The pinball network is online launching the Aussie pinball podcast Hello and welcome to this fortnight's episode of the Aussie Pinball Podcast. Music Welcoming us to this episode is Midnight Oil with their ode to asbestos mining in Australia, Blue Sky Mine. Music In a lower dark history, I picked a mining song to celebrate WA's main export, the mining industry. And joining us from all the way over in Western Australia is Anthony Cirillo. I first met Anthony overseas, which we'll discuss, as a tournament player who's rather new to the tournament scene, but actually brilliant player. In this episode, we find out all about West Australia, its charms and its foibles and its dangers. And we also hear from Anthony about one of his favourite pinball competitors, that being Mr Steven Bowden. I recorded this episode prior to the Brisbane Masters where Anthony popped over to see how it would go against Australia and the world's best and ended up facing off with Steve in the final two players in a series of best of five games for the Brisbane Masters title which is Australia's largest pinball tournament Anthony put up a great showing, just losing to Steve three games to two but cemented himself as one of Australia's top players. On to find out more about his history with pinball, what made him get into tournaments, what his current interests are and I hope you enjoy the listen as we have a chat. And this week's Aussie Pinball episode, we are moving all the way across Australia to a place I've only visited a couple of times so I don't know much about and I need education and that place is West Australia, in particular Perth and joining me is Anthony who is a sand groper I think we would call him would that be right Anthony? Yeah Dr John yeah thanks for having me yeah that is the term for Western Australians is a sand groper. And we'll use this episode for all the east coast inhabitants who don't get over there so those overseas who aren't aware what's the flying time from Sydney to Perth? There's a predominant wind actually so going from Perth to Sydney is about three and a half to four hours and coming back from Sydney to Perth is closer to four and a half hours so yeah it's actually longer one way than the other. Because you're going downhill one way aren't you? That's right yeah the wind blows you now the wind blows from west to east across Australia. So the funny thing with our map is always crooked Perth is actually more north than Sydney isn't it? That is true, yeah. They tend to turn Australia to make it look a bit more symmetrical, but the reality is Perth is, yeah, it's actually just north of Newcastle if you were to have it in New South Wales. On the actual lines of latitude. About 32 degrees south. It's like when you look at maps of America. They always stick Alaska down near Hawaii or something. They do weird stuff with cartography. It's strange. So you bought and bred in Perth, is that right? No, I'm actually from a country town about an hour and a half south of Perth called Woroona. It's a very small town. Yeah, so I grew up down that way and spent a lot of time in Mandurah, which is another bigger town that's about an hour south of Perth, and then moved to Perth when I started university. Okay. Rural West Australia. Now, you talk about parts of the East Coast not being populated. What have you got in Perth? You've got Fremantle? Yeah, Fremantle. And Broome. Then a whole lot of Aboriginal names in between. Yeah, well, Perth to Broome is a long way. that's about 2,400 Ks, so about 1,500 miles for the Americans. It's about a two-and-a-half-hour flight, and you don't even cross the state border. So that's something I actually like to tell Americans, especially people from Texas, because, you know, they like to talk about Texas and how big it is and stuff. And, yeah, Western Australia is actually the biggest state in the world. So, yeah, it's about four times the size of Texas. Ha-ha, suck on them eggs. Yeah, if you see on the map, it's about a third of Australia. So it's pretty much the Western third and the border is just one big straight line across the continent. And what percentage is desert? 80, 85, maybe more. And except for that small jewel down the bottom left, that is Margaret River. Yeah, there's like the Southwest corner is pretty green. There's a lot of forest down that way. And in the North Kimberley region, that's quite green as well because it's tropical and there's a lot of cyclone rainfall and stuff up there. So, yeah, you've got, like, one green bit in summer at the top and a green bit in winter at the bottom. I made the mistake of not understanding the distances in WA. I was there at a conference about four years ago with a visiting English doctor who said, I want to go to Margaret River. We said, why don't we go down there for lunch? We'll have a long lunch and then come back to the conference. So we ordered a cab You're laughing already We ordered a cab from the middle of Perth And said take the three of us down to Market River Lunch And he looked and said Okay This is going to be a good day $180 down And it was about $240 coming back Because it was big out Whoa, the nips are getting bigger. Yeah, that's probably not the smartest thing to do is to go to Margaret River for lunch. I suppose you actually went through with it once you worked out how far it was. We didn't know. Did we just get looking at the meter going, what have we done? Yeah, I think it's about three hours or maybe a bit less to Margaret River. So, yeah, it's a long way. Yeah, for sure. But some of the best wines outside South Australia, I'd have to say. Yeah, I actually did find that when I was in Adelaide not that long ago, a couple of years ago, that there were some really