On the other hand there could be no doubting the high regard in which both the Pastor and his wife had been held by the generations of Aborigines, far and wide, whose lives they’d influenced. Their departure from Areyonga, only a matter of days ago, had been even more dramatically emotional in fact than the newspaper accounts suggested. Aborigines travelled miles – from Hermannsburg, and Docker River and Kintore and Papunya – to see them go. They lined the road out of Areyonga, sitting in the dust waiting, while innumerable bulletins were relayed concerning the state of the Kalleskes’ packing. They waited and waited. Then the word came that the cortège was ready. Slowly down the rubble-road the car appeared – Leo Kalleske driving. Lydia Kalleske walking behind, extending her arms to the people, and calling auf Wiedersehen. It was Lydia Kalleske – who had once been in charge of the Areyonga choir, taking it up to Darwin for the Eisteddfod, and down to Adelaide for a series of invitation-only concerts – who had taught many of the Aborigines lining the route the meaning of auf Wiedersehen and how they should sing it out in return. Even the most rigorously anti-clerical of the teachers agreed it was a most distressing farewell.

I pictured the scene for days, unable to imagine anything more extraordinary. The slow, regal procession through the narrow, rock-ridden valley – the wild donkeys staring down from the orange hills – the dogs everywhere – the bitches on heat – the wide-eyed urchins with their fists to their mouths – the rows of melancholy, black faces – and the German woman walking behind, calling goodbye to her past. Auf Wiedersehen!

By now they were in retirement in Tanunda. For all we knew dining at the Landhaus, sampling Franz and Vivien’s roulade of pork.

Later that afternoon we were invited to look around the school. ‘Hello!’ we said to each class. ‘Hello!’ they mimicked back, raising their faces to us in mischief and curiosity and shyness. In a rare swell of promiscuous paternalism I was ready to adopt them all.