Our drivers were called Max and Dutchy. Their routine was the familiar fatuous one, though Dutchy invested it with a more than usually hyper-tense theatricality. If any newly boarded passenger failed to say ‘G’day’ when Dutchy said ‘G’day’ Dutchy would stop the bus, climb out of the driver’s seat, fold his arms across his chest, and wait. He was handsome in a disreputable sort of way, with long Western moustaches and a poker player’s eyes. There was a suggestion of bad temper, perhaps cruelty in his face also, so he had no trouble getting his ‘G’day’, or even ‘G’day, Dutchy’. After which he would pronounce, ‘That’s better’, and return to the business of getting us down the coast to Perth. In the absence of a properly laid down class system such men as Dutchy perform an inestimable service for the smooth working of Australian society, enforcing the rules of day-to-day affability and politeness, and ensuring that surliness and disgruntlement are never permitted to take root. Whatever the state of things elsewhere in the country our bus was a model of good-fellowship and patriotism. Even the waste-paper basket by the driver’s seat carried a smile sticker and the message, WE LOVE AUSTRALIA.