‘A Vauxhall?’ I asked.

‘Easy. Like everything in those days. Goin’ round, gettin’ married … like buyin’ a box of Persil.’ He felt for the new directions; smoothed them again, in his pocket. ‘Problem these days, everything’s too complicated. Keep it simple, Clemmy.’

We thundered north, following the pipeline. Pop opened his map and described Hesso and Monument Hill, Bookaloo, Birthday and the crossed pick and shovel that was Ernie’s hammer and sickle. To our west, Lake Dutton; east, the sulphur and porpoise-shaped rot of Lake Torrens (Pop claimed he could smell it). Then, Spud’s Roadhouse for early lunch: walls papered with number plates from around the world, pubobilia, snake skins and dunny seats signed by Burke and his missus. We sat down with our hot dogs and Chiko rolls.

‘We’re makin’ good time,’ Pop said.

Ernie rolled up his crossword book and put it in his pocket. ‘No turnin’ back now, eh?’

‘I got a sore arse,’ Peter said, and Pop told him it would get sorer.

You could pin your business card to the wall, add your photo to a gallery, hang your bra, even, in an underwear jungle hanging from the roof. There was a set of stoplights, operational, and a bowling alley beside the men’s chunderama. Pop’s finger traced the red line from Pimba to Coober. ‘Lotta bloody nothing.’

Back in the shed, the gaps had seemed smaller, but now each had to be worked for. Neville Bluff and Glendambo, thousands of strokes of a mapmaker’s pen that didn’t show the endless boredom or pointless conversations needed to fill the hours, and miles.

‘All that today?’ Peter asked.

‘Today.’ He stretched his hand, finger to pinkie, one-and-a-half times, to show us. ‘Still up to it, Ern?’

‘Don’t worry about me, Doug. How you feelin’?’

‘Never better.’ He glowed, but then dimmed. Dropped his shoulders and said, ‘I’ll go fill up.’

Peter drove, Pop beside him, me and Ern in the back. Pete was efficiency, upright, ten-to-two. Pop saw it all: ‘That one must be Rocky Hill.’ Indicating.

I chose Lawrence; Ernie, level four Superword; Pop, the promise of progress towards gold. There were a few outcrops, granite perhaps, but the thought of a seven-mile reef? ‘This is the way Lasseter must’ve come,’ I said to Pop.

He looked back. ‘I reckon.’

‘Musta felt like this, eh?’

‘How?’

‘Like it was getting closer?’

This didn’t seem to excite him.

‘Phar Lap outstation … abandoned. Mount Brady.’ But then he took out the new directions, laid the crumpled sheet on his map, and descended, again, into doubt.

We arrived in Coober Pedy early afternoon. Firstly, through a moonscape of tailings and shafts. We stopped, examined a few, and Pop said, ‘Best place to dump a body.’

A million shafts, according to the information bay on the way in. Then, low, growling fish shops and explosives stores. Another school, with even fewer promises of Byron on his pony.