She shook her head, spraying me with perspiration. Nervous? We were now passing homesteads she’d visited as a little girl, creeks she’d paddled in, roads into the hills she’d walked along with her parents in 1953. Nervous? Nostalgia Incontinentissimus was upon her.

The approach to Perth was lovely. I thought. Small farms. Market gardens. Modest wineries. Melancholy horses in green paddocks. The sense of manageable, domestic ruralism a pleasant relief after the massive stations of the north. Some of the houses were no more than tin sheds with simple verandahs around them, but even a tin shed can look charming in the late afternoon, set in a small paddock, sheltered by gums, amid signs of flourishing though unostentatious husbandry.

As we entered Perth proper, through a pleasantly amorphous and democratic tumble of suburbs, we heard on the radio that a man had blocked the traffic in the city by parking his car on the Narrows Bridge, climbing on top of it with a pair of rifles – one of them a military .22 – stripping to the waist, dousing himself and his car (marked HIGH EXPLOSIVES) in petrol, and daring anyone to move him along. The drama was unfolding now, this very minute, less than a mile from where we were. We could see the tailback of traffic and, because the Narrows Bridge is elevated, the blue revolving lights of the waiting police cars. Had the man decided to go ahead and blow himself and the picturesque bridge sky high, as a Good Friday gesture, we would have enjoyed an excellent view of it.

The other drama of our entry into Perth was also enacted against an ancient religious backdrop. Since this was Good Friday we could not hope to find a drop of alcohol in the entire city.

The person who informed us of this was the proprietor of the motel which Dutchy had been recommending to us as the best place to stay in Perth ever since we’d made the mistake, thousands of kilometres earlier, of seeking his advice on such matters. ‘Beaut little place,’ he’d told us. ‘Cheap. Clean. Friendly. Well-stocked bar. It’s where I always stay myself.’ He’d dropped us off there on the understanding that we’d get together later for a jar and a yarn once he’d returned the coach to the Perth office. And so there we were, further out of town than we wanted to be, in the presence of a sepulchral Englishman with skin the texture of gabardine, being told, even before we’d signed in, what we were wasting our time to expect.

‘When you say there’s no alcohol to be had anywhere in Perth, I take it that you mean with the exception of here,’ I laughed. I was halfway through filling out our registration card, but I stopped when I perceived that our host had not laughed encouragingly back.