Copywrite 2013 redherring3@optusnet.com.au

Forward

Colin Herring, aka Sub-Paragraph Three, aka Daddy Long Legs was the first person in the world to become a number and a subparagraph at that. As a variety entertainer he has entertained Australians for fifty five years.  He has two degrees (Bachelors of Arts and Indigenous Studies, Certificate Four in Workplace Training and Assessment and a Post Graduate Certificate of Applied Science in Natural Resource Management). The title of the book ‘7 league boots’ was chosen because the use of stilts has certain magical qualities that take the audience outside the perception of normality. They are a licence for people to be themselves in a non-threatening environment. While little is said about the thousands of hours spent on these tools of trade, the people he met and the happenings that resulted from Colin’s interactions with people are positive attempts to make a lighter, happier world.

            The passion to entertain and amazing moments that follow cover a very important part of Australia’s post war history. From a beginning in great adversity and cultural cringe, with excursions into psychedelia and a travelogue of this great nation this biography, warts and all is hopefully a satisfactory expose of the baby boomer generation and their contribution to Australian Society. We broke the man only to become the man! If there is a God, after creating the post war society she threw away the mould. Hopefully Australia is insulated by its multicultural society and isolation to survive the collapses of both capitalism and communism that rule our realities.

            Any would be entertainer, starting from scratch without the advantage of intergenerational experience should read this book. The message is to enjoy your mediocrity, exposing the pitfalls of yearning for an alternative culture. Greatness coincides with great discipline. Do not lose yourself amongst the many characters you become. The solutions are simple but complicated by people. As Colin crossed the paths of many great people who helped form the characters that are Australian, he accrued the most important oeuvre that surely is the point of being alive. That is to generate your own body of works and not hijack other people’s stories. Then the telling of your unique story can begin.

            Mr Three hopes that a better world evolves through the validation of alternate cultures especially Indigenous that has mapped out the Gaia of this great Australia, this Terra Australis. The correction of history in this regard is completely necessary to heal the still festering wound perpetrated by Captain Cook’s assessment of Terra Nullius.

 Many people speak of the ‘end of days’ scenario and Daddy Long Legs has spent much of his life preparing for the inevitability of climate change by simplifying his life. Colin knows exactly where the promised lands are within Australia. Sub Paragraph Three does not say “follow me”, “I am the way” for his path is ridden with poor choices and severe lessons in life. Do not judge a person by their occupation for it is merely an ends to a means and a ticket to unique greatness.

Along the way, I have written poetry since the age of around 16. This was to place my life experience into a condensed form and as a memory aid. Some of the pieces have taken 3o years to perfect or offer for publication. This is because of a feeling of worthlessness, early childhood trauma and low self-esteem. Even at poetry readings much of my word smithing appears to be little regarded. However this book is not intended for the literary set; it is intended for those who would dare place their uniqueness upon the world no matter how ragged it is.  The book is designed to give such poetry context in the hope people can interpret the content as intended. Colin Herring wishes you well in the great journey of life and encourages you to make your individual stamp upon it.

We shall travel a journey you and I. But it will not be linear. For I shall travel like a child from youthful memory to another, wiser memory and interpretation. Wherever the childhood memory triggers my mature perception I shall return to the current condition. What is a memory but a collection of outstanding events that remain. For instance I barely remember the greatest bowel movements I have ever had, for there is so many of them. But memory is difficult especially when you have been told over and over again certain things did not happen and if you insist they did then your childhood reflection is somewhat flawed. That something is wrong with you.

My childhood was an outrage. I have been angry for so many years and outraged. My oldest sister is even more outraged for she has been told her childhood is a lie too; so many times she no longer can discern fantasy from reality. Her life is beyond outrage for all she does is push and prod all those who remain her friend and ally, from one outrageous story and crisis to the next. She has become an unreliable witness.

The other half of the equation, mother and the youngest sister who simply survived by playing the favourite, whether it was to the rapist thug called father or the Queen denier called mother it did not matter. That any recall beyond a silence was a sign of weakness and deeply flawed character. However the anger and outrage was repressed and silence, getting on with the job was the superior character. Two of us chose the path of reinvention and denial.

However there were also two casualties. They killed off their innocent inner child to survive. And thus the monster won. However the other two expressed their rage toward all their loved ones and thus the monster once again won. So the question must be asked. Are we so bourgeois and pampered, bored in this so called ‘lucky country’ that we can afford to be disgusted by what must be daily horrific actions in places like Iraq and Afghanistan? For we were born into the war, the labour camp, raped and childhood absorbed by the Gestapo. Even though the peace had been declared, the war still maimed and raged. We may live in a so called peaceful zone, but the reality is, war is waged all around on other fronts.

So the safe haven is silence amid purges of obsessed cleanliness to purify. Memories are gone but reconstructed into blanks of a pure lineage and historic puritan spirit. The alternate universe was to advertise such horrors to the world as an attempt to cleanse the soul of such innate monsters. The answer to any miscreant behaviour was always “you are just like your father”. We who were his offspring would shudder at the ramifications of such a statement. “It never happened” is the statement of the only adult who was supposed to protect us in our innocence. By this time we were guilty in our zeal not to release the monster who still lurks within us unresolved. One is guilty by action, the other doubly guilty by omission.

So we travel without a sense of time flashing forward, backward and into the world of associating events for meaning. This is why I use the boots to flip, flop, zig and zag. To dwell too long on the injustice and manipulation causes a monster to leak into all aspects of my life. We all have soldiers, created to survive, for there has only been victims turned monsters and after sixty odd years there are many soldiers that have formed troops of survivors all within one person.  I am not alone, however the only safety zone being wanton loneliness and or crisis within which a great calmness blankets my being; for crises were my childhood and teenage years. Crisis was the norm, Only recently have I realised the source of my self assessed unpopularity; the post traumatic stress disorder called my childhood, The consequent reactionary, legendary battles with authority of any kind.

My whole life has become a performance against authority and like my older sister, I shoot my self in the foot every day. I guess when those seven league boots were offered and passed on to me, I grabbed them with glee and then expressed my fantasies across Australia for a fee. As I evolved toward the clown chasing a childhood that never was. My innocent child, who I declare still resides within, truly awakened when I moved with my family circa 1959 to Alice Springs.

Often to understand such an existence, I try to see the world through Indigenous eyes to comprehend my holocaust. One Bilyana an Indigenous intellectual explained moments of what I will call Mugami. In Torres Strait society this is what happens when a storm suddenly hits or when a shark suddenly takes a loved one. This is when through no fault of your own, life as you know it is changed for ever; there is no choice but to pray to your God(s) that it does not happen to you. So when my father had his drunken rages they were my moments of mugami. So this is about my moments of mugami and how I became a lost soul, not knowing who I am. When the opportunity arose to grab those seven league boots, I ran, climbed mountains with them, hopped, skipped and jumped across Australia and Pacific Isles knowing full well that “from the deserts do the prophets come”.

More importantly, I used the 7 league boots to discover who I was. The person who had been shaped by a series of events outside any control was a soldier, a survivor of many bitter alcoholic rages and slave labour with rosters, punishment and fines for not being perfect. A father who at any moment could explode, storm and like a shark tear you to pieces. A mother who seemed pre-occupied and by omission failed in her duty of care. To be fair she was belted too and put up with the abuse longer than us.

The horror of it all was when I discovered what father was doing to the sisters; I asked them directly if it was true. They must have realised the cat was out of the bag, told my mother and within twenty four hours my family collapsed. This was trauma, a death, my moment of mugami.

My mother had left him once before in Alice Springs because of his rage, alcohol and violence. As my mother and sisters faked going to school, they asked me with one hour to spare if I wanted to go with them. I was encouraged to stay with my father. In total fear of such consequences I threw my lot in with them. Then one day unannounced he returned to us. My mother let him back in claiming to this day that we adored him and wanted him back. My memories are of horror at the sight of him. That’s when he went to town and exacted his revenge. I was around 9 at the time. We were beaten, had no friends, worked every weekend and then the repeated rapes and emasculation between orgies of beer, tobacco, world championship wrestling and gambling. While other kids were on the beach swimming, we were at the end of the jetty fishing, our only respite. When I hear the beatles singing their songs from the early to late sixties, I am transported toward the torturous hours on hot summers days at the end at the end of a jetty waiting for a bite, gutting and scaling fish. “She loves you yeah yeah yeah” immediately invokes the feelings of torture and never ending chores. How I envied all those other kids who were at the beach having fun. The irony of killing and eating fish with the last name being “herring” has not escaped my notice. It was no wonder I was an extremely unpopular child at school. I would often arrive at school after a night of fishing then cleaning, gutting fish or alternatively a weekend of fibre-glassing a wreck of a boat he bought for a song or constructing caravans that rattled apart in between horse races, stubbies, cigarettes, cleaning bird cages. I would be in a daze at schools. My only freedom. As a result I was the school clown who in the face of authority had to be ruthlessly repressed for my behaviour was off the richter scale.

You are Not Alone

So many of us are

Traumatised

The wounded sisters

And innocent children

Anaesthetised

Predators of sex

And beaten blue

Acclimatised

And so many times

Magnify such crimes

Victimised

And yet we hold our head high

Amid such terrible lows

The black cloud descends

Over loss of innocence

And self respect

With obsessed cleanliness

You are not alone

Despite such self destruct

We become soldiers

Sentinels, feeling

Such interruption

To our souls.

We are on

Vigilance eternal

Despite the traps

Of self inflicted wounds

Never again!

Not on our watch.

His evil spirit

Will not visit the children

As they dream.

1, Childhood, early memories and the Alice: The Territorian

So with my 7 league boots I travelled the length and breadth of Australia. My situational memory came alive as I travelled from town to town. And yeah I was drawn to the many who suffered fates like I. Because I returned to the same place at the same time each year, I had to remember names, situations and incidents. For this was the one day of the year; of great festivity and occasion. I picked up conversations left a year ago and continued them as if the time between was but a comma in time. On these days I was an honorary local, privy to the best (and worst) of every nexus in outback and coastal waterholes. Afterwards I was no-one and it was time to take the money then get out of town.

Australians: closed and open, drunken and sober, law abiding thieves at the same time, racist and totally accepting of all. Racist? Well Australia’s history with its Indigenes is a sad and sorry tale.

My first real experience with Aboriginals was in Alice Springs circa 1959 where I was embarrassingly white and outnumbered by the Blacks. I remember the Pioneer open air picture theatre, where there was a clear demarcation between white and black seating arrangements. The blacks sat on the floor right at the front and the whites sat in beach chairs on the other side of a rope between them. At age 5 or 6, I did not understand this apartheid. I was kind of offended that the blacks had the best location and were permitted to sit on the floor. When I went to school, the children from St Mary’s Mission outnumbered us and they ruled the school grounds. My first day at school, I was initiated. At recess time, I wandered into the playground area in a daze with all that dry heat.

Next thing you know my pants were pulled down around my ankles. I pulled them up, moved on and watched a giant game of red rover all over and then my pants went to ground again. Each time I looked around there was no-one to be seen. Just before the bell went, a black fellow said “No whites allowed on the Jungle Jim except that one there. They pointed at me. I thought ‘oh good the natives are accepting me’.

As I started swinging on the Gym, two Arrente lads made their way toward me. Wrapping their legs around, they squeezed all the air out of me, then disappeared to their classes. On another occasion an Aboriginal took my lead pencil. I grabbed his hand and my pencil, he let go and I stabbed myself in the face. It was not all that pleasant being a white and in a minority. However I did eventually make friends with many Indigenous children.

No wonder rule on the playground was ruthlessly enforced by those mission kids, I witnessed many Indigenous youngsters bashed senseless by teachers and especially the headmaster, who appeared to enjoy chasing these kids with the cane all over the school grounds. I was pretty well uncontrollable as I had a few issues of my own, and spent many hours out the front of the schoolmaster’s office where I witnessed the rather large Headmaster often raid the St Mary’s school lunch box. Every day quite a few of the Aboriginal Mission Children went without their lunches. My mother, a teacher will say it never happened and challenge that view of a 7 year old. All aspects of my childhood never happened. I must be insane. I must persist with these delusions.

There were two kinds of marks: 50% and above for whites and 49% and below for blacks. My score was almost always 99 ½ out of 100. The smartest black got lower marks than the dumbest white. I remember Elvis Presley, Felicity Chippendale (my first love), Margaret Walker, Georgie Wong and Bobby Mellor were in my class. This was before Pine Gap (an American Base) when the Alice was a real remote outback town in the centre of Australia. They were the best years of my life. All I had to do was walk out the back of my house in Priest Street and I was in the outback. We lived near the old racecourse.

One day I was playing with around 12 other kids. We all walked to a salt pan that had bulldust, a red crust as a fine veneer above the firm salty earth. I noticed when you scratched it with a stick, the dust would be suspended and rise into the air. We spread ourselves out about 200 metres apart and started to furiously scratch the bulldust into the air.

The rest of Alice Springs eventually saw the rising dust and anticipated a dust storm rolling in. This sight was spectacular for the real dust storms rolled in like a giant wave and then it was on. Everyone had to batten down the hatches because during these events a stalk of straw could be driven into a wooden telegraph pole or a brick. A piece of corrugated iron flying in the air during a dust storm could slice a person in half.

So there they all were, battening down the hatches, when the parents of numerous children suddenly realized, they were no-where to be seen. They must have panicked, contacted other parents. We were oblivious to it all until we noticed a train of vehicles coming towards us. One by one we were ordered into the cars and every one of us were grounded for freaking the whole of Alice Springs out.

I remember we used to go rabbit and roo shooting up Anzac Hill until one day a 4 lane tarmac was laid and the monument upgraded. The Queen and Prince Phillip were to visit. Somewhere in their private photos, the queen has a picture of my sisters and me in the Todd River, under a huge River Red, next to the causeway. By strange coincidence I noticed soon after, the American base, Pine Gap was to change the face of Alice Springs. A friend of mine, (Robert Nowak) a poet, and manager of the Papunya store, reckoned that there were probably at its peak 5000 Americans there according to the amount of toilet paper used (the only thing they did not import).

In my later visits to Alice Springs, Americans were easy to spot. They were the ones sporting formal suits in the middle of that dry, dry heat. God knows what they were packing; handguns I suspect. After a short while the Americans realised they were not in America and started to assimilate, wearing shorts and T-shirts. They started to appear less and less paranoid.

I also noticed (in my later age) by coincidence that wherever the Queen roved to obscure places, putting them on the map in the Commonwealth, an American base followed. In this day and age it is amazing how the dominant paradigm is prepared to spend millions in legislation toward the extinguishment of Native Title, but is prepared to give masses of Indigenous land to Americans for a few peppercorns. In my opinion at the end of WW2, Australia was virtually given to America as a down payment for the mammoth debt inherited by the Brits for America’s involvement in that Great War.

The May Day Parade was always fantastic. The tribal Aboriginals would all turn up in their regalia with spears and demonstrate their holding of country to the whites. Occasionally, in between work details or if my father had gone to the pub, I wandered to the dry creek bed out the back of my house and finding Aboriginals camped there, learned how to take the roots of gum trees, peel the bark, then dry the cheroots to smoke them with that unique eucalyptus tang. I roamed all over the hills and swam in some of the waterholes.

After reading the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and watching my first Henley on Todd regatta, I constructed a raft out of the wooden packing case to our brand new jeep. Overnight it rained and Alice Springs was flooded; my parents decided to test out the jeep. They had a head on collision with my raft. Little did we know that a creek (called seven year creek) ran through our back yard. The raft was carried by the torrent and by coincidence struck the jeep. I was the only kid in Alice Springs with a raft during those floods.

The Henley on Todd regatta was a marvel. Aged around 6, we went to the Todd River and saw all these sailing boats in the dry river bed. Someone gave us fishing rods and we went fishing in the sand. To my astonishment I caught some fish. I was a bit disappointed that the paper fish had magnets. But I was too busy trying to figure out how they were going to sail those boats down the river bed. Did they know it had rained up river? Had they calculated when the river water was going to arrive? Was there a dam upstream? Were they going to release some water soon? How would they get anywhere without any wind? When cannon were fired, everyone lifted their boats. Flaps opened and they ran like buggary to the finish line. I didn’t expect that and it’s the stuff childhood memories are made of.

My father (correction, we children) would load up the jeep with about 10 dozen cans of beer as we went with the local boot maker, Mr Belcher and shot kangaroos or rabbits. This way I travelled to Palm Valley, Stanley Chasm, Jesse and Emily gaps. I fired my first rifle aged around 6. One day, near the Valley of the Eagles, we camped next to a waterhole. Everyone but me dived into the water. I refused and became quite hysterical in my insistence not to enter that water. I was very much aware of a presence there and instinctively knew swimming in that waterhole was wrong.

Alice Springs was where I encountered my first and only great occupation. A Miss Olive Pink enlisted me to be in a play featuring Aboriginals and the Dream Time; we won the Alice Springs Eisteddfod that year. My romance with theatrical enterprise had begun! The streamers after opening night, the crush I had on a grown female cellist and on another occasion, dancing with Felicity Chippendale all night are my longest serving memories. Her father was a Taxonomist who identified many of the florae in Central Australia.

Not good for Georgie Wong though, for I had graduated in to starring roles. There I was the sparrow and he played Cock Robin. As I sang my part and confessed, I lifted the bow and arrow and released it just like the teacher said; thwap, straight into cock robin’s head. Cock Robin momentarily came alive before an entire audience only to lose consciousness again as he fell to the floor. I also played the farmer in Peter Rabbit, planting a row of peas. I was already being typecast as a villain. Clearly farmer Brown was misunderstood. The sparrow was simply an extraordinary shot.

Years later at Winton during the Outback Festival (1991) where I became the Winton Outback Dummy Spitting Champion of the world I was to meet a Fencer known as the Phantom. When I mentioned Miss Pink he shook my hand and said “by God man. I knew Miss Pink, she was a great woman! By God man – You’re a Territorian!” He admitted at first he thought I was just some wanker, mouth from the south until I mentioned her name.

Bottom left Colin Herring. Middle Row 3^rd from left Felicity Chippendale on her left Margaret Walker, Bottom row 2^nd right Georgie Wong. Top row 5^th from right Bobby Mellor fifth from left Elvis Presley. Location Alice Springs, Ross Park Primary 1960

2. Queensland

There is a movie called ‘wake in fright’ that I see as the essence of being an outsider imbedded in a remote outback town. While I was in Mackay, I received a phone call that invited me to the Winton Outback festival. The object of this was the world championship outhouse “dunny can” races. Other world records were up for grabs. To say that it was little more than a grog fest in 1991 is an understatement.

I witnessed a road train world championship attempt of 13 (maybe 7, but in my alcoholic stupor, it’s a best guess) trailers negotiate a single turn through the town centre for the record. From my balcony view at the Tattersall’s hotel I saw it being achieved and we laughed to see an outback dunny being towed at the end of it. We laughed even further when the record was officially recorded at thirteen (or 7) and a turd. It was also the year I became the world dummy spitting champion. It has been immortalized as a poem. As follows and every word of it is true!

The great dummy spit

Around 1991

Down Winton’s main road did I go

When a man asked of me

To spit the dummy from a dunny can.

So I grabbed a pink dummy, foolish me

Shook it free of sterile water

And spat about one half a metre.

The man shook his head

As children looked to the ground

In complete disgust

I realised my mistake

Grabbing a blue dummy, for a bloke

And placed it in my mouth

The sterile water drop

Tickled the back of my throat

And coughed as I spat

The projectile flew

Beyond all safety limits

It square hit a child between the eyes

Bounced over ‘is head and did continue

The observer proclaimed

The best dummy spit

He ever did saw

And stopped the event.

Proclaiming the champ

Saving the protest of any child assist

That child was declared a natural obstruction

The spit so measured

Four meters and ninety one centimetres,

A whisker short of any world record

And yes I was declared the Winton Outback

Dummy spitting champeen of the world!

So you see if you’re thinkin

Of spittin’ the dummy,

I gotta tell ya.

Yer up against the champ

And like any good pugilist

Try as you might, I won’t let cha

Take the title from the champ!

On the last day the townsfolk headed to a waterhole and bet on the outcome of races between yabbies. Their scientific name Chorax destructor amazes me.

It took me four days to escape from Winton. I had to escape by stealth. I noticed coincidentally that the number of women with black eyes was becoming exponential. Of the one week festival on day 3 there was 2 women with black eyes, day 4, 4 women with black eyes and so on.

Each day I got up and on the balcony I watched the road trains go by. A shearer cracked a slab of XXXX and there went the rest of the day; pissed by 8am. Each day another character appeared and there went the next day......

Another day I ran into a Murri named Patrick. He was escaping his mob from Longreach. He told me he was Irish. We went to another pub that was playing Irish music and we jigged the night away. I often muse about Patrick, because he was trying to escape his Aboriginality whilst I perhaps was looking for mine. I certainly despised the ‘white fella’ ways that an Indigenous lecturer Glen Woods terms, ‘killing me softly’. I met opal dealers and the Phantom Fencer. The Guv of the hotel was Bill Bennett, an AFL star who in the sixties played a few games for Carlton. He settled as owner of the Tatts hotel with the love of his life named Helen. The face that launched a thousand slabs.

            Slowly but surely I cleaned and packed my car, washed my clothes and feigning drunkenness at 8.30 pm, went to my room. At 3.30 am I escaped from Winton and I did indeed ‘wake in fright’.

While in Charleville the following yarn was told to me. Front bars gather the best yarns.

A fish tail

As water was a flowin

Up on the river ward

Word has it that many a man

Threw in their hand

To catch the biggest Murray cod

Ever seen within the land

This big bastard was most elusive.

It seemed to outsmart us all

Until in a moment of inspiration

One bloke used a mare and its foal

As bait

What was strung

On rope so thick

It could tow the grandest shape

When that big bastard took the bait

It was stuck there well for a fight

That big cod ran the length of baker

Straight for over a mile

No snags, no escape,

It was stuck there good and tight

300 men and women with jags and hooks

Tried to bring that mongrel in

After many months, they’d pull er in

She’d slip back down the bank

 Of baker and away she’d go agin

They hoyed a passing semi-trailer

To join in that sight

It pulled that bastard in

After a three day fight

They were about to turn it into tucker

An share it all around

When one old timer shouted

“Hoi it’s took up arf the river

The water’s all but gorn

We can’t eat this cod without a decent cuppa !”

The townsfolk argued over the destiny of that cod

And finally realised it simply wasn’t

 Fair up on the sub-artesian basin

They’d rather see the ward a flowin agin

Than have jus one good feed

So they rolled that old fucker back

To swim familiar tracks

That old cod fair spluttered

E’ couldn’t believe its luck

Then fair took orf so fast

It burst right through the bank

As it knew the short cut

The straight of baker became a bend

And hence its name today

Tis known as bakers bend

And that big cod frequents the place

So you’d best be watching out........

Oh! And if you ever catch that mongrel cod....

You’d better throw it back!

I love Queensland for its unpretentious people, willingness to break into a yarn or have “a lend” of you and of course the varied, magnificent country. Every festival was a yarn, a celebration of the past and impossible or some surreal past time, even the world “Cooee” and soap box derby championships in Yeppoon. The festival that blew my mind was the Cunnamulla- Eulo Opal festival featuring the lizard races. The locals spotted an out-of–towner, and had ‘a lend’ of him. It was one of my first professional gigs and I remember every moment of it. If I ever organize a Festival it will be the ‘Festival of Yarns’. I have immortalized the Lizard races in another poem. Every word of it is true, except the part about the song:

A lizard’s Tail

Now I’m a registered member of scrub cutters incorporated

So I reckin’ I can tell youse the story

It’s so famous it’s been sung about in song

I don’t sing so

I reckon I’ll have to tell the story

Well up in opal country

Where the yowah nut was born

From volcanoes eruptin’.. But that’s all over now,

There’s a band of businessmen

Who have the only lizard-racing club in the world

Learnin’ from experience we

Grasped the quirks of lizard racin’

We knew the bookies would be movin’ in

To cash in on gamblin’ sports

So we had to have the stewards for fear o’ race fixin’

So too were the RSPCA

To investigate alleged cruelty to lizards

F’rinstance one year they had the greatest lizard sire

Of em all…..HERBIE

Out of the club ‘otel

But the race was fixed cos the clerk o’ the course

Trod on herbie and scratched him from the race

Another year they put a goanna in the race

It ate the rest of the field

And scratched them all from the race

Before ya know it, a committee was formed

To investigate these acts of a dubious nature,

And set the rules..

Only registered lizard racers

Could enter the race,

Who had to employ genuine lizard trainers-

A rare breed o’ man or woman

The lizards ‘ad to be familiar with mobile startin’ barriers

And only wear colours

Approved by the associashun that was duly registered

The startin’ method was simple

Cos reptiles like lizards need motivayshun

If they were cold..They couldn’t run

They stopped dead still..It wasn’t fun

One old timer had good advice

“Put ya lizard in a fryin’ pan

Heat it up....you’ll see the bastard run”

He obviously weren’t  a genuine lizard trainer…

And the RSPCA had a lot to say about that

The word went round Australia

The lizard race was on

You’d think there was

A muster on

The way they came in droves

The steward of the course

Was there looking all resplendent

In ‘is fine red riding outfit

And lookin’ official

This year they’d invested

In special solar powered

Mobile barriers

And didn’t know ‘ow it would affect the race-

The barrier was circular

Made out of Perspex

The sun shone through

And warmed the lizards up…

The starters entered the barriers…

Radiating out……

The distance was three feet…

Twenty-two starters in all….

No scratchings………

The favourite was  ‘club of hearts’….

At three to one…..

All starters in their barriers…

A red light flashed….

A bell rang…….

The starter lifted the barrier

4000 people held their breath anticipatin’ the run

………………………………

But the lizards stopped dead still

Seeing’ all those people

Nowhere to run…….

No escape………….

The crowd sympathised with their plight

Cracked open their stubbies

Drank ‘em ………………

Had another beer……….

Watched on……………

Ten minutes had passed by

Getting pissed…………..

Hot……………………..

So they called for the lizard trainer

The one and only lizard trainer

To encourage them to run

The trainer came into the ring in ‘is fine red ridin outfit

To make the bastards run..

‘E banged is ‘and on the earth nearby

Makin’ like a big animal..

‘E thrust fine red dust across their eyes..

But still they wouldn’t run..

The crowd ‘ad another beer…

The trainer withdrew……….

Consulted with the RSPCA

Then grabbed a bucket of water

And threw it on the bastards

The club of hearts took off like

A lizard inspired…

Ran up someone’s leg-

Thinking’ it was an escape route

The crowd had another beer

The stewards removed the lizard

A protest was lodged for offensive behaviour

……….Dismissed !

Then taken to the winners circle

Photographed by the women’s weekly

And made famous

It weren’t gonna run no more..As a world champeen

Had become a lizard stud..

The club ‘otel ‘ad won the day

Fastest time……..

Publicans purse…….

Stud rights…………

So everyone had another beer

And the lizard race was done!

I recently learnt that there is actually legislation exempting and permitting a person to catch and train a wild lizard for the purposes of Lizard Racing in Queensland, as long as they are genuine registered lizard trainers for the Cunnamulla-Eulo Opal festival. And that, my dear friends, is what makes Queensland great.

