Icing on the cake
Mum and I were driving through Fremantle in the late afternoon, on our way home from seeing Dad in hospital, when I turned into a street and was stunned by the low, golden sunlight as it hit the wedding-cake facades of the row of late Victorian buildings. I parked and dashed out to get some pictures, and almost ran into two sunburnt young men who were also gazing up at the buildings in rapture, one with a very sophisticated-looking camera in his hand, complete with huge white telephoto lens, which made me feel a bit of a dork with my little pocket Fuji.
Anyway, we got chatting.
'Isn't the light fabulous?' I ventured.
'It's brilliant - and look at that gargoyle up there, just waiting to throw stones at passers-by!'
'You over here from England?'
'Yeah, but we live here now. It's brilliant.''We have the best skies, don't you think?'
'Nothing like them anywhere, is there? Do you live here too, then?'
'No - well, I'm Australian, from here, but I live in America these days. I miss this light and these blue skies though. I read recently that it's hard in much of the US to see the Milky Way, not just because of the pollution, but because there's so much ambient light from all the cities and cars.'
'No problem with that here, is there? We just love it. We're so glad we moved over here. Wouldn't go back!'