We live on a rump of land. The river, the Swan River, shining, gun-metal, flows between Perth and Fremantle, and beyond in the other direction. It is a rollocking mass of water through the city. You can catch a ferry for a ten minute voyage across this water as a commuter if you live on the south bank and work in the city. As the sun goes down on a winter day, the sky is shining too, bright and tinny. In summer it is often a cloudless sky; just blue forever. It can be oppressively blue and clear.
People are walking along this river, as they do each day. The swell is huge today and makes for an eerie, dangerous mood. The circus is packing up after their school holiday season. Decades ago, this vast expanse of Esplanade, grassed land, was used as an amusement park, starting as a temporary fundraising venture and soon becoming permanent. These days it is used to erect racing car stadiums once a year for national spectacles of speed and smoke and bravado, or displays of multicultural harmony with singing, dancing, displays and, of course, food.
In 1929, Aboriginal people were barred from entering the central city area (before it was called a CBD).
Most Perth stories are exaggerated. The terms stretched out for maximum effect, done at the beginning of the story being unwound. Presumably, the teller thinks they can get away with it.
It's a big country.
Perth is a long way from everywhere else.
Why not try.
A self-deprecating judgement about Perth goes like this: that nothing ever happens here, and most people spend most of their lives asleep because it is such an easy place to live in. There is no intellectual life to speak of, and to compound the problem you are cautioned against rocking the official boat, against challenging anything. Complacency. It is said that nothing happened in Australia during Bob Hawke's eight years as Prime Minister because he was West Australian and that is how we have learnt to operate. Quietly; with the minimum amount of change. It's a bleak reading of influences - and outcomes and lives. I want to reject it.
In 1954, James Battye died. He was still employed in a job he had held for 59 years (since 1894). That job was State Librarian for Western Australia; he had also been Secretary of the Committee of the Library, Art Gallery and Museum for all of those years. If you look at the records of the establishment of each of those cultural institutions, you will note that Battye was either in control or working on it. He was a Mason; so were most of the committee members and people in power in the culture stakes. What sort of legacy did he leave?
Now, the State's Historical Library, a major library, is named after him.
In 1894, there were six books stolen from the Victoria Public Library, Perth's main lending library. This was two less than the year before. The thief was caught, the six books returned, and the thief was sentenced to six months hard labour.