But we hadn’t gone to the police to complain about dingoes. We weren’t asking that this solitary representative of the force – officer or officer’s mate – should go out single-handedly on a dingo shoot. We simply wanted her to take or at least identify the dog. Even this she was unwilling to get involved in. She didn’t know any dogs, didn’t know anyone who kept a dog, and had no advice to give us about what we should do with this one. Though when Ros finally persuaded her just to come and look at the thing, she instantly recognized it. ‘Minder!’ she said. ‘How did you get out?’ And then to Ros. ‘I can’t understand it; he is never away from his owner.’ And then to Minder, ‘What have you been up to?’

She wouldn’t of course have believed him had he told her. But it took a full ten minutes to coax him out of the van and into the police station, so frightened was he still of what was out there.

The dingoes didn’t leave us alone that night. Even before we went to bed we could see them in our torchlight prowling the wire fence which encircled the campsite. There were rich pickings for them out there. The Belgian family we’d sunset-viewed alongside were three or four caravan spaces down from us and tossing raw meat over the wire to entertain Laurent. They were playing a game called cherchez le dingo, and the dingoes were doing well out of it. But later, when the camp was asleep, they came in. Several times we awoke to hear, and then to see them circling the van; looking for food essentially, but also, I liked to think, stalking us, putting the frighteners on us for balking them of their prey. In the morning the dust bore the imprint of their many feet.

Part of the sadness of moving on from here was that we would, in truth, miss them; their uncanny yip-yip-yip followed by their wild, melancholy dingo howl, and their utterly fearless nocturnal incursions. It was quite something waking in the dark to see those sharp pointed eyes returning the reflection of your torch and those small vicious faces sneering at you, undaunted, through the windows of your makeshift home. You wouldn’t want it as a permanent condition of your life perhaps, but a little precariousness, a little foretaste of the feral, as long as your doors are secure, can add considerable savour to your nights.