This piece is a follow up to our previous Urban Mansion article. 

By this stage it’s 1AM, and having patrolled the property from the back, we decided it was now time to enter the house proper; Not that it is a proper house, it’s dilapidated roof, windowless holes in the wall and lack of doors sends a clear message that it’s been a while since Christmas was celebrated over by the now destroyed staircase.

Now the domain of bogans looking to do sick burnouts and junkies looking to do sick meth, it’s a haunting place, and just thinking about the amount of people who have destroyed their lives through addiction in these walls makes the mind boggle. However this negativity is balanced by another aspect, damn, there’s some awesome art around the place, far more than the original owners would have had hanging about anyway.

Back to the back door; We enter timidly, unsure if the house is empty, and after scaring ourselves with chit chat on the walk over (it was a storm, yo) we are more than sure we are going to encounter something here. Upon entering it was empty to the best of our knowledge and so we had the run of the place so to speak. The first thing you notice is the faces. Faces everywhere, faces, faces everywhere. I supposed aloud that these could be junkie portraits, each one more insane than the next, showing the progression of getting high. Ranging from comic style through to full on insane face terror they were the most prevalent constant theme of graffiti hanging around, that and the mantra “Smoke Meth, Hail Satan” which makes the spine tingle, does it not?

All these tangents I’m getting stuck on.

So the house is pretty much, in my (almost) professional opinion one big breeze away from being rubble, and exploring this dwelling was incredible. We walked through what would have been a huge open plan living area through to a small basement area, devoted to Satan culminating in the terrifyingly named ‘Corner of Rape’, we left that area pretty quick smart. From there we discovered the many parts of the house and quickly figured out it used to be FUCKING HUGE.

It is amazing to see a place in such ruin, and the graffiti around the place is the definite standout. It's obvious a lot of Perth based artists have spent a lot of time in these walls, and I was glad to see that not too much had been all fucked up by others who prefer to scribble over with stupid shit. Most of the imagery around the place was pretty darn scary, reflecting the place itself through the paintings on the wall.

There was one particularly fun two storey section, something of an outhouse, in which, for the most part, the second floor had been burnt out all but a few little areas of beam. Through the staircase window the view of the whole front of the house, completely and utterly destroyed and open, was fantastic. Other sections in the house proper where the second storey floor was intact were fun to explore, evoking visions of being a child in one of those huge ‘FunStation’ facilities, except a little more gritty. A little cleaner perhaps.

With intermittent stormy weather, and the clock nearing the way-too-terrifying-time of 3AM (international time of satan in horror movies) we exited the house, going back past the back of the shed, disturbingly finding some clothes, and headed back to the safety of the car. Or that’s what we thought, a little scream emanated from inside the car somewhere. No joke. It sounded like a stuck dying cat or something.

So please enjoy the following album, we got some great photos of the place, especially considering the midnight-ness of the trip.  

 Credit where credit is due, spot the artists?