Some Nostalgia for Our Mr. Greaves and Perhaps Others

[BobH]

Perth, WA circa 1954.

And updated a bit more recently 2019.

[viking33]

Perth, WA circa 1954.

And updated a bit more recently 2019.

Enjoyed the peek at the 1954 edition.
Thanks, Bob

[ChrisGreaves]

BobH"Perth, WA circa 1954.

Bob.
You have ruined my day.
I was about to go home and have lunch, read a bit, listen to some music, take a nap, maybe bake some ginger cookies for supper ...

Ruined.
Absolutely RUINED

I have d/l the 1954 video and will have to spend the rest of the week studying it in detail.

Perth.png

But first, a little story:
We landed at Fremantle on the Sunday, and were due to travel to Southern Cross on the Tuesday.
Monday was the only day for my dad to register his credentials at St George's Cathedral - which is the edifice that features as the "still" in your link.
That job done, my parents and Elizabeth and I walked the fifty yards to St George's Terrace and were immediately halted by a total stranger (our first 24 hours on the continent, remember) by a middle-aged man who held out his hand and said "Roy Greaves! Welcome!!".

My parents were stunned.

Turns out that The West Australian (newspaper) had that morning run a one-column inch announcing my Dad's arrival,
"But how did you know it was us?" my mother asked..

"Oh, you are the only couple with kids wearing socks with their sandals" came the reply.

Perth was a very small town in those days.

It still is the most isolated capital city in the world.

And yes, that man in the centre of the image looks like my dad, but couldn't possibly be, even though he was hatless.
We landed in 1956.

Cheers

And many, many thanks
.
Chris

[BobH]

I thought maybe the shirtless guy behind the horses pulling a drag through the orchard was you, Chris. And, I thought the wheat fields would be a fond memory.

[ChrisGreaves]

I thought maybe the shirtless guy behind the horses pulling a drag through the orchard was you, Chris.

How can you be shirtless and in drag?

And, I thought the wheat fields would be a fond memory.

They are, Bob, they are, but I rarely saw them in that green state, or a farmer actually strolling along the edge of the field.
The wheat fields I saw were one-mile square, and golden brown. I saw them in the summer when it was harvesting time. And the farmers I knew drove slowly alongside the paddock, one arm getting skin cancer, and just eye-balled the crop; they knew the paddocks well enough.

I found the colour in the movie too pallid. WA colours are solid and bright. The soil is RED (heavy iron content), the sky is a deeper blue than I have ever seen in North America. And the sun is so bright it almost reflects off your (sunburned) skin.

I was amazed to hear pronunciation errors - it is Mund-air-ing, not Mund-arr-ing weir - especially in an Australian documentary, but then the announcers were probably not Australians at all, but from [derogatory] The Eastern States [/derogatory].

Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Perth, WA circa 1954.

OK Bob, I'll bite: How did you stumble across this documentary?

Spoiler

I hope that you're not (wheat)-stalking me!

Cheers
Chris

[BobH]

OK, I'll 'fess up.

I belong to a very loosely organized group of meat smoking enthusiasts called "The BBQ Brethren." Some of us met for a day-long cook last Saturday. One of the guys (blokes?) flew a drone to photograph the event from the air. In viewing his posted results I saw that he also had a YouTube post of Perth (the second one in my links). When I viewed it, YouTube suggested the retro film, QED.

My friend's name is Sleebus Jones. Don't ask. I live in Texas, after all.

[ChrisGreaves]

I belong to a very loosely organized group of meat smoking enthusiasts called "The BBQ Brethren." Some of us met for a day-long cook last Saturday. One of the guys (blokes?) flew a drone to photograph the event from the air. In viewing his posted results I saw that he also had a YouTube post of Perth (the second one in my links). When I viewed it, YouTube suggested the retro film, QED.

So! The whole thing came full-circle.
When I lived in Southern Cross, a trip to Perth (a six-hour drive in those days) was known as "Going to the Big Smoke".
Cheers
Chris

[BobH]

So . . . what kind(s) of meat(s) would someone so inclined smoke in WA? 'roos are from the East, no? (I don't know if the meat is fit to eat but the hides make great boots.) Koalas? Of course there are the domestic varieties - pork/beef/chook. What else?

[GeoffW]

Kangaroos are all over, west as well as easy, and are quite plentiful. The meat is very low fat, so healthier than some other meats, but this also makes it more difficult to cook or smoke. It's available in many supermarkets, but it's nowhere near as common as domestic meat.

It's possible to find meat such as emu or crocodile in some speciality shops - but koalas are quite rare, not quite (yet) to the point of being endangered. I imagine it would be unpleasantly eucalyptus flavoured.

The other meat we commonly eat is lamb.

Well done on picking up the lingo. Chooks (chicken) used to be a rare treat when I was growing up, but have become quite common fare now.

