PERTH

(from King's Park)

We've been to Perth, both for the first time, but just for a couple of nights.

Fremantlle, where we stayed, had a touristy charm about it, though it was alarmingly quiet on a Sunday evening, teetering on abandoned.

Cottesloe's famous beach facing the great Indian Ocean was greyed under sullen skies but the heady pulse of hot summer days was palpable just below the surface. We couldn't resist fish and chips on the verandah of the grand old hotel, aka the Cott.

Before flying home, we idled a morning away in King's park. It is huge reserve of all but virgin bush with more manicured gardens around the restaurant and function areas, boasting a tempting preview of the west's justly famous eucalypts and flowers. The city is splayed along the river, clearly a mining town with any significant building's naming rights in the hands mining companies.

We went for a funeral. The cemetery is a vast and beautiful place of handsome gums and gardens with a random wildness that adds to the stillness. It seems more bush than mannered burial ground, and more welcoming for it. We walked about twenty minutes behind the hearse in a light warm summer drizzle to a plot reserved fifty years ago next to my sister's first little infant son who died at nine months and now no longer lies alone, but with his father.