Apologies

Thanks for all the people who ever read here. Unfortunately due to time constraints I was unable to finish all the things and I have lost now the motivation to continue we these ideas. I do however, point you to a new blog:

http://camusplusten.blogspot.com/

Please enjoy and please visit Perth and Western Australia when you can.

The silence is broken.

My friends, as part of the ongoing work into this vast and difficult investigation, it has been necessary to go undercover for some time. The silence is broken briefly here to say that the fearless Ramon will return soon to make more of the place at the edge of the world. I cannot say more for fear of exposing my position. Please be patient and you will find more when the time is right.

I leave you with faith and desire for all your family.

9. It's still rock n roll to me.

It can be seen that gang culture apparently plays a large role in Western Australian culture. It is a lawless place with as many fleets of shotgun wielding bogans on Harley Davidson’s as there are kangaroos, or as many armed and highly trained street fighting ninjas as there are New Zealander’s on the dole. That’s what the media would have you believe. According to the West (see Press Watch), we are almost as bad as prohibition era Chicago run by Al Capone and protected by Kevin Costner. Are they right?

A 2000 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC ) suggested that “the phenomenon of ‘criminal youth gangs’ is largely a media myth” and that “’youth gangs’ as such do not constitute a significant social problem”, though they agree there is some tendency towards criminality. It may be argued that things have moved on since then. To some extent, this seems likely. Racism was cited as the main cause of inter-gang conflict, whereas now it appears to be related to racism and drug trafficking.

But is it a serious problem or one of context? The West Australian report from 16th August suggests that Sydney has 10 organised crime gangs and Melbourne 8 to Chicago’s 4 and Perth’s 3. That means Perth is roughly equivalent to the other capitals on a per capita basis. One cannot assume that US statistics are gathered in the same way as here, so inter-country comparisons are meaningless.

There are several other things to note. Firstly, the West Australian’s sensationalist and absolute headline: ‘Perth home to criminal gangs’.There is no mention of the outside world. Secondly, it is only mid way through the article that the above quoted and relative numbers are revealed and they are not given any appropriate context to inspire free thought. Thirdly, there is no mention of who the three gangs are.

Why the rise of gangs in the eyes of media hysteria? Certainly it seems that the incidence of public weapon use in gang related incidents may be increasing. However, as the AIC report argues, “The resultant waves of race-based public panic are customarily triggered by the sensationalised reporting of atypical events. This reporting tends to reinforce the ‘ethnic’ character of the criminal activity in question, based on the ‘racial’ background of the perpetrators—alleged gang members.” Use of weapons is, overall, atypical and therefore exaggerated. Because of the alleged ethnicity of gangs, they then become easily identifiable and more capable of causing panic.

Former gang member Perth Boi : described to me, the fearless and quixotic Ramon Miguel Cadorna, in a Dog Swamp all-night burger bar the history of Perth gangs:

“Well originally there was two gangs starting around the early 80s, one the Dragon Boyz which were made up of a group of Vietnamese friends after one of their friends was stabbed to death and they wanted to form a justice, and a second called the Sword Boyz which was formed when the idea to form the gang came from Sydney… Around the early 1990s a new gang called the Embros [M’Bros] formed. In the mid-90s a lot of gang members attended the school Mt. Lawley, even some of the members of the Morley Boyz (Group of friends all living around the Morley area) which later on developed into Spider Boyz. A stabbing in 2001 ended [Spider Boyz leader’s] winning streak, he was locked up after his stabby bled to death in High Park. Later on they [descendents of the original Spider Boyz gang] became more organised and started keeping a low profit, changing their habits of fighting to dealing drugs over a large scale.”

The rise of gang incidents in the media suggests that racial minorities have reached a critical mass and require the expression of their own subculture. A new phenomenon in Perth perhaps? Yes, in terms of association of gangs with a particular ethnic group and not your average Aussie bogan bikers. It suggests then, that Perth is in a state of change and that some new elements of culture and identity are coming to the surface. It is a significant juncture for measuring the energy levels and ascertaining a state of excitement. But otherwise, gangs are as new as the concept of the ‘teenager’.

