^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 8 August 2023].}

If you're an Australian of a particular vintage (specifically, Generation X or Baby Boomer), I challenge you to tell me you're not thinking of Mr Squiggle's 'Rocket' while looking at my photo of Perth's Bell Tower at Elizabeth Quay.

I took this while on a whistle-stop tour of Perth with Rhys, one of my cousins.

While Kings Park was quite familiar to me, including the vista from the war memorial (which I had captured on at least one previous visit), the view had markedly changed in the roughly 20-30 years since I'd last photographed it.

This building and other high rises have since populated (and are still adding to) the skyline on Elizabeth Quay.

Although the architecture is vastly different: The Bell Tower is on a river, while the National Carillon is on an island in a manmade lake, and they are on almost direct opposite sides of the big, brown land we call Australia, I couldn't help but think of the near-annual visits my brothers and I took with my Granddad to the National Carillon on Queen Elizabeth II Island in Lake Burley Griffin as kids when confronted with The Bell Tower.

Perth was the city my grandparents moved to after decades lived in Canberra, and it was while visiting them in late high school that I first saw Perth.

I still feel I've only scratched the surface of Perth after about four visits, but there's something comforting about the same-same-but-different elements of the city to Canberra.

I'm sure that if my brothers, cousins and I were kids now and my grandparents were still alive and living in Perth, my Granddad would take us to The Bell Tower annually.