NATURE CONSERVATION (WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT) REGULATION 2006 - SECT 355

355 No conservation value payable for particular lizards

(1) This section applies to a person who takes a racing lizard—

(a) under a recreational wildlife harvesting licence held by the secretary of the committee of the Cunnamulla–Eulo Festival of Opals; and

(b) for racing the lizard in the festival.

(2) The person is exempt from payment of the conservation value for the lizard.
(3) In this section—
racing lizard means—

(a) Trachydosaurus rugosus (shingle back a close relative of the bluetongue or sleepy lizard); or

(b) Pogona vitticeps. (bearded dragon)

The breed of the lizards is most important. One is fast as lightning, the other is slow and cumbersome aka the shingle back, blue tongue or sleepy lizard. The trouble is the fast one when under threat impersonates a twig. The sleepy is likely to go straight to action and amble its way to the finish line in about 5 seconds, whereas the fast one covers the distance in less than a second. It is classic tortoise and hare. The issue of thoroughbred behavior is at the heart of such races. To witness 4000 people waiting for one of them to make a break for it in the red dust and blue skies, all dressed in official racing and punters outfits, hats and all, is surreal in the true sense of the word. If I was a half decent artist, I would paint the picture. Usually after this event, the tourists head for the Birdsville Races. To see a fashion parade amidst dust, flies and blue skies is an anomaly. Most travel by air.

3. Apprenticeship: The Three Mentors: Victoria

But why should I be chosen to be the holder of the seven league boots? Piss Pot Head that I was. It was both a blessing and a curse. Well I certainly paid my dues and the numbers were right. My apprenticeship began with three holders of the seven league boots, who in turn passed their magic onto me. I first met Alecsander Jurman at the Lygon Street Festa in Carlton. On the same day I met Bob Hawke. Some artist had made a paper Mache bust of him. I put it on my head whilst wearing the 7 leaguers and the media published a photo of Bob Hawke meeting a larger, grander Bob Hawke. His handshake was the most limp wristed hand shake I have ever experienced. Apart from that I admire him greatly.

It was Alecs though, who taught me how to be a Show Man. As a Transylvanian Rumanian, Gypsy, Jew, he was on Adolph Hitler’s hit list in more ways than one. He claimed he had killed many Germans ‘stone dead’. He ran away to the circus as a youngster. He slept with the elephants. At the end of the war, aged around 26 he was left on the Russian side of the Border. He claimed it cost him a kilogram of gold in bribes to get to Australia. He arrived by boat in Fremantle and though he spoke 6 languages, he could not understand a word of English.

He left the boat and went to a pub. There he met an Aussie who probably said “You poor bastard let me buy you a beer”. As this man was in his face and gesticulating wildly, Alecs claimed he punched him in the face, ran back to the ship and did not surface until the ship reached Melbourne. There he became a legend having walked in Melbourne’s Moomba Parade on the 7 league boots for over 30 years from around 1955.

The boots were that high he had to duck under the tramlines. The authorities were so impressed they turned the electricity lines off just for him. He gave me his name as I was a true showman. And as ‘Daddy Long Legs’ I have continued the great tradition. There were many pretenders to this name and title, but Alecs reassured me that the ‘boy from Wonthaggi’ could be Daddy long Legs Junior for the rest of his life but I was ‘Daddy Long Legs’ the  man. Unlike Daddy Long Legs Junior, I only used the name after a respectable time in mourning Alecs’ death of lung cancer aged 67 as a mark of respect to that truly great man.

Alecs and I went to the Jewish tailors and cloth merchants all around Melbourne. Everyone knew him. He took me to the markets at Prahran along Chapel Street and to trash for treasures as a trader. I walked the 7 leaguers with Alecs in 5 Moomba Parades. His costumes were immaculate and he would buy the tailor a cask of wine to drink overnight, often in a mad dash to finish it on time. A new costume made for every Moomba. I inherited (for a fee) many of his costumes, some of which I wear to this day.

Alecs came to Adelaide a couple of times, tried to seduce my mother to no avail. We went to the Barossa Valley where he purchased 20 dozen sauternes for $1.60 each and sold them for $5 to all his mates in Melbourne. The breadboards he left with me in Adelaide that he had bought from ‘Llewie the Fly’ were too hot in Melbourne so he dumped 8 dozen on me for a song of only $2 each. He probably got them for 50cents each. They retailed for around $5. You do the maths. We played poker, drank wine and spirits. He always won and I caught him cheating more than once. However his generosity far outweighed his ethics. After all he did survive Hitler’s Germany and he looked a lot like Josef Stalin.

 On the morn of every Moomba parade he would serve me a cafe royale mixed with a liberal amount of Brandy and glorious continental sausages with Sauerkraut. We needed it. As we crossed the Swanston Street Bridge on our 7 league boots, the wind was recorded at in excess of 100 kph. His boots were kiln dried knotless Canadian Oregon and mine were aluminium.

On one occasion I experienced a bizarre episode. Alecs got a phone call from a mate. Alecs drove me to the Coroner’s office/morgue where he identified the body of his mate’s wife. We then went to their house. We went inside. The house was spotless and there on the table was a meal. His mate’s wife had thrown herself off the jetty at, I think, St Kilda. Her cancer was terminal. We ate of her meal, European Carp, in stony faced silence. It was her last supper and we ate of it. Life goes on.

We first met in front of 1.5 million people. He stood before me and gave me his card. That night I went to his flat where I saw his magic cloaks and seven leaguers. He was 62 and I was 26, the same age backwards. He then proceeded to get me absolutely shit-faced on wine and spirits. Somebody had warned me he was a “poofter” (If he was, he never put the hard word on me and anyway his sexuality is none of my business – or yours).  So I did a ridiculous thing. Instead of staying the night as invited, I drove back to Carlton along Punt Road and the infamous Hoddle Street. One eyed, I was pulled over by Victoria’s finest and booked for being a fuck wit. It was the early days of breathalysers. The police arrested me and took me to a big “alyser”. I refused. I spent the night in the old Melbourne Jail.

Previous to that, I had made arrangements with a group of speed freaks to hang an effigy of Ned Kelly at sparrow fart on the 11^th November, 100 years to the day that Ned had been hung in the very same location. I spent the night in a drunken delirium pretty well under the very beam the dirty deed had been done.

In the morning I was herded into a general cell to be presented before the magistrate. 2 Guys started pacing back and forwards so I thought what the fuck and joined them. One had shot up Mildura the night before, the other for dealing and when I told them I was in for drunk driving, they all moved away from me exactly as described in ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ (a song/album by Arlo Guthrie). Another drunk kept dropping his pants, complaining they had taken his belt; then I was presented before the magistrate. I had been charged with refusal to take the breathalyser. I still claim to this day, I did not take it anywhere.

The policeman told the Magistrate “I asked Mr Herring how much intoxicating liquor he had had in the last three hours, Mr Herring shrieked at the top of his voice ‘I’m not going to tell you’. Mr Herring was on a chair with wheels, he pushed off with his legs in the air, chair spinning around repeating ‘I’m not going to tell you’. I then asked Mr Herring once again how much intoxicating liquor he had had in the last 3 hours. Mr Herring started banging his head against a wall, demanded a cigarette and shrieked ‘I’m not going to tell you’ I then repeated the question to Mr Herring. He said ‘I can’t tell you that, I’m a paranoid schizophrenic!’.”

With that, the magistrate halted the court case. He asked if I was in fact a paranoid schizophrenic. I replied straight faced, “well sir I am in two minds about the whole affair”. The court room was temporarily abandoned by all in authority. Years later I deduced it was to have a good old belly laugh. They all came back in and the magistrate suspended my license for 2 years and gave me a $200 fine. After some theatrics by the police sergeant where he pretended to line me up for a visit to Pentridge Jail, I was released.

I walked out, headed back towards Lygon Street, feeling pretty seedy and ran straight into the speed freaks. They were very angry with me. They had spent all night making an effigy of Ned Kelly. They asked why I did not front up to ‘hang’ the effigy on the old Melbourne jail. When they heard that I was in the jail all night, they gave me hugs of forgiveness, some speed and I flew back to Adelaide. I did not sleep for 3 days then went to sleep for 20 hours.

I never took speed after that for I loved every second of it. Time slowed to the 5,568 units (I counted them) in a second according to some Eastern Religions through Meditation. I marvelled at the precision of my body and time itself. Time is clearly manufactured by man. The past is but phantoms and the future is constructed out of fantasy; but the guarantee is in the now. I knew I have an addictive personality and imbibing in speed would be the death of me.

The other holder of the boots was a man of legendary circus fame, Phil St Leon. He was well known in Sydney for standing out the front of Lowes Men’s Wear, spruiking their wares and he was retiring. He was born on the 7^th of the second and I on the second of the seventh. Once again the numbers were correct. We were born on the same dates backwards. I did the same (spruiked) for around 8 years and learnt the art once again at the deep end. I often became conflicted when describing boys board shorts, or was that, short bored boys or was that bored short boys…….

But the man who taught me how to wear those boots was a fellow named Peter Schuman. Peter worked in the very early days in collaboration with Jim Henson who later developed the muppets. Peter Schuman however branched into the use of puppetry as social commentary. Politicians in Washington would wake up to giant puppets having a last supper in protest at the Vietnam War. Often a giant hand would appear pointing at congress as they voted to bomb Hanoi. There is a celebrated photo of a sniper on the roof of the white house ready to blow the giant finger away if it made so much as one wrong move.

 Through the art of Puppetry he taught me to actually walk on the seven league boots as a puppeteer during the Adelaide Festival of Arts circa 1976. As a consequence I learnt to animate the seven leaguers. I was selected to perform, having studied bread and puppetry at Flinders University. The anguished look on Peter’s face as he initiated me into the magic of being the holder of those boots, haunt me to this day. For many days I have walked those boots, wondering if they were my last.

This almost proved true at Townsville. I had struck up an acquaintance type friend who was, probably still is, the world axe champion. His name was Foster, his sponsor was Fosters. I walked up to his caravan where he popped a beer to me through a roof vent. I sat on the roof of the van, sculled the beer and handed it back. Then another beer was passed through the vent. I happily drank on. After 2 or three or five beers, I got up and walked about 2 steps, someone ran into my legs from behind and I fell to the ground. I shattered my elbow and badly bruised my knee.

That night was the most painful I ever had. In the morning my swollen elbow was placed in a cast. I drove from Townsville to Sydney one handed, even had to repair an exhaust pipe single handed and with the rear wheel bearings red hot and wheels wobbling I returned to my family by the hair of my chinny chin chin, penniless. I never drank during or before putting on those boots again.

Peter Schuman’s form of cultural expression is deeply spiritual, involving the making and baking of bread. The rehearsals were held in a disused railway warehouse at Mile End, the temperature was over 40 degrees C. The puppetry was large, clumsy and required split second timing. When we became frustrated, exhausted or lost, Peter encouraged us to grind rye to flour. It was to become sourdough. Eventually the aroma of rye sourdough permeated the rehearsal space and became quite intoxicating.

When performances were finished the puppeteers served beautiful bread with sun signs imbedded and a magnificent garlic sauce to the audience. This act of humility was most rewarding because at the pinnacle of performance the ego flies and serving the audience the product of our frustrations became not only spiritual but earthing as well. His advice on theatre: “become part of their lives, do not command”. Waste nothing even your frustrations.

Rye especially had to be prepared by a qualified baker. Peter Schuman was, but did not have the necessary certification in Adelaide and the bread was baked locally for him. Rye mould especially produces ergot and has a chemical structure similar to LSD or D’ lysergic acid. I found out later that such mould infestation throughout history occurred during particularly wet years across Europe and Nth America. The witch hunts at Salem and throughout Europe were most probably fundamental Christians and Quakers tripping off their heads on mouldy bread. They must have thought it was the rapture and were God’s agents. How is that for a piece of trivia!

Every second year I was invited to the Barossa Valley Vintage Festival. A photo taken from that festival is featured in a book by Bruce Elder titled ‘The Magic of Australia’. Most of it is landscape photos, but this one shows the magic of the seven league boots and armed with nothing more than a scarf, how one can infuse so much festivity into a gathering of people. I walked from Tanunda to Nuriootpa on the seven leaguers; a distance of around fourteen kilometres. After around four of these walks, I never remembered the last three kilometres. There were twelve wineries along that route. At the entrance to each winery people handed me drinks. By the end I was off my face on the generosity of those wineries.

4. South Australia & Sub-Paragraph Three

But while I had three mentors the question still remains, Why Me? Perhaps it was also because of the way I became a Yeoman or freedman from conventional society. I did this in more than one way. If I did what I was told, I would have remained in the taxation department recovering outstanding debts. For this was my destiny. Ah the Tax Department. As another public service family, that was my lot in life: my father, customs, mother teaching, sister, weapons research, brother in law, ASIO and Customs, niece Australian Federal Police. But I soon cut that mould right open when I resigned from humanity altogether.

At first assessing S forms was ridiculously easy. I would do all the easy ones first, put aside the clumsy or complicated ones for late afternoon. Then I would tackle them at a slower pace. This way I could do about 1500 a day and the quota was around 1200. Most people had difficulties getting to 1000. Before I did this I had to take an oath not to divulge information under the Secrecy Provisions Act that would give me 2-7 years jail. In a short while I was promoted to Recovery of outstanding debts. This slowed me down to a snail’s pace dealing with errant taxpayers and manual calculations of 10 percent per day per annum. This is the trouble with bureaucracies. They rapidly promote you to a level of incompetence or complete boredom, then leave you there to fester.

It was the days of the first computers that took up the entire floor. We were armed with computer codes of assessment that would be applied manually then sent to the Data Processing Officers (DPO). There were floors of mostly women typing the data into a now ancient card driven computer. For example NAC would be Not Acceptable Charity, if someone had donated cash to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). I started to make up codes of my own like minus the offensive amount or; - $1250 PLO, NAC, GF, YW. Although I guessed the values rather than calculated, I only had a small error rate. Many times I was presented to the boss who wanted to know what the code meant. I replied “Get Fucked, You Wanker”. I never placed the codes in official documentation; merely as an appendix on attached memos.

I was bombarded by so many rules and regulations it soon became clear that I could not mentally last the probationary period toward permanency of employment. I started doing bizarre things like turning up after lunch with bunches of flowers, handing them out to all the ladies, ask for some vases then placing lettuces in them. When asked why, I took the person to the window of the Tower and said “see all those people down there, they are all ants and their purpose in life is to feed us for we are the queen ant.” (The Taxation Office).

An example of the tomfoolery that is bureaucracy, the Public Service Board Union demanded there be water urns and facilities to store, cool and heat liquid & refreshments on every floor. So there they were at great cost. However they were not to be used as bare electrical cords were not permitted, for fear of starting fires. So due to the fire regulations the expensive room (under the stairwell) was not to be used. All twelve floors had about a thousand dollars worth of equipment, brand new, never used. This made it a perfect place to smoke hashish as no-one went there at all.

Some say it was the drugs, whatever. Others thought I did the deed because of them. Perhaps it was because I was studying living theatre at Flinders University. Or maybe it was just my destiny. I walked into the Births, Deaths and Marriages Office, then changed my name by deed poll to Sub-Paragraph Three. I formally demanded a stamp, a license, all my Tax details to be transformed to my legal name, Sub-Paragraph Three.

Legislation has now changed the births deaths and marriages act, declaring that one must be known by or called a certain name before changing it. Consequently, I am the only person in Australia who can legally change his name back to a number and or a sub paragraph because I have been previously known as Sub=Paragraph Three. I can change my name, get married and another person may take on the last name. Anyone want to become Mrs Three? I will do it for a small fee.

Now the Tax department did not like this at all. Although I had been promoted to Recovery of outstanding debts, I was eventually denied speaking to the public over the phone and limited to correspondence that had to be vetted by a superior officer. A phone call was instant but correspondence took at least a month. They then took efficiency reports on me. I now most certainly would not last the probationary period.

The strange thing was though, that with the power of a recovery clerk, I could track down any man, woman or child according to their last financial transaction even in the mid to late 70s. I cannot tell you the code for even to this day I may be arrested. I quoted, parrot fashion, section 207 and 222 of the Company or Income Tax Assessment Act and calculated manually the (then) 10% per day per annum penalty and procedure to wind up their company. I thought I was an assassin. The irony is that many tax evaders actually paid their taxes laughing, while doing business with Sub-Paragraph Three. They made sure I was aware that they only paid their taxes because they loved “Subby”.

Another officer had eaten a fritz and cucumber sandwich during office hours and was consequently demoted for it. We went under the stairwell and smoked some hashish, then ate sandwiches in ritual defiance. I then wrote a treatise on why I’d never become a good Taxation Clerk and resigned from the Tax office. But what happened before I presented the resignation was the drawing of the staff raffle on payday. I had chosen the number three and won. I took the winning couple of dollars and burnt it in an ashtray. The entire populous looked at the act in shock to the words of one person, “don’t do that! It’s my God!”

By the time I got to the dreaded 11^th floor to hand in my resignation the word had raced through every Government agency including Salisbury’s Weapons Research Establishment that I had destroyed a large sum of money belonging to the Tax Department. So much for the in house observance of any Secrecy Provisions Act! The inter-governmental and departmental gossip was rife. These days they call it “networking”.

I handed the resignation to the appropriate officer. But he told me that I had caused a naked flame in the office. I asked if he was embarrassed. I also asked if he had a cigarette, took it from him. I asked him to light the cigarette as I blew smoke into his face. He did not seem concerned about the naked flame in the office and spoke on. He informed me that as I had destroyed some legal tender it could become a police matter. He advised me to resign today, forgoing the 2 week notice. I did so and was escorted from the building.

But the tax department was not going to leave it at that. Within a matter of weeks I was visited by the drug squad. The police found in my backyard some Marijuana plants. The police declared my rights and asked my name. I said “Sub-Paragraph Three”. A couple of D’s were prepared to punch me out on the spot but a senior officer stepped forward and said “His name is Sub-Paragraph Three!” I was taken to number one Angas Street and formally charged.

They took my fingerprints. The officer said, “Height, 6 feet, Eyes Blue, any distinguishing marks or features, scar left cheek, Are you a Homosexual?” I asked “Is that question on the sheet?” He replied “No, I just like to know what I am dealing with”. These were the times when coppers were implicated in throwing homosexuals in the river Torrens and drowned (Duncan). I also looked in the interviewing room and saw a (loaded?) gun within arm’s reach. I looked at the gun and then the coppers who were just hoping I went for the gun……

I was presented to a magistrate who stated. “Mr Sub-Paragraph Three, you are charged under section 5 of the Narcotics and Psychotropic Drugs Act of 1934 as amended in 1967”. He then looked at my name with great confusion said “er….is this permissible?” I replied “Yes sir under section 24 of the Births Deaths and Marriages Act, sub-sections 1a and b & 2 and 3 (1), which require me to demand that I be called “Sub-Paragraph Three!” This caused a sensation in the court room and many people just about fell off their chairs.

One person, Meno Toutsidis, A court reporter at the time, smiled toward me, scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to a police sergeant. The magistrate spluttered and set a court date about a month down the track. As I left the court room the Police Sergeant handed the slip of paper telling me to contact him (Meno) and further instructions - I must not tell ‘The Advertiser’.

Meno worked for Rupert Murdoch. He interviewed me and got a world scoop report. Later I found out Meno became a Sports Editor. I reckon The News of Adelaide made a million dollars with newspapers, front page throughout Australia and the world with the report about Mr Sub-Paragraph Three. The story raged around the world with choice words like “talks like a machine gun and smokes foul smelling cigarettes”. My mother read about it in England, My partner’s mother read about it in Melbourne, Zyg’s brother read it in Singapore. It was even in Pravda. A Texas radio station rang to tell me I was the first person in the world to become a number and a subparagraph as well. A musical band changed its name to a number soon after.

But it was the answer to the big question that flew around the world. That was; why did I change my name to Sub-Paragraph Three? My answer: It was because while I was working in the Tax department an interdepartmental memo stated, “ All officers are reminded that they cannot put their coke cans and or banana skins in the waste paper bins provided for they are for the paper shredding machines only!”. I looked to the Number of the memo and changed my name to it. This act of DADA struck a chord across the world and made it chuckle.

During the ensuing court case I was feted by the media. As they wrote their lies about me I became the character they portrayed. I spoke “like a machine gun and smoked foul smelling” Kretek (cloves) cigarettes.  Kate Baillieu from a Current Affair contacted me for an interview. They interviewed me in my garden, up a tree, out the front of the Tax building and in a stationary Skoda sports car. Buzz Kennedy a respected journalist writing for the Australian assured the greater Australian public that with my “limpid logic….. (I was) a genuine eccentric and not a poseur of the times”. It wasn’t shown in South Australia, perhaps it was because of the court case and confidentiality. It was big in the Eastern States as I was to find out later. I reckon they all saw me coming.

A Current Affair wanted me to join their team interviewing politicians. Theatre Directors wanted me in their theatrical productions, ‘featuring Sub-Paragraph Three’. I was invited to weddings as a surreal piece of art, a living sculpture a mutation of bureaucracy gone mad. A film company invited me to start working on sets with them. I said no to them all. I was overwhelmed by the SP3 phenomenon. This media event frightened me beyond belief. The owner of the film company (Pegasus) said “you will regret that decision”, and I do.

For instance while drinking at my watering hole, the British Hotel in North Adelaide, I struck up a few yarns with strangers. They came out of the woodwork, bought me a beer, admitting they worked as undercover police and or ASIO. They reckoned the boys and girls at their office thought what I had done was marvellous. And just wanted to say they had had a drink with Sub-Paragraph Three. This scared the ever loving shit out of me. I gained insight to the secret side of Australian society. I became very paranoid and say without hesitation, there is a Nark resident in every pub in Australia. Many people, lecturers, directors all thought I had done the deed because of them. Their claim to my fame made me sick to my stomach.

I wanted to run away. After more than a year and one day I changed my name back to Colin Gone-Straight and tried to disappear from society altogether. It was nice to be informed by an ASIO/Customs officer that they did not have a file on me for I was not considered a threat to national security. However the Police from Holden Hill busted and harassed me often and eventually told me this could all end. All I had to do was work for the police. On Ash Wednesday as the State of SA burnt to the ground, I left the state and moved to Sydney.

I have to say during those years, I became unemployable in South Australia. The police interrupted and followed my every move.

For instance I attended a Royal Commission into Marijuana usage as Sub-Paragraph Three. As I spoke I noticed a resident undercover officer at Flinders University. I refused to speak stating that copper was using this Royal Commission for intelligence purposes to take names and bust all people who spoke about cannabis use. The copper stated ‘yes I am a policeman and I too have a right to attend a Royal Commission.

Years later I was at the British, playing darts and what did I see? A big tough bikie came in with other bikers. Taking one look at me, the bikie slammed his head on the bar as if pissed as a parrot. I recognized him straight away but said nothing. It was the undercover cop who had clearly infiltrated a motor cycle gang. I pretended not to notice. After all, I was on a good behaviour bond. Personally I was not going to be responsible for an undercover policeman waking up dead in some gutter. He was only doing his job which I respected.

I often wonder if the outlawing of motor cycle gangs is due to the fact that police are controlling the distribution of drugs and contraband. How much of it is entrapment? Recent concerns by police over alleged infiltration by bikies into the police force is probably, in my opinion, due to the fact that some police documents revealing names of undercover cops have fallen into the hands of the bikers. It seems to me the police are back stepping rapidly and covering up their lucrative covert activities. When faced with options when to act, any intelligent crime buster is going to wait until the money, drugs and key personnel are in the same room. Then you get to confiscate the money, drugs and enjoy the overtime as witness in any consequent court case.

I understand the meaning of the word ‘infamy’. I had lost my right to be human. I had become a thing to most people. The Commonwealth Employment Service refused to place me for unemployment benefits, but I did get a job under a relief employment development scheme (RED) for the Marion Council.

I used the Pseudonym ‘Stephen Price Three’. Here the workers gave me my nicknames of SP3, Clause 27 and Sub-Normal. I soaked up the sun and smoked plenty as a labourer for the Council. I often drive to the back of Morphetville Racecourse to view the now missing creosoted pine barriers and irrigation system that never saw a single drop of water. It was a mock employment scheme. At Christmas time the RED scheme ended and I was unemployed again

I became chairman of SHAUN (Self Help And Unemployed of Norwood) and championed the Un-employed’s rights. We set up a number of ventures. One was sending second hand bicycles, renewed and recycled to Papunya, 300 kilometres North West of Alice Springs. We placed garden hose in the wheels because bindi-eyes punctured pneumatic tyres immediately in Papunya. Another venture was to set up a clown company that evolved from Inma Community Workshop. How the department for the Arts and its administrators had the audacity to use us to put on shows at a minimal cost but maximum accolades to them escapes me. On one occasion SHAUN Circus went to the grand opening of Mount Gambier’s new Civic Centre. Prince Charles was going to open it.

As I placed on my 7 league boots a plainclothes policeman appeared and told me to get off the boots. I explained this was my employment and he had no right to order me off the boots. A number of plainclothes police then surrounded me and warned me that I would be felled by them if I did anything unusual in front of Prince Charles. Stationed by me, more police and or ASIO agents strategically placed themselves around me. This was the moment when I decided to leave South Australia, the police were now that confident, they were screwing with my employment.

The Prince passed by in his cavalcade (within 2 metres). I released some balloons, the shadow of which crossed Prince Charles face. With that he looked up and surprised to see me in my 7 league boots a boyish smile appeared over his face. I took off my hat and bowed as the cavalcade rolled on. I had no issues with the royal family, just those power-mongers who represent their so called will.

On another occasion I was contracted by Bruno Knez of La Mamas to design artwork and direct an Indigenous play. They chose “Wirinun the rainmaker”. I followed the script literally. It was performed at La Mamas Theatre in Crawford Lane off Port Road, Hindmarsh. That afternoon Bruno told me the Labor Party had their annual Barbecue in that lane and theatre houses. One single cloud came over the top of the location from the north and dropped at least an inch of rain in less than half an hour. It was red rain from the soil of the outback. The BBQ was washed out. The laneway became a river. After that I received phone calls from all over Australia to go to various locations like ‘Cockatoo’ in Victoria to divine water for those areas in desperate drought. I declined the invitations. The drought was broken soon after anyway. After all, the festivals were held in the middle of winter. They were washed out and cancelled.

One day I had placed an advertisement in the Advertiser. It was a two for one deal. One read ‘Klap the clown available for events and kids parties’ the other read ‘Sir Otto Higher MLC Minister of Elevation and Inflation available to speak’. A well known DJ rang and indicated he wanted to play with it as a radio hoax. I said ok, ring to air and we’ll play it by ear. So the DJ has a preamble by reading the ad and says he’s going to ring said number.

I answered the phone as a secretary busily screening calls. The DJ then said “I would like to speak to the minister”. So I passed his call to Sir Otto who flew into a tirade saying “G’day, My name is Sir Otto Higher, MLC Minister for Elevation and Inflation, I am available to speak! I will attend grand openings, can openings, in fact any opening I can get my hands on….” DJ interrupted saying “what are your policies, Sir Otto?” I replied “As a public servant, all politicians should perform their duties free of charges after all we are public servants and should serve the public as such without a monetary conflict of interest”. I gave out my telephone number then hung up. Within minutes a stream of phone calls occurred. People especially senior citizens wanted me to speak at their events. Eventually someone from the News or Advertiser rang and asked to do an interview.

