In Queensland, Victoria or New South Wales the cancellation of a writers’ festival would be an inconvenience. ‘Bummer,’ some people might say in their WhatsApp group chats, ‘what else can we do in February to show we are cultured? Where else can we pay $40 to listen to someone reading one page of a novel we could buy for $20? Where else can we sip pinot gris with strangers who won’t question the opinions we have cut and pasted from the Guardian, the ABC and the Age?’ In other words, if you were planning to attend a literary event in one of Australia’s more populous states, its short-notice cancellation, while annoying, would not leave a gaping hole in your life. Your less literary neighbours wouldn’t even be aware of it and the dent it would make on state revenues would be imperceptible. But in South Australia it is a Big Deal. This is the state, after all, which does not have an iconic bridge, opera house or Mardi Gras. Which does not host tennis grand slams, footy finals and F1 races. Which isn’t skirted (girt ?) by the world’s largest (and getting larger every day) coral reef. The ad man in me can’t help thinking that the task facing SA’s Tourism Commission must be no less Augean than that facing SA’s Macro Meats. Persuading overseas visitors to include South Australia in their itineraries must be a bit like asking Coles to reallocate some of the fridge space they currently fill with beef, lamb and pork to kangaroo. Even the most enduring of Adelaide’s tourism creds – that it is the gateway to Australia’s greatest wineries – is now challenged by at least two other states. Today, the only thing Adelaide gives visitors that they can’t get in any other capital is access to Australia’s second-biggest island. But unlike Rottnest with its quokkas, Kangaroo Island hardly has a monopoly on its eponymous marsupial. According to Google, Kangaroo Island’s only unique natural attribute is its Ligurian bee population, and while I’m sure the honey they produce is very tasty on a slice of toast I don’t believe anybody ever put it on a bucket list. Not long ago, a friend who happens also to be one of South Australia’s more successful exports was asked to think of ways to dramatically improve its destination profile. What was needed, my friend Bill told me, was something to rival the Opera House, the MCG and the Barrier Reef. One option, I told him, would be to make Kangaroo Island an indigenous cultural enclave where tourists suspicious of the dotted plywood boomerangs they can buy in city centre gift shops might experience authentic pre-colonial Aboriginal civilisation. Where, after signing a waiver absolving the state of medical and legal liability, they could eschew clothing, plumbing and gender equality for a few days, and perhaps even witness a spearing.

It would be interesting to know what SA’s greatest writer in residence thinks about the cancellation of Adelaide Writers Week. J.M. Coetzee was a star speaker at the inaugural event in 1996, and the place must have made a good impression on him because not long afterwards he moved there from a South Africa still dealing with the legacy of apartheid. The irony would not be lost on Mr Coetzee if the place he went to escape ethnic division and the suppression of free speech is now becoming an epicentre of racial conflict and censorship. Perhaps he identifies with Tsutomu Yamaguchi – the man who was visiting Hiroshima when the first atom bomb was dropped and got home to Nagasaki in time for the second.

Thanks to its reef, its islands and its weather, Queensland has never had much trouble attracting visitors. But not so much Brisbane itself. The first time I went there, in the early-1990s, was to shoot a TV commercial. Wrapping the shoot early, with a free afternoon, I got into one of the taxis waiting in the rank in front of my hotel. ‘Where to, mate?’ asked the driver. ‘Dunno,’ I said, ‘take me somewhere interesting.’ He lowered his head and gripped the steering wheel, and in the silence which followed I could almost hear the ticking of his brain. Then he started the engine and said, in a voice that was nothing less than apologetic, ‘Would you like to see where Christopher Skase lives?’