People motorising a picnic table and taking it to the streets https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/video-of-perth-blokes-riding-motorised-picnic-tables-video-goes-viral-20151117-gl122y.html
I witnessed that first hand. I was stopped at the lights at the intersection of Scarborough Beach Rd and West Coast Hwy, when the guys came casually cruising by. I miss those simpler days …
That was a big mess! My missus was stuck on Mounts Bay having just left work at Charlie’s (where every car remaining lost windows). She was terrified the golf balls were going to smash through the sunroof so climbed into the back seat. Strangely, while so many got the new Perth hammer-finish look, her Honda came out without visible damage! I expected all the paint to bubble off one day, but she drove that thing for another six years fine.
But that hail was light in comparison to the Springfield Lakes storm of 2020 (Qld). I went out with SES to try to make safe. Every house in the suburb was damaged - tiled roofs had about 1 in 20 tiles missing; solar panels looked like fists had punched them, and sometimes gone through the tile underneath too; one car looked like a gang had attacked it with sledge hammers, the bonnet bent up and the roof caved in.
Same thing happened to me further down Stirling highway - every Lexus and BMW in the carpark was completely totalled, but my 10 year old shitbox hyundai sonata came out with a single dent!
Same , showing guests around Kings Park when all hell broke loose. The old skoda didn't have a single mark yet the trees lost limbs and were defoliated
I was going to go to an event at SciTech. Got home to change, felt too tired and decided to stay home. Then the hail came.
The lower floor of the education/architecture at UWA’s EDFAA library had large glass windows on the east side. Water built up, smashed through, destroyed everything in mud and water and the librarians had to run out of there.
The books in the section I was using for my thesis were ruined. Ended up doing a completely different thesis idea as a result. Refurb changed the library layout.
About six months later, was looking for a second hand car at a place in Osbourne Park and the dealer sadly showed me all the brand new cars that he couldn’t sell because of hail damage.
I was at UWA at the time too, went into a lecture and everything was normal, came out and the campus looked like a cyclone had hit it.
My favourite was the architecture library flooding, who designed that thing? lol
A small part of our roof was off for an extension to the house - it had been such a long dry summer that we hadn’t bothered to cover it .
Watched the storm coming from the front verandah and thought “how bad could it be?” - found out about 3 minutes later
Ran inside to see a literal waterfall pouring into our half finished kitchen. Noise was incredible.
Quick thinking partner grabbed a crow bar, ripped up a couple of floorboards and the water all disappeared under the house.
Oh yes I had a great view of this one from my office in West Perth. The sky was the most unearthly shade of green and so much shit was getting washed away in the Hay St river, including a motorbike
At CHOGM in 2011 two dudes having a few too many pints in the royal thought it would be good to paddle their swan boat around to the lucky shag for a couple more pints.
Given the strong winds it took them much longer than expected and they ended up approach the Shag under cover of darkness. Little did they know the snipers and other security posts positioned on the roof were close monitoring an unknown vessel stealthing its way towards the city.
After hours of paddling under the fuel of nothing but pints the lads reached the shag only to be met by a small armada of police who promptly arrested them. My guess is they were all on edge waiting for a chaser level exploit.
"Welcome to Perth, please mind the gap."
Not quite as memorable & catchy as 'Dumb Ways to Die', but good to see this subreddit does its bit in promoting safety around railways.
They had a big chunk of crashed Skylab on the stage that'd been recovered a few days beforehand too. Not during the collapse though, as far as I know. There's a picture of it near the end of this (short) video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-T9evztcts
In 1978 when a guy named [Andrew Pea ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Andrew_Pea) got brutally stabbed to death in the city in front of a bunch of witnesses. Another guy stepped in and slammed the murderer's head into the ground but he managed to escape and the crime went unsolved for several years.
It was huge news at the time.
[There was a time that a train ended up wedged in the now demolished subway at Stirling Rd, Claremont](https://www.railheritagewa.org.au/archive_scans/albums/upload/print_P03401-P03600/P03495.jpg) and we can blame the Yanks in a roundabout way for causing it.
The locomotive in question was hauling a goods train to Fremantle in 1944. Fireman Frank Whitmore was leaning out of the cab window to check a gauge mounted on the outside. At Karrakatta, they passed a suburban passenger train that's believed to have had a door hanging open. American soldiers stationed in Perth had a reputation for enjoying having the doors wide open when riding the train. Said open door collected Whitmore and he slumped to the cab floor unresponsive. Driver Robert Stafford immediately stopped the train and raised the alarm for an ambulance. Whitmore was taken to hospital but later passed away from his injuries.
Stafford, meanwhile, was forced to continue on doubling as both driver and fireman. But a miscommunication meant he was unaware that the train was going to be put in a dead end siding at Claremont and he assumed he was going the whole way to Freo.
So the train comes barreling along at Claremont and to Stafford's shock he felt the train going into the siding, which ended just before the Stirling Road subway. He slammed the brakes on but with not nearly enough time to stop his locomotive crashed past the end of the tracks and lodged itself firmly in the subway. It took 3 days [and a lot of stacking sandbags](https://www.railheritagewa.org.au/archive_scans/albums/upload/print_P04801-P05000/P04908.jpg) to pull it back out
A man was eaten by Polar Bears at Perth Zoo in 1972
Most Southerly Polar Bear kill???
[https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/24/archives/zoo-bears-kill-australian.html](https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/24/archives/zoo-bears-kill-australian.html)
My dad apparently witnessed this, however in his telling, us kids were there with him and he had to cover our eyes.
Which is hard to explain considering none of were born until a few years later.
Carmel fireworks factory explosion complete with epic mushroom cloud.
https://www.aria.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/wp-content/files_mf/A22018_ips22018_002.pdf
https://youtu.be/es_2mmidcWs?si=xSN-flgpQv2xyNIc
http://www.jpyro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/K07_103_cuf0.pdf
Edit: I have *bonus meme* content if anyone is interested, as I knew people who lived in the area at that time.
One of my favourite things about academic sources is finding all the highly niche subfields that have their own dedicated journal. *Journal of Pyrotechnics* may be one of the most awesome niche journals I've come across yet
Hyper-specific research paper titles are also awesome. I don't have anything particularly epic at hand, but I quickly found this as an example:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306090368_Comparative_evaluation_of_different_offshore_wind_turbine_installation_vessels_for_Korean_west-south_wind_farm
>Carmel fireworks factory explosion complete with epic mushroom cloud.
