Category / Architecture

by Eddie

Fur coat and no knickers

GPO, 1929

GPO, 1929

Reader, you and I have grown quite intimate, have we not? We have confessed our thoughts to each other. Whispered those things of which only true friends can speak.

Yet, there is that one matter we have not dared to broach. And now it is time.

I lean over to you and say in a low voice: “Some of Perth’s heritage buildings are quite disappointing.”

There. It is out in the open.

In fact, right across Western Australia are hundreds of boring brick sheds with corrugated iron roofs, and a thin façade of Donnybrook stone glued on the front.

Lipstick on a pig, as the Americans say.

All fur coat and no knickers, as my mother says.

Or, as one critic said of the General Post Office in Forrest Place: “It’s like a lovely face on a baboon body.”

Next time you’re in the CBD, take a look at the sides of the GPO. You will see they would be easily mistaken, as the West Australian said at the time, for the walls of a factory.

Don’t get me wrong. The façade is charming. Really, really enchanting.

But, like so many buildings in this State of ours, the rest of the edifice has no architectural unity with the front. None whatsoever.

When the GPO opened, the Sunday Times was outraged. (Mind you, the Sunday Times was always outraged about something.)

They would never have done this in Sydney or Melbourne, it thundered, but the federal government feels able to “treat Perth with vulgar contempt.”

Sometimes you see a heritage building and think you’re falling in love. But then you realise that it’s just makeup, and there’s nothing behind it. And all your affection falls away.

Dodgy Perth is sorry we had to raise this issue, but you had to know.

Can we still be friends?

by Eddie

Turn me kangaroo round, sport

GPO

Is something happening over there?

Dodgy Perth went to Forrest Place and noticed the two coats of arms on the Post Office had been removed. Both the Australian arms (above) and the British royal coat of arms. They’re gone because of yoof who decided it would be funny to smash them up.

WP_20150225_002

Where’s me kangaroo gone, sport?

Anyway, the office got thinking. We’ve heard various stories about why the kangaroo on the GPO’s Commonwealth coat of arms faces the wrong direction. On all the other coats of arms, the two delicious animals face each other.

Australian_Coat_of_Arms

Burger time

Or to go all heraldic about it: why does the GPO have a sinister kangaroo regardant?

The best theory says because of swastikas, aliens, Masons, the illuminati and witchcraft. We don’t pretend to follow the argument, but we are convinced. Maybe.

Alternatively, the most popular tale concerns a sculptor who never got paid for his work, so the kangaroo looks back at the treasury as a rebuke.

We thought about this for a while.

So… the sculptor cast the coat of arms knowing in advance they wouldn’t get paid. And then no one noticed the sculpture was wrong when they put it up.

We back the illuminati story now.

But… Dodgy Perth is going can be the first to reveal the real, genuine, slightly mundane truth.

Take a look at the Commonwealth arms below:

Canberra

Are you looking at me, mate?

This is the Old Parliament building in Canberra. It may look ordinary now. That’s because someone cut the head off the kangaroo and turned it round.

That’s right. The coat of arms on the national parliament once had a sinister kangaroo regardant. You were allowed creative licence in your interpretation in those days.

The reason was simple: both animals were looking at the royal coat of arms, which also adorned every Commonwealth building. It would have been rude for either kangaroo or emu to turn its back on the monarch.

OPH_lion+unicorn

God save our unicorn, long live our unicorn

Same reason goes for the GPO.

But the more observant among you will have noticed a tiny problem with this explanation. In Forrest Place, both bird and marsupial face away from the royal arms, which were on the GPO’s right.

Best explanation: the contractors who put them up weren’t told which one went where, and no one noticed on the day. If anyone commented later, it was too late to do anything about it. So for nine decades, kangaroo and emu have been studiously ignoring a succession of kings and queens of England.

Perhaps, now both coats of arms are in for repair, this is the ideal moment to put things back the way they were intended. Or make a republican statement and put them back the way they were.

One way or the other.