I watched him do his best with the Chicago underworld and then wander off to a scene of what appeared to be passingly acrimonious domesticity with another lady in a hat. It seemed indecorous to be present, but it was all of a piece with the habitual accessibility of the Australian politician. He was around more in Australia and you got a better look at him. It was no startling coincidence that we’d run into so many of them; anybody else travelling as we were would have fared the same. Australia is a small country that only looks a big one. If you take it into your head to pop out to a garden party chances are that everyone else has taken it into their heads to do likewise. And there was a matter of principle at stake here also. Australian politicians are meant to be of the people. You’re supposed to meet them. Which was why poor old Tuxy was wandering round the Alice Springs racecourse on Cup Day in his shirtsleeves, nodding uncomfortably at the electorate.

Despite my certainty that I’d picked a winner, Gone Troppo came in an unimpressive fifth. The following day I read in the papers that Tuxworth had also backed it. But that was only the beginning of his bad luck. A week later he was no longer Chief Minister of the Northern Territory.

All I’d lost was ten dollars.

Stuart Caravan Park, Larapinta Drive, Alice Springs, midnight. Behold the author, sitting in a tight toilet cubicle with his notebook on his knees – I wasn’t eavesdropping; I just never went anywhere without my notebook – copying out a conversation between a man in the cubicle on his left and a man in the cubicle on his right, relating, if he understood it correctly, to an incident that had occurred a couple of nights before at a place 500 kilometres from here, though he wasn’t sure in which direction.

‘Ah yeah, but I could see the bouncer eyeing you before then. I think he could see you were going to throw up.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t have minded it from him. But some wanker who was just there drinking! It wasn’t even his fucking pub.’

‘Look, I agree he shouldn’t have thrown your drinks away.’

‘No. Not at those prices.’

‘Whatever it is you’ve done there’s no justification for throwing a bloke’s drinks in the bin.’

‘Right.’

‘He could have thrown you out, but not your drinks.’

‘What gets me is he said I’d been drinking too much yet all those other cunts were on the floor pissed as farts.’

‘You should have wiped him.’

‘I know. I should have.’

‘What did you do, anyway, when he threw your drinks in the bin?’

‘I kicked the fucking bin.’