We drove to Busselton, taking the Capel road through some fine tuart forests. Just outside Busselton we called in at Wonnerup House, a lonely homestead clearing in the bush, once owned by the Layman family. George Layman, the founder, had been killed by Aborigines. His family had opened the front door to him one day and he had fallen through with a spear in his back. The next man the widow married died by drowning. It was worth remembering that it had once been dangerous out here. Perhaps that was what the owner of our motel at Donnybrook had been alluding to when she’d called out, as we were driving off, that we should always stay in the car if we had a breakdown, otherwise the Abos would get us.

And some such ancient fear might also have been behind the sign I saw in the back window of a deep blood burgundy Toyota which overtook us as we were approaching Busselton.

ONE LAND – ONE LAW

it said,

OPPOSE LAND RIGHTS

I followed the vehicle into town in the hope of getting a look at the driver. But he was too quick for us. All I could tell from the thickness of his neck and the Australo-Viyella Tory shirt he was wearing was that he must have been the equivalent of a young farmer from Berkshire, the kind that drove a Volvo with the legend, YOUNG FARMERS DO IT IN THE HAY, somewhere visible. Was that, then, how one was to understand the messages that people stuck in the windows of their motor vehicles – were they really all political slogans in search of a political cause? In which case there was some relation between bigotry and facetiousness that was worth the investigating here, and I promised myself that one of these days I would investigate it.