His apocalyptic warnings came back to us the following night as we were driving through the immense jarrah and karri forests between Northcliffe and Walpole. We’d been travelling slowly, with our windows open, enjoying the damp exhalation of the eucalypts, when suddenly the scene had changed. Now, instead of dense and overhanging foliage, instead of giant breathings, what we saw and heard was fire. Not bush fire but planned, deliberate, man-made fire. On either side of us, and for seemingly interminable distances, felled trees lay smoking like corpses on a battlefield, like the slaughtered of the Somme, charred and contorted, and in some cases glowing from within, as if fire had attacked their vitals first and was eating them away from the insides. We drove for miles through this carnage, past what must have been thousands of blackened carcasses, choking the fading light with their smoke and ashes. A sweet woody smell of death filled the car.

We’d begun the day in high spirits, looking forward to some hard driving and a variety of scenery – caves, coast, lighthouses and famous forests – not to mention, if time allowed and we could find him, Fred Luff. But I knew we couldn’t leave Margaret River and its tourist cafés and craft shops, without grabbing a look at the Church of St Thomas More, the rammed earth Cathedral I’d heard so much about in Perth. Ramming earth was big in Margaret River and appealed to the profound nostalgie de la boue of Perth professionals. Many solicitors and accountants I had met in town wanted nothing more than to own a few hectares in Margaret River and to get down there at weekends and in holidays to ram themselves a little something of their own. Sometimes, when you heard them discussing it, ramming sounded like the last refuge left for manliness in the State.

Its principle as a building method is this: you mix 16 parts gravel to 1 part cement and ram the mixture into formers with pneumatic hammers. You then pile former onto former until you have the wall you want, and seal it up with Bondcrete. Do that four times and you’ve got four walls.

From the outside, the rammed earth Cathedral at Margaret River looked like a leisure centre; within, it had the atmosphere of a craft market in a ski lodge. Exposed wooden girders, Swedish in appearance, held up the roof. Beaten copper holy pictures hung on the walls. The altar, made by Henry Kowalski, was a rough hewn table balanced on a tree stump. Kazimierz Ambroziak and George Power had polished the jarrah burls for the credence and offertory tables. The baptismal font was made by Tristram Willcox, the grand candelabra resembling natural configurations by Jean and John Everett. And special thanks for the feature wall were owing to the Palandris (including Big Carlo and Little Carlo), the Fontanas, the Anghinettis and the Folattis.