Western Australia does not exist. I don't mean this in some pithy little way, it's just true. Fukuyama's 'End of History' was a failed hypothesis in every part of the world except one. All modern culture is weakly imported over, even our reactionaries. The kangarooed stereotypes you see in popular media are of the eastern states. The state is too wide for its minuscule population, what sparse cities we have are endless waves of mouldy concrete and JB Hi-Fi signs. West Girls takes place from the 2000s to the modern day, but every snapshot of WA is indistinguishable. Nothing has ever changed, nothing has ever happened, we didn't even have the pandemic properly over here.

Which, y'know, is that supposed to be a bad thing? 'May you live in interesting times' is a curse, after all. And yeah the pandemic thing was pretty nice to dodge. The problem with living in a void, is you become of said void. If there is no Western Australia, no one can be from Western Australia. Our main character, Luna, as she ages and starts to appear more vaguely Eurasian, starts to get the all too familiar "Where are you from?" and "No no, where are you actually from?" and "Go back to where you came from!" I'm white, born in Perth to a father born and bred in a colonial farm in the state's southwest, and a mother from the equally caucasian Welsh Valleys and even I've gotten the 'Where are you really from?' No one is really from WA. Everyone here is trapped in a forever search for something to belong to.

I can't imagine there's all that much to get out of West Girls if you don't feel the uncomfortable specificity in Physical Education, if you haven't also shot an incredulous look at a distant family member who insists they've always wanted to see WA, but if you do it's easy to see how much Woollett nails the feel. Her words are modern but never sleek, dead-eyed without sadness, a passive ugliness that never triggers disgust. Every sensory pleasure, every basic emotion, smeared and smothered in that oppressive dry heat. Skin flaking off from the sunscreen. I can fucking smell Osborne Park tarmac on every page.