Sunday, 8th May …..

Well, our visit to Perth turned out to be all that we had expected. It is certainly a beautiful city and I think it would be a great place to live. Mungo and Jan live at Waikiki near Rockingham which is a forty-minute train ride from Perth. As we thought, we had not seen them since December 1974; in fact, we saw them last the day they were married. At that time, Jan lived in Goulburn, NSW and the wedding was held there. Marilyn was matron-of-honour and I drove the wedding car. The wedding photos show how we looked then. I was only in one photo and looked like a spivvy used car salesman – nice suit, though. The reason, our paths didn’t cross again was that Marilyn and I left for Hobart in January 1975 while Mungo continued his studies at New England University. He tells us he commuted from Goulburn each week rather than stay in Armidale. In those days, it was a cheaper option.

We only had four days with our friends but we filled them well. Mungo took us to Mandurah which is fantastic. It’s a relatively new area with big houses on the estuary and on canal developments. Apartments for $1million are common and one penthouse we believe went for $10million. We can only dream. Jan had a stroke a couple of years ago but is still very mobile. Mungo, though, does all the cooking and he went to no end of trouble to feed us up. He must have thought we would be starving when we came off the ship because he had planned meals which would have served a team of truckies.

On Thursday, we caught the train into Perth to look at some of the sights. The Art Gallery was a little disappointing apart from its cafe but, at the museum, we stumbled across an AC-DC exhibition. You could hear it before you could see it. By coincidence, we heard an interview on the radio this week of a conversation between Richard Fidler and the founder of the Bon Scott Fan Club.

While we were staying with Mungo and Jan, we came across a little book entitled Poetry for Cats, published about 1995 and full of little gems, like this excerpt of a ‘Hamlet’s Cat’s Soliloquy:

To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,
Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock’s bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell. To sit, to stare
Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal’s opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt. To prowl; to sleep;
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our readmittance gain; aye, there’s the hairball;…..

Jan has every book she has ever owned, in bookcases in every room in the house, and what a collection of treasures she has. If you want to read a Billy Bunter story from the 1950’s, she’s got it. If you’re looking for a book of poems from the 1930’s, you know where to look.