On the way back to Perth the Prince had his first and only experience during the tour of a railway accident. Speaking of it in a reply to the toast of his health at a public dinner at Perth, a few days after it occurred, Premier Mitchell expressed thankfulness that the Prince had escaped unhurt. His Royal Highness in reply treated the matter from a humorous point of view. He did not regret, he said, to have been able to add a harmless railway accident to his Australian experiences. The mishap was very much nearer to being a disastrous one, however, than this would suggest. It occurred on a single-track, three-foot-six-inch line, in swampy Westralian forest, some ten miles from the township of Bridgetown. The Royal train was a heavy one, consisting of some nine corridor sleeping coaches. It had passed over the spot, which was on a curve, the same morning on the way to Pemberton. Heavy rain fell in the course of the day, and on the return journey at about three o'clock in the afternoon, the track had become so soft that the rails gave way. The train was, fortunately, only going at about fifteen miles an hour at the time, having had to slow down owing to cattle on the lines. The rear saloon, which was occupied by H.R.H. and Admiral Halsey, seems to have been the first to leave the line. The saloon immediately in front, which contained the remainder of the Royal staff and most of the state party, afterwards followed it. The derailed wheels then bumped along over the sleepers, which they cut up in the most complete manner, the line for two hundred and thirty yards being converted into a tangled mass of twisted rails and broken splinters. The engine-driver felt the jolting and applied the brakes. This happily took the way off the train, for a moment later the two derailed vehicles rolled over the soft embankment, here a couple of feet high, and lay on the ground below, all their wheels in the air. The train came to a standstill, the coupling between the wrecked and the unwrecked portions remaining intact. The Prince and his staff were still inside. Heads quickly appeared through windows now pointing to the sky, and the occupants of the front saloons, who had hastily jumped out, learnt to their relief that nobody had been seriously hurt. One after another the members of the Royal party, including the Premier and other state ministers, were extricated through the windows, now the only means of egress.