Stars – there are trillions of them. Stars are being born every day, it seems. But we are unaware because they are so far away, and their light takes many light-years to reach us. There are the human stars of TV, films, the sports arena, the music industry, even God.

We found him sitting in an experimental shaft dug into the wall of an opal mine. It was just above the water level of an abandoned cutting that had flooded when the miner excavated for opal. The hydrologist was reading the paper; several books lay strewn beside him.

Children ran every which way, many of them in just their birthday suit. They were to sit on the floor at the front of the hall so they could see but none took any responsibility for them, and they ran amok. Crocodile Dundee was showing, and the whole town attended. The building, a tin shed, was called the Progress Hall. The noise level was rising; soon, the roof would lift off.