Return to Perth

Do swimming pools have minds of their own? Did we get punished for breaking our lease? Whatever the reason, after weeks of pleasure, swimming in our pool in the morning, doing aqua aerobics in the afternoon, in the middle of the hottest March Perth has ever had, the Loch St pool developed a leak. Down, down, down it went and weeks after we first reported the problem the pool experts still can't find the reason why. I hope that it will be fixed for one last swim before we leave at the end of April. 

Similar to being in Adelaide or Cairns, one is much more conscious of the traditional owners of the land in Perth. There are just more people to be seen. This is Noongar country or boodja although they weren't words we knew when we were growing up. We weren't taught the stories of warrior Yagan or the about the sacred sites around the Swan River let alone the land-grapping massacres that continued in WA into the 1920s . So far, because it's been Festival time, we have seen indigenous art at various galleries, experienced the food choices of the Kimberley tribes, watched the story of the Warumpi Band. We've subscribed to Yirra Yaakin , the local indigenous theatre company and bought some art, one sublime and one practical. The sublime piece was from Artitja Fine Art , owned by our friends Anna and Arther. I was perusing the e-catelogue for their current exhibition  WARLUKURLANGU The Art of Yuendumu   and was strangly attracted to a Seven Sisters dreaming painting by At...

Many of you will have heard Julie Copeland on Radio National in years gone by. She was one of the brilliant intellectuals of the station presenting programs such as The Coming Out Show, The Europeans and various arts programs. She'd interviewed artists and writers, Gorbachev and Gaddafi. A horse lover. A swimmer. A beauty. A traveller. A reader. A painter. And sadly, we lost her. She died earlier this year and a memorial was held looking out over Port Phillip Bay on 26 March. I was honoured to be asked to give a brief speech (amongst many others) and here's what I said: "I first met Julie when I  joined the ABC in 1989 as Station Manager of Radio National. I’d come from the world of community radio and initially most broadcasters didn’t see the point of my role or value that particular background but Julie always offered a kindly welcome. And when I became Federal Editor based in Melbourne, that warm relationship grew.   Julie was such an engaging person. Kind and though...

While the first theatre I can remember going to in Perth was a pantomime in the Playhouse Theatre in Pier St (demolished in 2012)and the first ballet I can remember seeing was at the magnificent Edwardian theatre His Majesty's in Hay St. Alan and Betty were art lovers - music, books, visual arts, theatre, musicals - and shared their love with us. It was expensive to take four people, even when two of them were children, to the theatre so our seats were usually high up in the gods at the Maj. But we did get to see international stars like Margot Fonteyn and local legends like Lucette Aldous and Alan Alder. The Maj has had various renovations over its life and we have a connection to one of them. Gerald Savage, a friend of the parents, was the builder of our house in Cottesloe but he also was the craftsman who refurbished and remade the ceiling roses and cornices during the 1970s refurbishment. This was the moment when Perth almost lost the theatre to the bulldozer. It's now the ...

Perth was the first Australian city to establish a Festival....although most people don't know this and think that Adelaide got in before us. Perth's Festival fed my cultural appetite from an early age. The first Melbourne Theatre Company production I saw in 1969 was part of the Festival. We might have lived in the most isolated city in the world but the Festival meant that artists, particularly from the UK, Europe and the USA, found their way here. The richest festival time for me was in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I produced and presented an arts program on 6UVS-FM (now 6RTR-FM) boldly called the Stupendous Stereo Stage Show. My helming role meant that I had access to all the visiting artists for radio interviews and the reward for publicity? Free tickets. I met all sorts of people before they became really famous. I remember taking the cast of an Edgar Allan Poe production to the beach only to discover that none of them really knew how to swim. It woudn't have be...

Last Friday, as we were driving away from our inspection of 106 Archibald St, a brilliant double rainbow arched across Willagee. If one was superstitious, one might have taken the grey skies to mean something but I prefered to take the glorious colours of the rainbow as a positive sign of what was to come....

Susan and I took a deep breath after our intial real estate failure and fled to Melbourne. OK. That isn't really the story. We already had a trip back east booked to go to the Port Fairy Folk Festival and catch up with friends in Melbourne.  It did mean that we missed out on a week of inspections so as I sat in Melbourne Airport on Friday 14 May waiting to fly back to Perth, I got back to work and started checking the inspection listings. And there was another house in Willagee....just around the corner from our previous attempt to buy. The inspection time clashed with a lunch we had planned with friends so before getting on the plane, I sent off a request for alternative time. And when I got off the plane, there it was - 4.30pm that afternoon. It was tight squeeze, picking up Indigo from the Furbaby Retreat in North Perth and then racing south in the school pick up/escape for the weekend traffic but we made it.  And we loved it. 106 Archibald St Of course, it's not perfect bu...

