In the main the Aborigines of Areyonga didn’t look comfortable with the conventions of purchase. They did form a sort of queue at the till, subject as it was to defections or incursions at any point, but they took no interest in the additions of the bill, just handed over a large note every time and accepted whatever change was given them. I never saw a single instance of change being checked or queried or come to that received gracefully. For their part it was a mute, difficult, unabsorbing transaction; from the point of view of the storekeeper it was like taking candy from a baby.

I assumed that the easy-going bearded white man by the till was indeed the storekeeper, and I was struck by his treatment of his women customers. It would be incorrect to say that he took liberties with them exactly, but he knew their names and patted them on the back and put his arm around their shoulders, almost in the manner of a male nurse at a home for the incurably but innocuously simple. I was not at all able to read the response of the Aborigines to this, and queried it back in Leanne’s garden. ‘They tolerate it,’ Neil told me. ‘That’s about it.’

There were divisions, that much was clear, between the small number of whites in Areyonga. Too small a number for such divisions not to be costly. Which was partly why our teacher friends were sorry to see us leave; they were starved of talk. However passionately committed they were to the Aboriginal community they served there was no possibility of any real social contact there. They had one another and that was that. No wonder they were serious. Or, good job they were serious.

And we too were sorry to go. We’d been well looked after. We’d blown in out of the blue and been trusted and made welcome. We drove away with a curious premonition of anti-climax, as if we knew already that we’d have trouble over the next weeks doing anything quite so interesting. I now realize that this was a throb of wishful fidelity, that like young lovers faced with a parting we clung to the obligations of the present only because we were fearful of the enticements of the future. The more especially as the future in this case was Queensland, a state whose politics, according to Neil and Dawn, were such that we shouldn’t even approach its borders.