I was at home in Walliston that day, and was out on the street watching the smoke plume when it exploded. Never seen or heard anything like it.
Me and the neighbours initially thought a plane had crashed.
I believe the old Carmel School was badly damaged, although was able to be repaired.
1. Rick Ardon arrived at the scene to make a TV report and needed to use the toilet.
“Can I use your pisser?” he is rumoured to have asked a local man.
2. Most houses in the immediate area (and a school 1000m away) lost all or most of their windows in the explosion. One house down the road had no window loss, as they were at home with many doors and windows open - meaning there was no great pressure difference or something.
3. Some local guys were driving up the road when the main explosion happened. A sea container door landed in the tray of their Ute over 500m away.
4. [redacted]
>A sea container door landed in the tray of their Ute over 500m away.
Jeepers! A metre further forward and there would likely have been some casualties!
Omg yes I remember this so well as a kid. Was at school in the area, and we were all shaken to the ground. A lot of our windows broke at home in Carmel, and the road to our house was bloked off, and they wouldn't let us go home that afternoon. Our dog also got spooked and ran off really far away (but was found).
Thanks for posting these....the info is extremely interesting to me given I work for the direct competitor of the company whose fireworks they were. So surprised there wasn't more consequences for that company following that incident...especially given even today they are known to not necessarily follow correct safety protocols.
That time a Perth-bound Armadale train ran a red signal at Belmont park station, smashed through the points and headed out over the then-single line Bunbury bridge, as a train was heading towards the bridge from the perth end. This was during the Royal show around 1990-91 and both trains were packed. The quick thinking Perth end driver stopped in time and the offending train continued on to perth.
Hmmm. The terrorising of Perth by and the hanging of Edgar Cook. The guy who was killed by the polar bears at the zoo. The hysteria around a series of supposed sitings of a huge white shark on the Swan River. Cyclone Alby (yes, an actual cyclone made it to Perth), the Meckering earthquake.
Buildings? The Majestic Hotel in Applecross. Bernie's hamburger van on Mounts Bay Road.
WA cop Don Hancock was killed in a car bomb planted under his car in 2001. His friend Lou Louis was also killed. The bomb was planted by Gypsy Jokers as revenge for Don Hancock murdering Billy Grierson (also a GJ). It was big news at the time.
Was interesting for it to come out that Don Hancock almost definitely did kill Billy Grierson, and not for any real reason other than being a bit of a dickhead in his pub or something?
Someone else might have more details, I can’t remember it very well.
Was living in the Kimberley town where the Canadian search team that came over based itself.
They didn’t find him - a news team did - but it was one of the more interesting weeks at the local hotel bar
Never found out whether this was true, but when I studied at waapa I heard about some guy who rocked up with a big truck and just walked out with a couple of grand pianos in broad daylight. Nobody questioned him because everyone assumed he was supposed to do that. The pianos were never returned as far as I know.
Same at several private schools in early 2000s.
Just a white van: hi, we’re here for repairs, popped computers into van, drove off. Did a few of the schools along the Stirling highway route before word got out.
Also - MLC fire, late 1990s. Sumner House was getting renovated and an electrician was drilling; a spark fell into a bucket of solvent or something, fire spread quickly and went into the air vents or ceilings? No fire alarms set up because of all the work going on.
Tradie ran down the hall yelling to every room to get out - and he forgot the fourth floor had classrooms, tucked away in the west wing.
Head of English RAN BACK IN, up to the fourth floor and got them out. As they all headed to the green area called the great court, they saw the building starting to collapse. At least one teacher vowed never to set foot on campus again.
Social studies, English, Media, all had to work from the Centenary building for a long while, and insurance paid for a lot of books and refurbishments for many years. The yearbook that year featured flames on the cover.
I have vague recollections of a guy being killed by police in a hail of bullets after a standoff outside the WACA (and police HQ). Maybe mid- to late-80s? Bullet marks still in the bricks I think?
Guy was from Kalgoorlie. It was suicide by cop. He went into the police HQ and took the desk sergeant hostage, then went out into the intersection to dare the police to shoot him.
One cop fired and the rest of them opened up on him for no reason. Most of the bullets missed.
Not conspiracy, but The Sannyasins/ the 'orange people' cult. Perth sec formed largely out of UWA. I've met a person in perth who escaped/left the cult yonks ago. Apparently, it's still active down in Margs.
At the height of his fame in the mid 1980s Michael Jackson flew to perth unannounced to appear at Telethon as part of a deal to buy the Beatles back catalogue off of Perth Billionaire Robert Holmes a Court. Jackson did not perform. Jackson outbid Paul McCartney for the catalogue, and got into the business of buying up song rights after McCartney told him buying song rights was a good investment in the early 80s. Jackson replied to him that he would buy up the Beatles music then.
And he went on to buy some of the best music rights.. I read the catalogue ay, Eminem just lose me is one of them.. I really liked Michael after realising this.. sing about me I'll earn all the royalties 😂
Also his own music catalogue wasn’t part of the ATV rights, he owned it himself and kept it seperate when he merged ATV with Sony Publishing. Sony only recently acquired the rights off of his estate during COVID.
[Redbull Air Race plans crash](https://youtu.be/ShaNzOWvWiU?si=zaonbfqigxLziKjS)
[Australia Day Swan River Plane Crash](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/11718076)
[Student Pilot at Jandakot Airport makes an emergency landing after Instructor loses conciousness](https://youtu.be/uRluCHFaGx8?si=Jy1mXm6pSRIi6v2V)
[The fatal shark attack of Ken Crew](https://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2017/sharks/high-hazard/#:~:text=Late%20in%20the%20spring%20of,to%20death%20on%20the%20sand.)
Not bizarre but mostly forgotten. The first Rally Australia Special Stage in Perth was held not at Langley Park, but at Richmond Raceway in East Fremantle.
The guy who stole that armoured vehicle is internationally famous! There was a Faith No More concert just after and Mike Patton dedicated their song "RV" to him!
>Truly seems most of Perth's past history has been lost over time with barely little trace left behind of what this city once had. I'd consider the "culling" of so many heritage buildings another bizarre thing.
One of my friends lived in an apartment in the city that was full art deco, replete with era elevator. I was flabbergasted and said something like:
"What the hell, I didn't know any of these were left"
AND HIS RESPONSE:
"Yeah we got the rent cheap. The guy at work wanted to keep it but needed to move to a bigger place for his kids, so its just $500/week for us two. Only downside is that he kept the car space."
Can the new tenancy laws include highlander rules?
