their 4-wheel drives. A notice pinned to one of the fences made me feel that I’d missed something special. A couple of star sires had been on sale today: The Basin Palmer and The Blackrock Hercules, whose semen was none the less still available and ‘highly recommended’. Ah, youth.

On the outskirts of Margaret River I called into a craft complex called the Old Settlement, to see if they had any maps or leaflets that might be of interest to hurried tourists like ourselves. The woman behind the counter, who somehow let it be known that she was from Farnham, Surrey, was engaged in a serpentine conversation (neither the head nor the tail showing) on the twin subjects of Aborigines and cleanliness.

‘We’ve got some friends who have worked with them,’ she was saying, ‘and they tell us that it’s a terrible business getting them to understand white men’s hygiene. Just persuading them to wash their hands is a job in itself. They aren’t able to understand the reasons for it. It’s a real eye-opener, our friends say.’

The two people she was addressing were married, Australian, on holiday, and in their sixties. The wife wore blue slacks and a floral shirt and that expression of cross bemusement which settles on Australian women of a certain age if they’re not out playing bowls. ‘Well, it’s a totally different culture, isn’t it,’ she said.