And so, force-fed and out-turnovered we returned to the Toyota and the drive back to Derby via Windjana Gorge, the latter a wonderful opening out of the terrain, a vast craggy ravine of steep limestone cliffs and lovely, pellucid sun-lit water. It was to see country of this kind that we’d hired the services of Neil in the first place, and we were furious that now we’d got here it was time to return.

‘The trouble with Windjana Gorge,’ Neil said, virtually completing the circle of our acquaintance with him, ‘is that it’s badly managed.’

I looked up the sheer walls of the Gorge and then across into Neil’s eyes, nervous and flickering behind his thick spectacles. Scout-master’s eyes, I said to myself. Cub-leader’s eyes. Then I added, entirely for my own behoof, ‘Beware the boy who would be a man.’

As we drove back along the Kimberley Plain Neil told us an Aboriginal Dreamtime Legend relating to the area. ‘The Kangaroo and the Emu fell out, the Emu chased the Kangaroo and the Kangaroo flattened the land as he ran away. Which is why it’s a plain.’

‘Is that the full extent of the legend?’ Ros asked.

‘That about gets it,’ Neil said.

‘You have a real feel for Aboriginal mythology,’ Ros told him.

Eighteen kilometres before Derby we came to Mowanjum, an Aboriginal township from which all alcohol was banned. ‘What you’ll find,’ Neil said, ‘is that they come back here with their bottles at night and finish them off in the road. The booze is prohibited in Mowanjum but not on the highway.’

And sure enough there were brown stubby bottles everywhere. For the distance of about one kilometre on either side of the township the road glistened with broken glass, as if diamonds had suddenly risen to the surface of the bitumen.

The following morning I cashed another cheque with Stormy Collopy and went to pay Neil. The bill was half as much again as he’d said it would be. ‘We did a few more kilometres than I’d calculated,’ he explained.

I cast my eyes down the print-out and saw itemized, in computerese, the lamb chops and the tins of tomatoes and the steaks and the many dozens of sausages which Neil had insisted, like a hurt host, that we consume. I contested his total.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Fine. I always like to make my bill out in advance and then discuss it with the client afterwards.’

He was dressed in his accountant clothes again. Ten-year-plan regulation mufti. His fingers tapped away at the soundless keys until the bill came down not quite enough to satisfy me but far enough to satisfy him. We shook hands and I promised that I would indeed make the name of the man at the information bureau dirt the minute I got to Perth. Neil gave me the addresses of a few people I could make it dirt with.