Some of the first mission buildings still stand in Hermannsburg, a cluster of simple whitewashed barns that look like churches, or churches that look like barns, one or two with inscriptions in both German and Aranda on stone lintels. The presence of a few slender palms softens the spot and gives it the air of a very small colonial outpost. Had I been sure that we were allowed in Hermannsburg without a permit I would have taken more time to look around; as it was I slunk about rather, scribbling hurried notes and forming surreptitious impressions.

In the graveyard across the way the most notable memorial was to Moses Uraiakuraia, ‘Inspiring Leader and Teacher, Folklore Historian, Bible Translator, Travelling Evangelist – 1878–1954. “Those who turn many to righteousness shall shine like the stars for ever and ever.” Dan 12:3b.’ It made me think of pyramid selling.

The graveyard was a strange mix of German and Aboriginal, as – Adolf Inkamala: ‘We come Lord to thy feet.’ And there, too, was the grave of Mrs Kempe and her child. But if you were a non-believer, and the term included Moslem Afghans, you didn’t make it into this graveyard. You lay buried in the dust somewhere outside the cemetery fence, no stone or memorial marking your remains.

We drove out, having developed no taste for the place and taken no pleasure in its atmosphere, the tin cross always visible until we were once more on the gravel track.

It was a quiet, musing, uneventful journey back to Alice Springs, broken only by our having to pull up suddenly when we came to an unmistakably low-slung Aboriginal vehicle parked at a slight twist in the dead centre of the road. A surly looking adolescent sat staring out of a rear-seat window, otherwise no one was in the car. We waved to him. He waved back. But gave no sign that he was in any trouble. I passed slowly, trying to work out where the driver was and why the car was abandoned like this, and then I saw two sets of Aboriginal limbs thrashing about in the scrub, just yards from the road, on a blanket that could have been any one of those I’d seen on the floor of Areyonga School during the showing of Ghostbusters.

It was a hot day. And it must have been a hot impulse whose call was so imperative that there hadn’t even been time to pull the car into the verge. They’d just stopped and tumbled out, whoever they were, and were now flailing the air with their uncannily attenuated arms and legs, like some dusty Leviathan of the bush. I did what I could to resist thoughts about native spontaneity, but there was no getting away from it – you didn’t see people flouting the rules of the road with such insouciance in England, merely because the primal need had taken them.