  On our 8th week of looking we finally saw a house that we thought we could live in: 26 Cummins St, Willagee.  It wasn't perfect - almost too big and without the spacious alfresco area I'm hanging out for - but within 6 minutes walk of a little shopping strip with an IGA, a bar, a cafe, fish and chip and pizza shops, a medical centre, a library and a bus stop (although there is only one bus an hour). Willagee is a suburb south east of Fremantle and not one that we had on our shopping list or knew but during a consulation process with friends who live south of the river we were encourgage to think seriously about it. And there's the rub. You barely get any time to do that. A fifteen minute inspection on the morning of Saturday 1 March, a text from the agent saying all offers needed to be in by 4pm Sunday 2 March, a drive back on the Sunday to check the neighbourhood, some frantic research to try and work out what a house like this in a suburb like this might be like and the...

I still haven’t managed to catch up with all my initial Perth adventures but before the memory fades, I have to report on the Port Fairy Folk Festival. I can’t quite come to grips with the fact that I lived in Melbourne for over 30 years but it was only when I’d left Victoria that I returned to experience the festival. What was I thinking? Partly, it was because Port Fairy wasn’t on my radar until we had a forced lockdown there in 2021 and partly because I didn’t realise how much fun a folk festival could be until Susan and I went to the Sidmouth Festival in England in 2023. Port Fairy is a charming little town on the south west edge of Victoria, facing the Southern Ocean. It’s a walkable flat town with streets filled with pine trees and 19th century wooden cottages. And we managed to rent one of those - admittedly 18 months in advance because accommodation during the festival is hard to get, and I refuse to go camping. If you follow Susan’s facebook page, you would know all the gigs w...

There are so many things I'm going to miss in moving from Melbourne to Perth: - friends, obviously, but I can visit and so can they  - Melbourne Theatre Company, but I have trips and shows booked already - Haigh's Chocolates, although I will be able to do an online order once the weather cools down  - the comfort of Palace Pentridge Cinema with its bookable seats, comfortable reclining chairs, free parking and quality choc tops - Victoria's beautiful range of goldrush towns, all within an hour or so of Pascoe Vale South, but I'm sure it will be interesting to rediscover some WA historic towns - the ease of popping on a tram every few minutes and exploring the city, but I'll just have to learn to be patient with the longer wait times here. But most of all, I'm going to miss Beechworth Honey . Beechworth is a charming country town about three hours north east of Melbourne. It's in one of those Victorian landscapes that glows during Autumn with the changing col...

All I could think when seeing Jesus Christ Superstar on Sunday 16 February was Christ throwing the money lenders out of the Temple. Would he really have approved of (1) a musical about his life and (2) its presentation at Crown Perth Theatre which is situated in the middle of a Casino? Before I start whinging, I do have to express gratitude towards John Frost, a musical producer for decades, for the fact that I'm still on his  opening night list. When I said that I couldn't attend the Melbourne opening because I was now living in Perth I was instantly invited to the local opening. We dropped Sebastian at the airport for his return flight to Adelaide and headed to the casino where I had my first meltdown. I drove into a car park only to discover that it was going to cost me $60. I refuse to hand that amount of money over to a casino so much to Susan's embarrassment and the irritation of the cars that had started to queue behind me, I backed out and after some driving around,...

  When Susan told Sebastian that we were moving to Perth, his intial response was that (1) that it was too hot but (2) if we paid his airfare, he'd come to visit. On reflection, a less than encouraging response but living in Adelaide has helped him adjust to the heat and asking for help when you're trying to eke out a living on a PhD scholarship is a perfectly reasonable approach to life. So we did and he came. His visit was an interesting combination of cultural activities, meeting our friends, and heading off to explore the urban bush landscape for reptiles. For those readers who don't know, his thesis is on the illegal trade of Australian reptiles which is why they are somewhat more exciting for him than humans let alone beaches. For example, if I went to Rottnest, I'd want to head straight into the water but not Sebastian. He spend the day searching and finding Rottnest's various geckos, lizards, skinks and dugites. Luckily for him, there are also lots of little...