The question bore such a heavy charge of ironical indictment that I think I turned a little pink. I knew I wasn’t a bronco-buster’s bootlace, but was it that obvious to everybody else? And, if it was, then what did she mean to imply I might be into – saddle-sniffing? ‘No,’ I said. ‘Good heavens, no. It’s just that I’m ah . . . doing a book on the area and um . . . feel I ought to er . . .’ (I nearly said, ‘put my nose into everything’) ‘keep my eyes open.’

I always think it’s quite a defeat when you have to admit you’re a writer. It’s like being forced to play your best card – in this case the four of clubs – first.

She made no immediate response to this. She simply went on copying out the details of my driver’s licence. Then she said, as if reading out the numbers from the licence, ‘A writer, eh? And how am I coming through so far?’

I think that was the moment I fell in love with Queensland. ‘You’re coming through marvellously,’ I said. Not much of a reply, I am only too well aware. But I was in the presence of a conversational virtuoso. Somebody who did for expressionlessness what Angela Davis had done for the Australian rooster. I was licked and I knew it.

‘That’s good to know,’ she said, about ten minutes later.

She stood at the door to see us off, utterly impassive. ‘Turn left at the lights,’ she said, ‘and go straight. If you’re not in Cairns after 370 ks you’re on the wrong road.’

‘Bad bitumen,’ I said to Ros. ‘Potholes. Savage, twisting bends. Not enough room for more than 1½ cars in either direction.’

‘Thorny cork-screw trees,’ she replied. ‘Extreme chromatic monotony. Gnarled, evil-tempered landscape.’

We weren’t playing twenty questions. We were just getting rid of our spleen while we were still within touch of Townsville. But then the country opened up. The thorny corkscrew trees gave way to banana plantations, coconut palms, and fields – did I know before now that they grew in fields? – of pineapples. I stopped the car so that Ros could get out to look. ‘Pineapples, my dear,’ I said. ‘Pineapples and pineapples and pineapples.’ We agreed that if she were ever to develop her allergy to Australia again (we couldn’t say for certain it had gone; she hadn’t been back to Melbourne yet) this is where we would bring her – to the far north-east, where she could roll amongst them by the field-full, instead of having to make do with just a couple, one hanging from her left bedpost, one from her right.