good wineries in Adelaide. We are quite proud of our wineries down in the southwest. But yeah, Adelaide has some fantastic wineries. So, Pinball, you lived in rural WA. Did you have a chance to play it as you were growing up? Yeah, I grew up around Pinballs, John. So my father has been an operator for 46 years. So one of the longest kind of independent operators in WA, at least for sure. He was doing it for about 10 years before I was born. How and why? Where did he get pinball machines from? So his story was when he started, he opened up a pizza and burger shop on the highway in Maroona. I would like to buy a hamburger. I would like to buy a hamburger. I would like to buy a hamburger. I would like to buy a hamburger. Just like a takeaway, like a late night thing with his sisters, my two aunties, when they all finished school. There was an operator who came and saw that the place was busy and, you know, there's a lot of pizzas and burgers coming out. And he said, oh, I'll put a pinball machine in here. And, you know, they thought it was a good idea and stuff. And then I think the story went that he was initially giving them 50% of the take. and then he tried to push that down and he kept trying to push it down further and I think it got to a point where the old man thought, maybe I should give this a try myself. And what year was this? I may have missed it. What year was this? That was 1976. So he went and bought his first couple of pins. I think they were, he was right on that cusp. Like when he was first operating games, there were still EMs, but the electronics were just coming in. So I think he was saying that one of his first was a Wizard and he put that in the shop. I think he had a couple at home before that, but that was the first one that he really put out to be a purely moneymaker on site or on location. And then, yeah, he kind of just went from there. Once he had that one in his own shop, then he started putting them in surrounding towns. So there's other towns in the area like Pinjarra and Harvey and working his way kind of through that southwest and up to Perth kind of area. And, yeah, it was like by the time I came along, my brother and I, so I've got an older brother. he's like the technical expert i'm more the play tester by the time we were old enough to come on long road trips and that we'd go with the old man and do his long drives through the country and do the collections and repairs and all that kind of stuff so that was we're talking about late 80s early 90s kind of thing so went from there and then we've been working on playing fixing whatever restoring pinballs since we're old enough to know what one was right and was he buying these new in box or was he by the second hand from elsewhere in australia uh no he's i think the first first ones he got i think were second hand from other larger arcades in perth and he kind of drove up to the city and and buy them and then come back down to waroona and that and work on them in the shed and stuff and and get them kind of fixed up if they weren't in the best condition but he i think he got his first one he bought from perth from strong beckers which was a big arcade back in the day in barrack street in the city in perth and then i think from there he got involved with lai if you want to leisure and allied industries yeah they had a they had like an office and workshop in northbridge in perth and he was buying all the games from there that's kind of when he really got into the new and box kind of phase but yeah i think i think early on he was just kind of grabbing what he could and fixing them up because he always liked to actually work on it himself and and get them right and then put them out so is this a full-time job for him or was it a hobby no he's the kind of person who has a lot of energy and he actually worked a full-time job he was a shift worker at an alumina plant the bauxite refinery which is kind of the main industry in our town he grew up on a farm but by the time he was an adult it had kind of taken over and the town had like a large refinery there and most of the people went from farmers to working there so yeah he worked there for a very long time over there for about 26 years i think shift work and in between shifts on his days off he did his you know arcade business and then yeah he kind of got to a point when i was a teenager that he thought you know i'll be doing this long enough and i don't really want to keep doing the other jobs so he gave that up and retired and for about the last 20 years he's been just doing so as you branched into kiddie gambling machines um no redemption was never really that big for us we had some games like your stackers and your winner every time and those kind of games but not like the full-blown you know like ticket machines and stuff like that it was more just you know stuff that you could win win some prizes he wasn't really big on skill testers like claw games and that maybe in the early days he had a couple but kind of moved away from that he's been more about the actual arcade machine so he had a lot of drivers and stuff he was buying Daytona new you know I remember when I was I think I was like eight years old on the driveway in that carport it was like a brand new Daytona twin driving game that costs like I don know I think back then they were about 35 40 grand or whatever they cost it was a crazy amount of money for the early to mid 90s every kid in the neighborhood was kind of running down the street to come to our house and and um yeah play the Daytona not even knew what it was because obviously kids in small country towns don't really go up to time zone and big arcades in Perth that often so hey brandy the kids just got a new playhouse