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Cottesloe Beach, our headquarters while we were in Western Australia, is a pleasant seaside suburb, with, as its name suggests, an immense beach of finest white sand, lapped by smooth waters and protected by Rottnest Island from ocean storms. The cliffs of Rottnest Island, showing yellowish in the bright sunshine, with the white needle of the lighthouse sharply defined are the first sight of land as ships approach West Australia.

The half an hour’s railway journey to Perth runs through other little garden suburbs, for all Australian towns straggle out for many miles into the country, and cover a very large extent of ground. Space is unlimited, and nobody’s domain large or small, need elbow that of his neighbour. The little train on its narrow gauge railway rattles past roads of one-storied houses, standing on their piles; each with its verandah, and sloping iron roof, each surrounded by its palisaded garden, with its purple kennedya, its pink geranium and wattle, each with its inevitable tall grey iron water-tank; somewhere about there is sure to be an array of the ubiquitous kerosene tin, utilised either as a pail, a basket, a flower-box, or all three. We saw them used to form chimneys, even to construct a raft. These suburbs have an air of having loose ends left hanging out. It is all so new; there is no time to attend to details when time is so essentially money. So bordering the low fences are rough undergrowth and gum trees and banksias, and coarse wiry grass—the beginning and the end of the bush.