We both cheered up immeasurably thanks to those pineapples, so that by the time we reached the cane fields we were in the right frame of mind to make ourselves over to the extravagant beauty of Queensland. I’d read that there were serious problems in the sweet-tooth industry: world overproduction, EEC subsidies, and cane farms falling into ruin through land abuse; but I fell for those cane fields for all that. I loved the way they managed to look both luxuriant and orderly, dense bamboo jungles that grew in straight lines to the very edges of the road, giving off an aroma that might have been more imaginary than actual, a giddying paradoxical something or other that made me think of dry swamps. Hawks, too, were attracted to them, and eagles, enjoying the ride. I liked to think, in the sticky currents of air that rose from them, but primarily, of course, waiting to pounce on whatever lived in that stalked, sinisterly sugary undergrowth.

The first cane town we came to was Ingham – ‘Little Italy’, as it’s sometimes called. Apparently Italians had been here for almost a hundred years, the first boatload of migrants arriving in Townsville in 1891. They had been imported as cheap labour, mainly for the sugar industry, in which many of them were to prosper. According to Ross Fitzgerald, they aroused considerable antagonism because of ‘their increasing numbers and efficient working methods. Some British workers complained that they undercut other groups by accepting lower wages and working longer hours.’ What a miserable history the British have, I thought, when I read this, of carrying their querulousness into every corner of the globe, and how bad they’ve always been, when it comes to the logistics of labour, at working out where their own best interests lie.

‘Forget Cairns for a while,’ the woman at the Ingham Information Bureau recommended. ‘You’ve got plenty of time to get to Cairns. Why don’t you stay here for a while? Explore Wallaman Falls – the second longest sheer drop in Australia. And you can’t leave without seeing the new cemetery. Everyone goes to the new cemetery.’

‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

‘The Italians are buried there. People like to see the mausoleums.’

She asked me to sign her visitors’ book. She ran the Information Bureau as if it were her own lounge, and the vale of Herbert in which Ingham sat, as if it were her own garden. She had a sure touch. She made you feel as though you’d been welcomed into the town personally. The Italian influence, I thought. Assuredly not the British.

When she saw that I’d written ‘London’ in her visitors’ book she said, ‘I’ve got a penfriend there.’ I could see that for a moment she wondered about asking me if I knew her. Or him. ‘And I’ve got one in Bournemouth, one in Rochester, and two in Torquay.’

‘You’ve got a lot of penfriends,’ I said.