cletus you are the most wonderful husband and son i ever had yeah it was a real um real treat so yeah he's had a lot of that stuff you know shooting games all the other different arcades but his passion and my passion and my brother's passion we're all kind of pinball mad that's that's kind of like the labor of love They don't make the money that they used to make. Everyone kind of knows that. Yeah, that's just what we enjoy doing more. Cool. So have you still got games at home with you and your new family? Yeah, I do. I've got a few here. I've got eight in the shed at the moment. Actually, I can see the CV behind you. I've got a Circus Voltaire in the shed. There's a Monsters LE in there. I've got Doctor Who, a Flash Gordon, Star Trek Next Generation, Twilight Zone that plays really well that I really enjoy playing. You're not a wide-body racist like a lot of pinballers? No, I don't really have a problem with wide bodies. I think some of them are really good games. I think, well, especially Twilight Zone and Star Trek, I think they're fantastic games. I do enjoy playing Roadshow. That's a bit of fun. The scene in Perth, not having got over there for pinball, only over there for conferences, is there a competition scene? Do you visit each other's houses often? What's the go? Are there barcades? We do have the occasional social kind of catch-up or like a not-so-serious competition at someone's house on their collection, but we don't do that very often. It's kind of someone, you know, offers it up. But we've set up like an association called WA Pinball in the last couple of years. That's on Facebook, characterised by our black swan, which is like the WA bird. Yeah, we run comps in a couple of different venues. So we've got a venue where we have about, I think at the moment there's about 30 pinball machines in Northbridge. So that's called Planet Royale, and the Arcadia section is called Barcadia. So everyone just in the pinball kind of community knows it as Barcadia. Yeah, we do competitions there once or twice a month. I'd like to do them more often, but it's a bit of a challenge at the moment. And we've got other competitions that are run by another guy named Roy. He's got about, I think, about a dozen pinballs at another location, at a virtual reality centre in Northbridge. Yeah, he has comps here once a month as well. and those are the two main locations where we have competitions but we're you know we're trying with WA Pinball we're trying to get more people involved and we're trying to get other locations to kind of volunteer their games or or if they've got games that are at the competition you know standard that can be played and not have too many complaints you know that's what we're trying to get involved. If you run a pinball competition you are going to get complaints. Hello, a wish to register incomplete hello miss what do you mean miss oh i'm sorry i overcooled yes yeah that is true and sometimes it's just the game's too hard the game's too easy this switch doesn't work um when you know and then you go and you hit the switch and it works but you know there's a lot of that kind of stuff that goes on but yeah when you've got when you've got quite a few like we do at barcadia you can always just like you know deactivate one and chuck something else in on the facebook group for pinball os wide and sell there seems to be a roaring trade and people buying and selling games in the Perth area? Is there a large collector base there? Yeah, it seems like there's a lot of dormant collectors that have games at home who either didn't know each other or somehow are now connecting a bit more. I don't know if it's because of the competitions or because of those Facebook pages, but yeah, there's a lot of people who are bopping games that aren't even advertised, so they'll just talk to each other at different events and stuff and they'll do deals. And then, yeah, on Facebook, there's a lot that are kind of being bought and sold. But like WA, for people that don't know, WA has like a large mining industry. And there are a lot of people that have a lot of disposable income, you know, and people that work away. And when they get home, they want to get back to their house and have their, you know, collection or their man cave. And some people into cars and some people into other things. And the ones that are into pinball, that's what they do. Do you get across the East Coast much? Yeah, I do. Obviously, the last couple of years have been a bit tougher, but, yeah, previously I would. Mainly for just, you know, events or sports or other things like that, not so much for pinball. I'm pretty new to the competitive scene. I didn't even know it was really a thing until only a few years ago. And I remember a few years ago when Neil McRae from Robert Englunds came up and punched me again because there's a competition at the big events. Whoever travels the furthest gets a prize. And whenever I go and Neil goes, Neil gets upset at me. because I'm further than Robert Englunds, and I thought, well, I've got this wrapped up, until a young woolly boy from Perth turns up to Indisc out of the blue and says hello. What made you come all the way over to Indisc when you weren't really aware of competitions? So I'd only been playing in competitions for a few months before that. So I kind of started around August, I think it was, in 2019, and that Indisc was in January 20. 