As Mrs Maybe gives a prim address on the pristine virtues of capitalism, and as Oh Jeremy Corbyn tells his fans that neoliberalism is broken, it seems that the virtues or otherwise of capitalism are once again being kicked around.

An earlier Tory prime minister, and a man with a crisper command of English than Mrs Maybe, had his own take on this matter. Winston Churchill said: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

When she swerved through her rivals to nip into Number 10, Theresa May appeared to step back from free-market Thatcherism, speaking up for the state and pledging to intervene to fix “broken markets”.

The Tory manifesto for her hubristically unfortunate election even stated: “We do not believe in untrammelled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality.”

For all that, yesterday Mrs Maybe gave her free-market cred a spit and polish. In a speech to mark the 20^th anniversary of Bank of England independence, she said: “A free market economy, operating under the right rules and regulations, is the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created…This is unquestionably the best, and indeed the only sustainable, means of increasing the living standards of everyone in a country.”

While we pause to suck on that gobstopper, it is worth pointing out that her speech came the day after Jeremy Corbyn’s conference address suggested that Labour would rebalance the economy with more state involvement.

A YouGov poll suggest that 58% of people support renationalising the railways, water companies and other utilities, while 17 per cent were opposed to this. This indicates that policies the Tories see as extreme are in fact supported by many voters.

The debate of the virtues of capitalism – and Corbyn should stop saying ‘neoliberalism’, as it means little to ordinary voters – is partly down to mood music.

Corbyn wants to be seen coming down hard on the ruthless capitalism that rides roughshod over people’s lives; May wants to – well, what does she want exactly? One minute she embraces the state and doesn’t believe in “untrammelled free markets”; the next she says that the free market is the “greatest agent of collective human progress ever created”.

That one stopped me in my tracks. The greatest what? Capitalism is an unavoidable engine in our lives; it does great good and can do great harm. The world has never found a different way to do business, and probably never will.

But Mrs Maybe, in her prim little sermon, suddenly sounded as if capitalism represented God’s good work. That woman doesn’t seem to know what she believes some days.

Perhaps this is how the breakfast conversation runs: “Philip, today I am mostly going to be supporting the state as a means of helping the JAM…”

“Oh, yes please, pass it over.”

“Not jam – JAM – the just about managing.”

“Ah, them. Well I am just about managing to eat my breakfast, and…”

“But then again capitalism has been such a force for good in our lives…”

“Well it has it our lives, eh, love? Done us very nicely. Good old capitalism.”

“Ah yes, it is good, isn’t dear. Thanks for putting me back on track. Pass the marmalade.”

“Is that another acronym?”

“No, just marmalade, dear.”

Often in politics what is said is about creating the desired mood, while also being a reaction to what the other lot has just said. Mrs Maybe’s sermon on the mount of gold is interpreted as a riposte to Jeremy Corbyn’s attack on capitalism; and we can expect more of the same as the Tories gather in Manchester (what has that fine city done to deserve such a visit?).

Here are three closing thoughts.

One: capitalism seems happy to romp away, grabbing what it desires, until everything goes tits up, and suddenly Uncle Moneybags expects the state to step in, as happened with the banks.

Two: Mrs Maybe’s unreliable friend Donald Trump has agreed to slap a 220% import tariff on Bombardier’s C-Series jet, partly made in Belfast, at the urging of US rival Boeing – is this how free markets are supposed to work?

Three: Everything Mrs Maybe and Oh Jeremy Corbyn squabble about overlooks the fact that China goes its own way, taking over the world with its monster hybrid of capitalism and communism, without caring a jot whether something is untrammelled or not.

THIS blog usually lands in trouble when commenting on anything said or done by Oh, Jeremy Corbyn. This is a shame as there is much to admire about the man, not least a stubborn but faithful allegiance to what he has always believed in.

For some reason, whenever seeking the good in Corbyn, at my back I hear the scurrying winds of a ‘but’.

The other day I read about an online insult hurled at middle-aged men who tut about politics, especially with relation to being condescending to younger women giving their opinions. It’s ‘centrist dad’ and is apparently the insult of the moment.

Now I wouldn’t for a moment condescend to young women expressing views about politics, so I hope that slight doesn’t apply. But perhaps I am “Ah, but Man”. That all sounds very honest and idealistic; ah, but. That sort of thing.