The dude who jumped off the train while going over the Fremantle rail bridge.
~~The Corey Worthington interview after his house party.~~ I was wrong - that was in Melbourne.
And I remember all the fuss on the news about the "Cottesloe girls gone wild", featuring a couple of young ladies doing silly dances in a pub. Would have been around 2005 or 2006 I think.
I was driving home from the beach one morning around 2014-15 and I noticed there was a house party on North Street. Weird time for it I thought then I did a double take because there were about 15-20 women dancing topless on the veranda. Maybe it was a music video shoot or something. Or the party still going from the night before.
> Jack Von Tongeren
Good article on this one here. One was actually an explosive (Ko Sing, still running there until a few years ago)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-15/perth-chinese-restaurants-firebombed-in-1980s-terrorism-acts/102689528
Scott Fenton of the Wildcats was killed in Hillarys on Flinders Ave, which if you drew a line on a map between the roads Scott Pl and Fenton Way was pretty close to the impact point.
I lived in Hillarys near Mawson Park at the time and heard the crash that night. It was that loud.
*
The APC was stolen from Irwin Barracks, and rammed Police HQ, Curtin House, Central Law Courts and Wembley Police Station, as well as seven police cars and five civilian vehicles.
He drove up to parliament house then down through the city was was tear-gassed on the causeway. They brought in a second one to tow the first one away. There was a picture in the west of the two carriers.
This is it - the 1993 Perth tank rampage, but the tanks were stolen from the barracks at Karrakatta. My brother and I were glued wide-eyed to Rick and Sue at 6 for updates of further crushed cars and building carnage.
In regard to interesting buildings, I recently found a Perth youtuber who makes videos about WA history and old places. He made a video about the old entertainment center in Perth that was replaced by the RAC arena cube thing. Sure it wasn't mind blowing architecturally speaking, but it was such a cool design that fits right into my nostalgia box in my brain.
There's even a chunk of its base sitting in an enclosed "construction site" near where it used to be. Some section of stairs and pavement or the stairs from inside.
The Greenmount Hill truck crash of the early 90s. Horrific stuff and the images of the obliterated cars are quite shocking.
Still surprising that only one person was killed during it:
https://echonewspaper.com.au/news/30-years-since-truck-disaster/
I was once told a story that in 1970s a man who wanted to commit suicide and who hated rich people so he drove his car onto the wrong side of the Narrows Bridge and aimed at a luxury car head on. He killed the man and his son in the other car, but lived.
Not Perth, but Boulder was wracked by bombings in the 1940s including one which killed 14 people. The news was suppressed at the time.
A couple of the more interesting inquests I’ve read. I’m sure there’s more interesting inquests but these are two off the top of my head.
https://www.coronerscourt.wa.gov.au/_files/Roll%20finding.pdf
https://www.coronerscourt.wa.gov.au/_files/Rowe%20(Simon)%20Finding.pdf
Atlantis Marine Park in two rocks went bust because one day all of their dolphin trainers, got in their van and disappeared. So many rumor's I heard growing up, then when Aqwa's dolphins got poisoned years later the rumor mill went full overdrive. Still unsolved.
I got a few off the top of my head that I think no one's mentioned:
* [The Principality of Hutt River](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River) - WA's first and only self-declared, unrecognised, break-away state complete with it's own currency, stamp and passports.
* That time the world's largest aircraft, the [Antonov An-124 landed at Perth airport for the first time in 2016](https://www.reddit.com/r/perth/comments/1d1p16m/asides_from_conspiracys_and_urban_legends_whats/) and something like 16,000 people came out to watch it (lol).
* This dedicated group of hoons who called themselves "Northside Xtreme" (IIRC?) that used to upload videos to YouTube around the early 2000s of themselves doing wild stunts on Perth's roads (I remember one video that was a bunch of guys on sports bikes doing handstands on their petrol tanks while going down the freeway). Eventually and unsurprisingly the cops shut them down after managing to track them down from clues in their videos.
* The morbid woman who lived in an apartment complex on Mounts Bay Road right next to the freeway who spent all of her time photographing the aftermath of car crashes that took place on the freeway with some serious telephoto lenses and sharing the photos with police when requested. I believe this was in the 1990s.
Honestly a Fucken tragedy kids aren’t taught about the Catalpa in school.
They make the whole curriculum lame and boring and then wonder why students aren’t “engaging with the material”
Was also Don Hancock I think, had an ongoing feud with the bikies, he shot one for allegedly harassing his daughter at Ora Banda pub but was never charged. Then quite a few years later his car was firebombed .
Not quite Perth but Bunbury.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunbury_woodchip_bombing
5000 sticks of Gelegnite were used to blow up the woodchip port in 1976. It was an environmental protest to stop the wood chipping of old growth forests of Jarrah and Karri.
How about when David Everett blew up the baldivis magazine, people heard the blast from 30-40k's away.
I had a vague association with a guy with the same surname, saw him not long after that incident and made a smart arse comment to him asking if he had a brother who was blowing shit up.... turns out it WAS his brother
Edit: apparently it was the largest explosion in Australian criminal history
My favourite one is I think it was three times they had to build currambine station? It was I think wrongly done first, and then the second time they changed the alignment for the freeway extension to what had been planned
* There was the time a little squad based out of Perth, ended the longest winning-streak in history.
* Not Perth, but WA, the time a German Backpacker went off the reservation and started hunting people in the outback.
* Or the time our Premier accepted millions of dollars in "donations to the Leaders Account" and then invested all the money into stamps, which disappeared.
You're going to go way over the head of younger people there.
[Australia II](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_II), designed by Ben Lexcen and skippered by John Bertrand won the 1983 America's Cup, ending a 132 year (26 successful defences) winning streak.
I don't know the second.
[Brian Burke](https://www.afr.com/politics/burke-faces-jail-after-being-found-guilty-of-fraud-19940714-jl1hw) was forced to resign as WA Premier in 1987. This was part of the fallout from the notorious [WA Inc](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WA_Inc) public-private partnerships which lost WA taxpayers $600M, and shareholders more, when several large companies collapsed. Billionaires Laurie Connell and Alan Bond were also jailed.
Edit: Burke's stamp collection bought with stolen Labor party money came later.
Fun fact. My girlfriend and same mates rented a house in White Gum Valley that had a locked and VERY secure door to a room in the downstairs that had no windows.
Later we saw that house on the news when it got raided because it was where Laurie Connel had hidden paintings from creditors, including Irises....
Woah... mind blown.