2020. Yeah. I went over, what kind of led up to that was I went over for Marty's competition, comp the silver ball in melbourne i think that was in the october in your 19 so i just kind of discovered this world of competitive pinball thought this is great you know it's something that i'm really into and i didn't realize that so many other people that actually play this competitively and you know that can only be you know more fun the more challenging that you you find the competition so i went over to melbourne silver ball and i really enjoyed it i took the old man to that and um enjoyed the kind of show side of it as well there were a lot of games there that were just, you know, being displayed and people could play and obviously the competition was happening. I wasn't aware of at this point that, you know, larger competitions do tend to go for a long time. So it was funny because I actually booked our flights back to Perth on the Sunday night when the finals were on. And that's a huge mistake, as you know. So I haven't done that again. Yeah, I didn't end up making it. I got to like the quarterfinals, I think, of that one, the Melbourne Silver Bowl. And that was like the first big competition I went to. luckily I did bomb out because if I had gotten to the semifinals I would have had to like push our flight back or something so after that I had a bit of a taste and I thought oh you know you know it'd be really cool um I had some time off work as well I thought it'd be really cool to go over to one of the bigger ones in America and I found out about Indies and I've been watching a few YouTube videos because you know Carl and I are really good at recording and all their streaming that's really high quality so I thought oh you know Indies sounds great and the old man have been telling me for years about a place in California that had you know hundreds of games in this small town you know inland from LA so I thought oh you know you know I'll go check that out that that can only be good fun so yeah it was kind of like a last minute thing booked flights I think a week before and then just jumped over there and I thought oh yeah I can you know I can do this I can go and play against the world's best players you know what could go wrong well yeah so it was just kind of like a learning experience um I really wanted to see the actual museum itself I'm glad I went now since it's closed. Because it ain't no more. But you can be modest. You only played for a couple of months, and then you decided to go in the high stakes, which is, what, $50 an entry? Yeah, so they do something at Indisc where it's like $50 a card for high stakes. And I think the main comp, the open, is like $20 a card. But there was a thing where you pay $100 and you get, I think, like $120, $130 worth of cards across the classics, the main and the high stakes. So I thought, oh, I'll just do that. And I ended up going through quite a few cards for the main, and I wasn't really getting anywhere. I wasn't used to the card format. I'd never done it before. And I just kept finding, as a lot of people do, that, you know, you have a few go-to games that you feel good on, and I'd get three or four on the card that are really good scores, and then, like, one or two of them would destroy the card for me. So this happened for days, you know, and the cut line kept getting, you know the scores getting better and better as they go and so I got like I think right at the end of qualifying for the high stakes I thought I'm just gonna I've got a card here you know I'm gonna give up on the open I'm just gonna chuck in a card for the high stakes and see how I go and I think it was that attitude of not really caring so much anymore because I was really nervous and um you know the pressure of the competition and stuff and and you just keep trying to play the same games over and over and I think the change helped so I walked over to the high stakes bank and i just i think it was like nearly midnight and they were closing for that night and it was on the the last night before the finals and i just put in a couple of scores and i got really good scores and a couple of the machines in the high stakes uh bank and remember there's only seven machines and the card was four so you know you have to play four out of the seven um and i got two good scores and then the next day when i came in in the morning because the indisc it goes for like 14 hours a day i came in and i managed to get a couple of like decent scores on the other two machines as well and i think i qualified ninth so and they got more people in the high stakes than what they were thinking they were going to so i think initially they were expecting the finals to be eight or twelve people or something like that but they end up being 16 so once i got my card in at ninth i thought gee i might actually i might actually make this so um yeah i ended up qualifying ninth and getting into the finals how'd you go first round first round so uh finishing ninth so it was one eight nine sixteen was my group play number one yeah and number one was augustine yes trump yes number eight was johnny modica oh dear um so he i played so in the lead up this is probably going back a couple of days but in the lead up to in this i actually landed on a tuesday i think it was and i literally got a hire car i'd just flown close to 24 hours to get to LA because I flew through your neck of the woods I flew through Brisbane so I was nearly five hours to Brisbane and then I was at the airport there for a couple of hours and then it was what is it 12 13 hours to LA so I'm completely erect and I left on a Tuesday morning and I got to LA on a Tuesday night because of the time difference and that yeah I got in a hire car drove three hours in LA traffic to Riverside it's about one kilometer yeah yeah that's right it wasn't that far um it was not that far at all i thought gee this la traffic is definitely not what i'm used to in perth and then i got to riverside there's a place called riverside game lab which is a cool place got a mix