by Eddie

The war over Anzac Cottage

anzaccottage

There is nothing so wonderful, so perfect, that some mongrel can’t find a way to try and ruin it.

But first a quick history lesson.

Anzac Cottage in Mt Hawthorn was built in 1916 by the local residents as a home for Private John Porter and his family. It was intended both to help out a wounded soldier and serve as a memorial for those who lost their lives at Gallipoli.

End of quick history lesson.

So, they’re about to build Anzac Cottage when the said mongrel pops up.

Let me introduce you to John Beer.

Mr Beer decides to write to the paper saying that the proposed cottage is far too grand for a simple soldier like Private Porter. He thinks that a much more modest dwelling should be constructed for the wounded digger.

Of course, he’s only thinking of saving Private Porter from embarrassment of having to accept the keys of Anzac Cottage. Imagine how humiliating it would be for Mrs Porter to think that she and her family would have to live in such a lovely place. Mr Beer is only being considerate.

And, in any case, perhaps more people would donate money to the project if they knew that only a small building was being erected.

What a thoughtful, kind man Mr Beer was.

This letter drew a stinging rebuke from the organiser of the project, Frank Kelsall. John Beer could get stuffed, he said.

If you think a simple four-room cottage is too much for the family of a man who had served his nation, then you are an “insufferable cad”.

Besides which, continued Frank, there were enough gossip mongers in Mt Hawthorn already stirring up trouble about the project without tossers like Mr Beer poking his nose in.

Rather than do the decent thing, and keep his mouth shut, John Beer now decided to attack the organising committee, as well as Private Porter. Lovely.

Fortunately, the tosspots like Beer did not triumph, and Private Porter was able to receive the keys to his modest home as planned.

If you want to check out if Anzac Cottage was too grand for a wounded digger, it’s open this afternoon (1 March) from 1pm. I reckon a pint in the Oxford Hotel to toast Private Porter and curse John Beer would be entirely appropriate first.

by Eddie

It’s not paleo, but it does have spuds

potato-milk

But where are the laxatives?

Need to lose weight? Looking for a faddish diet with little scientific backing, but plenty of newspaper stories and celebrity endorsements?

Dr Dodgy Perth prescribes the following milk and potato diet which was all the rage in WA in 1940. We completely guarantee you will see the pounds simply drop off.(*)

Breakfast One glass of milk.

Lunch Two or three baked or boiled potatoes and another glass of milk.

Dinner Same as lunch or, for variety, potato soup made with milk and potatoes.

Supper A glass of warm milk to induce sleep.

Every night (and we mean every night) take one laxative.

Follow this diet three times a week, and we’ll let you eat some real food on the other days. But don’t forget the laxatives

Why not try it. What do you have to lose? Apart from the kilos. And maybe your health and sanity.

(*) Dodgy Perth survives exclusively on beer and cigarettes, and has never tried this diet. Consult a registered practitioner before embarking on the latest celebrity fad. Or don’t. It’s up to you, really. You’re a grown up. (If you are not a grown up, please do not try beer or ciggies. They’re bad. Really bad.)

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

Let’s go outside

letsgooutsideYoung people today, eh? No standards, is what we say at Dodgy Perth HQ.

Not like in the good old days, like the 1950s. When people knew how to behave. And respected their betters. And did not make love in broad daylight in front of picnickers.

No sir.

Take for example, the way our grandparents celebrated New Year’s Eve 1953. The good old days. Just like in Back to the Future.

Can you imagine wild “necking parties” going on all night in King’s Park until the families arrived with picnics the next day? That generation could never have blended booze and sex into wild public orgies, never caring who saw them. Impossible!

It cannot be that these courting couples deliberately sought out audiences to their wanton promiscuity.

No. It was the 1950s, not 2015.

There could never have been a couple freely enjoying themselves in a ’53 model American sedan in King’s Park. Her blue nylon frock was not draped over the bonnet of the car. And sheer silk stockings weren’t boasting of her activities as they flew from the car’s radio aerial. There were no empty bottles strewn in the bush around them. This did not happen. It was the 1950s, when everything was better than today.

