The men had red faces and round chests and looked tickled pink to be out. You could see their politics in the broken veins beneath their skin, like an apoplexy waiting to break out. The women were a curious mix of bowling ladies with leathery complexions and sirens of the early talkies – Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo especially. I don’t think I’ve ever seen elderly women dressed with such bad intent. Crones of eighty-five, wearing skirts three inches above the knee, shoes with deadly stiletto heels and open toes, and rakish white and blue bowling hats, stood in doorways of department stores at 9.30 in the morning, waiting for something to happen. There were old lips slashed with lipstick in every café, old legs, no thicker than my finger, in sheer black stockings riding every escalator. Pickled into a long preservation by the country climate, they were now content to go off rapidly in the city. It was like watching delinquency seize a retirement home.

A higher standard of behaviour was expected of the young. Outside every hotel were dress and appearance restrictions so complicated that you needed to check yourself out in a mirror to be certain you conformed. In the far north it had been sufficient to stipulate no thongs and no tank tops, but in Brisbane the texture of your trousers and the precise grooming of your hair determined your right to drink. Uneven turn-ups, too little ear showing, the wrong conditioner, and you were out.

Although there were reputed to be bars in town where suspected hoisters were given the third degree, I have to say that we were never questioned, perhaps because we were together, as to the nature of our relational preferences. But in the lavatories of one hotel I did find evidence of Queensland’s notorious anxiety about the spread of the spirit of the Gay and the Goanna. It was a stainless steel machine which offered you your own Germshield Disposable Seat Cover for a mere 20 cents a throw. There was even a little diagram explaining how you pulled out the tab and affixed it to the seat. If you left the tab on, and dangling in the bowl, the cover would be swept away when the toilet was flushed, thus ensuring that the next person would not be able to shield himself from germs for free.