of pinballs and arcades and stuff and i just rocked up there because i heard that there was like a lead-up tournament and i thought if i can make it i'll get there i think i got there 15 minutes before they closed entries to the tournament after driving three hours and flying for nearly you know nearly 24 hours or whatever it was so I'm pretty wrecked at this point I think I just I thought I'll just give it a go and that and the funny part was was that it was a flip frenzy and it was like a top four finals and I made the finals of that I think I qualified I think it was like second or something but and I surprised myself but then Johnny was in my group so it was kind of ironic that then when I got into the high stakes finals in disc I played Johnny again but by then I'd been having a few chats with him and you know getting to know the rules a lot of games that I didn't really know I didn't realize how many games are used in those competitions in america that we don't have in perth or in other parts of australia because we do get a lot of the same here um with the older games but yeah so then johnny was in my group again at indisc i thought oh here we go so then when i got into that group at indisc it was trent and johnny and jim belsito yes so he i think he scraped in and finished 16th and i heard about him i thought gee he a good player and i think some of the games in the high bank were actually his Yeah nearly all of them were his yeah Yeah so then we played the first game and it was actually one of the ones that I played in my card, and it was Stargazer, Stern Stargazer. And I like the older games. I guess that comes from playing a lot of older games when I was little. Yeah, I just had a really cracking game, and, yeah, I think that was one of Jim's games, and I think the score, I think it was about 3 million, which was it was the highest score of the weekend i'm pretty sure that whole weekend in this and it was a good time to do it too i think about two million and one ball and i thought yeah this is not bad i'm going okay here so i picked up uh picked up the four points there and then obviously trent was he was choosing the games i think the next two games were the two that i hadn't played and yeah so then that was another lesson i learned in this so there was the card lesson and then And there was the play every game in the bank. Because Indies is not like other tournaments where I think you get practice. It's literally, there was no like 30-second practice before you play. It was just you walk up and you plunge and you go. Yeah, I played, I think, High Roller Casino, which is like an early 2000s stern from memory. And I don't think we ever owned one of those. So I don't think I ever played one literally ever in my life. So I played that and did not do well at all. And then the next one was a Grand Lizard. Oh, the old Grand Lizard. It's a System 11, I think. Yeah, with the play field and the drops up the top. Yep. Yeah, keep it up the top or else you're dead type thing. Played that and did not do well on that either. So I ended up going first, fourth, fourth and got knocked down. So it was 4-0-0 points. Still a great experience. And playing with those guys, it's great to watch and appreciate just how skillful they are. Oh, amazing players and learning a lot of skills that, yeah, I didn't have at that time. Definitely some good lessons there. I came 11th and then I think looking back on it, I think the top 10, I think every player in the top 10 was in the top 50. So I thought, gee, that's a pretty good effort. That's a very good effort. I'm telling you. And are you coming over for the Brisbane Masters? I am. I am. I've managed to get some flights, get a hall pass to go. So you're going to face the world number one who's coming over, of course, Escher Lefkoff. We've got him coming back, so you'll get to play him and see There you go against him. We all enjoy a good game against Escher. I heard that, I think it was Escher and Colin Urban came over a couple of years ago for Brisbane and really dominated. They took home every first and second, apart from one flip frenzy that PJ won. But they took home all the prize money otherwise. They just kept battling it out who was coming first and who was coming second. And, of course, we had Bo and Keren here who took third. Oh, wow. Just in case. So this year we've got, we have got Colin. and we've got Esha and we've got Steven Bowden coming over. So that'll probably be first and second wrapped up in all the comps again. Yeah, I really enjoy Stephen at the major competitions because I really love his commentary. I think he's so – his knowledge of the rules is fantastic, and he explains the games in a way that I think anyone can understand. So I really do – when I'm watching, for example, the recent world championships and stuff, he was on the stream for a while talking. I really enjoy it when he gets on there. So I'll probably pick his brain in Brisbane a bit. And they're always willing to share. They're very good. They're very good sharing knowledge of the games, especially if you haven't played them before. Yeah, the top players generally are, in my experience. That's why I brought up Johnny Modica. He was very helpful. I'd just won a game on Stargazer. We're in the high-stakes finals. It's kind of everybody's really competitive and wants to win, but I'm standing in front of High Roller Casino saying, hey, Johnny, what do I do? And he was actually telling me, you know, you've got to do this and you've got to do that. So, yeah, I really appreciated that. I think that's really good for the competitive community that people have that attitude. Tell us a little bit more about your tastes in life, especially being way over