I wasn’t sure just how much irony he wanted of me. I was bored to within an inch of madness by the Americas Cup which was still nearly a year away. On the other hand I had to remind myself that I was now in Western Australia. I laughed. Just a little. ‘It is a touch excessive,’ I said, leaving out the bored to within an inch of madness stuff.

But I’d missed the point of the question. He wasn’t looking for a small amount of irony. He wasn’t looking, as it happened, for any. What he wanted to know was who I thought would win.

‘I fancy England or Italy myself,’ he said.

‘England?’ Shows what I knew. I thought it was only between America and Australia.

‘Yep. Dark horse, England.’

‘The key to it,’ Charlie said, ‘is the water between Fremantle and Rottnest. It’s a lot trickier than the Americans know or are used to.’

Already this had become too technical for me. I deferred to Ros whose home waters these were. I went vacant and stared into my Swan Lager. From next door, in the Workmen’s Bar, came the sounds of the biggest party ever held in Australia, or the world. And they hadn’t won a boat race – come to that, they hadn’t won anything – for over two hundred years.

I came to when it was my turn to order drinks. ‘My shout,’ I said, and when I’d paid I tried to do what Charlie and Henri did with their change, leaving it on the bar, like poker money, so that the barman could take from it in response to the faintest nod of the head. I’d always liked this Australian habit of slapping your notes down on the bar and allowing the pile to diminish through the evening; and I noticed that it was even more common in the north, where the heat made fumbling for your wallet in your shorts uncomfortable. I suddenly thought of England and all those white depressed men counting out their pennies from plastic coin trays, and I wanted never to go back there.

‘What do you tink of te Adelaide Grand Prix?’ Henri asked me.

‘Now that,’ Charlie said, ‘is the way to make money. A lot more people are interested in cars than they are in yachts.’

I fell vacant again.

Towards the end of the evening the name Ernie Bridge cropped up. Ernie Bridge was the Honorary Minister assisting the Minister (that’s to say the real Minister) for the North-West and Kimberley. He was also an Aborigine. ‘He represents this constituency,’ Charlie said. ‘Doesn’t he, Cyril?’

Cyril was the barman and neither knew nor cared who his local state member was. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’

‘It’s amazing,’ Charlie said. ‘Australians are like that everywhere. Ask them a question about politics and they instantly go vague.’