There is nothing of which Western Australia is more proud than its self-made millionaires. Just how many there are, and just how much wealth each has accumulated, varies from taxi driver to taxi driver; but that the figures are impressive not even Queensland, its closest rival in nouvelle richesse, disputes. Nor is there anything meanly parochial – if one can refer to an area of more than two and a half million square kilometres as a parish – about this pride. It isn’t at all necessary that you be born a West Australian for other West Australians to take satisfaction in your success; it is quite sufficient that you simply make your fortune there. Thus no one holds it against Bond – Bondy, to the people of Perth – that his place of birth and breeding was England. If anything, it rather adds to the lustre of the State that he should have chosen it to grow rich in. He confirms its reputation as a land of opportunity. And besides, a touch of genuine Anglo-Saxon still goes down well in a State that began life as a free settlement and continues to prefer straining its eyes across the water to looking over its shoulder at the uncouth territories behind. Western Australia has discussed the expedient of secession on several occasions, and many West Australians aggressively boast a more intimate knowledge of the streets of Paris or Rome than the beaches of Bondi or Port Phillip Bay. ‘Sydney? Why would we want to go to Sydney?’ they will ask you. ‘If we’re going to put ourselves to the trouble of flying five thousand kilometres we might as well go to Hong Kong. Or just stay on the plane and go to London.’ It isn’t easy, in the West of Australia, to argue the attractions of the East.

Of course a predilection for millionaires – there is no escaping the subject in this part of the world – lies perilously close to a preference for shysters, and the good citizens of W.A. are frequently left stranded in that moral no-man’s land between disapproval of malpractice and admiration for effrontery. In recent years local consciences have been especially vexed by a series of financial swindles entailing the flotation (or is it the submersion?) of phantom companies referred to, in the purlieus of Perth, as ‘bottom of the harbour’ companies. The phrase itself betrays the quandary, implying as it does a sneaking regard for inventive exploitation of the natural resources. If you’ve got a harbour, or something much like one, it’s a bit unreasonable to start complaining when someone uses it.