there in an almost foreign country in WA. What's the music scene like? What's your favourite music? I'm a bit of an older music kind of person. So I think from an Australian point of view, you know, the hometown heroes over here are definitely ACDC. They're a Western Australian band. Yeah, they're very popular here, especially being from down near Fremantle and that. So I do like ACDC. I also like Cold Chisel, which is another band that you'd know from the 80s, and Hoodoo Gurus and You Might All, and these kind of... We haven't had a Hoodoo Gurus call yet, so I get to slip some Hoodoo Gurus music in. I'm a man of many, many times. Oh, nice. I particularly enjoy it. You're a relatively young guy. What year were you born? 1986. You're naming all the bands from my era. I was born well before that. Anything new over there? Yeah, there's some new bands. There's Birds of Tokyo. Pretty popular. there's also from a kind of a psychedelic kind of feel there's a band called Tame and Parlor and they do psychedelic slash electronic kind of stuff they're very popular, they're from over here Eskimo Joe were pretty popular in the early 2000s and Pendulum, so people that like drum and bass and that kind of stuff Pendulum I think are pretty well-known globally in FN Perth as well. Aussie movies. What's your favourite memorable Aussie movie that you've seen? Well, I'm trying to stick with the WA kind of theme here because I know, you know, a lot of people on the East Coast, you know, don't really pay attention to what happens in WA so much. But, you know, besides yourself, John. But, no, one of probably the biggest actors that come out of WA is Heath Ledger. And he says, why so serious? He comes at me with the knife. Why so serious? He sticks the blade in my mouth. Let's put a smile on that face. There was a movie that he did, I think it was just before he got his big break in the US, and it was called Two Hands. Go! Was that you on that bank's down job today? Didn't know you could handle yourself so well. I've got a lot of work coming up. I could use another set of hands. Well, I did see a chick called Sharon. She's off a big pile of cash. Yeah, I'm known two ways about this. If you don't find the 10 grand, he'll kill you. What's happened, Jimmy? One of the new guys. First day on the job and he rips me off 10 grand. I think this was from about 99. It was basically, I think he's in King's Cross and he's working at a nightclub. I think he's on the door or something. and then he gets, somehow he needs money and he gets involved with a big crime boss out there. I think it was Brian Brown who plays, he's a very well-known Australian actor. You know, how many movies he's been in. And then he kind of gets in trouble with the crime boss. I think he loses his car or something. I think he loses their money. Yeah, he loses their money and then there's something to do with a car as well. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I just remember the movie having a lot of really classic Australian cars. A lot of good Fords and Holdens in the movie as well. a lot of like 70s cars 80s cars and stuff which is pretty cool and then like yeah his girlfriend gets in trouble he has to try and save her i think they kidnap her or something like that it was almost a bit like uh lock stock or yeah sort of gangster theme tough gritty movies yeah and the storylines of different characters kind of intertwining and all coming together yeah it's a bit like that yeah especially at the end of the movie um no spoilers no no spoilers but it is definitely like those kind of films where everything kind of comes together and the characters cross paths. I think Rose Byrne is in it too. I think that's the girlfriend. The love interest. Yes. That's cool. That's not a movie that's come up before. So that's good. What's your favourite holiday spot when you have to get away from the big smoke of the southeast or Perth in particular? Yeah, I mean, you named it before. I think anywhere down the southwest is very beautiful. You know, you've got Dunsborough and Margaret River and Busselton and that kind of area yelling up. There's a lot of beautiful coastal towns down there and some excellent beaches. Not that we're short of beaches in Perth. We've got some amazing beaches in Perth. You've got some things that like to nibble you off the beaches in Perth when you surf as well. Yes, yeah. WA tends to have every... Australia's got a reputation for things that can kill you, but I think WA's probably got nearly all of them. The great white sharks, yeah, they're pretty prominent off the coast of WA, and jellyfish and stuff like that, and then we've got all kinds of snakes and everything, but... One thing I know about Aussies, Aussies don't give a shit about stuff. Aussies are so understated, like a volcano could erupt in the middle of Queen Street and someone would go, it's a bit hot. The day after 9-11, I'm in the plane right, there was a storm and lightning hit the plane. I don't know if you've ever experienced that. It doesn't do anything to the plane but it makes a massive bang. Sounds exactly like a bomb. We're on the plane, we all hear this everybody just went oh I look out the wings on fire the bloke next me looks at the wing looks at me and goes that doesn't look good you reckon wings on fire it's pretty shit in my books I mean of all the things you don't want to be on fire wings will be number one captain's face number two you're getting back to the holidays uh esperance is beautiful as well but i think my favorite would have to be coral bay which i'm not sure if you know where that is but it's about it's about 1100 k's north of perth and it's it's where like the ningaloo reef is being from queensland you know you