Three Things I Love: She’s in charge of its biggest festival. Here’s what she loves most about Perth
By Emma Young
Each week, WAtoday reaches out to the Perth community to discover three things people love most about our coastal capital. Today we feature Anna Reece, who takes the reins as artistic director of Perth Festival from 2025-2028. Reece grew up in Fremantle and returned there to live in 2014, after a period in Sydney to attend the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art and a period in Darwin, where she was co-chief executive of Darwin Festival. She recently announced a stellar lineup for the 2025 Perth Festival, headed by British icon PJ Harvey.
Anna Reece, centre, with views from her walks.
I love the stretch of beach from Port Beach to Swanbourne. Though interstate visitors just see one straight stretch of coastline, Perth people all have their patch and each patch has a personality, a story and a community. I run and walk my dog along that stretch religiously, from that iconic Jeffrey Smart-style industrial port image of cranes and containers, north through each community: the dog-beachers, the surfers, the backpackers in their vans eating fish and chips or doing their washing in the car parks … and then you hit Cottesloe and see everyone looking beautiful and fit, and at sunset the lorikeets come into the Cottesloe trees and make that deafening sound; that whole walk is so full of WA character, history and community. During festival time, when people fly over for the festival, suddenly my Insta feed is flooded with Indian-Ocean blue, and I am reminded: yes, we live in this most incredible place.
A conti roll from the Re Store.
I love our conti rolls. I don’t like sandwiches – too many warm sweaty ham or dried-out peanut butter sandwiches in childhood, when we didn’t have fancy coolers or Frank Green water bottles! But conti rolls are a different story. Interfoods, near where I grew up in Fremantle, was one of those classic high street delis on the cappuccino strip. There, after school would be the nonnas behind the huge cabinets; it was kind of like Sizzler, but in an Italian deli. You would choose fillings and she would weigh it and give you this gigantic roll wrapped in paper with $6 written on it in marker. That was such a treat compared to those dehydrated brown-bread lunchbox sandwiches. Sadly, they’re not that prevalent any more, those corner delis, but now we have Little Loaf [Lunch Bar] in Freo and The Re Store [in Leederville and Northbridge] and also Galati & Sons, which lives on in Fremantle. They’re my favourite because they’re classics, not too complicated, not attempting to be bougie.
I love Astral Weeks. It is the most incredible tiny little bar tucked away behind Chinatown in the city, it’s a hi-fi listening bar modelled on one of those lounges from Tokyo. It’s got the most incredible hand-built Chinese sound system and it’s such a tiny capacity, only about 60 people, and you go in and they have this incredible bookshelf of vinyl. You can have a negroni or sake and there are some people socialising and others just reading a book. The quality of the sound and the intimacy of the space, make it a hidden gem in Perth for music lovers. You can go in at 10pm and there will be an amazing album playing and that commitment to listening to an album from cover to cover is precious and feels indulgent. You get to understand the journey of the full vinyl, what the artist is trying to tell you. It also recently opened this tiny secret restaurant, Ah Um; you get there through a sliding door and it fits just 25 people. The whole place is just this beautiful intimate space where you can treat yourself, kick back and listen to an album.
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