Tour de Northbridge

Riding around Northbridge on a beautiful 28°C afternoon, it was my mission to note down any suspicious houses that looked derelict or at least, abandoned. Because they were located in the same suburb, I expected that a number of these premises would be managed by the same property agencies, making it easier and certainly more efficient to approach them with a request to access the sites to photograph.

Within minutes of beginning my quest, I realised I’d forgotten about all the murals and awesome graffiti pieces I would see and certainly did see!

I also realised, I hadn’t ridden around or explored Northbridge so pedantically in some 14 years. Some of the artwork wasn’t visible from the street, nor Google Earth, sadly limiting the appreciation good pieces of art deserved.

Recently I had started photographing the better stickers left on and around laneways, drainpipes, street lights, traffic poles and the like. I remember first seeing them on street and traffic poles around 2002 but had never really been too interested in them until recently, when my urbex buddy Kristen made a point of looking for them.

As I rode around photographing anything and everything, I decided I would make a database of the good ones for my website.

As a consequence of looking out for any graffiti, murals and stickers, on top of photographing derelict and abandoned sites, three hours had passed and I’d only covered a small portion of Northbridge. I could see this was going to take some time as in weeks and this was just one suburb out of many that deserved a high level priority classification, particularly due to all the murals and street art.

A number of warehouse-sized properties had been empty for as long as 22 years, although only one appeared to have been used as a squat, on at least one occasion. Perhaps the inside had also been trashed and graffitied too, before the authorities reclosed it and secured all possible entry points.

A number of premises, such as European Food’s two massive warehouses on Francis Street, were some of the ones I noted down. It was highly likely they had nothing interesting to photograph or see, particularly as all entrances and access points appeared to be well protected and the general appearance of the external building certainly nothing short of very good.

Five houses were noted with one in particular, certainly capturing my interest. It had the dreaded, very scary-looking Site Sentry protection system in the backyard. It was the first thing I noticed, particularly as it seemed very unusual to have something like this guarding a house, rather than a commercial interest. It was similar to the ones I’d seen at Shenton Park Rehabilitation Hospital’s Victoria House, the South Fremantle Power Station and the Baldivis Explosives Reserve site, although the latter in particular made the sentry system at this house look quite insignificant.

So naturally, the house had my full attention. It was only then did I notice a Department of Communities trespass notice on the gate, an electronic padlock and wooden boards securing the windows and back door.

When I exited the laneway a few minutes later and made my way to the front of the house, it was just as bad!

Aside from expected wooden boards sealing the windows, a Site Sentry Guard Box had also been secured to the front of the house. This was deadset serious and certainly piqued my interest.

How long had it been secured like this for? I had never seen a Homeswest house protected like this before. Was it just because it was located in the city and not too far from a major homeless agency or a popular park hangout for this community? Why couldn’t they just get a new tenant in quick, considering how long the waiting list could take, in terms of years? Was this even a normal Homeswest house?

I realised how lucky me and my mates were that Site Sentry protection systems didn’t exist between 1999-2002 and if they did, they certainly weren’t used in the city nor to protect buildings we used as a squat.

Before I knew it, it was almost 5.30pm. As I gulped down a cold grape-flavoured Powerade in between munches of a Mars Bar with my mate Sean, who I briefly met up with, I had the strong urge to continue riding around. Why did the sun have to set so soon?

‘Where’s your lights?,’ Sean asked.

I groaned. It had been years since I rode my bike at night. Perhaps ten years or longer, especially with all my airtime and hard landings, there’d never been a reason for me to have lights on my bike. It didn’t help that knowing my luck, my goody-two-shoes-by-the-book mate was probably on shift, riding around on his police bike.

But I made it home.

Finally.

Dark.

To the delight of my beloved little bogans, KitCat and Spam.