guys have a slightly bigger reef but um the ningaloo reef is beautiful and there's a lot of wildlife there and the beaches are stunning and coral bay is kind of one of those holiday towns that's it's like a one street town so if you want to just go there and relax you know stay in the caravan park or or whatever it's really chill there's not a lot to do there but if you wanted to just enjoy the natural beauty and that's amazing the Carl Weathers is good the beaches are amazing it's just it's really it's west australia's bonnie doone from the castle ah yes that's right that's right I was thinking Bonnie's doing I've heard that before yeah no we have to have a castle mentioned every episode just yeah yeah it's a recurring theme but uh and you haven't taken up the hobby of kick a quokka oh no you don't kick quokkas no there are a couple of backpackers that got in trouble actually for that and I think one of them might have um I think he I don't know he'd like tried to light on fire or something like that with a deodorant can or something silly and got jailed for it yeah it was good yeah it was it was you know a bit of an outrage of that because we love our quokkas over here we don't want to see anyone harm them especially because they're very friendly you know on rottnest island so that's an island about 20 k's off the coast of freemantle and yeah all the it's full of quokkas um and it's kind of like their main habitat that i think they're on the mainland a little bit but they're mostly on rottnest and you go over there and you know they just come up to you and you can pat them and stuff and yeah the island's not very big in ride a bicycle around it a few hours and stuff. And it's just beautiful beaches and stuff there as well. I think that's kind of the thing in WA is that we've got really good Carl Weathers over here. And I think we've got the beaches to, to kind of capitalize, you know, with that Carl Weathers, so, you know, I'm, I'm the kind of person, I think Australia in general is not really about the cities I think if you coming to Australia to go to cities then better places to go I think Australia kind of starts when you leave the city I agree 100 Yeah And WA, you know, we're very sparse and there's a lot of area and we've got quite a small population relative to the area. I think it's only like two and a half million people in the whole state. So it's, you know, there's a lot of space and a lot of places that you can go and be on a beautiful beach and you're the only person there. So tell me, back to pinball, what's your favourite game at the moment? My favorite game is, I know people won't see this, but it's actually right behind you. Deadpool. Love it. Fourth wall break inside a fourth wall break. That's like 16 walls. Absolutely. Yeah, my favorite game at the moment. I think the theme integration, I think the layout's fantastic. It's got very satisfying shots. I think the comedy of the callouts, it's a very funny game. And I think that kind of, you know, is underrated in a lot of pinballs. I think the pinballs I tend to like are the ones that have a bit of comedy in them and make you laugh and you can really enjoy your game. It smells like old lady pants in here. Yes, I'm old. I wear pants. But you're no lady. The music's cool. The artwork, I think it ticks pretty much every box that a pinball needs to tick. It has good rules, it has good modes. Yeah, at the moment, it's probably my favourite. Great. But I like all George's games. I mean, I think I've owned them all. Right back at Puffin Corvette because you never see it. but I love Johnny Mnemonic. It's one of the only two games I've bought more than once just because I miss it. When one comes up, I buy it again all the way through. There, Batman 66, I own that and the rules on that were fantastic but Deadpool is just like an all-encompassing game that you can get a beginner on and go hit the little fella and you'll get a multiball. So it's great for the beginners to play to give them to something and then the team-ups to defeat the villains First time was fun. Second time was fun. And then we get to the Megalocracata something-a-saurus. Megalocracata adonis rex, yeah. It's such a good feeling to get there. But, yeah, an all-around good game. And your secret shame game, the game you play that you don't think other people enjoy as much as you. My secret shame. I think Black Knight gets a bit of a bad rap. What number? One, two, or three? Number three, sort of rage. um only because for me i really enjoy games that are really difficult um in terms of like shots and it being really brutal that if you miss a shot the game punishes you um i think you know deadpool's kind of an easier game and that's why it's my brother and i say it's you know it's a game it's easy to love you know beginners can play it experts can play it whatever but black knight is kind of if you're not uh you know experienced people playing you walk up and start playing it you probably won't enjoy it because it is very difficult you know it's very hard and yeah any mistake kind of goes straight back down the middle so what about the upper play field i assume you like the premium le i do i i can see how it's probably not good game for tournaments because you know you can play it for ages you can keep it up the top um even with the modes like you know you've got to do a few things on black knight to start a mode but then once you're in a mode if you hit at the top and you hit the small target next to the catapult it'll just spot you every shot as you go so you can just keep it at the top and keep hitting that little target and basically clear out a whole mode so if you if you get up there and hit the target five times you probably finish