As dawn broke over a parking spot on Crawley Bay, near the University, you would not have been able to see a dozen people in six cars greeting 1954 in their own unique way.

A slim girl, probably no older than eighteen, was not vomiting into the river while her escort (shoeless, tuxedo pants and lipstick smeared singlet) did not drink breakfast straight from a bottle.

The pair in the back seat of a cream sedan nearby were being chaste. Not engaged in open activities which would make a pro blush.

Since it was the 1950s, all of these activities were confined decently to the marital bed. To people who were married to each other. That’s how things were back then.

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.

by Eddie

Breakfast and bigamy

Fire station

The scene of our drama

In late 1924 Amy Coall showed up at Perth Fire Station on Murray Street. Unable to locate her husband, turning up at his place of work was a last resort. It was rumoured Joseph had married another woman, and Amy had to know the truth.

As it turned out, he had tried to be a bigamist. But his mum had stopped him.

But let’s return to the previous year. Amy and Joseph were lovers, and she was six months pregnant when they married in December 1923. The newlyweds moved into 9 May Street, Bayswater.

From the start, though, things were not right. Joseph spent two nights a week away, allegedly back at his parents’ house in Victoria Park, because he said his mum needed help looking after his father.

Their child was born in March, and the relationship rumbled on, with Joseph’s odd disappearances continuing. One Monday in August, Joseph left for work at the Fire Station and did not return for a week. When Amy questioned him, he simply shrugged it off, saying it had been a long shift.

Shortly after this Amy discovered guests had been invited to the wedding of Joseph Coall and Doreen Caple, followed by a wedding breakfast in Fremantle.

When Amy turned up at the Fire Station, Joseph admitted everything. And, by the way, his new lover was pregnant with his child. But he wasn’t actually a bigamist. His mother got cold feet at the last minute, and rushed over to Doreen’s family and told the truth.

Bizarrely, no one could bear to disappoint the invited guests, so the bogus wedding breakfast went ahead as planned, with none of the assembled party any the wiser.

You won’t be surprised to discover Amy got herself a divorce shortly afterwards.

by Eddie

What a mess!

Black Boy Hill, 1916

Black Boy Hill, 1916

Basic training for World War I took place at Blackboy Hill, a couple of kilometres east of Midland town centre. The YMCA won the contract to provide the canteen at the camp.

Trouble is, none of the enlisted men liked the way The Y ran the place. Instead of providing a service at a reasonable price, the canteen was basically run to raise money for the YMCA. The manager of the canteen was vastly overpaid, and they even had the nerve to charge rent to anyone on site wanting to use the canteen for a meeting. The building had been built by the Army!

All in all, the men serving their nation felt completely ripped off.

The officers weren’t happy about this situation, so on Monday 28 September 1914, a rival ‘wet’ canteen was opened in a tent at Blackboy Hill.

This would be good for morale, said the officers. It will keep the men on site and away from the local pubs. In any case, it would let the officers know how much the men were drinking, and restrict them to beer rather than spirits.

A welcome improvement to the training camp. No one could possibly object to this.

Welcome to Western Australia.

Naturally some pasty-faced wowser, the Mike Daube of his day, took to the letters page to rail against this threat to civilisation. Having a beer would turn soldiers to cowards, he screamed. They would become tired, be unable to shoot. Every military virtue would be wiped out as soon as a glass was poured.

In any case, drink leads to horrible, horrible war crimes. Apparently.

Perhaps it had not been wise for the officers to have seized one of the YMCA’s tents for the new canteen.

The Y retaliated to this insult (and to the end to their monopoly) by requesting that the camp commandant ban the consumption of beer at Blackboy Hill. He rightly told them to get stuffed.

But the YMCA were not to be put off. They drafted an urgent telegram to the federal Minister for Defence, explaining that the “young soldiers of this State” needed protection from the awful officers at the camp. And their “social work” was becoming more difficult, since no one wanted to eat at the old canteen anymore.

At 2 o’clock in the afternoon, on Sunday 4 October, orders came in from high command. The wet canteen was to be closed.

It had survived less than a week.

Wowsers 1. Anzacs 0.

