It wasn't hard to find an apartment in Cairns. It was a house really, raised up on six-foot high stilts, like many others in North Queensland. It had been a farmhouse, but the fields had now been replaced by streets of modern houses for the new suburb of Edgehill, in the lee of Mount Whitfield. Cassowaries were said to come down into the gardens, but we never saw one.

The old farmer and his wife had built some rooms for themselves by enclosing the stilts, so they could keep a good eye on their tenants. And an ear too, as they sometimes gave away. One day, for instance, we were discussing a possible trip to Cooktown and wondering what the road would be like. When Alison went downstairs a few minutes later to use the ancient clothes boiler, the old landlord sidled up to her and mentioned, as if by chance, that it wasn't advisable to take a caravan along the dirt road to Cooktown.

Australians back in Edinburgh had warned us about the flies. There are a huge number of species in Australia, and each seemed to have billions of members. They get in your eyes and hair and nose, and even in your mouth if you're foolish enough to open it for too long. Mosquitoes were bad, and their bites came up in angry red weals on newcomers like us; I once counted a hundred, all running into each other, on just one leg.