a mode then you go back down the bottom and light your next mode and kind of do it again so in that way once you are up the top you can kind of get through it and i can see that also you know taking ages in competitions with good players because they'll just you know they're risk adverse and they just won't let the ball go down to the bottom play field they just keep it up there and keep going people traveling to west australia you said you've got a facebook page for the West Australia Pinball Group. What's it called? Yeah, it's called WA Pinball. So, yeah, WA is obviously the abbreviation for Western Australia. And it's basically got a black swan holding onto a pinball, and that's kind of the logo. So, yeah, we're trying to build that at the moment and get as many people involved. And, yeah, we put all our events on there. There's an events tab and all the competitions that are happening. So next time someone decides to go for a long drive, they know how to contact you. It's just a little trek across the Nullarbor, which has got the world's longest 18 hole golf course in case you are into golf and you want to play a very long golf course i think it's every 200 kilometers i think is another hole something similar yeah spreads across wa and south australia yes along the side of the road so you can do that as well on the trip over so you're not bored driving across this great friggin desert so with With the long experience of a childhood being put into enforced slave labour by your father to maintain games, what can you share with game owners as far as maintenance? That's an amazingly accurate description there, Don. That is pretty much the childhood. But learning with small fingers when I was a kid that the number one thing is to assume that everything in a pinball machine is sharp. I think that's very important. I think a lot of people don't realise that when they look at a pinball machine from the outside, that as soon as you take the glass off or you open the door, you have to assume that everything in there can cut your hands in so many different ways. It's not just the steel bits, even some plastics and things can be quite sharp, and when you're cleaning, you know, you run your knuckles against something and you cut yourself, and sometimes you don't realise until, you know, a few seconds later, you look down and go, gee, why has my hand got it? Yeah, gloves, I recommend gloves, and yeah, definitely assuming everything is sharp and pay a lot of more respect to everything under the glass. The other tip I'd give is, I think you've touched on it before, is to clean often. Because I think the longer you leave it and the more build-up you get, it is harder to get it back to, you know, to the perfect condition. So we try and clean our games as often as possible. You know, in busy places, you know, up to once a week can be appropriate. Yeah, I think clean as much as you can without going too crazy and actually, you know, polishing things away. But yeah, clean and assume everything is sharp. What do you use for your cleaning of playfields? We use either Mr Sheen, that was the popular one back in the 90s. Where does all this dust come from? That's a job for Mr Sheen. Oh Mr Sheen, oh Mr Sheen, today's the day to make the household clean. Which is a spray on furniture wax polish. Pretty much, yeah. Haven't seen Mr Sheen. Yeah, Mr Sheen, or just any general furniture polish. So, yeah, we use other ones that you get from Bunnings here in Australia and stuff like that. But, yeah, furniture polish, stuff like that, anything that you can kind of either spray onto a cloth or spray directly on the playfield and it won't clog things up or anything like that and you can wipe it off and take the dirt off with you. So, again, Anthony, thanks for joining us from way over there in a totally different time zone and educate all us eastern coast bums on the real part of Australia, which is the west. And I'm looking forward to catching up with you in Brisbane in about four weeks' time. Yeah, thanks, John, and thanks for having a bit of a listen to some stuff over here in WA. I enjoyed chatting with you and chat to you soon in Brisbane. Great. Thanks, mate. So there we have it, Anthony from WA in a pre-recorded interview prior to his ascension to the second best finish at the Brisbane Masters against one of his heroes, Steven Bowden. What a great experience for him, and what a great experience to see new players coming through and performing so well, especially when they live almost in another country on the other side of Australia. Hope people can get over there for a visit sometime. It's worth seeing. There's some beautiful scenery, some very nice people, and it's worth making the trip. Well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. we will be back again in a couple of weeks time and i'll leave you with tame impala and one of their songs the less i know worth have you look on youtube if you like basketball if you like king kong if you like drugs and cheerleaders it's got it all interesting film clip again all right catch in a couple of weeks. Again, feedback, aussiepinballpodcast at gmail.com. That's the end. Thank you. Oh, my love. Can't you see yourself by my side? No surprise. And I was sure to love you every night. Oh, my love. Can't you see a child on my mind? Don't suppose you can convince your love To change his mind So what if I'm blind? She said, it's not now or never And today's moving together I said never leave me ever Just don't make me wait forever Don't make me wait forever Don't make me wait forever Oh, my love, can't you see I'm still on my side? I suppose you could convince your love that change is fine. 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