We comforted ourselves with tea in the gardens of the old Admiralty House, until 1984 the residence of the naval officer commanding whatever there was to command in the northern region, but now functioning as a gallery. It was the kind of small business we knew something about from our own enterprises in Cornwall. We recognized the strains of insufficient capital and a tourist season slow to get started. An atmosphere of anxious self-sufficiency prevailed. The proprietor talked to the only other people there about the problem of snakes. Pinned to a noticeboard was a typed poem about a mother buying a car and driving her children around in the heat. Upstairs, in the gallery itself, was a visitors’ book, inviting comment from the public. A visitor from Oxford had written, ‘Just more boring art.’ And someone else had recently remarked, ‘Very nice, but gardens untidy.’ This had prompted a reply in handwriting much like that of whoever had written the notices around the place. ‘Donate some plants then, critical BARHASTARD!’ it said.

We stood on the pleasant timber balcony, looking seaward over the landscaped Esplanade where a group of Aborigines sat partying under the palms, their numbers increasing or diminishing mysteriously by means of that process of Aboriginal materialization which cannot truly be called movement. There wasn’t a breath of wind. The only suspirations came from us, sighing over the sameness of things, the indomitable disgruntlement of Europeans, the universal recurrence of their disappointment.

In which temper we wandered over to the Hotel Darwin – the only place in town where you feel you can go troppo in some degree of colonial style – and there, amidst bamboo and fern, and along with all the other louche and lonely with a spare Sunday on their hands in Darwin, we waited for the Glen Baker Quintet and Special Guest Female Vocalist to jazz us into better spirits.

The Special Guest Female Vocalist – hereafter to be referred to as the SGFV – wore a dress the same canary yellow as the Volkswagen we’d hired, though where our car had been altogether without a top the SGFV was uncovered only on one shoulder. She had strong brown legs and nightclub-blonded hair, and was at that age where women are just becoming interesting, where they have memories, not expectation, reflected in their eyes. ‘I would now like to perform a number made famous by the late Judy Garland,’ she announced. She brought Broadway and Hollywood into the Darwin Hotel; these might have been her friends she was referring to. ‘And next, a song sung by the inimitable Marlene Dietrich.’ Which didn’t stop her attempting the imitation – ‘Farhleeng in lahv agayn, nehverr vaahnted to, vaht am I to do, caan’t ’elp eet.’