ISSU E NO . 5 / O CTO BER 21 — N O V E M BER 4 / 3 0 CENTS
*1 gave ray grand'daughter the
pill* D on ’t know if she
11use it.
Tw o old ladies talk sex. See page 4
PREMIER VISITS PEOPLE'S PARK NSW Premier Askin and w ife, pictured w ith the kids o f Glebe. The site is Adventure Playground, an illegal children’s park built in the path o f S yd ney’s Northwestern Expressway. It has so far cost the NSW Departm ent o f Main Roads, the NSW police, and the countless people w ith vested interests lots o f m oney and heartache. The kids love it. Why is Askin smiling? See page 6 for a report from the streets.
W ill M cM ahon b e o u t o f w o rk com e D ecem ber? Dennis Altman hopes so — See Page 5.
F M ra d io ’s p ro sp e c ts
ZIMMER'S ESSAY a,
JL a r t
T T b y R ° berf Adamson JLJL & Bruce Hanford
Glaister’s rape left him disturbed. Zimmer explains beginning page 8.
G ir l g o n zo m e e ts a d a n c in g H a r e K r is h n a Jenny Brown talks o f nirvana and abstinence. See page 3
BLANK PAGE FOR ISSUU VERSION ONLY
Page 1
The ABCB Report
A t last th e 1 9 8 4 sh o w :
Pim ps and spies to solve dole queue blues
F M radio’s fin e so long as it’s ours by Game Hutchinson
by David Rubin Someone, fresh from the USA, was telling me the other day how they were twiddling the knob of their FM receiver in San Francisco, and they heard something that sounded like an amalgam of Lord Buckley, Lenny Bruce and Wolfman Jack. What it was, was an open line session between Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers and Bobby Seale and David Hilliard. Plus interested listeners who would ring up and lay it on the three of them. That’s radio. Another time there was a hookup between two FM stations and a color TV station to broadcast a Jefferson Airplane concert from Winterland. In ,color, quadraphonic sound and, wait for it, LIVE. That’s radio. And there are black stations, Chicano stations, freak stations, news stations, talk stations, and all kinds of other stations. That’s radio. There are stations run by a non-profit Corporation called the Pacifica Foundation, which are mainly for stereo classical music and discussion programs. A kind of educational network. That’s radio. And there are stations run by staffs of freaks, and stations run by the listeners. There are commercial stations, non-profit stations and stations run by universities, Black Panthers, Democrats, Republicans, Nazis, Communists, Heads, & Feds. That’s radio. And it all sounds rosy. It is in fact pretty rosy. Though a lot of stations have a hard time surviving finan cially, and a lot more have problems with a conservative management anda radical staff. But at least the situation is such that there is an incredible variety of specialist stuff being broadcast at a much higher technical quality than we are accustomed to. But that’s the USA. It’s an earboggling prospect. It is in fact a lot closer now than it has ever been before. The Australian Broadcasting Control Board, the paper tiger ostensibly overseeing the legislation and licenses of our radio and tv systems, has fin ally released a report recommending that FM broadcasting be introduced. Not until 1977 mind you, but at least there is a date on it now, which there wasn’t in 1942, 1944, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1957-8 or 1968. B riefly what has been recommended is that the ABC get an FM' network to give the country areas better service, that the ABC establish a ‘fine music’ FM station in each capital, that there be a commercial FM network, and that
there be a public broadcasting system to serve specialist audiences; ie those who want to be educated or listen to other sorts of music. All radio in Australia, with the exception of shortwave stations, are AM in the medium wave band. AM signals don’t wobble around very much so that a lot of them can be fitted into a relatively small width of the medium wave band. AM channels are 10 kiloHertz (kHz) wide and there are 108 of them. FM channels are usually about 200kHz wide, because of the wide frequency changes in the signal that follow the same frequency as changes in the stuff being broadcast. (You can imagine how wide the frequencies are in a Pink Floyd album, for instance).! Consequently you cannot practicably have FM in the medium wave band, because you could only have five channels. Obviously not enough. It has to go where there is more space available — in the Very High Frequency wave band, or the UltraHigh Frequency wave band (VHF&UHF). The ABCB has decided against using what, overseas, is the most used frequency band — VHF. This is because of interference both technical and commercial with existing tv stations. They have recommended that the low end of the UHF band be used, in spite of the fact that the technology for transmission and reception will have to be developed here. At least these considerations didn’t stop the recommendation. This problem seems to have arisen because of a lack of foresight in years gone by. It has been evident for a long time that FM would be introduced sooner or later, and also that tv services would expand. Planning allocation of sections of the frequency spectrum has not taken this into account. Thus we are in the ridiculous position of having scatterings of operators all over the place — taxis, police, firemen, tv, radio — and having to fit a whole new system of broadcasting into frequency areas where, it is not ideally suited. But given the ABCB’s pussyfooting around with licence violations by commercial tv channel owners this is hardly surprising. The advantages that FM has over AM are background receiver noise is lower, it sounds better because the wider frequency used by FM enables a more honest reception of what was recorded, FM stations can operate closer together geographically
Songs they sang in the trenches:
she knew how to Bring pp young children to sew and to knit While the boys in the cowshed were shovelling Shavings and sawdust that lay on the floor I f you like my little story then I ’ll tell you some more But he didn’t need to hear any more. It was terrible. It was dis gusting. He looked around the court room. Everyone was smiling. Some of the Constables were laughing, and you just couldn’t stop yourself filling in the words that the song didn’t say. I mean, there weren’t any of the anglosaxons that you could hear, but they just kept popping into your head. Mr Thompson knew what was happening, even in the antiseptic courtroom,, with the flower of the Victoria Police around him, things were bawdy and lewd. Maybe he was being transported back to that time in his life when he heard the same songs in the RAAF mess. Or at Reunions on ANZAC day. Maybe these were times that he would like to forget. He is an SM. It became too much. It was nearly time to break up the court, already close to breaking up. He adjourned the case until October 13. The lawyer looked at the defen dents and then at the vice squad. They all shook their heads. It was not pleasant to see a man adjourn like that. And he’d only heard the R Certificate Songbook, and Aboard the Good Ship Venus. There were
Burning of the records by Garrie Hutchinson C.J. Thompson SM was sitting at the Bench on October 2 when something unusual happened. Not the run of the mill traffic/national service/smoking on the docks/d & d/maintenance case. No sir, it was an Obscenity Bust. Not that this was exactly unusual but the fact was that the defendents lawyer wan ted him to take some records of bawdy material home where his Wife and Children might accidentally hear them and be Depraved or Cor rupted. So the only thing he could do was listen to the records in court. The record was. played. It had verses in it like this: There was a young farmer who lived by the school This very nice young farmer used to play with his Marbles in springtime with the lady next door You could tell by her actions she was only a Very nice young lady who lay on the grass When she turned over you could see up her Fashions and fancies, she could swim like a duck You could tell by her actions
v
As was expected, unemployment figures for September announced by the government dropped eight per cent. The Liberals had to have a drop in unemployment on the eve of a federal election. Until the school-leavers register for jobs it is expected that a further drop will take place, in the October unemployment figures.
because FM receivers favor reception of the strongest signal, not the duplication of noises you get at the moment and interference from natural and man-made phenomena is much lower. In other words, FM sounds better, especially when you take stereo or even quad into account. But what is to be broadcast and who is to do it? This is the real question at issue. The ABCB’s recommendations mean that on the whole nothing much will change. The ABC will have a third, FM network, and some “fine music” stations. Unless the recent upsurge of spine amongst ABC staff continues, and the ALP wins, and they allow more independence and staff control, these provisions promise little excitement. The establishment of a series of commercial FM radio stations is also no great advantage, if the present oligopolistic system is perpetuated The ABCB stated that it did not recommend current owners of radio and tv stations should be allowed to control any more outlets. But that doesn’t really get us very far if what
happens is just higher quality muzak or familiarity programming. Will the government give licences to radical political groups or even radical musical groups even if they can prove commercial viability? The ABCB report does not get into this in regard to commercial stations but it does have something to say about public broadcasting stations. The Report only mentions them as outlets for fine music, educational and religious broadcasts. But they do say that if anyone can demonstrate th a t th eir organisation is “reputable” , “established” , and “financially secure” then it should not be excluded if time is available. But . . . “ It is thought essential th a t. the standards by which the stations should operate should include provisions for all sides of controversial subjects to be discussed It appears that the ABCB is still afraid of the medium. Initially the recommendation is for the establishment of stations that share time amongst several specialist groups. I imagine that means
mornings for educational broadcasts, afternoons and early evening for classical music, mid-evening for news/discussion programs and maybe late night for rock and roll and freak programming, or some arrangement like this. Studio and transmission facilities, co-ordinated by the ABCB, but run by co-operating station managements, would be available for rental from the government. They anticipate that public inquiries into who is going to get in on the ground floor will be held in 1976, stations to be operating in 1977. As each group involved will have to finance itself, it seems likely that listener subscription will be tried. This means that a group will send detailed program guides only to those people who have subscribed something like $10 or $15 per year to the station. It depends a lot on good will and enthusiasm for your sort of programming. But in view of the statements about “reputable” , “established” and “financially secure” organisations it would appear that people interested in getting it on in ’77 should start thinking now.
The Dirty Digger October 21 — November 4 two more to go. What had happened to bring a SM to this sorry state? It certainly wasn’t the fault of the defendants — Scallplatten Distributors Pty. Ltd., and Sound and Film Enterprises of Australia Pty. Ltd. All that they had done was distribute 4 records of very old and honorable bawdy songs, doing their best to keep them from falling into the hands of children who would be affected by what their parents sing at the pub. And they had to show cause why these allegedly obscene articles should not be destroyed. Perhaps it was the fault of the vice squad. On September 5 one of their number bought a copy of the R Certificate Songbook from Allans Home of Music at about 2.00 pm. They listened to it that afternoon and the next morning and worked themselves up to bust the distributors, Myers, Allans, Suttons and Brashes on the afternoon of the 6th. They also trampled through Brendan Hanley’s home. He is one of the musicians and is part owner of the AO Label through which the R Certificate Songbook appears. Perhaps it was the fault of who ever sent a copy of the record into
Norman Banks the week before that. Norman made a big issue of it in his show on 3AW-Muzak, and said that he would have to speak to his friend Mr Meagher, the Chief Secre tary about cleaning up the filth in the streets and the airwaves. Of course, it didn’t take Mr Meagher long to realize that here was good am munition in his fight to oust Mr Hamer from the Premier’s chair be fore the State elections next May. Mr Meagher announced he was going to clean up the State. Regardless of whose fault it was, when the court reconvened on Octover 12 the SM had to listen to 2 more albums. That took until nearly lunchtime, and just before he went to lunch the magistrate said: “ So far I’ve heard nothing obscene but I’m not prepared to make a dec ision until after lunch.” That sounded good. Perhaps jus tice was to be done after all. Perhaps the ten day rest had done him some good. The defendents were smiling. The vice squad wasn’t. Thompson SM returned from whatever he did at lunchtime and found that the records were obscene according to the dictionary and com
mon law. They were to be destroyed after 30 days. All the experts and legal opinion amounted to nought in the face of the OED. It says that in 1558 something was obscene if it was “ offensive to modesty or decency; expressing or suggesting lewd thoughts or offensive to the senses of the mind, disgusting, filthy.” Joe Cocker the Rotating Rocker:
Cocker power by Colin Maxwell Talbot Dateline: Melbourne, Wednesday. The Herald final edition front-page screamer reads GET OUT! COCKER POP SEVEN TOLD. Harry M. Miller is promoting Joe Cocker’s tour of Australia and Joe Cocker and some of the group have been busted in Adelaide for possessing grass. One member has been busted for possessing H. and an outfit. And not only that. Immigra
The real situation, of course, has not been explained. The Federal Government has not said why people are finding it more difficult to become registered for unemployment benefits. They haven’t told of the army of spies employed by the Labor and National Service Department, to visit, spy on and intimidate people who register for unemployment benefits because they can’t find a job. They haven’t explained why widows, single women and deserted wives, especially, are visited by investigators who descend around breakfast-time on houses around the country, to count the number of unmade beds, check the number of pillows and other intimate details .. . to ascertain whether or not the woman slept alone. Recently such a case came to the attention of The Digger’s corres pondent: Mrs H., a professional woman, is recently arrived back from overseas. She began hunting a job and after several weeks of futile searching, went to the employment office. After going through the usual bureaucratic procedures of filling in forms and more forms, interviewing and more interviewing, the office eventually accepted a claim for unemployment benefits (with the proviso that she visit the office once a week). If they found something for her they promised to let her know. Mrs H. had little means of support without a job. She was offered a place to live temporarily by friends, her goods and chattels were stored with other friends. After the second visit to the office she inquired about not having received the unemploy ment benefit and was told that it would be forthcoming. But when? She would get it soon, she was assured. But that would have been too easy. Instead of benefits Mrs H. received a visit from a gentleman by the name of Symons, an officer of the Department of Labor and National Service. To add to Mrs H.’s misfortune, the friend she happened to be staying with happened to be home and happened to be a male. The conversation went like this: 'Man on doorstep: I am Mr. Symons from the Labor and National Service Department. Is Mrs H. in? (He was invited in, asked to sit down
and offered a cup of coffee). Man: No coffee thanks; I’ve got the ‘wog’. (The investigator looked accusingly at his New Australia host as if to say ‘you never know what germs these dago bastards carry around for me to catch!) Mrs H. appeared and so did the ball-point and paper and the host discretely disappeared. However, the interviewer was obviously trained not to waste valuable time. He called upon the suspicious looking dago bastard host, “is this woman your de facto wife?” — horror of horrors (at 8.30 a.m. too). Host: No, she is not my de facto wife. (Enunciating carefully). Spy: Where does she sleep? Host: In the bedroom. Spy: Where do you sleep? Host: (panic rising). Now wait a minute Mister. I haven’t applied for unemployment benefits and I don’t have to answer your fucking questions. Spy: Oh yes you do have to. If you refuse to answer I will write it in my report. (The ball point was poised for action, but he tried again.) Spy: Where do you sleep then? Host: There’s more than one bed here, I sleep on the spare one, the divan over there (pointing to the other end of the lounge). Spy: That’s not true — it’s obvious that Mrs H. sleeps with you. (A cunning gleam appeared in his beady eye). Host: You can think what you like and you can write what you fucking well like. (But incredibly the spy persisted). Spy: (Hungrily and irrelevantly). What would you do if she went out and slept with someone else? Host: I would hope she enjoyed it. I didn’t realise that applicants for unemployment benefits are not allowed to fuck. Spy: You are a nice one; she is on a good thing living here and still wanting unemployment benefits. No wonder the country is in a mess. Yes, I am going to write all this in my report. At this point the interview fizzled. The victory so far is the department’s. Mrs H. is not yet on the official list of unemployed. A protest has been lodged over the matter.
tion Minister Dr Forbes has this day watched over there. De Courcy said the bust in signed deportation orders for the Cocker Pop Seven. Cocker has to Adelaide must have been a set-up. leave Australia noon Friday or be The vice-squad received a tip from physically ejected, and with the tour Sydney, and had a warrant to search only half way through, it’s one hell the entire hotel. They could even of a mess. So Miller’s chief PR Patti have drained the pool if they wanted. Moystoni has convened a hurried But there was no need. They asked for the dope, and it was handed Press Conference. straight across by Cocker et al to save And now in walks Patti and Melbourne Miller man Brian De the hassle. It could have died down. But in Courcy. Between them is Cocker’s personal manager, Nigel Thomas. He Federal Parliament, Stewart (Labor walks to the desk which has been set NSW) put the finger on Cocker and up with all sorts of mikes, Patti gave Forbes the chance to do his announces who he is, and he is worst. It must have been a surprise to crowded out. The questions start. It’s have someone from the other side of obvious neither Cocker nor any of the House doing your party’s dirty his entourage will front for the mass work. Forbes jumped at it with a public decency and depraved popmedia marathon. From Channel 7 News, Dan Webb star’s effect on children line, and that starts interviewing. He used to be was that. Harry M. Miller’s crowd Danny Webb when he compered said nothing officially, and left it up Video Village, but then he turned to »to Thomas to be quoted out loud as saying nothing, apart from the fact news, went to the States, and came that it was a little grotesque. back with a hard-news image and a “Don’t you think it’s double new name — Dan Webb. Dan Webb is punishment — the second bite at the asking hard news questions. cherry?” says Dan Webb. So is everyone else. “ What was “J wouldn’t describe it as the your initial reaction?” “ I was second bite at the cherry. ” shocked.” “Why?” “ Very stunned Someone asks him if Cocker was because it was so surprising.” busted before in England. They had What is his best known song, the heard him say this on television. Thomas said he wouldn’t know reporter asks. “With A Little Help From My anything about that. Meanwhile those people who paid to see Cocker Friends.” “Well, he certainly needs it now.” perform on a night when it seems he Brian De Courcy is quietly will not be present are going to be a talking. He says Melody Maker in little sad about the affair. It’s time England is holding its front page for for a change all right. I t ’s time, Mr Stewart. the news of Cocker. It’s being closely
Page 2
The Digger Dr Doolittle strikes again.
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by Ponch Central St police station is the place to be charged if you’re busted, I’m told. They’re very reasonable about bail there. The gallery at One Central St. is next door, where a group of muso’s, artists, film-makers, freaks and others have formed a collective. Each put up $70 to get space for events that “tend to promote an interaction between artists, art forms and the audience.” It seems you can put on just about anything. Someone’s planning to exhibit himself for a week soon, although Kiss Me Kate, to rustle up a bit of bread, just ain’t on. Tonight’s event is a Political Dinner to get together people from different Sydney scenes. Sitting on my orange Sebel-stack chair in the standard white gallery setting, I notice people aren’t smiling very much. The door looks further away all the time. Peter Collingwood, tall blond and white-suited like Our-Man-In-Havana, plays M.C. Sitting with him at the long table are the people asked to speak to the invited throngs. Sue Hollis, a beautiful blackhaired woman from Gay-Lib, Lester Bostock from Black Power, Lex Watson from Camp. Inc., Albie Thoms, film freak, Liz Fell who’s into liberation of all varieties, and Tim Johnson who’s into disrobing . .. and other friends and figures from the Sydney scene. Peter Collingwood raps on about everyone being involved in liberation movements but never getting to gether to discuss the whole spectrum. Introducing Albie, he puts it on him to start by talking about a whole day in the life of a liberated person. But Albie’s into offing the whole speaker spoken to scene, says electrapassivity suggests docility, let’s get into the electricity and energies in the room. Liz and Albie were going to show more of their old tapes and films, but had decided that exploration of the here-and-now sexuality ought to be more interesting. So Liz asks for someone to talk about a fuck, suck, masturbate, or perhaps their first or last fuck. The video freaks are wandering about, long black mikes in hand and porta-packs on their backs. They’re
getting it all down to use in the on-going journal the collective is making. Two gay women, Mimi and Sue, start to do that in specific terms only to have their set removed by a loud voice “Sounds very Womans’ Weekly to me.” The idea of up-front autobiography ends in questions about discussing sexual liberation isolated from the context of total liberation. It’s obvious that people aren’t into the structure that’s set up. But the M.C. trying to keep something going next introduces Ernie Gallagher as a “young man with something serious to say” . Someone described Ernie to me as an Irish-anarchist-Uriah Heep Character. Decked out in his violet jacket and stethoscope he seems light and earnest. Ernie’s into Stethoscopics, into listening to you in a different way, and he hands out stethoscopes so we can all start listening. But people aren’t into listening to Ernie just yet. Next to have a go were two people from A.C.T. Alternative Community Telephone (Sydney 698-2652). They’ve set up a talking Whole Earth Catalogue to bring information and people who have it and/or need it together. I went off to talk with them because that’s the sort of event I want to get into. I finish that just in time to see Tim Johnson ejaculate a pink plaster prick from his trousers which then gets passed about. Tim and the Brisbane cops have been in a bit of conflict lately about his desire to see what happens when people take off other people’s clothes in public. Much crowd noise and Lex Watson from Camp. Inc., tells every pne to shut up so they can hear him tell them that there isn’t much point in talking because no-one wanted to listen and that the real people to be talking to weren’t in the room anyway. Dialogue nil. When Lester Bostock the black dude, starts laying his trip down the whole place erupts. “All you bastards are a mob of racists” he throws out for openers. “Whites want to screw blacks.” I’m anti-white. A big clap was what he got when he first stood
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up to speak, but now people were jumping and screaming, “Crap, absolute stone-ground crap” . Lester screams back “Sexism and racism are the same thing” . Liz Fell shouts “what have you got to say about white women” , Lester tosses off “they’re all rapable” . Astonishingly he doesn’t get taken up in all the confusion. A woman in front wants him to tell her about “the universal mind” which dissolves me. A pissed off voice “What’s being black mean man?” Lester, “ Being black means me” . He just stands there while people argue across him about who’s more oppressed than who. Lester falls back in his chair. Fat Jack, a techno-video freak in white coveralls whose color matches his white crew-cut head jumps on the table slams his gold-painted boot on the table, “If you want to talk to your mates, go down to the bloody pub” . Nobody moves because the wine is flowing really freely right here. Me, I’m wondering where all the dope is. The anarchic party goers seemed to me to have won but Ernie decided to try again. His specifically designed noise-making menu of green lentil soup and soya bean sandwiches is providing the “ dinner” part of the evening. Ernie’s stethoscopes are being pressed up against walls, bellies, larynx, hearts and breasts and people are listening. Which is a bit of a change. I’m having a great time, playing dedicated reporter notebook in one hand, alcohol in the other. I look up to see some porn flickering away on one wall and a man beating on a tyre, and a lot of people talking to one another. Tim Johnson is getting some people together for an exercise in disclosures. Six people start romping and rolling at each other’s gear and then leap on Tim to get his off too. And what happens to him proves the point about wearing clean underwear that every mother makes ‘What if you were knocked over?’ He has daggy underwear as someone is quick to point out. No-one seems to be tripping on the great-looking bodies in front of them. No-one comes to join the disrobers, who look much more relaxed than the voyeurs. What can I say. The party went on, a lot of people were pissed off that people didn’t get to do what they planned. Me, I had a great time, sat about doing a lot of smiling, talking and touching and so did a lot of other people. and cheered on Carlton’s head ruck rover. Not just because he was one of us . . . but rather we were one with him. Cama M. Hawks Carlthorn, Victoria
Back numbers Bach-hander RE: September 9 Issue Danny Robinson you say you’ve studied at a conservatory (lavatory maybe?) and that “ Johann Sebastian used all those old chords.” I think you have been soaking your brain in that beer drinking music of yours, or maybe it was the Virgil hair dye that gave you such insight. Jeffrey Johnson Lalor Park, NSW
BO O KS SYDNEY Third World 1. Steal This Book, Hoffman 2. Deschooling Society, Illich 3. Primal Scream, Janov 4. Revolution for the Hell of It, Hoffman 5. Sexual Politics, Millet Abbeys 1. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich 2. Chinese Medicine, Beau 3. Towards the New Australia 4. Crash Go the Chariots, Wilson 5. The Twelth Man, Whittington Adyar IV Tibetan Book of the Dead, W.R. Evans-Wentz 2. Them Flesh, Them Bones, Reps 3. Magic and Mystery in Tibet, Neil 4. Steppenwolf, Hesse 5. Yoga, Wood Angus and Robertson 1. Q.B. VII,, Uris 2. Secret Woman, Holt 3. Chariot of the Gods, Von Daniken 4. Bombep, Deighton 5. U-jack Society, Moffatt
Carlthorn freak
It’s too big in the bath
Colin Maxwell Talbot’s piece on Brent Crosswell must be the best piece of Australian journalism in years. One small point though. It wasn’t just a group of Carlton freaks that day at Glenferrie Oval who grinned as Brent smiled at passing trains and flew for one stoned mark after another. A group of Hawthorn supporters smoked the same cigarette
I had Border Lord on the stereo and my bath was running hot and I started to flick a few crabs from round my cock and armpits ’fore I coated ’em with Ascabiol and Zimmer’s Essay was so damn good I took it with me and as I reached for the soap and over Lawrence R. Glaister your whole damn paper fell into my water and sank. Now I gotta
Dymocks 1. How Fischer Won, Purdy 2. U-jack Society Moffatt 3. Gehlan; The Story of the Spy of the Century, Cookeridge 4. Chariot of the Gods - a Critical Review, Department of Austral ian Archeology 5. The Banker, Walter
4. Fitzroy Bluestone, Calender $ 2.00 5 jDialectic of Sex, Firestone Collins Book Depot 1. Be Just And Fear Not 2. Liner, James Barlow 3. Secret Woman, U. Holt 4. Falcon for a Queen, Gaskin 5. Miracle at St. Bruno’s, Phillipa Carr
MELBOURNE Paperback 1. Politics of Catholics, Niall Brennan 2. Be Just And Fear Not 3. Secrecy, Spigelman 4. Jokes and Their Relation to The Unconscious 5. The Fairy Books, Ed. Andrew Lang. Source Bookshop 1. Vivi La Mutation, Drawings by Lee Conklin 2. Post Scarcity Anarchism, M. Bookshin 3. Journal of Albion Moonlight, Patchin 4. Flesh of the Gods 5. Stone Shelters, Edward Allen Robertson & Mullens 1. Be Just and Fear Not, A.A. Calwell 2. Kent Hughes’, Biography, F. Howard 3. Singapore, K. McKie 4. Of Many Things, G.E. Sayers 5. A Falcon For A Queen, K. Gaskin Spaceage Bookshop 1. Teaching of Don Juan 2. Tibetan Book of Dead 3. The Death of the Family, David Cooper 4. Monday Night Class. 5. Siddhata. Hesse Readings 1. Mother Earth News No. 16 2. Leaves of Spring, Esterson 3. Siddhata, Hesse
October 21 — November 4
ADELAIDE Mothers Bookfarm 1. Deschooling Society, Illich 2. Fantagor, Corben 3. Last Whole Earth Catalog 4. We Are Everywhere Rubin 5. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Next, Kesey Mary Martin 1. Fischerrvs. Spassky, Svetozar Gligoric 2. Only One Earth, Barbara Ward & Rene Dubos 3. Crash Go The Chariots, Clifford Wilson 4. Toward a New Australia Under a Labor Government, Edited by John McLaren 5. The Wit And Wisdom of William McMahon, Anon.