So they interviewed me on my seven league boots with my undersecretary, Mr Vulcan blowing fire across the legs. The headlines read “duo firing up the political trail”. However another headline on the same page revealed that a female politician had her bum pinched in parliament (Jennifer Adamson) with a piece on equality, sexism and political correctness. So just like the Sub-Paragraph three experience I read the associated headlines and advertisements (this time because I was aware that editors have their own political agenda and it is all about sales) to further the script. This time I had control over the media event.

So I went to my local member for Norwood electorate. I explained my need to take the event further and the game plan so far. All I needed from him was a letterhead from Parliament. The Politician said “I’m sorry that cannot be done, it would be illegal”. Then a phone rang in another room, he excused himself and as I waited, I noticed, lo and behold, a new Parliament House letterhead there on the desk. I took it to an artist and asked that they reproduce the letterhead but spelt the lettering of parliament not ‘ia’ but ‘ai’ for legal purposes.

I then drafted a letter and reproduced it 35 times. The letter was sent to all politicians and media outlets including Jennifer Adamson and the then Premier Mr. Tonkin. It read;

‘While the news report is a fairly accurate representation of events that took place, there is no truth to the rumour that I pinched Jennifer Adamson’s bum. My Undersecretary, Mr. Vulcan assures me it was merely hot wind beneath her dress. Nevertheless I feel very comfortable in continuing my questioning Mr. Tonkin’s policy, of stimulating the private sector, in situations of parliamentary privilege’.

With that the event became internalized. It must have done the rounds of parliament house and media circles and became an in house joke. However, the ‘Minister for Elevation’ also opened the Festival Centre Plaza in 1979 immediately after construction.

The story ended when I decided it ended, not a continuum as occurred with the Sub-Paragraph Three media event. Years later I now scan headlines and associated advertisements to see the agenda or strategies of editors, advertisers, moguls and managers of media. For instance, when the media was scaring us about our back yards and Native Title; what did it sell adjacent to these featured scare tactics: Financial, banking, property security and or insurance!

After that the media used me to make the news. One Shirley Stott-Despoja (a journalist) requested that I go to a ‘protest’ over Malcolm Fraser’s slashing of funding to the Arts. It was the most pasteurized, homogenized ‘protest’ ever. Labor politicians, employees and friends of the festival centre, and many other SA government employees with sign writer quality slogans ‘protested’. I interrupted the politician, telling him he was just interested in overthrowing the Liberals and it was just a State ‘Minister for the Arts’ vote reaping stunt on behalf of the federal arena. I told them that if Labor took power they’d do the same by spinning the money amongst an elite few. I called them ‘fuckheads’.

Even the media reported it was a beautiful protest with one miscreant ‘who appeared to disagree with everything’.

That night I was drinking at my waterhole, ‘the British’. Near closing I stepped outside onto McKinnon Parade, North Adelaide and into a war scene. Police were literally battling bikies everywhere. Amidst the blue and red flashing lights and confusion, I was lifted up by two policemen and thrown into a Paddy wagon. I spent the night in jail.

That morning I was presented to a magistrate and informed then, of charges against me. I ‘did not cease to loiter’ and received a small fine but 2 year good behaviour bond. After that the management of the British Hotel ‘encouraged’ me to find another watering hole. Clearly the powers that be had the hard word put on them. Threaten the place where he relaxes. This is what happens when you annoy a Politician.

It was at the least, too much of a coincidence for me. So with a behavioural straight jacket on, I was neutered in the State of SA. Any more shenanigans by me and it would be straight to jail, pay $200 and criminal records galore. Sub-Paragraph Three had been neutered by a police verbal and convenience clause. There was no discussion of whether I was actually loitering. Nor was there any evidence that I had been told to stop loitering in the first place. One has to not stop to loiter to be charged. And what does all that mean anyway.

We been waitin

We bin waitin, real long time

And it bin coming mate,

Long long time...

Payback from all dat crime.

Some’in ominous’s comin mate

For long long time, it bin comin.

You shoulda listened mate...

Instead o committin all dat crime

We bin waitin mate, long long time

For you change your ways...

Rapin our daughters and prison for boys

Stealin our land n poison the air

We bin waitin long long time,

You shoulda listened mate,

Sayin sorry not gonna cop it,

Some’in ominous’s comin mate.

We have big corroboree for you, mate.

Overdue long long time, now

This one just for you mate...

And it got your name.

5. RED BAND

Around this time, I ran into some tribal elders from Indulkana. They claimed to have ‘dreamt’ me up. They were staying somewhere in Grange. The key people I met were Kumantjai Baker and Kumantjai Mungi. They have passed now so I cannot specifically mention their individual names (out of respect – do not mention the dead). Through the Aboriginal College of Music I ran into Ben Yengi an African (Mesai I think) and the band members of both ‘No Fixed Address’ and ‘Us Mob’. Due to our insatiable appetite for Yarndi or Gnuntha Bulyu (as the old fellahs used to call it) we hung out. That is, according to old school language, ‘laughing cigarette’ or marijuana.

At one point the elders asked if they could sample some Gnuntha Bulyu. I was concerned and gave them some leaf. Instead of smoking it they mixed it with some ‘pitcheri’ balls that they constantly sucked on. They travelled with Capstan tobacco tins and in each were about 5 balls of this chewing material. They placed it between their teeth and cheeks and continually extracted the juice from it and ingested it. It was a mixture of chewing tobacco, pitcheri and fine ash from a particular tree or shrub that had been burnt. They reciprocated by giving me the start of one, but it was not my cup o’tea.

I had the van and they had the gigs, so we travelled to Point Pearce, Point McLeay, schools around Adelaide, Tailem bend, Ceduna, Koonibba. Between the elders from Indulkana, Billy Harrison, Bart Willoughby, Pedro and Ronny Ansell (who painted the land rights flag on the front of my Toyota commuter I received an education of traditional, contemporary Aboriginality). I went through many of the songs of the Inma Nyi Nyi cycle, nine locations and songs. I drove both Elders and Bands from gig to gig. They are not my songs so I’ll leave it there, to the appropriate people to tell their stories. But I have fond memories of a gigantic mobile land rights flag, cruising all over the landscape.

I also ran into the Mornington Islander Dance Troupe at various places across Australia. Their thunder and lightning dance/song was incredible. Adelaide was an important place for them because whereas the Dingo story began in Mornington Island, it ended in Adelaide. Many a night we spent drinking, but only after completion of the “business”.

A Nyi Nyi is a Zebra Finch and if you study a Nyi Nyi’s behaviour, you will always find water and edible grain in the desert; kindergarten stuff for the Pitjantjatjara and their kinsfolk.

On one occasion, the Elders got me to drive all over Adelaide. One of them had disappeared. Kumantjai Baker gave directions with his index finger. After around 5 hours we drove back to the Aboriginal College of Music. As we entered a Mr Peter Brookes whose theatre included performances of the Mahabarhata in a quarry out of Adelaide was waiting with his entourage. His producer, who I will call ‘Jungle Jim’ because he dressed like he was on Safari, threatened me. “This is costing thousands of dollars and I will make life very difficult for you”.

But the Elders weren’t interested because they were not complete as a group. I later found out that this missing person had a few drinks, went to Port Adelaide, met a few women who had fantasies of being like Jedda; the tribal man takes the urban, domesticated black woman back to traditional grounds. They cried ‘rape’ when he succumbed to their seductions. He was in Jail. Well that was his side of the story anyway.

 The Department for the Arts through Chris Winzar and Lyn Amadio gave me a job to organize a children’s concert in the Adelaide Town Hall. I immediately asked the Indulkana Elders if they wanted to participate. They said yes for they wanted all white people to comprehend an ‘Inma’, through public performances for the uninitiated. I had an opportunity to display such skills, with the help of the Indulkana elders, to the greater metropolis of Adelaide youth and school children.

Then I got an education about bureaucracy, as I had the carpet pulled out from underneath me: The Inma was cancelled. An arts administrator took over the reins of the show. I was relegated to being a performer. In my opinion the ‘tribute to youth’ for (the International Year of The Child) as I called it, was to be a winner so all channels of ownership was diverted to those who had the cultural capital to receive the accolades.

It was a riot. The Indulkana Elders all turned up and stood around, keen to do an Inma with about 1000 school kids bussed to the event.

They were witness to the event and could only be spectators. Entertainment from the country, a visit from a Hare Krshna, played by my best friend Zyg, a message about the environment and the grand finale with a very long dragon when Ned Kelly (wearing the seven league boots) astride a horse operated by two people held up the Adelaide Town Hall. Ned, realizing that the people were good decided not to bail them up and got all the children in a conga line. He said “My name’s Ned Kelly and I got an empty belly. I’ve come with a gun so you’d better not run so stand right up, let’s have some fun”. They marched single file, dancing under the larger than life Ned. The media reported a sensation.

We also appeared as work-shoppers at Vaughn House in Enfield, an institution or reformatory for wayward girls. It was actually a space to place the lost and stolen who resisted and repeatedly tried to escape placement with white foster parents. We met, amongst others Kumantjai Hunter and one Kumantjai Moodoo. The Moodoo name is historically associated with ‘the rabbit proof fence’ where David Galpulil plays the tracker Moodoo of the three Noongars who escaped from their mission and had an epic reunion with their mother travelling 100s of kilometres along the rabbit proof fence.

Pippa, from Yalata, was a very intelligent and street smart young lady. When we arrived at Vaughn House, we would bring along flour and yeast. Over a period of 3 hours we would make puppets. First the dough would be fashioned into characters and we would “play” with the changing characters, make paper Mache puppets out of our imaginations. When the glue was drying, we would go back to the rising (yeast) flour and knead it. The girls loved doing this. The dough was used as a football and the girls really took their frustrations out on it. More than once the dough landed splat on the floor. We would then place the dough in containers to rise.

While the bread was rising, then baked, we would shift our focus to the now dry puppets and put together a puppet show either from a stock script or made up. The girls found that part a bit boring, but when the bread came back to us (we were not permitted to bake it) they would happily munch on the bread, eating of their own frustrations. We were trying to help these young women to divert the energy of a negative reality toward positive outcomes.

We became quite taken by Pippa’s keen intelligence and on more than one occasion became her guardians, representing her as advocates and diverting her away from the criminal justice system. I forgive her (now) for stealing my car, the police chase through the city of Adelaide, crashing through a police barrier and coming to rest against a police car. I do not forgive the Police when they tried to get me to pay for the damage done. Last time I spoke to her older sister Bev, I heard Pippa had passed away at an early age from glue sniffing. This confirmed my belief that protectionism of a peoples and their way, actually kills

The old question

The oldest question.

Is there a God,

Who would permit

Such acts of genocide?

Permit colonialists

To destroy the corridors

Of a peoples and their ways

Of glorifying nature.

Support such wars

Of accurate technocrats

And one God bureaucrats

In dualism sway.

Of Good nor evil

Instead of balance

Of positive and negative

Events in harmony....

Is God a he or she

In an image of man

Or more a totality

Of all things living.

With no conscience...

Or species bias...

Of sharing atoms...

And transformations.

Who is it said ‘let it be’,

As we arrive upon the threshold,

As the mirror of our own definition,

Gods over all dominion.

Often the Elders preferred to stay at my place, the men under the date palm out the front, women under the peach tree out the back in 15 Mackay Avenue, Northfield, where my first daughter, Rose was born. I have participated in all 5 of my children’s births, 2 at home and the last one by myself, tying his umbilical cord with my shoe lace. All the neighbour’s kids would come around to participate in the Inma at dusk when they would break out into song. They taught me the most important lesson; business first, hit the piss after the business was done. They showed their desert, lizard eyes to me and once collectively emitted a note that shattered a crystal bowl in my hand. I smiled and told them to settle down.

These elders were red band. They one day made a red band for me as I had been through all stages of the Inma Nyi Nyi cycle. As they were about to place it on my head a number of young urban Aboriginals walked up to me and said “If you wear the red band, we will kill you”. These old men were pretty smart. Many of the urban Nungas were lost/stolen urban contemporaries. Whilst proud of their Aboriginality, they were reluctant to go through initiation (Whistlecock and knocked out teeth not with-standing – something I refused when asked if I would be initiated). This moment encouraged people like Ronny Ansell to go back to their home lands and follow through with initiation.

I would like to thank the producer director of ‘wrong side of the road’ for having nothing to do with me and other lecturers in the college for getting me busted as we all smoked some yarndi out the front of the British Hotel. I was the only one busted (the token white boy & continued harassment by the SA police), but thanks also to Ralph Bleechmore for representing (free of charge) me in yet another court case. ‘We have survived the white man’s world and you know you can’t change that’ (A line by Bart Willoughby, drummer lead singer for No Fixed Address)). By this time my record started to read like a ‘goon show’ script.

On one occasion as I was driving through Ceduna on my way to the Perth Royal Show and York Fair. I ran into Bart and the rest of No Fixed Address. We had a few drinks and as I went to the toilet a number of whites followed me in. They told me whites drink in the lounge and blacks in the front bar. They told me to stick to that rule or there would be trouble. On Bart’s advice I went to Koonibba and did a free show for the mission kids. I told the whites that these people were my brothers.

Koonibba has a number of rock-holes that have sizeable sacs in them. Water collected in them. Sometimes small birds trying to access these sacs as the water evaporated would fall in, drown and over time become pickled. Now I don’t know if the person who told me this was having ‘a lend’ of me, but he claimed these rocks and sacs were evidence of the location where the Rainbow Serpent had a shit. Hence it’s name; Goona Hilba or where the Rainbow Serpent shat on the hill, Koonibba. I’m pretty sure it was the affectionate story created by the lost and stolen to describe the mission. There again Indigenous attitudes toward ‘goonum’ is a bit different because it tells the Indigenes many things about what is happening in the landscape. Do you want to track a kangaroo, snake or lizard? Well the freshness of their goona not only tells you how far away the beast is, but what else is living there.

On the opening night of ‘Wrong Side of the Road’ in Port Adelaide the members of No Fixed Address, blown away by their performances in that film celebrated by having a ‘goon’ at a regular location. A Paddy wagon with a number of police grabbed a hold of them and they were thrown into Jail. That was literally stepping out of a movie, directly into the stark reality of being an Aboriginal in the late seventies and early eighties.

Over the following years, I have run into a number of people who confided they had stolen or taken objects from sacred sites such as Uluru and Goanna Headlands, Evans Head. They had nothing but sickness and bad luck since and in conversation asked if I would be the go between in returning these objects. I returned some rocks to the Indulkana elders who looked shocked and told me to put them behind a door. They soon disappeared. Sometimes the sickness and bad luck was passed on to me.

On another occasion someone told me the same about a beautiful black rock with a fine red seam running through it. Sure enough it is evidence (blood) of a mighty battle between the Goanna and Snake; the Goanna won and I returned the stone 2000 kilometres from Adelaide to the spiritual heart of Bundjalung Country, where I also received a Bachelor of Indigenous Studies from Southern Cross University at Lismore in 2000.

After the National Youth Conference, I was invited to Papunya an Indigenous settlement near Hermansberg, where a Professor Strehlow spent some time. I knew his son John reasonably well. I went there with my son Fletcher who was probably 3 years old. Papunya was a place that Indigenous people from various groups like the Walpiri and Pintupi were conned into settling. Their version of how they ended up there is as follows.

‘The word got around that the Department for Aboriginal Affairs told them to go to Papunya, Utopia or Yuendumu’, where they would be given ‘free food and accommodation’. When they registered another ‘gubba fella’ told them to sign on to the dole where they would be given money for food and rent. They said “no we’re gonna play cards with that money and with the winnings buy cars and alcohol”, and they did. Petrol sniffing was rife, but the famous dot painting originated in these locations. Famous people in the rest of the world, like Possum Clifford could be found here or Alice Springs out of his mind on flagon wine or sherry. Their art work is brilliant and inspiring. The sacred secret element of their paintings is a signature.

My son Fletcher, aged around three, went by air to Alice Springs then by van to Papunya. Each day he would disappear with all the other children. He would return at sunset every day. I have no idea where or what he was doing. Some people would call that neglect. I still smile when I think of Fletcher, stained red by the soil of Papunya arriving back in Adelaide with snot running out of his nose. His mother’s first words were, “oh my God”.

When you entered Aboriginal Land you were incorporated to a particular group for who you were responsible. It was the Law. Through the land, you had to fit in. The women looked after the children. It was the Law. My given skin name was Jacamarra. I went hunting bush turkey and kangaroo with the men and the women also took me hunting for lizard, honey ants and witchetty grubs. I was not permitted to touch the kangaroo and everything had to be portioned strictly to the Law.

I put my 7 league boots on for the local school and as I stood up heard wailing and looked around to see women and men hitting their heads with rocks and nulla nullas and bleeding profusely. Someone had died (Kumantjai Paddy) from the valley of the giants and with me on the 7 leaguers, it triggered the event where everyone was wailing and in deep mourning. Emotions spilled over.

There is a celebrated analysis of the costs that most whites think is hand-outs. There was a leaking tap at Papunya. After being advised, the government sent out a person to assess requirements. That person requisitioned a washer and a plumber to drive the return journey of 600 km to fix the leaking tap; for only a qualified plumber could do this ridiculously easy task. This required over 1200 km of travel all up and lots of requisitioning; at a cost of $3000 the leaking tap was fixed. The money was given to whites in servicing the Black community. However we get to hear of it as hand-outs to Aboriginals via the media. Just like the recent ‘intervention’. All that money appears as Aboriginal expenditure but most of the money goes to the white bureaucrats, Federal Police and authorities that service the intervention.

An example is the design of houses at Papunya. First, what is the point of doors and corridors? Everyone knows where to sleep. It is according to relationship not necessarily man with woman; so off came the doors. There is no need for privacy. The bedrooms need to be given access to the outside world so access is by the windows. We might as well lower the windows to ground level. What is the point of sleeping if you cannot see the sky? So it was necessary to put holes in the roof. As for floorboards, what is wrong with sleeping on your mother the earth? At least you didn’t have to go far to gather wood. It gets cold at night so it’s best to have a fire burning. Inside and with the hole in the roof it creates good ventilation. Within a very short time Papunya housing was looking to the whites like a ghetto.

Another analysis was that ‘ Kumantjai Paddy’ was now dead. He was associated with a particular Toyota. It was Paddy’s Toyota. When he died no-one would travel in that Toyota because it should have been buried (or hidden) along with all physical remnants of Paddy’s belongings. Not to do so would be to break their Law. Instead of taking the Toyota to some other settlement or getting it painted and or “smoked”, the white bosses, unsympathetic to local lore, insisted the bus remain there to the shame and grief of all. Shame they could not follow the Law and grief because it reminded them of the recently deceased. The bus was eventually left to rot in some back lot. Another story of wastage for whites (always blaming the blacks), with no respect for Indigenous Law.

Eventually the Pintupi elders had enough of the concentration camp that was Papunya. The Gubba Goonum (Government Shit) was too thick. Petrol sniffing was destroying their youth. One day they all up and left, back to their spiritual homelands, 500 km west; near the WA border to Kintore, Lake Mackay. It was in the mid eighties and a return to homelands movement had begun.

The government promises of food and shelter turned out to be lies and assimilation, unemployment, idleness, alcohol poisoning and petrol sniffing youth. Recent brawls, interventions and consequent displacement of over 100 Indigenous people to Adelaide recently, is testimony to the folly of putting people from different tribes and wrong skin together. It was a time bomb, always brewing and percolating then around 2006 on it really went off.

Sick of seeing their kids sniffing petrol because they were bored with no chance of any employment the Pintupi packed up and went home. Sick of seeing at least a death a week of family and erosion of their LAW they moved back to their homelands. They attempted to halt the genocide and fancy removal of people from their lands. They took a few positive aspects of white fella ways with them (Like my poet friend Robert Nowack and health services through the Flying Doctor Service), laid down an airstrip and took ownership toward protecting their children and traditional ways.

6. Trouble On The Show Circuit

There was a time when I abandoned the seven league boots. I had become Daddy Long Legs and Colin Herring had disappeared. Smoking and drinking too much, I had lost my identity, my family and any purpose. Travelling on my own was very lonely. When I left Adelaide on Ash Wednesday, I had a contract to appear at the Tamworth Show and the $1500 payment was the money to finance a move with a partner and 2 children to Sydney.

            On my way to Tamworth, I stayed the night in Coonabarabran. I had the good fortune to meet the Chief Inspector of Police for the Northern Region and the local Sergeant. They invited me back and yarned. They told me of their frustrations at having to take an oath to the queen and not Australia. Well they must have told the police in Tamworth about me because they treated me so well. My partner at the time must have been in awe how I was driven by the police to late night drinking places and delivered home in a police car totally off my face. I was invited many times to the Tamworth Show and it is how I eventually met Ian and Rosemary Sinclair at Bendemeer.

            Earlier, I had gone on tour through Queensland during a period of floods. The showmen were in a bad mood for show after show had been cancelled or washed out. From Newcastle NSW to St George Qld, I had driven back roads in heavy rain all the way. If I stopped the vehicle, I would have been bogged. I would like to thank the Eagles because without them I would have “let the sound of” my “own wheels drive me crazy”. I arrived at St George and the show was cancelled. That night I went to a fireplace and met the showmen. Some were fighters from Brophy’s boxing tent and a bloke named ‘Max’. Mad Max had been drinking overproof Bundy and as I left he tried to pick a fight with me over a milk crate. He shaped up to me and I instinctively lashed out with my left and knocked him out. Max fell to the ground and rolled into the fire. He sported a big black eye for quite a while after that.

            The Showman’s employees and family attacked me en masse and as I ran, fended off the waves of showies like in a rugby match. I straddled a fence and headed to the police station to the sound of windows being smashed in my van. I made them pay for the damage. This was the start of a long standing feud. Showmen never forget! At Alpha my tyres were slashed, at Capella they put sugar in my fuel tank. They fiddled with it out of Darwin and were most surprised to see me make it to Cairns, they loosened my wheel bearings in Townsville and years later at Gin Gin bashed me senseless. I was ‘accidentally’ knocked off my seven league boots in Townsville. But I kept coming back for more. Belting me around the face they put me out of business near Bundaberg, location of the annual Showmen’s Ball. I was not born a showman and I wasn’t even a ‘prick’ relation. And on top of that I was arrogant and ignorant.

            At Tennant Creek, I appeared as a giant white bird with at least a 7 metre wingspan. A group of young Aboriginals flocked around me. Spontaneously they flocked under the protective wings of the big bird. They were like baby emus, but in that wind I took a tumble and the Bird head rolled off my head. The kids all surrounded me and I told them to come in toward me. I told them to drag me as the big bird past the bar and keep on going. I also told them what to say if the old fellahs at the bar asked what they were doing. As they dragged me past the bar sure enough the old fellahs stopped their young kin and said “what you doing”. The kids answered. “This is the biggest bush turkey we ever saw. We takin him back to camp. We gonna cookim then we gonna eatim!” The old fellahs at the bar all had a good old fashioned belly laugh as I was taken away.

            I did make just as many friends as enemies especially the Zacchini family. Their forebears were known as the Flying Zacchinis as both trapeze artistes and the first to be shot out of a cannon as seen in Jerry Lewis’ “Three Ring Circus”.  Theo Zacchini the then oldest clown in the world aged around 86, taught me how to be a clown at Ashton’s Circus. Showmen come from Romany, Italiano, gypsy families with long standing circus heritage. Most no longer did circus and knew the money was in rides and ‘joints’.

A friend of mine Khail Juredinhi recalls “Earlier in the fifties I was so proud to be chosen by the clowns to put a harness on and go for a fly around the big top...and then they swung me down close to them , pulled my shorts and underpants off , and there i was , shame and mortification , ...it was in kingston , sth-east , ...and then BACK UP FOR ANOTHER 'WIZZ' AROUND THE AUDIENCE , ...til landfall and the return of clothes by laughing clowns...the one who did not collude with the 'flyer' clowns became my favorite in years to come , and a truly great clown , whom i finally met with in his latter days , once at bonython park , the great ZACCHINI !!.. and when i visited his trailer , i asked him to let me hear his famous big-top punchline........" GEEEEEEEEEEE , DAT'S NNIIIIICE !!! " ...millions of stories in the nekkid vicarious show”

Theo Zacchini taught me (the author) how to be a clown. I know his sons and his grandsons especially....trapeze clowns music and their family is featured in Jerry Lewis's three ring circus being shot out of a cannon as "the flying Zacchinis" (Theo’s brother) while they were with Ashtons at once again Bonython Park. Travelled on the show circuit 1982-1992 with them. I met Theo when He was at 86 the oldest clown in the world.

As Khail relates “I was passing by and noticed his trailer after hours , and surprised to be a welcome visitor , and had a classic unravelling memory trip , resolved by direct contact with the living past as a present-time experience...laser beam eyes , like a MRI- scan , and perfect clown- doctoring ...on,on,on,further , with head up...Theo would say GEEEEEEEEEEEE , DATS NNIIIIIICE !!!...”

Theo would enter the circus arena and assess the mind set of his audience immediately. With a vast repetoire his improvisation would begin. He would look to his audience and say in a miniscule voice heeeelllloooo, the crowd would at the same pitch say heeeelllloo back then he would say it again only louder, the audience ditto, then the hellos would rise to a crescendo and then Theo would pull back as did the audience. This would take about 4 minutes between main acts, hey presto the lion’s den would be set up and the lion tamer would crack his whip. Theo made the event seamless as his sons George and Philip would then fly high on the trapeze.

This conversation with Khail, triggered a memory of my less than satisfactory child hood. I remember the harness routine amid a horse performance. The clown didn't choose me but left me in wonderment. It was at Ferryden Park, I must have been 5 years old, an age when we kids (1959) were let to wander on our own. I remember begging my father to see the circus, so he tore off a small part of a 5 pound note and told me it had a value of 2/6d. I went to the circus and offered it to the box office lady. On seeing my utter disappointment at being told it was not money she let me in for free. My eyes were welling up with tears and then I saw my first circus show. It must have been Theo and the flying Zacchinis in hindsight. From this moment, I fell in love with circus, clowns and entertainment.

And 20 years later when I worked with Theo and his sons, at Bonython Park, He would upon seeing me as the utter novice that I was would subliminally say "bravo" in encouragement at the orchestrations and grand moments created. He taught by example and there was no such thing as error. I learned by osmosis as the dignity of clown transferred by simply standing next to the master. The aesthetic and ideal gave purpose to clown. It was at this point I realised that with all the gloom and doom and abuse in this world, clowns are a different kind of soldier who (amongst other things) save children from the dark abyss of their childhood trauma. The motivation was simple and honest, to forget the daily grind and revel in the grande illusion. And thus I discovered "rehearsed spontaneity”.

 Alas, alack I only worked in circus for a very short while. My clown was chasing a childhood that never existed. As a loner I travelled across Australia on the show circuit and frequently crossed their paths as we journeyed the Showman's annual migration. The welcome mat was all there but the descendants of Theo realised there was more money and independence in rides and joints. With such abilities they could extract far more than I with but 3 coke bottles and a soft ball than I could earning $500 per day.

The Zacchinis pulled out of circus due to 'critical references to the circus he worked with, as being a pretty quasi-'fascist' hierarchy within its domestic parameters...nonetheless' (so says Khail). Ashton's were a law unto themselves and they held court as judge, jury and executioners. This is why I resolved to work for no master, even when Fred Brophy offered to me the management of the house of horrors and bizarre genetic mutations because of my spruiking and spoken word abilities, the boxing tents in Queensland and NT were something else.

