I've met three people but I don't think they like me and we all talk about the state of the weather.

[reddragdiva]

Perth is so amazingly tedious it goes out the other side of "dull" and through to some sort of Nirvana-like state of introspection, only with Nutrasweet, yellow swimsuits, five months of thirty to forty degrees, undrinkable piss lager and hideous complacency. Also if you don't have a car you're utterly, utterly fucked. It's a damn good place to go when you have to get the fuck away from it all for six months or a year. Clean, cheap, fatally pleasant, lots of nice people. So quiet and clean, it's like the Martians left several hundred years ago and left all their buildings behind. It is Vermilion Sands. But, you know, I did so much getting away from it all growing up there that I think I'll be spending the rest of my life trying to get to it all. It's somewhere to come from or go back to. I've done one and don't plan to do the other. The young people either move to Melbourne before thirty or they curdle and become lifers.

No-one ever leaves ... Perth. It's on the other side of the event horizon. You don't get out of Perth except by going "fuck it" and leaving with a ticket and a single suitcase — the traveller's equivalent of quantum tunnelling. You forget your name when you come to ... Perth. You go to Perth, you better buy your ticket out before you go, 'cos you'll wake up one day and it'll be three years later and you'll have Perth friends and a Perth girlfriend/boyfriend and wonder what happened.

Comments

[mangosteen]

They have a saying in Maine(US)....

"When you're 18, you get a choice. Leave Maine, or get hit in the head by a shovel."

[reddragdiva]

I'm sure no real Mainer would notice.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

There's actually a place called "Perth"? Wow. All these years, I just thought it was a punchline (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.cecil-adams/msg/89d9c3501998f896?dmode=source&hl=en) to a twenty-year-old joke (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.cecil-adams/msg/74cda68296571c7a?dmode=source&hl=en) on Usenet.

[reddragdiva]

"Perth is also the asterisk capital of the world, as seen in many Usenet .signatures."

[jozafeen.livejournal.com]

*roffle*

You've just described exactly why essex_boy only managed to emmigrate for three months!

[reddragdiva]

I TOLD HIM! I TOLD HIM IN DETAIL! HE CAN'T SAY HE WASN'T WARNED! I ACTUALLY SAID EXACTLY WHAT YOU SEE WRITTEN THERE! BUT DID HE LISTEN? NOOOOO!

[http://users.livejournal.com/doctor_k_/]

I'm struggling to leave, but it's summer now. Summer!!

It's like quicksand - struggling just makes the death quicker and more unpleasant. You have to get out early or it's too late.

[reddragdiva]

Leave? No-one ever leaves ... Perth. It's on the other side of the event horizon. You don't get out of Perth except by going "fuck it" and leaving with a ticket and a single suitcase — the travel equivalent of quantum tunnelling. You forget your name when you come to ... Perth. You go to Perth, you better buy your ticket out before you go, 'cos you'll wake up one day and it'll be three years later and you'll have Perth friends and a Perth girlfriend/boyfriend and wonder what happened.

[elijahtc.livejournal.com]

Please don't use the "P" word on live journal Mr Gerard! Its a CRIME I tell you!

[redcountess]

I only contemplated living there when we thought nobody would buy your parents' house as it was, and wanted to lovingly restore it.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Well, fucking thanks, you enormous arse.

Now that thats out of the way...

Like anywhere else, your life and the people in it are what matters. Perth is a place where you can step off the treadmill if you choose, and thats a nice thing about it. But it can be tedious if you spend time with the tedious, or much better than that if you find a community worth being a part of.

I love Perth every summer. I LIKE the heat, and it has beaches like nowhere else, which can be a reason to like the heat. But best of all, in the summer, there is enough happening (with festivals, etc) that just for a few months you don't feel like you are in a cultural backwater.

I hate Perth every winter. Not cold enough to be interesting, just wet and miserable, and completely devoid of anything resembling cultural activity worth a damn. It makes me want to get out, and often enough I manage it. If it don't, well, it can be a good time to get things done.

The beer has improved since you left.