RECORDS SYDNEY Palings 1. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 2. Slade Alive, Slade 3. Tea For The Tillerman, Cat Stevens 4. Teaser And The Firecat, Cat Stevens 5. Thick As A Brick, Jethro Tull David Jones 1. Slade Alive, Slade.
Fat Jack lays a number on the Push
buy a new one and next Monday fortnight I ain’t gonna bath. . Kevin M. Crowe Darlinghurst, NSW
N o licence to fly In the Oct. 7—21 edition of The Digger, page 1, article entitled “There’s dope at the bottom of your garden” , a pharmacist with the Health Dept, was quoted thus, “ Under schedule 7 of the Poisons Act (Vic.) 1962 & Amendments, the only hal lucinogens gazetted as illegal are ly sergic acid, mescaline, :psilocybin and psilocin.” The pharmacist was either ignor ant of hallucinogenic drugs and the law or he was incorrectly quoted.
2. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 3. Never a Dull Moment, Rod Stewart 4. Moods, Neil Diamond 5. Miles Live, Santana Marthas Record Farm 1. Just Another Band from L.A, Mothers 2. Mothers Live At The Fillmore 3. Never A Dull Moment, Rod Stewart 4. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 5. Space in Time, Ten Years After Edels 1. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 2. Slade Alive 3. Schools Out, Alice Cooper 4. Thick As A Brick, Jethro Tull 5. Never A Dull Moment, Rod Stewart Nicholsons 1. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 2. Never A Dull Moment, Rod Stewart 3. T. Rex 4. Double Cocker Power 5. A Song For You, Carpenters MELBOURNE Professor Longhairs Record Bar 1. New Orléans Piano 2. St. Dominic’s Preview, Van Morrison 3. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 4. Never A Dull Moment, Rod Stewart. 5. Long John Silver, Jefferson Airplane Allens 1. Slade Alive 2. Çatch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 3. Machine Head 4. Mothers Live At The Fillmore 5. Never A Dull Moment, Rod Stewart Archie & Jugheads
Firstly lysergic acid is not hallucin Amendments are only L.S.D., mes ogenic. “ D. - Lysergic acid diethy caline, psilocybin and psilocin. * lamide” is the correct name of the Jon Martin, hallucinogenic drug commonly re Melbourne ferred to as “ LSD” or “acid” . Secondly, the 1967 Amendment (No. 7588) of the Poisons Act states that: “ Every person who has in his possession any special poison being an hallucinogenic drug without being Every paper has, if ro t a defined authorized by or licensed under this. editorial policy, a collection of Act so to do shall be guilty of an vaguely compatible ideas amongst offenee against this Act and shall be its workers. liable to imprisonment for a term It is this congruity that decides of not more than twelve months or Digger editorial. to a penalty of not more than $500 Advertising is another trip. or to both such imprisonment and Obviously we can’t write, or even penalty.” sub-edit ads. The Digger encourages As I am not a legal expert, I will readers to comment, if motivated, leave it to you and the readers of on advertisements received and The Digger ’• to judge whether the printed. illegal hallucinogenic drugs according to the Poisons Act (Vic.) 1962 and
Digger’s dilem ma
1. Just Another Band From L.A., Mothers 2. Sometime in N.Y. City, Lennon 3. Roy Galagher Live 4. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Steverts 5. Everybody’s In Show Biz, Kinks Brashes 1. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 2. Slade Alive 3. Never A Dull Moment, Rod Stewart 4. Thick As A Brick, Jethro Tull 5. Cocker Happy Headown Imports (bourke st) 1. Rock Of Ages, The Band 2. Close To the Edge, Yes 3. Phoenix, Grand Funk 4. Rock and Roll to the World, Ten Years After 5. Roy Buchanan, Record Centre 1. Slade Alive 2. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 3. Never A Dull Moment, Rod Stewart 4. Aztecs Live 5. Carney, Leon Russell Discurio 1. Never A Dull Moment 2. Saint Dominic’s Preview, Van Morrison 3. Buddy Miles, Santana 4. Just Another Band From LA, Mothers 5. Mothers Live At The Fillmore Chin Up Imports 1. Sailaway, Randy Newman 2. Mississippi Gambler, Herby Mann 3. Blacknuss, Roland Kirk 4. Schools Out, Alice Cooper 5. Amon-Dhul ADELAIDE Discurio 1. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 2. Demons & Wizards, Uriah Heep 3. Never A Dull Moment, Rod Stewart
4. Moods, Neil Diamond. 5. Ziggie Stardust And The Spiders from Mars, David Bowie Allans 1. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 2. Carlos Santana & Buddy Miles Live 3. Never A Dull Moment, Rod Stewart 4. Teaser & The Firecat, Cat Stevens 5. Slider, T. Rex. The Record Man 1. Catch Bull At Four, Cat Stevens 2. Never A Dull Moment, Rod Stewart 3. Teaser & The Firecat, Cat Stevens 4. Live At Sunbury, Aztecs 5. Honky Chateau, Elton John
FILM S MELBOURNE What’s up Doc? (Bo gdanovich) and The Adventures o f Barry McKenzie are two big newies. Macbeth (Polanski) is doing very well, as is Vittorio de Sica’s Garden o f The Hnzi-Continis. Pasolinis Decameron is doing as well as Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange and Fiddler On the R o o f is best of the oldies. Cabaret is moving fairly well although word has it that many party bookings are cancelling. Hitchcock’s Frenzy great with the critics but a bummer with audiences. ADELAIDE Straw Dogs The Godfather Up The Chastity Belt The Organisation The New Centurions Dr. Strangelove/And Now For Something Completely Different. Chariots of The Gods The Decameron. Bedroom Mazurka
The Digger
October 21 — November 4
Page 3
O h,how we danced (or how George freaked out, left Mutations and the Nederlands Dans Theatre, and spun into a St. Kilda temple to sing mantras to Krishna. . . ) by «fenny Brown “ May my mind seek the shelter of him Whose lotus feet destroy kalpas of sin, Whose feet are garlanded with flowers, Whose feet are entemally suspicscious, Whose feet traverse the three worlds, Whose feet dance to a thousand drums, Whose feet appear to me in dreams, Whose feet, I, unworthy, touch . . I ” George was tripping out on “ Chant” , (or part of it), a mam moth noem strung around, yes, Krishna, and he was really ripping out of this like coming off the Sbend of a ski-run — schoom! His eyes were like Christmas beetles, his fingers danced; and Suzy Cassio — Digger's blonde typesetter whom I’d drug along (20 years old and still looks like a tripping ten-year-old) — sat cross-legged and entranced, her mouth in a wow-shape. And I thought, no, wait a minute . . . because it was true, George was almost getting through. Mutations | . . George Coleman came to Aus tralia as one of the principle danceurs of the Nederlands Dans Company, which threw a few naked will o’ th’ wisps into Australia’s cultural bog with their nude ballet, “ Mutat ions” . And “ Mutations” was the only ballet George was to dance with the Nederlands crew in Australia. Soon afterwards he quit — to join the Hare Krishna movement, here, in Australia. “ Coming to this was a gradual process,” said Geotge, face browned bold and beautiful. He’s of some odd descent and speaks with a mild Can adian/ American accent. He spent his childhood in the States. Like all the initiated Krishna-ized men his head is shaved, with a truculent pony-tail crowning the back of the skull. “The Nederlands Dans Theatre company was very nice, I liked every one in the company. It was one of the most accomplished and profess ional around; we all had to have the ability to create and adapt for that company, because it was going to innovate. We. saw quite a bit of the world . . . Germany, Switzerland, Jugoslavia, Australia. In the begin ning it was all just great. After a while each city got to be just another, the people were1 the same. Lost its glitter. “ And I shouldn’t say this, but
What's it qll mean Mr Natural ?
a lot of people in the company were screwed up. Unhappy. There was lots of drink, drugs, lots of sex, four walls looking at you . . . dry. And they were taking it out on other people, on each other.” George stared at me curiously, to see if it was getting through. The Hare Rishna movement be lieve in abandonment of the material — and that don’t just mean your jewellery; it means drinking, smok ing, your sex life, and plenty more. We had well established by now that I was particularly boggled by the sex angle, I ignored the red flag for now and pressed on with the story. “ So how did you actually come to the Hare Krishna movement?” He grinned at the conflict in my eyes. “ It was a gradual process as I said. My childhood religion was Catholic. I gave that one up, but I was still lookin’. And I’d always been attracted to Eastern philosoph ies . . .” “ So how did it happen that joined the movement in Australia?" “ I’d been thinking about it for a while. Just hadn’t made any dec isions. When the company was tour ing the States I saw quite a few devotees. They’d been in New York, all the capitals. “ I met a devotee in the streets in Melbourne the first day I was here . . . I gave him some money. The second day there they were, out on the streets again . . . ” “ Loitering?” (Krishna freaks are constantly bugged by the cops for “ loitering” , as well as “ begging” .) George smiled widely. “ Loitering,, dancing and singing. One of the devotees asked me if I wanted a pamphlet or a book. I told him I already had a book, so he said, well, would you like to come back to the temple- in a while, for a talk? My ego instantly got up and said don’t go, don’t go . . . “ I had a few errands to run; I was hesitant, kinda scared, but some how I did it. Getting on that bus was like entering another world — so strange — like, for the first time in my life, I was home. “ The next day was Sunday, and there was a vegetarian feast on at the temple. Everyone said you must chant, chanting is the key. So I chan ted. I told myself that I must try to surrender to it. It felt good. I came back every day for a week, spent three days in the temple, and then I knew I was going to join.” Ms Cassio had been agreeing right, left ahd centre, and at this point I began to really feel that Digger was in danger of losing a major sex sym bol (and typesetter, subs manager,
Nataraja Das —also known as Lord Shira telephone-answerer and the only one verse . . . also known as Lord Shiva.” “ What made you- become a danof us who could tame the bucking switchboard with a wave of her fair- . cer?** ~ j ^ “ Something, which I understand skinned hand). I changed the subject now to be God, compelled me to post-haste. “ What’s your initiated name, dance. Some desire in me was satis fied in dancing.” George?” Later, talking about creative He spelt it out, still in the eu phoric state of mind he rode out all forces, George said that, he danced that night, smiling, dancing even ,in better if he didn’t fuck anyone. The old Rennaissance-period bit about his face. “ Nataraja Das . . . after one of withhold, and ye shall have more to the demi-gods who danced at the give later. I told him that my sex life end of the destruction of the uni often inspired me to write, rather
,
Film freaks adrift in a sea o f com m ittees, heavy surf by Jon Hawkes Back in Australia three days, still reeling from culture shock after two years in the far-away, only just managing to- relate to all the new trips rolling down !. . “Whadya do in the States?” “ Uh . . . hung out, got" stoned “ Yeah, but what did you do man?” “Well, listened to a lotta music, got into movies pretty heavy.” Couple of hours later I find myself happily committed to Expos ing the Real Meaning Behind the Heavies Coming Down in the Oz Film Industry, I mean, passing joints in front of innumerable silver screens is one way of being a movie freak, uncovering industry bullshit involved in getting those images up there is a whole ’nother trip. I steel myself to check through that 3” thick file and learn what’s happened to film in my absence. It’s a bummer — the file is 27/8” about something else altogether. I’ve only got two and a quarter yellow foolscap pages of roneod close type on films, and a state of total confusion. The yellow stuff turns out pretty heavy. It’s a report on a protest meeting — alleges corruption, dubious appointments to government committees, star-chamber decision making and all manner of other creepy-crawlies. L can see the expose approach would involve interviewing countless middle-aged bureaucrats, and I’m new to the country, I want to get it on with friends first. Even if I could dredge the motivation to knock on all those walnut doors it would take weeks, and there’s this deadline thing that means our spontaneous paper comes out every two weeks, exactly. Offing the middle-class virtues of
of thè Oz Underground. I figured as how he was living in Sydney and so was I, as how he was a freak and so was I, that talking to him could be fine; Might even score a “These guys are intimately smoke. involved in the film fracas Jon, Albie’s little terrace house in getting them into a confrontation Surry Hills is guarded by a huge situation would make a good story.” spiky-leafed treelet. The organic Farout I think, confrontation bodyguard and a bit of the old situations. Double take towards the anxiety syndrome at meeting the mythical Thoms man was freaking nearest joint. I mean a bucket of What fucking names? Barry Jones. me a little I flash on a pompous quiz kid with a shit might fall on me when I open false moustache. Phillip Adams. Hip the door, the floor might have glue wheeler-dealer on a hundred com on it. Then this gentle, enthusiastic, mittees, writes three columns a week, smiling dude emerged^ from the runs an ad agency and produces depths and we shook hands. Social movies. How can J relate to him, I graces over and I began to absorb can barely get it together to get out reassurance, a regular freak house of bed! Perhaps his beard is false too, hold. Couple of rock posters, an so four dudes take it in turns. I mean astrological chart, dingy carpet, dirty no man can do all that shit all the windows, tenth-hand furniture and time. There are other names, an ever-revolving turntable. I felt at D epartm ental heads, research home. Albie is a bit like a friendly w o rk e rs... beaver, long, straggly brown hair, a One name turns me on, Albie Thoms. (As a kid, was he Albert?) I’d bushy moustache (real), wide-open been hearing that name for years, eyes and a face that’s . totally always a friend of a friend, always in committed to smiling. He gave off really good vibes, a lot some crazed scene that no-one was quite sure they understood. Flashes j of energy lurking in there but it was of weird events edge into recall .. . as if he didn’t want to lay any trips an outrageous production of Ubu on me, he’s a lean, slim-hipped dude Roi many years ago, a film called I t — looks like it’s all under control, I Droppeth as the Gentle Rain but still loose and open. featuring lumps of shit coming from didn’t pick up any of the anger that heaven that brought down heavy I’d felt reading the yellow protest numbers from local piglets. Albie report. The Sydney Filmmakers’ Thoms who helped found Ubu film, Coop organised the protest and Albie the first rumble from the film is an integral part of that, and one of underground, made films like The the reasons I was there was because a Spirit o f Blood, and Blunderball and couple of weeks èarlier Albie had in 1969 the ultimate mindfuck — asked The Digger to cover the issue. Marinetti — feted as a masterpiece Well, now we were, and where was all and canned as a con-job. Couple of the righteous indignation? Albie didn’t seem to be superyears ago he disappeared, tripping across the States and Europe showing pissed-off about anything. He Mdrinetti and getting into things like reckoned that the bureaucrats had Amsterdam’s Wet Dream Film agreed to some of the Coop’s demands and that things seemed Festival. One of the great rriythical figures pretty cool. (My confusion now
thrift, industry, promptness and efficiency is a two-edged number. Someone lays a list of names and phone numbers on me.
extreme). I had an idea that the plot went something like this: the government (baddies) has got all the bread, the filmmakers (goodies) have none. The goverrimerit is pretending to be real generous (election ploy), but when it comes down to the nitty gritty it’s a hoax (opportunity to reveal a bit of scandal, drive another nail in McMahon’s coffin, generally shitstir). Now it comes out that, you guessed it, this is only a partial truth. | Albie’s not angry about the government not giving him money — in fact they have — it’s more exasperation about the way they stumble around fucking up trips that Albie .and others had already got going. What he has got going is pretty remarkable, but first a look at what our rulers have been doing. The political heavies have been babbling about film for a long time without being sure why. Obviously there’s money in it, between $50 and $65 million a year in box-office receipts for a start, plus the spin-offs like advertising, wages, all that. But they also had a vague feeling that film might be . . . Important. (Gorton was regarded as a visionary in some circles because he had a hazy idea about film being a Good Thing). Pushing Culture and Art might get the conservative-culture freaks’ votes and win over local film producers, with all their bread. Another Gorton obsession was nurturing local manu facturers at the expense óf foreign ones. Over $16 million of that film revenue currently ends up in the U.S., and a goodly bit goes to England too. Local profiteers are after a bigger cut of the pie. So out of all this, a Film Committee was born to make suggestions. After lots of research the Committee mixed it all together and recommended Something for Every one — setting up an Australian Film Development Corporation for our very own Hollywood trippers, a National Film and Development School for the education freaks, an Experimental Film and Television Fund for the crazies with hand-held cameras (like Albie and his mates), and a Tariff Board Inquiry into the
than detracted from my capabilities. He said dancing was different. I said possibly so.... ' It was true that he looked re markably together and relaxed, com pared to most of the other Krishetic guys I’d spoken to. All that damnedup sexual energy has to go some where and something physically ex pending a buzz at the same time, like dancing, could substitute. The other five or six male Krishna freaks I spoke to tended towards nervous twitches, random chanting, and guilty
Australian film industry, for the pin-stripe paunch brigade. While all this governmental toejam was coming through, the film- freaks in the streets realised that laying back waiting for Them to deliver the goods was fucked, whatever way it was looked at, so they got it together on their own. Filmmakers’ Coops were gotten together in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide (and no doubt elsewhere), mainly to distri bute members’ films. But the coops also brought filmmakers together, so they could borrow each other’s equipment, see each other’s films, produce newsletters and catalogues, and most important, maintain total control of their own films. They decided their own rental fees, royalties and all that, and in Sydney they set up their own cinema (illegally, but more of that anon). In Adelaide they even got up a film-processing coop to combat the remarkably high prices charged by commercial labs. A laboratory charges $2250 for a 50-minute 16mm color reversal film — and all of them charge the same, a coincidence the Tariff Board is investigating — as against around $1500 in the States. Back to the here and now. Albie and I had talked and confused me without even a relieving smoke about the place. He was due to screen a couple of Mike Kulchar’s American underground films at the Sydney Law School that afternoon, so we split downtown to a huge grey concrete building, carrying a couple of spools of film. Up in the projection room the usual fuck-ups — Albie couldn’t find the sound switch, the first thirty seconds ran in silence and people sat in the dark a while. Nobody minded. The films were furtky send-ups of our usual tv fare, but filmed in New York with all those decadent, ravaged New York faces and bodies, and with incredible slapdash energy. The result was more than just parody, they were films that push you back in your seat and leave you gasping “wow farout heavy” and all those other words that some say are meaningless. Albie collected the takings and we went home. All very nonchalant, and fun. Not the atmosphere at a Hoyts’ with the projectionist they pretend
glances at the bustline. I hadn’t hel ped;! was wearing a low-cut dress. I didn’t talk to any of the fe males at the temple — possibly be cause they were lower-ranking, being considered (officially) to be more controlled by emotion and, in fact, less intelligent. George said he hadn’t quite reached the level of “ enlight enment” to understand this. (It seems some of my best friends have been “ enlightened” all their lives, and never know it.) At the Sri Sri Radha Krishna temple, most of the devotees are celibate. They must have no “illicit sex” , i.e. male-female relationships outside marriage. Fucking is only licit for procreative aims, inside mar riage. The temple holds male and female dorms, and the two sides are not supposed to speak to eachother much, except for practical purposes. Krishna himself, (who is always portrayed in paint as a beautiful young indian boy with a blissful face), managed to handle an incred ible number of wives (the actual num ber slips the memory) who each believed he was theirs. This was on account of his ability to fulfill all these wives’ desires. His children were even more numerous. The kid I saw at the temple, a pouting threeyear-old, asked where his daddy was . . . but it looked like he had a dozen uncles, to comfort. You Keep A-Knockin’ . . . “Jagannatha Svami, do you see Madison Avenue? Mott Street? St. Marks? Haight-Ashbury? Bronx? Washington Square? Miami Beach? Boston Common? Times Square? Do you see the dark faces of Harlem and the pale faces of Greenwich, Conn? Do you see the Arkansas governor barring the schoolhouse door? The judge throwing thé book? . . . I really think I know why you must be smiling.” (from “ Cahnt!” a poem to the statue of Krishna, a primeval, smiling “ Diety manifestation” . By Hayagriva Dasa.) “ The other day” said George, in a burst of energy, “ the police broke into the temple at/three o’clock in the morning and took three devotees away.” “ How could theyNdo that?” I asked him, incredulous. “They had a warrant for their arrest. We’d broken the laws, accor ding to them. But they weren’t valid laws, and we weren’t paying our fines. “ Today a policeman booked me. I was in a really happy mood, smiling away. He said ‘you wipe that grin, off your face, or I’ll knock it off for you’.” “ So what did you do?” “ I kept smiling.” Good on yer, George, I thought, considering the Vice Squad and Digger's continued harrassment. “ So what did he do?” “ Nothing,” grinned George mischieviously, “ too many people were watching.” (It seemed fewer watched a couple of weeks later, when a police man kneed a Melbourne Krishna freak
isn’t there, the usherettes bored out of their brains, the harrassed box-office managers hovering, every thing shrouded in darkness, a feeling of gloom slithering down the aisles. The Coop shows films on campus and in schools, and they run a Filmmakers’ Cinema that allows people to trip on the new stuff that may never get to show anywhere else. The cinema is illegal because they can’t get a licence from the NSW Theatres and Films Com mission. Hardly anyone has got a licence in the last thirty years, except of course the two big chains, Hoyts and Greater Union, who get whatever they want whenever. There’s an Act called the NSW Cinematograph Film Act that requires that a quota of Australia movies must be screened, but the Big ( Exhibitors have convinced the NSW T. & F.C. that there aren’t enough good Oz films to make the quotas workable. The law has never been enforped. Meanwhile, the illegal filmmakers’ cinema has regularly shown a selection of over 250 Australian , films. That is, till they were busted and threatened with a $100 fine each time they held a screening. They’ve changed venues and kept showing, a bit wiser about the way the law works for some people differently than for others. Since this business got into the newspapers there have been promises of new legislation within two years and the heat has died down a bit. But the heavies don’t end there. (Bear with m e/ it all comes to something in the G^reat Cosmic Movie). The government does give money to “ experimental” filmers. You file an application with the Australian Film Institute, it goes through an Experimental Film and Television Fund Assessor, who makes a recommendation to the Interim Council for a National Film and Television School, and they make a recommendation to the Minister of the Department of Aborigines, Environment and the Arts . . . if your claim gets through all that shit (at least nine months), you might get a contract from the A.F.I. This year they have laid out 13 grants, totalling $36,140, “to aid cinema and
in the balls, and temple president Sanak (Steven Vergis, who I talked to on my first temple trot), hit the cop — and was arrested, with others, for asault.) I asked George the dancer why the policeman had booked him. “ Loitering.” “ What’s ‘loitering’, officially?” “ Standing in one place.” “ What happens if you walk around in cirlces?” “ You get booked for loitering.” “ Well, I was standing in one or two places, talking to people.” I began to reflect on points such as whether one might be booked for lingering with intent to loiter, but George’s hands swooped out of his lap like a graceful cobra, as he began to talk again. “The police are dying animals,” he said charitably. This struck Suzy and I as right on, but our dancer referred to the cops’ unenlightened state, which would reincarnate them as pigs, at the absolute most — or I think he did. “They harrass the women as much as the men. That one was a demon, who booked me. The police must live in darkness! If they took the time, they’d find that the Hare Krish na movement has a lot o f ‘common enemies with the police force. Illicit sex, drugs, gambling . . . We’re stop ping a lot of people from breaking worthwhile laws.” Krishna Boogie George Coleman or Nataraja Das, as he is often called now, still dances. In the streets, and in the temples; and even recently at a fes tival. He was an actor before he joined the Nederlands Dans'Theatre, and an artist, a writer, a choreo grapher . . . In America, the move ment has a rock opera on the road. George wants to get a T. V. program going in Australia . . . “ With a very high standard of excitement and professionalism. We’ve got a rock band in New Zeal and; they could do some work on it . . . We could use dancers, lightshows — we’ve got some1incredible slides — actors, everything. There’s professionals from nearly every trade in the movement. We could dovetail all our talents . . . this, people would understand. It wouldn’t be on a dry spiritual level at all. “ I met another dancer out here, she’s a professional. One of the first devotees I ever spoke too. She’s getting married soon,” said George, gently, “ I think she needed to get married for a while.” This gaye me the red flag again, and we were off into the wild blue yonders of sex and the “ purer level” . After; George looked at me with something like understanding in his eyes, and smiled. He turned to Sue, who was trippedout on saffron yellow curtains, flowers and incense, and remarked, “she’s obviously a very sensual lady.” For the first time in years, I blushed. George was a bit of a flash, really. I took Sue back to the office, chanting Mantras to the bats.
television activities.” The administra tive costs of doling out that bread, and distributing the films once made (a job the coops claim they can do better anyway — but more on that later) comes to over $40,000 a year. Then there’re those “Assessors” . They don’t have to interview applicants, and there’s no appeal against a knockback. Often all you stand by is your initial application. These committees are incredibly secretive, meetings and membership are closed, filmmakers have no official representation, and the Council is effectively a power unto itself. The Council controls its own membership and that of the various institutions that control funds. Multiple membership is rampant. The Sydney Coop has been going seven years arid flourishing. Its members have developed their own scene, but now the government bodies have decided distributing films is a gas. So all films made with A.F.I. bread have to be lodged with something called the Vincent Library, which is into the same trip as the Coop, that is, getting the films seen. The h£ing-up is they keep 40% of the take compared with the Coop’s 25%, and they insist on keeping world rights. They also need, for some reason, a hefty government subsidy to keep their scene going, money that Albie’s crew argues could be better spent financing more films. The coops also believe they can handle their own affairs better than the Vincent Library bureaucrats and that the government is trying to take over a market uncovered and developed by the filmmakers them selves. *** It’s a lovely sunny morning and the a.m. j is doing a number on me and the constant fuck-ups and plodding power-plays of the collarand-tie men are getting to be j:eal boring, and I’ve a pile of papers detailing at least another half-dozen more ballsed deals, but, it’s all the same direction and the same level, and I reckon if you’ve gotten this far you’re ready to make it on down to the local coop to find out what’s really happening, ant) maybe take a toke or two. I’m lumping for the latter.
