The reason we were off to Kakadu for a day trip instead of on one of Tom Winters’ more far-flung and extensive safaris was my determination not to stray too far from civilization, at least at this early stage, and not to lie too close to the ground. ‘I know it would be fun to live with some Aborigines for a fortnight and to hunt snakes and eat lizards with them,’ I said to Ros, ‘but we’ve a long journey ahead of us and there are a lot of other things we have to do.’ I wanted it to be understood that I wasn’t against eating lizards in principle but that I simply felt it had to take its proper place in the order of priorities. None the less, this was the beginning of some serious disagreement between us as to the nature of travel and curiosity in general and our journey and my nice recusancy in particular. Of which I will have more to say later.

Tom had picked us up from our hotel at about six-thirty in the morning. By seven the little party was complete and well acquainted.

‘Hi, I’m Karen,’ said Karen from Toronto.

‘And we’re Carl and Hazel – that’s to say he’s Carl and I’m Hazel,’ laughed Hazel from Washington. It seemed important to Hazel that she should let us all know as soon as possible that she was daffy. It’s sweet in Americans, the way they think you need telling.

The other four were June and Brian, and Marion and John, from West Australia. John sold Mitsubishis in Perth and wore a T-shirt that showed four pink palm trees swaying in the wind. Brian told us what he did but because of the strong Scottish accent which still persisted beneath his Australian one it was almost impossible to understand a word he said. It didn’t matter. I was so amazed by Brian’s similarity to Bob Hawke – and I’m not just referring now to the incomprehensibility – that I wouldn’t have been able to hear him anyway. He had the same oiled and weathered sheen, the same deep gouges in his cheeks – like axe marks on an iron visor – and he too seemed not to have brushed his hair but burnished it. The resemblance was so striking that there were moments on the journey when I allowed myself to entertain the wildest of traveller’s fantasies.

But I’m pretty sure Brian wasn’t Bob Hawke. His sentences were too short for one thing. And he didn’t wince when Tom spoke slightingly of the public service domination of Darwin, nor when he resorted to the ultimate Australian insult of comparing it with the nation’s capital. ‘It might just as well be Canberra. We’ve only got a thirty-five per cent private sector – that’s why I’m so bloody thin.’