Connoisseurs of our sunburnt country’s timeless heritage have a treat in store next month. An indigenous tanderrum, or ceremonial mass gathering, unperformed for nearly two centuries until recently, is again being staged in all its spectacle.

To see it, you’ll have to go to the annual Melbourne Festival – an eighteen-days Left-tinged wallow in what the festival website calls ‘stories and sensations’ but might more accurately be described as a farrago of concentrated modish tossery.