I’m on a Qantas flight from Darwin to Perth, sitting comfortably in the aisle seat. The middle seat is vacant and there is a copy of Bill Bryson’s latest travel book about Australia sitting there. The owner is an English girl about twenty-eight or thirty, a lawyer she tells me. She’s on holiday and meeting her brother who is backpacking around Australia. She wants to know what I’m doing in Perth.
‘I have no idea,’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to hole up in a motel for a day or two then catch up with a friend, Tim. I know him from Sydney but he lives in Perth now.’
‘Oh, you free spirit,’ she exclaims, which is not what I expected and I’m not sure if it’s sarcasm or not. We chat for a little while longer. She has come from New York but lives in London. I tell her I just spent four months on Elch
