And so there we were – a bark freighted with all the professions, a boatful of those into whose laps Australia had poured its treasures, ourselves an object of envy to lesser, shorter, poorer crafts who paused to stare at us; and yet we teemed with ingratitude and discontent. We ate till we were stuffed: spinach quiche, potato salad and asparagus, curried mushrooms, roast chicken, barbecued chicken, mock chicken sandwiches made from Mrs Bernice Ochiltree’s Recipe (which her daughter Carole will not divulge); we drank champagne and Chardonnay, low-alcohol beer, high-alcohol beer, and what we didn’t like, what didn’t suit our palates or didn’t go with our avocado dip or simply didn’t please us with its colour, we tossed overboard without a qualm – but still, because we’d been fatally unsettled as to our place and our degree, because we were in a city that tantalized us with the illusion of equality of attainability, we still lacked something that we wanted. We weren’t bitter and disgruntled in the English fashion; we weren’t sour from exclusion. We were piqued; our appetites pricked but not satisfied, our senses agitated, our imaginations teased. Funny what even a sleepy, provincial little cocotte can accomplish on a lazy bank holiday on the river.

Whatever its unrealizable dreams, however, this was a very polite gathering. No one was discomfortingly underdressed. No one got drunk. No one seriously flirted. In this way our cruise on the Swan reminded me of the very first experiences I’d had on Sydney Harbour, before Sydney had become a Rest and Recreation centre for American servicemen fighting in Vietnam, before it had a skyline like Manhattan’s, before it even had an Opera House. I tried this idea out on Wendy Maund (née Buckenara), another old convent chum of Ros’s, but she didn’t seem to like the idea of herself as a Sydneysider before the fall. She was tanned and good-looking and wore a white blouse that fell away from a brown shoulder. She narrowed a wary eye at me. Perhaps she thought I was flirting. Or it might have been that as a convent girl she’d had enough of the burden of innocence. They’d accomplished their tasks well, those nuns. Anxiety hangs around the necks of the women of Perth like an albatross.

I exaggerated, by the way, when I said that two of every profession revered in Western Australia enjoyed representation aboard the Queequeg – in strict truth we lacked dentists. I was remarking on that very omission to Carole and Wendy and Ros, late in the afternoon – any excuse to muscle in on their devotions – at the very moment that Jock Burdett, our skipper, caught sight of a small motorboat in distress. The two men aboard were leaping up and down, waving their arms and hallooing, while their wives sat in sullen dejection and contempt.

‘They must have run out of fuel,’ someone guessed.

‘Or Chardonnay,’ Ros suggested.