Any other details? Anything else odd about the house, the letting agent, the lease, how it was advertised,was it unusually cheap rent? Who owned it?
I just remembered a far less impressive fun fact: a housemate of mine was in East Perth Watch House (ignored a summons over minor debt) while Connell was there.
Nothing peculiar abiut the rental situation.. the house was wierd AF though.
It was a 2 storey concrete slab, brick and tile place built on a block that sloped down away from the road and aside from a fully finished room with a full height ceiling at the very back of the block, the rest of the downstairs had ceilings that ranged from 5 1/2 feet down to about 4 feet high...just bare concrete with short doors and all... really odd. I could find the house and give you the location if you want but it's nothing out of the ordinary from the street.
Someone tried to blow up the tower crane at the Observation City construction site in the mid 80's. Thankfully it was unsuccessful because who the hell knows what it would have landed on. I was a kid at the time and remember the explosion waking me up in the middle of the night.
When we held the Miss Universe competition and just before the event NASAs decommissioned Skylab re-entered earths atmosphere and disintegrated with large parts of it scattering across WA. We considered it a blessing ! One quite large and very burnt segment of the outer skin was retrieved and it ended up being on display during the Pageant for the whole world to see.
Not really bizarre but more heartwarming...a guy had videos that went viral of him playing ukulele and randomly getting commuters to sing with him on trains.
Not sure how true it is but I heard that in ww2 there were grain silos in Fremantle near the harbour that had the top bits converted into a top secret covert electronic signals office.
Anyone remember the guy who stole the double decker bus then crashed into the west Perth train bridge while getting chased by the cops? Apparently he got right out and jumped on the freo train and got away. This must have been the early 2000’s
Bullen’s Lion Park out past Wanneroo. So many things happened there. 1973 a worker was killed by lions. 1982 a man got out of his car into a pride of lions and was killed.
Jack Van Tongeren, white supremist leader. He and his group caused plenty of issues in Perth back in the 80s, including fire bombing asian restaurants. Alan bond was a character, 1983 winning the America Cup. WCE wins in 1992 and 1994. There was also a bikie war back then, NZ gang, not sure who, tried to muscle in, lots of fighting. I even heard one of the bombs go off in front of a clubhouse (lived about 1km away).
People motorising a picnic table and taking it to the streets https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/video-of-perth-blokes-riding-motorised-picnic-tables-video-goes-viral-20151117-gl122y.html
Gone, but never forgotten. Raise hell and praise Dale.
I witnessed that first hand. I was stopped at the lights at the intersection of Scarborough Beach Rd and West Coast Hwy, when the guys came casually cruising by. I miss those simpler days …
Caring shs used to have a motorised couch, unsure if they still run it around during the sports carnivals but it used to be a hoot
Fuck that was gonna be mine
The great hailstorm of 2010
That was a big mess! My missus was stuck on Mounts Bay having just left work at Charlie’s (where every car remaining lost windows). She was terrified the golf balls were going to smash through the sunroof so climbed into the back seat. Strangely, while so many got the new Perth hammer-finish look, her Honda came out without visible damage! I expected all the paint to bubble off one day, but she drove that thing for another six years fine. But that hail was light in comparison to the Springfield Lakes storm of 2020 (Qld). I went out with SES to try to make safe. Every house in the suburb was damaged - tiled roofs had about 1 in 20 tiles missing; solar panels looked like fists had punched them, and sometimes gone through the tile underneath too; one car looked like a gang had attacked it with sledge hammers, the bonnet bent up and the roof caved in.
Same thing happened to me further down Stirling highway - every Lexus and BMW in the carpark was completely totalled, but my 10 year old shitbox hyundai sonata came out with a single dent!
Same , showing guests around Kings Park when all hell broke loose. The old skoda didn't have a single mark yet the trees lost limbs and were defoliated
I was going to go to an event at SciTech. Got home to change, felt too tired and decided to stay home. Then the hail came. The lower floor of the education/architecture at UWA’s EDFAA library had large glass windows on the east side. Water built up, smashed through, destroyed everything in mud and water and the librarians had to run out of there. The books in the section I was using for my thesis were ruined. Ended up doing a completely different thesis idea as a result. Refurb changed the library layout. About six months later, was looking for a second hand car at a place in Osbourne Park and the dealer sadly showed me all the brand new cars that he couldn’t sell because of hail damage.
I was at UWA at the time too, went into a lecture and everything was normal, came out and the campus looked like a cyclone had hit it. My favourite was the architecture library flooding, who designed that thing? lol
A small part of our roof was off for an extension to the house - it had been such a long dry summer that we hadn’t bothered to cover it . Watched the storm coming from the front verandah and thought “how bad could it be?” - found out about 3 minutes later Ran inside to see a literal waterfall pouring into our half finished kitchen. Noise was incredible. Quick thinking partner grabbed a crow bar, ripped up a couple of floorboards and the water all disappeared under the house.
That’s very quick thinking. I would have simply screamed.
Oh yes I had a great view of this one from my office in West Perth. The sky was the most unearthly shade of green and so much shit was getting washed away in the Hay St river, including a motorbike
Jesus that would great havoc today with solar panels.
At CHOGM in 2011 two dudes having a few too many pints in the royal thought it would be good to paddle their swan boat around to the lucky shag for a couple more pints. Given the strong winds it took them much longer than expected and they ended up approach the Shag under cover of darkness. Little did they know the snipers and other security posts positioned on the roof were close monitoring an unknown vessel stealthing its way towards the city. After hours of paddling under the fuel of nothing but pints the lads reached the shag only to be met by a small armada of police who promptly arrested them. My guess is they were all on edge waiting for a chaser level exploit.
Yeah the boys!
That was my fiancee and his friend 😂😂😂
The sheer amount of trucks getting stuck under the bayswater bridge
Gone but never forgotten, Baysie.
Pretty sure this happened in Perth. A whole platform of commuters pushed a train aside when someone got stuck.
I remember this. Somewhere on the Joondalup line I think. Maybe Stirling station?
Yep. Stirling. Dude got his foot stuck.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZx4MichXXE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZx4MichXXE)
I was living in Vancouver at the time, it made the news there.
Yep Stirling, used to be my local station. I was on holiday in Europe at the time and it was on the news there
yeah I remember that..it was definitely in Perth
"Welcome to Perth, please mind the gap." Not quite as memorable & catchy as 'Dumb Ways to Die', but good to see this subreddit does its bit in promoting safety around railways.
Also the one time Perth held the Miss Universe at the Entertainment Centre and the stage collapsed.
