River Swan

I became mates with some guys on the St Georges Terrace Bank building-site. They were really into the Trotting Horse racing stuff. The first Friday wage packet went on the Trots. But they were more into it than I knew. They said. Be at Karri Bridge 7.00 next morning. So Saturday morning my taxi driving landlord dropped me off before his morning shift. Trotting ponies bugger their shin bones. Fetlocks or whatever they're called. It's the strain of trotting and not running properly. Anyway...it results in stress injuries to their legs and the best rehab exercise is to swim. There are pony farms all around and the Swan River in places is just perfect for horse swimming. So for four ludicrously wonderfeul weekend mornings I swam the ironically named Eskimo in the Swan River. I'm no swimmer. I didn't have to be. I just clung on and hoped for the best. She knew what she was doing and always got me back.
I was on a limit stay visa. Could I have stayed? Carved out a life there somehow?. I had a plan of doing Australia. It was going to involve the Nullabar. It was going to involve the interior which meant Alice Springs and Ayers Rock. I was utterly determined to go up the middle to Darwin. I was a bit of a hitch-hike junkie. Having done Cornwall to Sicily.......then a year or so later Provence to Norway......I was into that stuff like Tim Winton's characters were into surfing. I knew how to do it. It was just so cheap and easy. All you needed was attitude and charm and the ability to make people laugh with you and at you. And I loved the Australians. I loved them. That gut wrenching between- your-eyes humour, the unsophistication of it was just exquisitly sophisticated in a way that I'm not sure that even they were aware of.
So I had to leave Perth behind. Regrets I've had a few but this place I have to mention.
The thought of ever going back is a thought not really worth thinking about. I was there, it was wonderful, and I'm not sure if I would like to see the way the sububs have encroached and invaded the River Gums and the Peppermint scrub, pushed back the Parakeets, Gallahs and the Kookaburrahs, further and further back into the bleak, waterless, desolate, sand-driven, red dust and enamel blue sky of the hinterland. Yeah....actually the very place I wanted next to explore.