TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

AUSTRALIA 2 - PART FOUR

This week's blog has a distinctly music feel to it. You may remember that I had written a song for our project, those who can’t remember can watch it here.

Now that we had decided Fremantle would be our base, we wanted to try to record it with an Australian school. I found a Western Australian music foundation and spoke to someone there. ‘Why don’t you get in touch with our patron,’ she said and gave me his name and a number. Now, to my girlfriend, and, maybe, some of you, the name meant nothing but I just sat there thinking I had misheard.

The name she gave me was Keith Potger and, some may know, that he was, back in the sixties (the only decade when music mattered), and still is if I read things correctly, a member of The Seekers pop group. They were big and had, I think, four British No. 1 singles. They were also made ‘Australians of the Year’ in 1967. So, I dialled the number, Mr Potger answered, listened and immediately offered us his help. We sent him our song, including my version, and he still offered to help.

I told him I had written a few more songs and he still offered to help. Seriously he was an incredibly nice person and it was a pleasure to meet and talk with him. When The Seekers disbanded in the late sixties he formed a group called The New Seekers, I said he was incredibly nice not imaginative, and they had a hit with a song called ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’. Maybe he played my version, thought of this and realized what a futile hope that was.

Keith took us to Perth one day to meet a guy called Boyd Wilson who ran, and maybe still runs, the Variety WA Youth Choir. Variety Clubs exist all over the world. In very simple terms they are there to help disabled and disadvantaged children in, pardon the pun, a variety of ways. Keith was, at that time, the patron of Variety WA and, hence, the link. The Youth Choir was a group of youngsters who Variety WA had got together to perform at various functions some years ago. We had been given, by Keith, a CD they made called Big Heart and it is a wonderful collection of different songs. We were there to see if they would, firstly, record our song, and secondly, whether we could look to the future and maybe have a concert together or even a CD.

Later in the year, we were able to see them perform as part of a concert Keith did in Fremantle, promoting his first solo CD. For various reasons, our ideas never got off the ground but it was fun trying and a real pleasure to meet someone I had watched and admired years ago.

As well as this introduction, Keith also gave us tickets for a concert The Seekers were giving in Perth. They had split up in 1968 and then reformed in about 1992. Last year, to celebrate 50 years of something, they did another concert tour, even appearing in the UK but I couldn’t make it. I think I am right in saying that they are the only sixties group still performing with the original line up.

There is another little story about Keith which even he may not know completely. If you cast your mind way back, you may remember that our visit to WA was intended as a quick look and then we would return to make our base in Melbourne. So sure of this were we at the time, we left a bag in Melbourne and, on learning of this, Keith said he would go to the backpackers where we left it the next time he was back there, pick it up and bring it to us.

Once I had got my head around an ‘Australian of the Year’ picking up my left luggage and bringing it to me, I gratefully accepted his kind offer. A few weeks later and we got a phone call from Keith saying he had the bag, was doing an appearance in Perth, could we come there and pick it up. ‘Yes, thank you’ was a no-brainer. We arrived, he paused in his personal appearance work, took us down to his car and removed the case from the back. We took the case and then thanked him profusely and set off back to Freo. I pulled the case on the little wheels it had, wondering why it was so easy to move. I realised this a moment later when my girlfriend said, ‘Our case didn’t have wheels’. The backpackers had given Keith, who knew no difference, the wrong case. I remember sneaking a look inside on Perth station and discovering a magician’s cloak and a few other things. We subsequently phoned the backpackers who sent our case to us but we never found out who had lost his cloak.

Let me finish this bit with one other story about Keith. The first time we met he suggested a place called ‘Little Creatures’, which was an independent brewery in Freo. It was great to be there and see the beer brewing and we were all sitting around a table chatting. My girlfriend nipped out to the loo and when she came back Keith was standing up. She first thought she had missed a good joke he was telling which needed him to stand but, jokingly, said ‘Oh, is that for me’. ‘Yes,’ came the reply from a true old-fashioned gentleman. Beautiful.

Talking of ‘Little Creatures’ takes me back to Freo again. When Keith dropped us off, and we had the photo taken, it was the street in Freo known as the Cappuccino Strip. Now I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen a Cappuccino strip, presumably you take the cream off and it’s just naked coffer underneath, but this one has loads of cafés, bars and restaurants together with a few shops. It’s called the Cappuccino Strip because of the number of coffee places there.

