‘Those young blokes wouldn’t have a hope in hell,’ he said.

‘Look at that big fat one,’ she said. ‘There – there – hanging on to the post.’

‘What about the one in shorts.’

‘She won’t make it.’

‘That Chinese girl’s sitting on the bloody edge.’

‘Serve her right if she falls.’ She put her binoculars down and lit herself a cigarette. ‘A packet of fags a day,’ she said, so that I should hear too, ‘and I climbed to the top of Ayers Rock!’

I felt sorry for them. They were jubilant and didn’t know what to do with their jubilation – always the problem when you do something just-so-that-you-can-say-you’ve-done-it. They paced about their jeep, smoking hard. Not wanting to leave, not wanting to stop looking at where they’d been or to stop talking about what they’d done, but not able to hold back the onset of futility either. At last they drove off with their windows wound down low so that she could the more easily toss fag ends out. ‘Well, do you believe in me now, darling?’ was the last thing I heard her say.

The moment they left the car park a coach drove in. A group of men with no time on their hands charged the Rock. Within minutes they were a third of the way up it. A man with a withered arm set the pace. He wore walking boots and appeared to be working to a pre-arranged plan. Instead of following the usual vertical route, where there is a chain to help you, he preferred to zig-zag, striding way out to the left and then cutting back, in an extravagant diagonal, to the right again. This meant that he was covering about three times as much ground as everybody else, not just walking up the hill but also walking twice across it. Yet he was yards in front in no time, and very soon he had vanished over the top altogether.

A place of unfathomable mystification, Ayers Rock.

Our third and final sunset viewing. And the pair of us in a heightened state. Ready to be off the next morning, but tragic about leaving. A ritual of which we had become faithful observants was winding down. We were feeling Last Supperish.