Corbyn’s speech yesterday was a very good one in so far as these things can be judged. Mostly he spoke well and his words brought the party faithful to their feet; they loved what he had to say; raised the rafters with cheers as he said: “The Tories are hanging by their fingertips.” And on the BBC News – you know, the one hated by his true disciples – they were shown trooping out with beaming smiles, saying it was Jeremy’s best one ever.

The Corbyn phenomenon is certainly interesting: a man who was always a left-wing outrider in his own party, a bandit in a baggy jumper, has risen to lead his party, as if by fluke. Two years ago, this ascent looked like a crazy experiment that could only end in tears. Now Corbyn’s position at the head of his party is unassailable: he is there for as long as he wants the gig, or until he wishes to hand over to a disciple. And he seems comfortable; seems to be enjoying his moment; and seems in control.

On a morning when time is tight, and the drive to Horsforth awaits, there is no time to dwell on the details. But that ‘clinging by their fingertips’ should perhaps worry those who wish to see a Labour government – and I’d rather see one of those than any other kind.

And it is this: the Tories are very good at clinging by their fingertips; the tips of those fingers are made of iron forged in the heat of long and tedious battles. And even a prime minister as bankrupt and hopeless as Theresa May isn’t going to give up without a fight.

The ‘reviews’ for Corbyn are fairly good this morning, better than expected, with The Times saying that Corbyn was “filling a vacuum of ideas” left by a Tory Party that had failed to inspire voters.

All that is true, and good luck to the man; honestly, and almost without an “ah, but”. The Huffington Post inserts one of those into its analysis, saying that the speech was his “best by far”, but worrying: “Has the nation reached Peak Corbyn?” and asking: “Can he keep this up for five years?”

That is perhaps the biggest question. Corbyn has the impetus right now, as he rides the socialist slipstream of surprise. “Power to the people,” is how the faithful Daily Mirror puts it.

Authenticity is often given as the key reason for Corbyn’s success, and that is surely right: he is the real deal, but – “ah, but” – are the Tories really about the crumble, or will they cling on by the tips of their entitled fingers; that’s what happens all too often.

WHERE do you stand on puns? Wordplay is something I enjoy, but there are those among us who are no pun at all.

Oh, look, there’s no need to raise your eyebrows like that: where’s the harm in a pun? A punny thing often rolls off my tongue. But it is true that puns are less popular than once they were.

To me, a pun suggests playfulness, an awareness of the way language can be turned and twisted. Others feel they get in the way or are just plain indecent. All I can say is that Shakespeare had no problem and his characters are often spitting out puns.

A life in newspapers has left me with many pun scars, the stripes of the trade. But the old habit must be watched nowadays, as the Irish paper I work on two days a week does not favour puns, although you can smuggle one through occasionally.

These circuitous thoughts have been stirred by the death of the Coronation Street actor Liz Dawn, or ‘Corrie legend Vera’ in tabloid shorthand. Many of today’s headlines simply use her character’s catchphrase, with variations on “Ta-ra chuck” – a predictable but friendly usage.

The Daily Star goes down the pun route. Maybe it’s a matter of taste, but “The end of a Vera” hits a dull note to my ears. It’s the sort of headline that’s easy to compose: change one letter and, hey, you have a pun. Tellingly, the other papers avoid that path.

The tricky thing with puns is whether they are any good or not: do they mint something new or hit the floor like a dropped brick?

The Sun yesterday had the headline “Toff justice” above the story of the Oxford medical student who was, reportedly, spared a jail sentence for stabbing her boyfriend because she was too “pretty, posh and clever”.

Whatever the truth of that story, the pun hurried on to the front page didn’t work for me, missing the mark while also leaving a nasty aftertaste.

Sometimes a story is forced into a template, and that is what happened with Lavinia Woodward, who pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding at an earlier Crown Court case, and has now been given a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months.

The judge who heard the case observed that the victim’s wounds were superficial, and decided to defer sentence, a legal process which allows defendants to avoid an immediate jail sentence. Woodward was given time to address drug and alcohol problems, and to continue receiving counselling.

That seems like the law acting with wisdom and compassion, although the editor of the Sun would clearly disagree. Woodward has voluntarily withdrawn from her medical studies, which is another sort of punishment.

But let’s veer back to Vera. I am not much of a Corrie fan, although it’s hard to avoid an awareness of the classic days. And Vera was one of the great characters, a comic grotesque worthy of Dickens, and, in the words of the Daily Telegraph today, the “resident nagging loudmouth” who had “the tongue of a viper and the cry of a corncrake”.

