When I was 11, Mum and I moved into a duplex in Graylands. In 1978, the posh people of Claremont liked to call Graylands ‘the wrong side of the tracks.’

It was hemmed in between bushland and the railway line at Karrakatta. My nearest park was the cemetery. But it was the maximum security mental hospital that gave Graylands its ignominious reputation.

In those unenlightened days, Mrs Watson, who lived in the front duplex next door, would refer to the hospital in hushed tones as the “lunatic asylum.” Mr Wheeler, the Vietnam War vet from two doors down, liked to spook me by pointing out some bloke swaying up our street towards the corner bottle shop. “Reckon he’s escaped from the loony bin?” he’d whisper.