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The Digger
T h ey d id n 't say “sc re w " in 1892:
T h e changing fortunes o f Eros Sexual barricades are not under seige for the first time. They are always under seige. There are forces that make some men and women obsessive about maintaining public illusions about private experience, i Beatrice Faust took a tape recorder and listened to two women’s life-experience. Edith is seventy-five, Harriet will be eighty at the end of this month. They talk about their sex lives. Edith speaks first: asked me how I stayed so young and I nearly said, “Well, I’ve had lots of good lovers.” But I didn’t; I suppose I didn’t want to lose their good esteem. Even in 1972, you don’t always know what people are — you have to choose your audience. World War I took women out of the home and into the factories, it put money in their pockets for the first time. So many men were killed — it meant many women would never marry. It meant we had to go virgin to our deaths! And I think a lot of us did. A lot of women set up house with a girlfriend. And that’s why Women’s Lib. talk about lesbianism annoys me: I don’t think nowadays that lesbianism is the same as friendship was to women in those days. I know so many women who set up house together and gave up thinking of marriage. I doubt whether any of them developed physical relationships, although one never knows. People who become lesbians these days are not forced into it for lack of men. *** When I was a little girl, my mother and her friends used to send me out of the room so that they could talk about a girl called Rose who was interesting because she had been in the penitentiary. I never heard my mother condemn her, but I heard her condemn the men. She said it was a dreadful shame — Rose had had so many men, including members of the local council, and yet they used to punish the girls. There was a lot of talk about free love and declining moral standards after the War. But the only women I ever heard attack the double standard didn’t mean that women should be freer — just that ’ men should be more restrained. I am Women’s Lib., but I disagree with a lot of what they say about men. There is a lot of sex hatred in their talk and I can’t joitf in that. But then, many women have never had a satisfactoiy sexual relationship. And I’ve been thinking lately that those who are so bitter that they see every advance from men as a sign of their hatred and fear of women, may one day have a happy sexual experience. And there’s nothing like happy sexual experience to revolutionise one’s ideas. I’ve been very lucky in my sexual experience and when I think about what a bitter young woman I was in my early twenties, I regret it. I think I directed my bitterness to men* because I saw how society was set up. I can remember realising that anybody could have a baby — you weren’t honored because you had a baby — it was an animal thing to have a baby. My mother' picked me up once when I said “ Oh well, of course I’m never going to get married’ — my young man had been killed in France, and it was all sour grapes — ‘ I’m not going to have men touching me” . And mother said, “ Don’t talk like that. When a man and a woman really love each other they don’t think of it like that.” She was afraid, I think, to say it — she was a bit ashamed of sex. When my father died my mother went to work because we were so poor — before that she had always been ill. But I think there were reasons for that — sexual reasons. Anyway, she knew I was on the wrong tack. Out of all the million things my mother said to me, I remember that. So it must have touched something. And I remember a conversation with a girl I shared a room with in college, a very serious talk. She said, “ You know, there’s something our mothers know that we don’t know. Why do they want us to get married? Why will it be such a grief to them if we never marry and remain spinsters? There’s something we don’t know.”
And we didn’t. We were twenty, and girls twenty nowadays are mothers! I didn’t find out what that something was — not till I experienced it, I suppose, and then I was thirty-two — a virgin till thirty-two. And I used to cry. I realised when I was thirty that I was going to go through life, and never know what this is that people give up all their life for, and men commit murder for. I was very lucky with my first experience. Of course it was a married man. We were together for ten years, and very happy. I was really surprised when a woman friend of mine said that she hated sex, because she had a French husband, and my experience of Europeans, after Englishmen, was that they were really good at it. My Peter was French-Swiss, and he was an artist at sex, there’s no doubt about it. And I didn’k inind that he’d had such a lot of practice. I think it’s very likely that unmarried sex is more enjoyable 4when a man comes to see you, and you’re his woman, he’s come with that intention. He’s going to devote a few hours to being pleasant and he can give himself up to it entirely. I never heard sex talked about as you hear it now: when you say “free love” , that isn’t talking about sex, it’s as if you said “ coitus interruptus” . I never heard the word “ screw” or somebody going “to have a good screw” . It was more a moral principle that you decided to live together without marriage, or couples living together with other people. But they never got down to details until the ’thirties. I was in the Progressive League which opened the world up to me. They started in 1932 as the Federation of Progressive Organisations and Individuals. They wanted to bring together all sorts of people from Civil Liberties, and town planners with the divorce law reformers and abortion law reformers, and all the rest into one big group, dedicated to the idea of freedom. We became known as the Society for the Promotion of Sexual Intercourse. There was a bit of nudism, and naturism — sensible foods and so forth. We were very discreet; only pet-names were used, we used to call each other Lily and Jonquil and things like that. The only experience I ever found shocking was a film where they simulated sexual intercourse. It was a Bergman film — The Virgin Spring and it quite disturbed me. I thought “This is about as much as I can take” . It was the movement, you see, in the distance, but quite clear. And then the men pulling up their pants. I wasn’t very shockable, I’d been experimenting since I was six. I wasn’t caught and punished, but I was very frightened. We had a little maid, but to me when I was six, she was a big girl. Apart from keeping lodgers, mother was a suffragette, and used to go out to meetings, and we were left with the maid. I, like a fool, talked to her about my experiments with. my little boyfriend, and ever afterwards she blackmailed me. Whatever she wanted me to do, I did. Anything. Washing up, blacking boots, taking notes to her cousin (who was a prostitute) about one of our lodgers. And if I didn’t do it, she would tell mother that I knew about babies. That was the thing! I used to pray that God would undo what I had done, but I always gave in to Gladys. ' *** I gave up believing in God in my late teens and I despised the Church of England for their jiggery pokery. In those days, morality meant sexual morality, but I was sò bloody holy that I called everything morality. I stopped being a prig through a woman friend whom I loved very
The Universe, no less The explosion of the Exploding Universe has been delayed. Not that this is likely to trouble the universe, it’s been exploding/not exploding long enough to stand a further two weeks in its unravelling. Alan Roberts explains next issue. And a few other things to shock and amaze ya POETS OF THE COUNTRY, COME TOGETHER The Digger plans something of a poetry Supplement, within the next three or four issues in fact. The selection will be in the hands of Norman Talbot, and copy should be forwarded to that gentleman, c/o Department of English, The University of Newcastle, NSW, 2308. Preferred deadline is October 27, and final closing date is November 3. Preconditions are next-to-nil.
1
dearly. Sex was not always a bed of roses: I had terrible menstrual floodings, and my lover took me to his doctor. He said I had guilt feelings, and I said “ Oh Doctor, should I give up my lover?” and he said, “ No, give up your guilt” . But he didn’t tell me how. He sent me to a psychologist^ but I went back to him and said “ I don’t want to be treated by your psychologist he talks about getting adjusted to the world, and I think it’s such a terrible world, I don’t want to be adjusted. I want to be a rebel, even if it makes me ill!” I had an upper class friend, and she was having analysis, and I liked listening to her — she’d read a lot of literature and she talked about her analysis. She walked into my kitchen, and saw that I had a hose on my lap. She said, “ Oh, Edith, you’ve got a penis on your lap.” I’d never heard such talk, and so we talked a lot. And when my lover died, I was forty-two, which is a difficult time of life anyway. I didn’t know what to do, and Mary told me to talk to her lover, who was a psychoanalyst/ I didn’t want to have a breakdown, and become a weepy old woman before my time. So I went into analysis with Barbara Lowe, who had herself baen analysed by Freud. She did surprisingly little. I did it all. I worked damned hard and I thought it would go on for ever. But then the next war came and the Black-out and I was evacuated. It was an awful time: we can’t imagine it now. *** The other day I was thinking about a woman who committed suicide. I was depressed after the ’flu. She’d been found in a boarding house somewhere in the south of England, Bournemouth or Torquay, where retired people go. They’re full of elderly people. She left a note which said that she’d had a full life, but her money had run out and that since she was 67r she might as well die. I thought I’d do that when I was 67. But I didn’t. When I was 67, I was in the middle of a love affair! It upheld my feeling that love is a wonderful thing, and that men are not all bad. And that adulterous behavior is the best thing in life. I was 67, and I had all the same leapings of anticipation when I saw him. But his marriage was an important thing to him — he could never break it. And I could see us deteriorating into jealousy and misery so I left him. There was no future in it, but it was lovely while it lasted. My sex life was entirely private — except for people in the Progressive League. I can remember one man who was a great talker, and devoted to the idea that sex was for delight, and not just for procreation, and he was making advances to me (he’d already slept with everyone else). I said, “Well, I’ve a good deal of sex life, you know” . And he said, “ Good heavens, Edith! Who? Where? How often?” I’d had Peter for years, and he’d never known. Folk cannot imagine other people’s sex lives. I’d a friend who was widowed, and when I commiserated with her, she said, “ Oh well! you wouldn’t know anything about it. You’re not married.” She looked on me as a virgin and ignorant besides. By that time I was in my sixties and didn’t mind her raising the subject: Whenever there was a chance to have a dig at conventional morality I did so.
And just lately, I’ve a friend in England who sends me woollies every Christmas so I wrote to her that I had plenty of woollies, and would she please send me a copy of The Dialectic o f Sex. And do you know what I got? The New English Bible! She said she was sending me a work oi true love, which gave her great comfort. “ As for sex,” she said, “ Even the youth are vomiting it up.” My Peter was sterilised. Wasn’t I lucky? It was years before I met him. He did it as a matter of birth-control in his family: he was a Swiss. Another love I had for several years during the War — Peter died in ’39, just before it started —was sterilised. But he came back to me, and I got the benefit. How can men be frightened of sterilisation? It makes them so much more potent — absolutely insatiable! I’ve had no really personal experience of abortion — only in the sense that a lot of my friends had started taking lovers, knowing that no marriage was in view, and when they got pregnant, they needed abortions. They knew a woman who did them: I don’t know what method she used, but she never had a failure. She was very kind to her girls, and often did it for nothing. Then there was Mrs Whyte. She was always worried — she wanted to retire from doing abortions, but they wouldn’t let her. She’d done ail the parson’s wives, and the policemen’s wives, but they weren’t called when she was charged. It was a young woman, a deserted ‘ wife, and a neighbor called the police while she was in the house. In the Magistrates’ Court — we had a bench, not just one judge — we all knew that one of them had had Mrs Whyte for her niece — and for herself for all we kiow! When the Sergeant was helping her up into the dock he said “ You ought to get the Victoria Cross for this, Ma, not what you’re j getting.” She got two years. But they 1 were very nice to her in jail — she was in the kitchen and in the garden, and it added up to a nice rest. It was easier ,to think of abortion than contraception in those days, especially if you were single and poor. Thinking people advised each other. I never heard Marie Stopes, but I heard her husband, H.V^ Roe, the airman. There was a young woman doctor there that night, and she spoke very bitterly against Marie Stopes. She didn’t support abortion law reform or the contraceptive movement. She said that during the week she’d had a patient come to her with a Marie Stope’s cap in her, and was full of stinking pus. She said Marie Stopes had no business teaching these women to put such things in unless she taught them to take them out again. I suppose she expected Dr Stopes to take an intelligence test from these women. But these women then had no privacy and no fresh water quite often. They probably had to go out with a, bucket down six flights of stairs to fetch water and then boil it to insert the cap hygienically. Young women nowadays are lucky to have contraceptives. They don’t have to go secretly to find a doctor, and then go to a chemist in a different part of town from where they live. They’re lucky to know where to get abortions, and to have the money to pay for them. Of course the young men are lucky too, to have so many young women so willing. I’ve only had one lover who was
October 21 — November 4 shocked at himself, and he was the only one to talk of mariying me. It was humiliating. He was so ashamed that I’d permitted this without marriage. He broke up when I refused to be made an honest woman of, and I realised how gently you have to treat men who are so staid in their up-bringing. He knew I’d had other men, and that was terrible too. He’d fallen in with a bad woman, and marriage was the only way out. You have a sort of warning feeling about these men. They forget how happy they were, and all their pleading and how they tried to break you down. And if ypu disregard this warning, you pay for it. Fortunately, I’ye only had one like that. I forget how many lovers I’ve had. I often think I’ll try and count them up. And I find that afterwards I have missed some out and I feel so sorry and apologetic. It would be more than thirty — and I started late, and finished early. *** I’m very troubled about the young women of today. I wafr listening to young women’s lib. girls, and they speak of rape, and I can’t ' join in that because I’ve a lot of sympathy for men who rape. I said that a man couldn’t help having an erection, and that; it’s immoral to cause an erection and then do nothing about it. Somebody has to do something about it. It’s no good blaming men for their physical condition. We complain when women are penalised for their physical condition. We’re always given a back seat because we’re the bearers of children and that’s our biological tragedy. And yet we do this to men who are slaves to their own biology. One of the girls fell silent, but another said “ Of course, it’s just an expression of their hatred and fear of women” . I said I thought that girls should be taught that men are provocable. I wasn’t taught when I was young. They might say “ You shouldn’t do this or that to young men, because it’s very trying for them” , but they never told you what really happened. I think girls should be taught how men feel, because if you make a man come in his trousers, of course, there’ll be anger, and disgust. I don’t think I made any impression, so I shut up and came away. Women’s lib. are very down on people who say “she asked for it” , but I think these girls don’t know when they are asking for it. And I’ve been thinking about it all this week, and thinking these girls are unlucky they haven’t had the good times I’ve had to learn what a man’s nature really is. Harriet’^ story is the story of the happy country which has no history.
She is older than Edith, but her personal experience is simple and limited. But as a gynaecologist with fifty year’s medical practice behind her, she has close knowledge of sex from observation. I was born with a silver — no, a gold spoon — in my mouth. My father was a doctor, and had private means besides, so we lived very well. I don’t think people’s sex lives have changed. Sex has always been there as an underground. My children’s French master complained that it was hard to prepare French texts for children — they had so much to be cut out before they were suitable for children. He thought Dickens was ideal, because he wrote nothing improper, while Zola’s heroine, Nana, was a prostitute. I s^id, “ If it isn’t in his books, be sure it will be in his private life” . And sure enough, it was revealed that after he separated from his wife and children, he set up a young actress as his mistress, and had a child by her! All this talk of permissiveness: we are not permissive. It is just the old complaining about the young. They have to rebel to show they are grown up. And now it is sex. In my day we rebelled by getting an education. As my father had no sons, he easily permitted his daughters to attend university. We had a professor come to the house to prepare us for the entrance. And when I left Vienna to study medicine in Zurich, Papa was sure I had plenty of money because a girl could not live in squalid student’s quarters like a boy. Even so, I had to prove myself. Girls were not allowed to become doctors — they cannot stand the sight of blood. I went as a nurse to the Front in 1914 and saw enough blood there to last me the rest of my life. Then I went to medical school, and was married by the time the War ended. There were no great changes in the sex life in the twenties. Perhaps a few decadents went in for cocktails, and flapper girls and the Charleston: but in the German Republic in those days was such a spirit of rebuilding, of making this new, that you just did not have after the last war —there was so much destruction. Of course we had the nudist camps already — but they were for families to enjoy themselves and be healthy. If bachelors came and got erections looking at the women, they were asked to leave. But there is nothing very exciting about 250 nude people. There were affairs but not in the camps. They were kept private. You can’t tell me we have a permissive society — I see too many unwanted pregnancies, and too much sexual misery to believe that. A
mother o f six, pregnant again, told me she didn’t want to be sterilised because it would be too easy for her husband. Too easy! Australian women are so badly educated — not just in sex. And they all delude themselves. Every girl who comes to me ¡pregnant says she does not want contraception because she is going to give up sex. Did you hear of such a thing? Easier to give smoking — that would not destroy the individual. But to give up sex is impossible. It is nature forcing us to preserve the species. This permissiveness is just talk, and noF even new talk. In 1926 appeared a book by an American judge, for 25 years in the children’s court, Ben Lindsey. His book was The Compahiate Marriage. It was translated into all languages and reprinted many times. He said parents must not blind themselves to what their children are doing. They think all the youth is drop-outs and promiscuous except their own children. And even when their offspring come pregnant with gonnorrhea, they can’t face it and must blame the children. I had an admiral bring me his daughter from Sydney. Her mother did not come because it was more secret this way, no-one would think her father was taking her to the doctor. He raged so much against her that I took him outside: “ Do you want her to commit suicide? She is your daughter and you are as much to blame.” Judge Lindsey advocated tolerance for teenage sexual experiment, and a single standard for boys and girls, ,and among girls, no distinction between nice girls and bad ones. He advocated trial marriage to replace petting, which he thought was only justified as a prelude to the act itself. Myself, I had no trial marriage. We tried to have a little honeymoon before we were married, but it didn’t work. There was not available contraception, and we were frightened. But after marriage, I became radical in my ideas quite quickly. I had a ring inserted by Grafenburg himself, and became pregnant, and he terminated it. We were married 44 years, and I loved my husband the same on the last day as on the first. I put my granddaughter on the Pill. Will she take it? I don’t know. But I said “Gigi, do what you want, except don’t come home with a baby; it is so old-fashioned.” The changes are coming but small and slow. You look at ‘Ronald Conway’s book, The Great Australian Stupor, and you find he dqes not think that genital kissing is dirty. From a Catholic, that is a wonder.
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October 21 —- November 4
The Digger
Will McMahon lose his seat?
G arden-gnom e suburbs turn against their m an by Dennis Altman
Given a 5% swing to Labor in Sydney, by n o means imposs ible, William McMahon should lose his seat. On the figures it would take a 6.6% swing, but there are other things working against the PM. McMahon is personally unpopular in Lowe, his electorate. His position on the ballot paper, chosen alphabet ically, is below Labor man Bill Fisher. (In 1969, Labor’s can didate was Peter Young, last on the ballot.) Further, population shifts in Lowe have worked against the Liberal Party. When McMahon got pre-selection for the new seat of Lowe in 1949, it must have seemed a safe enough base for a political career. He entered ' parliament in th? great Menzies land slide that year, and Lowe was cen tred firmly on Strathfield-Burwood, a bastion of the protestant middleclass, self-consciously set in the vast working-class western plains of Syd ney. It’s an area of large houses with immaculate gardens, where the women wear hats and gloves, and social life centres on the churches and private schools. Apart from the north shore and a small section of the eastern sub urbs, -no area in Sydney has voted more consistently Liberal. But in 1961 McMahon held Lowe only by 681 votes and since then the seat has been enlarged to take in a carefully selected chunk of suburbs across the Parramatta River, which overall vote Liberal. The result has been to drastically weaken the seat held by Nigel Bowen, Foreign Min ister and one of Mr. McMahon’s few friends in Cabinet. The heartland of Lowe has also altered. Large middle-class homes, once maintained with the aid of servants, have been converted to institutions or wrecked to make way for home units. Many streetst in Lowe are now characterised by long rows of red, 3-storey brick buildings. They are likely to be filled with people who regard Strathfield only as a wayside stop on the path to the nirvana of owning one’s home. Despite the ads. — “This is a small bloc o f 8 units in serene Arboreal setting ,. ^ ...Nauticghtype^shn verandahs, personal laundry, LOCK UP garage . . . Truly Double Bay quality . . . ” Strath fie Id West is not Double Bay, as the Prime Minister indicates
by not choosing to live there. McMahon’s position is vulnerable, and like vultures candidates are mov ing into Lowe to help administer the final death-pecks. Last time, apart from Labor and DLP opponents, there was á DOGS (Defence of Gov ernment Schools) woman and an in dependent whose greatest asset was being called MacMahon. He polled more votes than the DLP. This time the Australia Party has a candidate, so has the hewly formed Common wealth Party — its only one — and CAMP, the homosexual rights or ganisation. Sydney University SRC was running someone on an educ ation platform, but like most SRC schemes this collapsed, and other rumors of candidates, including writer Frank Hardy and The Get Gorton Back committee have not yet even tuated. Apart from the DLP’s, all these candidates will suggest their suppor ters give preference to Labor. The beneficiary of this is Bill Fisher, a QC with a large industrial practice and the heavy, cautious gruffness of a man who has worked his way up, via the navy and a Repat. scholar ship to a home in Pymble — also outside the electorate, and as, solidly Liberal as McMahon’s Bellevue Hill. Fisher also runs a stud farm near Bathurst. Bill Fisher is a family man; his election blurbs feature him with Mar garet and four kids (as if he were bent on proving that anything McMahon can do he can do better), and his wife is out there door-knock ing in the solid burgher streets of Denistone and West Ryde. A shrewd pol, Fisher has a long history in the ALP. He ran for Par liament back in 1949, when he was a law student at Sydney University. He has a sense of how politics work,
rare in candidates. “ What do you hope to do if you get in?” I asked him. “ Sit in the very back row of the back-benchers and put my hand up when I’m told,” he replied, and he probably will. * * * Overall a good candidate in a city seat might make a difference of 500 votes — but that’s almost 1%, and apparently enough to make candid ates slog their way through a cam paign In the next few weeks Bill Fisher will run an “open line” (i.e. let people telephohe him for infor mation), leaflet railway stations, doprknock new units and flats and lead motor cavalcades, complete with fire engine and double-decker bus through the shopping centres of Lowe. No public meetings — people don’t come to them — unless Whit-! lam’s there. Mr McMahon, of course, can hardly adopt these tactics. Can you imagine a Prime Minister — even this. Prime Minister — handing out pam phlets at Burwood Station, or boun ding from door to door of nautical verandahs to explain the fallacies o f Labor’s urban policies? No, the Prime Minister is a man of dignity, albeit humble. Not ashamed" for ex ample, to kneel before God or joke with David Frost. On his visits to Lowe, which the Prime Minister makes somewhat in the style of a seignorial lord visiting his peasants, McMahon tours church schools and factories. All in the man ner of a royal tour. At the Hoover plant in Meadowbank (washing machines, vacuum cleaners etc.), the local, paper informed us, he “ took every opportunity to talk to the people on the job whose concen tration and industry impressed him.” While at Am ott’s Biscuits he wore a white tam-o-shanter to “ discuss with three operatives the intricacies of biscuit manufacture.” The Prime Minister’s office is one of the major contributors to the two papers in the area (Aeroplane Press and Western Suburbs Courier), whether it be major statements by the PM on the Importance of the Family, or the Need for Law and Order, or more homely touches like a telegram to Mr & Mrs Baker of the Enfield-Croydon Park RSL for their golden anniversary, or a photo of the PM chatting to Mrs Hilda Tinkler at the Concord Repat. Hospital. The Liberals are well organised in Lowe, with 4 branches of the Young Liberals alone (“ a full house” atten ded a Mexican night at the Ryde Branch last month), but as the num ber of electors plugged into local churches, schools, RSLs and eivic groups decline so too does the im portance of this organisation. None of the parties seem to have made much contact with migrant groups — Russians, Poles, British,
Germans, Italians, Turks and Leban ese, though the last two are largely unnaturalised. For the newer and more transitory votes, the campaign, in, as much as it impinges on them at all, will be via television and the press. The most genuinely “local” can didate is the DLP’s Emily Bannon, a music teacher who helped form the Strathfield Symphony and lives in an old, rather elegant house in the centre of the electorate. She is a plump, motherly woman with care fully arranged orange hair and the sort of clothes that are considered proper for ladies of her age. A woman one might expect to find in the Liberal Party — but for her Catholicism, A large Pellegrini Jesus, in soulful greys and greens hangs in her living room. She could probably pick up a large vote through her personality were such things important in federal elections. Ms Bannon ran in 1969, but badly (only 2 other DLPers in Sydney pQlled a lower percentage than her 2.8), but this election she’s campaigning harder, with some door-knocking and “ infor mation afternoons” in her home. These are afternoon teas at which she presents DLP poliby to the neighbours; at one a Ukrainian prof essor spoke movingly of Communist camps and tanks, which reinforced her fears. A nice woman, except when she’s talking politics and her ideology and gentility collide, she came into the DLP through the in fluence of her daughter and son-inlaw. She admired Chifley but had never been a real Laborite, though she now sees a real Labor Party — like the DLP — as the best hope for Australia. We spoke in a furniture-cluttered room, scattered with bibelots and trinkets, and only twice did she be come heated; once over a dpnation to the ALP of $25,000 by the Com munist-led Amalgamated Engineering Union — “we wouldn’t want such money” — and once on pornography. “ Don’t think I don’t face reality” , she said, “but after all the young need discipline, want it really, and While Mr Chipp talks about censor ship being a minority imposing their tastes on the majority isn’t it really the reverse?” A bit tricky, permissiveness, as an election issue. While the Liberals and the DLP would love to hit Labor with it they keep running up against the stubborn reality that it is not really a party issue, as Don Chipp and Arthur Calwell, in their respective ways, have shown. The PM may oppose abortion, but Bill Fisher says he supports the liberalising leg islation introduced by a Liberal gov ernment in South Australia, which puts him apart from most ALP mem bers in New South Wales. Nonethe less the DLP is using abortion as an issue; on a sheet prepared for the use of candidates the evils of Mr
Bill Fisher, A.L.P.
