Second and subsequent offences, up to $2,000 fine

or 12 months gaol.

The sign was faded and not all that conspicuous, and we weren’t carrying any Orlando Coolabah Moselle. I did remember, though, that we still had three quarters of a bottle of High Wycombe Franklin Gray Muscat left in our store cupboard – the last remaining drop of all that Angela and Colin Davis had given us.

‘Do you really think that’s significant?’ Ros asked.

How did I know? I stopped the van a few yards into the RESTRICTED AREA and reversed out of it again. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘we’re on somebody else’s land, and we’re only on that by the grace of Merle. I somehow feel that it would be only common courtesy to obey the regulations. Besides—’

‘You don’t want to go to gaol for eight months.’

‘So, do you?’

‘The sign doesn’t say anything about Muscat.’

I had a vision of us trying to get away with that before a court of tribal elders. Or before Merle. I switched off the engine and went into the back of the van and brought out the bottle. When it comes to the point it is not easy to throw away your last three quarters of a bottle of Franklin Gray Muscat, the more especially when you’re a long way from its source. But rules were rules.

‘There is the question of litter,’ Ros said.

I agreed, ‘I suppose we could bury it.’

‘Or drink it,’ Ros suggested.

I debated the morality of that. In the end, the earliness of the hour combined with the heat of the day and the heat of the bottle of Muscat decided me against the surreptitious consumption option. So, on Ros’s suggestion, we had a little ceremony. Ros stood to the left of the sign, and I honked the horn, while she very gradually upended the bottle into the desert. In honour of which occasion we named the nearest hill of the Krichauff Ranges Franklin Gray, and the more substantial twin eminences to the right of it we named Mt Angela and Mt Colin. To the whole area we gave the name High Wycombe.