DARWIN IS COMING up somewhere ahead, in the dark. Thirty hours semicircling the Earth to get here, in which time the moon has turned the right way up and summer has passed into winter. I check the internal landscape for signs of that physical happiness which, in the past, has accompanied the approach to my homeland, but there is nothing. Good. That is partly what this trip is for – to lay the ghost of Australia and to pay my respects to an old man who died before I could say goodbye.

The porthole cover snaps up and there, framed to perfection, is the Southern Cross. Happiness punches me right in the sternum.