William McMahon, Liberal Party
Emily Bannon, D.L.P.
The liberationist follies:
more than take. Girls needed that little extra, or there’d be no orgasm for her, and that was very old-fashioned. But then, for all the uninhibited ness of it all, I never did get through the word barrier to ask from-the-hip questions about whether she came, or how often. Words cheapened the experience, such things were com municated in so many other ways. Masters and Johnson have a chart, or four charts actually, of Sexual Response Cycle of the tluman Female/Male — Extragenital/Genital male consciousness. That is, if the Reactions. Each chart is divided male moves in the Kinsey-to-glossy horizontally into four categories, or circles, and beyond that circle I stages; 1. Excitement Phase, 11. know little, having been told my Plateau Phase, 111. Orgasmic Phase, Kinsey in the schoolyard. and IV. Resolution Phase. Vertically, So here I am, with an adjusted they’re broken down into several consciousness. Read D.H. Lawrence bodily ' areas, appropriate to the sex from start to finish at age 15, spent in question and whether they’re , many adolescent hours browsing listing genital or extragenital re through Havelock Ellis off the family actions. It’s all fascinating stuff, with bookshelf, listened to a liberated details like the fact that the male’s mother extolling the wonders of sex ejaculation contractions start at in only mildly mystified terms,, 0.8-second intervals, and that the launched into fucking early with the female orgasmic platform contrac Grand Tour of the female erogenous tions happen at exactly the same zones already well-rehearsed in time intervals. But then, realisations countless daydreams and wet-dreams. like,this come through subljminally, And it was all as amazing as the don t they? dreams, most amazing of a ll. . . I felt I knew these things, I felt If there was a catch, in those days my partner(s) coming, often, and we of high-speed chases through the both invariably came back for more. s-bends of experience, it was that I found myself getting to know new there was always that uneasy feeling girlfriends’ clitorises before their that this had to be a two-way stretch, names, and *the Grand Tour was a give-and-take, and all the New becoming refined to a familiar but Thinking had told me it was my unfailingly-orgasmic Art. (Germaine responsibility to give just a little talks scathingly of the Segovias of
There^smore to this orgasm
than a flash in thepants by Phillip Frazer Couple of weeks ago I woke up in a strange house. That is, some house I’d never seen before, that sort of strange. My new friend and her housemates were preparing for a party that day, an all-afternoon back-yard extravaganza, and the outcome of that fact that morning was that I could only exchange the odd word or three with her between the preparation of avacado sand wiches and creamcheese on rye. Instead I sat in the sun and read bits of four copies of Cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitan has these preten tions to being Liberated, lots of strong-willed writers saying strong things about their lives as well-off American women (mostly). It still carries endless pages of six-color glossy full page ads, most of them for things like Moonglow eye-shadow or Modesty vaginal deodorant (“But Jenny, vaginal odor is the most natural thing in the world!” So cover it up with a quick squirt of
pressure-packed chemical-lemon. You still smell like gorgonzola). Apart from the ads, Cosmopolitan has one other recurring theme. Every issue has a definitive article on The Bijg O. Sometimes it’s on the old problem of getting it at all (Kinsey found, in the fifties, that 54% of 20 year-old women, 85% of 25 year olds had experienced orgasm from some source). Sometimes it’s more joyous, on things like multiple orgasms (“ I’ve had up to fifty ‘skimming’ orgasms in one session”). But throughout it all there’s a litany, a never-ending-songof . . . ecstacy. Indescribable, but the message is plain. Any right-thinking, un-hung-up girl should be able to come like a jackhammer with the well-versed partner. And even a beginner-male can be taught the tricks easy enough, and there’s the catch. As the liberation of the female orgasm has seeped through from Kinsey to the glossies, there has been a contingent rearrangement of (he
Page 5 Whitlam’s stand on the matter is the first point. Ms Bannon remains adam ant that the DLP is not a Catholic Party. (That sheet, by the "way, is fas cinating. It hits Labor not only on the predictable issues — China, de fence, “ Hawke and his cohorts” — but most ingenious of all on choice of governors. Do you want a Gover nor-General of the calibre of Sir Paul Hasluck, it demands, or one like Sir Marcus Oliphant — A Dunstan appointee — who was President of the Australian-Soviet Friendship Soc iety?) Apart from permissiveness and governor-generals, the issue close to Lowe hearts is state aid to church or private schools. Emily Brannon talks about “ the right of parents to choose.” (Children’s rights are not important.) Bill Fisher has reason to be worried about private schools. The PM has close links, especially with the Methodist and Presbyterian Ladies Colleges, despite the fact that Whitlam’s sister is headmistress of PLC. Sonia is an old girl of MLC, and Billy’s an indefatigable opener o f new school buildings, of which there are plenty in Lowe. Despite it all, DOGS will be run ning again, to “show the flag’. Their candidate is Katherine Taylor, one of the Sydney founders of the Coun cil and currently its secretary. She has played her part in disrupting openings at several private schools around the city. DOGS have five candidates in Sydney, all dedicated to the abolition of all public financing of private schools, and all but one will direct preferences to Labor. Ms Taylor is a tall earnest woman with the thin-lipped toughness of a hardened demonstrator and solid middle-class taste. The loungeroom of her Bondi house bears portraits of her and her husband that look as if they were painted for the Waratah Festival open-air art show. She regards the PM as a “ dis4ster” , and on state aid she sees that Labor isn’t much better. The DOGS vote in those Syd ney electorates it contested last time averaged out at 4%, about the same as the DLP. Taylor’s preferences will favor the ALP. When the Australia Party held their first election meeting in Lowe , some time ago, 58 people turned up, Ms Bannon told me with some sat isfaction. It was chaired by John Dease which brings back memories. (Remember the Quiz Kids, that selfperpetuating group of obnoxious snotty-nosed kids who knew the chemical composition of salt and the capital of Upper Volta, lisping their precocious answers to John D., the Bob Dyer of the intellectual set?) Presumably some of the Quiz Kids > have since grown up and joined the Australia Party, which shares some of their tight-assed reactitude, and candidate John Steele admits that the party looks like it’s run by “ egg-
heads” . He is himself a production manager with a large company — controlling $x4 million a year from a low-ceilinged, semi-private cubicle on an office floor. He regards elections as allowing for public debate, some thing none of the other candidates seem keen to practise. John Steele will almóst certainly come third in Lowe, and his prefer ences — by and large anti-Liberal — could upset the PM. To this end Steele is campaigning hard,; meetings, door-knocking and cavalcades through local shopping centres, featuring a 1920s made-in Australia car to dram atise the problems of foreign owner ship. (One hopes, both for the sake of the candidates and the Saturday morning shoppers that his and Bill Fisher’s cavalcades don’t conflict.) Part of the problem is money — a point made by all the candidates — and Steele denies that the Australia Party, Gordon Barton notwithstan ding, is rich. If candidates were selected on the basis of their ideas Steele should win, but then, if that were the case, McMahon would not be in parlia ment. For with Calwell retiring, McMahon is probably the most con servative major politician left in Aus tralia. He formed his political ideas at the time of the depression and war; they solidified at his entry to Parlia ment in 1949 and in talking of for eign policy or immigration he slips unselfconsciously into the ritual rhetoric of 1952. McMahon opposes legalising abortion and homosexuality not out of firm moral convictions — like Calwell or the DLP —but rather because in his day and circle such things are not discussed, and anyway their present illegality hardly affect the rich folks he mixes with. Imagine then, McMahon’s reaction to a rival candidate who stresses, even flaunts these very issues. David Widdup, a local school-teacher, is one of the original members of CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution), and its only candidate for federal parliament. Widdup is standing in Lowe, against the PM. He is not, presumably, the first homosexual to run for parliament in Australia, but he is the first to do so openly. The point of his campaign is to raise the issue of homosexual law reform, something that has so far been almost impossible due to the mediá block on the subject. The Fair fax press (Sydney Morning Herald, National Times, Financial Review, etc.) even refuses to review books on the subject. But Widdup is not a gay lib man, in either views or style. Unlike his counterpart running against the PM in New Zealand. Despite his beard, the Strathfield upbringing shows through. His campaign pledges to remove governmental interference from all areas of sexual life, and he sees most of his votes coming from women who care about depoliticising
abortion, contraception and marriage. Lowe presumably has some closet queens, but the overt*camp world is confined mostly east of the city, in Kings Cross, Darlinghurst and Bondi. But then, it’s the national publicity that matters . . . What better for national publicity than to make McMahon the first PM to lose his seat since 1928? That lure has attracted yet another can didate — for the Commonwealth Party, their one and only candidate. The Commonwealth Party says its aims are “ to emphasise the creative role of aesthetic values in energising and sustaining a society first founded upon a generous and universal mat erial justice.” The party seems the brainchild of poet Les Murray and photographer Max Fabre; the latter, a thin, long haired and deeply lined young man is their candidate and he says he too will be “ showing the flag” in Lowe. Fabre is intense, rhetorical, a strange mixture of conservatism and counter culture. He is the only candidate likely to quote both the Bible and Marcuse, Dylan and Mumford. It’s hard to fully grasp his position But he believes firmly that “ people” are dissatisfied and seeking for a real alternative, which the Commonwealth Party will provide. I. doubt it. While there may well be a constituency for a culturally radical candidate who sees no choice between “inane complac ency and rapid reformism” , is it un likely to exist in the solid red-roof and garden-gnome suburbs of Lowe? * * * . Whether McMahon lives to plague us another term will depend first and foremost on his personal standing. Between now and December 2nd there are few voters who won’t be treated to Billy on television, Billy on radio, Billy in the papers. He has access to the electorate beside which Bill Fisher’s fire engine and railway station pamphleteering seem puny. And it’s hard to say how many in Lowe go along with CAMP posters picturing Billy with a caption “ Elect this man mayor of Woolhara” — the municipality where he lives, eight miles from Lowe. The one extensive survey of the seat (by a Sydney University group) shows McMahon as a loser, and apart from the line-up of opposition from ALP, DLP, DOGS, CAMP, the Aus tralia Party and the Commonwealth Party, the powerful white-collar Ad ministrative and Clerical Officers Association has decided to campaign against the PM . . . as they did in ‘61, when economic conditions were even worse.’ * * * My favorite fantasy is that, come December, there’ll be a ten-day wait for final results to be declared before we know if McMahon will be available to serve as leader of the opposition
Katherine Taylor, D.O.G.S.
the body, but I prefer to think she refers to someone who titilates the finer chords and knows little of the Wagnerian opera). Then there was this fine morning in Sydney. In the house where the party was underway and I was reading Cosmopolitan. I know those journalists use silver tongues, and I know that verbalising sexual feeling is “like describing music to a deaf mute” , but despite it all I became aware of a distinct feeling of unease. Maybe all these gushing euphoriacs were for real. Maybe these women were experiencing something I — or my sex — did not, could not. Maybe I had ’experienced them and forgotten. I couldn’t remember . . . maybe the evil dope memory-loss had transformed me into a creature of transient highs? I left all these poison thoughts hang and, mind racing in the morning sun, asked ‘If so, why?’ I thought of the night just gone by, and reassured myself I was suffering nothing more than temporary and paranoid fantasies. I could feel the good oil still coursing in the véins of my perinium. But remembering the. blow-by-blow of my multitudinous physiological changes, I could not. The question became, where is the male Cosmo sexologist? The man who will attempt the poetic and the medic in the one Big 0 tale of wonder? What, for a mere male, who, as every schoolgirl knows, blows and goes, is an orgasm ? My brain addled by these
paranoias and these best-of-all-possI asked more friends, some ible-things descriptions of my claimed to have experienced, oc partners’ ecstacies, I began asking casionally^ a ‘total-buzz’ that was friends, male friends, what thehf truly something apart from the orgasms were like. It’s not done excruciating flash of the moment of much. Men/boys don’t talk about emission!. ‘You know when you’re their orgasms except perhaps to a over the hill.’ ‘It’s like water skiing, deeply concerned partner, or a you’ve never done it, but you know soul-buddy. exactly how you’ll feel . . . when it We/they don't talk about our/ happens you know it’s something their orgasms because men are else.’ Others were vague, perhaps supposed to have ho trouble with thrown into cerebral fuzz by the orgasm, only with keeping a hard-on. attempt to define the indefinable, That’s the catch. perhaps sharing the unease of those I realised that in a (short) decade who are sure, deep down, they’ve of fucking my knees off, I’d been condemned to miss the Cosmic probably spent twenty-five times the Flash, and have so far managed to time I’d had my faculties zeroed in keep that fear buried in the nursery on my experience, thinking about toy-box. someone else’s. There are “cases” in Masters and J Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t of men who could fuck for hours “at crying foul on the world, the new any given opportunity” , but never morality, Kinsey, my mother, my experienced emission intravaginally lovers, my toilet training, or (M & J talk like that), but in eighteen anything. But I was onto something. years the indefatigueable doctors had I put it on my fellow-worker, only five such unfortunates. Three of Garrie Hutchinson, a man with a their wives, it’s reported on page 218 reputation for meeting friends in of Human Sexual Inadequacy, are beds. Game’s married now, and that, “multiorgasmic.” But that’s not the disease I found it turns out, was in part because he too experienced the ignomy of the smouldering close to the surface performing seal. There followed amongst my brothers, it’s a sneaking some conversation on the sadly feeling that we’ve travelled from neglected status of the male Big 0 , childhood fears of coming in two how ejaculation was but a complex seconds flat, only to become 1970’s coming together of all sorts of male chauvinists, believing that we secretions and spermatazoa from hold the key to her nirvana. *** various glands and vesicles and Now I’m day-dreaming again, dotted around the pelvic cradle. How simplistic and mystified was the about what it’ll be like not to be a common question of ejaculation and j performinjg seal once more . . . orgasm, blowing and coming . . .
Page 6
The Digger Below: Women at work. Below right: John McNaughton, BLF organizer and “I don’t want to be in print” Harper, o f the DMR, emerge from the oil warehouse. “ We’d prefer to get rid of the lot o f it, ” said Harper to McNaughton. “We’d prefer to leave it up, ” said McNaughton.
Below: Allan Rees tells Harper: “The DMR was never interested in safety before it became the only excuse for demolition . . . ”, The cameras click away. Photograph everything is Ju-ju policy.
9
Below: The Northwestern freeway running out from, the city, past the dog track and right through Glebe.
Below: “That area down there is rooted [’’points out Bob Erwin, (1. to n, Erwin, Ponch, the reporter, Albert Mispel.) Above right: A mobile crane was waiting when the demo arrived at the playground site.
The car-stream moves on Glebe:
ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND -WHERE ARMOURED SPACES CAN'T PLAY by Bruce Hanford Photographs by Marcus Van Nisse
Potted history of the Expressway hassle: 1948 — Department of Main Roads (DMR) plans radical expressway system for Sydney. 1951 — NSW parliament approves the plan. 1961 — Consultants’ firm says the plan won’t work. It’s altered, slightly. 1965 — Glebe properties to be acquired for expressway are gazetted by DMR. 1969 — Commonwealth government makes grants for urban expressways. 1971 — Householders get notice as work begins. Origlass-C.B.C. coalition replaces ALP in Leichhardt council. Anti-expressway committee formed, sends list of unanswerable questions to DMR. The DMR doesn’t answer. 1972 — Attacks on expressway by several ALP members (state and federal) by the State Planning Authority (which presents a more popular alternative), and by the chairman of the Sydney City Council development committee, Briger. Briger claims at Liberal Party meeting that central business district can’t cope with increased traffic. He calls the DMR project “monsters that demand constant sacrifice.” August — Squatters busted in Phase One. BLF bails them out. Phase One land seized by demonstrators for Adventure Play ground. September — Squatters let off in court. DMR calls off contractors demolishing or building fences, after pressure from residents. Ad venture Playground remains liberated. Origlass back as mayor but coalition splits. The Glebe newspaper turns against Playground activists. October - 5th: McNaughton of the BLF gets DMR to agree to call off all demolition. 11th: Unions bar use of machinery like bull dozers in Phase One. DMR offers council concessions on the play ground. 12th: DMR wants to demolish an oil warehouse as a fire hazard. They inspect it with McNaughton of the BLF but won’t talk to “ protest-group” . DMR agrees that council inspector will check the building, then puts off action.
DMR would just give the deposit back, he would leave Glebe, and Gerrassi can “ shoot him through a head with a gun” if he ever shows his face around there again. The middle-aged public servants from the DMR get in their cars and John ‘Gerrassi’s’ real name doesn’t drive out to Glebe, to Phase One on even matter, because he’s well known the hill above the Wentworth Park as John ‘Gerrassi’. He’s 23 years old, dog track, to suss out what’s hap and he has long brown hair down pening. The men of the DMR owe to his shoulders. Usually he wears their careers to the car. They build khaki shirt, with daubs of paint on “road-space” for cars, and they ap it, and a pair of khaki shorts. His preciate all the nuances of the car legs are long and beautiful, and they trip, the whole idea of a moving, go down to a pair of socks clumped armoured, personal space. Their cars around his boney ankles, to a pair aren’t marked, or anything, but DMR of sneakers. Gerrassi walks along with cars have ‘MR’ in the number plates, a sneaker walk, bending at the knee, from the little Mini, MR-083, to the swaying a little, digging the street with chaffeur-driven Holden MR-001. feet and body the way that Gerrassi and Rees see things like that. people in real shoes never seem to do. They know how to tell an unmarked Gerrassi has an eagle face, and police car from a Sun newspaper smiles a lot. The left lens of his car, by the chrome strip on the spectacles have a chip out of them. license plate holder, and the number If you were a middle-aged public of VHF antennaes. The MR plates tool around the servant who believed that clothes make the man, you wouldn’t think narrow streets of Phase One, trying much of Gerrassi, and when that to suss out what’s holding up the rich, complicated theatrical voice $1000-million Expressway scheme, rolled up over you, full of menace and as soon as they stop . . . Gerrassi and innuendo and rhetoric and comes walking up, with his lascivious authoritative condescension, you’d sneaker walk, and asks them who they feel . . . off limits. are. While they’re sitting in their Gerrassi hangs out around Darling armoured personal space, adjusting St., Glebe, in a bombed out area their ties. called Phase One. It’s Phase One of They don’t say anything. Standing Sydney’s Northwestern Distributor behind Gerrassi is Rees, smiling Expressway System, where the De through his beard, clicking away with partment of Main Road’s property his 35 mm Kaoica autoreflex T. acquisition section has acquired a “ We have to ask you who you number of houses and smashed them. are, because, ah, you see, you’re Other houses are only partially behaving suspiciously, ah,” says Ger smashed. They’d be wholly and ut rassi. terly smashed, except that Gerrassi The men in the car don’t say can turn people out to harrass the anything. They drive away from demolition subcontractors. Phase One, a neighborhood of vacant As long as people turn out to lots surrounded by Cyclone fences, oppose the demolish, Jack Mundey of empty houses being looted by of the Builders Laborers’ Federation kids and unemployed men, of houses will send laborers down to enforce occupied by people who are sour at the black ban. what the DMR has done to their The Department of Main Roads streets, and of ‘protestors’ who have (DMR) has let contracts to non gone beyond the law. union subcontractors, but Gerrassi They went beyond when Kerry, lurks about phase One, usually with Gary, Frank and Steve squatted in his bearded friend, Allan Rees, and No.69 Darling St., a vacant Phase One house. That was against the puts the old Ju-ju on them. law. One of the subcontractors, Tony The transport minister, Cutler, Merlino, isn’t doing any work in Phase One any more. He was very takes a very hard line on this squat worried about what might happen ting business. On August 18, the to his bulldozer, and Gerrassi did him DMR sent the police down to No. a favor. He made a sign for Merlino:— 69, and Kerry, Gary, Frank and Steve Dear friends this bulldozer will were busted for trespass. At four be clearin 84 Darghan St. house, that afternoon, a crowd of DMR & 69, 71 Darling St. houses, which men arrived at No. 69, which ha d is OK by us. The demolisher will been cleaned up and made habitable, NOT be touching any other houses and they thoroughly smashed the or the adventure playground. house, restoring Law and Order to — John Gerrassi & the Glebe Kids. Phase One. The Glebe Kids must have been The Builder’s Laborers’ Federat the ones who put the lino over the ion bailed put the four squatters, and samp pit in the oil warehouse, which the next day, Saturday Jack Mundey Merlino was supposed to demolish. said he’d black Phase One if he saw When Merlino went in to look it local feeling. He saw plenty of it. . . over, he fell through the lino, into the Mayor of Leichhardt (a muni all that thick oil. cipality of which Glebe is a ward), John Gerrassi is friends with the and the Leichhardtian aldermen, Glebe kids. They cluster around him, and 300 of The People, marched over on their Dragster bikes, in their mar to Phase One. oon Swimming Club jumpers and Fortuitously, the councillors and bright shortsleeve shirts, and when The People found truckloads of sand, one of them throws a rock through bricks, big timber piles, and a mobile a window of a house where the DMR crane with a 60-foot jib there, in a has evicted, he yells, “hey, cut that place where the DMR had cleaned out out — there’s a black ban on demol a few houses. The councillors and The People liberated that DMR land, ition.” He’s friends with Liz Fell, the and began to build an adventure Push heavy who teaches sociology playground for the Glebe kids. to architect students at Sydney uni. There’s piles of tires, and a rope Liz Fell brings her students down to swing, and . . . One local councillor, David Young, the demos when people like Merlino try to sneak in and do a little demol a thin Methodist bachelor who’s been ishing. doing youth work in Glebe for years, Gerrassi is also friends with the had this fantasy about rocks. He’s Mayor, Nick Origlass, and cán hassle been taking the local juvenile delin the subcontractor over the irregular quents over to Balmoral Beach for ities in his demolition notices. years, you see, and they’ve always When Gerrassi and his friend, Rees, really tripped on climbing over boul do their Ju-ju, it puts the demolishers ders . . . so, 20 ten-ton trucks in an awful bind. One demolisher, carrying pink sandstone boulders ar Hlebar, has given the DMR a $1200 rive, and dump them on the ad deposit which he can’t get back until venture playground. This is a heavy he finishes demolishing the houses objection to the Expressway. named in his contract. The DMR The DMR tried to cut the adven won’t give Hlebar his deposit back. ture playground area off from The
Man with no name
People with a Cyclone fence, but a housewife came out that evening while the cement was still wet, and pulled it down. Since then, the DMR hasn’t even tried to use muscle in Phase One. The police come down when a crowd surrounds a non-union demolisher, but they just cool it, and sometimes even hassle the sub contractor, if his load is tied on improperly * * * One day, Gerrassi and some friends and the Glebe kids are working on a thing, and they walk up on the ad venture playground. The land which has been seized is built up, held above the street by a retaining wall, and up there big timber piles are jutting up higher. Gerrassi looks down from this mountain being built in the way of the DMR, and sees . . . AskinH! Askin!!! “AskinH!” shouts Gerrassi, and begins to lope after this big car, which looked to him like . . . a Lincoln . . . dark brown, with a young, slick, wrap-around sunglass chauffeur, and Sir Robert and Lady What’sername Askin. The Premier of New South Wales, Sir Robert Askin, was bom at 11 Lyndhurst St., Glebe, near Phase One. He had not been back to his natal turf since being knighted, and changing his name from Robin Askin . . . heW got a house in Fair Bower now. Aqyhow, he’d been opening a dog’s home in some western suburb, and he thought he’d drop by with his, wife to . . . hit up with a nostalgia trip. Now, loping along behind his car is young Gerrassi, in shorts and silent sneakers. There’s no sign that Ger rassi’s rich salutation has penetrated the Premier’s moving, armoured, per sonal chauffeur-driven space. The big dark brown car moves up Darghan St., in Phase One, and . . . halts outside some number like 58 or 60, wherein dwell some people the Prem ier wants to visit. The Premier gets out, and a few people congregate, and the Premier begins to rap with them. What did he talk about? “ The hard times he had as a boy — oh, there were five or six stories.” How did that grab you, Gerrassi? “ It was all thoroughly obscene,” Gerrassi thought. Gerrassi’s father died when he was young, and his mother was a company secretary for a large foreign-owned subsidiary. A while ago, she gave it up, and became a mail sorter. Gerrassi is not Upwardly-Mobile, so he couldn’t identify with Askin’s pride in having Made It. Beyond that, Askin and he have a long-standing difference. When LBJ came to Australia to win the 1966 election for Harold Holt, the Yank took a ride in Askin’s car. Some people laid down in the road, to protest, and Askin turned and said, “run over the bastards,” to suck up to LBJ. Gerrassi was friend and bed-mate of the bastards. And even though Askin was only kidding, and no one was run over, Holt and LBJ’s war won the election, and cost Gerrassi his name. So while Askin was talking, Gerrassi was fight ing certain urges, for he felt like villifying the Premier . . . but he kept his cool, and turned his thoughts to inventing questions. And after Askin’s hardtimes stories were complete, Gerrassi talked the Premier and his Lady into going over to the adventure playground, for a look. Askin, in his deep, paternal, nos talgic voice, said: “There used to be houses here — the council’s ac quired this land, have they?” Gerrassi said, “ No. It’s DMR land.” “ Oh,” said the Premier. “ They’ve given you permission to use it until they need it, have they?” “ Nope,” said Gerrassi. “ Nope, we took it over.” There was a pause. Askin said, “ I’m sure, they would n’t mind anyway.” Gerrassi couldn’t really find a
handhold to wrestle with Askin. The Premier just wouldn’t be baited, wouldn’t argue. He’s saying things like, “ I wouldn’t know about those plans,” or, “ Government’s a very big business, and I’m only one small part of it.” He posed for pictures with the Glebe kids and his wife, and smiled, and hinted to everybody that he’d carried a heavy load for years, and he wasn’t going to be facing the problems much longer. He was going to let somebody else face the prob lems very soon. “It’s a good use for the land,” he said to Gerrassi, “ until it’s needed.” “ Oh, no,” said Gerrassi, “we’ve built this to stay.” Askin looked Gerrassi in the eyes, past the chipped lens of spectacle, and made placative gestures. He told the freak that he’d do what he could, though he couldn’t move mountains, but anything he could do, he’d do if Gerrassi just gave him a phone call. “ Good luck,” he told Gerrassi, as he got into his big brown armoured moving personal space. “ Good luck — I was a rebel myself, once.” Gerrassi stood there, watching the big brown car tool off out of Darg han St. and Phase One, off towards another meeting, or maybe even Fairy Bower, and looked at his friends. Far-out, they all said. Farfucking-flung.
