By Shi.
Australia has always been geographically isolated, it’s about 10 hours flight from Sydney to Hawaii, 14 hours Sydney – Los Angeles and 20 hours Sydney – London. As the wheels of the plane smoothly touch down on the runway at Perth International Airport, the inside of my head feels like the blanket I had draped over my head throughout the flight: fuzzy and cottony. But the golden rays of sunlight, bright blue skies and t-shirt weather could not have been a better welcome. A couple of hours out of the airport, and I am on my way to Perth city to meet my friend John Bourne from the Australian Parkour Association (APA).
The sun in Perth is strong and without sunglasses I’m walking around squinting – I hope that this makes me look tough although in reality my retinas are being blasted with UV Rays. I hear Spanish, Portugese, German, being spoken around me and I find out later that many Europeans have come to Perth on a working holiday visa, hoping to experience the famous Perth sunshine and beaches. The electric train whooshes into the station, cold air-conditioning and clean seats welcoming. The glistening skyscrapers of Perth rise from the horizontal sprawl of highways and suburbia.
Standing on the Perth Central Concourse, surrounded by people in t-shirts and flip flops, I get a big smile and hug from John, and with him is Fizz Hood, who’s visiting from London. John was one of the earliest guys in Australia to start practising parkour and he spent several years in London training and coaching with Parkour Generations. Since then he’s moved back to Australia and has been helping Matt James in Perth run the APA classes. Today the APA Perth classes will get a double dose of a woman’s touch – Fizz and I will be helping out!
John leads us to the James Street Mall in the centre of Perth city, marked by the State Library. The best way to describe the architecture of the Perth’s State Library is, as the sunnier, fluoro-shirt Australian cousin of the National Theatre in Southbank, London. But where Southbank is cloudy and the spaces dramatic, the forecourt of the State Library is a happy, blue and sunny mix of fountains, lakes, trees and grassy lawns. There’s a lot that can be done at the James Street Mall, it’s actually better than what I expected, with several good spots closely located within minutes of each other. Clancy, Grant and Jasmine who help out at the classes, join us. As we train, talk turns to the upcoming Instructor Training Course in Melbourne that Grant, Fizz and I will be doing:
“Hey Grant, did you get Chippa’s email for instructor training the one that says meet up front the Trace Facility, 7am sharp? And no pooping, no tying your hair, no fixing your shoes?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, when I read that I got this mental image, of someone at the front at 7am, shoes off, doing a poo, pants around his ankles and fixing his hair… who does that??”
Yup, I think we’re going to get along fine 
2:45pm rolls around and a good-sized group of students have gathered, about 30 to 40 people, ages varying from high school students to people in their 40s. One of them, Catherine, a lady in her 30s, decided to join the classes that very day after noticing Fizz and I training before class. It’s encouraging, Fizz and I agree that if we had not been training she would not have joined in, and Catherine comes for class the following week as well. I’m really happy to see a healthy number of girls joining in, all who seem to be regulars at the classes. Matt tells me that classes have been running for the last 2 years and last year, has really gained momentum with many returning and regularly attending classes.
After registration and handing out the APA green handbands that people write their name and emergency contact phone numbers on, it’s class starting time: First up, warm-ups! On the lawn, we take off our shoes and barefooted, John leads us through a routine that moves our joints, neck and muscles through a range of movements, before starting on the quadrepedal, crab, monkey and “table” movements. The students are enthusiastic, lining up, starting the exercises without hesitation and everything runs very smoothly. The group then splits into two groups, the first with first-timers, that Matt and I take, and experienced students, that John, Clancy and Fizz take.
The first-timers’ group is doing really well, Matt’s pleased with how well coordinated this group is and we go through basics such as how to land quietly and on the balls of our feet, as well as parkour rolls. We move to a ramp where we want to demonstrate wall runs and muscle ups, when the representative from the Council shows up to take some photos of the classes.
Unfortunately at the spot that we’re at, freerunners have been using the ledge to jump to the flower beds below and the council representative is reluctant to let us continue. Matt politely explains that the classes are conducted in supervised situations and that the class knows to move aside for any pedestrians but, despite this, we move the class on to a different spot.