Moving to Melbourne is sometimes a valid option of course. But Perth people moving to Melbourne and living in a house full of ex-Perth people and telling themselves its all so much cooler there is a common holding pattern, a substitute for movement while people try to decide what they are doing with their lives. Eventually people either work out that its not where they live thats the problem, or decide its not Perth but Australia thats the problem, or decide that if you are going to be a whore you get a better rate in Sydney.

[reddragdiva]

Lifer.

;-p

[korenwolf.livejournal.com]

I love Perth every summer. I LIKE the heat

Stange strange person, I've been there twice during the .au summer and the 40C+ temperatures are a killer for me and just confirm that I'm perfectly adapted to the UK. Comfortable in cool / cold conditions, waterproof and with decent taste in beer ;) [Last time I was there I think the in-laws finally got the message about me and heat when hiding from the sun, drinking lots of water and taking it easy did nothing to stop me getting heat stroke]

[shamus9999.livejournal.com]

"I hate Perth every winter. Not cold enough to be interesting, just wet and miserable, and completely devoid of anything resembling cultural activity worth a damn."

Perth sounds like Seattle except that our summers are also wet and miserable.

[kjersti.livejournal.com]

Are you sure you're not talking about Norway?

[reddragdiva]

You just wish you were from Kenya.

[http://users.livejournal.com/raven_/]

Bwahahahahaaha.

And to think I moved *to* there.

Escaped though.

[mr-e-cat.livejournal.com]

You need to add the line;

"and it's still better than Darwin!"

[baralier.livejournal.com]

Never been to Darwin. Went to Perth once about 25-30 years ago. Never been back.

(Though the bloody SwanCon people are trying to convince me to come over)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*snicker*

Being the end of the earth doesn't help the place. Nor does their ruling class. Or the endless suburbs (by god, the suburbs, when do they end?)

This all said, Perth does have a great alternative culture. The bold and the few do band together and make the place quite interesting from their own efforts.

And you of all people should know this ;-)

[reddragdiva]

I think I can quite unequivocally claim to have done my time pushing a rock up a hill.

[crypticgirl.livejournal.com]

I don't think localising is anything to do with the amount of time you've spent in Perth. It's when you start wearing jeans in the middle of summer, referring to the rest of the country as 'over East' and actually wanting to watch Telethon that you've really got to worry.

(I got as far as the first two but managed to get the fuck out before the Telethon-rot set in).

[greylock.livejournal.com]

I have the first two, I have never fallen to the third.
Those are the same people who live elsewhere and love Kath and Kim.

[gths.livejournal.com]

Rolf Harris came from Perth.

[reddragdiva]

And lives in London!

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Of course my argument is that people who can't hack Perth (or who become too unpopular) flee to Melbourne.
Repeat cycle for Sydney/London.

I've seen it happen to many times.
Of course I'm just back from a real city with a real nightlight (and that's a real nightlife) and I know how dead Perth can be if you need other people.

Perth has no afterhours culture.

[missmilky.livejournal.com]

I know people that can't hack London move to Perth
Just look at a certain ex goth electro person

^_^

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and the mines aren't all in the north-west.

In fact, that's just plain ignorant (if I may speak frankly).
The Southern coast has an awful lot of mineral sands operations, Kal is not north-west of Perth, and, you know, I could chew at that point for days.

Also, your transport section is shite.
Not only is rge train a brilliant idea, Perth drivers aren't all that bad.
Comapred to Melbourne or Brisbane.
I swear, Brisbane is the worst.

[reddragdiva]

I didn't write most of the article - check the history. Whoever did is obviously from Perth, but somehow neglected Kal.

[missmilky.livejournal.com]

I think the simple fact that redragdiva can go out in London "trannied up" and not get hassled for it and in no way would be able to do that in Perth speaks for itself...
So there

^_^

[greylock.livejournal.com]

I think the simple fact that redragdiva can go out in London "trannied up" and not get hassled for it and in no way would be able to do that in Perth speaks for itself...
So there

I don't.

But I think the fact that Dave, "trannied up" or not, could no less go into Northbridge than I and risk physical harm, speaks for itself.