Faced with three options to get us out to the airport, we ended up going for the slowest.
Yes, a taxi might have got us out there quicker, but there would be time to kill to fill in the void before the check-in process was scheduled to start. Yes, we could have gone somewhere for dinner, but that late lunch then became a factor. After close to a fortnight of not quite gastronomic excess but certainly dietary intake far in excess of what happens at home I wasn't interested in pushing the envelope any further.
Alternatively, we could have rendezvoused with the airport shuttle, probably cheaper but raising the same dietary issues and adding the question of where to meet the shuttle. It's not like we could specify the front door of the hotel. The best option, as it turned out, was regular public transport, which involved a meandering ride through some of Perth's lesser socioeconomic zones. I'm not phrasing that as a put-down, more a comment that people who could afford not to live under the flight path would probably prefer not to, and those factors would be exacerbated by late night departures, though with practice you would presumably learn to sleep through it.
It's a couple of blocks between Citiplace and the relevant bus stops, and we set off through the gathering dark, arriving just after one bus had presumably departed, since it seemed like a good half-hour before the next one arrived. The trip itself was unremarkable, though had we been travelling another day at another time things may have been different. Seven-thirty on a Saturday night is not, as you may suspect, prime people moving time.
That still put us into Departures with close to two hours till checkin time, so the scribbling resumed, broken by an investigation into the coffee shop possibilities. That check revealed that the cooked items on the menu weren't available after six, so it was back to the scribble after that short break.
But, eventually, the appropriate times roll around, and with the luggage out of the way we made our way through Security with the almost inevitable questionable object identified in the carryon placed there by Madam (on the way out of Townsville it was a pair of scissors, in Perth two umbrellas). Equally predictably, she was selected for the random wand-wave for traces of explosive.
Upstairs in the Departure Lounge there was the chance to sneak in an ale, but at airport prices you're not going to kill time at the bar. In hindsight I probably should've gone two or three more as a sleeping draught, but there you go.