Watching him twisting his mouth into that intelligently ironical shape that is necessary for the production of Dutch noises, I was reminded of how much I liked the semi-gargling sound Netherlanders make, brewing each word up at the back of their throats and then having to unpick it with their teeth. It all seemed of a piece to me, Mr de Jongh’s pleasantness and efficiency and the work he had to put in to making sentences. Had he been an Australian drawler he wouldn’t have been anything like so good at his job.

Rain. Real rain. Not counting storms in the far north, where the water was a mere incidental by-product of massive electrical disturbance, the first real rain we’d had in Australia. And Albany was a good place to have it. It had been threatening ever since we’d left Denmark, black clouds following us along the route Mr de Jongh had recommended, the whole length of the louring coast of Torbay. But it wasn’t until we climbed up into Albany itself, and got our first sense of how this city had been clawed out of rock, and our first views down over King George’s Sound, where there was twice as much water already as in Sydney Harbour, that the rain really fell. I hadn’t read anything to suggest that this was absolutely normal for Albany, that day and night it enjoyed a warm and blinding rain, but I was unable to imagine it any other way. It was a dour, hard-won sprawling place. Vast and immovable granite boulders were littered about the streets. One, resembling a dog sniffing the air, had achieved such distinction as a natural work of sculpture that it had a brand new place of entertainment – the Dog Rock Motel – built opposite it. Two massive lookouts, Mt Melville and Mt Clarence, their summits hidden in swirling cloud, stood sentry over the town, contributing to its bleak grandeur.