Any showman with 3 coke bottles and a ball could extract more money in a few hours than I could at $500 per day, walking on the 7 leaguers. I witnessed a showman strip $750 off a Fettler at the Emerald show in less than an hour with nothing more than an electrified wire and a loop to run an irregular shape and great showmanship. He put the pressure on and off as the crowd gathered. He got the Fettler to do it without a bet then extracted a further $400 from him with big odds and a cornucopia of prizes.

            I was in love with the show grounds and received an education on the mobile townships that are the world of gypsies, carnies and showmen. Carnies are the itinerants that showmen employ to work the rides and sometimes do their dirty work. The lay out, the battles for space, the showmanship, the smothers, security, the holes in the walls, the cons, after hour activities and the boxing tents were all part of my late initiation into manhood. We all had to have a situational memory, each year bring some new con or act, and above all remember names and faces and fights, for revenge was a sweet phenomenon, the next year round.

The sounds of the Boxing Tent, with the war drum of boom ba boom ba boom, calling and barking, challenging all the fighters and locals. The bets, the scenarios ring in my head today. For instance there would be the ‘bash a coon’ scenario.  A ‘local’ blackfellah, small featherweight, would ‘volunteer’ to fight one of Sharmans or Brophy’s best. He would be promoted as the next Lionel Rose (Aboriginal World Boxing Champion). He would do all right and decide he would join the boxing troupe, even though he was pretty soundly defeated. Then the next night he would be presented as a member of the troupe. The local whites would egg on a ringer, a local brawler to take the lightweight on. Bets would fly. The locals, expecting to see the local “coon” bashed legally, would bet big.

The first round the black fella would appear to be bashed senselessly. More bets were taken. In the second round it was more even, but the blackfella was still beaten soundly. More bets were taken at fantastic odds. The money was held by a ‘neutral’ observer and taken out of the ring next to a hole in the wall. In the Third round, the black fella would come out of his corner having spent 2 rounds observing his opponent’s brawler style then scientifically, like a good pugilist, ‘dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee’.

The Blackfella would systematically clean the floor with the Ringer. The Ringer would be knocked to the ground. The man with the money would disappear through the hole in the wall. As the crowd realized they had lost all bets, they surged forwards. Plants in the audience would ‘accidentally’ target and rugby style, push or “shoulder charge” anyone who looked a threat.  At the ‘two up’ game in the mirror maze later on in the night, there would be the key players laughing and joking, spending big. The Showmen and the Aboriginals were all related. Doing business with Showmen always became a parable and a lesson learnt. Fools and their money are easily parted.

Fred Brophy asked me once if I would like to run a tent of freaks and horrors for him. I replied “I serve no master”. This arrogance and ignorance was my downfall. I had forgotten that I was just a man. I had become my own con. Once a child at the local pub in Roma said to his parents “there’s the Show Man”! He was pointing at me. That is the day when I truly became a showman. The showman in me simply swallowed Colin whole. I lost my family, my business, self-respect and three children.

Showmen are like most people. They are just making a living. They had to provide a service to cope with all weather conditions. If it was windy, forget the fairy floss. If it was wet and blustery the rides were poor and the hot dogs and burger stores did a killing. So if you are a showman you have to diversify. When it rained incessantly, the trucks broke down, got bogged. Nobody made any money and it was just plain miserable. Their sensibility of family is their strength. Their ability to spin a yarn is legendary. They have a scenario for every eventuality. Their repertoire was one of rehearsed spontaneity and their memory immaculate. Drugs changed their society forever. Like the Indigenes, they too were losing their children to drugs. Like the Indigenes, their youth revolted against their elders drinking alcohol and switched to another form of poison.

7. The Move to Sydney and NSW

When I arrived in NSW, I wanted to travel the show circuit. My partner said no and insisted we live in Sydney near her identical twin sister. We lived first in Annandale then Chatswood and Lane Cove. I wanted to live in the Blue Mountains and place a deposit on a house there. However I was told we were too settled with family and spent 10 years in the Big City renting. Sydney has the best setting in the world with its magnificent harbour. As the Twin’s connections were all musicians, dancers and singers, I was privy to a major multicultural part of history in Australia.

 These folk musicians were singing Turkish, Albanian, Serbian, Macedonian and Balkan music. The choruses of women, singing open throated to Balkan music was magnificent. The musical instruments such as Gaidas, saxaphones and Tablas meant there was a stream of amazing musicians and singers through our house. They called themselves Mesana Salata which means ‘mixed salad’.

The musicians, singers and folk dancers became national treasures in for instance Albania. They had learnt the traditional songs and dance moves at a time when the Albanians and associated regions were in revolution and were more interested in Rock n Roll. Some are pretty well the last holders of the songs and dance moves. They connected with the Sydney University Music Department and Winsome Evans (a fine harpist) through the Renaissance Players. I would sometimes perform for them juggling and dancing on the seven league boots, walking up the stairs of lecture theatres. My children had the best of both worlds (Clowning, face painting, seven league boots, music and dance) in their early years. They thought that this kind of life style was normal.

Sydney was so large and driving was like in a permanent Grand Prix. Gunja was easily available and with my South Australian connections we were able to form clubs (of entertainers) to avoid any criminal associations. Above all, it was so easy to be anonymous in Sydney. Through theatrical enterprise we found an agent and went to every festival and major event in Sydney and beyond. Once a year the Mercantile Hotel’s owners Michael and Mary Durkin would give us the run of Circular Quay in the Guinness and Oyster festival. I danced on the seven leaguers, walked up stairs and through the cobbled streets in the oldest part of Sydney for four hours straight on one occasion.

I mainly went to children’s parties around Sydney. One weekend I did nine parties in two days. It was insanity driving all round Sydney, refreshing makeup in the car, sorting the props on the move, changing sweaty costumes. I wore the seven league boots, did magic, painted faces and juggled my way from one house to the next. I performed at many famous peoples house including Don Lane’s Son Paris and a number of parties for an up market restaurant (Maxmillians) owner’s child once again named Paris. I even appeared at famous prostitute’s houses. God they flirted with the clown.

Once I went to a party where criminal’s wives were partying. Their menfolk were in Jail. I would have to go to a telephone box in the middle of a state forest to receive further instructions and eventually perform to a bunch of flirtatious women and their children. Standing by were a number of men literally wearing pinstripe suits; in the middle of summer. I never stopped to ask what they were packing. Once one wanted you, the rest of their circle would have to have you and I did the entire circuit of associated friends. On another occasion when doing a show for a three year old whose father had the lead role in Chess the musical I was given a tip of a substantial amount of hashish.

This way I became the performers performer for the likes of Angela Punch-McGregor, Star of ‘we of the never never’, for her son Hamish. It was hard performing for Don Lane because as a loud Yank he told the audience what I was going to do next. I even did a job at a Psychiatrists request. A young girl had Coulrophobia or fear of clowns. I turned up straight faced and got all her friends to paint my face as a clown. She enjoyed doing it so much. I looked more like a Picasso painting at the end.

Then I started to meet a lot of ‘First Fleeters’ in a John Keating through Old Sydney Town. He was/is the world champion Town Crier. Many a time we would go to Curzon Hall and recreate old Sydney, muskets and all, in atmosphere or do grand (re) openings of for instance the Queen Victoria Building. The Irish wanted me to walk in the St. Patrick’s Day parade for five years straight. I then met a Doctor Jonathan King whose ancestor was Lieutenant King on whose record of the first fleet and early settlement is the foundation of Australia’s early history. At Macquarie University I did some short courses including implementation of the environmental curriculum K-12 and Heretically Independent thoughts and Dangerous Delusions because of the Sub-Paragraph Three experience.

The then Waste Management Authority of NSW was evolving into two branches. One was the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA). The other branch was Waste Management. The EPA, due to my qualifications on implementation of the environmental curriculum, commissioned me to invent a script. The brief was that I had to upend a whole lot of rubbish in a room then get kids to help me clean it all up into “reuse, reduce and compost” categories. I studied what was in the average bag of garbage then recreated it as safe props (no glass). That was the most expensive garbage content in the world (Cost $600).

I also invented a trick ladder (cost $1200 and I had to sign a contract that the design was the property of the Ladder manufacturer). Elements of its design are incorporated into a well-known multi-purpose ladder sold today. In the garbage were cues which when upset, varied the act according to what was brought before me. It was like rolling dice. A “garbo” (named Mr. Fixit) walked into a room with a garbage bag and tries to hide it. With the help of a ladder he would enlist the aid of the audience to ‘stash’ the garbage.

But the ladder broke down. With a map on how to use a ladder properly (Yes bureaucracies do have brochures on how to use a ladder correctly) with an audience member holding the garbage, I did a contortion act through and around the ladder. Desperately grabbing the garbage, the ladder would break in half and I, stuck on it would up-end the garbage amongst the audience. I would call out “oh no, I’m gonna get sacked! Please help me” Some members would help. There were some erasers and rulers in the rubbish. As they helped me transfer the rubbish to 3 bins (to sort the rubbish) certain acts occurred at random.

For instance when all the compost was put in a bin, a tree would magically appear. The recycled matter would start to accumulate. The erasers and rulers could be kept as a reward until someone handed me a stapled mass of photocopied $50 notes. I would hold it high in the air and shout, “This is Money”! On that the whole audience would surge forward and in seconds flat an entire room of garbage would be cleared and sorted. The showman’s con, see how it works!  Only a small percentage went to the tip. I performed it 55 times at the Royal Easter Show in 8 days and at least another 150 times throughout the Sydney region. For 2 years I was the human face, as Mr. Fixit, of the newly emerging EPA of NSW.

Of course working at the Royal Easter meant I could visit all my showy friends. The night before the show started a major theft occurred. All the RM Williams designer wear had been stolen. I thought nothing of it until I later turned up on the inland run through Queensland. Sure enough from Hughenden to Charleville and all the way to Darwin and Cairns the showies, one by one, started to wear RM Williams gear. They blended right in with all the outback folk.

During this period I often colluded with an Ira Seidenstein who is one of the greatest clowns of the late 20^th and 21^st centuries. His credits include working for Cirque de Soleil and recently in Italy on commedia projects. We worked together on the Waste-management gig. We first met at Sydney’s Luna Park during a gig. He was stunned at my work on stilts and I quite taken by Ira’s smooth and purposeful movements and eccentricities. We also worked at exhibitions of garden and pool furniture (Sebel) and were often placed together in the many performances around Sydney. However I would often disappear on the show circuit and I drifted away from the East coast of Australia. We recently re-contacted each other thanks to the wonders of Facebook.

The migration habits of show men and women across Australia are dynamic. Around Christmas they fragment and head to their riverside and seaside holiday haunts down south. When the Holidays end they go to minor shows in southern Australia. As they head north to escape the southern winter, they travel in convoys of family through Northern NSW toward the top end’s dry season. Then they tend to break into 2 streams known as the Coast and Inland run. One mobile township zig zags up the coast and finishes at Cairns. The other heads for Goondiwindi, St George, Roma, Charleville then upward to Barcaldine, Winton, Longreach toward Mt Isa, down to Alice Springs via Camoweal and the famous 3 ways, then the long haul a week apart to Tennant Creek, Katherine and Darwin.

Here they break up, one lot go to WA the other group trickles its way down to their Holiday locations along the East coast. After the Showman’s Balls in both Katherine and Bundaberg they split up and go either in land Queensland or off to Western Australia’s top end; or finish at Darwin and or go on to Cairns. Then they all filter down to the south. The major shows are timed perfectly for this annual migration.

I would alternate between the two in consecutive years. As the Showmen approached Queensland they tightened as a group and set up fishbone cities. Their battle for space is at the heart of all disputes and the layout appears ramshackle but every square inch is accounted for. The design of the joints was to place blinkers on a customer’s brain and totally involve them in a festival of sensory overload.

The Maze created had its purposes. On one occasion some youths stole a large bag of coins and ran off. They followed the maze. The proprietor simply walked through a hole in the wall to the exit point of the maze ahead of the thieves. He and his co-workers simply pushed them sprawling money and all. What happens next is not for writing. Never attempt to con a conman. Never steal from a thief. If you are racist you display a weakness. In Queensland the Showmen were judge, jury and executioners.

At the Hughenden show an incident occurred wholly of my making. Having finished work at the showgrounds, I went to the pub. I often chose pubs to stay at rather than motels because one could be sociable without worries about driving. Somehow we were demonstrating our athletic abilities to each other. I could place my hands on a stool, lift myself up with my elbows tucked in to my chest and my torso and legs would defy gravity by appearing at right angles to the upright stool.

On this occasion, the seat of the stool was faulty. It slipped off the square frame of the stool. I went head first into the frame of the stool and as my torso followed inside the frame, my neck violently bent backwards at a right angle across the lower bar inside the frame of the stool. People thought they had witnessed a man break his neck in front of them. I extricated myself and for two months I had to develop a silent act because I could barely talk.

Back in Sydney, I connected with a number of people who, sometimes after 18 months or so of knowing them discovered I was Sub-Paragraph Three. They would stop what they were doing and shook my hand. I had not realized how big it was because it had gone ‘viral’ in the Eastern States. This fact automatically fast tracked me through the worlds of many amazing people. Because Sydney is so big, people at the pub will speak to you but rarely invite you home. As SP3 I was invited back.

I went to Thredbo revisited. It was (along with Mullumbimby’s ‘Aquarius Festival’) the equivalent to America’s ‘Woodstock’. It was 10 years to the day that it had occurred. I met Jim Cairns and once again the people I came with introduced me as Sub-Paragraph Three. The organisers gave me the Cook’s Tour. At one stage there were a few circles of people consuming hooch. Upon hearing who I was the different circles ensured that I had my fill of smoko. Jim Cairns was in Gough Whitlam’s Cabinet 1972 to1974 and was the leader of Australia’s alternate movement at the time. The acting Prime Minister of Australia (for a time) was a dope smoking hippy.

I also had the first of many conversations with Burnam Burnam. He once sailed in a ship to England and upon landing placed the land rights flag on sovereign English Soil. He claimed Great Britain for The Indigenous People of Australia. This was a moment in Australian history for it highlighted the absurdity of Captain Cook claiming Terra Nullius (The Great Lie) for Royalists. When the tables are turned and an Aboriginal does it to the English it becomes an absurdity. Kumantjai Burnam has passed now and should be remembered for his marvellous absurd act.

So I ran into a fellow named Ram Ayana and helped start the Nexus Magazine with him by attending the first meetings and contributing a few articles. Another fellow named Mick Jacob, manager of ‘Gondwanaland’ featuring a one armed didjeridoo player (Charlie McMahon), introduced me to film directors, Sirocco and Larrikin Records. At one stage on my seven league boots, the bass player of little river band (my brother in law’s brother) invited me back stage to meet some rock n roll star as Sub-Paragraph Three. I refused because of my commitment to work. He devoted a song to me.

Through Larrikin Records I was given a gig for the Young President’s Club. These people had earned from scratch $10 million dollars by the time they were 30. A man named Sutton (car dealership), Stephan (Hairdresser), a Japanese gentleman who won bronze in the Olympics as a swordsman were a few of the great individuals who had by hook or crook achieved this goal. The only inheritors of money who were included were those who had made a further 10 mill before the age of 30. Once a year they meet somewhere in the world and it was Sydney, Balmain’s turn. In the docks, where the ferries arrived, they all arrived by private boat. The dock was set up as an old Sydney Town type atmosphere.

There were fish in an aquarium. Anybody could point to a fish. It would be scooped out of the water and within 2 minutes it was cooked. It was the best gourmet fish and chips I ever had. I roved around as a Cockney con-man saying “I am da entertainment fer dis evenins activities guvna. I am a Magician. I can make a one ‘undred dollar note disappear….Av you got wun Guv”. Mr Sutton wasn’t gonna be conned and they all laughed at the various showman’s cons amidst words like dog n bone and chalk n cheese thrown in for good measure. Their laugh was so hard you thought they woulda had an artichoke (heart attack). Sirocco played folk music throughout the event.

I even met at NSW Film and Television School a fellow whose company, Apogee was at the cutting edge of virtual reality in the US. I learnt about virtual reality before it was common knowledge. The application of green washes, primary colours and monochromatic treatments using ‘test’ experimentation with the likes of Sylvester Stallone was a marvel to me. I knew the tech guys at the opera house and can even say I have been in an opera at the Opera House.

At the same time I was a principal in a few commercials where I appeared on seven league boots 7 meters to the ankles. This was a holeproof underdaks commercial where for 2 years at least 30 times a day a kid tugged on my trousers, dropping them to the ground. I was caught in Rodeo Plaza, Double Bay twenty five feet in the air with nothing but a pair of blue undies on the seven league boots. The secretaries on the first floor got a bird’s eye view.

I thought I was going to die for the whole 12 hours of the shoot. If I made a 5 centimetre movement with my feet, my body would move almost 2 meters, gliding through the air. Time itself slowed as everything occurred in slow motion making those hours even longer. My brain was overloaded and functioning at a very high speed. At the end of the shoot, I went to the Kirribilli Hotel wearing a dressing ground and just the undies. I said nothing. I just drank as if each glass was my last.

While I was in Medee at the opera house, the ad would run in the green room between appearances. Many of the other supernumeraries invited me to the sleaze ball and gay mardis gras upon seeing the product shot, close up of my arse (actually a stand in arse). We were playing the Iconic roles of Immortals and high priests in a 17^th century opera with the great Elizabeth Connell. I was also an extra in a number of movies.

 I was invited to audition for a West End Advertisement.  John Swan and the Party boys were to feature in it. It turned out that the director of the Ad was a South Australian. Apparently I employed him to film (his first professional gig) an event created by Inma Community Workshop at Unley Primary School. It featured a giant puppetry extravaganza and Parade with over 400 students. It was the school’s centenary celebration, time capsule and all. I gave this graduate from Flinders University’s Film School total freedom to film and edit what he wanted in his first professional gig.

He reciprocated by giving me free range in this commercial. The Takes were fantastic and I was permitted to have total freedom all over the film set. It was the most creative I ever felt. The Ad played in SA for about 3 months before the Grand Prix in Adelaide. It was a resounding success. You never know what will happen in this business and if you do the right thing chances are the rewards will be reaped in unusual and wonderful ways.

My partner and I also designed and performed the first interaction (in Australia) between a Mime Artist with computer generated graphics for Polaroid Cameras. A Mime in a spotlight with a dark background painting a scene that appeared like magic and synchronous to the computer generated graphics appearing on a projected screen. We dabbled in State of the Art technology and a promise of things to come with the advent of virtual reality. This was our occupation. Put into practice what the executives could only imagine. Sometimes we felt as if we were in a permanent world of Bill Oddie’s “The Goodies”.

On another occasion I was employed as a hand model. The products were cleaning products for bathrooms, kitchens and toilets. The theme was ‘three of a kind’ a ‘full hand’ and a ‘royal flush’. They auditioned many magicians for the part. Each of them failed because they were limited by fooling the casting agent with tricks. They presented illusions to trick the mind. When I did the audition, I stated I was probably the worst magician out of the lot of them. That to achieve their objectives I would cheat. My illusions were to ‘trick’ the camera.

I was given the job. I drilled two miniscule holes into the top of a pack of cards. I then placed invisible cord in a loop through the pack. As I bent the pack inwards, all the cards sprung from one hand to the other in a perfect flourish. I then grabbed the various combinations like Royal Flush and glued fine fishing wire to the back of the cards so when they were fanned, had an equal distance between them. All I had to do was present the cards with my manicured hands and the photographer captured the moment. Two hours and 1200 dollars later, my hands were displayed in the aisles of every Australian Supermarket. If you want to keep a clean toilet why not give it the ‘royal flush’ using a ‘full hand’ or ‘four of a kind’. It was better than two pair any day of the week. As long as you are the one holding all the aces.

A fellow named Franklin Scarfe invited me to participate in the first World Environment Day (June 5^th). He commissioned me and Benny Zable to create some kinetic art for the inaugural parade. Benny is the fellow you see all in black with a gas mask on silently protesting at uranium mining plants like Roxby Downs. Whereas his art to me is all doom and gloom, I designed the big bird as a purely positive feature, representing hope for a better world.

Benny found an old bird cage in Glebe and fashioned it into a big bird’s head and on world environment day, a big bird flew hovering above a giant worm and gliding through a crowd of 20,000 people was the result. In the hazy heat the illusion of a giant bird projected out into the air, in but above the crowd, felt and looked a grand illusion on those 7 league boots. I still have the big bird (Mark 2) today and he has flown from one end of this country to the other in a silent spirit of resurrecting the human condition. It became a kinetic sculpture or pixel that brings a spirit of freedom to gatherings of people. I call it kinetic sculpture, moving living art as a piece of rehearsed spontaneity added to the natural gathering of crowds. Many people have a photo of my kinetic sculptures in the land and peoplescape.

This led to me having many sorties to the Blue Mountains for Franklin had created the Earth Repair Foundation. I have to say that rich people, because they have the financial power to make things happen think they are “the chosen one”. Peace and love comes at a price. It is easy when you can afford it. His Uncle is Reuben F Scarf and Franklin financed many bold ventures such as the battle for the Franklin River, Much of Benny Zable’s activities, World Environment Day and Burnum Burnum’s bold claiming and Invasion of England for the Aboriginal people of Australia. Thus I met many artists such as Jenny Kee, Reg Livermore and a poet and sculptor known as Ted the mad Gypsy. Ted painted a picture of our work at the Guinness and Oyster Festival.

The big bird also flew at Don Dunstan’s public mourning on Elder Park in South Australia. As the big bird flew gracefully and respectfully amongst the gathered crowd it became a focal point or beacon of our grief. I was overwhelmed within the big bird by the passing of such a great person. Tears streamed from my eyes and I was emotionally torn by the absorption of a large community’s grief for a person who had shaped the destiny of South Australia as a whole.

Artwork by Edward Imsirovic at the Guinness & Oyster Festival

8. Sport and Entertainment

Back in Sydney, I started to get jobs with sporting concerns. First it was the rugby union when East Sydney played Randwick at ‘East’s’ home. At half time I would walk on the seven league boots with around 50 kids aged 3-5, egged on by their parents to tackle me. They came at me from behind in waves and the crowd laughed as they all bounced off my legs. I was then invited to perform at the Sydney Cricket Grounds (SCG) during the test matches and one day internationals. On the first occasion I entered the SCG to the roar of the crowd. I played golf with instructions that the pitch was sacred. With a 4 metre club and oversize ball the crowd cheered my antics.

This was the day that ‘Dutchy’ Holland got 8 for, against the West Indies at a time when they reigned supreme. When I appeared at the SCG Australia never lost. The announcer Tony Greig mused whether a person could actually play wearing seven league boots. There was no rule against it. The Australian Cricket Team adopted me and gave me the nick name of ‘Big Bird”. It was Joel Garner’s nick name. On one occasion, I remember with a big bouncy ball I ‘bowled’ a ball at Nick the Dick (a name given because he slept with everyone’s missus) at least 100 meters away and the ball whistled past his head to the roar of the crowd.

The sponsors MLC invited me to their annual family picnic. They were playing a game of cricket. It was my time to bowl. On the seven leaguers I bowled a sharply rising ball. The Batsman tried to smash it out of the ground and it skied back to me; caught and bowled. The next guy was stumped and the next was run out. God the MLC executives hated me, victims of my hat trick! However my employers were actually the womenfolk. They employed me to sabotage the match because they were sick of doing all the work. We were left in the stands, preparing the food and looking after all the kids, while the menfolk pretended to be Test Cricketers. This was my brief and I let the nature of karma take its course.

On another occasion in the ovals next to the SCG the ‘Musos’ challenged the Techs to a cricket game. An elegant Indian chap seemed like he was winning in runs but had a tendency to hit the ball for a four through a mid-position, slightly on the up. I knew he was a good enough player and would hit the ball to another position if I occupied the position. I hid behind the square leg umpire and ran to the mid position, leaping to the ball and pulled in a two handed ripper parallel to the ground. This memory runs through my head every night before I go to bed.

The captain of the techs gave me the gloves that fitted perfectly and as wicket keeper, I took: one handed catches, stumpings and we routed the musos. As a batsman I got 12 runs but partnered 3 fellows to the limit each of 30 not out. That was a century partnership not out! They declared me man of the match when one fellow hit the ball across Cleveland Street where it bounced to the Bat and Ball hotel. It was time for ‘drinks’. It was the greatest sporting moment of my life. This was next to winning an 800 meter walking race in an unofficial time of 27 seconds below the SA record and winning the B Grade darts doubles and team championships for the City Of Sydney out of the Redfern Hotel. The captain assured me it was a first grade catch. Every dog has his day.

I often played cricket with my children. We would grab a tennis ball. The seam would be a pipe cleaner with PVC red tape creating a shiny red ball. Because of the shape of the ball, it was unpredictable and the smallest kid could get a hat trick with it. Young children had 20 lives. The ball would deteriorate quickly into a spinner’s ball. When it was in tatters we would have drinks and prepare the new ball.

And of course it seems more than appropriate for me to place a poem about backyard cricket and its significance to family values:

 

The cricket tragic.

If you’ve bowled a maiden over,

Been at silly point or off,

Known the difference between a duck

 Where one leg’s both the same

Looked good in covers or slips

Taken a catch behind

Or stumped, like Gilchrist

Walked, surprised at Billy’s hook.

Veteran of world Waughs one and two.

Like Fraser, picket the gap

Impersonated Greig.

Amid marvelous running dashes

And elegant strokes of play.

Being Ponting, pondering long on,

What would’ve the Don done?

A sticky wicket, cried “come in spinner”

Waited for the doctor, relieving hazy heat,

Polished sharply rising balls.

Mimicked Dicky, hopping, 222,

Appealed from gully,

Against the light or ball!

Ow is ‘ee!.. Immense satisfaction, Hail!

Beating England!... holding the burnt bail.

Understand this conversation!

Witness moments…that ball…magic.

An opera on the brink.

You true blue cricket tragic.

All… In your own back yard,

With Mum’n Dad callin’….“drinks!”

Around Christmas, the musos invited me to a gig in Redfern for a publishing house at a back street in a loading bay. They were having a Greek themed celebration. Amid the aroma of lamb on spit and gourmet Greek food and wine I juggled fire and walked on the 7 leaguers. As I walked to my car in a back alley I was surrounded by a group of Greek youths aged around 15. The leader asked me to do a magic trick. I grabbed a scarf and flipped it behind his head. An updraught on this hot balmy night caught the scarf and transported it upwards 7 meters to the lights of a telegraph pole. It seemed to dance around the light.

The leader looked behind him and his friends were transfixed to the scarf wafting around the light. They gave nothing away. As the leader looked back to me, a downdraft transported the scarf 7 metres down, directly over his head and I plucked it out of the air. This caused a sensation once again. The dozen or so Greek lads shrieked and demanded I do it again as I quickly packed it into my vest. At that moment an elderly woman said something in Greek and they all disappeared into their backyards. It was real magic. I felt a spirit, guiding my mediocrity towards a moment of greatness once again. Only me, one old Greek woman and about a dozen young Greek lads can testify to that moment of pure magic.

