The loneliness bided its time. Like a dingo lying in its den through the daylight hours, waiting. As I watched the sky turn lemon and the sun rise behind misted plane tails at Brisbane Domestic Airport, as I flicked through the in-flight magazine and failed the Sudoku between Brisbane and Adelaide (and from Adelaide to Alice Springs), as I picked up Monster Truck and took Larapinta Drive towards my first overnight stop at Glen Helen, I was barely conscious of the loneliness lurking. Only after the Englishman at reception had shown me to the bunkhouse, congratulating me on having a four-bunk dormitory all to myself, and I’d located the ladies toilets and changed into togs and was picking my way down the dry part of the riverbed with pebbles tinkling and crunching under my sandals, did I become aware of a nagging wish that someone was with me.

I stepped gingerly into the soft red water, and the wish grew. Late sunlight falling on the east face of the gorge turned the rock to warm golden honeycomb; the west face in shadow was rich terracotta. Unsettled by the immense age of cliffs surging upwards, their feet puddled in the silken river, I snuggled into a boulder hollowed into a natural armchair, veloured in algae. The water, so richly red I expected it to taste of rust, was warmer than the air, and tasted more strongly of water than any river I’d ever submersed myself in. The air smelt so powerfully of the water it made me dizzy.