On the roof of a jeep plastered with Queensland stickers a pretty girl teetered becomingly. Ostensibly she was focussing her binoculars, but the real drama revolved around her shorts. They were pink and very brief. Every now and then she would reach behind to try to prevent their disappearing up inside her for ever. But no sooner had she pulled them out than she would find some pretext for bending forward, and they would rise again. The setting sun, not yet crimsoning the monolith, gave us a teasing foretaste of what it could do with colour on each perfect hemisphere of her buttocks.

From a Nissan Patrol three vehicles down came one of the most heartbreaking arias from the St Matthew Passion – ‘Erbame dich, mein Gott’. If I had it right they would be nailing Jesus to the cross just as the Rock reddened. I wasn’t at all confident that I would be able to handle that without a drink, so I scrambled into the back of the van and uncorked a bottle of Peter Lehmann 1981 Shiraz – Barossa Valley spoils – to help me through. By the time I was back in my seat Ros had fallen into conversation with a couple we had last seen broken down, but surrounded by helpful gloating pensioners, on the Stuart Highway; and a big, high, brand new brutal navy blue Ford F100 Bronco with a white trim and giant 100 bars had driven into a space unexpectedly vacated right beside us. The driver, a true blue Territorian wearing a wicked grin and a red cowboy hat, was climbing on to his roof and hauling after him a movie camera and a sophisticated high-volume cassette deck that was already turned on and drowning out the Bach with blackfeller music – a fidgety, repetitive, half-hearted glottal stomp which none the less went better with the landscape than ‘Erbame dich, mein Gott’ did, notwithstanding the Teutonic legacy of Baron von Mueller. From the eminence of his Bronco the cowboy beamed down on us. There was no challenge in his expression; surely, it seemed to say, you will agree that this is the appropriate music to be sitting Rock-watching to. Once he’d jack-plugged his equipment together he squatted with it all before him, drew out a pair of Aboriginal music sticks from his pocket, and began to beat out an accompanying rhythm. It appeared that he was making a one-man film, but what kind of film, whether it was of a spirituality quite belied by his appearance and appurtenances, or whether he was enjoying a huge joke at everyone’s expense, not least the Rock’s, it was impossible to determine. Either way, he stepped up the tempo of anticipation in the Sunset Viewing Area.