The Honey Ant/Sharpe's Rifles/A Gift of Life/The Harrogate Secret [antikvár]

? They do a great PR job on Perth. Beautiful setting, they say. (True.) UnspoiU, they insist. (Not quite true.) Happily laid-back lifestyle, they'll tell you. (True of some.) Everything blessed—by Nature and by God. Among those so blessed are the redback spider, the great white shark, the death adder, the brown, the tiger and other deadly snakes. Plus the mosquito. The Ozzie-Mozzie, that is, and may he never bite you. So there Perth sits, at the far end of nowhere, a million-plus prosperous people in one city, commanding a state the size of Europe, and surrounded by killers: animal, vegetable, mineral—and human, some of them. Still, heigh-ho for the outdoor life in the sunshine. Because the sun certainly shines. Oh boy, does it shine! Many people will tell you Perth is paradise, but it didn't feel like paradise as I walked up the steep incline of Barrack Street the day all this began. The temperature was 36°C (muhiply by 2 and add 30, that's the rough and ready way, and it gives you 102°F). The pavements and walls and buildings and earth had been soaking the heat up for days and were now releasing it. My shirt was stuck to my back and my trousers to my legs. I toiled to the top, turned into St George's Terrace and walked towards my office. A couple of Abos strolled past me, black and comfortable, protected by pigment and the evolutionary processes of forty thousand years. No sweat, this heat, to them. Not that I felt envious. The way Abos get treated isn't one of the brightest chapters in Australia's story.