2. Size and origins.

My dear friends and bitterest opponents, we begin our pursuit of the truth at the beginning. We use fact, not myths and stories, as a basis for our methods. We are all outsiders and strangers to this distant land, afterall, and none of us knows who to believe more than another. I invoke the Spanish proverb, coined of course, like all wise proverbs, by the master Cervantes: we must have a solid perch to hang up our coats.

Since this is a dialogue about space and time, I begin with a scientific description of the land we are about to explore and then present to you the background to our question of duality, the question that confronts the contradiction inherent in the identity of this place: the State of Excitement or Dullsville? We will confront time only as it passes.

Using moles deep within the CIA, my contacts within the local West Australian government and the swift work of Aboriginal trackers, I have obtained access to rare and classified documents and I lay bare their facts.

Western Australia capital Perth is closer to Singapore and Jakarta than it is to Canberra and is described as the most isolated city in the world. My statistics also suggest it is isolated within itself:

The area of Australia is 7 687 000 km2

The State of Excitement measures 2 525 500 km2

The area of Spain is 505 000 km2 whereas that of the UK is 243 300 km2

This means WA is 5 times larger than Spain and 10 times larger than the UK. That could make for a lot of excitement. However, the population of WA at the last national Census was 1,851,252 people (922,268 males and 928,984 females) with an average age of 33. That makes less than one person per km2. The population of the UK is approx. 60 000 000 or 30 times larger than WA; Spain is approx. 40 000 000 people or 20 times the size.


The population of my home town Toledo, was 60 671 in 1990, but Toledo, Ohio, home of Corporal Klinger from M.A.S.H. (see image), is five times larger, making it like WA is to Spain. But I think my home is more exciting than Ohio; I don’t need any more evidence for this other than my three sisters.


(please see CIA, City of Perth and Toledo facts for references).

My fellow Europeans knew of the existence of Western Australia in the seventeenth century. The English explorer, William Dampier, amongst others, visited the north-western coast in 1688 and 1699, but his reports were unfavourable. We must ask why he thought this so? Was William Dampier not excited when faced with the prospect of an entire new country, a continent even, if he could have imagined something so vast? The Swan River area was eventually settled in 1829 at the sites of Perth, upriver, and Fremantle on the mouth of the Swan River.