Author's note: '...Great hardships were faced to colonise this beautiful State [sic] we accept so casually to-day [sic], but those pioneers are not forgotten. Readers have possibly stood to look on the proud city of Perth and allow their minds to fly back to the hopes, the joys, the distresses and the agonies that formed the travail of its birth; to see full-skirted ladies endeavouring to retain something of culture under adverse circumstances and tight-trousered gentlemen attacking a grim job heroically. These people built a nation.'