Liz Dawn wasn’t her real name, and I can find no reference to why she chose rather a plain name over her actual name of Sylvia Butterfield. That’s a good Yorkshire name for a woman born in Leeds.

Dawn first appeared in Corrie in 1974 and remained there until 2008, when lung disease forced her to leave the show. Her character Vera Duckworth died in her sleep, but was fleetingly resurrected in 2010, when she appeared as a ghost as her husband Jack died. The eternally quarrelsome pair settled their differences with a last waltz.

I am sniffy about the Star, a newspaper I never actually pick up for fear of what might be caught. But in an attempt at even-handedness, here is the paper’s punning headline for when Jeremy Clarkson and co were dropped from the BBC after Clarkson punched someone on his team: “Strop Gear.”

Not bad, that one.

FOR three weeks, the news was hardly given a glance. Headlines were squinted at on the phone, but that was that. Being half a world away pushes the daily quarrel into the dismal distance.

The thing was, that every time I did look it was the usual dull choreographed ballet of Brexit and other balls-ups. One day, Mrs Maybe was making her Brexit speech in Florence. Despite the big billing, her audience mostly comprised British journalists, other European politicians having more important matters to attend to.

Her speech seemed to be a tacit admittance that quitting Europe wasn’t going to be as easy as all those Europe-haters would have us believe. But Brexit still meant Brexit, whatever that means.

Another day, another idle threat from Donald Trump to blast North Korea to smithereens.

Meanwhile in Australia, the poll on same-sex marriage was driving the news. One day, the West Australian had the headline: “Same-sex headbutt” – a blunt instrument with which to sum up an alleged assault on the abrasive former prime minister Tony Abbott.

Early reports suggested an altercation with a Yes supporter, during which Abbott banged his lip. By deadline time in Perth, this had transformed into that headbutt.

But then, our own dear Westminster is a decorous tea party in comparison to the bear-pit of Aussie politics.

Incidentally, Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, a prominent No campaigner, said that opposition to same-sex marriage was like “the successful Brexit referendum in Britain and Donald Trump’s election as US President”, again according to the West Australian.

Well, mate, that doesn’t sound very liberal to me, but then liberal in Australia translates as broadly centre-right. And if you think the Brexit vote was a success, call again in a few years to check up on us.

Back home, it is party conference season, that time of year when politicians gather, usually at the seaside, to bask in their own brilliance.

It’s Labour’s turn this week, with the party buoyed after the unexcepted success of the election, that’s if success is defined as a better than expected defeat. But with the Tories weakened and behaving badly, perhaps Jeremy Corbyn is in with a chance, should Mrs Maybe suffer a final, fatal wobble. But my advice would be to restrain the cockiness, as it’s off-putting, especially with John McDonnell giving the impression that he was in power already, the inconvenient truth of the election having been brushed under his shiny shoes.

The plan to abandon those horrendously expensive PFI contracts has appeal, as the NHS is much burdened by those enormously unwise higher-purchase deals. But life and politics are never simple: although they were a Tory idea, the public finance initiative deals were grasped enthusiastically by Labour – and with good reason, as the NHS was coming apart at the seams. As it is again now. Funny how that happens whenever the Tories are in control.

Could Labour pull that off without some other financial compromise containing hidden poison in the small print? That’s a big ask, but those deals don’t seem to do anyone much good, apart from the lucky contractors who signed no-risk contracts that pay up for 25 years.

Still with Labour, how depressing that the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, has a bodyguard at the conference, such is the virulent hostility of some Corbyn supporters to a woman who is merely trying to do her job – and a very difficult job, too.

Labour’s Diane Abbott, who knows far too much about being abused, was asked if she would call on the more extreme Corbyn supporters not to abuse the likes of Kuenssberg online. “Oh definitely. Don’t do it,” she said. “There is a positive case to make on Jeremy online, make that positive case. You don’t have to be abusing other people.”

Quite so – and it is fair to say that those who indulge in such misogyny could just repel the undecided voters Labour needs to win over.

Here, to end, is news that truly disturbs. According to Bioversity International, we are too dependent on only 12 crops and five animal species. This heavy leaning could end in global famine. Only marginally less drastically, it could also lead to the end of crisps, chocolate and coffee. Which reminds me, it’s time for breakfast.

