My partner Billy and I are in Gondar, in north-eastern Ethiopia, a few bone-jarring hours’ drive from the Sudanese border. All the other foreign guests in our hotel seem to be with one NGO or another and frown a lot. So we delight in telling them we’re only here for the beer. Unlike their largely Muslim neighbors Ethiopians drink quite a lot of it, and the makers of one of the country’s most popular brands have asked us to write some tv commercials. In these digital days, freelance copywriters and art directors over forty can’t afford to be too choosy. Have pun will travel is our motto.

But I’m ashamed to say that until a few weeks ago I thought that wondering where the next meal was coming from would be a more pressing concern for the average Ethiopian than wondering which beer to drink. And that’s because the only preconceptions I had about the country are based on memories of the famine which ravaged it 30 years ago. Or rather, of the Band Aid concerts which did so much to raise international awareness of, er, the musicians who performed in them. As the man who put Rastafarianism on the map Bob Marley is still revered here. Bob Geldof not so much.

The beer brewed in Gondar turns out to be very good. So good, in fact, that Billy and I are not surprised to learn the town has UNESCO Word Heritage Site status. To be fair, though, this may also have something to do with its many archaeological and architechtural treasures. As our host explains, via our Amharic translator, Gondar was the Abyssinian capital for hundreds of years, and as such home to a succession of emperors, each of whom built a bigger, flashier crib than his predecessor. It’s a measure of the respect Ethiopians have for their past that these beautiful ancient buildings remained intact for centuries. Right up until 1941, in fact, when the RAF dropped a shed-load of bombs on them. Evidently nobody has attempted to clear up the resulting rubble, but it adds a certain menacing frisson for the visitor. It’s like walking around a Game of Thrones set.

An appreciation of the amber nectar isn’t the only thing Ethiopians share with Australians. One of the first things I noticed after arriving here were the eucalyptus trees. They grow in such profusion, and to such lofty heights, I initially assumed they were indigenous. Not so. Apparently they’re all descended from seedlings that were shipped from WA in the 1890’s to address (I’m not joking) a firewood shortage. Since then, thanks to the rich volcanic soil and cool, moist climate (most of the country is 6,000 feet above sea level), they’ve spread steadily across this remarkable landscape, crowding out the native cedars and acacias and defying all attempts to destroy or contain them. Arboreal cane toads.

To take the psychological pulse of our target audience we are attending consumer focus groups in different parts of the country. En route to the southern city of Nazret one morning we pass a vast compound set back from the highway. From the height of its fences, and the razor wire along the top of them, and the identical rows of huts beyond, we conclude that it is a massive, state-of-the-art prison – which hardly chimes with the country’s famously low crime rate. But it turns out to be a Chinese-owned factory farm – one of many that have been built here in the last few years to compensate for the inability of China’s own farmers to feed their population. My initial guess wasn’t so far wrong, though. Apparently most of the workers in these compounds are prisoners; convicted Chinese criminals serving long sentences who’ve been brought here in air-conditioned shipping containers (I’m still not joking). The deal is that if they work for nothing in Ethiopia for a few years they walk free when they get home. Billy and I argue for several miles about whether this arrangement is a plus or a minus as far as China’s human rights record is concerned.

In our next town we spend an evening drinking a competitor’s beer in various bars and watching the locals dance. I don’t know if either of Ethiopia’s two television networks has been approached by Mr. Cowell yet, but I can confirm that the country isn’t short of terpsichorean talent. Traditional Ethiopian dancing isn’t just brilliant to watch, it’s also quite informative. Where we are, in the north, the dancers’ feet stay locked to the floor and all movement is confined to the upper torso and shoulders. But apparently if we were a few hundred miles south of here, hip movement and a certain amount of shuffling would be involved. And if we were in a bar a few hundred miles further south, near the Kenyan border, the dancers’ arms and torsos would be locked rigidly together and they’d putting all their energy into staying airborne for as long as possible. Pogo-ing, basically.

Billy and I are old hands at the advert caper, but driving back to Addis the following day we see two things which neither of us has ever seen while traveling between meetings in London, or New York, or Sydney. One is a dead hyena being eaten by vultures on the hard shoulder. The other is something far more shocking; a chiller cabinet in a roadside café containing both Coke and Pepsi.

On our last night, in the bar of our hotel in Addis, we overhear some American tourists discussing the ebola crisis in West Africa. One of them has changed his ticket to fly home a day early, and is trying to persuade the others to follow suit. For a while Billy and I consider reassuring them by pointing out that the distance between Nigeria and Ethiopia is about the same as the distance between San Francisco and Boston. But then we think better of it, and start staggering around the room and coughing uncontrollably.