I’ve spent twenty one years of my fifty nine in WA and always enjoy an opportunity like the past week to get back.

I do get quite melancholy driving around the old haunts which formed so much of my values and humour with my friends in the 60s and 70s.

To be a ‘Kwinana Boy’ is definitely a proud badge of honour. We were looked down upon by the wealthier establishment north of the Swan River and subsequently any travel I did would usually finish at Fremantle.

It was in a café opposite the Freo train station whilst playing pinball with a couple of mates, Jim and Peter in July 1980, that life changed quite dramatically.

My Mum caught me smoking, ripped into me accordingly and I followed my two friends to the army recruiting centre where they applied to enlist.

In a confused state, I too filled in the paperwork as more of a joke, but found myself in Wagga Wagga three weeks later with a shaved head and being abused ‘Full Metal Jacket-style’ in freezing temperatures.

Freo was a fascinating place to visit as a kid. Before the Americas Cup came in 1987 it was rough and tough with a genuine docklands feel combined with a strong Italian and Slavic influence.

There were eclectic shops and superb old bars. I remember my late friend Dave Chambers and I snuck into a topless bar as sixteen year-olds after training at South Fremantle FC. A rare treat for a couple of wide eyed teenagers.

There was always an old guy in a wheelchair who sold the Daily News, WA’s afternoon publication in the old days. He sat outside a pub on South Terrace and yelled an indecipherable “Ayayper”.

Freo was busy. It reminded me of a John Brack painting from the 50’s. People busily moving to and from jobs but interspersed with hippies, Orange People and the smell of Swan Lager on tap emanating from the many pubs, accompanied by secondary tobacco smoke.

The Americas Cup was an opportunity for the government and greedy landlords to capitalise on the tourism influx, thus discarding the lower socio-economic citizens to the poorer suburbs such as Willagee and Kwinana.

Despite still being relatively expensive to live, the Freo of today is a stunning city that has thankfully retained it’s original charm. We visited South Beach, The Markets, Freo Oval, had lunch at the legendary Culleys Tea Rooms and walked the streets taking in the abundant, charming sandstone buildings.

 

I took Lynda to Kwinana Beach which for us locals was probably the most frequented before the council built a 50m and diving pool. It doesn’t exist now and has been replaced with a smaller indoor centre.

Kwinana Beach sits adjacent the imposing industry hub on Cockburn Sound and houses BP, Alcoa, CSBP fertilisers and the CBH wheat terminal. BP, CSBP and CBH all have huge jetties that facilitate the international fleets that come in and load up on WA resources.

We used to sneak onto CSBP and CBH regularly to fish and relished taking on the security guards with their flashlights. We’d duck down, sometimes lie down to avoid being caught, catch a pile of Tailor and sleep on the beach.

The jetty we were most active on was the Kwinana Beach jetty. Kwinana was named after the SS Kwinana which is safely wrecked amongst rocks and the jetty was built off it into deeper water.

It’s been said that to master a skill you require ten thousand hours of practice. If that is true, and I believe it, then many Kwinana boys including me, are at the pointy end of executing the perfect ‘bombie’.

The ‘peg leg’, ‘horsy’, ‘nut cracker’ and ‘apple turnover’ were our specialties with variations common place. There was the ‘360 horsy’ that could be developed into any degree of rotation depending on the height of jettison from the jetty.

One of my close mates, Peter Shaw and I invented the ‘Shawson’ which was nothing more than hands on thighs, feet and legs tightly pressed against each other and torso at ninety degrees.

Jumping from the Kwinana jetty meant complete freedom. There was a restriction on ‘bombies’ at the local pool, namely in the physical form of the manager Mr Robertson.

A fair man but with little tolerance for imbeciles, of which there were plenty, he had no issue chucking you out if you breached one of his warnings.

The diving pool was the only place to be if you chose to take Mr Robertson on. A twelve foot high diving board could enable you to pull off any number of artistic variations of your favourites.

If someone managed to try one, you would hear on the loud speaker, “you with the black footy shorts, that’s your last warning”.

Unfortunately for Mr Robertson, six spindly kids with black footy shorts would turn to him fifty metres away with a questioning look and an index finger pressed to what would one day be a chest.

He would retort with, “you know who you are. Last chance”

One day a kid named Craig Coyle attempted an ‘apple turnover’ off the top board. An ‘apple turnover’ was my personal specialty and was difficult to execute.

It starts with what looks like a normal dive but just when you hit the water you roll thus creating not just a vertical splash but a violent horizontal splash that could be directed at friends sitting close to the pool.

Unfortunately for Craig, he got too close to the edge of the pool off the big board, hit the aluminium filter ledge and descended unconscious to the bottom of the pool.

Mr Robertson saved him and was awarded a bravery medal. We understood why he hated ‘bombies’ right there and then.

About ten years ago I brought my two daughters to Kwinana Beach and duly did some ‘bombies’ off the jetty much to the chagrin of my kids who as teenagers at the time weren’t prepared for the sight of a middle aged buffoon hurtling into the ocean.

So can you imagine my horror when we arrived at Kwinana Beach the other day and the jetty was no longer there? I was shattered.

I don’t know why, but I will investigate because this isn’t just a traditional T-Shaped timber jetty. The Kwinana jetty plays an integral part in not just the history of the Shire but in the hearts of so many people my age and older.

In protest I did an interpretive version of a ‘peg leg’ and a ‘horsie’ standing on the wreck of the SS Kwinana. It’s not over…

 

When I was able to come back to Perth in 1995 with work for four years, you could see some growth in the housing south of the river, but that has accelerated beyond belief now along the coast from Freo due south past Mandurah.

I guess it was inevitable but what strikes me as extraordinary is the absence of people utilising the pristine beaches.

It’s what I love most about WA and also what I dislike most about it.

From a selfish perspective I’m glad no one goes down the beach despite thousands of houses being built alongside them.

From a sociological perspective this attitude reflects what it’s like to live in the most isolated city in the world. Ask any Sandgroper and they’ll rave about the beaches. I always ask them “when was the last time you went to one?”

Boating is a different story. WA must have the largest population per capita for boats and four wheel drives. There is no shortage of coin where large, goatee’d FIFO workers are driving expensive 4WD’s and hauling enormous boats up and down this expansive and spectacular coastline.

I make a comparison of the WA beach patronisation with West Coast Eagles supporters. Eagles supporters are theatre goers. They will leave at halftime when down by five goals, they’re smarmy and they’re spoilt with four premiership cups in the cupboard after 40-odd years.

For me, a Saint Kilda tragic with one cup in the cupboard in 150 years, I’ll take what I can get. I don’t need thirty degrees and a gentle off shore breeze before running over the sandhills to the warm, azure waters of the Indian Ocean.