‘I know,’ he said. He was doubled up with hilarity now. ‘I know.’

An hour or so later we were in Kununurra. We were the only ones breaking our journey. The rest still had another two days travelling ahead of them before they reached Perth, and would stop here just long enough to grab steak, chips, and coleslaw. So we took our farewells, warning Fred that we would call in to see him in his new hotel in Northcliffe, and after settling the issue of our accommodation we ventured out into the town.

Nothing that I had ever seen in Australia before had prepared me for the breathtaking spectacle of sunset in Kununurra. Had I been brought here blindfolded and asked to guess where I was I would have said South America, partly – or perhaps precisely – because I didn’t know what South America looked like. Kununurra didn’t remind me of anywhere I knew. A crumbling, serrated ridge of hills encircled it. The highest of them, which seemed to be rising from, and indeed about to fall into, the very centre of the town itself, glowed an ochreish red and resembled an utterly exhausted volcano. In the dying sun the hills didn’t so much give off colour as palpitate with it. The sky was turquoise, streaked with orange. Silhouetted against it, the palms defined themselves with an extraordinary clarity, so that you could pick out the perfection of every frond. The evening was still and very warm. In the eerie quiet – it was no more than six o’clock – the low-slung town appeared deserted, left entirely to the Aborigines who squatted, as always, wherever there was grass or trees, or who arrived in the back of pick-up trucks, dozens at a time, to collect their grog from the bottle-shops.

As we walked back to the hotel in the fading light – the sky now shot through with electric blues and malarial yellows – we saw the bus pulling out. Clay was at the wheel. We waved, wondering how he would respond. He waved back warmly and tooted his horn. You can’t afford to bear grudges in Australia – the country’s too big and there aren’t enough people in it.