And yet it is precisely because Kalgoorlie is a country town in the middle of nowhere that its notorious flesh market – a tableau vivant of whores in comfy horseboxes – is so bizarre. I took a look for myself once the R&I Bank’s thank-you party at Hannan’s had finally fizzled out. One minute I was walking down a broad, dusty, absolutely silent suburban road – the humming town behind me, the open bush before – the next I was being smiled at by girls in their nighties, sitting on the edges of their beds under tantalizing red lights, or pacing the porches of miniature simulacra of the ideal Australian home. More than anything else I was reminded of those garage sales that little girls from nice families put on in summer months, their old dollies and a few fairy cakes laid out on a trestle table, and not a customer in sight. The power of Australian provincialism can conquer all. The demimonde had come to Moonee Ponds.

Despite Kalgoorlie’s high masculinity factor I was very nearly the only hominid on the street. Occasionally a car pulled up – caked with dust and fitted out with ’roo bars front and rear – opened its windows, and then drove off again.

‘How are you?’ one of the girls asked me.

I told her I was fine and asked how she was. ‘Good, thanks,’ she said. From the way she squeezed her vowels I thought she might have been a New Zealander.

Another one called out, ‘Hello, you look intelligent.’

But I knew I couldn’t trust her judgement. She had Desiderata hanging in her porch, and Kipling’s If.

We gave the whole of the following day over to getting on and off tourist buses. Our morning guide was called Guy. ‘G’day I’m Guy yer guide,’ he told us. He made atrocious puns and then – a capital offence, I’ve always thought – apologized for them. But he was otherwise efficient, interspersing gossip with information and allowing just enough of his politics to show. Yes, the hand of Bondy had stretched into Kalgoorlie – you could see it right there, on the Mount Percy Open-Cut Mine – and yes, there were mixed attitudes to that; but better a West Australian own it, Guy thought, than . . . well, than anyone else.