A separate reality The DMR built the Sydney Har bour Bridge, and pictures of The Bridge hang on the veneer walls of its pop-together office cubicles in Gastlereagh St. The DMR is used to making Sydney look different. Soon after The Bridge was built, the DMR began to develop a vision of great flying expressways on stilts bringing traffic into the city. WWII interrupted the develop ment of the vision, but in 1948, the Sydney radial Expressway scheme was born. That’s 24 years ago. In 1951, when it was adopted, a lot of people already knew whether their neighborhood was going to get Phased, and a few people had already begun to buy land that would apprec iate in value because people could drive up to it on a flying expressway. The scheme was locked into the consciousness of the money-people, they knew about it, and their money believed in it. “ Expressways proposals are based on the needs for transit,” says Laurie Moyle, the DMR PR man. “The more vehicles people buy, and put on the roads, the more road space is required. That’s common sense. Every car owner knows that.” Laurie Moyle is a small, wirey man, with thin lips. He did not come up through journalism. He came up through textiles, on the technical side, and 20 years ago he decided that textiles was a dodgey business. So he got a secure job with the DMR, and now he has a cubicle, with a couple of Heysen prints, two sketches of The Bridge, and a couple of shut tles full of files. The files have covers on them with stuff like Inwards Mail from Outside Bodies and Persons
on their covers, and printed, red Action placemarks stuck in them. The DMR has just written to the Leichhardt Council, about the adven ture playground. After all, the Mayor, Nick Origlass, led the People to the site, and a few days before, the Leichhardt Council rang up, and ask ed for permission to put some sand on the site. Moyle says, “ the adven ture playground is council-sponsored. If someone were injured on it, they could claim on the Commissioner for Main Roads. We would suggest that the council seek approval from the DMR . . . we are trying to establish an order of legality in the taking over of this land.” The main thing the DMR doesn’t want, is to have to deal with the ‘protesters’. “We’re not making any statements about the protest groups, and we’re not commenting on any statements they may make.” The DMR is worried. Moyle and his visitor slide off the record, back onto the record, off again, on again. Moyle looks me the eye, holding his lids in such a way that no white shows, and says, “ I believe in being frank, providing my frankness is respected.” He en tertains the possibility that the re porter might carry “ notes back and forth.” Australia doesn’t have a lot of roadspace for cars, by international standards. Traffic engineers in this country have always talked about “ Australian conditions” when design ing much higher traffic loadings for intersections than apply in overseas countries. “ Australian conditions” mean that drivers are expected to be more aggressive about getting through, and one consequence of this game is the high incidence of screech and clang at Australian intersections. And pedestrians getting killed. The DMR claims that road devel opment is so far behind needs, that creating more roadspace won’t nec essarily create the same problem America has experienced: in America more roadspace seemed to create more cars, and congestion just got worse, not to mention atmosphere and noise pollution and the social dis ruption of cities by “traffic erosion” . Inside the DMR, where men are giving the best years of their lives to making roadspace, it seems a bit hypocritical to- talk about the rights of residence and the abolition of the motor car. People who buy cars have rights, too. Andrew Jakubowicz, a NSW Uni sociologist, says the mentality of the DMR is difficult to study. He says, “ basically, they’re a group of engin eers with engineers’ priorities. They’re stuck with putting through an express way that was decided on, in, ah, 1948 or sometime. “They’re the hardest group to get into, almost impossible to study.” However . .. there are some young heads in the DMR building, and things keep slipping out of the office, like this report from the American firm of De Leuw, Cather & Company which falls into the reporter’s hands after he leaves Moyle. The report was made in 1961, before the actual gazetting of de molition in Glebe’s Phase One. The reporter goes over the photostats with an increasing sense of aw shit . . . because this report is billed as the only major study of the feasib ility of the DMR’s flying stilted
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October 21 — Novem ber 4
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Above right: Rees and 'Gerrassi' put a touch on the hearse . . . Middle right: Rees gets it on as the bad M.F. from the DMR, for T V . . . The card board house in front o f ‘Lyndhurst\ Below right: The hearse rolls over the house . . . Below: Nick Origlass, Mayor
expressway vision, and there’s not a Single reference in it anywhere to people. No . . . here’s a single reference to people, yes: “ Better understanding of the design requirements for these modern highways has developed with increased knowledge of driver behaviour and motor vehicle char acteristics.” Beyond this, there’s a cost-benefit analysis based on cars, not people, and a long obsessive rave into geo metric analysis. Geometric analysis. Geometric analysis, which shows that the DMR’s flying stilted vision of expressways is a bummer, even by its own inhumane criteria. Geometric analysis shows that the traffic projections the DMR uses to justify the building of the express ways are so high, that by the time the expressways are built, they’ll be congested . . . you begin wondering if the traffic projections are real, if the geometrical analysis is real, if . . . but pulling back into the framework of this particular reality, and here on page 14 of the photostats is a contradic tion: “ However, the projected traffic demand in 1980 . . . exeeed[s] the possible capacities of the Wes tern and Southern Expressways by about 70 per cent and 175 per cent, respectively, and are far beyond the capacity of any prac tical or reasonable design for the Ultimo Interchange.” Anybody who can dig a bit of geometric analysis knows that’s no bloody good, because once you get past “ possible capacity” weird things begin to happen to your carefullyconsidered car-fluid flying over the stilts. For one, the Weaving Patterns constrict into Lethal Zone, and you get 40 m.p.h. utes merging in front of 120 m.p.h. Kingswoods and there are other highly abstract parameters that translate, from car-fluid reality, into mangled flesh and panic in the moving, armoured personal spaces
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Coursing Association wanted the ex pressway shifted so they could build a members’ bar and dining room, and that was why the DMR had altered the route.
Instant karma hat trick
Nick Origlass is mayor of Leich hardt. He looks like a handsome, perspicacious wombat. Origlass is controversial and becoming more con troversial, now that The Glebe, this country’s most interesting local throwaway paper, has begun a cam paign against him and his allies. The Glebe had supported him, but in September this year, it began run ning stories about orgies in the Town Hall, and blaming Origlass for nearly everything that goes wrong in the suburb. The orgies don’t . . . well, whether there are orgies, or not, many of the local residents are older, Irish Catholics with working class ideas about such things. The ‘tall poppy’ feeling is running against Origlass, too. He’s got a lot of media coverage for his part in anti-expressway “ happenings” (as he calls them). People talk about him all the time . . . he’s got thick, shiney workingman’s hands, and the middle finger of his right hand is missing, and he goes to work in the Mayoral car, and he has a hearing aid. People talk about how he’s an old-time Trotskyist, and one thing that would unite the most right-wing Labor man in NSW and a former Moscow correspondent for the Tri bune is the issue of Origlass’ ability to bore. Origlass has been kicked out of the Labor party, which is very much more conservative in NSW than in Victoria, but the reporter has no doubt the Mayor is basically a Labor man. Sizing up local Labor heavies for years, you discover they share De Leuw, Cather & Co.’s recom one stylistic trait: they all have a mendation for meeting this problem huge respect for the power of bore was simple. More expressways, going dom in politics. They drive their op different places. Moyles had told me position mad in committee with bore “the1 opposition to the ex dom, by ju s t. . . talking. pressways contends that the plan is Jakubowicz: “ That’s how Nick out of date. This is not correct. It took over the Balmain branch of the has been continually reviewed.” ALP. He bored the shit out of the All this continual up-dating is right wing, and they all left. Nobody done within Castlereagh St. The DMR could stay in against him, talking.” never goes down to argue with John Origlass the Trotskyist came to Gerrassi about the best way to Weave. power in a remarkable way. For But just because the process is done, years, the Leichhardt council was you might say, in camera . . . doesn’t dominated by 14 Catholic ALP mean that the DMR is totally autistic. councillors, older men, who were The DMR will take into account generally regarded as corrupt. Ori human things, even animal things, glass hung out in the Harbour, in but it doesn’t like to admit it. In Balmain, and after he was kicked 1969, it altered the path of the North out of the ALP, he formed a thing western expressway, which has stop called the Balmain-Leichhardt Labor ped at the moment at Phase One. Party, with his mate Izzy Wyner. It maintained publicly that the alter Origlass still did well in Balmain, ation was made soley in the interests but he couldn’t get anything happen of smooth-streaming the precious ing in Leichhardt’s other five wards car-fluid, and that was the reason — Glebe, Annandale, Lilyfield, Leich why an additional 50 houses, includ hardt, Rozelle. A bookseller, Phillip ing a National Trust ‘C’ rated Geor Bray, tried running on the Origlass gian Mansion, had to be demolished. ticket in a ward outside Balmain, However, a letter slipped out of and got done badly. But he stayed the DMR into the hands of Lindsay interested. Smith, a reporter on The Glebe There were obvious issues for the Weekly. The letter showed that the city. The expressways were obvious. DMR had moved the expressway be For years they’d been boring maps cause the management of the Went with shaded areas . . . but it gradually worth Park greyhound track had became obvious that the DMR was asked them to do so. The National actually going to do it.
Meanwhile, the C.B.C. tried get ting candidates in the other wards, where no new middle-class was living. They didn’t do much good. They wound up finding successful candid ates in Leichhardt (ward) and Lilyfield. One candidate on the C.B.C. ticket was Bill Dougherty, a builder and plumber, who had been sitting in council for 14 years as an in dependent. He came to Bray, and said he liked C.B.C. policies. With Dougherty came Val Smart, a ren ovator of houses, who would later marry Dougherty’s daughter. And, in Lilyfield, a Presbyterian electrician named Ernest Mcllveen also got on the C.B.C. ticket. Bill Dougherty is a regular adver tiser in The Glebe newspaper, and Mcllveen has also become friends with its proprietors, Len and Colleen Campbell. Len is a nuggety feisty journalist, who ran the Old Mens’ Home in Glebe after the residents took it over from the old Leichhardt Council, and he hated the old Leich hardt aldermen. Colleen, his Irish wife, talked to David Young, and convinced him to get on the ticket. The Glebe ran scandal story after scandal story about the old aldermen. Bray, Dougherty, and Young all put money into the paper to keep it going. After the 1971 election, the C.B.C. had six councillors — Young, Sandblom, Dougherty, Smart, Mcll veen and Bray. Origlass and Wyner got in in Balmain ward. The ALP was left with only four councillors, and one of them, Bill Hume, was a C.B.C. sympathizer. Well . . . the C.B.C. had six and was solid, and others had six and were divided. Or so Bill Dougherty thought. There was a meet ing at his house, and he was talking to “ my boys” about the mayoralty situation. His “ boys” were uncom fortable. Some of them felt cold feet, because none of their women candidates were elected, and that had been a great source of support. But everyone agreed: Bill Dougherty was the only one who had council About 4000 houses, and 10,000 experience, but. of the municipality’s 70,000 people, Then Bray blew into Dougherty's will have to go if the DMR can get house with Origlass and Wyner, and those roads built. When they are Nick Origlass sat, right down in built, about half a million cars will Dougherty’s house and began to do make a daily trip through the sub his numbers. The numbers were . . . urb, which is now delightfully dif 8 to 4 in the council, if the Balmainficult to drive through. The traffic Leichhardt Labor Party could fuse will pollute the area with,CO, SO2 , with the C.B.C. hydrocarbons, noise, vibration, and His first big success was an anti litter, and tetra-ethyl lead will wash expressway meeting. 700 people through the gutters not to mention packed into the Town Hall to hear blood . . . because while the express him, and 300 had to be turned away way distributor is under construction, from the SRO house. the half-finished expressway will be He did other things. He opened vomiting car-fluids through the nar up council, and let citizens speak row streets where the Glebe kids from the public galleries. The meet play. ings went late — sometimes as late Of the six wards of the Municip as 2 am, but people got to speak. ality of Leichhardt, only Balmain Including Origlass. is unaffected by the expressways. Len Campbell rang up Young and Before many other locals became abused him. Campbell said that interested, Nick Origlass began to Young had let the electors down. work on the DMR’s scheme as a Today, Campbell says, “ your poorer political issue. Origlass had something class of citizen put them in, because to interest the new middle-class — The Glebe asked them to put them in fact, he could even get along in . . . the paper and the can with freaks, who could appreciate didates were taken by Origlass. how far-out Origlass really is . . . We’ve got to the bottom of it now . .” four hours of his rap is a stone. Last month there was another About this time, the old Leich mayoral election. Dougherty and hardt Council goofed. The new Origlass tied. The ALP man. Bill middle-class has been moving into Hume, has been suspended for voting the municipality, into terraces in against ALP caucus, for Origlass, but Glebe and big houses in Balmain. he denies doing it. The council approved a plan for a Names were drawn from a hat, marina, a place for the working-class Origlass won the draw and remains yacht — the fibreglass runabout, mayor. the 16’ cabin cruiser — on the front Campbell says, “ Hume, Young, age that the new middle-class had Sandblom, Bray, Wyner and Origlass staked out for itself in Balmain. are history. They’ve been told in no Visions of fibreglass vulgarians uncertain terms that The Glebe will filled the heads of the new residents, get them. We’ll expose them every and they had some heavies among chance.” them. Architects, physicists from the The Glebe, which circulates AEG, people with clout in the Fair 40,000 copies has attacked the coun fax press, like Lindsay Clinch, and cil for the Church of England’s dec his step-daughter, Suz Baker, who ision to evict 600 households in edits the Herald's liberated . . . Glebe in order to sell the land for woman’s pages. Through the liber development. The C of E says it ation, the links run towards the needs the money to build bigger University, and the Women’s/Gay offices for its diocesan staff — $4 Lib Centre over on the other side million worth. Campbell has made of the municipality at 67 Glebe Pt. the Anglican decision part of a plot Road. by the Glebe Society upper class These people can agree about a types to rid the city of working lot of things — preserving old class families. houses, defending the helpless, and The councillors Campbell attacks so forth. They had another agree are distributing roneo’d sheets, ment now — the old Leichhardt counterattacking The Glebe. But council had to go. And it did. Bray they know they aren’t the popular started a group called the Campaign journalist that Campbell is, and they for a Better Council (C.B.C.). know Campbell sees the ALP, with Bray went to see The Glebe new blood in the branches, in power Society, across the municipality. again in the Leichhardt Council. The Glebe Society is a mixed bag. David Young says, “ We’re in a Its strength is in the people who quandary. He’s got the newspaper, like old buildings and who are ren and it’s very easy for him to print ovating. old houses. It includes such scurrilous articles.” people as Peter Pockley, the ABC science broadcaster, Bernie Smith, the professor, and (respectable left) Eric Sandblom and Jan Potter. On the fringe are some students and liberationists. Bray took Jan Potter for the C.B.C. campaign manager, and Eric Sandblom for a C.B.C. candidate. Then he worked on David Young It’s been happy out there, in the to lead the ticket in Glebe. Young street. Sunny cruel days and cold has been in the city for 12 years, nights, spooky afternoon light that and he’s spent most of them in is hard on fair blond women with good work. He’s a town planner green -•eyes, when they reach the age when the chin separates from with the State Planning Authority, a Methodist, a bachelor, a man who’s the jawbone. Their eyes bounce from spent his money on youth work his eyes to the green ceiling of the projects and trips for pensioners to buses, which arsenic the air. the Blue Mountains. He was the Wander down streets in the new most popular, least suspected person middle-class wards, where Randy Newman issues from terrace houses, in the Glebe area. Young didn’t know whether to like Leonard Cohen used to, like Dylan before him, and girls in jeans stand or not.
Hearsepower
and loose tops, young, with very clean hair, smile at him when he eyes them off. There are rooms, with people in them. “ Excuse me, but I’m brain damaged, and I can’t find the demon stration. There’s a nine-foot high cardboard house and . . . a hearse, I think.” The three women and the man look up at me swimmingly from the mattress, and smile and flower. “ Ah, we’re brain damaged, too,” a girl says. “ They come around asking us to make it to the demos, b u t. . .” “ We’re too brain damaged,” giggles another girl. Here’s . . . another room . . . and the people there know where the demonstration is. A boy in the kit chen is telling a girl, “ you’re just an apolitical hedonist.” “ I’m not even a head. I can’t even do dope anymore.” “ All right. So you’re an apolitical juice freak.” People are opposing the express way for different reasons. John Ger rassi lives in a windy room in Randwick, and on the mantle of his fire place is an old stocking-knitting machine he’s picked up somewhere, and a manuscript entitled Class Struggle and Personal Socialization. Outside the door is a collection of model’s wigs, and a gorilla mask. Gerrassi and Rees are into street theatre, and for them the struggle against the expressway is partly about personal liberation. They go and play roles with people that Gerrassi calls The Real People, the cast of Phase One. Gerrassi gets mixed responses in the Phase One streets. The two Ju-ju men are welcome at Jim Palmer’s shop. Palmer is “well over 60” , a healthy, bony-faced man with white hair and blue eyes, who’s been in his shop for 43 years. Since 1965, when his place was definitely gazetted, he’s been running down his stocks. “I’m not even making wages,” he tells me. “ It’s just that I never shut my door.” Palmer is pissed off at the DMR’s “ high pressure conmen” , who haven’t offered him a right price for his place. He’s got a 6-room terrace with shop at 82 Bridge Rd., and he’s been offered $14,320. The place next door was demolished by the DMR, and his place was damaged in the process. Now damp’s coming in and collapsing his ceilings. Palmer reckons the house opposite, half the size of his, was offered $17,000. For the grey-eyed lady who’s just gotten out of hospital, who lives up in Darling St., the Ju-ju men are just another alarming part of a hassle she doesn’t want to know about. The kids, she says, in a loud voice, could get killed on that playground. And you can’t guarantee I won’t be burnt alive in my bed, she yells at Gerrassi. There were three fires this weekend. “ You’ll get a better price if you stay,” offers Gerrassi. “What’s two thousand against my life, my kids?” she yells. Her husband strides out of the door. “ Come on mother! I can’t listen to this! I’ve got too much to do!” Albert Mispel, the Vice President of the Glebe Association, lives a few blocks away. Mispel was a systems analyst for Qantas until the purge, and he got a golden handshake that’s allowed him to take a world trip, and come back to Glebe to shop for the right job. Mispel’s house is affected by thè DMR scheme. He distrusted the long hair activists at first. The maoists bothered him. “ We think there are more immediate enemies that are more immediately fightable, than U.S. Imperialism,” he says of the Glebe Society group. He likes the non-doctrinaire longhairs like Gerrassi, “ It’s good to have all different types, all different views of things.” But he sees a practical side to their presence as well. “ John and Allan are useful. They sometimes do things that are illegal, than an official group can’t take responsibility for.” He adds, “ People care more about buildings than they do about people. People up on the North Shore will join in a demo to save a place like Lyndhurst, but they won’t come to save a hundred people being kicked out of their houses.” * * * The maoist line was that any com promise with the structures was a sidetrack. The only way to stop the DMR was to organize the local people and workers to oppose them totally. Len Campbell says, “they want to throw bombs — they’ve made no secret of the fact.” Gerrassi and Rees believe that The Real People, the residents, are the key. But they can dig people like Lindsay Smith, the reporter for The Glebe, who says, “ you have to work at all lebels, such as proposing al ternatives, like the rapid transit scheme, which the Sydney Morning Herald publicized, and which got favorable editorals.” The Campbells don’t know Ger rassi and Rees. Len Campbell assoc iates them with the maoists, the bomb throwers, a fringe element he associates in turn with the “ pseudo intellectual bums” in the council who have gotten behind a “ raving red” , Origlass.
