Illustration: Dionne Gain Credit:

"Darling. (Yes darling.) Nothing darling. Just darling, darling." Crossing the mighty Darling River always reminds me of this little ditty deployed, back in the day, by punk rocker Ian Dury. This time, though, we’re just outside Louth, a hundred clicks west-south-west of Bourke, and as our ancient Land Cruiser lumbers across the old box-girder bridge it’s another voice that murmurs "as he died to make things holy, let us die to make things cheap". Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker seeps from the sound-system like coal tar from a wound.

"Stop the truck," I insist. I need a picture, for the mighty Darling is mighty no longer. It’s a dotted line, traversed by bare khaki dirt in several places. Less a chain of ponds, this poor dishevelled deity, than a chain of puddles.

I’d woken that morning rubbing my feet on the delicious soft roughness of plain cotton sheets, 30 bucks from Kmart. I mean, who knew Kmart could do anything without polyester and fluoro, right? Beside me, the tiny grandson gurgled happily in his new, pelican-pattern all-cotton Wondersuit, just $14 from Bonds.

But in a flash, on the bridge, I see the links. I applaud Kmart’s new venture into a kind of plainness approaching taste. It’s almost Quakerish, almost noble in its simplicity. Bonds is excelling itself in the design department and even Target makes a feature of “Pure Australian cotton”. That’s all great. But the cheapness is illusory. Because this right here is the cost. We’re buying this cotton with our river, our grandchildren’s future.