We weren’t the only ones in the gallery. Just ahead of us, and going at about the same speed, a small boy of five or six was taking a lively interest in everything he saw, getting his mother to read out to him every word of descriptive text. ‘What does that say?’ I’d already heard him ask a hundred times.

The mother, or just possibly the aunty, wore a powder-blue crimplene trouser suit of a kind you don’t often see in art galleries on weekdays, and had her hair coifed à la manière Moonee Ponds. She was growing tired of answering but had obviously been told by some encyclopaedia salesman that curiosity in the young ought never to be discouraged. ‘Nude,’ she said. ‘That means without your clothes on.’

‘What does that say?’

‘Also nude.’

‘What does nude mean?’

‘I’ve just told you.’

‘What does that say?’

‘Torso. That means not the whole body.’

‘What does that say?’

‘Nude. Look. This one’s nice.’ She nudged him towards a still life – fruit and flowers on a table. ‘See. Some artists paint things not people.’

This distinction – I have a sneaking feeling she was actually voicing a preference – reminded me of my brother who paints nothing but things; things at the moment people have just evacuated or discarded them, or at the moment just before people pick them up or turn them on. Since it now seemed ages since I’d been out in the bush naming creeks and mountains after friends, I thought it was time to resurrect the practice, so I decided to give him the whole building – the Stephen Jacobson Art Gallery of Western Australia. A couple of hours later we were in the spanking new reference library, in which transparent lifts convey you to the upper floors where you can actually see and lay hands on the reference books themselves, a convenience which solves at a stroke the conundrum that has for so long plagued the scholar – how to order a book you don’t know exists. We sat for a while browsing through documents which were of no earthly use to us, luxuriating in the easy access, enjoying not being ticked off by librarians, and taking in the fine views over Perth from the windows. Even from here Ros was able to spot the tower of her old convent school. I decided to dedicate the library to my brother’s wife – herself a distinguished embroideress, of ideas as well as canvasses – so that neither she nor the building should feel left out. I can recommend anyone with a few hours to spare in Perth to forget about the prestigious water-front homes and pass the time in the Janet Haigh Reference Library of Western Australia instead.