Return to Perth

  A couple of posts ago, I promised to tell the story of Drastic on Plastic, a radio program of women's music that is still being broadcast on 6RTR-FM. Once upon a time, in the late 1970s/early 1980s, I was a volunteer at community radio station 6UVS-FM. I presented programs such as a Drive music show, the Stupendous Stereo Stage Show (with friend Barry - all about theatre), and a show featuring women's music. When I was packing up to go to Adelaide to start an MBA, I was worried that the women's music show would disappear. There weren't many other female presenters to pick up the slack. However, there was a group of feisty ladies whose boyfriends presented programs so I decided to encourage them to take up the challenge. Somehow or other, radio was seen as a man's world, presumably because of the technology, but if I could run a studio, so could other women. A group of women took up the challenge and created Drastic on Plastic and some of them are still presenting ...

  As we come to the 12 month anniversary of moving into 106 Archibald St, I thought it might be appropriate to reflect on why we came back to Perth. I tell the story that it started with me making an announcement one morning that I wanted a swimming pool before I died. And we got one. Albeit, a modest sized pool with just enough room for 8 strokes from one end and 8 strokes back. So the important question is: have we used it? Has it served as a place of exercise and a place of relaxation? And having just come back from a swim, in the middle of Autumn, without the heater on, the answer is yes. On almost every day during late spring, summer, and early autumn, Susan and I have both had a swim. We weren't here during winter last year so we haven't worked out whether the pool heater will make it bearable for really cold days but I do love being able to step outside and plunge into the cool. Having a pool hasn't stopped us going to the beach either. During summer in particular, w...

I've seen many variations on a Swan Lake theme but until this week, I haven't seen circus performers tell the story. Circa , the brilliant Brisbane-based physical theatre company, was in town for a minute and I was lucky enought to get tickets before the show sold out. The production is charmingly called Duck Pond.   What makes it so effective is that it contains all the elements of contemporary circus that you expect - aerial silks, hula hoops, acrobatics, clowning, balancing, diabolo - but presented within a story telling context that makes everything feel fresh and new. Whether it's the burlesque black swan or the row of quacking ducks, the pratfalls of the prince or the ugly duckling making her way to the top of the pyramid, it was all engaging. The music, composed by Jethro Woodward, was a series of brilliant riffs on Tchiakovksy's original score. Once again, Circa's artistic director Yaron Lifschitz has shown that he is an director of international standing. M...

My doonas don't match - tonally that is. I have a watermelon set in red, green and white for spring. A mediterranean view in aquas and blues for summer. I turn towards somewhat darker colours for autumn but still with lots of reds and oranges and golds and then for winter, it's an Australian forest with scarlet flowering gums. Which is all very well but it means I have to change the art in my room over each season. Now that we have hanging systems in most rooms, technically that should be an easy process but it was very handy that Hal the Hanging Man had to come back this week with the final set of attachements for the final room to be sorted and I could ask him to go up the ladder instead of me. For the last three or four months, my walls have been covered in tones of aqua and blue including a pastel of Cottesloe Beach by Betty's beach friend Barbara, a poster of the 1982 production Women Beware Women, a lagoon photo I took in Fiji, an indigenous painting of the area near ...

Monsignor O'Shea, director of Fremantle's Stella Maris Seafarer's Centre and founder of the Holy Trinty Church on Rottnest, died in 2012. His memory lives on amongst the faithful but now it's being shared amongst the somewhat less than faithful as the name of a new Irish pub in Fremantle. His family are outraged. In the initial publicity for the Mons O'Shea in South Terrace, he's described as a jolly beer drinking priest when in fact he was teetotal and his family feel that his legacy is ridiculed through being connetct with the bar. We decided to call into the Mons to check it out and I feel that Mons would have been more upset by our experience there than by the naming per se. I spotted an article about a play The Local written by a local and set in pub that was going to be performed in the Mons O'Shea  so bought some tickets. It's a slightly odd bar as there's a shop in the front including a fridge containing (presumably) Irish bacon and other fo...

Susan and I enjoy the film festivals that are offered by the Palace cinema group. Each has their own strength althoug I have learnt not to go to anything in the German Film Festival that's marked as a 'comedy'. The Spanish Film Festival is always interesting because films come from South America as well as Europe but it's usually the French Film Festival that has the most number of films that we go and see. Of course, as you know, our taste in culture differs so we don't always go to see the same films. This year, for example, I went alone to see the new production of Albert Camus' famous novel, The Stranger, plus some police procedurals. I also saw The Great Arch with different company when I was in Melbourne. It's a film about the making of La Grande Arche de la Defense in Paris, designed by a Danish architect. The story is very similar to that of Jorn Utzon and Sydney Opera House: a designer with ambition beyond the budget and the imagining of the people ...