When the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement was moved in 1825 from the Redcliffe Peninsula to what is now Brisbane, the empty buildings were offered as a free gift to the local Aborigines. But they weren’t much appreciated. Umpie Bong, the Aborigines called them – Dead Dwellings.

But there seemed no point in trying to talk to Neil about contempt being a double-headed weapon, a spear with a poisoned tip at either end. Though just how many more of his one-way certitudes we would have to swallow was a question that was bound to enter our deliberations when we came to decide on whether or not to accept his offer. Or challenge, I suppose I should call it. Standing by the Boab Prison Tree – a vast, hollowed-out example of my favourite vegetable, used at one time as an overnight lock-up for restraining local malefactors – he had returned to the problem of the man at the tourist bureau, and his ‘negative attitude’ to tourists. ‘Didn’t he mention my name,’ Neil wanted to know, ‘when you asked him whether there was anyone who would be willing to put you an expedition together?’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Are you saying that you would have been?’

Neil ran his fingers through his beard and flicked a mite from his shirt front. ‘Put it this way,’ he said. ‘I don’t just own a taxi. And I’m not just an accountant. I’m also interested in the tourist prospects for this area. I’ve got my own heavy-duty Toyota. I’m looking particularly into the field of personalized safaris.’

‘So you could have personalized us one?’

‘Still can.’

A curious silence descended. I took a stroll or two around the cleft Boab. It was one thing being frustrated because we couldn’t get out into the wilds; it was entirely another, it seemed to me, actually agreeing to someone’s offer to take us. The more especially when that someone thought that being civilized meant knowing how gadgets work. He’d picked the wrong person to tell that story to, of Aborigines feeding their electric ovens with their verandahs. I was only a sliver of mechanical education away from doing the same. So it was him against us.

On the other hand, no one else was offering. Or, to put that another way, everyone was offering – no one was delivering.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Neil said, having caught Ros and me exchanging fraught glances, ‘why don’t you come to my office, I’ll make a few telephone calls, and we’ll see what we can come up with?’