Boorloo/Perth with Emma Jackson

Perth, the capital of Western Australia, is the most geographically isolated capital city on earth, sitting on the time zone shared by two thirds of the world's population. It is one of the largest and least dense metropolises anywhere—closer to the urban populations of Indonesia and Malaysia than to the Eastern Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne. A paradoxical city, it is both bigger and smaller than it seems. Perth named itself the City of Light after it turned on its lights for astronaut John Glenn in 1962, and its connection to NASA continued when the Skylab space station crash-landed east of Perth in 1979.

In this episode, we are joined by Emma Jackson—an architect turned tapestry designer who studied in Western Australia and has spent years as a colleague at RMIT, where she carried out a series of projects under the title 'The Strange,' exploring the world of Western Australia's mining town urbanism and vast landscapes. Her fascination with geology has led her to design tapestries and textiles drawn from geological formations, and as a once-local and partial outsider to Perth, she brings a unique lens to the city.

Literary depictions of Perth—including Christos Tsiolkas's writing—frame it as a fragile, almost artificial place, where ancient landscapes and Indigenous histories challenge the city's sense of control and future ambitions. The ancient sand seeps through every crack, and the vast, unfathomable sky dwarfs human ambition. Emma explores how the natural environment strongly influences Perth's mining landscapes, geology, and urbanism—and what it means to build a city at the edge of the world.

SUP is hosted by Ian Nazareth, Graham Crist and Christine Phillips.  

This podcast is produced with support from the Alastair Swayn Foundation and the RMIT University School of Architecture & Urban Design.

We acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups on whose unceded Country we are recording this podcast.