Open Writing

I have always loved Perth, since I first visited the city in March 1960. It was bright and clean. The people were open and unassuming.

Homes were built on quarter acre blocks. The cheapest blocks were in Armadale or Wanneroo, and cost about $250.

You could buy an old house in Cottesloe for less than $10 000. It would cost more than $1 million today.

The black top road to the North West ran out just north of Geraldton. The inland route to the Murchison Goldfields, unsealed, corrugated and full of potholes, was known as the mad man’s track.

Eyre Highway was a potholed, dirt track, apart from a mile of bitumen east of Norseman.

The Narrows Bridge had been opened in 1959 and the freeway ran from Canning Bridge to the Narrows – and that was it.

I came to live here in 1962, about the time of the Commonwealth Games. I remember going into the Adelphi Hotel in St George’s Tce for their famous smorgasbord lunch when I was stopped by the head waiter.

“You can’t go into the dining room like that,” he said.

I was wearing a pair of navy blue dress shorts, long stockings and black shoes, and a white shirt and tie – standard summer dress for a city male at the time.

“Why not?” I said.

“You’re not wearing a jacket,” he said. “House rules, sorry.”

“I have no way of getting a jacket now. I’m on a lunch break from my job as a journalist with the Daily News. What am I supposed to do?”

He thought for a moment, then said “Here, take mine,” offering me his own jacket.

I put it on. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll give it back on the way out.”

I felt the inside pocket – there was small bulge – it was his pay packet.

Perth was like that in those days – very trusting. People didn’t lock their cars or their front doors. It took the serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke to change all that and Perth became a city of fear until he was caught and hanged. One of my jobs was to report that he had been executed.

The city had these little wine bars – rather like those you see in Paris. You could buy braised rabbit for lunch at the Criterion Hotel, or the Alhambra Bar.

If you went into the Palace Hotel, you might meet the cartoonist Paul Rigby and his mates in the saloon bar. Rigby would suddenly drop flat to the floor – what was known as a limp fall and was better attempted when fully relaxed. I never tried it myself but a number of journalists were injured attempting the trick. Rigby had mastered it.

Eating habits were more conservative than they are now. You got some strange looks if you asked for a glass of wine. People thought you were odd. The general drinks were beer or spirits.

I remember going to Northbridge for lunch with a party of journalists from the Daily News. We went to Mamma Maria’s and I ordered the calamari griglia with a salad.

Some of the others feigned retching, or having been poisoned. “What’s the matter with them?” I asked a friend.

He replied,” That’s wog food, mate. You should have a steak, or the dhu fish.”

Gastronomically, Perth has come a long way since those days.

People used to drive into the hills to view the Canning Dam when it overflowed. It’s years since the dam has been more than half full.

Driving round the suburbs at night in the rain, especially in some of the low lying areas, you’d see little frogs hopping everywhere. You never see a frog now though some nights in gardens where people have ponds, you’ll hear a motorbike frog calling for a mate. Or lamenting the passing of those frogful days of his ancestors?

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To read more of Richard’s superb columns please visit http://www.openwriting.com/archives/western_walkabout/