Some people raise alpacas and llamas. I'd love to have a shop dedicated just to llama meat. I'd call it the Deli Llama.

[ChrisGreaves]

So . . . what kind(s) of meat(s) would someone so inclined smoke in WA? 'roos are from the East, no? (I don't know if the meat is fit to eat but the hides make great boots.) Koalas? Of course there are the domestic varieties - pork/beef/chook. What else?

Kangaroos abound wherever there is feed, nowadays especially Barley, Oats, and Wheat.

Untitled.png

I have outlined roughly the wheatbelt in W.A. Down at the southern end the dead-straight line of one of the rabbit-proof fences is quite visible. What you can't see in this image is the pixelated top-end. Flying from Kuala Lumpur to Perth the first paddock is a one-mile square right on the coast; a mile further south are two paddocks, each one mile square, one to the east of the coastal paddock. Another mile, three paddocks and so on.

2Untitled.png

The fifty-mile long quartz ridge is visible in detail. Southern Cross is pretty well half-way along it. The wheatbelt is now extended a bit to the east of Southern Cross, what with bigger holdings, larger equipment and so on. Four bags (4*180lbs) of wheat to the acre was considered a normal harvest in my day ...
I have never cooked kangaroo meat, but I ate a roo burger in Adelaide in 1993.
We barbecued on a disc-plough blade, a circular iron plate, curved inwards with a square bolt-hole in the centre. The fat from the burgers, sausage and bacon ran down to the hole, and dropped on to the fire, so the meat was usually pretty-well smoked by the time we got around to eating it.
Koalas are protected, and live in minute areas - mainly because their diet is specialised, only certain types of eucalyptus tree leaves. Best of luck finding one, let alone being able to catch or trap one.
The aborigines, I read, roasted wichety grubs, lizards, snakes and other wild life, but I've not tried it.

Now the smoked capelin here in Bonavista ...
Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

... 'roos are from the East, ...

If you would like to hear what a kangaroo sounds like when it is talking, you'll here one in this clip.
Cheers
Chris

[BobH]

No doubt a didgeridoo done dandily.

[GeoffW]

So . . . what kind(s) of meat(s) would someone so inclined smoke in WA? 'roos are from the East, no? (I don't know if the meat is fit to eat but the hides make great boots.) Koalas? Of course there are the domestic varieties - pork/beef/chook. What else?

This was at our local markets today

[ChrisGreaves]

This was at our local markets today

... and let's hope it stays there!
Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Perth: Following on Bob’s find I d//l three or four more videos on Perth from YouTube.

I deleted the modern videos; they appear to have been recorded by amateurs with short attention spans (he wrote, grumpily), with each scene lasting about three seconds, too short for me, even with my now obsolete knowledge of Perth to work out where the scene was shot.
Excepting Hay Street became a pedestrian mall back in the 70s, I knew that, and yet bouncing up and down on someone’s shoulder as they made their way along the mall did little for me.

What would have worked for me would be a look sideways, with pauses, at the shop fronts.

I am of course curious about the arcades I remember from the 50s and 60s - The Piccadilly and Plaza arcades and a couple of others, each with its non-stop newsreel/cartoon/travelkogue-C-grade movie; likewise, is it still called the My Fair Lady theatre? And so on.

The quick-flash scenes told me little about Perth except (1) the sun shines (as it does in every tourist brochure - even for Bonavista! - and (2) a great deal of money has been wasted on grants for modern art works (he continued, grumpily).

I did retain “Postcard From Perth” which would have been taken by a professional photographer (we didn’t have videos back then), and seems to be a pace better suited for viewing without actually being there, whereby the brain retains some of the peripheral views to put the focussed view in context.

I could be wrong; perhaps people can use these short-flash scenes to decide whether or not to travel to Perth WA/Bonavista NL/TempleTX etc, but to my mind they do not do justice to the target scene or to the target audience.

I could say the same thing about the various videos you’ll uncover for “Yilgarn” or “Southern Cross”; the content probably makes sense to the person shooting the video, an aide-memoire, but not to the person seeking knowledge about the region (again, except that the sun shines, there is little vegetation etc).

Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

...And updated a bit more recently

here you go, old fella!
Museum of Endangered Sounds
CAUTION: I found that I had to manually turn off any sound turned on; after clicking four of them it sounded like I had a teenage party going on in my basement, and this house doesn't have a basement.
Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

And updated a bit more recently

And while I am on a roll ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_command_set
http://home.intekom.com/option/hayesat.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pmxkt9mYgM
Cheers
Chris

[LisaGreen]

Thank you blokes!!! Fascinating... I really love all this stuff!!!

[ChrisGreaves]

Perth, WA circa 1954.And updated a bit more recently 2019.

Here's another one, from the early 60s. There are shots of the reclamation (sand) of the river at Mounts Bay Road for the Narrows Bridge. Memories of 60s Perth W.A.
Cheers
Chris