Perth is the world's most isolated capital city. A lot of ocean and Africa in one direction, a Nullarbor in the other, so desolate its very name is Latin for no trees.
The knowledge that they are perched at the edge of the world is apparently so oppressive it turns some citizens quite batty.
![WA Liberals want more troops stationed in the state to ward off China.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170522235701im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/0/n/z/l/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gw71dw.png/1495004428483.jpg)
Consider the West Australian Liberals.
Not content with reducing themselves to the numbers of a football team without any reserves following the state's recent election, they have taken to leaping at shadows.
Unable to do much about the Labor Party that handed them such a whipping, the punch-drunk Liberals have consigned their dread and loathing offshore, out there in the deep.
Yes. Great white sharks and the imperialist Chinese.
Great shark hunt
Fear of sharks is hardly surprising, of course. Three West Australians have been killed in shark attacks over the past year, and such attacks have been going on for some time.
The WA Liberals, however, want to launch an all-Australia Great Shark Hunt as a high priority on their federal party's political platform. Remove the great white from the vulnerable species list and bring out the marine posses to improve beach safety, they are hollering, and they want the party's upcoming federal conference to go along with it. Overkill is a word that may come to Malcolm Turnbull's mind.
But something more dreadful lurks at the edge of the West Australians' nightmares.
The Chinese. In heavily armed ships, swarming the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
Call out the military to protect our coast and our trade routes, the West Australians are demanding, possibly overlooking that the border force already has its hands full against rather smaller and more dilapidated craft than Chinese warships.
It's difficult to say what is the more ambitious task: stopping sharks from roaming their natural habitat or confronting the most populous nation on Earth as it sails international waters.
The Lord only knows what the West Australians might come up with should they turn their eyes to that great treeless desolateness to their east. A ban on the sun coming up in the morning?