On the Up: The Making of a Perth Boy

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Beachside Como and South Perth in the 1950s and 60s - the time and place of my early life. Then, even more than now, Perth’s remoteness gave its citizens a distinctive independent spirit.

To guide you to that distant time and place, I write as wholeheartedly as I can - of Perth, the city of my youth, as well as the events, people, songs and movies that moulded me. That said, the biggest influence in the making of this Perth boy was my dad. So this memoir is as much his as mine.

In my dad’s bleak childhood in Northern Ireland, family life and family love were absent. Sadly, such emotional harshness fractured his self-belief.

Like boys the world over, I copied my dad to be loved by him. And in my case, as I grew, I soaked up dad’s repressed childhood anxieties. Eventually, they became a persistent, unwanted inner voice telling me I wasn’t good enough. As a young man, finding and then grappling with the source of my deep insecurity became a relentless quest. And yet, as you will read, it was because of that personal struggle that I discovered a way to admire and accept my dad as he was.