This location was also where Simon Townshend’s Wonderworld interviewed me. They grabbed the footage and played a snippet of it in the opening and closing credits every day for at least 5 years. I received not a single cent for it. I gave permission for them to play the interview but they assumed the right to include snippets in the opening and closing credits. During my earlier days in Adelaide on very tall boots I actually opened the new Plaza of the Festival Centre (giant scissors and all).

The Festival Centre Executives took photos and used my image as not only letterheads but a brochure with a centre piece feature titled ‘Free for All’. This insult, namely my trading image advertised as free for all by the Festival Centre was typical of attitudes toward street entertainers. I objected strenuously especially considering they never asked my permission. The result; I was never offered worked for the Festival Centre again. When the State takes control of entertainment it becomes a monopoly. Most entertainers are treated like cattle and bureaucrats rule.

A natural progression from the cricket was the Commonwealth Bank Cycling Classics and George Bass Rowing from Batemens Bay to Bega. The Commonwealth Cycling Classic from Tweed Head to Sydney was simply amazing. In a cavalcade of sponsored vehicles I was transported by the President (A Mr Bates) of the cycling federation with of all people the East German Cycling Team. This was as the Wall was being disassembled.

In broken English Jan Uwe confided in how bad it was behind the wall and his happiness in the potential of a united Germany. I travelled with the executives of the Commonwealth bank with last names like Turnbull and Caldwell. At the beginning of each leg, I would be astride the seven leaguers and also there at the end. A gaggle of international media including the voice of international cycling travelled with us (Phil Leggett).

Jan Uwe won the leg into Coffs Harbour. He privately wheeled his bike round to me and stated “Colin when I came over the hill I was spent. Then I saw you on your boots and the energy came back to me. I pedalled toward you and won”. He devoted that victory to me. Everyone I met was a champion and they all treated me like one too. By the time we got to the last leg at the end of the race all the international cyclists adopted a single file peloton and rode their bikes between my legs, each giving me a high five as they did so. It was a great honour of trust and acknowledgement. Not many people can say they have had a million dollars worth of bicycles ridden between their legs.

At Newcastle, waiting for the cyclists to arrive I noticed a lighthouse. On the seven league boots I decided to look inside it. There was a spiral staircase leading to a lookout at the top. I walked from the bottom to the top without any assistance by person or wall. Then I walked the entire distance down again. Surely this is a record of some note. At the time though, it was just another day at the office.

The next year it was extended to Wollongong. Many of the media and cyclists had become friends. By day we were champions and professionals. By night we partied and drank ourselves silly while the cyclists were massaged and prepared for the next day’s race. The parachutists also travelled with me. They were Tactical Response Groups, Police and gentlemen who wore insignias on their berets that said “First Strike Wins”.  In each city and township we were given the keys to the city. I always went home rich, hung over, exhausted and feeling like a champion.

The Commonwealth Bank invited me to the George Bass rowing competition from Bateman’s Bay to Bega. This was a 200 kilometre international open sea race with mostly lifesavers and rugby players keeping fit in the off season. The Boats were about 7 metres long and the race follows the path of George Bass and Matthew Flinders as they mapped the South East Coast of NSW. I was to see them off on the seven leaguers, then catch them as they arrived at the next beach. Again I travelled with the TRG and Army parachutists. Each jump they took gave them ratings. Once they achieved a set amount of jumps in all conditions they were fit to go to any ‘Hot Spot” in the world. I matched them stride for stride, at the peak of my fitness, in stamina and discipline.

 I had to walk on the sand and what I went through was nothing compared to the rowers. The event took place during storms and 10 metre swells were the order of the day. It was incredible that no-one drowned. The only casualties were in the media boat when both engines failed and a well known commentator (Daryl Eastlake) broke his collarbone when a rope snapped in trying to recover the boat. On the final night I watched a rugby scrum of over 100 men in the sunken lawns at a seaside tavern off twofold bay. It was the rowers letting off steam. It was an orgy of beer, testosterone and blood.

In a finale I decided, as the boats came in on the last day, to walk on the 7 leaguers out to sea. The waves filled the boots and I threw myself into a wave that transported me back towards land. Some lifesavers dragged me back to shore as a commentator pretended to give me mouth to mouth. Once I ‘came to’ he pretended to kick me when down instead. As I looked up, I saw a mate from Adelaide who looked like he was about to drop the man who appeared to be kicking me. I said “Hi” to him. As I picked up the 7 league boots a stream of seawater gushed out of a fine hole and it appeared as if my boots were pissing themselves. That night I went to his house and met his Maori wife and children.....

9. Fear and Loathing in Australia

I did not touch drugs until I was at least 20 years of age. However I was drinking plenty by the time I was around 17. I remember at school I would have a flagon of plonk in my locker. All I had to do was get into trouble, be sent to the corridor and there I would happily stay drinking sherry or green ginger wine. Aged about 20 I had my first reefer and frankly I did not know what all the commotion was about.

Up to then I went to lots of parties and with a beer in my hand, sang dirty ditties with the lads. As a member of Adelaide Uni Fencing Club and President of its social arm (TEAM) though, I had a true varsity life. We would often retire after fencing practice to the British Hotel. Here we played darts, a game called Mickey Mouse or Boggo Road. So therefore I remember the sixties through to the mid seventies. After that I have a shits clue about the order of events.

My weirdo friends smoked dope and I asked them what it was like. They told me I had to take the ‘stoned’ test. So I smoked a reefer and had to do some exercises. I continued doing them as everyone went to the pub and started drinking. I continued doing them until someone closed the university gymnasium. A fellow was at Uni doing economics as his family owned Chateau Yaldara. This meant wherever we went and whatever we did, there was an unlimited amount of free alcohol.

Once during a flood year, we hired a houseboat. I tied a rope around my waist and as the houseboat was moving, jumped off the back expecting to be towed along. However it was a slip knot and as it tightened around my body it squeezed the air out of me and I started to go under. I was drowning. Some drunk eventually saw me in distress and told the pilot who rapidly put the engine in reverse upon being told it was me. Everyone thought it was a big joke but I was relieved because another sixty seconds and I would have passed out.

One thing we always did was attempt to remove the criminal element out of procuring drugs by forming clubs with people to buy in bulk so all could reap the benefits of a lower price. The people I formed ‘clubs’ with were or are now prominent criminal lawyers, Community Arts Officers for Councils and arts administrators. This way we eliminated associating with criminals as much as possible. I became a terror to procure for I had an addictive personality.

My family got to know of my nefarious activities on my 21^st birthday. A couple of mates were members of bands like ‘Benny Bagel’s Washboard Ensemble’ and they played for free. I wanted all the tables and chairs to be chaotic so all my friend could meet each other. My mother and sisters thought this was crazy and restructured them in an orderly fashion to my dismay. My sisters stayed behind the bar with my mother as they ogled at my weird and wonderful hippy friends. Hardly any alcohol was drunk. They gave hookahs, hash, gunjah, incense and we smoked the lot. My mother and sisters thought we were from another planet. From that moment on I was cast as the druggy by my family causing a rift between us.

At University I spent my time taking LSD, smoking hashish, oil and trying out this new stuff called di- and polyploid dope. The first generation chosen for its superior quality grew to seed. It was soaked in Colcichine causing the DNA to double in the next generation especially the resinous quality. That generation, it was unwise to smoke because it created monster weed but the next generation was super dope that was close to tripping. This process then moved indoors and the strains of seeds were then refined to become the skunk sinsemilla we know today. The best I had was purple Durban Poison. An ounce took me a month to smoke it was that powerful. These days I do not smoke at all; not since February 2000. I find it amazing that the very same people who object to Genetically Modified Crops simple cannot get enough of GM skunk.

My adventures with characters such as Suzi Creamcheese are documented elsewhere. But I also met a fellow named Peter Olseweski who changed his name to JJ McRoach and handled Hunter S Thompson’s visit to Australia and wrote a book about it. He also ran for parliament on the ticket of legalising dope. When I met him he was writing a book about Yabbies as heroes of the benthic zone in fresh waterways. None of us were criminals, but the Police targeted the outspoken ones, placing straightjackets on them and giving permanent criminal records.

It is a fact that if drugs were legalised, the price would go way down and the criminal element will lose interest. The criminalisation of Marijuana and all drugs, for that matter, creates conflicts of interest for the police because they target a world of victimless crime. When it is criminalised it becomes an open invitation for criminals to move in. Then the crime is no longer victimless. Police employment has become dependent on the criminalisation of drugs. The undercover cops get in to the crime groups with confiscated dope and money and entrap small timers into criminal activities. When they get busted there is a choice; criminal time or work for the fuzz. We have all been given that option. They are responsible for many recreational users becoming hopeless desperate criminals and the source of narks in every pub.

In between scoring orange barrels and Blue moons, I abandoned all classes and any kind of an education. But before I am mistaken for an advocate to glorify the consumption of drugs a poem written out of the haze of Marijuana seems appropriate:

Marijuana Steals your Dreams

In the plateau of sleeps

Marijuana creeps

Dreaming on high

A marijuana lie.

WAKING

To the dull thought

Of finding the gunjah

I thought I bought.....

Another day glides...

I begin to slide...

Into the abyss...

Of forgotten dreams.

            I must distinguish myself from heavy core drug takers. Whereas they were popping up to 3 tabs of acid, I was very cautious. Because my upbringing was of extreme violence and alcoholic rage, I frankly had no male role model. I thought I was insane. These pieces were probably written while under the influence. Poetry saved me from sabotaging myself too much. I have never published them at all as they are very private pieces. I have worked them for 30 years and they are still not perfect.

First the following is the reason why I never published any written words until up to thirty five years later apart from low self esteem and belief my stories and writing was worthless. Something I was told by my father for the first fourteen years of my life:

 

Oh, Karl they mist the Marx

The dilemma:

I am a brilliant witty anarcho-socialist

Capable of creating incredible social theory,

But Karl, Karl – you beat me to it,

By one hundred and fifty odd

Very odd years

The Repercussion:

Oh Karl, what have they done,

In your name, the wars, the dogma, the obsessions,

Those transformations of societies

In your last name they have created

revolutionary fame with flame

The means of production:

they lost their sense of fun,

In re-structuring society, reforming the lessons

And working to quotas they purged

Miscreants to the beat of

Death dirges, purges, regurges.

My Pledge:

You have turned within your grave great Karl

As society and politicians have missed the Marx,

I promise you this great mate oh Karl

When I die, no one will quote me

When I die, it is the end.

And then the sad pieces:

The Molecular Theory

Earth is of an atom

Its nucleus the sun

Part of the universal instability

Of which our planet is the centre

When an atom splits

Its environment is destroyed

Perhaps a solar system

A galaxy

A university

But we who are of a different order

Who see the general view.

Remember the starship enterprise

Travelling at Warp eight

A being named Spock

A captain named Kirk

Made indestructible that merry ship

Discovering new lands

After the shadow of the eclipse

Passed over Ausralia

In October 1976

The USS Enterprise

Capable of withstanding anything

Except a direct nuclear attack

Landed in a city called Melbourne

The start of a new era

(Sing as a lament)

Once a jolly swagman

Camped by a billabong

Ander the shade of a coolabah tree

And he sang as he watched and waited for his billy boil

You’ll come a waltzing matilda with me

The satire:

ANOTHER DAY AT THE ZOO 

The form reads

Please print full name

I write “dickhead” because

That’s what I become

When I’ve had a few too many

Are you of aboriginal or torres strait descent?

A giant microscope appears above my head

I suddenly become self aware

Do you have any disability?

My slightly webbed toes become marginalized

And are happy they can hide

They tell me it is compulsory to vote

Yet I am obliged to vote for the other side

Because it’s two party preferred

And there is no Happy Birthday Party

Prince Philip was peed upon by a monkey at the zoo

He said “you dirty buggar”

A talking Monkey - well I never

An incendiary device went off in a market place

Killing 2 Americans, one Australian and 45 Afghani Nationals

We pray for those brave American Australians

We fight for that right

To buy goods from china

For one dollar

And sell it to other patriotic Australians

For forty five

The queen today

Announced the marriage

of will and kate

As we have too many bills

and pay them late

The carbon tax is here to stay

Under Liberals it may stray.

Became reality to day

Only 130 odd elements to go

Fergie says she can get

an audience with the prince

It will only cost 50k

It’s another day at the zoo

Disjointed, bizarre, surreal

It’s up to me to make my sense

Whether the bad guy was

Osama Bin Laden,

Obama Sin Laden

Or senses dim fading

Prince Philip today….

A bomb exploded….,

Senses disabled….

Drinking tea prolongs your life

One lump or two

Coffee, tea, milk, sugar

I’ll have the usual…thankyou

The down- right ridiculous:

The system

You can smell the enemy

They’re drugged to the eyeballs with the system

Through their synthetic breads and sausages

They’re not going to fool me anymore,

Chanel number five does not smell nice

My farts smell nicer

But not if I eat American hotdogs

You see these people are conditioned

A condition of the mind

Instead of natural nutritional or filling food,

They buy mitotically dividing chicken flavoured foam

As an insignificant fat one

You might have bought for around eight dollars

They even do it with humans

I mean do you want big tits

Just a small squirt of silicon brand X

Will have even the most primitive cannibal

Smacking his lips in anticipation

At least a cannibal appreciates the meat

We appreciate the tits

Is it not a pity

That breasts,

A source of nutrition

Get turned into tits

By the drug called system

And finally the madness….the core of my insanity. Written while ‘coming down’ from a trip.

The following piece I had performed by 3 dancers with elastic attached to their hands. Puppeteers manipulated them representing the mind, the body and the intellect or in Indian philosophy: the chariot, the reins and the charioteer as guided by God. From this I came to terms with my madness. This was the core of my being and as I write it down the shame and pain wells up inside me:

A Discourse between the Intellect, mind and body,

A Discourse between the Charioteer, reins and chariot,

A Discourse between the Philosopher, child and clown

They’re all split

Right down the middle

They’re not real

You know real

Them, yeah

You can see it

The way they twist their face

Just that split second before they,

Hey have you heard the one about

Oh you know the one about

They say things like

‘thankyou’

‘just two thanks’

They’re not like you and me

I can tell you’re real

You can understand

I can spot them a mile away

It’s in their eyes

My mum was real

My dad

One, two, three

In they went

Twang, twang, twang.

Anyway those real people

Like my mum and dad,

They know what real is

Booze and darts,

Dad was such a good shot

Twang, twang, twang.

Right in the bum

A real good shot

Never drank whisky

Only shot beer,

We had to vacate the premises

He followed us

And his shadow.

We went to mars

He thought he was on venus, electra

Since then we never looked back

Yeah, I know what real is.

Life’s living

That’s what it’s all about

It’s like paper in the garden

They were dropped on the ground,

They give fine for that nowadays

They give fines for that nowadays

The weather’s fine

The weather’s fine

They say things like

“the weather’s fine”

I had a garden once

Had one or two papers in it too

I didn’t mind it because

Most of them were behind things

Where people couldn’t see

Anyway the radishes grew well, and radishes

I grew big radishes

But not as big as that Italian kids family

Can’t remember his name

Too many I, Os and U’s in it (laugh)

It wasn’t my garden

Although I did own

A small plot in it

You see it wasn’t my garden.

I won lots of prizes

For those vegetables

At the show

Big ones

Did I tell you about my radishes?

Oh yeah I did

Didn’t I,

The garden belonged to

They didn’t belong

Like the papers in the garden

Geez I was sore

You know

When he found the bloody paper

Then marred me in his venus

Just because of those silly papers

He had a grin

To the left side of his face

With his indexless left hand faced backwards

Just that split second before he, before he

And you want to know what REAL IS?!!!

DO YOU

Dad was a good bloke

Life’s living

That’s what it’s all about.

He really pushed me around

Wanted to bring me up so

I wouldn’t tickle girls

You know

I went home from school one day

And geez I was dying for a piss

I sat there thinking about the circus coming to town

To the same paddock, when

Dad teared off a small piece of five pound note

Told me its value

I didn’t get to see the circus!

Five pound note

I didn’t get to see

I was so pissed off, anyway

When I got home

My mum was waiting

Some little girl’s mother told my mum

I was flashing on the paddock

Where the circus came

But all I wanted was to piss

And mum said “I’m disgusted in you”

Geez my mother loves me.

Oh yeah I don’t pee on paddocks anymore

Nor flash at girls

She never hit me

And just her word controlled

Yet he would rage and punch

And taught me hatred and violence

She never lifted a finger in hate

And showed me love.

For we had no choice.

I would often become quite introverted in the beginning of a ‘trip’ as it took the half hour or so to digest. Thoughts as in the above poem would filter through my mind as the trip was coming on. I would come to terms with my less than satisfactory childhood and find in me the inner innocent child that had been bashed and raged at, the child who was by now very angry. I soothed his outrage then blossomed into a journey of discovery and re-education from my childhood trauma.

My friends were, especially with the large round blue moons, placing them in their eyelids, up their penises, vagina, anus and orally all at the same time. The blue dye by osmosis following the veins in the eyes was a sight to behold and gives new meaning in being ‘ripped to the eyeballs’. I would take a quarter orally, after a half hour another quarter, then once I felt comfortable take the other half. I would smoke hashish and Gunja throughout. I never took any more than one, but my friends popped as many as they could. I smoked reefers while everyone else preferred bongs. I wasn’t into sharing lips and saliva that much.

On one occasion I was tripping with a mate named Patey. He was very violent and his way of appreciating friends was to thump them hard. He loved and owned a motor bike. I tripped on magic mushrooms with him and as he started realising that the world was beautiful and we were one, I thumped him affectionately on the back and asked him why then does he try to punch everyone out. This question was profound to him. He then purchased and read a book entitled ‘the art of zen and motor cycle maintenance’, sold his bike or gave it away and joined the Hare Krshnas. Years later I met a person high up as a spiritual leader at the Confest at Martin’s Bend in Berri. We got on well and though I recognised him with his bald head and all, did not refer to his past life. He was a contented drug free, spiritually content man.

I hung out with many well known personalities and read Tolkiens Lord of the Rings ripped out of my skull and A Yaqui Indians way to Knowledge, Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castanedas. Lo and behold growing out the front of my house (and still is today) was some Jimson Weed or Datura. The active ingredient (atropine) was used in open heart surgery until a synthetic drug was made. We broiled one flower and a leaf for each person for a very long time and then had it as a tea. We all woke up about 2 to 3 hours later with very dry mouths all having gone on journeys through our sub-conscious. Some psychotics are said to meet their worst enemy and physically fight them only to wake to a wrecked room and no enemy. I just went into a marvellous world of my own making. The large insects clinging to my body were a bit of a worry though.

I never had it again for I was out of focus vision wise for about 3 days and pretty well blind for the first 4 hours of consciousness. Only recently an Indian chap drove past my place and respectfully asked if he could take a cutting as an offering to the Lord Shiva. He told me his Guru likes to smoke the leaves. We gave each other the sign of spiritual acknowledgement and my blessing to take an offering to his guru and temple.

I had frequent visits to the back of Lobethal and Second Valley, harvesting huge amounts of magic mushrooms, then putting the fresh mushies in paper bags and giving them to friends. Sometimes I reckon I was responsible for a hundred people tripping through the weekend on the odd occasion. It was always a journey and each trip had a significant lesson to be learnt, the colours, the kaleidoscopes and the issues. I always started tentatively then introverted, I would blossom into a realization. One had to be very careful who to trip with. Some people I refused to as I considered their personalities pathological. This could alter the trip from one of meditation to a hell between the ears.

My mother had long service leave from teaching and as she travelled around the world I was left with the house. A number of friends joined me and we spent three months listening to trippy music sipping tequila with salt and lemons from trees in the backyard. There was always a roaring fire and I would grab the magic mushrooms and infuse them at the last moment into a rich soup. This was the best way of taking magic mushrooms because the trip came through the distribution of nutrients to the body. It was a warm and cosy feeling. The only alternative was to eat the mushrooms raw or pour honey over them to disguise the foul taste.

The blue moons were the fore runner of designer drugs. They seemed to have the qualities of both LSD and Speed. These cocktails seemed perfect companions to hashish, oil and marijuana. I must say I never had ecstasy. I asked my dealer what it was. As he rocked his head back and forwards and said charismatically, “well Col, if LSD was the drug of the 70s through 80s, ecstasy will be the drug of the 90s and beyond”. With that sales pitch I assured my dealer that I would never take ecstasy and I have not.

On another occasion I was contacted by a member of a well known orchestra. They had been performing in Asia. They purchased about 20,000 Buddha Sticks. As the orchestra travelled with about twenty tonnes of equipment, it was easy to for instance place the sticks in a bass case and let it travel with the equipment. The bass itself the person bought a ticket for and it travelled with him. So the equipment is fast tracked through customs and presto there are 20,000 Buddha sticks or more let out to an unsuspecting Australian Public.

Buddha Sticks are a particularly strong strain of Thailand hooch probably dipped in liquid heroin. Lengths of thin bamboo have heads tied to it. It is then compressed and left to cure. Then it is cut onto about eight inch long bundles. I had the pleasure of releasing about 500 sticks to the clubs of friends I had in Adelaide.  The price was twelve dollars a stick where as retail was around $20. Unfortunately the person who steamed them open was far too zealous and the hooch crumbled to flake. About a half of it crumbled off the sticks and was unsellable.

I remember on my seven league boots I strode to a scaffolder on Elder Park and handed him a bag of these sticks as he was building a stage for a concert. The local mafia were interested in a bulk buy and held me off for one weekend while pretending to want to buy it. That weekend they released a few tonne of their own domestic product and blew me out of the market. My attempts to bring hooch to South Australians for a good price, was a complete disaster. So I was stuck with unsellable flake that took me about 3 months to smoke. I was a lousy ‘dealer’. Hanging around men capable of ensuring you wake up dead in some gutter, was not a good idea.

When I moved to Sydney, I doubly enjoyed the anonymity. You really had to stand out to get busted. When people found out I was Sub-Paragraph Three, I had total ticket to the upper echelons of drug parties and raves. I met a band of acrobats and with my SA connections often imported primo South Australian Heads. One occasion has become the subject of a movie script I have written. One day, when I win lotto, I will turn it into a film.

They hired a car to deliver the goods. As they drove along the Hay Plains a cow fell out of the sky onto their hire car. There was cow shit and intestines all over the car. They got out and were fortunate to get a lift to my place in Sydney. They took the hooch with them. They were shocked and looking at their Hire car agreement that had a giant kangaroo stamped on it. The clause read “If you hit a live animal you are liable for the full amount of damages. They added one third on to the price in anticipation. They caught a plane back.

Later I found out that a vehicle coming from the other direction had at 110 kph had driven clean through the cow’s legs flipping it over onto the oncoming car. It was an unfortunate coincidence. The powers that be deemed the cow was no longer a cow. By the time it struck the oncoming vehicle, it was most surely dead and therefore it was no longer a cow. It was an ‘object’ for the purposes of insurance and normal conditions applied. This brings us possibly to the world’s first Zen, vegetarian joke.

            Q: When is a cow not a cow?

            A: When it is dead meat!

On another occasion an acquaintance from Adelaide turned up with good old SA Hooch. Somewhere in his fantasies he thought he was a super criminal. So to do business with him, it was all cloak and dagger stuff. He would ring and move to another location and ring again as if he was a spy. I lost patience with his shenanigans. So he rang me again, of course from a public phone box.

He tells me that he is somewhere in Randwick next to a main road, opposite where he is staying. So I say look I will meet you at the corner of..... He looks out the window of the telephone booth and guess what? He is in a public telephone booth at the very location I described with a sign post revealing the 2 names of the streets I mentioned. This destroys all his spy mentality and in frustration he calls out “No” as I hang up and head for that location. Some mothers do have ‘em!

When I did the Cycling Classics and Rowing Marathon, it became clear to me in travelling with some of the media, TRG and first strike winners that another agenda was under the surface of all this festivity. In stopping at many motels and seeing the helicopter pilot having the right to alight in the courtyard of these motels everyone was regularly briefed. A military agenda was occurring. These guys were landing in their parachutes at 3 pm in the afternoon. So what were they doing the rest of the day? The photographer was a Vietnam Vet, used to taking high altitude photographs and interpreting the data. Each evening they would look at the shots in the strictest of security.

They were taking aerial photographs of the entire East Coast of Australia at the peak of the Marijuana growing season and it appeared that the military, TRG and media were systematically photographing the crops, assessing it and the intelligence would be passed to the local coppers for the busts. As we travelled in the mobile headquarters, squads of men on two stroke motor cycles would be acknowledged and almost saluted. So when my Adelaide mate saw me on the beach in two fold bay, I told him what was happening.

He of course told his mates. There is many a tale of how major growers avoided being captured given a 48 hour window to move their gunja. It was disguised as bales of hay in paddocks. Trucks being intercepted did cross country bush bashes, chased by men on two stroke bikes. Properties were placed on high alert. As a result of my effort that saved the crop for that year, I was introduced to a supplier that arrived in Sydney for quite a few years. The transactions were cordial, on tick and if your gunja was ripped off nobody put the strong word on you. There were no guns and it was all done in a pleasant, civilised and businesslike manner.

A few years later around Lismore and Nimbin I gave such intelligence to the locals. They kept an eye out for helicopters berthed at a specific chain of Motels. Sure enough the hippies found their way to a balcony where a number of law enforcement officers had their official uniforms drying. A few T-shirts in the style of ‘ghostbusters’ except it was a marijuana leaf disappeared. It was reported in the local newspapers and very embarrassing to the law enforcement officers along with photos of hippies chained to the helicopter.

Of course as with most commodities the market place dries up and there is a drought. This created times of craving. The price of the goods shot up. When I started smoking one could obtain an ounce of good heads for around $30, or an ounce of Hashish for about $120. By the time of stopping, in between “droughts” the price per ounce has jack-knifed to $450 and a good ounce block of hash was around the same. Actually good hashish is almost impossible to find.

During the droughts you would mix tobacco with the hooch to make it go the distance. If there was no hooch; all there was left was tobacco, or white powders. I didn’t want to play with powders so I started smoking cigarettes. So those who say marijuana leads to heavier drugs are right. But seriously if the system leaves the sale of drugs to organised crime, like any businessmen they will market them.

They will orchestrate ‘droughts’ of marijuana, assisted by police busts and by coincidence the white powders or tablets were almost always available at the same time. If a large bust occurred criminals passed on the overheads to their customers. It was the consumer who paid for it like any other business. When are the police and the politicians going to wake up to the fact that the criminalisation of drugs is what creates all the trouble? I also became hopelessly addicted to tobacco. Over the years I tried to give up the hooch but smoked tobacco. I tried to give up tobacco but smoked hooch. Finally I realised I was not only addicted to hooch and tobacco, but smoking itself. I had my last smoke in February 2000.

But I was pretty well addicted to alcohol as well. In 1992 I gave up drinking alcohol and had not a drop for 10 years. In 2002 I started drinking moderately to prove I was not an alcoholic. I mastered that beast for now I rarely drink and when I do, have no more than 3 drinks. Sometimes when I am naughty I may have a fourth in a period of around 3 or 4 hours. I still haven’t had a cigarette or any hooch for around 13 years, but I have a suspicion that I may have one with my sons if they so require. I think I have mastered the demons of desperation and addiction.

