‘People get changed around every couple of years?’ I thought I was on to something now. So they shipped the Abos out after twenty-four months – sent them back to the missions or out into the bush – just so they should never feel at home. The bastards!

‘Yeah. You know, the public servants. They all do a couple of years up here before moving on to somewhere else.’

White men – it was white men he was talking about and the only people they shipped out were themselves. Damn!

No matter how hard I tried I failed dismally to prise Rod open on the subject of racial disharmony. Perhaps he didn’t want to be prised, could not afford to be prised; or perhaps there was nothing to prise; either way I came under intense silent pressure from Ros to let him alone. He was an amiable man with a lovely smile and kindly eyes. A good rock musician to boot. I had no business pushing him around.

We watched the seven Aboriginal teenagers coming off the plane, behind executives travelling on expense accounts. They didn’t look especially excited – the children I mean – but then shyness often constrains the expressions of Aborigines, and besides, these kids were frequently in the air. It’s a big state, Western Australia, in which being bussed to school can mean being flown thousands of kilometres. They climbed into Rod’s vehicle and packed in tight together. Not for the first time I noticed that Aboriginal children seemed to get closer to one another than European ones.

Back at the hostel they rushed as one person to get on the pool table. At one stage all seven of them were playing simultaneously, striking balls from all sides of the table, some of them having to use rests for cues. ‘Two at a time works better,’ Rod tried to explain to them, but they were unable to face the prospect of splitting up. Playing all at once was more fun. The idea of individuation appeared to hold no attractions for them.

Rod invited us back to his rooms. He was a considerate and attentive host, seeing to all our needs and taking us patiently through his collection of paintings and artefacts, many of them ‘presentations’ made in return for services to the community. But we could feel his discomfort mounting. ‘Am I giving you the sort of information you require?’ he kept checking. It was our fault entirely that he didn’t know what we wanted, since we didn’t know what we wanted ourselves. I made one or two more subtle essays at investigative journalism – hinting at the primeval antagonism between white and black, wondering about rivers of blood – but I never once found anything politicized in my host. ‘Derby is a great place for sports,’ was all I succeeded in getting him to blurt out.

The tension became unbearable for all of us at last, and we rose to go. ‘If you find any good jokes on your travels,’ Rod said, ‘I’d be grateful if you’d send them to me. I collect them.’