As we approached Hay Street Mall the streets became festive. On the mall itself a jazz band was playing and an assortment of buskers and hawkers fought for our attention, often in English accents. I was reminded of the numbers of stories I’d heard of English migrants stopping off at Perth en route to the Eastern States and liking what they saw so much that they couldn’t be bothered to complete their journeys. Certainly it felt the most English of all the Australian cities I knew. It even boasted its own Tudor Shopping Arcade – London Court. Built in 1937, ‘its unique Elizabethan architecture’ (I’m quoting from its own advertising now) ‘has attracted tourists from afar. Walter Raleigh and Dick Whittington are inside the arcade above the first floor level at each end. The St George’s Terrace and Hay Street faces are highlighted by two unique clocks. The St George’s Terrace clock tower is a reproduction of La Grosse Horloge at Rouen, and in a large mullioned window St George and the Dragon make circuits each quarter of an hour.’

I thought that London Court might have gone the whole way and sold exclusively pastiche English merchandise instead of fluffy koalas and ‘I’m an Aussie bird’ T-shirts, but I didn’t otherwise object to it. I might have adopted Western Australia but I hadn’t entirely thrown over my connection with England. And London Court was hardly more spurious in its essentials than what passes for the original. I did give a miss, though, to the Elizabethan Village in Armadale, where there are full-size replicas of Shakespeare’s Birthplace and Ann Hathaway’s Cottage. And where, apparently, ‘The Poet’s Arbor Restaurant is delightfully appointed’. I wasn’t feeling that homesick.

Once Ros had squeezed all the sentimentality she could out of Perth’s department stores she led me up to King’s Park, the lovely picnic and perambulation area – part tended botanical gardens, part bush – which overlooks the city and the river. By late morning Perth was as warm in autumn as London ever gets in summer. And a lot less sticky. Young people on bicycles passed us, ringing their bells and smiling. Wherever there was a view down to the Swan and the amenable skyscrapers of the new go-ahead Perth there were Japanese posing for photographs. In so far as you can be certain with Japanese, they too seemed to be smiling.