This is an edited re-post of an earlier article. But we like it, so are sharing it again with our new followers.

by Eddie

Getting into hot water

013150dThe office at Dodgy Perth HQ is a fairly relaxed place. Not much makes us angry.

But today, we read of how Dalkeith residents were forced to listen to people having fun on the foreshore.

You can imagine how that made our blood boil.

Pictured above is the notorious Hot Pool at Dalkeith, which for decades was a popular place to relax.

One of the best things to do was get to the pool around midnight, strip off and hold a nude swimming party. However, the installation of floodlights and regular patrols by the police made this a more difficult activity to get away with.

So most people just turned up with a picnic and a few beers to have a good time. Right up to the 1950s.

Enter the Dalkeith residents. They had not spent all that money on housing to have to listen to people having a good time. No sir.

They pressurised the Nedlands Road Board who passed a by law forbidding barbecues on the foreshore. And for good measure they outlawed alcohol too.

Police started nightly visits looking for evil doers who wanted to barbeque a steak.

Unbelievable as it might seem, the police once found a group of young people who had some beer and who thought it would be acceptable to get together within earshot of Dalkeith. That was quickly put to an end.

So now Dalkeith is exactly as it should be. Big houses and no nudity. And certainly no fun on the foreshore.

by Eddie

Way out of line

CarnamahThere are not many inviolable rules when erecting a building, but there are some. Dodgy Perth now offers you this planning tip: make sure your building is in line with the street or it will look like you don’t know what you’re doing.

Welcome to Carnamah.

In 1932 the good citizens of this small Mid-West town were all excited about the new Post Office being raised by the Public Works Department.

However when the foundations were put down it was noticed that the alignment was completely wrong, and it did not fit with all the other buildings on McPherson Street. The Government was asked to fix this problem before the building itself went up.

At first, the response was that the local Road Board had asked for it to be built like that. Which wasn’t true.

Then the Government said that it was at the request of the Citizens’ Association. Which wasn’t true either.

In the end, the Government simply told Carnamah that if they got any more complaints they wouldn’t build a Post Office at all. So shut the hell up country people.

The Post Office was built and opened in June 1932. With the wrong alignment. And remains just like that to this day.

So when you’re next in Carnamah, raise a glass to the Postmaster General’s Department and their unorthodox approach to making friends in the regions.

by Eddie

As your attorney…

Ye Olde Englishe Fayre was a fairground which included a freak show where you could see the monkey boy and a two-headed pig. It also had a variety show with the top acts of the day, in between local performers of varying quality.

By 1896 the Fayre had relocated to the site now occupied by His Majesty’s Theatre where you could see renowned singer Priscilla Verne do her best known routine, a song called ‘He Sits in the Front Row’:

He sits in the front row; he is blushing like a maid,
I love you, darling; be my hub; now, don’t be afraid.
Don’t turn away in anger, dear; I always will be true,
Accept this kiss, and give me one; for I love you.

At this point she would lean forwards and beckon to a male patron in the front row to act out the final line. This particular Friday, she turned to Gus McBride, who fancied himself a bit of a ladies’ man. Priscilla invited him on stage to kiss her.

For reasons which are not clear, Gussie declined this generous offer and retorted with an insult which made Priscilla’s blood boil. “You contemptible little cad,” she snarled from the stage. The next day she consulted a lawyer, who advised her she should have her abuser horsewhipped in public.

So Priscilla sent a letter, signed ‘Alice Chambers’, claiming she had fallen in love with Gus and would like to meet him outside the Town Hall on Barrack Street that very afternoon. Together with other members of the show, she lay in wait with a cane hidden in her dress.

When Gussie arrived to meet with ‘Alice’ he was shocked to be greeted by the assembled Fayre employees. “Come here! I want to speak to you!” said Priscilla. Gus began to run along Barrack Street, followed by Priscilla who kept lashing out at him with the cane.

“You cad,” she shouted, “I’ll teach you not to insult another woman as you did me.”

By this time a large crowd was enjoying every moment of the scene, and Gus had to plead with two burly police officers to defend him. Soon afterwards he left Perth and we never heard from him again.

There’s probably a moral in all this, but we have no idea what it is.