Campbell believes that the ex pressway resistance in Phase One is doomed. “ They won’t stop it there.” He thinks Glebe will stop the Western expressway, but not the Northwestern. For Campbell, the main enemy is Origlass. He says that public support for anti-expressway activities, which could draw 2500 to a mass demo, is falling away. “The reason for the falloff,” says Colleen Campbell, “is primarily Ori glass, where he gets up for hours and says sweet bugger all.” Colleen believes that things have gone bad. Decorum is missing from the council chambers. Young has gone to the “other side of Glebe” , where people swap wives, and the/ campaign against the DMR has pre judiced the chance of getting a hearing at the State and Federal levels. Colleen is strong on parliamentary redress. The Campbells say that every group in the community has be trayed the people, by raising expec tations, and failing to deliver. In the past month, The Glebe has withdrawn support from the council’s anti-expressway activities. The adventure playground, which it once praised and supported, has be come a KID’S DEATHTRAP, and the paper has detected the real purpose of the exercise: MAYOR “ USING CHILDREN AS CHESS PIECES” * * * Councillor Ernest Mcllveen is a Presbyterian, but he reckons that Ted Noffs and Alan Walker have given “ fantastic witness” . Mcllveen has done a lot of youth work him self, up in the Darlinghurst area, and he sees the adventure playground that way. It’s a menace to kids, not be cause he’s against adventure play grounds, but because it’s not properly supervised. And then . . . its real purpose is to use the kids to take to the streets against the government. It could turn into a situation like Bel fast. Mcllveen has his own analysis of what’s happening in Glebe. “ Upper class people are moving in, and out pricing the working class. Whether the DMR goes through or not, they’ll push the worker way out, to Emu Plains. “ If we expect the worker to get out of Glebe, he’s got to have some way to travel out there. I’m an elec trical contractor, and if I have to spend two hours getting out there, I’ll have to charge the customer for that. If there’s an expressway, it’ll only be a charge for half an hour. The expressways, says Mcllveen, are for everyone’s benefit and for every car driver that has paid over the years for them. The plan’s been established, and the time for objec tion was 30 years ago. The plans have already affected property values. “ The roads belong to the Queen for the benefit of the people.” The bridges have already been built in the West. They can’t just stand there. They’re just standing there in Toronto, observes the reporter. “ If you’re anti-expressway,” says Mcllveen, “ the first thing you do is take your car out to Sims Metal’s shredder. Don’t sell it — someone else buys it. Instead of having to confront the government and break the laws, all you have to do is get on public transport, crowd it, en courage the government to build up the railways.” The Leichhardt bus services have just been curtailed again. * * * ‘Lyndhurst’, the early Georgian mansion in Dargham St., has teen a colonial surgeon’s residence, a re ligious seminary, and headquarters of the Australian Nazi Party. It’s a big stone place, covered with flaking blue paint. Under this blue eminence, Rees and Gerrassi have erected a cardboard house, and about 60 people have gathered. The TV channels have commit ted three Arriflex sound synch crews and a Bell & Howell mini-16mm for cutaways, and this street theatre will be on all the channels tonight, because it’s . . . a slow news day. Up the street is a 1928 Dodge Bros, hearse, with a 6 cylinder side valve motor, and 5.50x20 spoked wheels. It’s black, immaculate, and has huge engraved glass windows. There’s a sign on the back: It’s the End of the Road for the DMR The owner, Peter Hickson, is be hind the wheel, with a red mou that makes him look like part of a barber shop quartet. Beside him is a clean, goodlooking young man, Allan Sorrenson, the Australia Party can didate for Sydney in the Federal elections. Sorrenson tells me he is going to win the seat, on 30% of first preferences. a It’s things like this, getting in at the grassroots, that’s winning me support. Even in solid Labor areas.” He says the Church of England’s action in Glebe is socially, morally, totally irresponsible, and he’d like to talk about it later, after the hearse runs over the house. Rees is dressed up in a Simon Legree DMR outfit, and he storms up to the cardboard house, which is filled with Glebe kids. “ Out, out” , he shouts, “ in the name of Pro
gress.” The kids boo and hiss, and he throws them out, waving a paper and abusing them. People up on the porch of ‘Lynd hurst’ hold up there Quality of Life placards. People blow soap bubbles. The hearse runs over the house. Kids jump up and down on the card board. The TV crews order a retake. They want to get a cutaway from inside the house as the hearse ap proaches. Rees consults about special effects, like a fast-motion shot of the house being re-erected, but the crews are not interested. They’ve got beer between their ears and the sun and flies on their hair. I sidle over to a girl waving a soap bubble hoop. She has jeans, a loose shirt, and long, clean hair. “ Could I have your name, to put in my story as a person making soap bubbles?” Another girl, in jeans, a loose embroidered top, and an afro-style hairdo steps up, jumping up, shouting, “no! no!” I turn to her. “ You’re saying she shouldn’t tell me her name?” “ That’s right.” “ Why are you saying this?” “ I can’t see it matters.” I look at the girl whose name I asked for, “ You want to tell me your name?” She shakes her head. The second girl says, “just say people were making bubbles. There are several people mailing bubbles.” “ O.K.” Twenty-seven people have already told him what to put in this story, and what not to put in. Jack Mundey and the BLF heavies drive up in a white Mazda 1300. John McNaughton had a 1300, too, remembers the reporter. There’s a big sign on this Mazda, which says: The City should be lived, in —Aarons. Mundey is a familiar face, dressed in familiar white slacks and white shoes. He soaks up some TV, but the channels tend to run Allan Sorren son instead, that night. Down the street, Bob Erwin fronts Albert Mispel. Bob Erwin has just downed three schooners at The Courier, and he’s got something to say. “ I disagree with what’s going on here. Would some body tell me what this is all about?” Erwin rents from a chinaman, he says, in a house in Darling St.’s Phase One block. He’s a BLF mem ber, but he’s not going to talk to Mundey. “ He’s on TV, he doesn’t want to talk to me. It’s a political issue. They’re not interested in people personally . . . ” Erwin says, “ I’m a city kid, I’m not educated up like the people that do things like this, people that can’t get work because they’ve got too many other interesting things to get into . . . ” He talks about the mess in Darling St., the half-wrecked houses, the kids and derros in there. “ Yes, they’re being looted, but we’re trying to stop it,” says Mispel. “I helped loot them,” says Erwin. Mispel makes a point. Erwin talks about certain people in the third person. “ They want to stop demolishing. Well, every Sunday morning, I wake up — kids breaking glass. Well, I was rapt in it myself, I’ve broken glass myself to get money. “ But the point of it is, it’s a danger, it’s unsafe for kids. I’ve got kids.” Mispel says he has kids, too. His house is affected too. * * * Erwin puts down a rap on me-asreporter. “ You breed, you gotta look after what comes out. That playground might be an adventure, if it weren’t your kid.” The reporter thinks the rap sounds a lot like this latest edition of The Glebe. “ I’m sour about getting shoved out. I want to be close to the city, within shooting distance of a job. But I’m against people yelling stop now. They should save it before the money gets into it. I don’t want to go anywhere else — I don’t want to go over with the Chocolate Frogs, in Marrickville. This is one of the few areas in Sydney that’s relatively clear of them.” I point out ‘Lyndhurst’. “This is . . . ‘Lyndhurst’?” says Er win, incredulous. He studies the old, flakey early Georgian manse. “This is what they want to save?” He looks some more. “ Well. . . make no mistake, it’s solid stone all the way up.” If you had to chose between de molishing this, and demolishing the dog track down there, how would you choose, I ask Erwin. “ I back dogs,” says Erwin, upon reflection. “ Move it for the dog track. 12,000 people show up for the dogs, they’re coming on, the dogs.” Down the street, some of the Glebe kids light a fire in an old warehouse. The smoke drifts up, in Phase One. Erwin is saying, “you can’t blame the DMR for this. Your biggest enemy are the people who sell up and move out. They get offered $20,000 for a place worth $4,000, and they say, that’ll do me, and they go. Well, what are you going to do about that?”
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Page 8
In the preceding Digger, Zimmer introduced himself. He's a poet, and a queer, and an inmate politician at Maitland Gaol. His job as library runner allows him to travel through the prison, carrying information and contraband, and generally servicing the fix. Zimmer put down a rave about the modern prison system. Although many people refer to prisons j as “medieval", the prison system as We know it has developed over the past 140 years. Zimmer quotes one comp troller-general o f NSW.prisons, who says: “ . . . it is, historically, new, and, as yet, unjustified by accurately calculated results." Zimmer outlined the development o f prison architecutre, and related it to the theory o f “rehabilitation" which has influenced the design of prisons. Zimmer thought Prison ar chitecture was kirid o f funny. But he thought the theories about prisons were hysterical: for more than a cen tury, people have been spending tax payers' monies on buildings which they claim j will reform the people p u t in them, and all the evidence tends to indicate that the buildings just deform the inmates. Zimmer showed how the myths about prisons have lad gradually to ward the present situation: a crisis that can't be solved even with un limited brutality. In the words o f the comptrollergeneral's report (1966):— One has then a penal system operating largely in walled prisons which are too small, yvhich were built 50 to 120 years ago, with inadequate or inappropriate pro visions for work, education, leisure and other activities. On top of these disabilities, one finds that the very texture of the prison pop ulation itself has changed to an almost overwhelming emphasis on youthful prisoners serving long sen tences. Traditionally, it is the youthful offenders who committ the reckless, unpremeditated acts and áre the most overtly rebellious. When these inherent characteris tics are combined with the ex tinction of hope by long sentences . . . the mixture is an explosive, amoral and potentially violent compound. Then Zimmer talked about the prisoner politics inside gaol. In prac tice, the prison administration dele gates a lot o f responsibility for keep ing order to ’ the “fúavíeé", the pris oners tha t penologists call The Bar ons. The “heavies" include bankers, who handle the prison economy — with tobacco the main currency — and the bankers' friends, who pro vide muscle. Some prisoner politicians are queens, too, because sex is a scarcity inside . . . Then Zimmer's mind's eye tracks the career o f Lawrence R. Glaister, a New Zealander who failed to hold down a straight job in Australia, j and drifted into social isolation and the meanest sort o f theft: non violent door-handle trying. Glaister was caught three times, and on the third occasion copped a sentence of one year. Long Bay was built to hold most prisoners in solitary confinement, but as the prison population grew, the policy became two to a cell. Then the population grew some more, and the administration decided to put three in a cell. When the decision was announced, some o f the urgers reckoned the change would cut down on . the number o f homosexual as saults among prisoners. Glaister dis covered the sense o f this, when one o f his new cellmates held him down while the other raped him. Zimmer's mind's eye has taken all this in, and passed it on. Now his mind's eye rolls through a few ran dom associations towards an ac count o f Glaister's first morning in gaol.
T IM E A N D M O U N T A IN S The casting of the shit shed is an interesting spciological phenomen on. In nearly every prison in New South Wales, every shit man is a coon. The shit shed is the shed where the shit tubs are emptied. At the Bay, there are about half a dozen coons in the shit shed. They open the lids of the shit tubs. The shit shed screw checks each shit tub for ditched con traband. If he sees any, he takes the number on the lid, and has the men in the cell where the tub came from up on a charge. After the shit shed screw ramps the shit, the coons empty the shit tubs in a drain trough. Sometimes contraband shows up then, so the shit shed screw stands at one end of the trough, watching. The coons scrub each empty shit tub with a hand-brush, and throw a haif-cup of diluted phenol into it for a sweetener. Then the coons stack the shit tubs in trollies, and ruh them over to their home Ranges. The Range Sweepers come down
The Digger
about lunchtime, and run the shit tubs back to their peters. I have often thought it would be great if some dogooders found out about this sociological phenomenon, and agit ated for integrated casting in the shit sheds. I see in the Annual Re port? that the administration wants to put toilets in all the cells, so the dogooders will have to hurry to make an issue out -of this one. I think such an agitation would furnish a model case for the study of exter nally-induced organizational dysfunc tion. I believe that a tradition is in volved. Goons have probably been doing the shit shed job for a hun dred years, or more, and it is their job. For a hundred years, every so often the shit shed screw has got his coons all cleaned up, and made them scrub their pink palms in phenol and then the Governors have come down to the shit shed and shaken hands with the coons and ,told them what a plurry good job they’ve been doing. Whenever a whitefella, usually a chat, but maybe somebody that the overseer wants humiliated, has been put on in the shit shed, the blackfellas have shown signs of resent ment and hurt. Governors never shake hands with whitefellas. Probably the Governors can’t even come down to tjhe shit shed, if there’s a whitefella in it. The Governor realises that if he offered to shake hands, with a whitefella, one of two things would happen. The whitefella would shake ,his hand, and get the shit beaten out of him by the other white pris oners. "Or, he would snub the Gov ernor, and then he’d have to do a stretch of solitary cellular, and be come more intractable. There’s a third option — make the shit shed all white . . . and the coons would prob ably riot. Because they would prob ably get allocated to jobs like Yard Sweeping. So the dogooder agitation would disrupt a stable distribution of rewards within the prison system, and dysfunction would result. This would make a good model case study. Range sweeper is a pretty good job, but it’s not the sort of job that a coon would get. The Range Sweep has to work pretty tight with the screws on day shift, and he’s usually the sort of bloke that the screws identify with — say, a good Roman Catholic who tried to support a wife and six kids outside by breaking warehouses, and who got caught two or' three times, but who always went quietly. There are a lot of different kinds of jobs in gaol. If you have clerical skills, you may get to work in Rec ords, keeping track of who’s coming in and who’s going out. The coons don’t have clerical skills. There’s a big farm outside the Bay, and the coons could work there, but only maintenance prisoners get to work on the farm. There’s the maintenance crew, who go around painting and carpentering and wiring and plumbing — but the coons don’t usually have trades, and besides, the blokes on the maintenance crew might not work with them. “ Smell like shit” . There’s the library — but, most of the coons can’t read. Now, the big employer at the Bay is V.C.N. Blight, the Govern ment Printer. A lot of prisoners work in a shed behind Boys Range as binders of books and pamphlets, and as sorters of the Blackfriars Corres pondence Courses. Occasionally a matriculation student gets an exam paper with the answers filled in on the last two pages. Or a housewife in Yangoonwah gets a lottery ticket with the personal inscription: “screws suck cock” . If you’re illiterate, it’s a big han dicap in the printing business. It’s an even bigger handicap if you’re an illiterate coon. So if you were driven out of the shit shed in the name of a better deal for aboriginals, you’d get allocated something like Yard Sweeping, which is the worst job inside. The overseer might rig a spec ial tobacco concession for you — Yard Sweepers don’t usually get a tobacco ration — and then the other Yard Sweepers wouldn’t just ignore you: they’d give you hell, because you were getting special concessions for being a coon. On Yard Sweeping: Yard sweeping is the most abstract activity known: Yard sweepers are locked in a caged yard, twenty yards long, six yards wide. No smoking\ is allowed. In fact, yard sweepers aren’t issued with tobacco. So there are no cigarette butts in the yard. In fact, there is nothing in the yard, except the sweeper, and his broom, and maybe some invisible grit. In fact, the yards are always immaculately clean. A screw stands somewhere up there with his gun, walking along the wall, occasionally urging the yard sweepers jointly and severally about, their’ activity. The yard sweepers sweep the yards, which aren’t dirty, all day lpng. In Bathurst in winter, it gets down to 15 degrees. In summer in Grafton, it gets above 100 degrees. Yard sweepers tend to swallow razor blades, to cut wrists, to hang them selves, or to save up their issue of Largactil for the ultimate stopper. But you couldn’t say that yard sweep-
October 21 — November 4
A short novel by Robert Adamson , and Bruce Hanford ers do rash things because they’re j overworked A t- no, there are worse I things than Hard Labour. Time. | When you are on the outside, j days go by and never return. But ; on the inside, days are circular. Any ! event worth telling swells up like a : dream. A dali. piano with twat stan- l ding proud and isolated on a long ; plain miles before a huge black ' mountain of terrible boredom. When ,| I speak of these objects/events, it )\ seems like they swell into the pic ture, but behind them is the moun tain. You know how sometimes there is a speck in the paper of a book, under the type, a bug or a
It hits their legs as they walk. The shit tubs are often brim full, especially when several crims in a cell have dysentery, and the lids are always loose. Some shit tubs leak, The rich slops run down trouser legs. Prisoners denims are laundered once a week. Dysentery is No. 1 on the Bay’s sick parade. The exercise yard is much larger and dirtier than the yards yard sweepers sweep. It is bounded by two, fences of spiked bars ten feet high running between, say, Range 1 and Range 2. The crims of Range 2 loiter there waiting for the shit tub soldiers to return. There are more than a hundred men in blue
piece of crap or maybe brown flesh denim in a space a little smaller than caught in the machinery as the paper a basketball court. They maybe wash was rolled through the presses? When at one of the four washbasins. They I read I often stop at those specks, maybe sit on one of the six white and think about them. It came to porcelain seatless toilets, under the me that it would be good if some bus shelter arrangement at the back one caught their hand in the press fence. Or pace, or smoke, or talk as this book was printed, and that about things of interest like who toward the end of the book you they fucked last night. held there would be first, perhaps, »f» embossed onto the paper, a full “ I believe I heard some singing.” fingernail, and on the next page, “ Bloody oath mate, she sang so some parchment, say, the lines of a palm, and then brown stains. So that j*ood me and Barry named her Carol. Pity she wasn’t with us for Christ some representation of the mountain mas.” showed behind the story. I don’t' “ Better late than never.” know if that is a sound plan; will * * * anyone care about this book? Will printers sacrifice their hands? What The empty-handed shit tub sol a time for hands! I’ll never get a diers all come home. Then the barrow good hand: best that will happen for bearers from the kitchen bring two me is for some printer to let me coffins full of mush past the front dribble praying mantis, shrew and fence and sit them down in front other small animals dismembered in of the Range doors. The Range screw to the rolls of his press. Maybe opens the yard gate and announces the best place to introduce these muster. “ Get in fuckin line.” things is in the collator. It’s a tech ’ Four of the screws who have nical problem. A technical problem. been standing around in the yard run for the gate when muster is Range 2: bells ring at 0700 hours. In summer there’s light in the win called. This scares you, the first time dow (in winter there isn’t). You you see screws run. Two screws stand by the door when it’s slapped stay in the yard, towards the back. The prisoners form up in three lines;open. The screw says move out. One crim from each cell grabs the you have to learn your place so that shit tub. The crims all file down into •you are next to your cellmate. the exercise yards. The crims with The range screw calls numbers shit tubs line up at the yard gates. from his book, which is a major A screw opens the gates and about property in the prison game.1- When sixty rpen from Range 2 file across your number is called, you walk the wide compound to the shit shed. such as the range sweeper, It’s hkrd for the weaker men to hold who1.Acancrim, influence cell allocation, can a shit tub. It weighs about 15 pounds. earn a lot of favours.
j through the yard gate past the range j screw. The, range sweeper hands you ! a dixie, containing boiled kibbled i wheat, which is called mush. The j range sweeper’s offsider pours your j daily ration of milk onto the mush, ; with a two ounce dipper. You walk j into the entrance to the Range. The four screws who ran are inside. As soon as a peter is full, a screw slams ! the door and locks it. Grim screws slam doors loud. You can tell a new screw, because they teach them to shut doors softly in screw school. You are now locked in your peter for an hour, while the screws take their breakfast. Only one screw is left t>n the range. There is ho shit tub in the peter. On the first day you
David Porter
have dysentery, you will kick on the steel door. The screw will come. You will say I have to shit. The screw will say work it out for your self, because the Regs say doors can’t be opened when there is only one screw on a range. You will shit in your water jug while your cellmates shout at you, and water won’t taste the same for weeks. Then more bells: Five minutes until doors come open. When the doors open, the peter has to be clean. The qualities of a clean peter are these: blankets folded atop a doubled hemp mattress, a swept floor, towels folded over the edge of the locker, bread crumbs swept from the top of the locker, and other articles e.g. pannikins library books and margarine jars stacked neatly in the locker. Then, hard labour. Lunch: Bells: Same barrows: the main thing is mutton, steamed. The menu goes through the same variat ions every week . . . Tea is different from lunch in that it is served with a half-loaf of bread. * * * The morning after Larry Glaister lost his cherry, the screw held him in the peter while the other boys went down to the yard. He didn’t have his number. To go into the yard, you need a number. A screw came and escorted him back to the Recep tion Hall. He saw two familiar faces —. the two crims who work in re ception. One nodded to him. Glaister looked away. Some other familiar faces arrived. Purleyman. The chats
received under Sentence the night be fore. Again they were made to stand naked. Glaister didn’t look at Purleyman, who had moved to stand beside him on the white line. White boy flesh, the pubic hair darker than the amber hair on his head, standing naked., The doctor walked in, and wearing a grin, proceeded to ramp everyone’s prick. “ Okay, when I get to you, hold youi; penis firmly, so it opens its lips. Everyone who is uncircumcised pull back their fore skins.” This scene is sometimes referred to as symbolic castration. Reflection: of xall the cocks held firmly in all the Reception Halls Zimmer has known, only about a third were circumcized. This is strange, because the spread of the hospital fad of infant cir cumcision was underway before the increased average duration of sen tence fad was underway. Could this fact of foreskin have something to* do with the’ religion of parents, or the class origins of crims? In some hospitals now a parent has to fill out a form to prevent the partial castration of a son. In Victoria last year $75,000 was awarded to an infant who had his entire penis burned off by a doctor with shakey hands. Circumcision is justified for many specious reasons but probably most such medical mümbojumbo (e.g. cleanliness, low rate of cervical cancer in jewish population etc.) has' got very little to do with it. During Victorian times, all sorts of medical mumbojumbo was adduced to sup port psychological castration, and medical journals were full of re ports of masturbating boys who ejaculated blood and perished with consumption. Genital mutilation is one of the oldest human pastimes, as a study of coonlore will demon strate. Australian coons had all sorts of tricks with flints and cocks, cut ting cocks open so they were shaped like spades, or subincising them sc that tribal elders could fuck boys into their bladders. Also cut out the ovaries of girls to produce a special class of harem girl, who resembled a boy, and who could not get preg nant. These sorts of things are not done for empirical reasons, but for religious reasons. Parents, who bring their children up fearing God, cancer and dirt are moved by The JudeoChristian Spirit to whittle away at their sex early. Statesmen who under stand the religious appetite of the electorate are often convinced that the State should radically whittle sex of offenders . . . after the doc tor had completed his ramp of Glaister’s stalk, Purleyman leaned toward the kid, and inquired, “can you sit down yet?” Glaister felt like he had been in jected with some mad drug. He stared at Purleyman. Purleyman’s face went blank try ing to read Glaister’s face. Glaister stepped back, off the white line, and saw the screw start, and noticed that everyone else in the room was moving in slow motion. Glaister kicked Purleyman direct ly in the orchid of his brambley pubes with the nails of his naked foot. The screw grabbed Glaister from behind in a butterfly. Three screws altogether descended, fel) or sat on Glaister the naked boy flesh frantic under their weight and after such descents, falls and sittings Glaister calmed into catatonic de pression and was dressed and thrown into solitary cellular confinement. * * * Human Beings, I have been told by a pom parole officer, can become dcclimated to anything. A lumber jack has his crack at fat happiness. So could Larry R. Glaister have opened himself to golden oppor tunities, and made other men’s sex into manure for his flowerbox. But he didn’t. He could have made himself the most sought-after lady in Range 2, if not The Bay, and made the Stat dec declaring himself a homosexual, and made a transfer to The Cooma which everyone agrees is a place where you can get a good deal. I explained these things to him carefully, latér on. Even if he had known, I now doubt if he could have tránslated the theory into actual social practice. However, if you don’t understand these things intuitively, somebody has to tell you. Who could tell him? You don’t make wise friends when you scream and sulk and spend a lot of time in a oneout, underground, in the damp dark. When he wasn’t tanked in the black peter, the administration tried to get him a'' segregated cell, or slam him with yahoos, who are generally quite harmless, if a little coarse, but whose ignorance was as pro found as Larry’s innocence. Neither loneliness nor the company of yahoos taught him how to deal with the powers that be. He did a few things right — he didn’t lag on *57 and *16. They spread tales about him, so that the other crims all called him Carol, but he could see the shiv very clearly
even when awake with his eyes open. The shrink called him in aftér his third trip to the punishment cells, after he had already been diagnosed as a malingerer. The shrink asked him if there was any truth to the rumour that he was homosexual. Glaister shouted, “I’m not a queer! I’m not a quteer! I’m not a queer! I’m not a queer!” Four times. The shrink muttered “ methinks thou do protest” , and wrote “hysterical, latent, possibly active homosexual psychotic; denies homosexuality in interview.” Glaister did two half-hearted suic ide attempts. The first time was a wrist-shave, performed about an hour before his peter was due to be opened for the morning, while the yahoos were asleep. You got to get through the tendons that way: he only opened the skin before fainting. That earned him another trip to the shrink’s room, and two days in the dungeon. The second caper involved saving up a few days dosage of the Largactil that the shrink authorized for him. Largactil is a tranquillizer, I believe, a CNS depressant. He sat up all night thinking about it, and did not drop the wodge until first light. Once the shrink says you are sane, you’re sane. The Long Bay Penitent iary finished with Lawrence R. Glais ter and he was issued a train ride north to Maitland.
