THERE ARE STILL some hot summer nights when I can tool around Adelaide with the windows down and feel like a teenager on the hunt. It’s 30 degrees at eight in the evening, and down at the beach people are queuing for ice-cream. Henley Square’s pumpin’ and hoons are chuggin’ the strip.

In from the beach, away from the respite of a sea breeze, the western suburbs are on heat. The suburban dreariness gets sexy again, as it was before the word bogan had currency and we didn’t know that’s how we’d be described half a century later. My brain takes a sharp fork in the memory road. One way leads back to the music and the dances, the microclimate of slow dancing and drive-ins; the other pushes forward to tourism ads touting beautiful South Australia, with green and hills, vines and heritage.