Mandy Browne

(1956-)

Mandy Browne grew up living in the Australia Hotel and the Esplanade Hotel, in Fremantle, with her publican parents in the 1960s and 1970s. She became a member of the activist theatre group Desperate Measures and then a well-known artist in Fremantle in the 1980s.

Mandy Browne was born in Mt Lawley on the 25 October 1956. Her parents Tom Askin Browne (1922-1989) and Evelyn ‘Nora’ Wilkins (1924-1999) also had a also had their first daughter (Rhonda born 1948) and a son Mark (born 1962). Tom and Nora both served as Signalers during WW11 and they married in Maddington in 1948.

Evelyn ‘Nora’ Wilkins was born 24 April 1924 in Perth. You had to be 18 to join the Australian Women’s Army Corp (AWAS) and even though she was 18, Nora said she was 20 when she enlisted on 25 June 1942 (Service number W45655). She was sent to train in NSW with the 1st Australian Cypher Section Unit, a cypher and intelligence unit at Land Headquarters in Melbourne. Her next of kin- her father Maurice worked at Pearce Aerodrome WA, in 1943. From 1944 -1945 Nora worked at Balcombe Camp, Mount Martha, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria with the Australian Signals and Survey Corps. She became a Corporal in June 1945 and was discharged in February 1946.

Tom Askin Browne was born in Perth on the 31 March 1922 and when enlisting in December 1940, also altered his age by two years- saying he had been born in 1920. He served as a Private, Gunner with the 2nd/7th Field Regiment (service number WX10478) and in November 1941 studied Morse Code. Tom then served as a Signaler in the Middle East (Sept 1941- Feb 1943) and Morotai, Borneo for 8 months in 1945. He was discharged 8 Jan 1946.

 1948 KITCHEN TEA- On Saturday, May 29, friends and relatives of Miss Nora Wilkins, and Mr. Tom Browne (both of Kenwick - Maddington district) gathered at the Maddington Centenary Hall to honor them in the form of a Green and Cream kitchen tea. An evening of dancing was enjoyed by all. Arrangements for the evening were made by the Maddington Cricket Club with Reg Rose as organiser, and they provided the orchestra and dainty supper. The guests of honor received many useful gifts, including electrical appliances. With much ceremony, the cricketers presented Tom with an electric iron which they hoped he would use. (reference)

19 June 1948- Wedding- Maddington Church of England was the scene of a very pretty wedding last Saturday when Nora, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. M. S. Wilkins, of Kenwick, said ‘I will’ to Tom Browne, youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. G. H. Browne, of Maddington, captain of the Maddington football team and a keen cricketer. (reference)

After the war Tom worked as a Line Foreman with the PMG Department and was transferred to various country towns in WA including Kellerberrin and Bridgetown in 1954. He lost his discharge papers and in applying for a replacement said he wanted to apply for a War Service House, which the family received, and they moved to live in Wembley, not long after Mandy was born in October 1956.

In 1967 Tom and Nora Browne became publicans of the Australia Hotel in Fremantle (opposite the old shipping terminal) until c. 1974, when they took over the Esplanade Hotel, where Mandy lived during her last few years of high school, until 1977.

Mandy describes her life in these hotels:

“In the days of the Australia Hotel Fremantle was pretty rough; the Japanese tuna boat men would stroll by after months at sea with the most astonishing long wild hair. The English seamen would commandeer the Saloon Bar when they’d hit port and the American home porters would rock up- with some impressive action from one very strong and fierce African American who tried to bash the heavy wooden doors of the pub with one of those old concrete bus seats because he was pissed off that the pub had closed. I know this because I was with a school friend that night, as we would often hang out in the decrepit old function room, smoking butts, while our parents drank the nights away in the bar.

One other memory was that the blokes in the Woolstores on Cantonment st would dangle themselves out of the windows with long tongues; wolf whistling as the 11 year old me walked down the road to buy Barbie Doll Clothes at Boans (now Target). So it was rough as guts… sleazy detectives from the local cop shop drank in the bar after hours… and corruption was rife.