“In America, they were called rockers, in the UK, teddy boys. In Australia, we called the boys bodgies and their girlfriends widgies. Bodgie comes from the word 'bodger', meaning someone worthless, and they defined themselves with their clothes and their hair.” From Dimensions

The Australian 50’s gangs of Bodgies and Widgies were subject to the same media hysteria as modern gangs are, particularly in Perth. “Without recourse to reliable statistics, many people embraced the opinion that a substantial proportion of the country’s teenagers were uncontrollable. Some advocated punishments such as sending ‘bodgies to the Nullarbor to work on a rail gang’ (Perth Daily News, 7 October, 1957), sending them ‘to sea under a tough [navy] skipper’ (Perth Daily News, 16 November, 1957) and inflicting harsh corporal punishment upon them.” Note a reference here to the requirement for ‘reliable statistics’.

Group activity is designed to facilitate a social connection. Common social ground exists for a number of well described reasons: socioeconomic, to establish identity, particularly in emerging racial groups, as well as boredom. “When combined with the lack of alternative recreational outlets and the consequent boredom experienced, feelings of exclusion may actually lead to various kinds of “deviant” behaviour.” (from AIC report). Insufficient transport and recreational facilities is cited as a major cause of boredom in 58% of people interviewed in the AIC survey. Perth’s public transport at least is notoriously sub-standard (to be addressed later), so boredom is probably a genuine concern. Gangs can therefore be considered in one sense a symptom of a state of unexcitement and in another, a state of excitement. Its not a new phenomenon, but implies a state of transition.

Know your WA gang.

The following gangs are known to have clubhouses and/or prominent centres of operation in Western Australia. They are loosely divided into two groups: motorcycle gangs and ethnic based groups. The former prefer motorbikes and penny farthings and are a more dangerous evolutionary variation of the bogan; the ethnic-based gangs usually employ souped up Japanese sport sedans such as Mitsubishi Lancers and Suburu WRXs. A discussion of gang hype and the use of ethnic generalisations is given below in following posts.

Coffin Cheaters: Bogans

Gypsy jokers: Bogans

Club Deroes: Bogans

Bandidos: Bogans

Rebels: Bogans

God’s Garbage: Bogans

GANGajang: Australian*

Sword Boys: Lebanese

Scorpion Boys**: Lebanese

Filo Boys: Lebanese?

Spider Boys: Asian (Chinese and/or Vietnamese)

M’Boys: Asian (Chinese and/or Vietnamese)

African Kings: Somalian?


* The status of this gang is currently unknown. Despite widespread belief that they no longer exist, sightings and soundings are often heard with alarming frequency on Sky Show Night (see Space is the Place part 2).

** In some newspaper articles, it is the Scorpion Boys and not the Sword Boys who are implicated in the Metro’s club attack on Coffin Cheater Troy Mercanti.


* * * * * * * *

This website does not condone the use of racial stereotyping or pandering to media sensationalism. The description of gangs by ethnicity is deemed necessary for discussion and to understand the origins and aims of organised collectives of youths and immature grown-ups. Please see a Press Council report on this issue if you are offended

Press watch – Sin City says Bob Bottom

An article published in the West Australian on Tuesday 16th August seems to corroborate the above reports. It is entitled ‘Perth home to criminal gangs’ and goes on to say

“Perth has just one less organised crime group than the infamous gangster city of Chicago, according to Australian crime analyst Bob Bottom [who] revealed that three of Australia’s highest-risk organised crime groups are running their rackets out of Perth... “There are other subsidiary groups in Perth and regional areas that still have national significance,” Mr Bottom said.”

We will go on to address the issue of crime and excitement, discussing gangs first and general crime second. The context of this discussion is drawn from our Ozsurvey source which suggests that Perth is a great place to live because of its safety.

Press watch – Rebels MC – Why waltz when you can rock n roll???

An article published in the West Australian on Wednesday 24th August entitled ‘Police home in on Rebels’ describes the return to business of the Rebels motorcycle gang. The article states:

“In March, police…believed the Rebels Perth chapter was crushed after serious drug convictions against senior members…The rebels Malaga clubhouse was closed after [senior members] Raymond James Washer and John Di Lena were arrested.”

“The gang, reputed to have the biggest membership across Australia, has a clubhouse in [Western Australian cities] Busselton and is building one in Medina.”

