I took a turn around the campus, enjoying more of its follies – the terrace library looking out over a landscaped pool bristling with tropical fish; the mock-Elizabethan theatre, an exact copy, some said, of the original Mermaid; the Sommerville Auditorium, a lovely shaded arena, surrounded by Norfolk Pines; the sunken garden where brides came to be photographed in a sylvan setting. And everywhere there would be sudden views of yachts on the Swan River, billowing spinnakers glimpsed through the swooning palms.

I lingered over the student noticeboards. ‘Rage’ seemed to be a buzz word right now at the University of Western Australia. There was a poster advertising AN EASTER ROCK RAGE, and beneath that an appeal to all students to RAGE AGAINST TERTIARY FEES. I was reminded of Gough Whitlam’s famous injunction to all Australians at the time of his dismissal to MAINTAIN YOUR RAGE. He hadn’t got very far with that and I couldn’t see The Furies prospering out here either. You have to be altogether more deprived to stay angry about a principle for long. The one enraged man in Perth had blocked the Narrows Bridge and doused himself in petrol – and he, according to the morning’s papers, was now in police custody, awaiting ‘psychiatric assessment’.

I hired a car that evening and drove to Fremantle, changed and still changing out of all recognition to my eye in readiness for the Americas Cup. It was at Fremantle that I had first stood on Australian soil and first tasted Australian beer, twenty-one years before. If you had a few hours in port in those days you were advised to jump straight on the train and head for Perth. Freo wasn’t considered to be worth a look. Now, given the extent of the restoration and refurbishment, the animation on the streets, and the proliferation of nightspots both smart and bohemian, there was a good argument, should you be flying into Perth with only a few hours to spend, for hopping on the train and heading straight for Fremantle.

I was soon to discover that there was more than one attitude to the tarting up of old Fremantle. It was spoiling the character of the place, some said. It had put up the prices of property. It was forcing long-time residents to move out. ‘I AM NOT AN AMERICAS CUP PROJECT,’ I read on one person’s T-shirt – ‘I LIVE HERE.’ And there was another cause for concern – what would happen to this playground for visiting American yacht freaks when Australia lost the cup or, even worse, when America failed to reach the final?