But something always takes its place. I have become addicted to food. When I was smoking I was around 75-80 kg. I had ballooned to about 130 kg. In one year (2012) I lost 20 kg and I am now around 110 kg. I am looking forward to losing a further 20 kg. Only time will tell if I have tamed the beasts and demons within. The reason why I have tempered my addictions is because I have two wonderful children now in their early teens. At almost 60 years of age I want to grow old enough to annoy them and still have my fitness and wits.

10. Childhood – The wrong side of the Road

My sister was not very impressed with my antics; what with hanging out with Aboriginals and showies, excursions to Melbourne, hanging with anarchist poets at the Dan O’Connell Hotel, the drug taking, my eccentric entertainment and changing my name. She was born in Woomera 1952 where my father witnessed a few atom bombs go off. My father a particularly violent man, drunkard, basher of his wife and children, a daughter raper and emasculator of his son, was not exactly a role model. The day I discovered what he did to my sisters is the day my whole life fell apart. The day my family collapsed. The day I figured it all out was the day I lost everything. My father did not rape me physically but he certainly raped my mind. This has been my mantra ever since.

I was born into a Nazi slave labour camp. My whole childhood was living in a prison of work and responsibility. This is why I am unkempt and untidy, chaotic to this day. Aged 6 I was pulling our own sewage out of the septic, one can at a time and pouring it over a garden in Alice Springs. Growing gardens, building caravans, boats, tending caged birds, cleaning houses; this was my childhood, rostered to work every single day for around 10 years. My father broke a broomstick across my back on at least one occasion. Later, in Gulf St Vincent, when his best fishing lure was lost through no fault of my own, I remember he punched me out of the boat, caught me, pulled me back into the boat and thumped me again.

As a father I have minimized my abuses to that of verbal abuse. Whilst my life journey has eliminated 95% of such abuse, I was physical toward my oldest son but purely verbal to the last 2. For those abuses I unreservedly apologise. Once I went to my father’s pauper’s grave in Albury, burnt it to the ground telling his evil spirit not to visit my grandchildren in their dreams.

 My father enjoyed the best of everything and the only respite to the enforced labour was to listen to horse races or watch World Championship Wrestling. By the time I was 12 years old I knew all the horses, dogs, jockeys and odds. My heroes were Mario Milano (The Golden Greek) and Killer Kowalski. Victory of his gambling plunges meant we weren’t beaten, yelled at or not at least until after all night rages of alcoholic stupor. Losses meant beatings, mother, sisters included, all night rage; many a night we spent sleeping in the Todd River whilst father destroyed everything in the house. Once in a bid to escape his rage mother drove over his foot. Years later I twisted that same foot as he drunkenly engaged in a wrestling match with me and my fostered brother Ben Rigney.

Later, I remember we would go down to Gilbertson’s Hardware at Gepps Cross to buy and drink powdered milk meant for pigs and ate dog biscuits (very tasty) while he wore pure woollen cardigans, ate and drank the best of everything. These are the snippets of my childhood memories. So the memories could be a little distorted or unrealistic, influenced by a child’s world view. Any work is a chore to me and these memories have shaped my reality.

When I was young I had a Viennese boys Choir voice and sang ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Hosanna in the Highest’ pitch perfect. My father forced me to sing to his drunken mates and when I eventually refused, was beaten. As a result I do not sing to this day. There was little music in my life. I loved school as an escape, brilliant but totally uncontrollable. I did not reason with the other kids, just fought every single one of them all the way through to high school. My father bet against the parent of the other kid (who was promised a bike if he won). I beat the shit out of him just for my old man’s approval. However the next day on the bus three of his friends bashed me.

As man landed on the moon we obliged our father to leave us forever or we would have him arrested. Over the years he visited across the road and peered through the windows. Fortunately we never opened any of the parcels he sent in the mail. Years later (after he died) we opened them to find them full of receipts and magazines about and for hand guns and rifles. He died of a myocardial infarction aged 58.7 years of age, the exact age at the time of an Aboriginal Male’s life expectancy, hopelessly addicted to tobacco and alcohol. He was on his way back to Adelaide presumably with the intent of a final showdown with us.

In my travels on those 7 league boots, I crossed the paths of many an abused cadet. It didn’t matter what I was doing, I could just stand by the abused person and feel it. It was only triage, for in the wake of the national emergency, that is Australia, I could only save them from suicide and or self-mutilation. I used neuro-linguistic methods to encourage them to tell someone, that they are not alone, that help could be found. It was little more than sympathy and I have met many great people whose spirit and actions were shaped by such adversity. I also found out from a young man in Tambo that a woman can rape a young man. His crushed pelvis was evidence of his mother’s rape.

Out of Tamworth I was invited by Rosemary and Ian Sinclair to go to Bendemeer and assist in an auction for charity supporting NAPCAN as they were the patrons. I learnt that Rosemary, an elegant and beautiful woman (A Miss Australia) too had suffered such adversity. Ian Sinclair was not afraid of hard work and his handshake was firm and warm. Through them, I met Bronwen Bishop (A Liberal Politician) in Sydney and I support the principles of NAPCAN (National Australian Prevention of Child Abuse Network) unreservedly. Politicians and their partners do some good after all.

In my travels I have met Joh Bjelke Petersen, Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Ian Sinclair, Russ Hinze, Don Dunstan and I have to say Labor Politicians have the weakest handshakes whereas the Liberal/Country politicians are firm, warm and strong. The irony is Labor politicians appear to me as never having done a hard day’s work yet they appear to represent the working man and woman. The Liberals and Country politicians actually have calluses on their hands yet they support big business and the right to make enormous profits at the expense of the working person. Recently a feminist labour supporter explained that Labor politician’s hand-shakes were soft because the feminist movement had trained them to be aware of the women’s side of the story.

That LCP were a bunch of chauvinists and of course grabbed hands and dominated women with their testosterone filled handshakes. She did not get it. She certainly had forgotten Mark Latham’s election losing handshake. The last Labor Politician that actually did a day’s hard work was Mick Young, member for Port Adelaide (A Wharfy). All the rest are academic politicians (or lawyers) and that’s why they get it so wrong. They have lost touch with the working man (and woman). It has become a profession (Politician) not the election of a prominent member of the community who is trusted to represent his or her electorate’s view. No it is two-party preferred and voting usually is towed along Party lines. Each Party is both the same. So many blue collar workers vote Liberal. My values tend toward Labor, yet the people I get on best with are LCP. Go figure.

I don’t entirely blame my father for his disgusting behaviour. He did witness the post bomb destruction to Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of the victorious occupational forces of Japan at the age of 17. He helped clean the fried meat and brought home postcards of the destruction that I viewed most of my early life. Dead babies, total devastation, vaporized humans merged with horses.

He did become an alcoholic and damaged man. So I do blame post war society to a certain extent, for my father’s transgressions. However we all make choices at critical points. If anything I am guilty of not touching especially my daughters. This is because I have had my fill of “you’re just like your father” and ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’. This is why I challenge authority incessantly.

As for the impact on my family, well it is best summed up in the following poem:

It never happened   

My entire childhood

Never happened

My mum told me this

One sister agrees

My childhood simply

did not happen

I am not allowed to

talk about my childhood

The beatings did not happen

The rapes did not occur

The slave labour never happened

The drunkenness, tobacco, gambling

Simply did not happen!

However, when they

really wanted to hurt

They said, “you are just

 like your father”…

They never said that

Just ask them

They’ll tell you

It did not happen….

My whole youth

 was a dream

My attempts to come to terms with it

Is met with

why do you always bring it up.

Yet the way they physically react

 to my father’s face

That happens to be on my shoulders

Is too big to bear……

When I realized

 what was happening

I spoke to my sisters

They told my mother

My whole world collapsed the second

 I got wise to it……..

This is the way it happens today

First it never happened

And if I object

I am just like my father

In the Cleopatra Court.

Then my world collapses

And I remain the villain.

Perhaps this is why I am a clown,

A seven league booter.

Finding a childhood,

That never happened,

But the disappointment

of my life’s choices,

Is clear upon my mother’s lips,

My sister’s denial.

If only my mother had cuddled me

After the age of 2,

Or if any sister did not judge me

For my father’s sins.

But now I own it!

Over the anger!

Past the violence!

The drugs, the denial,

The many challenges to authority….

……………………It happened!

And I am probably the sole survivor.

For those most affected became

Someone else, to survive.

This situation with my family has become a bit better. I do wish we could have had some therapy, followed by a good cry together. Then there would have been some closure. As a result my sisters and I, with my mother have become damaged people, some more than others. It was very tough being the only male in my family. I have performed this poem at Friendly Street and Gawler Poetry at the Prince Albert Hotel many times. On each occasion many women approached me claiming that they felt in the following poem, I was talking directly to them. There are a lot of wounded sisters out there. One poet wrote a reaction poem stating ‘that door was closed years ago’.  My response to her reaction is as follows:

The Closed Door

So you closed the door

What for a metaphor

You closed a door

On your trauma

or so you think

You shut the door

Bolted it

Padlocked it

Welded it shut

Do you know what for

He did it behind that closed door

And when time became yours

You closed the door for him

What for

You closed his door

Not yours

On your innocence

Or was it mine

You did not just close his door

Nor just yours

You also closed mine

You welded my innocence shut

There’s no ifs, or buts

The sins of that father

Visit the children

Even behind closed doors

Did you stop to ask

My child because

My innocent child

Is also locked behind

Your closed door

When I demanded closure

You closed his door……

Behind that door is a gaping wound

That festers as your innocence

And as surely as is my innocence lies

Behind your closed door…….

…………………………He wins.

The only good thing my old man taught me was to enjoy travelling. As a result I became a travelling man. I wasn’t interested in travelling outside Australia and used the seven league boots as a ticket to travel the length and breadth of Australia’s sunny clime. Their magic gave me an access all areas card.

11. Pranks, Hoaxes and Running Amuck: memoirs of an Anarchist!

When the old man was disposed of, I ran amuck. As a teenager with a mother who worked, I got into a lot of trouble. I went to teachers college, dropped out. I went to University and studied little. It took me 27 years to complete my first Degree. I was the leader in many pranks and hoaxes. If anyone wanted to know where any parties were or wanted 100 people to a party, they asked or told me. I will now confess to all my antics.

First with a merry band I set about to polish every statue in bronze that had exposed boobs in the city of Adelaide. Sometimes a pretty young lady would be distracting the police while I was on the other side polishing the boobies. I admired my handiwork for over a year as I watched the boobs turn iridescent green then from the nipples dripping oxidised copper as a tell tale sign, streaming to the ground. I gave up polishing the boobs of statues when a newspaper article revealed some of Adelaide’s statues were decaying at a very fast rate with no apparent reason. I did not interfere with any statues that honoured those fallen in any war.

Another year, I scampered up Colonel Light’s statue and attempted to put a beer bottle on his finger. The bottle of beer smashed to the ground as 2 coppers approached the statue there on Montefiore Hill. The coppers were very impressed at my organization for when the bottle smashed a team of cleaners appeared out of the bushes and cleaned every last shard. The coppers asked what I was doing. Hanging off Colonel Light’s arm I said “placing a beer bottle on Colonel Light’s Finger” I explained I was having a little trouble getting it right.

The 2 young coppers then said “How big is his finger”. I locked both hands of my middle and index fingers together and demonstrated. The coppers went back to their car, grabbed some wire, and fashioned it around both the neck of a beer bottle and with a loop that, when it was passed up to me it slipped over Colonel light’s finger perfectly. At that moment a senior policeman appeared. He told the probationary constables to go straight back to the cop-shop. I thank them wholeheartedly for their assistance and tolerance.

The senior copper who had I think at least 2 pips on his shoulders asked what we were doing. We informed him it was a Prosh Day (Adelaide University muck-up day) stunt. He also informed us that within fifteen minutes a ‘paddy’ wagon would be driving by and if any of us were seen, all would be arrested. We all disappeared into the night and for over a month, we admired the beer bottle on Colonel Light’s finger. I reckon the council workers liked it so much that they found many reasons to leave it up. The next year a yoyo appeared on Colonel Light’s finger. So thanks Adelaide City Council, SAPOL and organizers of Prosh; these memories are stained into my brain and I am the guilty one what done it!

Another year I stole Dante’s bust from Flinders University and left it somewhere at Adelaide University. Another year a double decker bus appeared on the uni grounds. Another year the police were rung claiming a number of uni students dressed as rail workers were interfering with some railway lines. At the same time the Railways were rung and told a number of students dressed as police were entering railway property at the same location. The consequent confrontation was hilarious.

Another Hoax was the ‘cash for bonds scheme’. We printed out about 10000 leaflets that read “Channel 7 in conjunction with the Commonwealth Bank would like to announce their new ‘cash for bonds’ scheme. If the number on the certificate had one seven they could open a bank account with ten free dollars, 2 sevens a hundred , 3 sevens $1000” and so on. The trouble was every certificate had at least one seven on it, 500 with four sevens.

Female students wearing T shirts that had printed the channel 7 and Commonwealth bank logos with the words “cash for bonds’ highlighted, handed them out at the railway station and bus stops. At 8.30 am we hit the city. The night before we went to every agency of the bank and glued posters at every Commonwealth Bank that read, “collect cash for bonds here”. We had a few left over and gave them to students and even went ourselves to collect our ‘cash for bonds’.

The queues at every bank were at least 100 deep. We had created a run on the banks! We feigned being outraged and worried officials went from person to person explaining it was a hoax and apologized profusely. We went underground with that. It was a sensation. Our attack on capitalism was wonderfully executed and it was all oh so subversive. The “certificates” were printed by Paul Paech who later changed his name to ‘Suzi Creamcheese’. We also handed out free money to Uni Students.

Suzi ran for parliament and created “the Happy Birthday Party”, the only political organization I ever joined. We all dressed up as super heroes, me on my 7 league boots, at polling stations throughout South Australia. We didn’t win but we all had a happy birthday anyway. In 1974, “Suzi” when he was a Paul, managed to get funding from Adelaide University to celebrate its Centenary. There were pin Ball machines in the Barr Smith lawns and films in the Union Theatre like ‘marijuana, the devil’s weed from hell’.

Suzi and his friend Roxy Fruit had managed to score a pound of Sumatran heads and rolled them like cigars with a stamp that read Adelaide University Centenary 1874-1974. We smoked them, watched the movies, slept and got the munchies something bad. I walked home that night. As I passed the Red Café in O’Connell Street, I asked the proprietor to give me the greasiest hamburger or at least one that had been festering for a couple of days. He made it and when I protested it wasn’t greasy enough he dipped it in the hot oil for fish and chips, wrapped it and handed it out to me. I happily ate the lot and staggered the ten kilometres home to my place.

On another occasion I teamed up with a well known Arts administrator, musician and puppeteer who at the time, was a committed communist. We wrote the word “uranium” with $$$ signs either side of the columns supporting parliament house on the corner of North Terrace and King William street. I can still see the watermarks of the steam cleaning perfectly outlining the letter ‘U’ to this day

The lawyers to be were members of a social group called United, but through the Adelaide Uni Fencing and car rally clubs I became president of TEAM (the Total Elimination of All Morals Society. United became famous because one day during a SANFL footy match, dressed in Glenelg colours they ran out on a footy oval and then there were three teams on the oval. It caused a great commotion. This was a great prank. TEAM and UNITED became rivals in out ‘pranking’ each other.

For instance I would run the Beer sculling competitions. United would turn up and win in world record time. The call was “hands on knees, chins on tables, face the water, row”. 6 contestants one after another would scull a 7 ounce glass each. TEAM would always come second. I didn’t mind because I would go to the Coopers brewery and get 20 dozen free long necks, use 14 dozen for the sculling and TEAM would have a further 6 dozen to drink.

We used to go to the Coopers Brewery and at the Norwood location there was a bar for all the truckies. All the left overs of broken cartons would be in a fridge and many of us left the brewery with our booty, legless. I never finished the beer sculling because, awash with beer, I would pass out. I remember UNITED pouring a rubbish bin, full of ice over me. I would like to thank the unknown concerned woman for nursing me back to consciousness on that occasion. On our last beer sculling venture we pulled out an eight inch reefer between 6 people and claimed a world record for it. We were so stoned no-one hung around to claim the prize.

One day, to celebrate the universities centenary, Prince Phillip came to visit. The fencing club raised their swords to salute the prince and as president of TEAM I handed a letter to the Prince asking him to become patron of TEAM and or declare us a royal society. I still hold the written response via the Prince’s Aid de Camp Major Benjamin Herman, stationed at government house in Perth stating the Prince “cannot give it the attention that such a position merits”.

12. The 11^th of November and all that.

Around my 18^th birthday a revolution occurred. Many of us opposed the war in Vietnam. We attended many marches protesting at moratoriums. Undercover police targeted more than one of my friends and beat the ever loving crap out of them. As the police charged I would make pig sounds. The cops hunted me through the crowd, who swallowed me up and helped me disappear.

These were the days that universities were occupied. Many Adelaide University Students visited the occupied Flinders University registry. I helped one fellow attempt to open the chancellors safe. I witnessed a letter with a CIA/US Defence letterhead thanking the University for researching biological warfare. In hindsight that letter may have been a dodgy “plant”. In the board room a motion was put before the group of communists and anarchists that any person on the run would be protected by the Students Association of Adelaide Uni. Upon asking how they would find a safe haven, if they lost their way through the hotch-potch of buildings that is Adelaide University, I put forward the motion that they ask a policeman.

Well it was time in 1972 for change and at age 18 I voted myself out of Vietnam by supporting Gough Whitlam and attending moratoriums. It is the only time I have ever voted. I would not be conscripted to fight an unjust war. This was the days that radically transformed Australian Society but by November 1975 a bloodless coup occurred through a royalist loophole and some assistance from the CIA according to Ray Martin (of television fame). Just like the registry occupation, the administration / LCP and management (the old guard) blocked supply of wages to the workers who became angry and deposed a democratically elected government by Royal decree and or forcibly ejected protestors from the registry. The CIA did not like who Gough Whitlam was prepared to do business with by recognising China.

I refuse to vote, for a succession of criminal governments and The USA took over my country. I will not vote until law and order is restored or at least until the successive governments stop licking America’s arse.  Mr Howard’s recent conspiracy with a foreign power (the US of A) to undermine the security of my country via lies, committing us to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan makes him a traitor in my estimation. There were no weapons of mass destruction, no evidence of chemical warfare and both Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were created by the CIA and had to be obliterated for dead men tell no tales. Australia’s risk from terrorist attack remains at a permanent medium as a result of wars that anyone (but the Department of Defence and certain Politicians) could have told you was unwinnable.

NOT SO NICE ODE TO AMERICA

America…you just do not get it

Your president continues to reverberate

You are the greatest Nation on this Earth

That well worn rhetoric

That massive ego

That tortures Hicks

And has a Guantanomo

That creates Osama, Hussein and Al Qaeda

Nothing has changed much since 9/11

After a thousand twin towers

In Vietnam, Nth Korea, Japan, African and Arabic lands

Your country was invaded for one day

You claim it changed the world

America you just do not get it

Your greed and money lust

A hundred years of war

No wonder you’ve gone bust

You tried to dominate the world

By Covert means for 100 years

You have merely dropped the C bomb,

 and are now overt

In your cultural imperialism.

We are without doubt the greatest planet in the known universe

But as long as you claim supremacy

With your mammoth ego

Your national class consciousness

It’s exactly the same as Rome

During the decay

When the Vandals sacked

The greatest nation in the world

So America, abandon your supremacy

Do not blame China

For beating you at your own game

Do not go to war

Avoiding your debts

In the name of National Supremacy

So you got a bloody nose

And like a spoilt brat you invaded the houses

Of Iraq and Afghanistan

Against people you created

You lied about the WMD’s

As you rattled the drums of War

You sent talcum powder through the mail

Imposed a regime of fear

Legislated fascist purges against your own people.

And destroyed your own constitution

You are no longer we the people

For you cannot exercise your right

To remove criminal governments

Save to vote for one or the other

That are both the same.

America…..You just don’t get it.

However Whitlam’s successor, Malcolm Fraser was soon to meet the likes of Sub-Paragraph Three. My outrage from the deposing of Whitlam is actually what drove me to change my name. It was time for my Guerrilla Theatre Phase.

One of the first things Malcolm Fraser created after the 11^th of November was the National Youth Conference. Ninety percent were selected and ten percent via phone. I rang claiming to be a young business man with some ideas about how to support young adults become good at business with a bit of help from government. Next thing you know I am on a plane headed for Canberra. For the week, I had honorary politician status and was untouchable.

Given license to do anything I wanted and having brought my seven league boots with me, I performed the following on the boots to a range of politicians and delegates from all of Australia. It was a piece of Guerrilla Theatre performed at the National Youth Conference in Canberra.

The eleventh of November 1975

or 8 bells for Australia

An open letter

Dear Sir,

Ever since the events of 11^th November 1975, I consider the government that took power, did so most illegally. As a consequence I refuse to vote and tender my resignation of citizenship from the Commonwealth of Australia, until law and order is restored.

I identify with the Aboriginals of Australia

We demand you give us our land back.

Pray wait for this will take only seven moments of your time

You see we are no longer the seven deadly sins,

For we have become departmentalized

Ours sins are seven I introduce them in ones

Bell ring 1

I am the department of social insecurity

I know everything about you

For I have your number…er

Have you seen my brother (repeat 3 times)……..

Bell ring 2

I am the department of Attack,

You see I defend like the scorpion

Who’s best means of defense is to attack

We have much money

We hold Insecurities brother

The Department of National security..

Security…..Security

Bell ring 3

I am the department for the ecologically disturbed

I am an asylum,

Under my protective wing

I make you forget attack and insecurity

forget about the bomb,

Forget the whale, forget ecology,

Remember the concrete skyscraper (repeat 3 times)

Bell ring 4

I am the department of entertainment and propaganda

I woo away the while

I am in your bedroom and your loungeroom

Even in the bath

I give you total knowledge inside your little cube

You don’t dare go outside

I have you tuned to my dial (repeat three times)

Bell ring 5

I am the women’s advisor to the men’s advisor

On women’s affairs…I’m quite confused.

Because I am the woe of man, I handle

Sexist affairs, men. Rape, domination, children, dishes,

My husband’s underwear..

Bur I’m not sure…you’d better ask my husband first (repeat three times)

Bell ring 6

Thank you dear

I am benevolent

Like a father

Why when something goes wrong

I do a little dictation

And fix the problem up

My department?

Absolute dictators adviser on men’s affairs

Benevolent dictator’s advisor on men’s affairs

Absolute dictator’s advisor on human affairs.

Bell ring 7

I am the department of culture

But you see I keep on getting pissed

I look for Dionysus your god of wine

But keep on seeing a kangaroo

I’m flagin joe and I know the wind and sea and sky

But I’m stuffed if I can find my immortality

I keep dreaming one day I’ll find your pearl

Somewhere near my waterhole

Where the rainbow meets the white

Bell ring 8

I am the department of social insecurity

Attack attack attack

We hold your security

the whale The bomb ecology

In your bedroom and the bathroom

You’d better ask my husband

Absolute dictator on human affairs

I keep on getting pissed

But what of me I’m Joe meet my flagin

I am Mephistopheles, the beast, 666

There once was an old aboriginal aged before his time

He tried to talk to a white man

I live in death said the aboriginal

I live in money said the unoriginal

I see it in the sea the sky the tree

The government of Australia is in control

Not your sea or sky or land

The aboriginal replied “I don’t know boss,

I’d rather be a kangaroo, malu.”

            I also attended a number of tutorials about issues in Australia today. One of them was multiculturalism. I observed to the group that I was the only Anglo in that group. I recommended they deliver the report in their first language. A Polish fellow did so and then stated in English “Our group arrived upon many recommendations but if you are interested you will find them on the bulletin board”.

There were also many protestors attending outside the venues at the now old parliament house and Australian National University, demanding a voice at the conference. I found it amusing that protestors and police actually got along at the barricades until the media and important people and their cavalcade arrived. Then it was on, people linking arms, police seen to be doing their job. Then when the cavalcade or arrival/departure disappeared it was slack as.  It was all a performance on both sides, for the media.

On a number of occasions, I broke rank with the delegates and did funny walks, including placing my legs over my shoulders and walking on my hands. I demonstrated how if any protestor touched a car or crossed an imaginary line, they would be arrested. However I could do anything I liked and crossed the line or touched a vehicle with impunity because I had a badge. The protestors enjoyed having an ‘inside’ man.

On one occasion the delegates were to have a barbecue hosted by Malcolm Fraser at the Lodge. But he was late because of a late flight from Tasmania. So while we waited for his arrival at the lodge we had a good look around, smoked some of the Prime Minister’s cigarettes, even went upstairs. The butler was amazing, being everywhere at the same time. With complete politeness he “shooed” us from places we weren’t allowed. I got to know him pretty well as a result in a short period of time. After all when would I ever have free range of the Lodge in my life-time.

Eventually Malcolm arrived a little worse for wear. Eggs had been thrown at him in Tasmania. He actually scoffed down a meal over the mantle of a fire place as the rest of the delegates surged toward him. I was already there and said “look mate, why don’t you have the meal in a private place” He assured me it was ok. So I asked him about his kids.

This was the perfect question as Mr Fraser relaxed into a conversation about his kids. Behind me there was 200 people wanting his autograph. But Malcolm used me well to finish his meal and have a nice conversation. After five minutes the crowd became restless. Someone pinched me, another kidney punched me then arms and elbows grabbed me and forced me away from Mr Fraser as I said “see ya later Mal, I’ll sink into the abyss”. They all demanded his autograph.

 Mr Fraser’s head followed me in astonishment as the crowd ripped me away from him and occupied the space. I realized then how easy it would be for a peaceful conservative crowd to turn into a vicious mob at the drop of a hat and for little reason.

13. The State of Oranges

Of all the travels, Queensland was the greatest followed closely by the Northern Territory. Here the distribution of people was contrary to the demographics of the rest of Australia. Half the population is distributed in country regions. This peculiar quality distinguishes Queenslanders as distinct from all other Australians. The one thing Queenslanders despise is wankers especially those with mouths from south of the border. And everyone knew that anyone south of Rockhampton was a Southerner or ‘Mexican’.

I learnt a great lesson out of Rockie. Never touch or take another man’s hat even when wearing those seven league boots. That ringer chased me all (to the delight of the locals) over Rockie and he would have killed me had I not apologized profusely for the offence. Since that day I never touched another man’s hat unless only to admire it and only after permission.

It is said even the most vicious of crims could survive a peaceful life in paradise as long as they were fair dinkum about who and what they are. Many a criminal in southern regions had retired with the loot in Queensland. Many of these crims worked at the Gem fields in Central Queensland. The person who might be your best mate in these parts could easily have been Australia’s most wanted. As law abiding citizens and good spenders they’d be honoured members of the community and chances were high that amongst their best friends was the local copper for they had a lot in common.

But that one day when you drank a bit too much, and was breathalysed, booked, fingerprinted, up would appear your record and whammo off on the extradition express. The convenience with living in Queensland was that for misdemeanours you were not checked for interstate crime, but once it was criminal well it was bye-bye.

To understand Queensland was to understand its greatest son, Joh Bjelke Petersen a misunderstood man. Most southerners viewed his style of government as corrupt but I beg to differ. As a peanut farmer Joh understood hard work and the rules were different in the sunshine state. When it rained it was biblical and when I met him in Gayndah then Springsure then Anakie and Emerald during the floods of 78, I understood why the man needed his personal helicopter.

