Late yesterday afternoon I was on the bus going from Victoria Park to Perth. It had just crossed the Causeway and was on Adelaide Terrace approaching Plain St when traffic slowed right down. I thought there'd been an accident. But the driver told me it was something to do with Hillary Clinton's visit.

I got out at the stop and walked to the corner where the Hyatt Regency is. There were heaps of policemen around, some on motorbikes. The traffic was halted at that particular intersection. And the copper controlling it was stopping pedestrians crossing Plain St, too.

After a few minutes of waiting people were getting a bit annoyed. One woman shook her head and sniffed "She's not the Queen of us!"

There were some blokes in a cab on Adelaide Terrace. One was yelling out to the cops: "How long will we have to wait? The meter's running ... Hey, who do we send the bill to?"

Finally the cavalcade appeared at the river end of Plain St. It was like a scene from a movie. There were many cars, a couple of vans. Lots of tough looking security guys in them. I tried to spot the Secretary of State but had no luck. I assume she was in one of the cars with the darkened windows. Or maybe she was already in a meeting inside the building, and these were just some of the bit players?

I had a wander up Plain St and saw what looked like dozens of police, along with their parked motorbikes at the back of the hotel. I'm no greenie but I still shuddered to think of the size of the carbon footprint left by this event.

This visit wasn't on the scale of CHOGM, which involved several nations and many meetings. Yet it still required a huge number of local resources. Just goes to show how important we believe the relationship with America actually is ...