For those that don’t know, I live in Perth, Western Australia (actually I live in the burbs and work in the city) and I love it.. Now Perth is well known for being:
- The city of lights; and
- In 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in the Friendship 7 spacecraft and on this mission, whilst Glenn was flying over Perth, he clearly observed the city lights and thus Perth became known as the ‘City of Lights’
- One of if not, the most isolated city in the world
- This really depends on how you measure a ‘city’ and ‘remoteness.’ However, there’s no doubting that Perth is “remote” from the other Australian and world cities. It’s actually quicker and cheaper to fly to another country than it is to fly to Australia’s other major cities
As a kid, I moved around a lot, however, I lived my formative teenage years in Victoria and when I started working as an apprentice in 1987 I moved to Melbourne and to be honest, I hated it. Melbourne was, and still is, a big city with a very inter-changeable climate (but often wet and cold); so I moved to Perth in 1989 and I’ve been here ever since. Perth is now well and truly home. I met my wife here, who’s a born and bred Sandgroper (someone from Western Australia) and we’ve had our kids here.
When I moved to Perth in ’89 all was far from perfect. The city was tiny, compared to Melbourne and almost all other cities on the world stage, the shops and petrol stations didn’t open on weekends. So whilst the sun and sand were glorious, life could be pretty dull; very little was open on weekends and forget trying to find a bar open after 10pm… Well this is changing and changing rapidly, and for the better in my opinion. In the last 25 years I’ve seen Perth really start to grow up, developing its own unique style and culture. So whilst we never want to lose the things that make Perth special, i.e. the sun, sand, laid back people, climate, remoteness etc., it’s really nice to see Perth mature and we’re starting to see lots of new areas, cool buildings, restaurants, bars and art. You can now bar hop through Perth, finding lots of cool little hangouts each with their own style and flavour. There are little lane ways and old building spaces opening up everywhere, along with some unique street art (aka graffiti). And so to the point of this post….. the actual catalyst for me posting it, was whilst I was walking around Perth today with my family, I snapped the following street art pieces in behind my work. Street art in itself, however, isn’t the only thing that was there, these pieces were on/out front of a cool little whiskey bar which is behind an innocuous, unmarked door and I believe it’s places like this that give a city its “feel”.
Melbourne is well known for its vibe, culture and feel, although I think our little city is starting to mark its mark on the world. So, you should visit us sometime. Who knows, you may love it and stay here forever….