Queensland resembled the inland sea and as people had lost hope with those sandflies, mud and mould, wet and bedraggle everywhere, the only hope people derived was from their premier’s presence saying “she’ll be right mate, don’t you worry about all that”. With that all Queenslanders were comforted in the wake of such disasters that all would be right and everything would come good; and it did.

I met Joh on my seven league boots at Gayndah first. Here he joked that amidst the clouds I had become the reference point for his pilot could only see my head above the clouds. I joked how I had to duck as the helicopter came into land. His handshake was firm and warm. For the rest of my time in Queensland I did not worry about all that rain, getting bogged, isolated in a town with usually dry creeks raging at the entrance and exit.

Under those circumstances I got a snapshot of the characters that made up an outback town on the top of the great divide. At the showgrounds one would meet the ringers, religious nuts, miners, the real locals that had been there for many generations and some of the Murris that happened to be in town at the time.

Getting stuck in Emerald gave me fantastic opportunities. I was in the gem fields, home of the famous Parti-sapphires. Here I started looking to the ground after a good wash of rain and I found plenty of rough rock. Here I was obliged to hang around because Queensland had become a mass of plasticine. The roads were only one lane thick of bitumen and those road trains weren’t going off it for anyone. So it was unwise to travel the roads at all. The evidence of bogged road trains was everywhere up to 8 feet deep in places. For a seven league booter like me it was suicide. But I almost came undone in another way.

Queensland police had a policy of no tolerance toward any kind of drugs. They loved pulling over hippy vans and giving them a few hours to get out of Queensland. My weakness was for Mary Jane, hooch, marijuana. Little did I know that in Emerald there is a large police training school; there were many plain clothed officers. So isolated, and hanging out for a toke I started to ask around. I met some Pentacostals who used to be smokers and scored a little to tide me over. Then the news came through. The river was down and I went to Mackay the back way.

My work in Mackay was washed out so I went to the pub and had a yarn with the locals. They were concerned about a bloke who was recently murdered and the locals seemed excited. The murdered fellow used to drink at this pub. The publican read on that he had a reputation for selling a bit of weed. Anyway I travelled back toward the gem-fields.

Half way I was pulled over by the police. They were asking about the murdered fellow. So I told them what I had heard in the pub. Then I thought nothing of it and travelled on via Capella to Emerald, then cracked the back of the Great Divide. I strode with the 7 league boots at Alpha, my favourite town in all of Australia next to Springsure. It was show day and the one thing you have to understand is, it never rains in Alpha excepting on Show Day. It was a wash out. So I grabbed a hold of my ladder and did some repairs. Dressed as a sparky I started work at the only place you’d expect the locals to be at on a wet boggy day; the bar. So I tried to make the ladder work but it all came undone. The work was very technical, but it was my job to keep everything working. But this one young fellow, barely 20 kept harassing me and getting in my face. It was so frustrating.

At one point the ladder split in half and I found myself atop the two halves with that idiot underneath it all. At this point I looked at this frenzied fool then the rest of the locals and said in an exasperated voice an old line but most appropriate. I muttered “this is what happens when cousins get married”. The townsfolk dropped to the ground. Some almost fell off their chairs. It was a sensation. The best laugh they’d had ever. I did not understand because with that the show grounds were abandoned. I went back to the bottom pub and changed.

Soon there was a knock at the door. Twin ringers appeared and told me to get ready for a long hard night of festivities. These guys were about six foot three and were legendary fighters. If you rubbed them the wrong way you had to fight one, then the other, then both. They took me to the top pub. All the locals were very friendly. They bought me drinks, took one look at me and laughed their heads off. Then the twins told me it was time to go back to the bottom pub and escorted me there.

On the way I ran into that idiot who’d given me shit at the show bar. He stopped me and said, “I don’t know what you said to me mate, but I haven’t paid for a drink all night”. I laughed with him, shook his hand and he went to the top pub while I stayed at the bottom. I too did not pay for a drink that night. It was the greatest night of celebrity I have ever had but I did not understand why. I asked one of the twins why.

They explained. The guy who gave shit to me at the Show bar was in fact a product of what happens when cousins get married. The twins were there to protect me if he or any of his family got wind of what I said. The whole town kept the secret. No-one mentioned it. That’s why they kept him and his family at the top pub and transferred me back to the bottom. If they knew, they would’ve killed me. Instead the whole town was abuzz with the joke and is a yarn of legendary status. They have probably kept the secret to this day.

In those travels I ran into a parachutist who’d broken his legs. He told me of a chance to use the 7 leaguers at the gem field’s festival. So I drove back to Anakie and Emerald. Half way between I was suddenly ‘Starsky and Hutched’!. The police swooped and went through all my possessions searching for the hooch. They mentioned the dead man in Mackay. They found nothing. Thinking little of it, the next day I turned up at Anakie to go in a race pushing a wheel barrow with 50kg of rough rock, the 10 k’s to Sapphire. I did it on my 7 leaguers.

Strangely enough the same coppers who had raided me the day before were also you guessed it Joh Bjelke’s chauffers. Joh made a point of walking to me and shaking my hand. As he left the Gem-fields, Joh waved to me from the car and the police who had tried to bust me the day before waved as well, a little sheepishly. That sight placed a wry smile across my face as I think of it to this day.

When I first received the 7 league boots, I used them as a ticket to events for I too was born ‘on the wrong side of the road’. I had to have a ticket to get to most events that were beyond my class.

The most spiritual event I appeared at was The Gayndah Orange Blossom Festival. It coincided with the back to Gayndah event. When I arrived the township was empty but I heard Irish music coming from a certain point. I travelled toward the sound. Just a little out of town I arrived at a community hall where I witnessed around 400 people dressed in colonial clothing dancing the Pride of Erin. Grandfathers were dancing with their grand-daughters; Mothers dancing with their sons. Everyone knew the dance steps. It was a miracle.

I thought I was in Brigadoon. That by some magic the place would disappear at midnight only to come alive once in a hundred years. And everything looked so Irish. The local sergeant of Police’s name was Paddy O’Toole (or a name similar). As I spoke to the people they broke to a language that sounded so familiar yet I could not understand a single word. The point at which they stopped speaking English toward their ancient language, I could not discern. They were probably speaking Gaelic.

On the last night a truck rolled through the town dropping bales of hay. As the sun set some violinists took to a stage as the townsfolk sat on the hay bales. The music was purely acoustic and eerie, mystical calm music emanated with an audience totally captivated. I danced to this music on my seven leaguers in a trance.

Only thirty kilometres away is a township called Mundubberah. Between the two villages were groves of citruses. The mandarins grown there were as big as your fist. Mundubberah is the home of the lungfish, capable in a drought year of living underground in a cocoon of mud for many years. Gayndah was Orange and Mundubberah was Green. Their rugby union matches were all Irish affairs. Yet somehow or other, everyone got along.

I went to the pub at Mundubberah and noticed a koori woman with an Irish man. She was cooing in his ear. They were blissfully in love. In Gayndah I witnessed a smallish koori with sparkling green eyes walk up to the President of the Gayndah orange blossom festival and saw the president smile and without hesitation give the black Irishman $100, without batting an eyelid. He only asked for fifty dollars.

I am convinced in this area is a place of love and contentment and the local Indigenes are in command of a love song. This area, like Cape York Peninsula is an example of Indigenes and the whites getting along naturally and after many generations have become family. I hope in writing this I haven’t blown their secret. Something beautiful is in the land here. Perhaps it is in the water.

So during this period I based myself in Sydney with many sorties to Queensland, sometimes on the road for three months; the summer months down south and the winters in Queensland. Once I got a ‘secret’ gig. We were given an address in Palm Beach. We turned up and surrounding a mansion was all of Channel nine’s Outside Broadcasting (OB) vehicles usually used for the cricket. Our contact sent us to one of the OB vans where I met a band called ‘The Models’. They each had white moons around their nostrils. They had been snorting Coke or Speed. They looked panicked but after I introduced myself and said “it’s cool”, they chilled and prepared for their performance.

A whole lot of Eastern suburbs (Posh People) were being bussed to the event and we were to breathe fire and the like, as they left the blacked out buses. And there I spotted him, Kerry Packer. It was for Jamie Packer’s twenty first birthday. Kerry Packer literally glowed with power. At the entrance to their home were some security guards. A local man, who appeared pissed as, seemed to be having an argument with Kerry.

Their conversation went a bit like this: “I bet you Packer I can get into this party. Come on big shot I’ll bet you $1 I can get past your security”. Kerry looked at him, a familiar look as if they knew each other (probably from the local pub). Kerry took the $1 bet. Kerry called over his head of security. He explained the bet. He pointed to the fellow just before he disappeared. Then Mr Packer said, “So you see, if he gets in the grounds I will cancel my contract with you (probably worth millions per year), do not harm him”. It was on.

I had just gone to the bar and grabbed a couple of bottles of Bollinger for us to drink and I returned to the OB van. Who was in there placing makeup on? It was the guy who made the bet with Packer. Now I wanted him to win the bet. But he was using our group to get in.

We too had a number of contracts like the half time entertainment at the cricket. So I informed the security people who took a big sigh of relief as they barred his entry to the event. This event described Kerry Packer. Never one to refuse a bet even for $1, Kerry used it to his advantage and was prepared to wager a multi-million dollar contract against the outcome. The personal power of Kerry Packer was immense. I knew instinctively the man could have me killed if I crossed him.

I also appeared at the grand opening of Darling Harbour. Trouble was it rained for two days not stop. I witnessed about $50,000 dollars worth of fireworks being defused and or let off. I was paid around $250 per day, waiting in a pub for the word to start entertaining. The fireworks were neutralised so the workers could continue working in a safe environment.

14. The hero returns amid defeat and abandonment

While living in Sydney, I had done nothing else except smoke drugs, drink Coopers Ale, play darts and work. Once I drove at 3 am from Sydney to arrive in Texas Queensland by 11 am. I then performed for 6 hours, up and down an old wooden grandstand where my 7 league boots crashed through the dry wood to a bar below; all in a day’s work. I then drove back to Sydney and was home by 1 am.

I reckon I did not see it rain for five years for I followed the sun. I also flew to Noumea at the Bravo Lete festival. This is the only time I have worked in a world where another language was spoken. I stayed in luxury at Club Med. During the parade through the city, the military band broke rank with the set parade and marched to Government House for a military salute. We were obliged to follow and witnessed the arrogance of the French first hand.

The Military band abandoned us at that point and we found our way back through the native sector to the city square where about 5000 Kanackers were running amuck. They were calling for the magic man, a fakir who walked on glass and bent long metal rods imbedded in his eye sockets. At first they thought I was magic on the seven league boots until hordes of them shook my legs and realised it was just a man on top of them. I had spent the night listening to the fakir chipping the glass off his Bacardi bottles, preparing for the big day ahead. With about 5000 Kanaks running amuck and pushing, pulling my legs I thought I was a goner. Fortunately a respected elder guided me away from the throng of the crowd and literally saved my life.

On one occasion I was visited in Sydney by some detectives who were investigating the granny killer of the north shore. I used to drive with the seven league boots on the roof of my Celica. Someone had taken my number plate as I was seen often around the Mosman RSL where I did some regular gigs at poker machine venues. Fortunately I had an alibi. During those events I was actually in Brisbane supporting Jill and Aggro (A children’s television hand puppet) in and around Brisbane suburbs. The detectives apologized for making such enquiries and eventually caught him.

I did many performances at clubs, where I went around poker machines and as people got payouts, I would give them funny money or horse race tickets. At the end of a two hour session we would hold auctions for prizes or bet with the tickets on a horse race ten minutes after the session ended. Along with meat and chook raffles we could fleece from mostly pensioners around $25,000 in two hours. At its peak I did about 6 of them in one week but gave it in when I realised I was actually being paid to seduce lonely little old grannies to part with their children’s inheritance. It was because of these gigs that I became a suspect in The North Shore Granny Killer Murders.

Pictorial evidence of my alibi below.

I had also developed an act with my dog Rocky. At showgrounds I would dress like a chef with a giant chopper in my hands and some sausages in my pocket. The dog would steal the sausages. With a cleaver in my hand I would track the dog usually to some children who would be patting him. I would demand my sausages back brandishing the cleaver. The dog would have a tug of war with me and with his mouth clenched over the “sausages” I would spin the dog into the air. Round and round the dog would go until he landed to the earth. We would have a standoff until I slapped my end of the “sausages” to my thigh. With that Rocky would disengage from the snags, I would put them in my pocket and off we would do the routine again in a new part of the ground. I would also walk the dog while wearing the seven leaguers and perform a similar version of the routine. Rocky was a blue heeler, the smartest breed of dog there is.

While I was in Brisbane, I met a number of American servicemen as they were on recreational leave. How I met them was pretty convoluted. It was the year of the Expo in Brisbane. Now we entertainers would do our bit at the expo, while I was also doing some gigs {free entertainment in the parks) with Jill and Aggro. In addition we would busk in the Surfers Paradise and Queen Street mall. Now my friends were international buskers who could juggle six or more objects. They were continually getting hassled by drunks when they were about to put the hat out. Every busker knows if there is any negativity when you put the hat out, it becomes the difference between making $10 or $200 per show.

So to counter the drunks, I would pretend to be a drunk myself. When the real drunks would start up, I would go next to them and with a bottle of coopers in my hand say all the lines that a drunk might say. I developed a raucous laugh and would say “ahhahahaha you are so funny it is to laugh, ahhahahahaha!’ This had the effect of shutting the other drunks up and keeping the audience in good humour with payout lines from the busker. If no-one hassled the buskers I would let the show take its natural turn of events. But if they made mistakes or hecklers kicked in, I would start up.

I developed a statue type drunk who would slowly double over sleeping standing up and if so much as one drop fell out of the bottle I would laugh and heckle the performer. Bolt upright I would go. I would try to roll a cigarette disastrously, try to light it, disastrously to the delight of the crowd. I would appear to swallow the cigarette when the busker (His name was Rusty) looked at me then out it would pop, when he looked away to the delight of the audience.

Eventually the performer would get so frustrated that with his fire torches, nearing the finale, he would light my cigarette. In exasperation he would hand me the juggling clubs and say “I give up you do the show”. I would walk toward the crowd with the fire and they would all back away. Sometimes “heroes” would step in and confiscate the fire clubs as I was left holding them. I had to learn a technique of snatching them back. Then I would juggle the fire clubs laughing ahhahahahaha! With that the act ended and people who were fooled gave me $50 and $20 notes. We shared the booty equally.

Rusty and I developed ‘the drunk’ and performed it all over Australia. On one occasion at the Adelaide Grand Prix, I accidentally almost swallowed a lit cigarette. I coughed as I spat the cigarette high into the air with embers that looked like a rocket into the night sky. On reaching its zenith, it fell still with a trail of sparks straight back into my mouth. This created another sensation amongst the audience. We incorporated it into the act. The drunk was fast becoming the feature of the act. This act was abandoned as it became a thin line between reality and performance. After eight performances a day I would be pissed as a parrot.

As a result, I was recommended to many other international buskers who would ring me upon arrival in Sydney. I would drive them to Kings Cross and synch them in to the best places in Sydney to busk. Sometimes to assist them in getting used to an Australian crowd, I would perform the drunk with them. After acclimatisation and or meeting someone they knew, off they’d go.

A number of American servicemen came back to watch the show again and again. Some African Americans even copied my act, alongside me as I was doing it. They were probably going to do the same with it when they got back to the States. They spoke to me after the show. I invited them back to my place in Sydney when their ship arrived. Sure enough about a month later around six servicemen rang and I gave them some good old Aussie hospitality. A BBQ at my place and a home cooked meal.

Strangely enough, soon after the Richmond air base rang up for me to perform at an open day. Then the Mosman Officer Training Corp through the HMAS Penguin called me in for the Officer Graduation Ball, the Sergeants Mess had to have me for their family Christmas celebrations. Now once again an act of kindness was rewarded five-fold. You may be aware of my attitudes towards the policies of America. I may despise what America Stands for, but that does not give me the right to be nasty to Americans especially Servicemen.

New Years Eve in Sydney was a wild affair. The fireworks in the Harbour attracted half of Sydney’s Population. When it was over it was a bunfight to get home. On one occasion the traffic was gridlocked. The police attempted to direct the traffic under the harbour bridge, but it was pointless. As I was on the seven league boots, a copper handed me his hat with which I directed traffic. People started to take orders from me upon seeing the hat. Finally I went to throw the cap back, but remembering the incident at Rockhampton with a Ringer, I dusted it off with respect and handed it back to the Copper.

A few months later I lost my Licence for being over the limit again (low range). The attending officer was the copper who had given me his hat. As I had a SA licence when the limit was .08, the NSW limit of .05 applied. I explained to the magistrate that I had not broken the terms of my license, but was aware of the limit in NSW and it was a fair cop. The Officer also put in a good word for me and I was given a $50 fine and 6 week suspension of license in the State of NSW. The magistrate sympathised with my position. Thank God they did not check my record!

 And I had a tour coming up through Queensland. So I rang Jock McCafferty of McCafferty’s Busline, in Toowoomba and asked him to sponsor me through Queensland. So with a pushbike and all my kit with the seven leagued boots I travelled Queensland by bus. This was not good news for I really hit the piss without the responsibility of driving. One night in Mackay I rode my bike away from a nightclub at 3am. I hit a gutter and flipped head first into some rocks. My tooth broke off and went through my lip. I spent the night at Mackay base hospital having the top of my lip sewn back to my nose. My forehead resembled a roadmap.

That morning I walked on the seven league boots with a patched up head. The white pills they gave me for the pain were fantastic. When I finished I collected my pay, caught a bus to Brisbane, a plane to Sydney where I went to my Permaculture garden, healed myself with aloe vera and lived on soup with vegetables from the garden. I was back to the Cairns show within a fortnight looking pretty and rearing to go.

Within another year, pissed again some showies ambushed me coming out of a pub at Gin Gin where they beat me senseless; that night I spent being stitched up again. This time I was put out of business completely. Once again it was back to one of my herb gardens to make myself pretty then off I’d go to the Darwin Show within three weeks. By this time I was starting to look like a punch drunk alcoholic with many scars over my eyebrows.

By this time I was completely estranged from the mother of my first three children. I was either at the Kirribilli Hotel drinking or at local gigs or on tour. Wherever I went I drank and smoked heavily. Even in the showground, I would find a hole in the wall and smoke bongs inches from where I was supposed to perform. If I heard the politician say “and finally”, I knew I had 15 minutes to put the seven leaguers on and magically appear through a hole in the wall to catch the assembled crowd and lead them off to sideshow alley. I appeared and disappeared like magic.

Once at the Darwin Royal Show in the grand parade about 50 tethered cows and bulls saw me and spooked, ripped about 70 metres of protective cyclone fencing out of the ground. The iron posts were attached to giant lumps of concrete that were also ripped out of the ground. The beasts ran towards the crowd, heading for their stalls. It looked like there was going to be a massacre. Fortunately the type of knot used to tether them was taut on first pull but slipped at the second pull. The beasts all ran back to their stalls and no-one was hurt.

The Show Society asked if I had attended many Shows. I said yes. They then looked to the rule book and discovered that in waiting for a Grand Parade all people must be in control of their beasts while waiting to enter the arena. Their handlers realising they were the last group to enter the arena were under a Marquis having a few drinks. It was the Cattlemen’s Association that was at fault for they abandoned their beasts during a Grand Parade. They were still very upset with me. The ABC radio reported that Daddy Long Legs had created a sensation at the Darwin Royal Show.

My problem was though, that at home in Sydney I would organise wonderful tours but always came home to no work at all. I became very frustrated at this because although I was paying up to $360 per week to live in a house in Sydney and with commitments to large advertising I thought someone would run the business at home. But no-one answered the phone, nor did they negotiate bookings and gigs for me. Eventually I ran into a very well connected woman known as the Hat Lady. She became my manager. She scored some good work for me but kept all my money. Her business was in Oxford Street and she had some stalls at Paddy’s Market. I am pretty sure she drugged me and placed it in my food for I would crash every night and she would disappear frequently. She got my sapphires, passport everything.

Eventually the amount she owed was around $25,000 and I confronted her about it. I demanded to be paid. She hit me with a backhander into the bridge of my nose. She threatened to drive into a brick wall unless I shut up. On my final days I walked from Paddington to Chatswood across the Sydney Harbour Bridge with my dog Rockie, penniless; went to a mate’s place where I rang my mother for some money to finance the journey to Adelaide.

A mate helped me steal my own car back from the hat lady. I drove home to Adelaide a beaten and damaged man with many real and metaphoric holes in my head. I was behind in my taxes by about 5 years, in a lot of debt, addicted to alcohol, tobacco and marijuana. I was thin and sickly. My oldest daughter thought that I was ready to die.

15. Academia and Academics:

Arriving back in Adelaide I was up against the ropes. I was certainly damaged in many ways. Estranged from my partner and children, brain damage from two beatings, one self-inflicted the other a bashing a long time coming within a year of each other, alcohol damaged, tobacco stained and marijuana dependent. I was no longer Colin. I had become an older, worn out old hack with nothing to show for it. With one front tooth missing and scars on my lips and forehead, I was not a pretty sight. My mother wanted to know why I had returned, but she insisted and paid for my missing tooth to be restored.

While in Sydney the media and film professionals recommended I go back to Flinders University where they would put in a good word to an old nemesis of mine. He too was damaged by drinking too much wine and we had both coincidentally given up drinking alcohol. I tried to focus on getting academic ‘boggo’ to fill the holes in my head. I used one drama major as a start to completing my degree. So I studied media and environmental studies to complete another two majors.

At first I simply studied Media. This was basically watching classic movies and understanding the theory around the language or grammar of movie making. I also tried my hand at being a film critic for the then MMM community radio as it evolved into 3D radio. Using the script of ‘Mr Fixit’, I performed at many schools for the Friends Of Living Christie Creek (FOLCC). A lot of my old time smoking buddies made it easy to score hooch. They had not changed at all in the 12 years I was away in Sydney. I had stopped drinking, but the trap of hanging with weed freaks continued to be costly and literally going nowhere. I became disillusioned quickly with the Arts. I was particularly shocked at how incestuous the University had become.

Things weren’t much better at home. It did not take long for my mother to tell me to go and find other places to board. However it was hard to find a place that accepted dogs. I ended up sharing house with some professional criminals only because they accepted the dog. These criminals worked every day. They liked to move into a house with a young couple and set them up with hydro equipment and when the crop was mature both the crop and equipment went missing. Then the heavies would demand recompense for the losses. The young couple would be terrorised, pay up and flee the house leaving all their belongings.

I even made a film using their expertise as professional thieves. In 1994, I constructed a movie made with a ‘mis en scene’ entirely out of security cameras and various big brother devices such as radar and speed cameras. They gave me quite an education. For instance they shaved their heads and eyebrows. They wore T-Shirts featuring a photograph of a face. The auto-focus on security cameras automatically focus on the T-shirt photo. Once I mentioned I would like to grow a garden. Next thing over $500 worth of seeds in packets were presented to me. Oh and beware the man who is the pest exterminator he may be the one who cases your joint and three to six months later you may find all your treasures missing. Find a reputable Pest Exterminator is all I am saying. I did not last long there at all. I ended up at a Christian Boarding House opposite the ovals of Flinders University in Bedford Park.

A new discipline was emerging. It was called Environmental Studies. Being science based made it a bit difficult for me. However I persisted and completed my environmental courses satisfactorily. At least I was becoming familiar with academic process, reasoning and research methodologies. The sections regarding Indigenous Australians and their contribution to the flora and fauna through firestick farming was inspirational.  The lecturer, a true teacher and sharer of knowledge commented that the science in my work was pretty average but were the best descriptive narratives he ever had the pleasure to mark. I also filmed Meriam Fox’s acceptance speech for the one millionth copy of her book ‘Possum Magic’, a few academic conventions and did some workshops with the Oral history Unit of the SA State Library about ethical interviewing techniques.

Slowly but surely I filled the holes in my head with contemporary information and started to use computers for the first time. My only High Distinction was in computer studies featuring Excel, Word and Publisher (for beginners). Another subject I found challenging was Professional English for an Information Age.  Jonathon Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’, dissected and placed in context was pure genius as satire. The presentation of it in pamphlet form was sublime. The fact that many of the English Upper Class thought the idea of feeding up Irish Children as meat for the English, solving the Irish Problem and providing fresh meat, was wonderful. It is an indictment on the cannibalism that ultimately defines colonialism and one nation’s control over the affairs of another; One nation’s genocide and linguicide of another in the quest for land.

Unfortunately I could see too many parallels with the University film department. The old Sturt teachers college was merged with the University. Their film course was cannibalised by the Flinders University Film section. Rather than a merge, it was a slaughter. Staff and equipment from Sturt were placed on the sacrificial altar. The Flinders staff actually referred to their male students as “delicious”. It was easy to see who got the best marks; the most delicious. By this time I had abandoned my seven league boots all together.

When I noticed the chief cannibal had fallen off the wagon, I knew I had the upper hand. So I wrote a modest proposal of my own. I handed it to other lecturers and placed it on notice boards around the university along with some cryptic poetry as ‘the feral poet’. This man, once a champion of anti-censorship had a small army of his ‘delicious’ students to tear down the notices.

He actually advertised to other people that I wanted to kill him. This is because a fellow named Monaco had a final chapter in his book entitled ‘The Death of Cinema’. When I asked him if he had read that chapter his logic went. “I am Cinema. Colin asked if I had read a chapter entitled ‘The Death of Cinema’. Therefore Colin has threatened to kill me”. See the flaw in logic when you become a hopeless alcoholic. You become an egotistical paranoiac extraordinaire!

My modest proposal was really a statement. It circulated around the university. The highest echelons of the university had read and revelled in it. They had private meetings with me because the cannibal had made formal complaints about me threatening to kill, slander and libel him. Their only concern was that I was not on a vendetta to harm him. They knew after a brief interview that it was not even the last thing in my mind. While it is their duty to protect their staff they all without exception were delighted at the content of my proposal for it articulated what they all wanted to say. They were all well aware that I was Sub-Paragraph Three. The cannibal thought I had changed my name because of him back in 1976.

The Film discipline restricted the supply of equipment to their students. Deadlines for assignments were looming. An obscure student in the University made the comment that while there was little equipment the Sturt College had plenty. The student demanded that Sturt staff stop their petty bickering and hand it all over. This was a letter to the editor in the University Newspaper “Empire Times”. I simply responded by declaring that the person who made the complaint was not necessarily acting alone. That the staff at Sturt had been shafted and they should look to the people that are creating the restrictions. I also wrote those remaining were encouraging their students to film their genitalia and successful students were those who revealed their psycho-sexual fixations. Anyone revealing the inherent dysfunction of heterosexual activity was also being rewarded with the best marks.

I also pointed out that the Sturt lecturers and courses were majors in Education. They layered knowledge in modules. The equipment was used by the disability sector, to gain an equal footing in their education. I also wrote that if anyone wanted to seriously discuss the matter with their Film lecturers they could be found at the lecturers club sipping chardonnay, flipping through their files, rejecting the ones that that weren’t “delicious”. I suggested that in their zeal to consume departments and students their table manners were lacking because spitting the ones out that weren’t delicious, is rude and offensive. The metaphor of cannibalism when the university was losing 500 staff while doubling student numbers was right on the money.