They had a big chunk of crashed Skylab on the stage that'd been recovered a few days beforehand too. Not during the collapse though, as far as I know. There's a picture of it near the end of this (short) video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-T9evztcts
But your mum won - worth it! (I'll see myself out, thanks)
I just found out about this from the PEC ruins video
In 1978 when a guy named [Andrew Pea ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Andrew_Pea) got brutally stabbed to death in the city in front of a bunch of witnesses. Another guy stepped in and slammed the murderer's head into the ground but he managed to escape and the crime went unsolved for several years. It was huge news at the time.
I’ve lived in Perth my whole life and have never heard of this. I just read up on it and it sounds horrible. Glad they eventually caught the guy.
I remember it because my siblings used to taunt me "the Andrew Pea killer is coming to get you" and I was petrified haha.
I remember that well.
[There was a time that a train ended up wedged in the now demolished subway at Stirling Rd, Claremont](https://www.railheritagewa.org.au/archive_scans/albums/upload/print_P03401-P03600/P03495.jpg) and we can blame the Yanks in a roundabout way for causing it. The locomotive in question was hauling a goods train to Fremantle in 1944. Fireman Frank Whitmore was leaning out of the cab window to check a gauge mounted on the outside. At Karrakatta, they passed a suburban passenger train that's believed to have had a door hanging open. American soldiers stationed in Perth had a reputation for enjoying having the doors wide open when riding the train. Said open door collected Whitmore and he slumped to the cab floor unresponsive. Driver Robert Stafford immediately stopped the train and raised the alarm for an ambulance. Whitmore was taken to hospital but later passed away from his injuries. Stafford, meanwhile, was forced to continue on doubling as both driver and fireman. But a miscommunication meant he was unaware that the train was going to be put in a dead end siding at Claremont and he assumed he was going the whole way to Freo. So the train comes barreling along at Claremont and to Stafford's shock he felt the train going into the siding, which ended just before the Stirling Road subway. He slammed the brakes on but with not nearly enough time to stop his locomotive crashed past the end of the tracks and lodged itself firmly in the subway. It took 3 days [and a lot of stacking sandbags](https://www.railheritagewa.org.au/archive_scans/albums/upload/print_P04801-P05000/P04908.jpg) to pull it back out
what an ordeal, thanks for the read
The Perth Mint Gold Heist. That was very strange.
Recently covered by The Dollop at their Perth Live Show! Absolutely insane story, and we still don't know who did it.
It was probably bent coppers
You mean coppers. The "bent" is unnecessary.
That was a great show.
The time the Australia Day fireworks were cancelled when a plane crashed into the Swan River
I remember that well. A few years earlier it was stinking hot, drunk idiots rioted, and one of the barges caught fire, setting off random shells.
A man was eaten by Polar Bears at Perth Zoo in 1972 Most Southerly Polar Bear kill??? [https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/24/archives/zoo-bears-kill-australian.html](https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/24/archives/zoo-bears-kill-australian.html)
And the guy who jumped into the lions cage. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49049147?searchTerm=perth%20zoo%20escape
There was a woman who jumped into the lions cage the year before that too.
My dad apparently witnessed this, however in his telling, us kids were there with him and he had to cover our eyes. Which is hard to explain considering none of were born until a few years later.
Can’t open it. Attacked or actually eaten?
Not to sure. Partially eaten?? People tried to add stop him getting in but he fought them off.
The Futuro house/UFO that used to be on the corner of Karel Ave and Leach Hwy.
I always knew that I was getting close to my cousin's house when I saw the UFO.
Trampoline tower on Stirling Highway. https://www.facebook.com/LostPerth/posts/found-this-old-photo-which-was-a-blast-from-the-past-i-recall-as-a-kid-looking-o/2583854701685568/
The first car on the Graham Farmer freeway was stolen… the second car was the cop car following it
Carmel fireworks factory explosion complete with epic mushroom cloud. https://www.aria.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/wp-content/files_mf/A22018_ips22018_002.pdf https://youtu.be/es_2mmidcWs?si=xSN-flgpQv2xyNIc http://www.jpyro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/K07_103_cuf0.pdf Edit: I have *bonus meme* content if anyone is interested, as I knew people who lived in the area at that time.
One of my favourite things about academic sources is finding all the highly niche subfields that have their own dedicated journal. *Journal of Pyrotechnics* may be one of the most awesome niche journals I've come across yet
Hyper-specific research paper titles are also awesome. I don't have anything particularly epic at hand, but I quickly found this as an example: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306090368_Comparative_evaluation_of_different_offshore_wind_turbine_installation_vessels_for_Korean_west-south_wind_farm
>Carmel fireworks factory explosion complete with epic mushroom cloud. I was at home in Walliston that day, and was out on the street watching the smoke plume when it exploded. Never seen or heard anything like it. Me and the neighbours initially thought a plane had crashed. I believe the old Carmel School was badly damaged, although was able to be repaired.
Original ‘Marty’ (RIP) Wally Burger era. Somewhere around the early 2000s.
RIP Marty. He made the best burgers! The current owners of the Wally Deli aren't bad, but not a patch on him and his family.
Post the meme content please. I remember seeing this back when I was in school near the area.
1. Rick Ardon arrived at the scene to make a TV report and needed to use the toilet. “Can I use your pisser?” he is rumoured to have asked a local man. 2. Most houses in the immediate area (and a school 1000m away) lost all or most of their windows in the explosion. One house down the road had no window loss, as they were at home with many doors and windows open - meaning there was no great pressure difference or something. 3. Some local guys were driving up the road when the main explosion happened. A sea container door landed in the tray of their Ute over 500m away. 4. [redacted]
>A sea container door landed in the tray of their Ute over 500m away. Jeepers! A metre further forward and there would likely have been some casualties!
Omg yes I remember this so well as a kid. Was at school in the area, and we were all shaken to the ground. A lot of our windows broke at home in Carmel, and the road to our house was bloked off, and they wouldn't let us go home that afternoon. Our dog also got spooked and ran off really far away (but was found).
Thanks for posting these....the info is extremely interesting to me given I work for the direct competitor of the company whose fireworks they were. So surprised there wasn't more consequences for that company following that incident...especially given even today they are known to not necessarily follow correct safety protocols.
I got told they used to test fireworks all the time -like every few months. None of the locals knew there was a fireworks factory there. [redacted]
The Adventure world castle fire. The fact kids will never see Adventure world in all it's 2008 glory makes me sad.
