It felt more like a punishment than a reward. It’s possible that she had spotted how apprehensive I was of what might be waiting for me at the remote Pitjantjatjara community, how much I was secretly banking on her not letting us in. Or it might have been her way of showing how little trouble she thought me capable of causing. Either way I felt put out that her indifference was so massive that she couldn’t even be bothered rolling it in our path as an obstacle. She wrote out the permit – TO ENTER ONTO AND REMAIN ON ABORIGINAL LAND OR SEAS ADJOINING ABORIGINAL LAND – and said that she would radio Areyonga to inform them that we would be there the next day. Radio? But of course – did I think there were telephones in Areyonga? Maye she didn’t know the concern this information caused me; maybe she couldn’t tell that she was talking to someone who had never been more than a hundred yards from a telephone – not even in Camballin – in his life. But she gave me a pretty level gaze as I thanked her, and for a laconic person did not look at all dissatisfied with her morning’s business when we left.

We spent the rest of the day making preparations and the evening at the cinema. It was showing The Gods Must Be Crazy, a quirky little African comedy about what happens to a tribe of remote bushmen when a Coca-Cola bottle falls from an aeroplane and lands on one of their heads, which had gathered a huge cult following in Australia. This was already the umpteenth time it had been on in Alice Springs in under a year, and even before it had finished you could tell that the audience wanted to watch it again. Especially they wanted to watch again those scenes in which the bare bum of the starring pigmy bushman was shown high-tailing it from danger. Small, black, bare and frightened – that seemed to be the combination that had the large, white, clothed and fearless Australians laughing every time. One flash of prune-coloured hemisphere, the merest pusillanimous twinkle – and they were gone. I thought the couple in the seats directly in front of ours would have a double heart attack, they were so amused. But it wasn’t savage laughter. This could have been a child or an animal whose simplicity they were enjoying. To stimulate the other kind of mirth the film showed other kinds of blacks – blacks not in a state of nature, city blacks, blacks in power, impossible dictators and hopeless revolutionaries cocking up self-determination. The audience seemed to get a kick out of making the distinction.