This book was made possible because of the advice, stories and materials shared by the following people: Shane Abdullah, Jeff Atkinson, Ron Bradfield, James Calligaro, Rob Campbell, Brett D’Arcy, Jo Darbyshire, Ron and Dianne Davidson, Brian Dibble, Ron Elliott, John Fielder, Paul Genoni, Maureen Gibbons, Liz Hayden, Ken Hayward, Dennis Haskell, Greg James, Wendy Jenkins, Geoffrey, Joan and Joseph London, Barry McGuire, John Mateer, Ken Miller, Carmelo Miragliotta, Jeannie Morrison, Mark Reid, Georgia Richter, Marty Saxon, Kim Scott, Ted Snell, Jon Stratton, Kerry Trayler and Glenn Hyndes, Brenda Walker, Antionne Yarran.
I’d also like to acknowledge the generosity of the following people for reading an early draft: Mark Constable, Ron Davidson, Sean Gorman, David Hutchinson and Deborah Robertson. Their suggestions towards a second draft were invaluable.
Ron Davidson and Barry McGuire were especially generous with their time, meeting with me on a number of occasions.
I’d also like to thank the librarians at the City of Perth Library, in particular Claire Burton, and the librarians at the Fremantle Library local history collection. As I researched this book, I began to recognise how important local publishers Fremantle Press (formerly Fremantle Arts Centre Press) and UWA Publishing (formerly University of Western Australia Press) have been in communicating and curating local culture over the years. It’s hard to overstate how poor Western Australia would be without their books. Kudos to funding bodies, publishers and editors, past and present.
For readers interested in pursuing a more comprehensive recent history of Perth than I’ve been able to provide here, I wholly recommend Jenny Gregory’s City of Light: A History of Perth Since the 1950s. I also recommend the various municipal histories of Perth that are too numerous to mention but are often crammed with fascinating detail (they are always available at your local city library). Ron Davidson’s Fremantle Impressions is a brilliant rendering of the port city, its characters and stories, while his High Jinks at the Hot Pool provides a fascinating look at Perth through the history of a newspaper. If you are interested in reading more about the natural history and environment of Perth, I recommend each of George Seddon’s books about Perth as well as Ernest Hodgkin’s Swanland: Estuaries and Coastal Lagoons of South-western Australia by Anne Brearley. The fourteen books that form the 1979 Western Australian Sesquicentenary Celebrations Series are also great resources.
I would like to acknowledge the following people for their kind permission to publish quotes or for their help to obtain it: Georgia Richter of Fremantle Press, Terri-ann White of UWA Publishing, Robert Drewe, Nicholas Hasluck (all the way from Bolivia), Jenny Gregory, Gail Jones, Stephen Kinnane, Trisha Kotai-Ewers, Niall Lucy, Jan McCahon Marshall, Alsy MacDonald, Mark Reid, Brenda Walker, Dave Warner, Tim Winton, Jo Alach, Abby Page at Mushroom Records, Karen Throssell.
I’d also like to thank Joromi Mondlane of Mamba Boxing for the use of his boxing gym at all hours, and the noodle gurus at Cafe 55, iPho and Vivisen Teahouse for their sustaining broth.
Thanks to Phillipa McGuinness for inviting me to write this book and to Uthpala Gunethilake for carrying it through. I couldn’t have hoped for a more thoughtful editor than Natalie Book. Thanks always to my agent, Mary Cunnane.
Thanks to my parents, Rosemary and Tony, for making those 3000-kilometre round-trip long weekends to Perth with a carload of kids (and the rest), and my brother and sister, Peter and Kerri, for their stories and advice. Finally, I’d like to offer my love and gratitude to Belinda and to my children: Max, Fairlie and Luka.
All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright holders couldn’t be traced. I would welcome all information in this regard.