Nor did the more humble contributors to this grandiloquently rustic monument go without their commendations – ‘The volunteer men who had poured all of the flooring (5 big pours) . . . and the volunteer women who made and served thousands of cups of tea, several hectares of sandwiches, and tonnes of cakes and biscuits.’

As further testimony to the power of pioneering communality it should be noted that the Cathedral was fully rammed inside a year. Work began on Australia Day 1982 and was completed, with a nice sense for patriotism and symmetry, on Australia Day 1983. The great Cathedrals of Europe had nothing like so good a record.

I wasn’t much concerned, after this, to look at caves. At any time I am prepared to give caves a miss, not caring much for the crudity of their symbolism, but today, with the sun shining and the above-ground scenery ravishing, there was even less reason than usual to hang around in car parks waiting for the cave warden to turn up with the keys. So we drove down the Caves Road to Augusta, the third oldest settlement in Western Australia and as delightfully situated a little town as any we had yet found. From wherever we stood in Augusta we could see water – Hardy’s Inlet, the Blackwood Estuary, Flinders Bay (for it was hereabouts that Matthew Flinders began to chart the Australian coastline), or the ocean itself. And whereas, whenever we had looked out from the coast of Western Australia before, we had stared northwards or westwards, to Indonesia or India or Africa, now we had, as it were, turned the corner; now there was nothing between us and, had our eyes been good enough, the South Pole.

To celebrate this dramatic new geographical perspective we bought a kilo of frozen prawns and a kilo of frozen oysters and cooked them up on a public barbecue in a park overlooking Hardy’s Inlet. Then we drove down to see the lighthouse at Cape Leeuwin, declared the prospect to be much superior to Land’s End, and set off for Pemberton through karri forests every bit as magnificent as they were reputed to be. The karri does not rival the boab for personality or friendliness; it is altogether too stately a tree to make a chum of. But it is somehow benign and protective for all that – an aloof but kindly uncle of a tree – and I could see why the Orange people had made this area their home for a while, seeking peace and property, and causing considerable consternation to non-Yogis, in the forests of the Karri Valley.