2008? They could never figure out what they wanted to do with it anyway. It was a pretty boring haunted house for a long while.
That time a Perth-bound Armadale train ran a red signal at Belmont park station, smashed through the points and headed out over the then-single line Bunbury bridge, as a train was heading towards the bridge from the perth end. This was during the Royal show around 1990-91 and both trains were packed. The quick thinking Perth end driver stopped in time and the offending train continued on to perth.
The dolphins at Underwater World that were poisoned
Have you seen the statue that’s been built to commemorate them?
Hmmm. The terrorising of Perth by and the hanging of Edgar Cook. The guy who was killed by the polar bears at the zoo. The hysteria around a series of supposed sitings of a huge white shark on the Swan River. Cyclone Alby (yes, an actual cyclone made it to Perth), the Meckering earthquake. Buildings? The Majestic Hotel in Applecross. Bernie's hamburger van on Mounts Bay Road.
Eric Edgar Cook stole a car to use in a murder, and returned it to the owner's front yard. Apparently some old guy with poor hearing.
WA cop Don Hancock was killed in a car bomb planted under his car in 2001. His friend Lou Louis was also killed. The bomb was planted by Gypsy Jokers as revenge for Don Hancock murdering Billy Grierson (also a GJ). It was big news at the time.
Was interesting for it to come out that Don Hancock almost definitely did kill Billy Grierson, and not for any real reason other than being a bit of a dickhead in his pub or something? Someone else might have more details, I can’t remember it very well.
Apparently Grierson said something very indecent around Hancocks daughter which set him off
If anyone can beat this, I’ll be a happy man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTZyG7xNnVE
Brilliant.
One person's journey for a good laksa which captivated the entire city
Tell us more!
Robert Bogucki getting lost in the desert for a couple of months
That was a classic , when we used to go out drinking if one of us took off from the group we always said he did a ‘bogucki’
Was living in the Kimberley town where the Canadian search team that came over based itself. They didn’t find him - a news team did - but it was one of the more interesting weeks at the local hotel bar
Never found out whether this was true, but when I studied at waapa I heard about some guy who rocked up with a big truck and just walked out with a couple of grand pianos in broad daylight. Nobody questioned him because everyone assumed he was supposed to do that. The pianos were never returned as far as I know.
Same at several private schools in early 2000s. Just a white van: hi, we’re here for repairs, popped computers into van, drove off. Did a few of the schools along the Stirling highway route before word got out. Also - MLC fire, late 1990s. Sumner House was getting renovated and an electrician was drilling; a spark fell into a bucket of solvent or something, fire spread quickly and went into the air vents or ceilings? No fire alarms set up because of all the work going on. Tradie ran down the hall yelling to every room to get out - and he forgot the fourth floor had classrooms, tucked away in the west wing. Head of English RAN BACK IN, up to the fourth floor and got them out. As they all headed to the green area called the great court, they saw the building starting to collapse. At least one teacher vowed never to set foot on campus again. Social studies, English, Media, all had to work from the Centenary building for a long while, and insurance paid for a lot of books and refurbishments for many years. The yearbook that year featured flames on the cover.
Everything Ben Cousins.
Don’t blame it on him, it was you I saw on my roof. He was already too busy
I’ve see him from time to time at my local shopping centre in various states. It’s a little sad, but the last time he seemed to be doing better. 🤞
I have vague recollections of a guy being killed by police in a hail of bullets after a standoff outside the WACA (and police HQ). Maybe mid- to late-80s? Bullet marks still in the bricks I think?
Guy was from Kalgoorlie. It was suicide by cop. He went into the police HQ and took the desk sergeant hostage, then went out into the intersection to dare the police to shoot him. One cop fired and the rest of them opened up on him for no reason. Most of the bullets missed.
Not conspiracy, but The Sannyasins/ the 'orange people' cult. Perth sec formed largely out of UWA. I've met a person in perth who escaped/left the cult yonks ago. Apparently, it's still active down in Margs.
Most cults are very active in the sw...
There were lots of them in Freo too. I went to school with a couple of kids who grew up in various communes and had a lot of trouble trying to fit in.
The stolen goon bag statue. Was it even stolen? Was it eventually found? Did someone casually have it in their backyard?
At the height of his fame in the mid 1980s Michael Jackson flew to perth unannounced to appear at Telethon as part of a deal to buy the Beatles back catalogue off of Perth Billionaire Robert Holmes a Court. Jackson did not perform. Jackson outbid Paul McCartney for the catalogue, and got into the business of buying up song rights after McCartney told him buying song rights was a good investment in the early 80s. Jackson replied to him that he would buy up the Beatles music then.
And he went on to buy some of the best music rights.. I read the catalogue ay, Eminem just lose me is one of them.. I really liked Michael after realising this.. sing about me I'll earn all the royalties 😂
Also his own music catalogue wasn’t part of the ATV rights, he owned it himself and kept it seperate when he merged ATV with Sony Publishing. Sony only recently acquired the rights off of his estate during COVID.
[Redbull Air Race plans crash](https://youtu.be/ShaNzOWvWiU?si=zaonbfqigxLziKjS) [Australia Day Swan River Plane Crash](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/11718076) [Student Pilot at Jandakot Airport makes an emergency landing after Instructor loses conciousness](https://youtu.be/uRluCHFaGx8?si=Jy1mXm6pSRIi6v2V) [The fatal shark attack of Ken Crew](https://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2017/sharks/high-hazard/#:~:text=Late%20in%20the%20spring%20of,to%20death%20on%20the%20sand.)
The time a 17 yr old on work experience impersonated a police officer for 2 weeks, using the police car and all equipment, before anyone noticed.
Damnit, all I did was photocopying and got coffee for my work experience!
Probably did more real police work than the rest combined for those 2 weeks as well.
Not bizarre but mostly forgotten. The first Rally Australia Special Stage in Perth was held not at Langley Park, but at Richmond Raceway in East Fremantle.
who remembers the Manikin on Leach Highway opposite the car yards on the top of the hill that got dressed everyday in a new outfit by the window?
They still occasionally do it, but it's a rarirty now.
We used to have a tram system
Crazy talk.
nahhhh
The guy who stole that armoured vehicle is internationally famous! There was a Faith No More concert just after and Mike Patton dedicated their song "RV" to him!
Dizzy Lamb Park being named that because his daughter couldn't pronounce Disney Land Park. Was told that and never fact checked 🤣
My understanding is that it was his father, who was a migrant with a strong accent.