IIOW A M A N “ What’s your lagging?” The woman of mystery moved away, without a word. Glaister was scatty, 'the last time he had been spoken to as a friend was months past, that time had been in the North Sydney lock-up,.where a kindly old cop had extracted a prolix confession from him. When the confession had been shown to him in writing, when he had seen the éd itorial treatment, where his friend had bent his words . . . Glaister’s suspicions had groWn from whens and wheres and he was withdrawn . . . he swept his yard meticulously, and hoped the wind would blow something interesting into his life, a stalk of grass, a swirl of sand. He would not answer to my kind words* but he began to see me as I passed by. He was being watched. The Gov ernor had rubbed his eyes while reading Glaister’s classification report. The shrink billed him as a malingerer who had made two theatrical suicide attempts. The Governor seated his back teeth and assigned Glaister to the yards for sweeping, for if this one was going to do something silly he wanted to find out sooner rather than later; so, Glaister swept the clean concrete in the bright autumn wind, and developed large freckles. I learned about him from rumour, and through a week he began to see me when I smiled. I looked good. I travelled between groups in the exercise yard, getting easy laughs, receiving cigarettes. I was free, I walked all around the prison, and I stopped at each gate to converse with our guards. Even yard sweeps have library privileges, and I was helpful with Glaister’s choice of read ing, He grew calmer. Maitland has a different ambience. The screws are older and more tolerant. It’s a smal ler gaol, and faces become familiar. The quality of polity is better — there is less turn-over, and the Bankers are more mature, stable men, who work at keeping the vibrations at »a highlevel. And there is the buffering affect of. the one-out peter, where every prisoner is alone for 15 hours a day. The yard Glaister swept was five short strides by ten short strides and enclosed by inch-thick steel bars that went to spear points high above his head. In the centre of one of the ^narrow sides was a padlocked bar gate. That was the front of the yard. Behind and over the yard was a dark stone wall, and a screw patrolled the catwalk along this wall from the comer tower. His job was to agitate the yard sweepers, and to pre vent them from sitting, smoking, talking or whistling while they swept. As the screw passed by above, I came to the front of her yard. She ignored me, from fear. The screw shouted, “ don’t drop anything *7, ya might have to bend over.” I smiled and waved in appreciation. Glaister kept his head bent, sweeping slowly. “ Hey *14.” Glaister looked up. The screw was moving away. “ Don’t bother, he’ll give us a min ute,” I promised. Glaister came to the gate, his broom in both hands, and vertical, the end moving. I asked him how he was going. He said all right. I told him there were better jobs, but he didn’t say anything. I told him .1 didn’t like to see him doing it so hard. He flushed. I asked him if
hie would like another job. He nod ded. ; “ Look, Carol, I been in your shoes.” 1 "What?” The rumour name was a spider bite. “I been in your shoes. I did three months in the-yards at Bathurst once, in July, it was fifteen below, or fif teen anyway.” ; She stood there. “ You want me to get you another job?” “ What do you . , .” . Glaister stopped, flushed again, rocked. “ I told you. I’ve been your way. I see me in you. Now I could get you a job in the laundry, a good job. I know the screw there. He’s a good screw. Okay?” I watched. It was hanging. I asked: “ Look, be straight — do you like this, here?” “I hate this here. I hate this here.” “ Okay, I’ll see what I can do. Maybe it’ll take a few days. Just keep cool, okay?” “ Okay.” . “I’m called Robin. Now don’t do anything stupid, and it’ll be okay.” * * * The laundry had been built in the early 1950s, of red brick — it was newer in appearance than most ofl the buildings on campus — and I had worked inside it before getting my library job. The inside walls are painted gloss white, and the paint stays dean and streaked from conden sation. The routine is satisfying. The dirty laundry is in the wicker bas kets along one wall. It is loaded into three large, commercial-style wash ing machines in the centre of the room, then into the spin drier at one end. When it is mostly dry, the laun dry is brought to the other end of the room, where the four pressers work. In the summer the laundry is humid and hpt, but in winter it is the pleas antest place in the gaol. The move ments of the machines were eccen tric, from wear, and the room was full of rattles, hums and hisses, and the queens singing and talking. Talk ing in the laundry was satisfying, because of the machine noise; it was one of the few places where you could express yourself in a loud voice. Lobey was the laundry screw. The legend was that Cloe had bitten off his earlobe, whilst doing him a favour. Lobey was fat, about 50, and he combed the fringe of his hair across a bald spot. His forehead bulged' like his abdomen. His forehead hung over his nose and eyes ripely, and the skin of his face was covered with hundreds of hair-thin wrinkles, so that «my expression looked like a movement of crushed pink silk. He clicked his false teeth when he was annoyed, but the queens in the laundry had a special truce with him, and he did time easier than anyone else I’ve met. He spoke softly, asked people to do things instead of or dering them, and in conversation dropped the odd kamp phrase. Once I put it on him about the Cloe story. He laughed. He had a different story. He said that a sand fly had bitten his ear, and the bite had become infected. When the in fection cleared up, there was a pale scar, and after six months it had turned black. The doctor had prom ised cancer, and amputated. I never repeated Lobey’s story, It would have done me no good to look like an advocate of a screw, even Lobey. We had a special shared interest. Fishing. My father’s side of the fam ily were estuary fishermen. I didn’t talk about this to other crims — it clashed with my swinging queen role — but Lobey was so rapt about my views on fishing that he gave me copies of Angler's Digest to smuggle back to my peter for a sly read, and then ask me for my critical opinion on various articles. When I was run ning for Brunswick, I sometimes dropped by the laundry, and Lobey would lead me behind the dryer, so that his seven servants could not hear, and we would have a scholarly talk about the jew and the tailor and the properties of German mono filament. So I went to the laundry from the yard where Glaister swept, to speak with Lobey. Conversations inside are often continuous. I mean, two people may be speaking about some matter, such as an article about a Cowbell multiple-spoon lure, and arguing about whether it was worth catching a fish on such a piece of tackle that required a four pound drag at the reel to troll dead slow . . . and a bell, or the shutting of a door might interrupt the argument . . . and somei weeks or months later the two people might meet again, behind a racketing spindlier, and resume the argument at the next point of dis putation. » “They’re bloody expensive, and easy to snag. Say you catch a few more fish, and have less sense of their play, and then lose the tackle. What would you think of yourself, then?” “ Well, the Japanese lures are only half the price.” “ A mate that’s used one at Jindabyne reckons they don’t draw ac tion like the American ones, but the
Page 9
The Digger
October 21 — November 4
point still stands.” “It’s a question of what you fish for, Lobey. I want them in my hand, bugger the expense.” Lobey laughed. I excused myself, and went to the library. A day passed, and on the third day I returned to the laundry. “When you want something, you don’t care how — 'that’s why you’re in here, m’dear,” said Lobey. “ If you’d learn to love, doing things properly, m’dear, you’d be less likely to outsmart yourself.” He knew I wanted something, so I smiled and looked aside. I put it to him that a friend, Glaister, was doing it hard yard-sweeping, and I thought a laundry billet would do him a world of good. Lobey’s face crink led; he talked while he tried to re member the reason for his resistance. “ Spring blanket storage is coming up,” I said. “ You’ll need an extra hand then, anyway.” “I’ve heard something about your mate, Robin,” said Lobey. “ I’ve heard she’s trouble.” “ She’ll be okay, Lobey. Word of honour.” He laughed. The overseer worked the transfer. The governor was stew ing over something else, and didn’t miss a face from the sweeping yards. The air was getting cooler, and it was a satisfaction to come from a cold cell in the mornings to the warm, moist laundry, to the noise and the chatter of the queens, and to push a heavy old-fashioned iron across the fabric, which turned shiney in the wake of the metal, and wisped steam. Lawrence Glaister had his billet. In the big yard for segregated pris oners, there were five nonconformists. One was the Banker who handled a tobacco book. He was stationed un der the verandah near the front fence, listening to the screw’s radio through an open door, sweating over his book as each result came over the air. Two crims were pacing together, mates, talking of their release and their life together outside and the job they would do. And Zimmer sat under the verandah with his Carol at the back of the yard, explaining how it was. “ . . . it really mucked me up for a few weeks, but think about it, now, won’t you — it only lasts for hours, the pain only lasted while they were on top of me, and that was because they were clumsy . And look at it this way: I hadn’t changed. And how had it affected them?” Two checker pigeons flapped over the verandah guttering, and landed to strut on the gritty bitumin. Grun ting. Drumming. And ruffling when they turned their backs to the windy Glaister looked as though he had sealed his lips by locking the insides between his incisors “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how. You think they were really some thing, don’t you? Really tough, really animal. And you haven’t got a clue, because they were more screwed up than you feel now, they were trying to be big tough men and prove some thing to themselves and yahoos in the yards, but they’re nothing and they know it and so does everybody else. They’re hollow men. Think about them, they’re probably gonna get married, what happens when somebody says the word “queer” — not me, not me he’ll be screaming, but not out loud, you can bet. He’ll have his own full dress pros ecutor and a greasy defence counsel inside his head and your face and your bloody arse for exhibits . . .” I shot his half-finished fag out into the yard, where it curved and rolled under the wind. The checkerpigeons flew a few yards ahead of it, and resumed their business with ex aggerated dignity. Glaister’s lips went loose. He said, “ I’ve got something too.” L looked at him, replied softly: “ Of course you do. I know.” “I don’t want it.” “ You got the name: Carol.” Carol shuddered. I saw she would n’t look at me so didn’t bother smil ing. I put my effort into a voice like a shawl. “ Okay baby, you really think so aye? Aye. You put your head down and your bum up and really work on feeling sorry for yourself. You’re a real martyr, a real victim of the system, aren’t you? You are a real stupid cunt is what you are. Don't press me any body, I ,might self-destruct — what kind of threat do you think that is in here? Nobody is going to pay on that act, Carol, baby, and if you had an ounce of guts you’d fucking come up with a better one. You don’t think you’re defending your fucking mas culinity by going around weepy, do you? Is that what you think you’ve got to defend? Oh sweet jesus Carol you’re playing the bloody foolish virgin, " and I could see that Glaister was crying and trying not to make any noise. Time passes outside. Inside the days circle. A few turns later the cell next to mine became vacant. Its occupant had been a neurotically tidy queen, and I had been promised the peter by the wing screw. Instead of claiming it, I installed Carol there.
This was the time of the shitbowl sermons. The one-out peters of Mait land Gaol are plumbed. At the back wall of each cell is a white porcelain toilet. Our two cells were on the second tier of the cellbloek, and their toilets were connected to the same standpipe. All we needed to do to communicate was to splash the water standing in the traps of our toilets down the standpipe, and we had an intercom tube with a cor anglais resonance. I prescribed readings. The first important one was old Sam Johnson’s Lives o f the Poets. Then biographies, the most important of these, Ariel being a romantic Victorian’s life of Shelley. “ You look like Shelley,” I spoke into the shit bowl. Gliaster identified with Shelley. I explained aboutv persona — through imagination, a poet could becdme another personality. Glaister began to hope he had an imagination; it was, according to me, the only way one could be saved. Shelley, the suffering effeminate, voyaging, searching for great causes. Shelley the doomed, finding only hypocrisy, pains, and meanness, the petty bitcheries and the tightening days of Maitland Gaol. Shelley as Carol. I gave her poetry, edited 1from context to save her any irrelevant responses. There were lines in Epipsychidion which might have been precisely about the coronation of Carol . . . . . . remain a vestal sister still; To the intense, the deep, the imperishable — N ot mine, but me — henceforth be thou united, Even as a bride, delighting and delighted. The hour is come ~ the destined star has risen Which shall descend upon a vacant prison. The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set The sentinel — but true free Love never yet Was thus constrained. I t over leaps all fence: Like lightning, with invisible viol ence Piercing its continents . . . >* * * I had never been more than a cute queen, and Glaister made me feel the ugliness of my pretence to girlform. I, Zimmer, am a strong boy, with black hair on my body. My navel is botched — it’s only a scar. My back’s covered with huge freckles, my teeth are going bad; I’m getting old and there’s no future for me outside in this sex I’ve chosen. But Carol’s different. She’s beautiful.. She could work for Sammy Lee’s all male revue, she is that beautiful. And I can make her a gift of this mind, for her to carry in the temple of the beauty, through wide years of being loved. Brain graft via the bailed-out toilets, Zimmer to Glaister baby, get this straight! I discovered I knew things of use, I took comfort from poetry as a sybarite: I took a teacher’s pleasure; I evolved a theory of personification not taught in schools. I formed Glaister’s realization: a person could be anything he needed to be, anything, he wanted to be. This is a powerful magic, the magic of changes, A man survives as best he can. I was a mag ician in a hard place; how could I have known tenderness was so dan gerous. It was a trip to mind-job Glaister. through Carol, Zimmer was Sappho. Zimmer was eagle. Zimmer was fish sounding in the deep Sulu sea. The earth is raddled with burrows of burrowing things^ and Zimmer was; marmot,' Zimmer, in fact, virtually swung from tree to tree in this movie. Glaister identified with Shelley, and felt better. I made a mistake. I thought Glais ter had become stronger, as the weak bridgeroom strengthened in the bride. A mistake: I gave my project a copy of The Poor Wedding Guest. The book reads easy. Set in Paris about the time of the Franco-Rrussian troubles the story concerns some lit erary gents, Verlaine is an established poet who has made a good marriage. He gets some poems from a fan, a provincial schoolboy. Verlaine sees that this unpublished kid is a genius, and sends him an invitation to drop by if he ever gets to 'town. Arthur Rimbaud, 17, leaves school and family and lobs at Verlaine’s townhouse, where he becomes the most ungracious guest since Penelope’s suitors. Verlaine’s wife and in-laws are noveau-riche and angst-ridden and even the servants are snobs, and he expresses his disapproval by visiting the Master Bedroom during the day and positing several Rimbaudian turds on the nuptial cot. Madam Ver laine says it’s either this freak or me, Paul, and Verlaine opts for Arthur. Rimbaud comes up as the butch partner, and they are off on a famous binge, fueling on absinthe and hashische. After a while, Verlaine sees he has blown his chances for a peace ful life. Rimbaud attempts-to desert 1 him. Verlaine shoots his butch in
the leg on a railway platform: Glaister said through the shitcan intercom, “ I think Rimbaud was a perfect bastard.” I asked, “how do you read Ver laine?” “ He wasn’t a bad bloke. He was generous, he did everything for Rim baud, got him printed and fed him and gave him money and then sac rificed everything for him because of the way he felt. He was conned, that’s what I think.” “ You don’t understand.” “I suppose you take Rimbaud’s side.” “I don’t take Rimbaud’s side at all. I mean, there are no sides to it, Carol, get that through your head. Rimbaud just did what he had to do.” “ Which was act like a /b o o n ." “ Look, Carol, Verlaine wrecked the best part of Rimbaud’s writing. Verlaine was just a weak, silly bitch, a fucking cat who was jealous of Rimbaud. You haven’t learned a fucking thing, have you? Not in yclur whole bloody life. Rimbaud never asked for nothing. He just paid out. He just took what he needed, he needed grist for his mill, people were just something he could use, and if he couldn’t use them in what he had to do he got out of their way. Ver laine was a lame cunt, Carol, he pretended to be something he wasn’t, and what he was, a snobby nowhere queen, didn’t impress Rimbaud either.” Glaister thought about that, and said, “That’d be right. You think Rimbaud’s the hero. I know why, I think I know why, all right. You’re just a manipulator, Robin. You’re like, him, you hope. He gives you a . . . justification^ for your way of living. You think you’re some kind of precious person. You’re trying to be god, or a screw, or something that can steamroller people into whatever shape you like. Is that what you’re getting at — I think it is it sure seems like it.” It was dangerous to talk at night through that apparatus, and Glaister’s prepared accusation had been deliv ered in a whisper so that it almost denied itself. There was a theatrical pause, and I exploded, as though 1 didn’t care if the world was ended by a midnight ramp of the whole cellbloek — “ You silly fucking little shit-ass queer! You got a lot of gall to put down fucking Rimbaud! It’s so fucking easy for you, isn’t it? I got you the best fucking peter in the place, and try to teach you some thing, and you can’t get over being a silly cunt! You . got a one-out peter and you’re safe under lock and key and you don’t have to come across for anyone for anything — how would you fucking live on the street, like Rimbaud had to? You couldn’t fucking do a bloody spring to make candy money, let alone make rent — you know what you’re good for? You know what you are bloody good for? A finger-fuck! That’s all!” and Glaister heard the booming flush at the other end of the intercom, the water that ends the words.
I apologised the next morning in the yard, with a face set as though still hurt. Glaister was impressed at my obvious emotion. I was too. After paying out on Carol, I had gone to his bunk, laughed, and then fallen into a vertiginous feeling which I could not understand or control. I was in love, I couldn’t keep my hands off Carol in the yard. I couldn’t wait to talk to Carol at night. I ached for Carol. The argu ment over Rimbaud had sunk the barb: I had been insulated from my growing need to love by making an object, a vessel out of Carol. But her perversity on that night had hit me with the fact of her separ ateness — she was not an extension of my will, but an other who meant something to me, who was part of my very idea of self. I had in fact blown it. From the comfort of poetry and the selfassurance of pedagogery I had blown through to a need for meaning, and Carol was it. Because I had this thing, and because Carol recipro cated in a mysterious way, not phys ically, but by knowing my weak nesses without wanting to hurt, Zim mer’s world began to disintegrate. My world was not built on love and my love failed that world. My re lationships with other crims and the screws, which had received my full lucid attention for years, began to suffer from neglect. I failed to please* the screws at the gates with repartee. I was not available when Bankers wanted news. I noticed that fewer people offered me a smoke in the yards. I found it amusing that crims were ambivalent towards Robin and Carol, two queens, getting it together. Only Dick Brunswick, who consid ered the possibilities, seemed to en courage us.
Love’s periods and uncertainties masked the cause of disorder in my existence. Once again, I found a clue in the library. Human nature was to blame. “It is to be asserted in general of men that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowards, covetous and as long as you succeed they are yours en tire^,” Thus spoke an unemployed Italian public servant named Niccolo Machiavelli, who suffered fronv the 1512 replacement of the Florentine ad ministration. The critics of his mem orandum rightly assert that he iden tified expediency with right conduct; his defenders rightly assert that his work was not innovative, but des criptive of the established and amoral practice of the state power. This memo, called The Prince, was in tended for limited circulation. It came to be considered one of The Great Books of the Western World and as such was bound in leather and donated to the prisoners of Maitland Gaol for the purpose of their rehabilitation. * * * That late autumn Twinkletoes by Roy Orbison was a big radio hit. Your modern prison cells have threeinch speakers and your modern pris oners heard Twinkletoes twice an hour, Twinkletoes was Larry Glaisr ter’s favorite song. Larry Glaister through the shitcan intercom told Robert Zimmer: “I really dig Twinkletoes.” “ Listen Carol,” I said, “ I’m read ing a book that gets across perfectly what I’ve been trying to tell you for months. Believe me, sweety, the Big 0 has got nothing on the Big M.” Nobody feels any pain . . . . . I almost said the Big D, standing for [Dylan, who had a big radio hit then called Just Like A Woman. However it was hard to allude to that knowing the fruitful parodies the queens in the laundry had dev-1 ised. * * * * “I don’t want to read any more of this book, Robin. It gives me the creeps. ” “ What gives you the creeps?” “This Prince is just too cynical, Robin.” “If you’re so hurt,” said Zimmer, “why then don’t you show it?’’ And flushed. Carol was so stupid. ^ “Love seekç th not itself to please. Nor fçr itself hath any care, B ut for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair. ” So sung a little Clod o f Clay, Trodden with the cattle's feet, B ut a Pebble o f the brook Warbled out these metres meet: “Love seeketh only self to please, To bind another to its delight, And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite. ” Zimmer carefully wrote the note in longhand, and then typed it several times so there wasn’t a single error in it. Dearest Carol, You know I love you and you would not treat me this way unless you wanted to stir me up inside, f have just been trying to help you and that is why I have insisted on you reading the big M. It is easy to do and you would learn a lot but you will not make the effort. The risks I have taken for you are maazing. I got you a good job, and a good cell. I have got you to read good books for yourself. I have got unpopular because you are my constant devotion. Then I think my efforts are failed. You never do anything for me. I have got terrible headaches and you have made them worse. I need pills from the infirmary and I nearly got sprung yesterday. You realise I could have been trans ferred to another gaol for that. I just want you to talk about things intelligently and not be so stupid. That is not much to ask. I spend à lot of time on you you know. Your closest friend & Lover I bopped out of the Library and into the Laundry, and gave the note to Carol, and turned^ straight away and went back outside. A new screw, a fuckwit, thought he saw something pass between us from across the yard, through the Laundry door. He ,went into the Laundry and spoke to Lobey. Lobey just shook his head, as though he couldn’t hear over the machines. The fuckwitted screw ramped Carol and sprang the note. His eyes lit up as he read it. He had discovered a queer prison drug ring. The machinery caught the note like a rotary printing press catches a wedding ring, and ran on swiftly. Larry Glaister was charged with possession of contraband, and slam med in the black peter to await the Visiting Justice. I was hailed before the Governor’s big desk. It was an old-fashioned desk with elaborate relief. One of the Governor’s tricks was to stare a standing man in the eye for 30 seconds or so, and then beginning reading from a file or charge sheet. I adopted a fixed stare at an imaginary point two inches above and two feet behind
the Governor’s head. I hadn’t been charged. The evidentiary situation' was technically good. The fuckwitted screw could claim to have seen the note pass hands, but he needed some corroboration. The note had been found on Glaister, not Zimmer, Lobey wouldn’t say anything. Carol had not lagged, nor would any other prisoner in the laundry. B u t . . . only four crims had access to the machine which had typed the note. Was the class large enough? It was dicey. The Governor accepted no score on the staring game, and began speaking. I did hot move my eyes, even though I had to blink. I followed the sound carefully as a critic confronting a new concerto by art old composer. “ *7, did you write this note?” “ No, sir.'’ > “ You have knowledge of its ex istence, then.” “ I may have heard from your runner, sir.” “I’ll ask him.” “It could have been from someone else.” “I suppose its the talk of the gaol.” “ Yes sir.” “ Well it damn well shall be, *7. What does this reference to em in the note mean?” “What em sir?” “The big em.” “I beg your pardon sir?” “ Would you like me to read you the note, *7?” “ No sir. If you wish, sir;” I waited through the pause, knowing that the way it ended would be a signal of how the game would end. When the Governor began to read the note deliberately, he knew the game would end badly. “ Do you find that ambiguous, *7?” “ Yes sir.” “ You realize there are only what? — four prisoners? five prisoners? How many, *7? How many prisoners had access to that machine?” “I’m not sure, sir.” “ You know which machine.” “If I knew which machine, sir, I would be certain, yes.’f “ Well, then we both know that four prisoners had access to the machine on which this note was written. This note, besides being contraband, raises some disturbing questions about security here, and it will have to be tendered to the Visiting Justice. *7, I’m no Leavisite but there are certain internal indications in this note which point to an author. Now would it be fair if I lock up the four prisoners who have access to this machine, *7?” I answered reasonably, “ Yes sir. That seems quite fair.” A paper folder drifted across the desk. The chair moved forward on its swivel-base. “I don’t think its fair, *7.” There was a pause. Zimmer felt queasy. He felt he had won the point, but he knew ,who scored the game. The Governor’s face swam up into view, and the deep, affected voice continued. “ I don’t think its fair to lock up all four of them.” Of course, he couldn’t legally could he? “I don’t think I’ll lock anybody up. But offences of this nature threat en prison security and discipline, and I am going to see that you are safely removed from access to a typewriter, and then I’m going to wait, *7, and see if offences of this nature cease. Does that sound fair?” “ Fair enough *7?” “ Yes sir.” The swivel chair swung out. The Governor moved over the carpet on foot, and out of the room by his private door. * * * The Prison Overseer handles the allocation of jobs. There was a vac ancy in the laundry. There were no typewriters in the laundry. “ Jesus, *7, that was a passionate little letter. You know, there were things in that letter ,that never should of been writ.” I almost laughed. Ordinarily the Overseer was a very laconic screw, but his composition had affected people. “ You know, we all thought you were pretty smart.” In Lobey’s warm aviary, I felt like a clipped rifle bird, * * * Before the Visiting Justice Law rence R. Glaister pleaded guilty as the Governor had asked him to do. The Governor looked grim when the VJ / asked Glaister where he had got the note referred to in the charge. Glaister said he had found it in cloth ing passing through the laundry. The Governor looked relieved when the VJ did not ask any questions about the next of the note, and said that in his opinion Glaister had been a good prisoner except for this ! one episode of withholding a coni traband article. The Governor said it was impossible to detect the real offenders under the circumstances, but that Glaister had not been un cooperative if his story of finding the note was true. The VJ gave Glais ter 24 hours in the black peter. Glaister had already done four days 1 in the black peter waiting for his I charge to be heard. Life in the black | peter is terrible punishment, but in 1 prison you are guilty until proven
innocent. When Glaister came out of the black peter, the Overseer did not slam him in the yards. Glaister was given a job straightaway, at the woodpile. The woodpije screw was terrified of sitting exams so he said he loved the outdoors and refused promotion and he had been tsar of the woodpile for years. Tradition has great magic in gaol and the woodpile screw was a tradition that transcended the careers of Governors. The woodpile screw was terrified; that the prison might run, short of wood and another screw might be wheeled in to replace him and his excuse for not sitting exams Would be blown so he worked his crims hard to keep up a ridiculous backlog. He had the face of a sun-dried fruit and never took a day’s sickness leave. The woodpile screw was terrified of the crims for good reasons because the woodpile was a transition billet so he had a constant turnover and all the short-timers and riff-raff who would and did do anything — local crims, cunt-starvers, wild-eyed chats, yahoos —and all these odd bods were armed with woodbreaking equipment. The woodpile screw felt like he had to keep every prisoner in his do main cowed and covered and con stantly at work. The prison viewed from the woodpile was an infernal place. It ran on two boilers, fired continuously, which fed steam to the kitchen and the laundry. Wood was also used for the offic er’s mess and the Governor’s fire place,. The woodpile screw was terrified of electricity and had worked,out a very regular system which was ac tually quite economical and efficient. On one day a load of bloodwood was delivered. The next day, ironbark. A big truck dumped whole trucks in the woodpile yard, where two crims bucked it into three-foot sec tions with a crosscut. Twenty or thirty other crims (depending on the season) wedged the sections with fourteen pound hammers. The bloodwood split easily on the sap lines. It was used as kindling for the ironbark, a heavy wooly-grained wood which split sullenly apd burned slowly. The wedged sections were stacked in caddywompus pyramids, and the chips were swept and bagged. Of all the jobs they call hard labor, only the woodpile is hard work. Glaister was weak. The woodpile screw was terrified of his own homosexual phantasies and showed Glaister no preferment. He made the boy swing a four teen pound hammer which he could hardly lift, and the cheap handle pulled skin away on each stroke. Only when Glaister’s hands wept did the screw give him a different job. Sweeping and bagging. This meant Glaister spent all day with his back bent, collecting splinters in his hands and forearms. Ironbark splinters con tain a toxic resin which causes local inflammation and supporation. After a while, the woodpile screw put Glais ter back on the hammer. “Would you like to hold the wedge while someone else swings your hammer?” “ No sir.” “Then swing that fuckin hammer.” Glaister swung that hammer, hang ing onto the rough handlelike a man hangs onto the edge of a cliff in solé political cartoon. Beneath him were the yards and the black peter, a void. He was unhappy. He asked to go to the toilet. “Tell me if you piss standing up,” ordered the woodpile screw. “ Yes sir.” “ Yes sir, you’ll tell me, or yes sir, you piss standing up?” “ I do sir.” “ I know you do. I want to know if you piss standing up.” “I do sir.” “I know you do. I want to know if you piss standing up.” “ I piss standing up sir.” “Well, you can piss where you’re standing then.” * * Maitland Gaol is covered and re| covered in paint by the Maintenance Crew. They have ladders and brushes and buckets and scrapers and gallons of murky pastel higloss paints and bright red pavement paint and strip pers and thinners and they rather like their job. The fumes leave you slightly dissociated and you get to
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The Digger
—Continued front Page 9 see different parts of the gaol, and a change is as good as a holiday. They operate from a sheet-iron shed by the woodpile, which is a joke to them, and when Carol the Gorgeous Queen approached them for some materials for a little interior dec orating, they were happy to donate her the stripper she requested. She got a bit from them over a week. She put it in plastic bags and wrapped the bags in her towel, and carried it off with her when she left the woodpile for her shower. She would smile boyishly at them as she went by, and the Maintenance crew were all secretly feeling romantic and hardly ever made smart remarks. Sometimes the stripper seemed, to eat the plastic bag and drench her towel before she could get it back to her peter and pour it into her water jug.