From the strip you can walk into the vehicle-free area of the High Street and again, there are restaurants and cafés with seating outside. You can often hear buskers singing or playing nearby. In and around the old Fremantle Markets, there always seem to be buskers or street entertainers. We were told that on Sundays, the buskers will meet and each will be given a set time and place where he or she can play. We saw this guy performing as we walked from the markets. In fact, this is right opposite King’s Square in the centre of the city, and he was singing his heart out and accompanying himself on his trusty guitar.

Kings Square is looked down upon by the Old Clock Tower of the Town Hall building. This was opened in 1887 as part of the silver jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria. History does not record if she was amused, a rather obtuse reference that many should ignore and those that understand be suitably impressed with my knowledge. Also in Kings Square, set among the trees, is the Church of St John and a statue to the sculptor Pietro Porcelli. He created several pieces of work around Freo and is a good example of how the place has been, and is, somewhere where many artists live and work. When we arrived in Freo for the first time, way back in April, it was the last few days of the Fremantle Street Festival, where street entertainers from all over Australia performed. This whole atmosphere and culture of street entertainment is very strong and it is one of the things that gives it such a special feeling and such a great place to spend some time

Fremantle may well be a city in name but, to those of us who are more used to large European cities, it still has the look, and the appeal, of a small market town. Fitting neatly with this image is the fact that it actually has several markets. The oldest markets are held, each Friday, Saturday and Sunday, in a building which was indeed built as a market hall in 1897. There are a large number of stalls and a large section at the back offering fresh fruit and vegetables for our health conscious Australian buyer.

Then, right across the city over by the port, is the E-shed markets. They are, so my notes say, the only water-front markets in Western Australia. I can’t remember what the sheds originally were, I’m guessing at warehouses, but my notes do say that they were relocated piece by piece in 1995 and rebuilt on its present site. There are over 80 speciality stalls as well as an international food court and terrace cafés. It is a fine example of how to bring back to life an area of a town or city that has died through progress.

Let's keep the music theme going and I will ask you what is your first thought when someone’s says ‘Australia’? OK, you’re second? How far down do I need to go till you say ‘didgeridoo’? Really? Well, in case you don’t know, the didgeridoo is an aboriginal musical instrument. Basically it is a long tube, often wider at one end, and usually made from wood but some are made of bamboo. Wooden didgeridoos are made of the branches or trunks of trees, usually the gum tree or Eucalyptus, which is famous in Australia. It is the leaves of this tree that koalas use for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The branches, or trunks, will have been eaten away inside by termites or other creatures. A skilled and experienced aboriginal can easily find the best tree or branch just by taping it and listening to the sound. This will tell him how hollow it is. Most didgeridoo are also painted in elaborate patterns and I have put up some photos to show you different ones.

One day, when we were walking around Freo, we came across a shop with loads of didgeridoos inside. We went in and had an interesting little chat with one of the guys working there and made an appointment to go back and see the owners. A day or so later we did. Their names were Matt and Tony and the didgeridoo was their passion. They showed us a few instruments and took us upstairs, where they spent time explaining how they started the business and got into teaching didgeridoo techniques.

Very simply, you blow through one end and a loud reverberating sound comes out the other. In order to play it properly, you have to be able to blow out through your mouth while breathing in through your nose. Go on, try it, it’s not easy. Well, wipe it off. Use screen cleaner. However these guys told us that it’s really easy to learn how to play didgeridoo and you don’t need to have any musical background to play it well. If you have, that’s great because you know more about how to compose music, but you really can do it just by trying and get better by practising. There are no two didgeridoo players who play the same way or in the same style. The way you play depends not only on what shape you put your lips in while blowing, the tempo you use and the sounds you try to play but also the shape of your mouth, tone of your voice, which you can add to the music, and your accent. Aborigines, we were told, speak by keeping their tongue up in the roof of the mouth and this affects the playing. My Polish girlfriend was told that, as she had a different accent, she probably put her tongue in a different position too and this would influence her playing. I said nothing.

The guys told us that you could learn the basics in an hour and a half. The breathing in and blowing out bit, in Polish or any other language, is called circular breathing. This allows you to play continuously without taking the didgeridoo out of your mouth to take a breath. I’m still saying nothing. It seems like everybody can do it and we were told that a week earlier a two-year-old tried and managed to produce the sound with amazing power. ‘Both of you could learn easily,’ they said. After we left the shop my girlfriend decided to practise as we walked, trying to breathe in through her nose, out through her mouth and wobble her lips. I think nothing should be said again here too. But her efforts were interrupted when our mobile, we had now bought one, rang. It was Tony, from the shop, inviting us to a 90 minute course they were running that night. We immediately agreed and practised circular breathing, wobbling lips and tongue positions for the rest of the day. Individually, of course.