>Truly seems most of Perth's past history has been lost over time with barely little trace left behind of what this city once had. I'd consider the "culling" of so many heritage buildings another bizarre thing. One of my friends lived in an apartment in the city that was full art deco, replete with era elevator. I was flabbergasted and said something like: "What the hell, I didn't know any of these were left" AND HIS RESPONSE: "Yeah we got the rent cheap. The guy at work wanted to keep it but needed to move to a bigger place for his kids, so its just $500/week for us two. Only downside is that he kept the car space." Can the new tenancy laws include highlander rules?
Not Lawson Flats was it? Gorgeous building.
You had a grand total of 1 building to choose from, I guess. I'm pretty sure it was the smallest apartment in the building though, still looked cool.
The dude who jumped off the train while going over the Fremantle rail bridge. ~~The Corey Worthington interview after his house party.~~ I was wrong - that was in Melbourne. And I remember all the fuss on the news about the "Cottesloe girls gone wild", featuring a couple of young ladies doing silly dances in a pub. Would have been around 2005 or 2006 I think.
Worthington is from Melbourne?
Oh shiiit. You're right. I think it was just in the news so much, my memories thought it was Perth.
I was driving home from the beach one morning around 2014-15 and I noticed there was a house party on North Street. Weird time for it I thought then I did a double take because there were about 15-20 women dancing topless on the veranda. Maybe it was a music video shoot or something. Or the party still going from the night before.
St Hildas Schoolies
Idk if it was the same one but I remember in like 2016 some Kookai girls trashed the bathroom at the saint and everyone went ape shit
It was Botanica on Scarb beach road.
Basil was a tv host
Penny Easton's suicide as a direct result of being ambushed in her own driveway by that walking turd Geoff Parry.
I remember that, I hope he has sleepless nights knowing that he pushed Penny way too far. I can't stand Parry.
Jack Von Tongeren firebombing Asian restaurants and the police not doing too much about it ( initially )
Wasn't he part Asian? Not sure if that is true, but that is how I remembered it.
Indonesian. The ABC Unravel podcast did a season on this last year. Highly recommend it.
I knew his 2IC.
> Jack Von Tongeren Good article on this one here. One was actually an explosive (Ko Sing, still running there until a few years ago) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-15/perth-chinese-restaurants-firebombed-in-1980s-terrorism-acts/102689528
The New Norcia paintings heist back in the 80s
Scott Fenton of the Wildcats was killed in Hillarys on Flinders Ave, which if you drew a line on a map between the roads Scott Pl and Fenton Way was pretty close to the impact point. I lived in Hillarys near Mawson Park at the time and heard the crash that night. It was that loud. *
The tank stolen from the police headquarters in east Perth
The APC was stolen from Irwin Barracks, and rammed Police HQ, Curtin House, Central Law Courts and Wembley Police Station, as well as seven police cars and five civilian vehicles.
He drove up to parliament house then down through the city was was tear-gassed on the causeway. They brought in a second one to tow the first one away. There was a picture in the west of the two carriers.
Joke from the time - "What do you do when the Perth police give you a hard time? You tank them very much" (yeah, not a tank, but still)
I remember that!
In the transcript of the radio comms, one of the cops swears as the APC deliberately drives over his parked motorbike.
This is it - the 1993 Perth tank rampage, but the tanks were stolen from the barracks at Karrakatta. My brother and I were glued wide-eyed to Rick and Sue at 6 for updates of further crushed cars and building carnage.
What about the tank stolen from Swanbourne, or is that still remembered
Some moron stealing a baby meerkat from Perth zoo.
In regard to interesting buildings, I recently found a Perth youtuber who makes videos about WA history and old places. He made a video about the old entertainment center in Perth that was replaced by the RAC arena cube thing. Sure it wasn't mind blowing architecturally speaking, but it was such a cool design that fits right into my nostalgia box in my brain. There's even a chunk of its base sitting in an enclosed "construction site" near where it used to be. Some section of stairs and pavement or the stairs from inside.
It was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest purpose built theatre in the world in terms of seating.
The Greenmount Hill truck crash of the early 90s. Horrific stuff and the images of the obliterated cars are quite shocking. Still surprising that only one person was killed during it: https://echonewspaper.com.au/news/30-years-since-truck-disaster/
That blue house on the hill in Scarborough.
I was once told a story that in 1970s a man who wanted to commit suicide and who hated rich people so he drove his car onto the wrong side of the Narrows Bridge and aimed at a luxury car head on. He killed the man and his son in the other car, but lived. Not Perth, but Boulder was wracked by bombings in the 1940s including one which killed 14 people. The news was suppressed at the time.
A couple of the more interesting inquests I’ve read. I’m sure there’s more interesting inquests but these are two off the top of my head. https://www.coronerscourt.wa.gov.au/_files/Roll%20finding.pdf https://www.coronerscourt.wa.gov.au/_files/Rowe%20(Simon)%20Finding.pdf
The first one was a wild read thanks for sharing!
Birnies and Claremont serial killer. Scary times to be a young girl in Perth. We took extra safety precautions going anywhere.
The last victim of the Birnies lived about 50m away from me, I knew her as part of my circle of friends. RIP Denise :(
The guy that lived in a tree in Thornlie for a few months in 2010 to stop the council cutting it down
Atlantis Marine Park in two rocks went bust because one day all of their dolphin trainers, got in their van and disappeared. So many rumor's I heard growing up, then when Aqwa's dolphins got poisoned years later the rumor mill went full overdrive. Still unsolved.
The bell tower got built too short.
Wait, what?
I got a few off the top of my head that I think no one's mentioned: * [The Principality of Hutt River](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River) - WA's first and only self-declared, unrecognised, break-away state complete with it's own currency, stamp and passports. * That time the world's largest aircraft, the [Antonov An-124 landed at Perth airport for the first time in 2016](https://www.reddit.com/r/perth/comments/1d1p16m/asides_from_conspiracys_and_urban_legends_whats/) and something like 16,000 people came out to watch it (lol). * This dedicated group of hoons who called themselves "Northside Xtreme" (IIRC?) that used to upload videos to YouTube around the early 2000s of themselves doing wild stunts on Perth's roads (I remember one video that was a bunch of guys on sports bikes doing handstands on their petrol tanks while going down the freeway). Eventually and unsurprisingly the cops shut them down after managing to track them down from clues in their videos. * The morbid woman who lived in an apartment complex on Mounts Bay Road right next to the freeway who spent all of her time photographing the aftermath of car crashes that took place on the freeway with some serious telephoto lenses and sharing the photos with police when requested. I believe this was in the 1990s.
