Suddenly, a spate of raised voices rent the air. They were coming from the direction in which Manolis was walking, although he couldn’t tell from which side of the fence. Whatever they were saying was incomprehensible. He moved faster, breaking into a half jog, stumbling, nearly twisting his ankle on the uneven ground.

Crouching and peering discreetly through some needle-sharp spinifex, Manolis finally saw the source of the voices. It was a group of men, white, on his side of the fence. They were arching their backs, hurling stones and torrents of abuse at the detention centre. The rocks were landing on a vast expanse of dead lawn and falling a long way short of their intended target. Behind the men lay cases of grog, one per drunk, ripped open hurriedly, with discarded empties encircling them in a delicate ring of shiny aluminium. The men were making an afternoon of it, settling in, enjoying their sport. Empty cans didn’t fly as far as empty glass bottles. But rocks did.

‘Stone us? Fucken stone them!’

Manolis turned to the detention centre and squinted into the near distance. On an outdoor basketball court, enclosed with its own separate containment fence, he saw a small crowd of detainees, around twenty or thirty. But there was no basketball being played and no shade from the sweltering sun. Most of the detainees were trying to stand upright but losing the battle. They clutched at the chain-link fencing with outstretched arms to avoid the searing hot asphalt surface, and silently watched the drunken spectacle unfold before them. Manolis kept looking at the detainees, wondering why they weren’t inside during the hottest part of the day. A few slumped against the wire with clear exhaustion. There were no guards or other officials in sight.

Manolis stared intently. The longer he watched the basketball court, the more it dawned on him that its occupants weren’t there voluntarily. It was almost as if they’d been herded up, and he bet his life that there was a thick steel padlock on the door. Such sweltering heat, he thought, would surely boil the brain.

‘Cop that, ya terrorist scum.’

It was a surreal sight. From what Manolis could discern, there wasn’t a great sense of community in Cobb other than for retaliation. Only when there was a common enemy did people unite.

Manolis considered booking the men with trespassing, vandalism, criminal damage. But no one was where they weren’t supposed to be, and nothing other than sobriety was being damaged, and didn’t look likely to be. It was merely the displacement of organic matter, which had no owner, from one place to another. A nuisance charge, maybe. But not worth the paperwork. Careful not to be seen, Manolis crept away.