Thus cleansed of all sin, like two little lambs of God, we entered the forbidden land, determinedly making no references to the sparkling brown stubbies and the cheerless green boxes which littered the road with no less frequency after the sign than they had before it. In fact, although we thought we were almost there, there would be another half-hour to go before we reached Areyonga. We kept going, the country becoming more ancient, the orange hills crumbling even as we looked, and me stopping at anything that even so much as resembled a habitation, just in case that was it. Then at last we rounded a bend and saw power lines, and a moment or so later a pool of water, set amid trees and rocks, with ropes slung from branches for swinging and jumping from. No one was there but it was easy to people the scene, to see natives up to their necks in warm water as we’d seen them in the Ord in Kununurra, to imagine them frolicking innocently like the creatures of Paradise that Captain Cook had beheld on his first view of the Aborigines of Botany Bay. Our spirits rose. A couple of wild donkeys turned to look at us. The rocks were suddenly wooded, beneficient, sparkling like gold in the sun. At last – the black man and nature restored to harmony, at last.

Our optimism was short-lived. A kilometre further on and we were in the settlement, a couple of rough stone roads of prefabricated houses, some on stilts and made of aluminium, with rusting cars and all manner of other rubbish outside, each one like a gypsy encampment in a lay-by, no charm or happy sense of permanence anywhere. Loitering in their own gardens or squatting under the trees as if they were on a nature strip in the middle of Katherine, the Aborigines resembled both in dress and demeanour those we had seen in urban settings throughout the North. The shrill sounds of domestic disharmony issued from a dozen homes at once. And the place had a litter problem too – trash everywhere, but as usual no bins to put it in, the roads themselves their own rubbish piles of loose stones and dirt and chippings. Dogs rummaged. Flies buzzed.

It would be irresponsible to give the impression that this was a shanty town comparable to the street of shame that Neil had shown us in Derby; the dereliction was not at all of those proportions and the beauty of the valley itself – great sheets of jagged bright orange cliff on either side – was still just holding out against the vandalism of its human occupants. But it was a shock to realize that we had come all this way only to find the same old dispiriting hand-me-down slummery of fringe dwelling, albeit at a distance of about two hundred kilometres from the fringes of the nearest town.