Swan River

Listen, we'll get him over to Perth.

He can swim in the Swan River.

There's

sharks over there.

By the

early 1960s, Alan and Eileen have three kids, but they've upgraded from their first home in a garage and bought a fancy house with epic views of the Swan River.

Alan's constantly fighting off creditors, but he manages to cruise around Perth in his flashy imported Oldsmobile, racking up speeding fines and losing his licence.

By the mid-1960s, Alan Bond owns land right across Western Australia.

It's literally like rivers of gold over there.

You land in Perth and it's like the Swan River bubbles up and just gold falls out of the water.

But this is the side of it.

For the

South Fremantle.

will be kicking to the right of your radio dial towards the Swan River end of Optus Stadium to start this one.

Obviously Colts Grand Finals have a bit of a unique place for a lot of players.

We talk about senior teams never really getting together again and being able to play as that unit again.

Boundary throw in.

Right full forward for East Fremantle.

Attacking the Swan River end of the ground.

This opening quarter.

Yeah, 100%.

Look, I know that the fisheries are monitoring even the Swan River for bull sharks, and they just catch them released.

So they know how many are out there.

And, yeah, I'm not a fisherman, but all of the boaties and commercial fishers out there say they've never seen so many.

Yeah.

And, you know, Sorrento, and you don't want to say it anywhere, but it's a different set of circumstances to when you hear something like this happening, you know, out at a pretty lonely beach off Esperance Way, you know.

Or even the young girl that got killed in the Swan River down in our way.

I walk past that spot every day and just feel for that family and the people who saw the attack.

Obviously back then it wasn't open water.

But having said that, Fred would actually take us down to the Swan River a few times a year just to train at Ma- Maylands and, yeah, maybe that, that was part of it.

Maybe there was something in my DNA.

My mum was a, um, surf swimmer for Cottesloe Surf Life Saving Club.

I w- able after that to, to recognize, um, that level of human depth when I, you know, when I went to rock shelters or, y- you know, in the, in the Pilbara or certain caves in the, in the Kimberley, or when I started, you know, visiting middens, um, a- around Ingiloo, and just getting a sense of how deep time is and how deep human experience is.

In thinking of deep time, of course a key part of Cloudstreet is the river, right? The Swan River or the Derbarl Yerrigan, as it's called here in WA, the, the main river that runs through Perth, and it's such an important part of Cloudstreet.

You know, this, the beautiful scene of Fish and Quick Lamb in the boat with the stars above and below them as they drift through the night.

There's al- obviously the book ending scene of Fish Lamb running for the, for the water.

It was very windy.

But then I made my way down to Crawley as well to have a little bit of a walk along the Swan River, checked out Eliza, and I also checked out the Blue Boat Shed, which...

I've never seen with no people in front of it.

There's always tourists in front of it taking photos.

Street circuit

... right near the Swan River.

Yeah.

It'll look fantastic.