NO sleep for 24 hours, so I am writing this to stay awake. We flew out of Perth at 5pm on Friday, which is to say 10am, and we arrived back in York at ten this morning – so the journey took a day, a whole day mostly spent sitting. Sitting and not sleeping.

The flight to Abu-Dhabi took nearly 11 hours, with two hours off to sit in different chairs, then another six hours to Manchester. We had a plan for sleep, or my wife did: stay awake for the long haul, and sleep to Manchester, as that was our night-time, rather than the Aussie night.

It amazes me that anyone can sleep during a flight, as the seats are uncomfortable, the plane is noisy, and time is shredded by those wings: what day is this; was that horrid meal intended as breakfast, dinner or tea? – not that it matters, as the meals were nearly always the same.

At some time early this morning, or late last night, because heaven knows it’s hard to concentrate, I sat in the plane and looked around. The flying tube was in darkness and around me people seemed to be sleeping; my wife was certainly asleep, and reckons she managed 90 minutes. I managed not a slumbered second. Same as on the way out, when none of those hours sitting doing nothing coincided with sleep.

On the outward flight, the man sitting next to me slept for seven or maybe eight hours. He sat down, nodded a greeting, then nodded off, while I twitched and wriggled beside him, taunted by restlessness and an aching bum. Dear me but flying is uncomfortable.

After I complained about my problem, my wife unkindly suggested that was the price you pay for having a skinny arse; but she redeemed herself this morning or yesterday morning or some time or other, by suggesting that I should remove my wallet from my back pocket. I did this and it worked up to a point and those six hours to Manchester were less uncomfortable.

If sleep can be hard to find in your own bed, you are hardly going to impersonate a baby when sitting on a plane. Anyway, I saw plenty of films: Ghost In The Shell (strange but intriguing), My Cousin Rachel (solid good), Gone Girl (solid bad really), Sicario (good) and Spotlight – a fantastic newspaper film based on the real story of the Boston Globe’s investigation into allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Spotlight is exciting, driven and in a sense stands as a love letter to how newspapers used to be before the cuts and other shitty interludes.

I may have seen something else but honestly, I can’t remember. My head is fuzzy, my sense of balance has gone and my legs are wobbly: and alcohol has nothing to do with it.

Flying is frankly awful, but at least you end up somewhere good and have a lovely time. That’s worth the airborne insomnia, the aching bum and endless meals, each one cunningly disguised as the last.

The plan for the rest of today is to stay awake until bedtime, so the hours are looking long.

THAT serves you bloody well right, mate, for posting pictures on Facebook showing sunshine on sandy coves and other holiday snaps to cause envy to break out like a rash.

Today the rain is lashing down and yesterday we abandoned plans for a return visit to King’s Park in Perth. Instead we walked in the rain to a late breakfast with our daughter, then went to see a film (Ali’s Wedding, an Australian-Iraqi rom-com, if you can believe such a thing, and quite wonderful, too).

You don’t think of rain when visiting Perth, but you should if you come in August, the rainy month here – just like home, in a sense.

Mostly the weather has been good, at least, to visiting Brits. Sunny and sometimes warm enough to burn, but nothing too extreme.

“This isn’t hot,” our friend said, when I edged out of the low afternoon sunshine one day.

August here is wet, Christmas is hot and the temperature in February can approach 90°F. And that’s another confusing thing: we left Britain at the start of September, just as summer gave up the fight, and we have spent nearly three weeks here in spring, only to return tomorrow to darkening autumn.

Today we fly home, leaving Perth at 5pm local time. Thanks to being seven hours ahead, we are due to land in Manchester early on Saturday morning. That makes this my last travelogue, as commuting to Howden and Horsforth offers little potential for wander words.

We have loved our time in Perth, and here are a few passing thoughts. People here are very proud not so much of being Australians as being Western Australians, with loyalty to state being stronger than to country.

A bit like Yorkshire in a way, only writ enormously large, for Western Australia is vast. Perth, the state capital, is the most isolated city in the world, with its closest companion being Adelaide 1,367 long miles away. If WA were a country, it would be in the top ten in the world in terms of size. And, seeing as we went there, the jetty at Busselton is the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere, running to just over a mile.

Oh, and King’s Park, which we didn’t return to yesterday thanks to the rain, is the world’s largest city park, much larger than Central Park in New York.

