How 'boring' Perth was reborn as a magnet for hipsters
In The Shark Net, Robert Drewe’s memoir of growing up in Perth, the capital of Western Australia, in the Fifties and Sixties, the novelist describes the city as a “branch manager’s town”, lacking charisma, identity and amenities. If you had suggested even 20 years ago that it would become a hipster hangout you’d have been regarded as a few stubbies short of a six-pack. Well, Perth is now so hip it has an artisanal cheese-themed restaurant housed in the vault of an old bank – the former branch manager of which is no doubt spinning in his grave out in Karrakatta Cemetery.
It’s hard to put one’s finger on precisely when Perth binned its collar and tie and pulled on a pair of boardies. But its coming of age as a liveable world city may be neatly dated to March 26 2018, when the inaugural non-stop Qantas flight from London landed at Perth Airport. Now ever more Europeans are arriving to discover the pleasures of a destination that has augmented its natural advantages of pretty much year-round sun, sunnily disposed people, sandy beaches and wider excursion possibilities (see below) with exciting urban facilities and fabric.
Only in the past two years, for example, has Perth taken proper advantage of its location on the Swan river. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a city on the up is in want of a revamped waterfront area – sheeny skyscrapers (preferably containing a marquee hotel group or two), joggers’ boardwalks, public sculpture and, if you’re really pushing the boat out, a kayak-friendly beach. Perth has gone the Full Monty with the glitzy development of Elizabeth Quay, which opened in 2016 and still has that construction-fresh smell of new paint and timber.
Providing a link between the downtown area and the ruffled blue vistas of the river estuary, Elizabeth Quay is a vital part of the dot-joining process that is transforming Perth. It is matched in the north by the City Link development that has plugged the central business district into the hitherto semi-detached Northbridge neighbourhood of bars and restaurants. John Parker, who owns one of the most popular bars, the Standard, described up-and-coming Northbridge as “like Shoreditch in the late Eighties” and there are indeed more asymmetric haircuts than mullets in the teeming bars around William Street and James Street.
The food in Perth and its environs, at the top end at least, showcases fresh WA produce – especially seafood – and restaurants have upped their game by absorbing influences from Perth’s neighbours across the Indian Ocean, Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as the traditions of Aboriginal bush tucker (Wildflower restaurant in particular). Reflecting this newfound confidence, upmarket hotel groups are arriving in numbers – including the Ritz-Carlton, slated to open in Elizabeth Quay next year, and COMO The Treasury boutique hotel (where I stayed), which has garnered “best in the world” accolades since it opened in 2015.
Wildflower and COMO The Treasury are both housed in the State Buildings complex next to the cathedral, former government offices that have been refurbished as a ritzy oasis of shopping, wining and dining. Such “repurposing” – along with microbreweries, solar-powered “smart bins” (“I can compact up to five times more waste than a regular bin,” declares the slogan on the side) and skateboarders with tattooed calves – is a sure sign that a city is learning the meaning of urban cool.
It was on a city walking tour with local guide Ryan Mossny that I came across Fromage Artisans, the cheesy dining concept on St George’s Terrace. We had just emerged from Helvetica whisky bar, named after the typeface, and would presently be admiring a car park off Wolf Lane tuned up by dazzling murals. Affable and impassioned, 40-year-old Mossny embodies the new spirit abroad in his adoptive city.
He’s from Saskatchewan in Canada, a landlocked place of harsh winters, and worked across the world for a Japanese electronics company, but found his feet in Perth when he co-founded a walking tours company. “In Melbourne and London people work hard but they don’t know when to stop,” he said. “Here they work hard and then they switch off, go to the beach, whatever. The work-life balance is more healthy. I really love it.” And with that he padded off into the balmy evening, no doubt for a moonlit swim.
Perth essentials
Getting there
Qantas (qantas.com) flies non-stop London Heathrow-Perth daily (17hrs, from about ￡800).
Getting around
Transperth (transperth.wa.gov.au) runs buses and trains with a zoned fare system (e.g. Fremantle is in Zone 2 and a ticket costs $4.70/￡2.60 one way).
Rottnest Island is served by frequent ferries run by Rottnest Express (rottnestexpress.com.au), Rottnest Fast Ferries (rottnestfastferries.com.au) and SeaLink Rottnest Island (sealinkrottnest.com.au): from $60 return including $18 island admission fee.
The day tour of the Margaret River region with Swan River Seaplanes (swanriverseaplanes.com.au) is highly recommended: take off from South Perth, fly over the city then parallel to the coast and enjoy visits to two wineries: $795pp.
Walking tours
Two Feet & a Heartbeat (twofeet.com.au) offers a variety of themed tours in Perth and Fremantle: two hours from $35.
