I tried to ask whether there’d been any real likelihood of their raping a white woman, but got a bit caught on the absurdity of the phrase. I wasn’t able to inject ‘white woman’ with the appropriate sense of precious, fragile commodity, and keep a straight face.

Not that Neil was listening. He just wanted to be able to let a little fire blaze in his eyes and say, ‘I’d have shot without hesitation.’

He took us again through the catalogue of Aboriginal incompetence – their hopelessness, their unintelligence, their incomprehension of the idea of property, their economic and moral backwardness. ‘What you mean,’ I said, ‘is that they are not able to formulate a ten-year plan.’

I suppose it was hoping for a bit much to get a rise out of him, but I was surprised he didn’t so much as blink. ‘It won’t change either,’ he simply went on to affirm. ‘It can’t change. That’s unless we adopt Lang Hancock’s suggestion.’

Lang Hancock was the richest man in Australia and went in for that laconic terseness of phrase and moral philosophy which Australians who haven’t been to university find appealing. ‘And what suggestion would that be?’ I asked.

‘Poison their waterholes.’

I swallowed down a tumbler of Bundaberg rum myself, forgetting all about the coke, and said, ‘Are we to understand that things get pretty dangerous out here?’

But it was Robin who answered. ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘It’s much more dangerous in Melbourne. When I go to Melbourne and I’m on my own I lock every door, turn the radio on, and sleep with my brother’s Magnum under my pillow.’

‘The other way,’ Neil went on, ‘is to put rat bait in their food.’