Here’s another telling statistic. The endless vastness of Western Australia is home to around 2.5m people, while the cramped confines of London contain approaching 10m people.

Yorkshire Tea is hugely popular here, thanks to the number of relocated Brits, and coffee shops are everywhere, much like home. The beer is good, much better than when I visited the east of Australia more than 30 years ago. Like the coffee, craft beer is plentiful, although it comes icy cold and isn’t hand-pumped.

The people are friendly, open and chatty. The centre of Perth is quite small, with huge banking skyscrapers dwarfing the older buildings, and it is easy to navigate, and there are more bars, cafes and restaurants than you could visit in half a life-time. The food is good and yesterday’s brunch featured the “best BLT in Perth” and between mouthfuls of proper bacon, sourdough toast and salad, I couldn’t help but agree. The veggie options have been good, too – and our first meal out was at a vegetarian cafe, all tasty fresh goodness to banish the awful stomach memory of airline food.

Anyway, we’ve loved our time here and hope to return one day, but other people’s happiness doesn’t write well, so it is time for me to shut up and wait for the jet-lag to hit.

THIS fellow is a quokka and you will only have seen one in the furry flesh on Rottnest Island, or Rotto as everyone here calls it. Quokkas live nowhere else.

Rottnest is a low-lying island off the coast of Perth and the ferry there takes about 30 minutes. Almost as soon as you step off the jetty, you will meet your first quokka. These marsupials are about the size of a cat, have hinged back legs like a kangaroo or wallaby, cute faces and a long tail.

Roos use their tail as another limb, and perhaps the quokkas do too, although you can’t escape thinking that it looks like a rat’s tail. That’s what 17^th century explorers from Holland thought, and the island’s name comes from early Dutch for “rats’ nest”.

The quokkas are everywhere on the island and visitors stoop and kneel to photograph them, some even risking a $150 fine for stroking the creatures. The maximum fine for harming a quokka is $50,000, reportedly, and two years ago two French tourists were fined $4,000 each for burning a quokka using a deodorant can and a lighter.

That clearly served them right, but you can see that the quokka exists somewhere between being a feted cutie and a blessed nuisance. Or big rats with better PR.

Anyway, they are appealing, they are everywhere on Rotto, and although Wikipedia has them down as nocturnal, someone forget to tell the quokkas, as scores of the creatures were out in the daylight, although they did look a little sleepy.

We bought sandwiches from the bakery in the little port, where a gate keeps out the food-snuffling quokkas, and got on the bus. You can buy a ticket that lets you hop on and off around the island. That bus was hot and smelt of diesel. “Can we have some air in here, mate,” one of the passengers heckled the driver.

There are no cars on Rotto, just buses and delivery vehicles; and lots of hire bicycles. The bus set off and the ancient air-conditioning blew one puff of vaguely cool air towards our hot faces. We got off after a few stops, gulping the fresh sea air, and strolled up to Wadjemup Lighthouse.

When you walk through history, you often end up with something nasty on the bottom of your shoe. Rottnest Island today is a nature reserve, a place of great beauty, its coastline filled with picturesque sandy bays. But the island has a dark past, as it was used as an Aboriginal prison for many years, and the lighthouse was finished in 1849 by prisoners hauling the heavy stone into place.

A new lighthouse was built at the end of the century and was involved in saving some members of the crew after a British ship, the City of York, was wrecked off the island’s treacherous coast in 1899.

We climbed the lighthouse tower, led by a refugee from Liverpool, who told us not to have our hands in our pockets during the visit. As a hands-in-pockets sort of a guy, I was ticked off many times, but the visit was interesting, and the views from the top were great.

After that we walked for a while and found a deserted cove where we ate our sandwiches, then we popped on a different bus – cooler this time, thanks to the emergency exit panel in the roof being open – and drove along more of the coast, before stopping to walk the last part, and dozing on the beach below another pillar of safely, the Bathurst Lighthouse.

We bought ice creams before the mini-voyage back to Fremantle. The boat was full and no doubt the cameras were full of pictures of those quokkas and their friendly-seeming faces.

“DID you tag off?” This is what they ask you on the bus here and it always sounds like some Australian euphemism. Did I what? None of your business, sir.

But it’s only to do with the travel card. You buy a card costing ten Aussie dollars (about six quid) and load it with money. This card can then be used on the bus, trains and ferries, much like an Oyster card in London, and buying it reduces the fare a little.