See Ozbiker for more information on the previous closing down of this gang’s Perth headquarters.

I have been to Malaga in Spain, near my home in Toledo and it is much more beautiful and peaceful than Malaga (pronounced here as Ma-lager and not Mala-ga with short vowels), despite the predominance of drunk Liverpool supporters.

Press watch – Guntastic Subiaco

An article in the West Australian, Saturday August 20 entitled ‘Shot fired after bikie told mate was ‘slashed' ’’ describes the local Subiaco entertainment scene. The article begins

“A Coffin Cheater bikie who fired a pistol during a brawl at the Red Sea nightclub on January 23 had just received news his friend and fellow Coffin Cheater Troy Mercanti had been “slashed up by some Lebanese”.” The incident involving Troy Mercanti is described in the references below and has been previously aluded to in our description of Subiaco.

The Lebanese belong to a gang known as the Sword Boys (see below). John Kizon is known to have association with the Coffin Cheaters. References: SMH and Ozbiker

8. Chelsea pizza

An interview with Jose Mourinho

It was my good fortune to spend one evening dining in the affluent suburb of Nedlands, where London’s Chelsea Football Club manager Jose Mourinho has just opened the first in a chain of themed restaurants called Chelsea Pizza. Already a popular hangout for the local university crowd, the night became rowdier as the interview proceeded. The discussion took place in both English and Spanish with a relaxed Mourinho in a flour-stained apron.

Ramon Miguel Cadorna (RMC): Hello Jose and thank you for your time.

Jose Mourinho (JM): My pleasure Ramon.

RMC: First of all, congratulations for your success last season.

JM: Thank you. It was a great beginning for me in the Premier League, but still, we are dissatisfied. We didn’t win the Champions League and we failed to annihilate all our enemies, so we have a lot of work to do this season.

RMC: And your interest in domination is extending now to the pizza trade?

JM: Well yes. We want to keep Chelsea’s style and power operating at all levels. We want to reach from the ground up. Also, we make a lot of money selling pizza to Old Trafford for their buffet.

RMC: So why Perth? Why not open Chelsea’s first pizza bar in Leicester Square or New York?

JM: There are many reasons. First of all, we can play the best football and make the most beautiful pizza, but we cannot force people to watch or to eat. We want to attract people, magnetically, intrinsically. For me, it is like holding up a mirror. In Europe, the people have enough to see, for now, and aren’t ready for Chelsea. That is also why we win. Everyone knows the American’s cant play football (laughs). Second, I am always one step ahead. I think one day there will be a market here for football and pizza. I am the first to arrive. It is me (he shrugs). Thirdly, I have relatives here in Perth. Some of my family live in Fremantle. My great grandfather was sent here as a convict.

RMC: A convict?

JM: Yes. I am not ashamed like some of the Australians. My great grandfather Diogo was the only Portuguese man sent to the Fatal Shore for his crimes.

RMC: What was his crime, if it is not rude to ask?

JM: No, of course. He was transported for fourteen years for public and political dissent. He refused to apologise and was happy to be sent away.

RMC: But what of Perth’s reputation as being Dullsville? Are you worried there might not be much interest or profit?

JM: Sure. Dullsville. State of Excitement. It’s a risk, it’s a humble beginning, but we aren’t bothered with that reputation. We want our enemies to be strong as we will defeat them regardless.

RMC: Do you think Perth is boring?

JM: Yes. Yes I do.

RMC: Why do you think it’s boring?

JM: Why? It is difficult. I am here once a year to visit family. I am objective. But I say, it is because of expression. It is not an impassioned place like we have in Iberia, or in the change rooms at Stamford Bridge after another win. It seems a difficult place for a culture or a community to express itself from within. People are too cautious about expressing their view of culture. The emotion and the feeling are trapped inside. It is like the team bus is parked in front of the goal.

RMC: What causes this entrapment, in your opinion?

JM: I think two reasons. One is the youth. Everything is new here. There are so many places in the suburbs where nobody has lived before. There have been no generations and no impressions left to build upon. There have been no struggles for or against identity, if you discount the Aboriginals. Young people, they see this emptiness and it is frightening. It seems too vast to begin or perhaps seems unnecessary? It is difficult to find the alchemy or the leader that will ignite a cultural push or to keep it going. Everything here is yours from the beginning, it does not have to be fought for or repossessed or claimed. It is misleading. I think the isolation is one factor controlling this.

