Not being able to understand the question was the least of Steve Jennings’ worries. While he had been attending to Dick Lamb he had thought to bind his unruly hand to his side with the wires of the microphone; now the hand was back in its usual position, the microphone was out of order, and the rest of Steve Jennings was tied to his chair. A question from a woman representative of the Aboriginal Council gave him some respite. She had arrived late and so hadn’t heard everything that had been said but wanted to know why no Aboriginal organizations had been consulted. She appeared a touch crestfallen when she was told that they all had. ‘Well, I just want to remind you all that we have a consultable body in every town,’ she said anyway. She couldn’t have been more sympathetically treated. Everyone on the platform wanted to go on record as being willing to talk to any Aboriginal group anywhere at any time about any subject. In his agitation to be seen as even-handed Brett Goodridge actually dismantled his pipe into seven separate pieces.

All this was too much for Digger Daws. He rose to his feet in the full consciousness that everything until now had been a mere charade. Now the bullshit was coming to an end. ‘Can I ask the gentleman two questions,’ he said, ‘after which I’d like to finish off with something in the nature of a comment.’ He pronounced the word, comment, in the time-honoured tradition of expert proceduralists. ‘The first question is how long it took him to do the study. My second pertinent question – which those who know me won’t be surprised by; just as I won’t be surprised if I get no answer – is how much it cost.’

In fact he couldn’t be bothered listening to the answer. He had just detected a certain something – he had just smelled another rat, as it were – in the accent of the now horribly scarlet Steve Jennings. ‘That bloke a Pom?’ he whispered to me. I told him I reckoned he was. ‘Bloody place is lousy with them,’ he said. And he was so struck by the fact that he clean forgot to deliver his comment.

He was more gallant to Ros, though, before we left. In order that she should never forget him for as long as she lived, he handed her the name he’d worn on his lapel. ‘I’ll treasure it forever,’ Ros said, sticking it on the top left-hand corner of the cover of her notebook –

Charles Daws

Shire President

Boulder Shire Council

He regarded what she had done for a moment, then he leaned over and wrote next to his name, J. P. Justice of the Peace.