Hers is not a recent fancy. She has owned the land since the 1970s, when she built the house with her then husband. For some years she lived in Sydney and used it as a weekend retreat, then returned in the 1990s with a new partner. When that relationship failed, she decided to stay in ‘this place which had etched itself into my very bones’.

She has a telephone, a computer with internet access, and a four-wheel drive to take her back to civilisation whenever necessary. But there is no interior plumbing, and the solar power is unreliable: she needs a back-up generator. These mundane details are more interesting than her forcefully voiced opinions. To her frustration, she often needs the help of the opposite sex with their seemingly innate mastery of machines and axes. She finds this particularly annoying and complains about machines ‘clearly not designed by women’. Generally, she displays a deep sense of the battle of the sexes which is (one hopes) becoming seriously outdated.

Munro does not quite say that the world would be a better place if everyone lived as she does – after all, her manner of living depends on the continuation of civilisation – but too often she rails against all that is wrong with the government and the corporate world. Much of what she says is no doubt true, and perhaps others will hear passion when I hear stridency, and self-deprecating humour when I hear leaden irony, but goodness she takes herself seriously!