Perth has a higher number of British-born residents than any other city in the whole of Australia and those ex-pats have been swelled by a huge number who have arrived this week hoping to see an England fightback.

I met two friends from Swindon on Saturday in a pub watching the Manchester football derby, friends fulfilling a lifetime’s ambition to watch England in a Test match Down Under.

Their excitement at being here was infectious, but they were concerned that England were in danger of ruining it by repeating that harrowing Adelaide denouement.

On the evidence of the first day, their savings will not be wasted. Monty Panesar will take the headlines but, arguably, Stephen Harmison bowled better — with all the necessary fire and venom — and his celebration of Ricky Ponting’s wicket was pure summer of 2005 and particularly reminiscent of the evening he bowled Michael Clarke with that beautiful slower ball at Edgbaston.

Ponting’s leg-before was the moment that convinced Alec Stewart, the former England captain, sat next to me in the 5 Live commentary box, that the big Durham fast bowler had clicked back into place.

Stewart had told me a few days earlier at Lilac Hill in the one-day match, that he still rated Harmison as the best fast bowler in the world when he was in form — and the raising of Alim Dar’s finger could prove to be a seminal moment in Harmison’s tour.

Ian Botham took plenty of wickets without being at his best and maybe Panesar has something similar in his DNA. He will bowl better with fewer rewards in the future, but his cult status is a given: the cheer that greeted his first touch of the ball, some 48 minutes after the match started, was matched only by the acclaim, 19 minutes into proceedings, of the first strains of Billy Cooper’s trumpet on this tour. The Waca allowed the Barmy Army trumpeter to blow where Brisbane and Adelaide had forced him to be silent.

England supporters all around this endearingly hotch-potch ground were in good voice, thrilled that Andrew Flintoff’s team were finally competing and that by carrying the attack to the home side, they were forcing the Australia batsmen into mistakes. The scorecard looked untypically Australian — six of them got starts but only an impregnable-looking Mike Hussey got beyond the 30s.

And are Matthew Hayden’s bullying powers fading, the way he tried and failed to force one from Matthew Hoggard across the line? Whatever, it caused Geoffrey Boycott to exclaim, not for the first time, “My mother could have played a better shot”.

Australia, though, are never down for long and the last hour of the day, when Brett Lee was charging in from the Lillee-Marsh Stand, his hair blowing in the Fremantle Doctor like some sort of Norse god, provided the best atmosphere of the series so far.

The crowd clapped and banged their feet in unison and then groaned in disbelief as Shane Warne seemed not to pick up the edge from Paul Collingwood’s bat until it was too late. We had an old-fashioned barracker, too, who, when Flintoff and Harmison were contemplating a fielding change at some length, yelled from underneath our point: “Why don’t you get bloody Vaughan in as well and ask him!”

And so the headline on the West Australian’s Ashes pullout may still be a little premature: “Home and Hosed: Our Warriors poised to finish off the Poms,” it read and, although some of those thousands of ex-pats have gone over to the “other side”, others never forget the Old Dart. While Christmas shopping on Monday, a shop assistant leant forward as I was paying and whispered conspiratorially : “Emigrated from Canterbury in 1968. I do hate it when England play badly.”

Welcome to the series, England. We’ve been waiting for you.