We had heard that some Aboriginals don’t like the white people playing their instruments and consider it an abuse of their culture. We also heard that women should not play. Coincidentally, later that day, we met Neville Collard, the elder at the ceremony I wrote about a few days ago, and he told us that the didgeridoo was never traditionally used in south-west Australia. The didgeridoo was originally played in and around Darwin and the Arnhem Land in Northern Territory, as well as Kimberley in northern Western Australia and the Gulf Country in the north of Queensland. He, therefore, couldn’t enlighten us as to its true cultural traditions.

When we went back for our lesson we asked Tony, and he said that the people in the North that he had met didn’t seem to mind. This is why they sell the instruments to him and I had to agree that this seems good proof. Whether women can play depends on the tribe. In some cases women can’t play on certain ceremonies and can’t use it in public but are allowed to play for themselves. In other tribes only women can use the didgeridoo for healing and in yet others they can paint it but not play it. There are some tribes where women are not allowed to touch it at all. We were told that sometimes it is not a taboo connected in any way to their religious beliefs, more the share of obligations and privileges. If women were busy playing the didgeridoo, they wouldn’t be able to do their other jobs.

Our lesson started at 6.00 pm. First thing you had to do was to breathe the air out through your lips making the lips vibrate at the same time. It’s a little bit the same as what kids do when they imitate a car. It looks stupid, but it’s not very difficult. Well, not until you put your lips on the edge of didgeridoo. Then it just stops. After a few trials everybody on the class, me included, managed to do it and the didgeridoos gave some sort of sound. The next 20 or so minutes we spent on trying all different sounds by reshaping the mouth and adding some voice to it. Our teacher showed us a few tricks and he used his Mickey Mouse voice because apparently this is a voice that is quite good for the didgeridoo. Then we came to circular breathing and I found this really hard. Eventually I mastered something close and, before, we knew it, the lesson was over. It had been great fun and we learned quite a lot.

Afterwards we went out and had a kebab, where I tried circular eating but it’s not very pleasant. When we got home, the lady who owned the house we were staying in said, ‘I could have taught you how to play, I had a lesson on the vacuum cleaner’. At which point, I think I will say nothing yet again. A week or so later we were invited back to join in a jam session. All sorts of people came in and sat down and played didgeridoo, drums, sticks, everything. It was great fun and, as you can see, I was remarkably good at circular sticks.

This whole thing has become very musical. So, I’ve decided you might like my thoughts on the music scene in Freo, compared to my experiences in Poland and I didn’t hear a single word from you against this idea. We went to many clubs in both Freo and Perth during our time there. I experienced drum and bass, house, techno, an overnight rave out in the bush and an open-air something called ‘Salty and Delicious’, out near the beach.

The first thing I noticed was the venues, excluding the rave. They were purpose built, or at least purpose converted. There was no sign of my ‘Waterloo Station in the blitz’ venues from Poznan. The first night we went out in Freo, the streets were packed, so we unpacked them. Sorry. There were queues everywhere and I mean serious queues. My little party friend had arranged a visit to Metropolis, a club in the centre, and the queues to get in were at least 100 yards long. But, my little friend had done this properly, and we were invited guests. We walked straight in.

Inside the club, there was a DJ downstairs and a live band upstairs. Quite obviously the music was house, or techno, or funk. I have no idea but these three words are in my notes. The building was originally an old theatre, then a car park and had been designed by a local architect who had used the theme of the four elements – water, fire, air and earth. There were some discreet seating areas for people who still understood and wanted to use the ancient art of conversation, without the need to shout.

Digression to make interesting point: My girlfriend was Polish but spoke English pretty well, albeit with a bit of an accent. Normally, I could understand her perfectly but, in a nightclub, with the noise, I really had a problem. I think my ears may be pitched too low, possibly because of my overall height, I don’t know.

There was far more security there than I ever saw in Poland but remember I never saw any real trouble in Poland either. In Metropolis, all the security staff were mounted on platforms or, in one case, a tennis umpire’s chair, so they could have a semi aerial view of the room and spot anyone who was making trouble and decide if the potential trouble-maker should leave, presumably with their help. You can watch, and I did, a security guy pretending he is a traffic policeman and waving his arms around. Later, I found out, this is how they communicate with each other. I was told there are probably around 30 different signs in use. It was great fun, as you may remember I don’t dance, trying to guess what all these signs meant and then looking for any follow-up actions. It’s a bit like the guy who stands at the front of the aeroplane just after he’s finished playing table tennis. I suppose it’s lucky Metropolis had a roof on; otherwise the Boeing 747 destined for Perth may have misinterpreted the signals.