Apart from hiring a car for a weekend trip south, we have used public transport all the time and it’s good in the way public transport often seems to be when you are abroad. Using the card, you tag on the train or bus – and tag off when leaving. And if you forget the last part, the system assumes you stayed on for the full journey, and charges you accordingly. Hence that tagging off question.

We used two buses to get to Perth Zoo yesterday. The zoo is housed in a 40-acre park across the water from the city centre. The grounds are lovely and it’s a well-kept place. Those who dislike zoos will not like this one either, I guess, but surrender to the experience and it’s a great day out.

Much of the zoo is Aussie-themed, with a reptile house full of native snakes and lizards, and an enclosure that mimics the Outback, where kangaroos wander past you or lounge in the sun, scratching themselves. You can spot the male kangaroos because their balls are large and hang low like a punch-ball. It looks like a dangerous way to arrange your tackle, but presumably the roos know what they are doing. And we saw Aussie penguins too, small and unbalanced on land, little submarine missiles under the water.

We glimpsed a dozing dingo, cooed at koalas and had our stomachs turned by watching the Tasmanian devils at feeding time: what funny, ferocious creatures – squat, solid and with incredible, bone-crunching jaws.

Elsewhere, we saw a Sumatran tiger on the prowl, long and lean and slim-hipped from behind, saw elephants, a lion taking a nap and a rhino too. Zebras shared an enclosure with two giraffes, one male one female, and the tall boy was very interested in his mate, following her around with one-track-mind male persistence, sniffing her bum. He sniffed, she swerved, he sniffed again.

The meerkats did their usual charm offensive, winning everyone over, and hopefully banishing thoughts of that annoying TV advertising campaign. While most played or dozed, one stayed high, perched on top of an anthill, watching out for what was coming, even if it was just more visitors.

Two hyaenas had a cackle of a fight while I watched, and they are quite scary-looking creatures, larger than you might imagine, but just as ugly as reputation dictates. They are noisy and look like the scruffiest dog you ever saw, except that they aren’t dogs at all, but closer to cats. And dingoes, by the way, don’t bark but just sneak up on you with a soundless snarl.

The end of our holiday is creeping up on us with a soundless snarl, too. We are leaving our Airbnb in Fremantle today and returning to stay again with our friends M&A for four nights, then starting the long haul back on Friday afternoon. After which real life awaits, but Australia still has us for a few days yet.

THE sun is shining and we are tasting wine: what’s not to like? The gravel in my throat and a hacking cough, perhaps. This afternoon tour of the Swan Valley was booked some time ago, so I swallow a couple of Nurofen cold and flu tablets, as supplied by our daughter, and man up.

There are seven of us on this tour and the young woman leader drives the minibus between wineries, as they are called here. At the first stop, she gives us a mini-masterclass in wine-tasting, telling us to hold the glass by the stem and to swirl the liquid. I swirl the wine, and soon enough, the wine swirls me.

There isn’t much to say about a wine-tasting tour, except that they are pleasant occasions. Being a good boy, or possibly a foolish one, I drink everything offered, liking some more than others, but casting into the spittoon only a splash of red too oaky even for me.

Apart from the three of us, the other guests are an Australian couple (she’s from Melbourne, he’s from Perth but has recently been relocated to London); and a couple from Venezuela, now living in Perth.

Risking my sandpaper vocal cords, I chat as best as possible. Everyone is friendly and interesting, but what stays with me is a thought about Venezuela, a country of many advantages, including the world’s largest oil reserves, that seems to have become an economic and political basket case.

The president, Nicolas Maduro, blames foreign sabotage for his country’s problems, including severe shortages of food and medicine, hyper-inflation and worsening violence. Maduro has responded to this unrest by jailing and blacklisting opponents.

Anyway, it hardly seems fitting for a man drinking wine in the Australian sunshine to offer a definitive view on what’s happening in Venezuela. Some on the left in Britain side with Maduro and blame the US, seeing Venezuela as a proud left-wing country brought low by capitalism.

Again, swirling my glass, I don’t know the truth of this. But I do know that this lovely young couple – one a lawyer, the other working 50 hours a week as a chef in an Italian restaurant – left Venezuela because it was no longer possible to live any sort of life there.

All their young friends left too and are scattered around the world. When everyone who can leave a country does, it doesn’t look good for that country.