My parents as publicans cut seriously loose. My father had affairs with the Barmaids and my mother with the Boarders (2 floors of them upstairs). Nights were often spent at the Tarantella Nightclub, off high street near Cleo’s… it was apparently a dive; seedy, louche and violent.

Mum also apparently ran a brothel at the pub, on the side, while Little Beryl the housemaid (also a kind of nursemaid to my brother and I and who was a dead ringer for Granny from the Beverley Hillbillies) would change the bed linen after every punter. The wharfies from over the road would ring mum up at night because they could see her getting undressed… she’d tell them, with erotic relish, to fuck off. The smell of sex must have swirled around the upstairs rooms. I remember being woken in the middle of the night by a boarder. My room was on the top floor above my family and right at the end of the hall. I would have been 12. The bloke had one helluva mullet and spoke to me through the half open door, luckily on a chain. He reckoned my mother had asked him to come and see me. Naive as I was I smelt a rat and shut the door on him. I’m not entirely sure what my parents thought about that incident.

The first year we moved in was quite incredible. In a way it was so very freeing from the life we had in that stiflingly small, suburban house. I would go on Saturdays, on my own, to watch movies at the old Princess Cinema on Market St.

My brother who was 6 years younger would play ‘Juke Box’- he would sit in a large cardboard box placed in the courtyard between the Saloon Bar and the Men’s Toilets, and blokes would slip a coin into a slot in the box, on their way to the Men’s, while Mark played my Monkees records on a portable record player all the while doing DJ schtick. He was very good at it.

Both my brother and I went to East Fremantle Primary School. I was in grade 7 while Mark was in Grade 1. I remember a woman teacher, Grace Hayward, who recognised something in my abilities and insisted I apply for a place at Applecross High School’s Special Arts Programme. 

My first experience of going to Applecross High School was naively wearing gloves and hat as part of the seriously daggy school uniform… I tossed them off pretty quick. Applecross art programme harboured kids from different suburbs and friendships were made that have lasted decades. It was a fertile ground for this working class kid who came from a much rougher part of the world.

On weekends and holidays I would walk from the pub to Cottesloe Beach. Punters from the pub would see me walking along the coastline path and heckle me about getting thick thighs from walking! I scored a job at the kiosk and made friends there. My teenage years were spent in wildly different and segregated pockets… arty middle class school friends who were heading towards the Gothic; male and female kids, older than me at Cottesloe, who were downbeat and savvy about life… some had cars, nights were spent at the Speedway or in pubs… and life in my family’s pub.

Once I was caught at the Cottesloe pub drinking a lemonade. The Detective pinked his finger at me and when I got up and told him my name he looked at me and said “You’re not Brownie’s daughter?” I argued the case but still got sent to sit in some non-drinking area. It was an oddly solitary existence. Art was a very useful way to stay intact.

In my years of pub life I’d only ever seen the wharf, the Woolstores and shops down Adelaide St, spaces that were scary and lascivious. But occasionally my parents would take us to eat at the Roma where we would eat chicken and spaghetti. I was allowed to have a glass of cold claret as a pre-teenager. This felt very different and welcoming against the more bogan element I walked amongst.

The Esplanade was a very different experience… my mother had moved my brother and I to a spec home in Booragoon which proved to be utterly abject. Visits to the pub weren’t often, though my mother still worked in the kitchen for Lions Club events. Not only was I growing up but Fremantle was changing. The day I turned 17 I got my drivers license from the traffic cop shop over the road from the Esplanade, which only a few years later became a restaurant to be followed by Rajneesh Apartments

My father left the Esplanade Hotel around 1977 and he and my mother went their separate ways. I left home as soon as I could. After a few years of meandering I returned to a very different Fremantle. It was friendly and communal with a good mix of Italian business people and a rag tag influx of artistic spirit. “

Mandy finished high school in 1973 and started Fine Arts at the West Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT) in 1974, finishing in 1976. Printmaking, especially etchings became her first love. After participating in group exhibitions and doing a bit of teaching, the lure of Performance arrived, as Agitprop theatre came to Fremantle in the form of Desperate Measures Theatre Company (1977 - 1982).

