Freo Days, Part II

When I found the motivation to drag myself away from the couch on the verandah, it was usually to go to a gig. Ahhh, Freo gigs - how I miss you. 

I'd hop on the pushy and roll in the last light over the old traffic bridge. The golden sun sank into the ocean, leaving the black outline of the stacks of containers and mechanical dinosaurs at the port, and the train rattling by with a handful of straggling commuters on board, and the swirling Swan River below me all continuing their business in the darkening evening. 

Mojo's was the venue most nights. Bright on the outside, gloomy and dark on the inside, I leaned against a wall to watch the band. Barefooted Charlie Parr with his big grey beard and tangled grey hair played his frantic hillbilly tunes to a baying crowd. I saw local reggae dub maestros The Sunshine Brothers quite a few times, including one of the last nights before I left town. They joked with each other in between songs as though nobody was listening. 

Down opposite the abandoned Woolstores, with all the graffiti and where the kids skate all weekend, is Clancy's Fish Pub. Full of friendly vagrants and colourful eccentrics, you can't feel out of place there. Free gigs on Friday nights and a variety of tasty beers to drink and seafood to soak it up with. The T Shirts they sell say We put the beer of God  in you, and it could be true. 

Summer Sunday afternoons found me on the shady lawns of the Freo Art Centre. Free gig from two til four. People lay on picnic rugs sharing bowls of nuts and cold beer from the esky, gurgling toddlers escaped the half hearted grasp of dad to run around and dance up the front, the acoustic tunes floated up and around and into the trees and people smiled at each other. In my memory it was pretty much paradise. 

There were so many more venues - world music upstairs at Kulcha, where you can step outside to lurk on the balcony and watch the drunks stumble round on the main street below, indie tunes in the cramped Norfolk Basement, Gomez rocking at the Fly By Night Club, comfy retro lounges to sprawl in at the Little Creatures Loft (continuing the local knack for a catchy phrase with their slogan Open Up A Little), the Blues and Roots Festival in the park - oh the music flows richly in Freo. 

Freo Days, Part I

For three years I had a house in Fremantle. When I say ‘had’, I mean I rented it of course.

It was smallish and oldish and each of the rooms was painted a different bright colour – yellow, red, blue, purple, green. The wooden floorboards creaked in places and the ceiling fans ticked a little as they spun.

I first came to 49 Forrest Street on a summer afternoon in response to a housemate wanted advertisement. I propped my pushbike against the tree out the front and knocked on the door to meet Alena, whose friend had left at short notice. After a few days she let me know I could move in, I was the least strange of her applicants. Must have been some real weirdos turn up.  

My favourite thing about the house was the verandah. It was wide and shady and had a decrepit lounge on it.  The fabric of this lounge was torn and faded and the frame wobbled and groaned when anybody sat down.You got to know the comfortable spots to sit, away from the poky bits or saggy spots.That lounge and I spent some time together over the years. In the hot dusty afternoons, in the late evening light, in windy squalls, in winter rains I sat on the verandah and read and watched and thought.

I liked the feeling of being outside, yet sort of inside. I had shelter from the biting West Australian sun, but felt the cool benefits of the daily Freo Doctor (the sea breeze that calls every summer afternoon to make people feel better).  As a storm arrived from the coast I would get splashed by the rebound of fat raindrops from the railings. The trees alongside the footy field bent sideways in the howling southwesterlies. 

I could hear the music from my stereo inside, yet I was part of the world outside. I could smile or say hello to people walking past; the lady with purple hair walking her sausage dog, the families with young kids on scooters, the teenagers delivering advertising brochures who had to pass by our stickered mailbox. Or I could choose not to engage with anyone at all and just read.  

I don’t know how many books I must have read sitting out there. Stories from around the world, stories from across the centuries, characters come to life in my mind in colour and adventure and anguish and happiness and confusion, living their lives as best they knew how, bringing a zest and new perspective into my little old Freo life.

When Alena moved out for a new beginning in Albany she took all her furniture but left the lounge on the verandah. It was decaying further, exposed as it was sometimes to rain and sun, and it wasn't a specifically outdoor lounge. I didn’t mind though, I still ate dinner there often enough, had some serious kinds of conversation there, I liked to sit there and await guests for a warm greeting, and I was there early that Thursday morning when I got the phone call about Foz’s passing.  

When I decided to leave Freo earlier this year, I gradually emptied the house of its contents. Most of the things I’d scavenged from kerbside pickups, so was happy to return to the kerb and let the circle of life continue. Some I sold for cheap on gumtree. Off went the barbecue, the stereo, the bed and mattress. But nobody came for the lounge. Nobody knew its value like I did so it sat there until the day before moving when there was nothing else for it - we wrangled into the back of a ute and tied it down as though it might have known the hole in the ground where it was headed and tried to escape.