Where to stay
Perth: COMO The Treasury has 48 generously proportioned and understatedly elegant rooms, two restaurants (including Wildflower) and the Shambhala spa.
Fremantle: Hougoumont Hotel (hougoumonthotel.com.au) manages to be both chic and relatively cheap.
Where to eat
Odyssea City Beach (odysseacitybeach.com.au), has excellent seafood and mostly local produce.
Wildflower (wildflowerperth.com.au) is the city’s premier fine dining venue. Sample foraged leaves and berries with wild fish and kangaroo.
The Standard Bar Garden Kitchen (thestandardperth.com.au) has a laid-back blend of shared plates and local wines and beers in a garden setting.
Yarri (yarri.com.au) in Dunsborough in the Margaret River region follows a similar indigenous ethos to Wildflower.
Bread in Common (breadincommon.com.au) in Fremantle combines a bakery with “farm to table” menu.
Further information
Beyond Perth: three of the best escapes
Rottnest Island
Lying 12 miles off the Indian Ocean coast due west of Perth, this fish-shaped island measuring some seven miles by three (11km by 5km) was “where West Australians lost their virginity,” according to the novelist Robert Drewe. Its 63 sandy beaches and bays provide plenty of cover for canoodling couples but nowadays government-run “Rotto” markets other physical activities (swimming, surfing, hiking), balancing the touristic pressures of 600,000 annual visitors with the protection of a fragile ecosystem. No one lives here – bar the staff who maintain it – and cars are not allowed (a bus service and bikes, which you can hire, are the preferred transport options). Most people come over for the day on ferries, though there is self-catering accommodation and a hotel. What they find, apart from those scalloped bays, is a beautiful environment of gentle hills covered in tea trees and grasses and, out on the headlands, wild rosemary and low-lying succulents. Cute mini-marsupials called quokkas kick back in the shade and nibble the greens of the golf course while, offshore, bottlenosed dolphins cavort above pink coral reefs. If all this sounds impossibly paradisiacal, it should be noted that Wadjemup (the local name for the island) has a dark history, for it served as a penal colony for Aborigines for almost a century (until 1932). Some 370 prisoners still lie here. The story is told in the little museum in the main settlement, known as the Settlement.
Fremantle
I took a taxi the 12 miles south from Perth to Fremantle and knew I’d got there when I spotted an elderly hippy pedalling a rickety tricycle with a micro-dog in the basket. Freo, as everyone calls it, is Perth’s bohemian sibling, a gritty port city (indeed, Australia’s first port of call for shipping from Europe, Africa and Asia) at the mouth of the Swan river, turned enclave of easy living for arty/alternative types and partying out-of-towners. A generation ago Freo was a roughhouse of brawling sailors at night; by day its colonial and Gold Rush-era buildings gave it a dignified, old-fashioned air. Now those buildings, which survived the urban planning purge that flattened much of old Perth, house cafés, bars, shops and galleries. Best place to take the pulse is the terrace of Gino’s (ginoscafe.com.au) on South Terrace, the street known as Cappuccino Strip that comes alive with buskers, street performers and parades of classic cars on weekends and evenings. A good overview of Freo is to be had from the Round House (fremantleroundhouse.com.au) at the end of High Street, built in 1831 as a jail and now the oldest public building in WA. Fremantle Prison (fremantleprison.com.au), which closed in 1991, offers tours.
Margaret River
This region, occupying the south-western tip of Western Australia a few hours’ drive (or an hour’s flying time) south of Perth, is where the WA lifestyle finds perfect expression – surfing, swimming, fishing and hiking, lubricated by top-quality wines produced in a Bordeaux-like climate. I walked part of the coastal path (trailswa.com.au/trails/cape-to-cape-track; there’s also an organised luxury option – see walkintoluxury.com.au), along dramatic cliffs and sandy bays; enjoyed tastings of some excellent chardonnays and cabernet sauvignons at Vasse Felix (vassefelix.com.au) and Amelia Park (ameliaparkwines.com.au) wineries; and dined superbly well on emu, prawns and foraged berries at a new restaurant (Yarri – see “Where to eat”) in Dunsborough. But most memorable was the tour of Ngilgi Cave with Aboriginal guide Josh Whiteland (koomaldreaming.com.au). The cave, a vast amphitheatre of phantasmagoric limestone formations that he regards as a “living, breathing spirit”, is sacred to the local Wadandi people as it forms a “pathway to the dreaming” through which the spirits of the dead flow out to their final resting place at sea. In 1911 the soprano Dame Nellie Melba had a piano lowered into the cave so she could sing in its strange acoustics, but I can’t believe this was more memorable than Whiteland’s performance on his didgeridoo – a hypnotic orchestral wash that contained both weather and animal sounds.