Later in the morning I accompanied Angela on an errand to her friends Janette and Fernando Martin (once Martino) who ran the Château Dorrien just outside Tanunda, a fun complex housed in the old Seppelt’s Winery, famous for its towering scraggy palms and castellated storage tanks. These tanks had now been turned into tourist kiosks where you could buy knick-knacks and hamburgers and tickets for camel rides. Inside was a wonderland of Bavarian kitsch, incorporating a Wiener World Bistro, hot-nut bars, gift counters and the like. A sound of violent beating came from the kitchens. ‘That’ll be Fernando hammering the schnitzels,’ Angela said. I met Fernando briefly. The last time I’d clapped eyes on anyone as dashingly romantic as this was in an operetta sung on a stage set identical to the room I was now standing in. Would that have been White Horse Inn? I exchanged a few sentences with him, being careful not to look at the forest of black hairs that sprouted from his slashed satin shirt. He told me he had just returned from a most wonderful holiday. ‘Heidelberg?’ I wondered. ‘The Tyrol?’ No – Alice Springs and Ayers Rock. I enquired – as I now enquired of everyone – about the state of the roads. ‘Put it this way,’ he said, ‘if you go in a new car it will be old by the time you get back. That’s if you get back. I’m glad I didn’t take mine. We went on the bus’ (I couldn’t imagine Fernando on a bus) ‘and it had eleven punctures.’

Before we returned to Bethany, Angela showed me the new Lutheran school her daughter went to. She was full of praise for it and wouldn’t have countenanced her daughter attending any other. But she gave me an inkling, too, of just what it was that bound non-Germanic families such as the Davises and the Martin(o)s in friendship. ‘It’s hard for people like Colin and me to be accepted by the community, whatever we think of them,’ she said. ‘Not being Lutherans we’re behind the eight ball from the start.’