But for everything native Australian, no matter how low it crawled on its belly, Peter had nothing but good to say. Even the deadly taipan, which injects enough poison into its victim to kill it 118 times, he asked us to consider from its own point of view. ‘There it is, hiding behind a rock, minding its own business, and you come stomping along . . .’ He pushed his bush hat back off his forehead and scratched his beard, trying to look like a frightened but otherwise well-meaning taipan.

It was a good try. It just didn’t explain the 117 times over the odds the taipan poisons you for disturbing him.

It might have been for this thought that the Natural Order paid me back the next day on Green Island. Or rather – man and wife being one flesh until it comes to pain – paid Ros back.

The weather didn’t improve. For the second morning running we walked out on to our balcony at Palm Cove and thought we might as well have been in Folkestone. A palm tree is a miserable-looking thing in the rain; as is a fallen coconut. The beach – no longer golden but dun-coloured – was full of them: wet and shapeless, like deflated footballs, or rejects washed ashore from some head-shrinking colony across the waters.

We drove down the coast to Cairns and returned our hire-car. We had only booked in one night as house guests on Green Island, but we were keeping our options open. If we felt like spending the rest of our lives there, we would.

It was an unpleasant, choppy boat ride. Almost no one on the upper decks because of the wind and drizzle, and not that many of us below either. People weren’t taking any chances on the day. There were later boats they could catch. If it brightened up they would pack their five changes of bikini and head for the wharf. Meanwhile it looked as though we were going to have the Great Barrier Reef very nearly to ourselves.

There seemed to be a perfect circle of blue sky over Green Island as we approached; not so much a gap in the clouds as a sort of superimposition on them, an apparently free-floating disc emanating warmth and light. But either it was a mirage or a Will-o’-the-wisp, because no sooner did we reach the island than it was gone.

We’d been told to introduce ourselves to Mark, the Activity Officer, the minute we disembarked. ‘How will I know him?’ I’d asked the girls who’d processed me. ‘You’ll know him,’ they promised. And I did. He was tall and dark and very clean – too clean: you could have eaten off him. And he was wearing a T-shirt which said MARK on his chest, and ACTIVITY OFFICER on his back. ‘You must be Mark,’ I said, ‘I’m . . .’