Mandy performed in Desperate Measures from 1978 - 1980 and also painted props and designed posters for the plays they performed.

She was first involved in a production that addressed the Liberal Government’s threat to close the Fremantle to Perth Railway Line (1978). The camaraderie of the group continued on with the help of funding from the Australia Council and they had ‘immense fun and energy’ creating political protest shows.

Mandy was in Don’t Panic This is Your Half Life Uranium Show in 1979 with other Desperate Measures actors: Brian Peddie, Celia White, Jansis O’Hanlon, Annie Robinson, Patsy Molloy, and Mandy Smith. It was Directed by Pam Nilan. She also produced a pack of educational materials which Desperate Measures used in ‘Park activity days’ and acted and co-wrote shows for Theatre in Education; performing in high schools around the state.

Mandy also had solo exhibitions of drawings and paintings at this time. In 1976 she won the TVW 7 Young Artist’s Award for Painting and Printmaking Her work was chosen for the 1977 Fremantle Print Award and the Fremantle Art Collection acquired a few of her works including the iconic 1988 painting ‘Perving in a multicultural society,’ (oil on canvas 120 x 210 cm). In 1981 she provided drawings for Elizabeth Jolley’s novel The Newspaper of Claremont St, published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press and in 1983 she was chosen to create the prestigious 1983 Festival of Perth Poster. 

In 1986 Mandy produced an iconic graphic of an octopus for the Anti- Anchorage campaign, organised by Community Action for Rational Development (CARD) (1985-87), in a protest against a proposed huge resort development between the bridges in North Fremantle. The image was reproduced in ‘Fighting for Fremantle, the Fremantle Society story’, by Ron and Dianne Davidson, Fremantle Press 2010, pp 86-87.

Mandy also produced artwork for the first Fremantle Festival poster in 1988 and she was also awarded winner of a trip to Paris with a controversial painting of her mother.

In the early 1990’s she moved to Melbourne where she exhibited paintings and drawings in several venues also being part of an improvisational Dance Group at Carlton’s Dance House with Sylvia Staehli, and a separate Body Voice group in Footscray with Helen Sharpe, that worked with sound and movement as it brought to life Negro Spiritual songs called ‘the Death Project’. Her last solo exhibition was at Dance House in North Carlton where she wrote and performed in a series of soliloquies called Fat Love.

In 1998, Mandy drove home to WA from Melbourne and 22 years after graduating from WAIT, enrolled in Honours at Curtin University.

“To be brutally honest that year killed any love I had for the art scene and exhibiting. In contrast to the camaraderie, courage and strong sense of safety in the deep exploration of creative expression I’d been part of in Melbourne I was overwhelmed by the unboundaried nature of the art programme. It felt as if I’d been caught in a time warp with the same people who had taught me decades before. I felt alienated, unsafe and outside of myself.”

However the Honours degree enabled Mandy to get into Art Therapy Masters at ECU, which she found productive. One of her final year placements with 11 year old kids at Merriwa gave her the taste for psychotherapeutic work and steered her towards training in Analytic Psychotherapy. She worked in her own practice, and lectured in the Counselling Program at Murdoch University until retiring in 2020.

“Analysis is to me a lot like the experience of painting. Each session with a person is a blank slate that unfolds through a process of mutual relationship. At its best it’s a safe and boundaries space of creative and intimate understanding of another where both entities experience something unexpected and rich.”

‘I now live in a semi remote part of marginal farming land in the South Coast region affectionately known as Pig Sticker County. I occasionally knock up a painting or a drawing... ‘just for myself’.

Researched and written by Jo Darbyshire with correspondence and photos supplied courtesy Mandy Browne 2024.

For another story about the Australia Hotel go to this link