I had met a person twenty three years my junior. We were thoroughly disillusioned with the universities that sold dreams, having become puppets of the State and Big Business. I only had 1.5 units left out of 108 to complete my degree. We took off from South Australia and headed for Lismore only 30 kilometres from Nimbin to the Southern Cross University. We abandoned the dominant paradigm and our families, and were prepared to commit to immersing ourselves into the alternative sub-culture(s) of Australia. It was the time of the Native Title Act and Australia was reeling from the legal argument that exposed the great lie of Australian settlement and the historic declaration that Captain Cook’s assessment of Terra Nullius was a rude and vicious reason to murder Aboriginals; for technically they did not exist until 1967.

Like local flora and fauna they had to be ‘protected’ as a species facing extinction. Eddy Mabo proved that the dogmas of Hume and Locke and certain Keynesian principles on the rights of a civilised people to own land are provable by their own definitions in law. Australian Aboriginals did hold country. There were boundary lines as proved by Tindale. They did grow crops. Fire stick farming was an ordered scientific method of agriculture. Above all they did exist, challenging Australia’s historic status as Terra Nullius.

16. BUNDJALUNG DREAMING

I applied for and was granted an application for a Bachelor of Indigenous Studies. The area of the Northern Rivers I had frequently travelled through on my way to Queensland. The Sub-tropical rainforest was vast and with Nimbin such a short distance away it was easy to lose yourself. Most of the lecturers were also of an alternate view. This was a perfect environment for it is the Garden of Eden in any direction. Mangoes, Bananas, Macadamia Nuts, Avocadoes, Paw Paws and vanilla beans grew wild and along streets.

We walked everywhere. At night certain fungi glowed in the dark. Fireflies emitted their signals and helped you navigate by night. The alternate community was tight and sympathetic to the local Indigenes who are the Bundjalung. The Earth still retains its spirit and the Gaia of it all is a miracle. Gunja was freely available and the local Police were very tolerant. Bundjalung Country is my idea of heaven.

The local word for Butterfly is Bundjalarm. It is a key to the Bundjalung world view. We enter this world as a grub and metamorphose into a different being after the cacoon of initiation. Understand the butterfly or moth and you understand its predators and the fruit and seed it pollinates. For instance once every four years the blue white butterfly emerges and heads for the Bunyah Mountains. Follow them and the Bunya Nuts will ripen having completed their four year cycle. The festival of the bunya nuts begins. Every year when a certain wattle blooms 200 km inland, the mullet will be running at Evans head by the time you get there. Just as when the Casuarina blooms in the Northern Territory, the squid are ripe for the taking. All you had to do was read the landscape as text.

Scientists, who are pre-occupied by thesis making, will argue that phenomena must be linked to associations. They will set up hypotheses, test them and if all outcomes occur ninety five percent of the time, the thesis may stand. Even then it remains a theory. The observations that have a 100% reliability factor as observed over tens of thousands of year has no foundation in science for the events seem to be mutually exclusive. This is why most westerners appear as fools in the bush. Their reliance on the scientific principles of the day denies their instincts. It appears to me anyway that there is a link between different types of pollen in the water (amongst other variables) and behaviour of certain organisms in the same water.

These occurrences signify times for the Bundjalung to migrate; along with when the bark on trees, peel. In a particularly good year holders of certain totems can sing the dolphins to herd the mullet toward you. We saw land mullet walking along fresh water creeks and some of the most magnificent rainforests left standing on this planet. Evolution was a continuum in Bundjalung land. This has been hard fought for by the Bundjalung and Hippies who had moved here en masse in the sixties and seventies and into the naughties and nineties were up to 3 generations of alternate lifestyles.

On their highways that are coincidentally now roads one can see from vista to panorama groves of bunyas that act as compasses. After a while one can see groves of bunyas from one end of Australia to other. Every one of them come from and traded by the Bundjalung and or Wokka Wokka. If not they were stolen by whites without permission. Bunyah pines have cones bigger than your head and edible nuts as big as an egg. Never sleep under a Bunyah pine for when they crash to the ground the whole earth rumbles.

On one occasion Marcia Langton came to the university during the heat of Native Title for the annual Pastor Roberts lecture. Uncle Eric Walker, the number one for the Bundjalung in welcoming her to country announced. “We who are in this room now are the Bundjalung Nation. We have known this young lady since she was a Jarjum (child). Kungalier (listen) to her words with your Binung (ears). Take these words to your Joogal (heart). With an action resembling the cross he then announced the Bundjalung Nation was open for business. Tears were streaming from Marcia’s eyes as she then gave the most inspiring lecture knowing that in the Northern Rivers Region, the Bundjalung Nation is alive and well. “White man we know what you are doing”, was Marcia Langton’s message.

The irony about the Hippy movement is they adopted the flag of the rainbow in amongst one of the few collectives of Indigenous Peoples where the Rainbow Serpent was not the key deity. Everyone knew that it was the Goanna that reigned supreme having defeated the snake.  The splattering of red ochre through that volcanic landscape is the evidence of the giant battle. The most important location is that of Goanna Headlands where the three brothers arrived by boat and the Dirraghan ensures all men consider women and children on their journeys. Many an irresponsible male leaving a pub, drunk again, has been bailed up by an outraged Dirraghan in Bundjalung land.

Many of the Bundjalung are devout Christians. This is because they can through their oral history confirm that there was a great flood around 5000 years ago. But they also know that there were many arks during that great flood for they had three of their own. That biblical story is not so Eurocentric. Their oral history and links with the Walpiri of Central Australia confirms also that there were at least three waves of Indigenous settlement in the country now called Australia. One group have always been here. The second claim is those that came from the land bridge from Northern Australia. A migration of people from Africa via India and a 3^rd was a different sub-species altogether that are known as small hairy men and women. Sometimes you run into them on festive occasions for instance at Nimbin you will see many very small people totally covered from head to toe. They love wrestling. There are many eye witness accounts recorded testifying to this fact. Last time I heard they were living in Wyan Wyan forest. It is a reason to fight for that forest to remain.

At Southern Cross University I majored In Law, Health and Education. I met many people who when they discovered I was Sub-Paragraph Three, shook my hands and I was quickly circulated amongst the Elders of Nimbin. The creator of the Nimbin museum, Mick Baulderstone confirmed with the belief of the Bundjalung that they had inherited the abused and mentally ill people that were victims of the dominant paradigm. As a consequence many sick, of European background, youngsters were drawn to the alternate lifestyle movement. And so were ASIO and undercover agents. Fortunately I bypassed the ASIO tests and was fast tracked to the immediate action groups that fight a daily battle for the Aboriginal rights and environmental concerns that are inextricably connected.

We met two people immediately. One was Robert Corowa known as ‘The Spook’. The Spook was there to put straight those mentally ill people who had decided to come to Bundjalung land as great white prophets who were going to save the Aboriginal race single handed. Robert also educated the whites that they have only been here for a couple of hundred years in a timeline stretching for beyond 40,000 years. That the whites have fucked everything in such a short while; so much that they may be an endangered species. He told us whites to shut the fuck up.

That in another 200 years the blackfellows will still be here and the white fly by nighters may not. The other person was Al Oshlack of Jewish descent, who championed the Bundjalung’s campaigns for Native Title especially in the courts. Jews and Aboriginals have a lot in common. They both yearn for their God given homelands. People have been trying to exterminate them for centuries. He had lived with the Walpiri for a time and the Bundjalung Elders used him to challenge and create precedents in law regarding the rights of protestors to halt pending developments especially at sacred sites and Crown land.

Multi Nationals know the world

Their expensive minds mine the minds

Of every man woman and child on this planet

But sedated on a myriad of drugs

We become such apathetic blowhards

Talking our prowess, living in a past

Or was that dying fast

They are giants taking no breath, nor pause

As they invade our personal space

Leaving not a trace of Gaia

We choose between flight or fight,

Against planetary destruction

Or left behind we remain

sceptical of the inevitable, hence

The vision is of a menagerie

Birds of pleasure, butterflies and dragonflies

Fly by in patterns of delight.

They articulate abstraction

Tongue tied flow and fluid

Moving clearly through the mire

Of conceptual cultural silence

As deafness, clarity of thought

Toward motor skills

Of mandible manipulation

The crispy sounds of

Enigmatic classic costumes

Of experience, blessed cress

As I see your light

The ones we fight

As passive resistance takes flight

Such emanescence belies the hurt

And interruption to our souls

As we cross in gender, dance and sparkle

Despite such visionary scepticism.

 With Uncle Eric and Aunty Una Walker’s (apologies if they are Kumantjai) approval we took on the many developers who were in a mad rush to develop Evans Head amid Crown land with the attempts by the Howard Government to find as many reasons they could to extinguish Native Title. This led to the battle for Evans Head. Firstly it is important to realise that developers employ lawyers and people with military backgrounds to help them strategise. The Developer had at around 5 pm on a Friday started digging a road through Crown land (Evans Head) to get to a site that was destined for development of a housing estate. This means it is impossible to get an injunction to halt works until after Monday 9am.

This gives the developer the weekend to do the damage, straight through some shield and scar trees. They could be burial chambers and middens of Indigenous ancestors. In anticipation of this dirty deed, Hippies put up tall bamboo tripods to halt the front end loaders. This halts proceedings for a morning and they are easily dismantled. This resistance gives the developer confidence. This road is in acid sulphate soil and there is already evidence that the runoff (between low and high tide) of the exposed earthworks is polluting the river. Middens are sliced clean through and at least one grave tree has been destroyed. The fluctuations between high and low tide are revealing very turbid waters that are usually pristine with Melaleuca tannin. The area is very important for breeding fish especially mullet. It’s where the rainforest and heath lands meet the sea, next to the most sacred site of all, Goanna Headlands (as sacred as Uluru).

The process is as follows: Suddenly ‘soil surfers’ in front of the front end loaders are slowing the monster trucks down. When the equipment halts, the women rush in and lock onto the machinery. There goes Saturday afternoon.

Police bash men, but they are more gentle with women. As the police remove and arrest them, they wail along with the screams of their children, who act as witness to any police brutality. Further along at a significant site are protestors who have locked their arms into steel and concrete sleeves. To get to them the heavy machinery moves slowly on. About 20 metres to the main lock on point, trip wires latticed across the roadway are lifted by the oncoming front end loaders, causing panic. You don’t know whether the protestors will by sliced in half by the lattice. Everything stops. There goes most of Sunday.

Police and plain clothed personnel with a military bearing then make their way to the protestors. As they walk through, their feet slip in small holes that have been covered by soil and paper. Each slip represents a (non-existent) land mine. The police, developers and their cronies are in a cold sweat. The Police have their hands on the pouches of their pistols. They do not like it when the Eco-warriors are as organised as they are. There goes the rest of Sunday.

The police and military start freaking out. Machinery on tripods is brought in and a panorama photo is taken of the entire event. One by one the protestors are read their rights and the lattice is removed inch by inch. The lock on devices, one by one are lifted surgically from their spots. To watch a front end loader delicately lift a metal sleeve attached to a protestor out of the ground, is a sight to behold. The drivers are just workers trying to make a living. We do not insult them or give them a hard time. In fact the driver loves every minute of it because of the over time. In fact they are purposely employed for they are of Aboriginal descent. They are not local Aboriginals. There goes Monday morning.

 The leaders are arrested and all the hippies are herded into an area 12 metres square and told if they leave it they will be arrested. All children whose parent is arrested latch on to another adult so they are not taken away and their parents face additional charges of neglect. All people are put on good behaviour bonds and if they return they will be arrested. The general Al Oshlack is arrested and by that time it is 12 midday on Monday. The legal representatives are still in court requesting an injunction to halt proceedings.

The news comes to us that Al has been arrested. So Team B goes into action. The Spook and I get a bus and a small group of additional protestors are rounded up. We arrive and quickly go through crown land because all other access is barricaded by the police and developer. We make a lot of noise as if there is a 100 protestors coming. We say “They are coming on buses from all over Australia. Can you arrest a thousand of us?” The police have to begin again reading the cautionary rights before arrest. We comply and negotiate with them a safe exit for the Hippies and their children, herded into the 12 sq metre holding cell. We are given permission to release the hippies and they, with the children make a tactical retreat. The children are reunited with their mothers away from the site.

By that time (about 2pm on the Monday), an injunction is served to the developer. They have to halt work. Three months later the courts declare that the action in constructing a road through crown land to get to the freehold site marked for development was illegal. The developer was polluting the crown land river as a result. Furthermore any person with a history of environmental action can enter crown land or a sacred site if they believe an illegal act is occurring and there is a genuine belief related to environmental protection. They will not be declared or arrested as trespassers. Therefore the option or strategy to arrest and place on good behaviour denying a return to an action can be in itself, an illegal act.  This 2^nd attempt in 20 years by developers to destroy the most sacred site to the Bundjalung, as sacred as Uluru, has been averted. It will happen again. The hippies are on standby waiting for the Developer’s dirty tricks department to start up again.

We also went onto a gold mine where nothing more than a piece of plastic was between arsenic (used to extract gold from ore) and the pristine waters of Timbarra where large amounts of Peat Moss were to be removed. These highland peat mosses filtered the water to a pristine quality. We camped in groups for one to two week shifts in those highlands on standby to protest while legal eagles sought clarification of the Environmental Impact Statements (which are put together by and at the expense of the miners and developers by law). The well-known mining company eventually abandoned Timbarra but not without a lot of damage to the environment and pressure from environmental concerns.

It was no wonder that the then Gunjil Jindibah (Tawny Frogmouth) centre for Aboriginal studies invited me to do a paralegal degree in lieu of the new Native Title Act and the many Indigenous land use agreements (ILUA) that are needed to be negotiated. But by this time my daughter Jalia was born. “Jalia” is Bundjalung for a female tree. In our travels through Bundjalung land we were initiated into an understanding of Djurebils.

A Djurebil is a significant place or sacred site where if a woman in love enters the area, she will give birth to a child whose spirit comes from that location. It can also be a place of contemplation (friends and enemies). In other words there are a number of locations where the Gaia of our planet endows us with certain properties. I believe my daughter Jalia’s spirit is a product of her mother and I being at Djurebils in Bundjalung Land. The midwife at Jalia’s birth was a Bundjalung Elder who gave her the totem of the white hawk. When we travel across Australia it is amazing the number of white hawks that guide our way. Jalia is acknowledged by her teachers as a leader and gifted child with an inner calmness and warrior spirit.

“The headland at Evans Head is a djurebil (sacred place) inhabited by the Goanna spirit whose function was to bring rain. The shape of the headland is said to resemble a Goanna, with its tail extending south past Chinamans Beach, but the spirit is believed to live in a cave. (Steele, 1984)
The arrangement of the landscape is understood in Aboriginal terms as the actions of ancestral beings in the Creation era:

Animals both shaped and made possible traditional life. Most commonly thought of as food, they were this and a lot more to traditional people. The relationship with animals started with the Dreamtime and helped shape the land. At the centre of the Bundjalung beliefs is the battle between the Goanna and the Snake. They formed the Evans River as they fought, and the Headland was formed by them (Heron, 1996).

Another Dreamtime story explains the significance of Nimbin Rocks and how its name was derived. The following account is taken from Nayutah & Finlay (1988, p8):

The name Nimbin, is probably derived from the little spirit man, Nyimbunji. The rocks are associated with this little man who has great supernatural powers. The Nyimbunji from this area was a very strong and powerful man who ruled the land for miles around. He had more power than other men in the whole area. When the people wanted more food or rain or any other substance which they lacked, they would go to the Nyimbunji. He was not only powerful but also generous, wise and kind.

He would visit the tribal areas to make sure everyone was all right and to see that they were following the rules and laws.

The name Ballina is derived from the Aboriginal term bullen-bullen, meaning tournament, of which many are believed to have been held there and are often referred to in Aboriginal mythology. Various legends tell of a balugan, or hero, leaving home to travel to the coast intending to try his fighting prowess at a tournament (Steele, 1984).”

Source: http://onthehillgilayjun.blogspot.com.au/p/bunda.html

To prepare for the birth I went to work as a chipper of weeds in the main camp tea tree plantation. Working at the tea tree plantation was the hardest work I have ever done. I would wake at 3am and drive from Lismore to Casino. There all the workers would gather then travel in convoy a further 40 km. It was our job to chip weeds before the harvest of the melaleuca cinnamoni. The oil of the weeds contaminates the tea tree oil.

Once we chipped, a giant tractor would harvest the tea tree followed by another that applied heat with gas burners to the remaining lignotubers. This was to affect the plant and create epicormic shoots, beginning to grow another tea tree bush. This was commercial firestick farming. Invented by the Aboriginals but no royalties for the intellectual property rights are paid. They were manufacturing liquid gold from a plant that evolved through fire-stick farming of the local Indigenes.

I worked until there were 30 blisters on my hands. Everyone said piss on your hands. Eventually I had to. My weeping palms turned black instantly and formed calluses. I had to buy a fridge, a cot, a washing machine and prepare for the birth of Jalia.

Before Jalia was born, I went on two indigenous environmental management field trips. The first one was to Wreck Bay mission in Jervois Bay Territory, the port of Canberra and Naval Headquarters. This was to see the fresh handover in lieu of Native Title the National Parks there. Firestick farming was being employed, controlling the undergrowth. The chairman at the time Bruce McLeod observed that as the landlords to the Naval Base the Indigenes had to determine the rent. Bruce reckoned going by white fella standards the rent should be around two million per year. The government negotiators told his people to be realistic.

Now the fact is the government is more than prepared to pay that price to other Europeans for their Centrelink and other Human Services Offices for their pokey little buildings, but laughed at the Indigenous rent request for a few square miles of Jervois Bay Territory. So this was an indication for the hope of genuine partnerships and Reconciliation. It was merely an exercise of being seen to comply. The Native Title Act has become merely a white culture invention to legalise rape, theft and murder, intervention and declaring future acts of dispossession. It has become a minefield of litigation unless all parties agree to outcomes through Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUAs). Like Eddie Mabo, the process takes so long, the claimant dies before resolution.

Bruce looked at me and asked if I came from the Wellington district of NSW. I said that although I was born and bred in Adelaide, it is where my relatives on my father’s side through his mother are living and or buried. I had only been there for a very few occasions. Bruce (coincidentally my father’s nick name) said that many of the Wreck Bay descendants came from the Mudgee, Cootamundra and Wellington area. My father was born in Mudgee, the family moved to Wellington and an Aunty was from Cootamundra where the girl’s mission was. There was a disastrous mission in Mudgee that moved to Wellington. This really rocked my boat because my father’s younger brother Calvin (who had done 5 years in Long Bay Jail) had always told us the land around what is now Lake Burrendong used to be our land, but the Government took it away from us.

This awareness changed my world view completely because with both anecdotal and factual confirmation there is a strong chance that I may be of Indigenous descent as a Wiradjuri. This could explain why I got on so well and felt a strong kinship with the Gamilaroi, Bundjalung, Minjerribah, Pitjatjantjara, Narrunga, Kokotha, Narrentjeri, Eora, Wik-Thayorre, Kaurna, Arrente, Pintupi, Walpiri, Barkinje and Wokka Wokka peoples. I shifted camps for I hold strong beliefs that I am indeed not a member of the stolen generation but the lost.

In 1813 the Blue Mountains had been crossed and settlers trickled over, but when gold was discovered in 1851, there was at mass movement to Bathurst and beyond. My earliest European ancestor Thomas Newton arrived as a Convict in 1822 when only 25.000 Europeans were in what is now known as the state of NSW. He worked with Wentworth and Lawson in the roads, clearing vegetation around the Hunter Valley and beyond. There are many Wiradjuri granted exemption from being an Aboriginal with the last name of Newton (Notably a Josephine Wilhelmina Newton) at the Cowra Mission. Relatives of mine live there to this day. There is a record of an Indigenous man named Colin Bede Newton in the IAATSIS records. My name is Colin Bede Herring. Bede is a common family name belonging to me, my father, his father and two of my sons.

The early settlers were both gold miners and farmers. Within twenty years whitened Aboriginals could easily have been born or whites with great sun tans. With the bitter treatment of the Indigenes it could have been easy for them to pass themselves off as white and join the throng of gold diggers. Added to that was the government policy of removing whiter Aboriginals from their families. It explains why they all have pauper’s graves.

While my young partner was pregnant, we also went to Mootwingee National Park to see, first hand, the nature of National Park handovers. Here a Badger Bates and the upper Barkinje people played host to us. As the main body of students went on the tourist route through the national park, those of Indigenous Descent were taken through emu country to the plateaus and caves of the ancestors. My daughter, still in her mother’s womb was taken through powerful (Emu) women’s country. Just like the emu, the men looked after their young. Jalia has double indemnity as of Indigenous spirit.

 All these events happening took me back to the time as Daddy Long legs when I travelled on a dirt road between Roma and Injune. I slept the night at Caenarvon National Park fifty years to the day of its inception. The Gorge there in the middle of the desert is a birthing spot and strong women’s country. From one waterhole and niche the King Fern derives.  Cycads five metres plus high (at least 500 years old) grow there. At the park I met a woman who looked and behaved exactly like my oldest sister. She told me she was from Wellington in NSW. I told her of my family connection and how the old bridge after my grandmother was buried, had collapsed. How I named my second son Jesse, for he was conceived when my Grandmother Jessie Forrest passed away. She advised me to go under where the old bridge was and speak to Uncle John. I thought nothing of it at the time.

The Bundjalung taught me about family and strength through family within the landscape. Jalia was born on my birthday. When she was 11, I turned 55. I am exactly 44 years older than her. I hope to share our birthdays when I will be 88, exactly twice her age. I will happily die having met that milestone. I will also die happy knowing that even if I am not directly of Indigenous descent, I most certainly am related through spirit and kin. I really do not care if I am of Aboriginal descent for my people have been in many “djurebils” where from the very Gaia of our planet, my ancestors and descendants have been imbued with Indigenous Spirit.

 We realised that while Bundjalung land and people are very powerful and the countryside is so rich and beautiful, our families were in Adelaide. We returned to Adelaide in 1999 with a child and in a spirit of Reconciliation went back to our families. This realisation is manifest in a recent poem: The Forever People.

The forever people in my life are disappearing

And within my psyche a deep abyss is rising

They gave birth to me and guided

Through thick and thin, were there

To help and nurture

The forever people are leaving me

And nothing fills the void

And all the little things

Remind me of their absence

Aunty Rhonda’s custard and apples

Transports me toward my youth

When I lost that first tooth

The aroma and the flavor chime

A time of innocence, waning.

But the forever people are passing on

As I arrive upon that threshold

As the elder of my clan, no longer

A flash in the pan.

The forever people are moving on

Reminding all of our mortality

Becoming elements of memory

And brief sojourns upon this life.

A fragile statement

The forever people are leaving me

As I am taking their place.

White people, who are estranged from their families, must realize that reconciliation starts within their own families. Some things cannot be forgiven but peace of mind is reconciliation. How can you reconcile with a family of Indigenes when you are not at peace within your own family. The stories that come from your family are at the heart of your DNA. It is a travesty to hijack Indigenous stories for only the Elders who own that story have the right to tell it. The story belongs to them and their kin. And yet the theft of story and sacred secret continues. I say create your own stories.

It was urgent for me to return to my now aging mother and let her know that whatever occurred in the past has happened ‘and you can’t change that’. Decisions were made and they cannot be changed. It was time to thank my mother for the sacrifices she had made for bringing me up, as best she could on her own, to be a half decent person. Words are shallow but deeds are evidence of truth. This book is the culmination of that act.

So we returned to Adelaide and had one more child. He was born on St Patrick’s Day and you get to guess his name. He and his sister were born a millennium apart.  All five of my children have aspects of my personality: Fletcher was given accuracy and direction as the business man, Rose is the beautiful deep red flower that appeared at her birth and the great events manager, Jesse is the Hippy, the Perma-Culturalist and artist, Jalia is the academic artist and Patrick will break his way into new frontiers especially with music. I have continued my studies, having negotiated a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Indigenous Studies, A Cert 4 in Assessment and Workplace Training and a Post Graduate Certificate in Applied Science specializing in the application of Native Title to Natural Resource Management (NRM).

White professors laugh at and mock my application for thesis. It demands they give up control. To promote those at the coalface of the parent company’s imposition of an alien human resource management methodology, on an Indigenous culture. Promote them to a position of management and policy making. To give Indigenous people a permanent culture of corporate behavior.  Rather than designs to failure and dissolutions of  DAARes and ATSICs and Departments of Aboriginal Affairs tacked on to the governments of the day with ever changing rules. Dissolve the racist mainstream resentment around equity for the individual, played out against social justice for collectives. Realize and accept the duality of operational systems. Sheer weight of numbers does not equal democracy nor does it represent a mandate to do anything you want. The junior partner always loses especially and often they are right.

I am waiting for the day when our first Australians are acknowledged in the Australian Constitution before I ever vote again. Then law and order will begin in this country. We are waiting for the long overdue treaty and the right to hold our own Parliament to determine our own affairs. Acceptance of nations within a nation and a bicameral country where our first Australians assume the traditional title of Governor General and through their own parliament ratify any legislation, dealing satisfactorily with any issues of sovereignty. We expect the Australian government to finance it as proper payment and back rent in acknowledgement of the crimes committed. We forgive you for the war that many continue to wage against our peoples through intervention and future acts of dispossession.

Meanwhile back at the ranch in Colin Utopia. These days I continue to wear the seven league boots. My clowning and performances are so much better for my life experience. I realize that some people have been given the grace to choose a soft spiritual path. Mine was not. I argue it has as much validity. Lives are shaped by adversity but choices are made. I rarely drink and do not smoke. I take chocolate. I am a hermit. I am the most qualified fool you will ever meet, with the possible exception of Ira Seidenstein. I think someone has to foster positive aspects of our society. The journey has not yet ended. When I die I will become compost at a Djurebil near you, waiting to be recycled.

And so I write my epitaph….

With my 7 league boots, I travelled and wormed my way,

Crossing the path of many an abused cadet.

It was only triage, for in the wake of

The national emergency, that is Australia,

 I could only save them from suicide and self mutilation.

Ah yes I angered so many, but

I absorbed their pain and frenzy

Became but part of their lives,

In a way they truly deserved

For I was but a catalyst

Toward self-salvation.

And, like a beacon, a radio tower

I disseminated the hurt

Radiating all over the crowd

For I have voluntarily fluttered

Into that mouth of the Beast

And cooled his temperament.

That fool, who stepped in while others wept...

Sometimes I was wounded,

Ultimately by, but friendly fire.

And died many deaths,

In re-inventing myself.

Like the phoenix I arose from that pyre, and cacooned,

Indifferently drawn to the same fire,

Metamorphosed as a moth or butterfly

I expired many, many times.

Again and again!

Too many people, young and old, had cause to denial

Amongst all that Hell and with no Holy Water

To expel the demons and I,

Left wandering seven weary leagues in

Those boots, wondering if to swiftly flee or fly,

At last, retired from self imposed invincibility

And the inevitable repercussions.

A weary warrior, worse for wear,

Having done my time

Pause…..poised……………………..

To enjoy the ripening fruits of survival

And the wisdom of

Falling, failing, then rise,

Only to fall again......

As ashes to dust...

And with my own story...

I will die.

Kumantjai.