The following week, there’s big news. During the week, John and Matt had a meeting with the representative from the management body of the James Street Mall, who can’t allow the APA classes to continue at the location. However, there is a spark of hope because John and Matt can file an application with the James Street Mall Management for a parkour training area, or a parkour park around the area however this will take weeks and months.
So this week, our mission before classes start, is to find new training spots for the class. There’s a couple of places in neighbouring Northbridge which is the clubs and pubs area of Perth city. We find our way to a carpark with beautiful graffit-free grey walls nicknamed “Teflon” because of the anti-grafitti paint and yup, non-stick walls. Matt really shows his familiarity with this spot, nailing cat passes to precisions with confidence and ease. After a few precisions, I’m a casualty of Teflon’s slippery walls, luckily it’s not a sprain or anything serious but I’m still a little shaken up.
John has Grant and Matt spotting him for a cat pass to arm jump, but today’s not his day either. We meet up with the rest of the group at a row of bike racks, where Fizz is doing handstands to back walkovers to handstands, over the row of bike racks. Very impressive and I save that exercise away for another day…
Back in the city, we explain the situation to the students that parkour activities are no longer allowed in the James Street Mall area and we lead the 30+ group of people to the park 10 minutes away. Warmups complete, we split up into 2 groups again, Fizz and John have gotten the scaffolding spot and Matt, Clancy and I lead the class to a rail in front of some shops. We drill forward and backwards balancing, cat balances and rail precisions, and regroup back at the park for more conditioning. The students have been given several alternative places for classes, and told to write down their preferred areas on their green APA wristbands. While reading the responses from the students, Matt smiles and shows one reply to us: ”I will go as far as I have to for parkour”It’s a light-hearted moment in an otherwise gloomy situation. Matt and John are worried about how changing the location will affect the classes, which had up to that point, been showing steady growth in numbers. It’s also a blow, to have worked for 2 years to maintain a good relationship with the council, to have to move away from the area.
The next day, John and Fizz pick me up to meet the rest of the group at Scarborough Beach. Outside of classes, there are several regular training sessions during the week: Tuesdays in the city and Sundays at Scarborough Beach. Fizz, Rachel, Jasmine, Tiza and Emily are off doing routes, clambering onto a 1 storey viewing platform and vaulting from the sides, and later we all climb the craggy side of another viewing platform.
As I talk to Clancy, who has been training for several years in Perth, he points out an interesting fact that many people who attend the classes don’t attend the training sessions outside of APA classes, which suggests that holding classes increases the public’s dependency on the APA’s classes, although the APA encourages students to move on from the classes when they are ready. It is a tricky issue, I recall that in London some students from the indoor classes never venture outdoors and that it can take months before participants in the classes “assimilate” into social jams. But overall, the APA has been doing a great job by ensuring a uniform level of training and classes throughout Australia including insurance for the volunteer instructors. In a country as geographically spread out as Australia – Perth is 3 hours flight away from Sydney or Melbourne and separated by a lot of desert in between- Perth’s APA classes have garnered a regular group of students with its consistent and focused training. I haven’t trained yet with the guys in Melbourne, who founded the APA and are amongst the earliest in Australia to start training, so it will be an interesting experience for sure.
The group dynamic of the Perth crew is really close, there’s a brother and sister training together and everyone gets along well as friends. A slackline is strung up and everyone gives it a go, and as the sun sets, the golden rays light up the coastline and the blue ocean. It’s just one of those beautiful days with lots of good times and good friends, and everyone’s listening to John telling his travel stories as the sun dips below the horizon. It’s a scene that’s familiar, I recall a same scene in London and it dawns upon me that, despite travelling thousands of kilometers and across continents, some people are always there no matter where you go. For example, in parkour groups, there’s always the guy who always takes off his shirt (day or night), the Star Wars/manga fanatic, the leader, the old man, the girl…
I wonder when I’ll see some of these people again, but with parkour people, you never know when someone will pop up in Sydney, Thailand, France, London… Big thank you to the Perth crew for making me feel so at home, it was awesome meeting you all.
Til next time, peace.
The Australian Parkour Association website is www.parkour.asn.au
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