Which is what I would very much have preferred to be doing from the moment Brylynn pushed open the door of the school and showed us in. A sight of a kind there was nothing in any part of my cultural background to prepare me for met my eyes. Aborigines of all ages, Aborigines of all sizes, Aborigines dressed for every possible climate, squatting on the floor of the hall on old blankets or on scraps of mouldy carpet or simply on the bare concrete itself – a hot, black huddle of wholly foreign and for that reason wholly frightening humanity (‘Oh, God! Sir, look at them; look at them!’) less packed and less numerous only than their dogs who were also here tonight to see the video – sleeping where there was space, prowling where there  wasn’t, the scabbiest curs you ever saw, fighting, scratching, sniffing, in some instances even pissing, without any sense at all that the inside was not the outside or that the school hall was not the road.

From behind a hatch a couple of bright-eyed girls, as astonished by the sight of us as we were by the sight of them, sold us hotdogs. These they presented to us, with a shy aversion of their heads, on a square of tissue. Holding mine aloft, while trying not to spill the sauce, I decided that the better part of valour was valour and plunged into the heaving mass. A dog looked at me curiously as I found a space to squat in, which caused me suddenly to be queasy about my sausage. To hell with it, I thought, meat’s meat. And I sank my teeth in, thinking that I had eaten much that wasn’t kosher in my life before, but that this was trayf and trayf again – this was über-trayf.

I’ll say this for Aborigines’ dogs: they are not personal nuisances. They don’t want you to love them. They don’t nuzzle your groin. They do not imagine that sexual congress is possible, or even desirable, between you and them. They seem to want you to be there to prowl between, and that’s all.

And between their owners too – or at least between their owners and me – there was a curious absence of informality or licence: we were jammed up against one another but our eyes kept their distance. Despite my alarming conspicuousness I was almost never stared at. Even the handsome, sleek young blades who came in after us and stood against the wall, superciliously smoking, did not taunt or grace me with a look.

Once the television was switched on the smallest children settled into the front row of squats; with their unkempt hair-do’s and their natural tawny streaks they looked from behind like a line-up of punk dwarfs. Then a picture flickered on to the screen and I realized that I had come this far not to see a Pitjantjatjara travelogue, or a Land Council documentary, or even The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, but Ghostbusters – Ghostbusters!! – that dead-pan college kid romp through genre-pastiche and smart-arse middle American not quite funny enough to be Jewish throw-away, second-time-round asides. Who in this room apart from Brylynn was going to hear, let alone understand, let alone enjoy Ghostbusters?