The next day we would see the extraordinarily sophisticated printing and duplicating equipment available to Leanne in her Production Centre – an even more bizarre technological oasis than the computerized accountancy office we’d found in Derby. The only problem being that the machinery was too complex for Leanne to use. It required its own fully trained printer, and although one had originally come with the equipment he had since gone down with Ross River Fever and there had been no replacement, no mention of a replacement and not one word as to whether the position had ever been advertised. In the meantime the presses lay idle and the Aboriginal children went on with their colouring books, little knowing both how close and how far they were from the wonders and ineffable benefits of man’s great scientific stride.

There was to be a film show at the school that night, a video of somebody or other’s choosing, with hotdogs and ice creams sold before and after, all proceeds going to Neil’s current pet project – a school excursion to Melbourne, where the kids could get their first, and their last, ever look at a real city. Melbourne was where Neil himself came from and I read this scheme of his as a sort of final symbolic gesture: he would complete his circle of obligation to these children backwards instead of forwards, he would render his past to them in lieu of his future.

Before the video we went for a short walk with Leanne and Geraldine and Brylynn to the waterholes, a picnic spot of spectacular seclusion just minutes from the rubble of the road. While Geraldine talked to Ros about Airey’s Inlet (she wasn’t to know what I knew about Ros and inlets), and while Brylynn sat on the bank and kicked her feet in the water, I balanced on a boulder and listened to Leanne voicing her anxieties about my presence. What was I actually here for? Did I want to find something out in particular? Did I want to take photographs? Was I after some specific sociological low-down on the community. ‘People have come here before,’ she said, ‘and gone away with some funny ideas about what they’ve seen.’

I didn’t ask her to be more exact. It was easy enough to understand the reasons for her concern. She was how we came to be here. In a manner of speaking, it was she who had put the door on the latch for us. So it was she who would be responsible if we slipped away with the silver. I did all I could to put her mind at rest. I wasn’t looking for any dirt. I didn’t want to ridicule the community. I had no political axe to grind. The silver, in other words, could hardly be safer. But as for funny ideas – well, you can’t stop anybody taking those.