RMC: Isolation from the rest of the world?

JM: No. No. No. No. It is not that. That is laziness and a local weakness. There is the internet. There is telephones and aeroplanes. Yes it is more difficult to be far away, but people need to ask and it will arrive. There is not that desire. If you do not have attitude to win, you should not play.

RMC: What isolation do you mean then?

JM: Isolation from self and each other. There is too much personal space. Too much ownership. Community is separated by too many walls and it creates fear. It is like everyone trains alone and then is confounded when they can’t play as a team. There is perceived to be no necessity to come out of your own half. There is a perception that culture will arrive or will be found in the supermarket. Also, there are no managers to focus the vision of many into a unified action or style.

RMC: Do you think it could be an issue of having nothing to say?

JM: For some yes. But for a country, a state. No. It is impossible. I think it is a question of identity.

RMC: A cultural identity of boredom?

JM: Yes and no. If you think, in Portugal
we are also still struggling to realise an identity. It is always newer and newer (shrugs). But we can look at our selves and see our history and a face we recognise from which we are derived. Here it is difficult. It is new, it is faceless. There is also the safety of acquired identity. My relatives, they are compelled by the Portuguese culture they left in Europe. In a sense they preserve it here more than we do in Portugal, because here it grows in isolation and does not evolve with the same influence of real Portugal. But their children are not born with the same responsibility to Portugal. It is diluted in each generation. Same for the Asians, whoever. They protect themselves in a community they recognise, but it is lost and assimilated in time. And then?

RMC: What do you perceive as the direction of the local identity then?

JM: I think this is the question. I think Dullsville is an important identity as it is the first. This is why there is pain. It is like birth. Every child is always screaming when it is taken from its mother. Now it is time to act here. Perth is Dullsville. If you don’t like it, it means you have to act. If you are one goal down, you have to score to re-enter the game. For the first time, Perth is being recognised and it is recognised as boring. Similar with Chelsea. After 50 years with no title, with no aura that precedes us, we have begun to express ourselves with personality. We have an identity now that is recognised. We have had to build this, from the goal keeper forward. Perth is the same. You have to fight back from Dullsville to domination. But you have to remember also, the best team can lose. That is also history and culture.

RMC: Finally Jose, can you tell us about your menu.

JM: We have many styles of pizza. Most reliable is the Makelele 12” which can satisfy three or four at once. We have the Thin and Crespo crust or the Deep Pan Drogba. We have the four-four-two: four cheeses, a variation of quatro stagione, four vegetables and two meats upfront. My favourite is the Che Guevara, hot and spicy, and when I am here, I like to cook the Special One myself. This pizza is second only to God.

RMC: Jose, thank you for your time.

JM: My pleasure.

Space is the place part 2.

Don’t look down, the sky is about to explode.

Western Australia’s obsession with the sky and outer space would continue. What began with John Glenn and John Glenn had entered the psyche of the sandgropers.


On 14th May 1973 the US launched the first of many Skylab missions. The 80 ton prototype space station was meant to survive until the mid 80s when it would be serviced and upgraded by the then nascent shuttle program. However, damage during launching when the micrometeoroid shield deployed too soon and ripped off a wing and solar panel meant that from the outset, the functionality of Skylab I would be limited. Despite the set back, several manned missions to Skylab were completed successfully, before the safety and potential of the station became prohibitive.

On July 11 1979 Skylab was allowed to plunge to earth, ending days of speculation as to its final destination: Skylab I came down in blaze of glory and a sonic boom over the Indian Ocean and Western Australia. It is almost as if Skylab I had answered the beacons of the City of Light and come home like a prodigal son. Debris was recorded near Kalgoorlie east of Perth and down in Esperance on the south coast. Treasure hunters still look for pieces of the space station in the desert and fields; local councils still advertise their shire to tourists as the final resting place of the lost space station and, like the assassination of JFK or 9/11, the local people still remember where they were when the chariot of fire crossed down from the milky way and fell to earth.

Similar scenes were recorded again in 1986 when Halley’s comet made a return after 76 years in orbit. Street curbs were packed and sales of telescopes and Hills hoists went through the roof.

