It’s worth dying if you’re an Italian. Take Antonio Patane. Who could not envy him what he left behind in the bosom of his grieving family? – Inconsolabile dolore.

I envied him his resting place, too. It was a lovely setting for a cemetery, seemingly doubly protected – first, and at a discreet distance, by the warm surrounding hills, then, in a much closer embrace, by the cane field. As high as the manusoleums themselves, the bamboo stopped, or simply paused, at the very fringes of the estate, sweet to its very doors. For the dead it was no more than a clearing, a benign glade made architecturally fantastical, amidst the sugar.

As we drove back out of Ingham we noticed a poster in a shop window advertising Mario’s Disco, and a performance of Robin the Hood at the Arts Theatre, directed by Monica Vitale. Then on to Cardwell, looking out over the granite peaks of Hinchinbrook Island, where we paused to walk on the beach – the mud rather – of Hinchinbrook Channel, and to stare at the bulging-eyed mud hoppers, gulping the element they lived in. On the foreshore a small yellow letterbox affair was affixed to a post, containing ‘Vinegar for Sea Stings’, courtesy of Tully Rotary Club. It was becoming dangerous out there.