The pilot rounds out the plane and steers it into the downhill run out of the light Pacific clouds, and all the water down there is rich and thick in the December morning sun.

‘Islands,’ Beno says. I lean over him a little and get a better angle on the world. And the fullness of the ocean is mirrored in the lush green of the scattered islands below — one big one especially, where trails snake around its rim and through the guts and on the shore side there’s a harbour with boats glistening white in Saturday play.

Soon, like so much else, it’s behind us and there’s more islands and they slide green on by, and water and water and wabam! US fucken A. Water beach land and we slide in through one little pocket of all this going Californian coast and we’re in, above it, and in. The houses and buildings start and blow out and don’t end and by Christ I thought Sydney was big, but this is topless stopless. From the coast right on through, and maybe LA has grown huge and bulging all the way over to the east coast so big and heavy and totally unlike anything coastal Western Australia. Buildings and roads and free ways, way-o-ways, all the ways to skyscrapers, and hills and more roofs. Roofs of horses hoofs pounding on to heartland America driving and grinding it out and out as it goes a ridin’ on.

I grab the waitress and ask if we can sneek in a coupla cheeky ones and I look out again to see the land roll and dip with the buildings going with it perfectly, flawlessly, roof-fully, dutifully. And I look down at one house in a gaziiiilion and I wonder what’s going on there. What’s happening? What do they do and who are they? Where do they find their getgo? What’s their story?

Soon, they’re gone too, but our champagne is here, and we raise it to the window’s golden rushby USA land. To all that life and energy beating a breaking rhythm in this timeless Saturday song.

‘Welcome to America,’ says Beno. And I smile as we clink our glasses to the sound of the wheels reaching out for it. Stretching and feeling for their spot in all of this massive swinging country.