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I popped my ears as my flight began its slow descent into Alice Springs, where the rows of little planes sat to one side like a neat arrangement of a child’s toys. I had stocked up on glossy magazines for my mother, and anything I could find on the cricket and the football for my father. Not that any of that was any compensation for what I was about to tell them. I waited in the air-conditioned departure lounge until the mail plane was ready.
The vast red country slowly passed below as the waves of warm air lifted the little plane gently up. I chatted to the pilot as best I could against the incessant drone. This was the way of my generation, which now took the outside world to the isolated stations. The bush telegraph had worked in its timeless way; the pilot knew all about me and so
