On the other hand you couldn’t be in Australia long without knowing that the best establishments, like the best dishes, are always christened after women. I was prepared to bet that you could get an excellent Pavlova at the Parmelia.

We didn’t ask whether the Parmelia had a room, only whether she had a bar. Yes, but we couldn’t use it tonight – Good Friday, in case we hadn’t heard – unless we had a room. ‘We’ll have a room,’ Ros said.

We followed our luggage up in the lift, just for the look of the thing, splashed water on our faces, caught a quick glimpse through our windows of the police cars still biding their time on the approaches to the Narrows Bridge, waiting for the man to come off the roof of his vehicle or to ignite himself and have done with it, then we redescended for our raid upon the bar.

The staff punctiliously insisted on seeing our keys each time they served us a drink. All the other guests were British. A Scot in a Marks and Spencer’s pullover was explaining the principles of oil-exploration to a tired-looking companion. He held his hand downwards, his fingers like teats, and made a slurping noise. I was overcome by a disappointing sensation of having taken a long time and come a long way to arrive nowhere very distant at all.

Over steak at the hotel restaurant I made my first acquaintance with the Perth custom of waiters positively harassing you to drink. (That is after they have positively harassed you for your keys.) A new beer was brought to us before we were halfway through our old. ‘Another bottle of champagne, sir,’ I was asked a half a dozen times, ‘for when you’ve finished that one?’

I felt as if the whole city was pulling the old double detective trick on us, now giving us everything we wanted, now taking it all away from us again.

On television that night we discovered that the Police Station in Russell Street, Melbourne, had been bombed the day before, while we’d been dozing on the coach. The report was delivered in a tone not far removed from hysteria. It was a national catastrophe. Nazis might have been behind it. A police spokesman described it as ‘the greatest ever outrage against humanity’.

Victoria’s Chief Commissioner of Police, Mick Miller, blamed the Council for Civil Liberties for wearing down respect for law and order and making it difficult to grill suspects. ‘I believe the civil liberties lobby has a say in Victoria out of all proportion to its numbers,’ he declared. ‘I’m speaking for the strong silent majority of citizens who are fed up with crime in this state and who are tired of being victimized by criminals. We are not seeking increased powers for ourselves but for the people of Victoria.’