They are a bright, attractive couple, newly married by the look of it, lovey-dovey in the sunshine, taking photographs of each other and enjoying their day off. But it is possible to sense a sadness in them too when they talk about their country. They don’t mention the president or who’s to blame; they don’t take sides. They just pause beneath a different blue sky to say what a rotten mess their country has become.

They chose Australia because it was the man’s dream to visit the country, and now he’s living that dream instead of living the nightmare of life at home.

Later, over tiny paper cups of different chocolate liqueurs, they tell me that they like the sunshine here – and that they should visit London, but worry about the weather.

“Doesn’t it always rain there?” the woman asks, frowning.

By the time we head back into Perth, I have sampled everything on offer: assorted wines, bits of cheese, a little glass of beer, good chips and those chocolate liqueurs (bad idea that: I blame those lovely Venezuelans).

Back in the city, its banking towers scraping the blue sky, we retreat to a cafe hidden down an alleyway before heading out for a meal with the daughter of friends from York, who now lives out here. On the way to the restaurant, I go into a supermarket to buy throat lozenges.

Now it is late and I have been in and out of bed. I could accuse the cough but only have myself to blame. All that different food and drink is having a rebellious moment in my stomach. I get out of bed for a while and read Oliver Twist on my Kindle. After that I return to bed and sleep well enough, and wake feeling quite a bit better.

WE are in a crowded bar in Perth for a gin tasting and one of the bald men swings by with the last drink. “You’re my favourite,” he tells my wife, as he hands over her glass. “What about me?” asks our daughter. “No, her,” he says, swinging away.

The gin tasting is a late birthday treat for my wife – and an early one for me, arranged as a surprise. The bar is heaving. They’d expected 20 guests and found themselves with closer to 50. As the evening wears on, and the gin is poured, the bar gets pleasantly lively.

Four Pillars is a small Australian distillery that makes various gins and by now we’ve tried a few. A very pleasant G&T kicked things off, made with their ‘rare dry gin’ and served with orange and Fever Tree Mediterranean tonic.

This gin is made by a coterie of bald blokes, possibly four, although I can’t quite remember. Two of them are here tonight: the stocky showman who complimented my wife, in between delivering outrageous patter and leading a Christmas singsong – they have a Christmas gin, you see – and a tall, more serious-seeming former Olympic athlete, who tolerates his companion’s boisterousness with good grace, and the occasional cutting remark.

Neat gin is a neat idea, until you stand up to leave. There’s a navy-strength one to give you sailors’ legs; that Christmas one to make you sing; a Bloody Shiraz gin that steeps Yarra Valley Shiraz grapes. And that paring drink, a Negroni cocktail that only I manage to finish.

“We used to make wine and drink gin,” one of the baldies said earlier, “then we decided to do it the other way round.”

The gin is very good, unlike – they quip – the wine they once produced. The former athlete is the chief distiller, tasting every 15 minutes of his working day, while his mate distils characterful clamour every 15 seconds, or so it seems.

All great fun and we weave our way back to the station in good if tired shape. Our daughter goes off in her direction, and we catch the train to Fremantle. In the darkness before the last stop, you can see the docks lit up at night, the hulking shadows of ships and new cars neatly lined up on the quayside. Fremantle is a great mix: cultural, trendy, full of hipster-style bars and cafes (Hackney on Sea, if you like) and a working port, too. Many of the buildings are old hotels that have a Wild West feel and there is much to see and do.

We have toured the old prison, visited the maritime museum and the shipwreck museum and the old roundhouse jail on the seafront. Yesterday we spent time in an art gallery housing indigenous art, fantastic paintings, all dots, swirls and mysterious shapes – often aerial views of landscape, the gallery owner told us.

We lay on the beach for an hour and then, in readiness for that gin, had a meal at somewhere called Bread In Common, a former medical supplies warehouse that now supplies top-notch bread and good food in a cavernous space. Being a bit of a bread head, I stood by the ovens to feel the departing heat. Another great find has been Little Creatures, a brewery with bars on the seafront.

Waiting for the bus after the train, it is cold and I am coughing, having managed to bring along a holiday chest, which is annoying, but there you go. The previous day we caught the wrong bus and ended up walking a long way back. But tonight, having worked out the right stop beforehand, and my wife having steered me away from confidently choosing another wrong one, we are safely, tiredly, transported back to our Airbnb for a post gin-sozzle cup of tea.