'Welcome to Perth: A City For People'

...as opposed to the other kind, I presume. For so says the sign above the freeway into central Perth. Jeremy made some excuse about fifteen years of urban housing development but I think he knows it must be the lamest city slogan in the world.

Perth is much like other big cities at five to eight on a Monday morning. There are commuters stunned with sleep and wired into iPods, street cleaners reading the paper, monks in McDonalds and a crowd of Aborigines who cackle and hawk barefoot on the road out of town. As far as this non-Australian can tell, there are three main divisions of Aborgines - these last have fallen between the cracks and rot their brains with petrol and drink. Next are those who make didgeridoos and paint pictures or busk in the street with chalk on the face and beard and belly, a photo opportunity for a gold coin donation. And the last, perhaps the luckiest, are those in the far North whose lands have the good fortune to be without minerals worth mining. They have shut out the Western world and live pretty much as they have for fifty-thousand years. Survey suggests Aborigines spend an average of twenty minutes a day lookng for food. Which is probably on average what we spend in the supermarket queue. I'm on thin ice.

I got back from my jaunt around the Southern forests and had just time enough to recover before the Buck's Show - starting in the morning with paintball, eight-a-side over five grounds and ten games. Those things hurt, but fortunately head shots don't count, so you just wipe the paint from your visor and keep running. You are not supposed to shoot surrendered/shot participants, but everyone did. Mick the Buck copped a thrashing, but he made an easy target with the bunny ears above his helmet. I shot someone in the hand from about fifty metres away and I was very pleased. Mick's prospective brother-in-law was there, a soldier who scared us all with tales of having his jaw broken whilst on war games - in the army they use frozen paintballs. Then I accidentally shot him four times in the groin from about a metre away, but he shouldn't have snuck up on me like that.

Happy, bruised, and in some cases bleeding, we retired for the afternoon to cousin Richie's house (though technically almost everyone I've met out West is a cousin - there really are two-hundred of them) and fell asleep watching beach cricket. The twins - who are almost feral, and proud of it - turned up later in the afternoon with a metre of pressed ham, a motorized spit and four tonnes of ice. We started drinking. There were about twenty of us by the time the topless barmaids turned up, and I spent some of the evening talking to Nicki about her media studies course while the stripper did unspeakable things with unspeakable things. I put myself to bed pretty early, and Shane the soldier starting pulling Titan's tail. Titan is an English Mastiff with a head the size of a soccer ball. He was soft as butter until the tail-pulling started. "If he does that again, you can bite him," says Richie. Titan looked at Shane very carefully, and you could see the cogs turning: "You is lucky Richie is around mister, else I woulda ate you a long time ago."

I woke up the next day with a screaming hangover, fur on my teeth and stuffing from the pressed ham all over my jeans. I hope to god it was stuffing, anyway. Richie, The 'Phonz and myself headed back over to Jem and Joan's place for her birthday party and a tooth of the shark that bit us. One fantastic beef curry later and Richie put himself to bed, there was much in the way of rough and tumble on the kid's bouncy castle and my hangover hung around like an unwanted British house-guest. In the evening Jem and myself laid a nice spot of patio paving with much help from six-year old Jayden. Jayden keeps threatening me with biting things - snakes, mainly, but also spiders, mosquitoes and octopi. "Again?!" I cried. "The snake bit me again? Man, I don't know if I can take any more bites." Jayden lowers his voice to a conspiratol whisper. "It's OK, Uncle Simon," he says. "I'm pretending."

Mid-week I went climbing with cousin Jasmine, who is a boxing champion and frighteningly good at climbing for a first-timer; I managed some nice reachy 18s including a fanastic dyno. Next time I'm going to try the climb where the last move involves running up the slab and jumping for the last hold. The rest of the week I just sweltered in the sun or cowered under the air-con. 40oC and above is simply not funny. Nothing can be done. The hottest UK temperature ever recorded stands at 38.5oC - on Friday, Australia Day, national drinking day, it was 43oC. We found a shady spot under a tree by the river and settled in with the coolers, beer, wine, barbeque sausages and water fights. Me and Bambi threw Angela in the river but she got what she deserved.

It's a good day, a day for almost everyone; some Aborigines refer to it as 'Invasion Day'. It's not as though Australians are shy about being being Australian, Lord knows, but Australia Day is a fantastic display on national pride - the same generally happy attitude as a rock festival, but without cheap amphetamines and emo kids. The Triple J Hottest One Hundred starts at ten in the morning, and I carried my little radio all over the foreshore to hear the countdown. Augie March was Number 1, which was pretty good, but the fools missed out on The Pipettes, The Fratellis, M. Ward, Old Man River, The Veils, Mew... further proof that democracy does not work. The fireworks were pretty good but nothing compared to the lightning storm miles behind it. A few of us stayed the night at Vanessa's place - the next morning Jem and Joan picked us up for Mick and Kerry's wedding and it started all over again. With a family of two hundred, there is a wedding or a birthday party virtually every day of the year. The priest was a cheerful soul who may have missed his vocation as a stand-up comedian - at Butlins - and the reception was suitably social, winding up with a boogie to Bon Jovi at the Mobydisc and a hapless DJ who may have been on work experience. It occurred to me that he was a bit like Luke Skywalker in the first two Star Wars movies, grasping blindly for the Force but unable to channel it anywhere constructive. I was so pleased with this simile that I told everyone, often: "When the apprentice is ready, the Master will appear."

And Godfather III - "Just when I think I'm out, they drag me back in..." No respite on Sunday, as Jared turned thirteen. Another barbeque, more beer (though not for him), and then some doubles pool where I finally got my revenge on Australia. This was two days after Paul Collingwood announced in the pre-match press conference that "England are now playing for pride", go on to win the toss on a decent wicket and are promptly skittled for 111 runs which Australia knock off with nine wickets to spare, leading to calls from the press to send them back to England because everyone who paid for the day/night match only got to see the 'day' part... I've also got Jeremy's English/Australian identity crisis figured out. He doesn't so much sit on the fence as jump from one side to the other. Fortunately, he is pretty good at pool and Team England meted out a sound thrashing to the Aussies, and not before time, too.

Back in the orchard we spent a happy evening running retriculation pipe to irrigate the lemon trees, water cold and clear and good from a hundred and twenty feet down, and the sky turned orange and rippled with lightning. The storm lasted for seven hours. Seven hours. The thunder woke me again at four am or so, and idiot dog Aloo was going crazy in the garden. The air is oppressive but there was not enough rain to clear the cobwebs - this morning the eastern sky was pink.

Now I am in central Perth, bound for the museum. I hear they a have a meteorite. Coffee first, mind you. I'm off to the movies tonight, cliff-jumping on Wednesday, rock-climbing on Thursday, and home soon thereafter. Before Christmas I was really eager to go home. My time with the Roses in A.C.T., the Zuads in Coffs Harbour and everyone in W.A. has changed things. All good people, and barely a backpacker in sight. But I remain unemployed (and possibly unemployable) and I need to get back to Blighty.

"Lightning she is just a flash, but the thunder she rolls on..."