Summer in the city ain't like summer in the city anywhere else. Even though Greater Perth is home to about a million-and-a-half Western Australians, they are so spread-out, kicked-back, greened-and-gardened that the thought of jammed-together metropolitan tension is something as foreign as, well, an American TV show stressing same.
Perth, sprawling and glistening beside the Indian Ocean, is so remote from the handful of other significant cities on this remote continent that most Australians have only heard of it, feeling vaguely that it's out there somewhere."Ah, their loss," says Paul McNamee, who, because of his businesses, maintains homes in both his native Melbourne and Perth. "You Yanks think our country is laid-back, and you're pretty much right," he says. "But Perth makes the rest of the country seem bloody frantic."
The Aussie motto, heard unceasingly - "No worries, mate!" - probably originated in Western Australia. This state, hardly populated beyond the Perth city limits, is so vast that if it seceded - almost did in 1933, feeling neglectedly removed from the east coast mainstream - it would be the world's ninth-largest country. Bigger than all of Europe.
But Perth does have a few downtown skyscrapers, TV (abysmally glutted with American reruns), occasional traffic snarls, an awful daily newspaper, some unemployment, crime, drugs and unscrupulous pols. It can't duck the world, though seeming unworldly in its abundant good nature and urban beauty. But why shouldn't people blessed with such an eye-warming setting and benign weather be pleasant and friendly?
"I think we know how lucky we are, especially people who come away," says Pat Barclay with a smile. ("Come away" is Aussie for traveling abroad.) "But maybe Perth isn't quite what it was when I was a girl. We lock our doors now."
Right. An urban terrorist is probably somebody who holds a neighbor's case of Swan lager hostage, or steals a golf ball from one of numerous fairways.
Water, water everywhere and innumerable places to drop your body, boat, skis, fishing line. Coursing curvaceously and inescapably through town on its way to Matilda Bay and the sea is the Swan River, complete with black swans, Perth's symbol, and enough recreational possibilities to suit anybody with an itch for wetness beyond a pub. In some stretches, the river is so broad that it accommodates regattas for good-sized sailboats, sometimes paced by dolphins.
"Even if this is outdoor jock heaven," says Voja Milasich, "it isn't a hick outpost. We keep seven theaters busy, have respectable art museums and a symphony orchestra, an opera and ballet season. Luciano Pavarotti has sung here."
King's Park, a huge public garden on the western heights, is a good place for scanning. Below, coiling around the heart of the city, the river is a blue necklace circling upreaching silvery fingers of concrete and glass and restored turn-of-the-century blocks of two-story brick buildings, painted in jolly pastels.
Sweet-scented by tall, upright lemon eucalyptus, the park is a split-personality layout. This river-viewing side is covered with brilliant floral displays that you'd expect in a planned botanic garden. But pioneer John Forrest, the planner, adhering to a formal English style in taming and transforming dense scrub 100 years ago, felt that the wilds, the bush, should be preserved for future generations of city folk. Thus he left as-was a substantial acreage, a thicket penetrated only by skimpy hiking paths.
Farther along is the cozily handsome Royal King's Park Tennis Club whose lawns, dating to 1898, have been trod by many of the greats such as Rod Laver, Arthur Ashe, Jack Kramer, Margaret Court, Doris Hart and Evonne Goolagong, straying off the beaten court. The elegant tile-roofed Victorian pavilions at the center court were witnesses to a US Davis Cup disaster in 1960. After running up a 2-0 lead in the semifinal against Italy, Americans Butch Buchholz and Barry MacKay managed to blow it on the third day, 3-2, losing, respectively, to Nicola Pietrangeli and Orlando Sirola, missing out on a chance to play Australia for the Cup.
Their smiling faces can be seen in a clubroom photo, obviously taken beforehand. But MacKay and Buchholz have gotten over the pout that gripped them here 36 years ago. They're smiling again, Barry as a TV tennis babbler, Butch as proprietor of one of the planet's foremost tournaments, the Lipton at Key Biscayne, Fla.
A tennis Eden, Perth is lushly speckled by more than 700 grass courts, undoubtedly more than any other city in the world can claim, or the entire United States. Peg McFarland, a grandmother and daily communicant at her neighborhood club in Nedlands, sighs and says, "It's heaven, all right. With grass, so kind to your body, and not hot underfoot, you can play forever. Because of our climate, we play all year round. It's hardy grass, and the sandy soil means we can play soon after rain, as on clay courts in your country."
She says that because of summer heat, seldom humid but sometimes over 100, "Perth is a morning and evening town for tennis and golf. But our outdoor air conditioning, a restorative seabreeze we call the Fremantle Doctor, comes to call every afternoon about 4."
Her friend, Myee Richmond, suggests nearby Cottesloe Beach (only one of many edging the city) for an ocean swim. "But it'll be crowded. The weekend, you know."
Mobbed. About 100 Sandgropers, as Western Australians are called by outsiders - and themselves, too - are arrayed here and there on the white beach, getting as deep-fried as the delicious potato chunks served with aioli at the North Cott Cafe on the cliff. Quickly past the fringe of youngsters in the shoreline waves, we find plenty of aqua-tinted water to ourselves.
Caressed by the sea, floating entranced, I drift back to a band of the '60s called Lovin' Spoonful and their hit, "Summer in the City." Perth is a lovin' spoonful of a city.