IN his continuing search for the weird, wacky and wondrous in this world, DAVID ELLIS says there's a park bench in Perth's Queens Gardens that looks like it could be any old-style bench in any gardens in any part of the world.
But this one has fame on its side and a history that's both famous and sad.
Famous because it was the park bench on which Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant talked love in the 1999 romantic comedy Notting Hill.
And sad because a Perth man subsequently bought the bench after the film and gave it as a birthday gift to his girlfriend. And one day while seated on it, he proposed to her.
Unfortunately his proposal was rebuffed and the relationship ended.
He decided to give the bench to the gardens so its history could be enjoyed by others.
Now considered something of a gardens "treasure" it still has the words carved onto it from the film: "For June who loved this garden, from Joseph who always sat beside her".
The donor insisted that despite the value of his gift to the gardens his identity remain secret, the only clue to he and the lady who rejected his hand in marriage being "Rodd & Nicole 2002" etched behind the bench's top rail.
