Whether or not he was right about the Pope, Wayne couldn’t have been more wrong about The Electric Cowboy. I watched Robert Redford and Jane Fonda doing their usual thing for about half an hour – exhibiting their neat pin-pricks of conscience about the culture which had made them beautiful and successful – then I gave it away and concentrated on the country outside. We were in termite territory. Their mounds were not as high as those we’d seen on the road to Kakadu, but they were more plentiful – little reddy-brown phallic pillars sprouting like magic mushrooms, for miles on either side. Occasionally the bus would stop, or swerve, to avoid a brumby or a brahmin bull. As we approached the West Australian border the country changed. Gradually the land grew hillier, until we were driving between terraced escarpments of crumbling red sandstone. The rocks had been so evenly worn away that they seemed to be surmounted by a man-made wall, like an ancient but perfectly preserved fortification. At their bases palm trees – Livingstone Palms, Fred told me – huddled for protection from the wet and the heat. Then we crossed the Victoria River – a broad green swathe of water, over which kite hawks hovered. ‘This whole area’s called the Victoria River District,’ Fred said. ‘I worked here once. Wonderful, benign country.’ I immediately named it the Jeremy Lewis District, after Jeremy Lewis Esq., of London, whose encouragement had not a little fortified me in recent years.

‘I was out here on a job a few years ago,’ Fred went on, ‘entirely on my own, in a 4-wheel drive with radio and rifles in the back. I wasn’t expecting any trouble, but it’s a good idea to be prepared. I decided to make camp at a little waterhole I knew. I stopped the vehicle and started to get my gear out and suddenly I heard giggles. I looked around. More giggles. Then calling – “Hey, here, over here!” I still couldn’t see anyone. Then I looked towards the waterhole and there they were’ – he paused here to make sure that his niece was still sleeping, and to lean closer to me across the aisle of the bus – ‘three sheilas, three sheilas, stark naked in the water, shouting, “Come on in, come and join us. The water’s beaut.”’

His face was creased with amusement. He wiped his eyes and towelled down his moustache with a handkerchief.

‘So what did you do?’ I asked.

‘I thought, “Hullo, this looks like trouble”, Remember there was no one else around for hundreds of miles – just them in the nuddy and me with my radio and rifles. So I excused myself – politely, of course – and drove up the road a few miles. You know, to cool the situation down.’

‘And then what did you do?’

‘Made camp and went to sleep,’ he laughed. His face danced with wonderful memories.

‘What happened to you was what most men fantasize about,’ I said.