Not surprisingly, a formal culture of space worship has developed in Western Australia and is celebrated every year on January 26 for at least the last 20 years. On this day, thousands of people flock to the banks of the Swan River around the city centre for what is known locally as ‘Sky Show night’. In honour of John Glenn, John Glenn, Halley’s comet and Skylab the people of Perth drink beer, eat what we call in Spain salchichas or butifarras in Catalonia, but known locally as snaggers or sausages, set off fire works and shine torches into the sky. According to the Ozsurvey, it is the most significant event of the calendar.
















Why? Why make beacons for a lonely astronaut in 1962? Why worship comets and outer space?

Boredom and desperation is one answer, but is far too condescending an explanation. In terms of psyche it is an easy question. Western Australia is full of empty space, so it is easy to relate to the great black void that awaits beyond the atmosphere. Being the last physical frontier of the known world, the nearest neighbour to Western Australia is outer space, an even more unknown arena. When you consider that space is 100km or 62miles away it makes it very proximal when considering the relativity of distance of the vast state. The suburb of Joondalup in the north of Perth is 100km from Mandurah in the south, making it as close to outer space as it is to the other side of the city, let alone the rest of the country. It suggests a visitor from outer space is more likely than a visitor from Mandurah. It is not surprising then, to find that 4 out of 5 Western Australians believe in aliens, a higher number than those who believe in the existence of other Australians. Sky Show is thus a worship of isolation and an investment of hope in the future that the cosmos may bring contact with other life.

Interlude - Space is the place part 1.

City of lights

It wasn’t the Portuguese traders on the way to Timor in the early 17th Century. It wasn’t Dutchmen Dirk Hartog who left his famous plaque in Shark Bay in 1616 or Willem de Vlamingh who first described Perth’s black swans in 1697. It wasn’t the Frenchmen Entrecasteaux or Hamelin who scoured the south west in search of foreign bases in the twilight of Napoleon’s 18th Century. It wasn’t the celebrated English mapper Mathew Flinders in the Investigator in 1801-02, as he charted the future site of WA’s first colony in King George Sound. It wasn’t Captain James Stirling who first appeared to the aboriginal tribes of the Swan River as a jang-ga, or ghost during his first foray into the future suburbs. And it wasn’t Queen Victoria who declared Perth a city in 1856.



It was John Glenn and John Glenn who put Perth and Western Australia on the map in 1962, in the months preceding Perth hosting the British Empire and Commonwealth Games. But neither of these men were athletes, politicians or popstars. Colonel John Glenn was an astronaut, the first American to orbit the earth, whereas John Glenn was a good citizen and resident of Perth suburb Wembley. On 20th February 1962 Glenn was in orbit above the earth in the spacecraft Friendship VII. Looking down, he saw the lights of Perth gleaming back from the darksea and darklands at the edge of the vast continent, the edge of the known physical world. He was lucky.

Lord Mayor Howard hadn’t wanted to keep the lights on, in those days turned off at 1am every night, as it was ‘morally wrong’. Others doubted he would even see the lights; the American’s had never asked to see them in the first place, though one billionaire offered to pay for them. In the end, the American public did contribute £33 19s and 5d in donations to pay for the cost.

But it was John Glenn with his son and others like him, leaving lights on, laying sheets on the lawn, shining torches in the sky and making beacons with white linen and their iconic Hill’s Hoist clotheslines (below) that allowed John Glenn to see the city in a global context for the first time. How much more Australian than this and how crucial the event was in revealing the mentality of the local inhabitants.



John Glenn’s safe return to earth and his public thanks of Perth, which he dubbed City of Light, led to the first international record of Perth on a map. Paris, France is also known as the City of Lights, but people do not often get the two cities confused; Paris is well known to be more exciting than Perth.


In the first 133 years, from founding in 1829, there was no need to know of Perth’s existence and it was another 25 years before Perth made a name for itself again when it hosted the almost forgotten Americas Cup in 1987. This latter event was eventually made into a feature length Hollywood film in 1992 starring Jennifer Grey and Mathew Modine and entitled Wind. In 1998 Perth citizens once again turned on their lights to honour John Glenn during a pre-retirement Spaceshuttle Discovery flight