Perth participants

Dear Bill

I enjoyed the photo on page 27 Vol 2 No. 3 showing some of the participants at the 1987 IUCr Congress in Perth. As someone who thinks he was at that gathering, I'd like to make a couple of observations on this picture that may be of general interest. The mountains in the background seem somewhat higher than they are today (but then the erosion is pretty fast in these here parts!). The population and urbanization of Perth has grown rapidly in the past few years and now numbers some 1.1 million people (the locals all knew that the publicity from that meeting would do us no good!). The ugly fellow to the right of Howard Flack has more hair than David Rae - are you sure that you have the right bloke?

Dear Syd:

You are right about the ugly bloke in the photo, it was you. Now I expect to get a rebuttal from David Rae concerning which of the two of you has more hair.