(This is my second time in Australia. Here are five pieces from my prior trip: First impressions of Sydney, Sydney the suburban paradise, Twenty-seven hours on the Aussie dog, Alice Springs, and Final thoughts on Australia.)
As our plane to Perth angled out of Sydney, its full magnificence — the harbor, cliffs, and beaches — spread diorama like beneath us, I mentioned to the elderly woman next to me, “You have such a beautiful country, so gifted” and she shrugged, “Too many people. We had a good time (in Sydney), but I’m glad to be going home.” I laughed, saying that’s opposite of what I’d found in Australia, which felt empty, to which she replied, “Wait until you get to Perth. We have the same beauty, but without the crowds.” When I told her I am a travel writer coming to Western Australia for the first time, she added, “Well, don’t write anything good about Perth. We don’t want any more people.”
In my week in Perth I’ve heard that same sentiment from everyone I’ve talked to — which is they don’t want me to tell you how fantastic Perth is — which it is (more on that below), but admittedly I only got that opinion from a few people, because Perth is empty. Very very empty. Not in a “they don’t have any people here” way, which they obviously do, but in a “they have a quarter of the people they could have and sometimes you will be walking and realize you haven’t seen a person or a car in fifteen minutes and you look around, struck with how you are all alone, and you begin to believe you’re in a stage setting of a city, where two thirds of the actors have been plucked out, removed to play some sort of trick on you” way.
It’s not that the city is destitute, ragged, or falling apart, rather it’s the opposite. It is immaculate, with extensive neighborhoods of ridiculously handsome homes with well manicured lawns, parks with well-groomed playgrounds, high streets of European cafes and top-notch Asian restaurants. The infrastructure is all there for a lot of people to live fulfilling lives. Fantastic first world infrastructure, which magnifies the solitude, because it feels off, and/or wrong. It feels as if it is your fault you are alone, since there must be fun being had that you simply don’t know about, or the emptiness is because of a recent catastrophe. Maybe a plague, or pandemic, or nuclear holocaust.
Right next to my apartment is a tidy pocket park, with playground, dog walk, bathroom, and a garden of plants that only could be found in Western Australia. It’s idyllic and as I passed it my first night I imagined spending my week sitting there, reading, watching kids play, making friends with the retirees, but since then I’ve never seen anyone in it other than solitary morning walkers anxiously scolding their dog for not defecating fast enough.
Over two million people live in Perth, so of course there’s plenty going on, with the peaks of action and density that every large city has — malls with shoppers, bars with celebrations, office buildings with workers, restaurants with diners. But here in Perth they are isolated, localized points of action, where everything falls off rapidly beyond their walls. You leave a shop, and within a block you are all alone. It is the Perth power law of people — excitement drops off as the inverse of the square of distance from the action.
It is unnerving, but it shouldn’t matter, not rationally, since you can still navigate between those fortresses of excitement, yet it has mattered to me, despite being used to being alone, and it has affected my week here, covering it with a thin blanket of ennui. Which is unfortunate, because Perth is a singular and remarkable city and contrary to what everyone has told me, I will loudly announce that more people could and should move here, since Perth has a lot going for it.
It is a fully functional major city, with good jobs, that because of that emptiness, is especially relaxing, without all the stress of modern city life, like finding a parking spot, or traffic, or fighting the crowds1.
It’s set in a physically singular location, with a gazillion miles of beaches, and flora and fauna that’s head turning, and frankly absurd. Walking from downtown to the beach, my ten mile daily walk, passes through suburban neighborhoods festooned with monumental trees (Norfolk Island Pines, Tuart and Jarrah Eucalyptus) that tower over everything, or are perfumed (Peppermint), or that bloom only once in decades (Agave americana).
Each lawn — lush, well maintained, and highly curated — even those of the most humble houses, could be featured in Homes and Gardens. Add to that the swarms of enormous, raucous, birds, nesting in those trees, whose collective human like wails make the crepuscular hours sound like you’re adjacent to a nursery under assault, and you have a magical, majestic, and chimerical setting that is something straight out of Dr Seuss.
Yet the citizens who live here are anything but dreamers. Perth is the most grounded, most practical of Australia’s major cities because Perth is adjacent to what keeps Australia wealthy — mines of coveted rocks, and deposits of combustible gases.
It’s appropriate that I came here directly from the US Midwest, after writing a piece extolling its virtues, especially how the citizens have jobs that tether them to reality. How building tangible things (manufacturing), means they can only get so many fancy (and absurd) notions about themselves, and their place in the world. If you have one foot firmly on the earth, then you are more likely to be, well, grounded.
Perth is that for Australia, because Australia gets almost all its money from digging up those rocks and capturing those gasses and selling them to China and the rest of Asia. Almost all of which is done in the desolate stretches of Western Australia, with Perth as the lifeline to all of that.