Because the Wet had been rather modest this season the boat which was to take us for a cruise on the Yellow Water Billabong couldn’t make it to the jetty. So we had to trudge through boiling amber water, dodging leeches and recalling Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, to get to it. I was pleased to see, since one of the purposes of the cruise was to look for crocodiles, that the boat was built of steel. Once aboard we were joined by a party from another tour, amongst whom I recognized a woman who had been on our plane from Bahrain. She had made some impression on us on that occasion because of her jet black Cleopatra wig and lace mantilla, her ability to converse in loud American with one child and even louder Arabic with another, and because she wore a Turkish belly dancer’s costume. ‘Looks just like Barbra Streisand,’ our steward, Trevor, had observed appreciatively. Today she still wore the wig and the mantilla, but had swapped the belly dancer’s costume for harem-style Scheherezade pyjamas, worn over tights and, if I read the perfect brittle cones upon her chest correctly, falsies. It wasn’t all that long since Ros and I had been a touch overdressed for the tropics ourselves, so we were assiduously uncritical, but there were others aboard whose enjoyment of the wilds of the Yellow Water Billabong was spoiled by this potent reminder of Baghdad and Bloomingdales.

It looked as though we were going to be out of luck as far as spotting crocodiles was concerned. Thirty-five species of waders have been recorded on the wetlands and I think we saw them all. Another brolga refused to do her dance for us. Several magpie geese came to check us out to see if we might be thinking of starting up a rice farm. And every now and then the amazing Jesus bird walked alongside us, on the water. But no sign of any crocs.

I was so satisfied myself of there being no such creatures in these shallows, despite the warnings everywhere, that I idly hung my hand over the side of the slow-moving boat. Then suddenly I felt Ros, next to me, relax. She had been rigid for the last fifteen minutes, not through fear but – and it pains me to say this – through competition. There’s no fathoming the universal competitiveness of women. Ever since we had set forth upon the yellow waters of the billabong in search of crocodile, every single woman on the boat – most notably, of course, the Princess Scheherezade – had privately determined to be the first to find one. Even Hazel, starting at each passing twig, was seriously engaged in the subterranean struggle. Ros’s sudden relaxation was an expression of pure triumph. ‘Over there,’ she hardly bothered to raise her voice to say, ‘just there – there – about a yard from the bank.’