Cars and campervans were still arriving. And more and more of the possessed were walking out towards the Rock like zombies. A station wagon roared in, throwing dust into everybody’s lenses. An American girl called Lester, who had been standing very still for six or seven minutes, was just about to squeeze her shutter. In exasperation she kicked a clump of mulga-grass. ‘Aw, shoot!’ she said. The station wagon performed several more manoeuvres at speed before screeching to a halt on the roughest section of terrain. Three boys climbed out to check the tyres; they seemed surprised to discover they were bald. Sometimes the vigour of youth can remind you of a nervous ailment; these three had so much unfocussed energy* they looked in need of hospitalization. They jerked their attention to the Rock for a hundredth of a second – the very period they had denied Lester – grew crazed with inactivity, and then fell to emptying the wagon of their belongings. In sight of one of the great wonders of Nature they unrolled their foam mattresses and shook out their sleeping bags and rinsed their smalls and tossed their slops into the dust and never once raised their eyes to Uluru.

The older men, meanwhile, were dithering over their cameras. They weren’t sure when to take their photographs. Or how many. They were growing angry with the light. ‘If I stand here I can’t get out of my own shadow,’ one was complaining to his wife. ‘If I walk forward it follows me. Maybe I should set it to infinity. Shall I set it to infinity? I’ve set it to infinity. I think I’ll take two to be on the safe side. No, I won’t. It’s a waste. I’ve taken one. Do you think I should take another? Well, I suppose we’ve seen it now. Not all it’s cracked up to be, is it?’ And all the while the wife sat white and motionless in the passenger seat, her head bandaged in a scarf, staring into an infinity of spinifex.

The couple who had broken down on the Stuart Highway were explaining to Ros how a tin of coffee had saved their lives, or at least saved their exhaust, the funny part being that they didn’t normally drink that brand of coffee but had bought it in a shop at Coober Pedy because it had been on special, which just went to show. As the crucial moments of sunset approached the people in the Nissan Patrol turned up their radio. I heard an alto, two oboi da caccia, and talk of Golgotha. In the excitement I filled my plastic wine beaker more times than was recommended for optimum appreciation of colour change. But everything was looking pretty rosy to me.