We have been in Broome all of five minutes, waiting for our bags at the tiny tin-roofed airport, when my eight-year-old daughter, Cameron, makes her first sighting. ‘There’s one,’ she hisses excitedly to her older brother, tugging at his arm. ‘Come on, Dec – let’s go over and look.’

Always the more cautious of the two, my son shifts his small backpack from one shoulder to the other and rubs his nose thoughtfully. ‘Nah,’ he finally answers, though I can tell he’s tempted. ‘Mum wouldn’t like it. We better stay here.’

I’ve been scanning the conveyor belt, searching for our luggage, but I turn at this exchange to see what they’re talking about. A gecko, maybe, or some other kind of foreign fauna. I am ready to shoo them off, to encourage their interest in their new environment, until I follow my daughter’s gaze and discover not a lizard, not a bird or a flower or a fruit, but an elderly Aboriginal man sweeping the waiting area.