Everyone who entered had to show their ID not, as I hoped, because they couldn’t believe I was old enough, but for a very different reason. Checking the ID meant that the club was able to stop those who, shall we say, had become a little unpopular, from entering. In this case it doesn’t matter how long you have waited in the queue, you will still be turned around and sent on your way. If you pretend, or genuinely don’t remember, why, no worries. Someone will be able to remind you, someone might even be able to show you.

I say this with confidence because we were lucky enough to have a long chat with Mario, one of the owners of the club. One of the things he told us is that there are over 60 cameras in the club. ‘All the customers think that this is to protect them, but it is also to protect us to a certain degree’, he said. ‘We employ all these security guys but to throw someone out of the club and use any physical force to do it can mean we end up in court, as some people might sue the club for assault. It’s much better to have proof that this sort of intervention was really needed’. He told us that they had done some research and all of the precautions, cameras and the big security team were because of about 1% of their customers.

The venue hosted around 1000 people each Friday and around 3000 on Saturdays and the entire crowd came, not because of famous DJ’s but because of the atmosphere and character plus really good music. We were given VIP member cards from Mario, as I think he was out to get the award for the oldest regular clubber in Freo. These cards not only allowed us to jump the queue, but also gave us free entry each plus 3 guests, free cloakroom usage and allowed us three private functions a year. We also got double points before 11 pm but I don’t remember for what. That’s the trouble with old age clubbers, can’t remember anything. When we left, that first night, the queue was now for taxis and was even longer than that to get in. Everybody leaves at the same time. So, at 2 am in the morning, we walked the 2 kilometres home. I may be old but I can still move, as long as it isn’t on a dance floor.

The ‘Salty and Delicious, beach thing was completely different. The dress code in Metropolis was quite strict. Here the crowd, though it was a special night, was much less concerned about their outfits and I fitted in so much better. Someone once said, when I worked in the City of London, that it looked as though I had just walked through my wardrobe and come out with whatever stuck to me. Even now, a friend of my daughter’s is constantly complaining that I do not iron my shirts. Wastes my time and anyway I have solved that one by lending my iron to my daughter when hers broke and never asking for it back. It’s been at least two years now. Hope she doesn’t read this. (Note: I now have the iron back and will soon learn how to use it, maybe)

I can assure you that when I turned up in the Cheapside office where I worked in the late sixties in an orange shirt, double breasted highwayman-collared suit with platform soles, no one dared suggest I had no fashion sense. No sense, possibly, but the word fashion was not there. I’m actually waiting for it all to come back. Shall I find a picture for you? I think I may. Watch this space. I used to lead the world in fashion. I’m a style setter; bit like a red-setter only scraggier.

I could also become a trend-setter in music, if only I could understand the difference between techno, house, funk and all this stuff. I have to say it all sounds a bit the same and I know that’s a stupid comment but I really do. Back in Poland, we had a friend who was learning to become a DJ and had all the technical stuff. He actually let me do some mixing, showing how to bring in one sound at the same tempo of the one already playing. It was quite fun but I still didn’t know what sound I was creating. And I had no idea whether it was danceable because of course I didn’t, and don’t, dance.

I never wanted to learn either but my first wife insisted on taking me to ballroom classes and it wasn’t going badly until the lady instructor told me my bomchookas were in the wrong place. It was during a samba lesson, I had sailed through the waltz, quick-step and cha cha, and she said the Samba went bomchooka bomchhooka bomchooka bom and my boomchookas were in the wrong place. She may be interested to know they still are and that is where they will stay.

To be honest I actually quite enjoyed all this clubbing. The best bits being when I was allowed to film it, as I could be a bit arty-farty with my camera-work. I often think I have lived my life backwards, not flying till I was over 50 and not being a regular clubber till even later. What next, you ask? Nappy rash, I guess. Actually, it’s a bit lucky I didn’t get that when we went on the rave because it was very basic as far as sanitary functions went. Dig a hole, we were told and dig a hole I did.

One more thing about the rave. The bush we were in had all these really weird trees and I wish I had the photos I took. However, I found a pic on the internet. The trees were called ‘black boys’ and some of the branches on the ones we saw would shoot off in all different directions. I think the name came because the settlers mistook them for the dark-skinned Aboriginals in traditional dress. They were really amazing.

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