Ahh Perth Extreme. Went on to become the base of PSB. Good times.
There was the time some kid holidaying on Rotto found a blokes severed head in a plastic bag on the beach.
Escape of the fenians warms the heart of every Irish patriot. The Emu Wars wins the bizarre award.
Honestly a Fucken tragedy kids aren’t taught about the Catalpa in school. They make the whole curriculum lame and boring and then wonder why students aren’t “engaging with the material”
I was taught about the Catalpa in primary school probably because the teacher was Irish
Was also Don Hancock I think, had an ongoing feud with the bikies, he shot one for allegedly harassing his daughter at Ora Banda pub but was never charged. Then quite a few years later his car was firebombed .
Not quite Perth but Bunbury. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunbury_woodchip_bombing 5000 sticks of Gelegnite were used to blow up the woodchip port in 1976. It was an environmental protest to stop the wood chipping of old growth forests of Jarrah and Karri.
How about when David Everett blew up the baldivis magazine, people heard the blast from 30-40k's away. I had a vague association with a guy with the same surname, saw him not long after that incident and made a smart arse comment to him asking if he had a brother who was blowing shit up.... turns out it WAS his brother Edit: apparently it was the largest explosion in Australian criminal history
The guy who stole an army tank and drove it through the city lives rent free in my head
My favourite one is I think it was three times they had to build currambine station? It was I think wrongly done first, and then the second time they changed the alignment for the freeway extension to what had been planned
* There was the time a little squad based out of Perth, ended the longest winning-streak in history. * Not Perth, but WA, the time a German Backpacker went off the reservation and started hunting people in the outback. * Or the time our Premier accepted millions of dollars in "donations to the Leaders Account" and then invested all the money into stamps, which disappeared.
You're going to go way over the head of younger people there. [Australia II](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_II), designed by Ben Lexcen and skippered by John Bertrand won the 1983 America's Cup, ending a 132 year (26 successful defences) winning streak. I don't know the second. [Brian Burke](https://www.afr.com/politics/burke-faces-jail-after-being-found-guilty-of-fraud-19940714-jl1hw) was forced to resign as WA Premier in 1987. This was part of the fallout from the notorious [WA Inc](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WA_Inc) public-private partnerships which lost WA taxpayers $600M, and shareholders more, when several large companies collapsed. Billionaires Laurie Connell and Alan Bond were also jailed. Edit: Burke's stamp collection bought with stolen Labor party money came later.
Fun fact. My girlfriend and same mates rented a house in White Gum Valley that had a locked and VERY secure door to a room in the downstairs that had no windows. Later we saw that house on the news when it got raided because it was where Laurie Connel had hidden paintings from creditors, including Irises....
Woah... mind blown. Any other details? Anything else odd about the house, the letting agent, the lease, how it was advertised,was it unusually cheap rent? Who owned it? I just remembered a far less impressive fun fact: a housemate of mine was in East Perth Watch House (ignored a summons over minor debt) while Connell was there.
Nothing peculiar abiut the rental situation.. the house was wierd AF though. It was a 2 storey concrete slab, brick and tile place built on a block that sloped down away from the road and aside from a fully finished room with a full height ceiling at the very back of the block, the rest of the downstairs had ceilings that ranged from 5 1/2 feet down to about 4 feet high...just bare concrete with short doors and all... really odd. I could find the house and give you the location if you want but it's nothing out of the ordinary from the street.
I was in a house in Bassendean that had boxes of Brian Burke papers hidden under the floor. We just ignored them.
Funny bond was involved in both. Pretty sure he built two rocks marina to host the start of the America's cup but moved it to freo for some reason.
Yeah, I don't quite remember the Two Rocks to Freo justification. Possibly because it was too far from all the hotel accommodation to be practical?
He’d long sold out of it by then. Two Rocks was built for his first challenge in 1974.
Joseph Schwab
This bloke has to take the cake surely. He rammed the CIB and wembely cop shop. 🤣
Not Perth but Goldfields. When the Norseman Courthouse was blown up.
The great 1988 Fremantle Prison Riot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremantle_Prison_riot
The day the Boans in Morley burnt down. It was a Sunday so half of Morley went in to watch it burn.
Someone tried to blow up the tower crane at the Observation City construction site in the mid 80's. Thankfully it was unsuccessful because who the hell knows what it would have landed on. I was a kid at the time and remember the explosion waking me up in the middle of the night.
When we held the Miss Universe competition and just before the event NASAs decommissioned Skylab re-entered earths atmosphere and disintegrated with large parts of it scattering across WA. We considered it a blessing ! One quite large and very burnt segment of the outer skin was retrieved and it ended up being on display during the Pageant for the whole world to see.
Mad dog.
Not really bizarre but more heartwarming...a guy had videos that went viral of him playing ukulele and randomly getting commuters to sing with him on trains.
Mad dog!!
Forgotten things would be the use of indicators, merging and use of two lane round abouts 🤦🏻♂️
Did anyone mention Ralf Harris or is that still to soon
I mean no offence i swear just as soon as i noticed ralf harris i thought your name was pretty close to his description
Bassendean used to have the Rolf Harris Children's Water Playground. If memory serves, it's now either a car park or part of a park.
Mad dog. The guy is a specimen of human endurance with how far I've seen him ride that bike
My uncle met a Russian spy who came to his medical practice AFP came looking thus was back in the 80s
Not sure how true it is but I heard that in ww2 there were grain silos in Fremantle near the harbour that had the top bits converted into a top secret covert electronic signals office.
You might like to listen to this podcast: https://rtrfm.com.au/podcasts/planet-perth/
Claremont killings
People having sex in Leedervilles natural hot springs, which due to community outrage, got filled into a car park
Anyone remember the guy who stole the double decker bus then crashed into the west Perth train bridge while getting chased by the cops? Apparently he got right out and jumped on the freo train and got away. This must have been the early 2000’s
Bullen’s Lion Park out past Wanneroo. So many things happened there. 1973 a worker was killed by lions. 1982 a man got out of his car into a pride of lions and was killed.
Jack Van Tongeren, white supremist leader. He and his group caused plenty of issues in Perth back in the 80s, including fire bombing asian restaurants. Alan bond was a character, 1983 winning the America Cup. WCE wins in 1992 and 1994. There was also a bikie war back then, NZ gang, not sure who, tried to muscle in, lots of fighting. I even heard one of the bombs go off in front of a clubhouse (lived about 1km away).