But if nothing much had really occurred, it was a reminder for all that of how unresolved the black/white issue still was in Alice Springs, and how pervasively present in the town – as a matter of visible fact, not merely of politics – these second-class citizens with no jobs were. There was absolutely no escaping the issue. During our last few hours in Alice it was all around us. Even in the little art gallery in the mall, where it was above all possible, you might have thought, to subsume race under artefact, it rose like an odour from a sewer. ‘These,’ a young Japanese tourist wanted to know, pointing to a book which contained illustrations of ancient Aborigines sharpening sticks, ‘can I take photograph of these?’

‘I think he means in the street,’ an English girl with him helped out. ‘I think he means the ones outside.’

The woman he had shown the book to was herself part-Aboriginal. ‘Ah, I dunno,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they like it. Better ask them yourself.’

‘Ask them? Ah yes.’

‘Yeah, I would.’

‘Is it – is it – is it, hoh, dangelos?’

‘Dangerous? Ah no . . . it’s not dangerous.’

‘Do they expect you to pay them?’ the English girl asked. I stayed away from wine bars in Clapham so as not to hear an accent like that. Now here it was, catching up on me in Alice Springs.

‘Aw look,’ the woman behind the counter said – and I could see her thinking that if she was forced to become any more ponderous she would crush herself beneath the dead weight of her words – ‘Aw look, I’d ask them.’

So leaving Alice wasn’t an especially painful rupture, though we weren’t pleased to be back on a bus. After being masters of our own fate for so many weeks it was a shock to be reminded that there were such things as prohibitions. And twenty-seven hours until Townsville seemed an awfully long time to have to suffer them. Especially as neither of us had the slightest desire to go to Townsville.

But I had the proofs of a novel to read. The job wouldn’t take long. Just a day or two. And the typescript would be waiting for me in Townsville. We’d pick it up from the Post Office, do what had to be done to it which would be nothing, post it back, and head up the coast to the real Oueensland, to Cairns and the Daintree and the Barrier Reef. That was the plan. And Townsville was not meant to be any significant part of it. What we didn’t yet know was what had been done to my manuscript. But I’ll come to that – or rather, iLl caM£, TWon; *@:;%at!? – later.