More than just 40s nostalgia Striking It Rich — Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks — Festival SBTL - 934608 (BTS 36) by Cynthia Dyer-Bennet Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks are, at last, about to spring on the un suspecting Aussie record buyers. And it’s about time. His last two albums, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, and Where’s The Money, have never been released in this country. Much to the loss of all those fans of 40’s nos talgia. His musical bag consists mostly of a mixture of Django Rheinhardt, swing, and jazz, with the occasional taste of laid-back C&W. Hicks and His Licks are a San Francisco group who’ve been kicking around for several years with little recognition. I once saw them playing a gig in L.A. (playing a triple bill with Lonnie Mack and Doc Watson, whew, whatta night . . .) and his back-up girls were a vision. With ostrich plumes in their hair and flowing 40’s gowns, they did choreo graphed steps together. During an instrumental break Dan got up and did a synchronized hand jive with them, knockout! They’ve had an avid cult follow ing, but up until a few months ago, when they ravaged New York’s trendy set (sell-out performances with 2,000 people trying to buy tickets from scalpers) their fame has been minimal. Dan’s Hot Licks are: Sid Page, violin and mandolin, John L. Girton,
A w art on the ole self-esteem Once more unto the crutch. Once again our correspondent has reques ted anonymity, to protect her from unnecessary barbs and unsavory precoital jitters amongst her chosen ones , . . _ m One bright and sunny morning in September of last year, I lay abed with my chosen of the time, paying close and loving attention to his private parts. It was with some surprise and a little dismay that I noted thereon, several small round lumps, quiet and unobtrusive but nonetheless disturbing. I poked vig orously at the object under suspicion, crying “what’s this then?” The owner snarled and covered himself, grow ing progressively more enraged and embarassed as I asked vain questions and urged him to take himself and his lumps to a doctor, pointing out that, whatever his feelings; I person ally had no desire to rot of an un known malady. He was an unfor tunately coy and modest lad, re garding his private parts as private indeed, and not given to frank dis cussions of sexual and genital prob lems. His nose will probably drop off at an early age. Some two months later, free of the modest one, and celebrating this in the most unlicensed style, I made a far more startling discovery. Wash ing myself thoroughly one morning, I detected through the soap and hair — a lump! One, two, three lumps! Was it syphilis? Gonorrheoa? Cancer of the cunt? Away post-haste to my doctor, fearing the worst. But no, it was none of these. The lumps and
October 21 — November 4
* * * I was too impotent to even write an epigram about how I felt. My world had shrunk, and the smaller world was more hostile. I had made several screws angry, and even Lobey was diffident. The Bankers were vexed by thè ramps that followed the note incident. The infirmary had become an unfriendly place, and everyone suspected that I was a loser and a spoiler. I was disappointed, frustrated, a field for freshets of anger, and I even felt a little guilty. I could do nothing for Carol, because the woodpile screw was terrified of me, because I personified trouble, and he would begin screeéhing if Zimmer so much as appeared near his caddywompus pyramids. “How are you feeling, Carol? How are your hands?” The shitcan con versations had grown mechanical, and I felt like a motor lugging in front of a sprung machine.
“ They don’t hurt anymore.” Her voice was tired and flat. “ You’ll probably develop muscles any day,” I joked. “ I suppose.” “ You haven’t got much to release, you know.” “ No, that’s true, only two months.” I couldn’t read Glaister’s voice. On some days it sounded tired and tense, and I trieu to loosen and boost the kid. But over a week or so Glaister’s voice had become just tired, or tired and flat. I thought maybe Glaister was learning to do it easy, but I couldn’t really believe that. “ You’re okay, aren’t you?” “I’m beat, Robin.” There was a pause. “ I think I’ll clean up and turn in.” I said, “ cool, Carol, I understand.” I didn’t even launch into one of the future movies I had been playing. Glaister had stopped responding to thel future movies. I thought maybe Glaister didn’t want to think about this love continuing outside, but I couldn’t really believe that. “ I think I’d just rather listen to
the radio. I’m not really feeling like talk,” she said, almost dreamily. “ All right,” I said, “leave the tube open . . . if you want to talk later, after lightsout, all right . . . I really do . . . love you Carol — I just feel so down myself . . and I changed the discomfort of squatting over the empty bowl to the ease of the bunk and listening vacantly to the radio. The lights went out, and after wards I smelled smoke. My imagin ation led me through annoyance (it seemed like Carol had smuggled a blowtorch into her cell and was burning off the paint and this was silly and she would be charged and go back to the black peter . . .) to wakefulness. Awake in the cell, I decided there definitely was a fire. I went to the toilet bowl and whis-* pered, “hey, Carol.” I smelled it through the toilet, and shouted “ Hey Carol! Hey!” Glaister may have heard the voice because that was when the scream started — it wasn’t a loud scream, and it tapered quickly away into odd noises, I began shouting and
kicking the door of my cell. A few other people did too — the smoke must have gone all through the cellblock, I reckoned. Everybody can smell it. Five or six minutes a screw came marching deliberately up the iron to the second tier. He went along the tier deliberately until he came to \ the number that I was yelling, and looked in the peephole. Of course he couldn’t see anything, and of course regulations state that cells are not to be entered unless two officers áre present. The wing-screw was probably still in his office read ing a novel or finishing a cup of tea, because jthe junior screw took a couple of quick steps and began shouting. “ Hey Jack, we got to go 'in, Jack. C’mon up.” The crims were still kicking their doors. A minute later a voice cut through the block. It was the wing- j screw. “ Shut-up you bástards. I fuck ing slam the lot of you up ya don’t bloody cut it.” “ Right up here,” shouted the other screw.
The wing-screw walks deliberately up to the second tier, and cracks the door. He must have swung a torch into the smokey cell, and his voice was a little too stagey when he said, “ Ah shit have a look at that.” The junior screw for some reason went back down the stairs, and got a bucket of water, and threw it in the cell. Maybe it was still smoul dering. It worked something like this: The orderly was called in, and the screws carried it over to the prison infirmary, where it was bandaged, or rather, swaddled. It must have been breathing. The next morning, the Governor came in to have a look, and didn’t even bother to roar the wing-screw for not waking him. He just rang a doctor. The doctor came a couple hours later, and sent it to Maitland hospital. The hospital called air ambulance, and it was DOA at Sydney hospital. The air ambulance bit made about two pars in the paper, and the papers printed the words “believed to have been smoking in bed.” The story of course was cut out
of the newspapers allowed into the prisons. I heard of that later. In fact, most of the details I pieced together later. Onee again, I was defensive about his feelings; I didn’t seem to have any. What impressed me most about Glaister’s entire existence was how it had changed almost nothing in anyone’s lives, except for the fact
lead guitar, James Leopold, string bass, and Naomi Ruth Eisenberg and Maryann Price, vocals and rhythm instruments. /The album opens with a fingerpoppin’ “ You Got to Believe” , the beautiful bass line intro sets the pace, it’s a jazzy swing number. Hicks, who sings lead (as well as playing guitar) on most of the songs, sings in the same nasal manner as Neil Young, which I find really appealing. He writes most of his own lyrics, and his mellow delivery saves his songs from the edge of corn on which he teeters. In “ O’Reilly at The Bar” , a song of drunkenness, Hicks puts on a voice like an old Louis Armstrong track and sings: . . . wasn’t that beer there one o f mine? Stealin’ my beer’s a sin Stealin’ my drink has caused me to think Think about the rat that you are. Whoever you are, y o u ’ve pushed me too far. Now I ’m gonna smash your face . . Nick Decaro does a lovely job of arranging and conducting the strings on “ Moody Richard” (a “ Nowhere Man” story with a gentle lilting melody) and “ Presently in the Past” , a C&W song with a 3/4 beat, sung by either Naomi or Maryann (the credits on the sleeve are frustratingly incomplete.) It puts Patti Page’s “Tennessee Waltz” to shame, John L. Girton undoubtedly has ¡the finest fingers in the west, his tasteful guitar riffs shine through on every track, and when he and Sid (Symphony) linage work together, as on “ Flight of the Fly” (the title describes the cut perfectly, I find myself swatting at imaginary flies), it’s a combination to send the gentle listener into ecstacy. Two of the tracks are re-makes
from 1Hicks’ first album. “ I Scare Andrews Sisters in top form, syrupMyself’, a flamenco-rhythmed love sweet. song, features Page sliding through And then there’s “ Philly Rag”, a the break with the grace and ease of 40 second instrumental alone worth an Olympic ice skating champion. the price of the record, “ Woe, the “ Canned Music” starts with bass Luck” , and a rendition of “ I’m an and acoustic guitar in perfect counter Old Cowhand” , sung super-sexy by rhythms. Dan sings a true story of Naomi or Maryann in a swing/jazz/his ex-lady: C&W style (if you can imagine such a A little before she left me thing) with some lovely licks thrown I asked her what it’s all about in op steel guitar for good measure. She said (here Naomi or Maryann I must mention “ Skippy’s Fare sings:) well” , a very funny 50 second cut I feel like dancing, which concludes the record, done I feel like steppin’ out. (Hicks) I took her where the band, in the style of an amerikan compere at a fourth-rate dive, rattling off the the band was on the stand names of the band members and Playing live music, live music, She got us on the dance floor, to various corny jokes, ending with: ‘ ‘Itsbyebyetimenowandlhopeyougome it was a sight. I never seen my baby movin’ like ho me an dhavearealnicesleepcauseWE the move she made on me REOUTOFIT!!” that night. I did not have a chance the way that music made me dance. It was some live music, live music. (chorus) Canned music, canned music, Play it on the radio. Canned music, canned music, Without a dime it doesn’t go. Favorites on the juke box are only half the show When it’s canned music, canned music. (verse) And that was the night she left me Danced herself into m y memory Kris Kristofferson -7 My baby .left, me for the drummer. Border Lord I guess I ’ll never solve that mys Festival - PL 34596 tery . . . by Pamela Brown (Nor will the drummer, the lady subsequently ran off with the and I sometimes stagger, but Sugar, rhythm guitarist.) I seldom fall. Kris Kristofferson used to give me Django Rheinhardt’s influence is most evident on “Walkin’ One and the notion that he was a monotonous, Only” , “ The Laughing Song” , and moralising, bring-ya-down bore, then “ Fujiyama” , all of which really swing. I went to see Cisco Pike and I was tot The back-up vocals sound like the ally blown out by the guy’s charis-
ma . . . so I started listening harder to his msuic. It’s easy to trip off on Kristofferson’s lyrics and his fairly static singing style and block out what’s happening behind him. The music really should be the main business going down ahd on his new album, Border Lord, he’s got a few of the old Nashville studio greats working it out, plus a fine chrous starring everybody’s background cousin, Miss Rita clapyrhands Coolidge; so there’s plenty of licks and harmonies to get you going. You put the record on your music box and the first track hits you with some neat fiddling by Tommy Jackson. It’s a kind of sad song with Kris tofferson reminiscing about a lady called Josie who “ loved him back to living” once, but he left her just like he splits from all the other ladies in his songs, and now she’s selling “sadness on the street” . Keeping company with some very pretty acoustic iguitar and Kenny Buttrey’s sharp drumming. “ Burden Of Freedom” has soine fairly “ traditional” pedal steel by Pete Drake that’s nice, clean stuff which doesn’t rip your occiput apart the way Sneaky Pete or West Vir ginia Creeper do. The lyrics on this one are a bit of a mind-fuck, tinged with paranoia . . . I stand on the stairway, my back to the dungeon The doorway to freedom so close to my hand Voices behind me still bitterly damn me For seeking salvation they don’t understand There’s a little anonymous banjo and then you catch Tommy Jackson playing thè “ fiddles of the devil” on “ Staggèr Mountain Tragedy” , a cajun number. Kristofferson creeps in to some very spooky imagery on this
one . . . Then I saw the laughing dagger and I heard the devil scream g And her bleeding heart was beat ing in my hand Then the darkness flew away a n d ! was standing by a tree With a hanging rope a-danglingfrom a limb. The title song, “ Border Lord” , was written by the guitar gang, Kristofferson, Steve Bruton and Terry Paul, and Donnie Fritts, the keyboard man. It’s a bluesy song with keen drum rolls and plenty of guitar pick ing. This is the most complex piece of song poetry on the album. Kris tofferson seems to pull his ideas out of some sort of philosophical city cornfield where he gets very hung up on time all the time ; . . raves like “ Tappin’ time and thinking of the time we never had the time to take7- .,. . now, that’s difficult to get around but he does it, and the backup boys are working hard here too. The song I get really locked into is “ Smokey Put The Sweat On Me” . It’s a hard living, hard drinking, hard fucking and hard travelling song with Charlie McCoy suckin’ and bio win’ on his harp with true Area Code faith. Kristofferson winds up in Louisiana with a ctazv chickadee called Smokey, and she’s a “ longlegged, sweet walkin’, raven haired and cajun lookin’ devil” . ¡. . wooohheeee . . . and “ Smokey put the sweat on me.” Doowaekadoowackadoo. There are a couple of lonesome city cowboy ballads about sad, spaced out people. These tracks smack of oldies like “ Dark as a Dun geon” , or if you stretch it a little further jfou hear Cisco Houston in there somewhere. “ Somebody No body Knows” is a quiet ballad laced with some trippy picking, but it’s
still a very down song because “some body’s dying alone in a city where nobody cares.” “ When She Was Wrong” is another very sad blues but the fine lead guitar and keyboards save you from tears. This is also where you really notice Rita Coolidge’s magic harmony. The other ultra tragic song on the album is “ Kiss The World Goodbye” . I ’m going down to the shade by the river, one more time And feel the breeze on my face before I die I ’m gonna leave whatever’s left o f my luck to the losers Then bend me down and kiss the world goodbye. It’s cool if you remember it’s just a song. Kristofferson reckons he’s ready for everything, no matter how wrecked or wasted he’s going to get doing it. He rocks into “ Gettin’ By High And Strange” which is a very speedy number with annoyingly sim ple lyrics; but he actually laughs in the last verse which is a good blast after so much sobbing and sorrow New ain’t nothing but a state o f mind Keeps a man from missin’ what he’s left behind1 I ’ll take anything that I can find Anyhow — anywhere — anyway anytime I ’ll keep livin ’ till the day I die I f I can keep gettin' it up for one more try The album isn’t really tricky en ough if you are wired right into country music, but Kristofferson does “ keep gettin’ it up for one more try” . So if you feel a little down and you’re looking for^a piece of musical empathy, open up a bottle of booze or light up a joint, whatever’s your style, and lay back with Border Lord.
and getting snarkier by the hour, I Waiting is what you invariably do — soon found myself back in Mel there are many stricken, and the line bourne. Word very shortly reached moves but slowly. Listening is what me from back in Sydney that it makes those long hours between urine had come to the attention of my sample, financial assessment, blood thenceforward rather less enthusias test, interview, and examination bear tic friend that strange modulesrwere able, and even quirkily pleasurable. appearing on his cock. How could On my first Visit I waited breath this happen to a clean-living kid lessly for those words of wisdom like me, he asked, and I blushed. that would tell all. Come back in I have since discovered that, in the two weeks, they said. During that matter of transmittance, warts are waiting fortnight a remarkable thing extremely capricious! They constitute began to happen. The burning-ar yet another variation on the many rows feeling I had experienced every forms of sexual roulette already avail time I had taken a piss in the past able for play — maybe you’ll cop few weeks began to abate, and finally it; sonny, maybe you won’t. In my to disappear, my monilia was going. experience, the won’ts are far in And the warts seemed to be faltering; excess of the wills, and even the even the strongest and sturdiest in unfortunates who do land a couple the front lines were hanging back, and seem to be vulnerable only at cer the previously unbroken ranks of tain times. My only frequently un lumps developed a few gaps. This baffled rather than reassured lucky recipient declares that a sturdy thumbnail courageously employed as me, making me all the more anxious soon as they appear does the trick, for the second visit, when all myster although this does sound a bit sav ies would be revealed. This second consultation featured the added kick age to me. j I again consulted my doctor. Yes, of six young interns peering solemnly venereal warts I had aplenty, caused between my legs, looking eager and by the same form of virus that taking notes on such highlights as produces warts on any other pari my , blue cervix. There was also a of the body. Most common during j smart-arse doctor who insisted on pregnancy, when the hormonal status dragging the interns off into huddles is altered — and women who use the on the otlter side of the room. Now, pill are also changing their hormonal I resent people ¡talking about my cunt balance. The usual treatment is to if I can’t hear what they’re saying, and paint them with a chemical, or if I told him so. He ignored this en they didn’t curl up and die at that, tirely, as well as my vigorous protests to burn them off with electro-surgery. at his decision to do in a trial wart with a bit of the ole silver nitrate, I paled. But there was more. I was also suffering from monilia or just to show the kids a top wartstrichomonas, maybe a bit of both. man in action. He seemed to use some He suggested I clear these up first, kind of metal instrument in order and then worry about the warts. To to snag the'lump, and only the lump, tha$ end, he again prescribed some with a drop of the fluid. “ Now, did that hurt?” he de goodies for me — two different tablets, Flagyl and Pimafucin, a bunch manded, and I was forced to admit of pessaries (insert two each night and that it hadn’t. He had won on wake up with yellow sloppy sheets). I points, and was now a little down took all these religiously but by this on me. “ You’d be a student then, would stage my complaints were so advanced that I was getting nervous — one, n’t you,” he said. “ No. About these warts, as I two weeks, still not clearing up. I returned to my doctor, mumbling say, a few seem to have gone away, about Expert Advice, and was re and I was wondering —” “ What did you have for dinner ferred to the gynaecology Outpatients department of the Royal Women’s last night?” “ Meat and two veg,” I lied. “ How Hospital. If you want to hear some fascinating gossip on every imagin come on, tell us about these warts.” “ You’re anaemic.” able female ill (a few are imagined), “ For God’s sake, I’m also covered trot along here, wait, and listen.
in nasty lumps, they’re what I want to know about!” “ Listen dear” he snarled, “ don’t worry about them. Why, lots of women have a few that they never even know about. Go and get dres sed.” I was fairly frantic. What, I de manded, could be done about mine if they stopped this gradual disap pearing act? “ Well, if you’re that worried about them” he said, a very nasty glint in his eye, “ we could always have them burnt off.” I went and got dressed. As it eventuated, this whole un pleasant scene was for nought. Over the next few weeks, I experienced a joy I had almost despaired of — the gradual reappearance of a' smooth, sweet, tender twat. For a few months after I’d get the odd W o or three or dozen whenever I suffered another attack of the faithful monilia or trike, which seemed to be im med iately after each period, but now this has settled into one small raw spot appearing at these times. Whether I have any permanent deep-seated residents I’m not sure, as I had never employed a regular mirror-inspection befote these troubles began, and so can’t be certain what the pre-wart me really looked like. I would like to suggest that all women take good hard looks at themselves, and often. Healthy genitals are always a joy to behold, your own or someone Ielse’s, and if any thing is amiss you’ll pick up on it pretty soon. It also helps to dispel any attacks of nerves when involved in internal examinations or other more intimate situations. If you know what’s going on down there, and are not,embarassed about it, you’re much less likely to be fazed by anyone else getting in close. Another excellent idea is to know a doctor, a good doctor, and to go to her/him regularly. It means that you have to pay your bills, but it’s worth it. As for venereal warts — mine even tually just faded away, but if you have to have them chemically swab bed, a doctor is able to do it far more efficiently and less painfully than the actual sufferer. And ob viously electro-surgery is not amateur territory. If you’re in doubt as to
who might actually be a half-way good medical person, ask around among your women friends, espec ially those who have been taking the pill for a long time. You will prob ably find that they, too, have suf fered and endured, and in the course of it all have found someone fairly reliable. Perhaps one of the worst aspects of this condition is the utter graceless ness of it all. One friend speaks of a sufferer standing in a corner at a party, discreetly clutching herself and thinking “ How will I ever meet a young man when I’ve got . . , Ven ereal Warts? Oh my God — he’s looking at me — he must know I’Ve g o t. . . Venereal Warts!” Indeed. Those who contract syphilis, say, or gonorrheoa, have at least the con solation of knowing that (heir’s is a dramatic affliction, diseases rolling
down through the ages with the weight of a world-changing history behind them. Or to temporarily ex cuse oneself from erotic activity on the grounds of an attack of monilia or trichomonas — these, uncomfort able as. they may be,, have a some what modernistic and infornied ring to them. The names are long and calm and the conversations that ensue can be educative and even entertaining, with no insults passed on either side. But to have someone refuse to fuck you because you’ve got a warty cunt — this is the ultimately snotty king-hell rabbit-killer to any bloom ing libido. What can you do? What can you say? Very little. Until the cursed things start to back off, you feel you stand alone with your in firmity before a pointing, laughing world.
other things he checked out — in flammation, a slight discharge tf* por tended no foul and fatal disease. I was so relieved at this news that I made a couple of mistakes. He told me what was wrong, and I paid scant notice; he prescribed a bunch of tablets and pessaries, which, I neg lected to take. A few weeks later, I was visiting Sydney with a new and accomplished friend. Our attraction had been im mediate and satisfying, and we were getting up each other an awful lot, when I began to notice that .it was getting a mite . . . painful. It felt as though my vaginal area was quickly and tortuously closing up — my God! a divine punishment for the debauched and sinful life I had led! I decided to have a bit of a peer with the aid of a mirror. Well boys, the sight I saw was truly one to shock and amaze. There were lumps, bumps and protuberances in every direction, inside, oiitside, and round the corner. My friend and I quickly decided to take our ailing genitals (his were somewhat on the raw side) to a medical man, and were recommended to a genial Indian GP in Balmain. Up on the table I went, legs wide. There was a moment’s stunned silence, then a clipped wail in the best sellers’ tone “ My good ness gracious me — you’ve got warts all over you!” And so was a name finally affixed to this least romantic of conditions, and I ’thank the Indian doctor for his frankness. However, I can’t quite bring myself to thank him for his remedy — a tiny bottle of liquid called silver nitrate, to be daubed on twice daily. I recommend the liberal use of this vicious concoc tion only to those with a kink for setting their loins ablaze and getting off on real genital agony, because that’s what this stuff provokes. The sensation has nothing to do with that glowing heat that accompanies or gasm; it’s pure bullet-biting nastiness. It works, sure, but personally I would rather couple with a toad than endure another amateur swabbing with silver nitrate. If you’ve ever had methylated spirits poured over an open wound, ypu’ll have a notion of what I mean. Unable to get my juicy young rocks off with my friend, in pain
Listening to the music behind Lord Kris
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B o Diddleyhaving a little both ways Where It All Began - Bo Diddley Chess CHLS 277 by Bruce Hanford Here is a record cover with a Doug Johnson painting on it. The painting portrays big fat Bo Diddley with his totem object, or trademark, which is a big square guitar. The painting is kinda psychedelic, Bo Diddley’s head is above the clouds, amongst the wavy, bent art deco skyscraper tops . . . and when we turn the shuck around, mother, we see that Bo Diddley’s feet are in the country, Which is full of stylized toy farm houses, plastic cows, and water melon slices. And we see that the countryside is flying apart, great black fissures of abyss are opening up, because Bo Diddley’s feet go down to solid rock! GET IT? Or . . isiirthat the very earth is flying apart? Have a little both ways. Bo Diddley is always hyped as the man who was playing rock ‘n roll when it was called Race Music, in the trade. His records are full of aggressively funky self-aggrand isement — the first track on this one, has a lady chorus honking bodiddley bodiddley bodiddley, and him singing the lyrics of “ I’ve Had It Hard” , and urging them to pour more on him. Bo Diddley’s lyrics have never
READERS’ R EC O R D R EVIEW S The Digger encourages readers reviews of anything of interest, particularly of records. We receive albums for review and pale at the thought, sometimes. The obligatory tour of each track, dropping all the names off the record sleeve, we find pretty uninteresting. And so it’s over to you, whatever record you’re inspired by will do, and if you nominate a few LPs off the list of Latest Australian Album Releases in this issue, we’ll mail your selection if we print the review. Please mark envelopes, “ Re cords.”
LATEST AUSTRALIAN ALBUM RELEASES DAVE MASON, Headkeeper (Blue Thumb) BRASS MONKEY, No Visible Means Of Support (Interfusion) MARTIN CARTHY, Selections (Transatlantic) FREDDIE KING Texas Cannonball (Shelter) LEON RUSSELL & MARC BENNO, Asylum Choir II (Shelter) JESSE, WOLFF & WHINGS, Jesse, Wolff & Whings (Shelter) STEPPENWOLF, Rest In Peace (Probe) THE GRASS ROOTS, Move Along (Probe) GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS, Standing Ovation (Tamla Motown) BUCK OWENS & HIS BUCKAROOS, Ruby (Capitol) SKYLARK, Skylark (Capitol) KEEF HARTLEY BAND, Seventy Second Brave (Deram) PATTO, Patto (Vertigo) PATTO, Hold Your Fire (Vertigo)
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The Digger
October 21 — November 4 displayed any of that four-years-ofcreative-lit sensitivity which has be come the common & staple of the new music industry. I was actually hoping it would be something as funny as “ Pills” on the Originator album. Instead it’s a long serve of Bo Diddley’s foursquare guitar, and what I suspect his sidemen consider a pretty far-out arrangement . . . a bit of reverb ■on the vocal, some organ-grinding . . . When your boss come around and say. . . That’s a bad trip That’s a bad trip When your woman’s messing around with another man That’s a helluva bad trip That’s a bad trip . . . I lost every thing I had That’s a bad trip In fact, Bo Diddley isn’t as funny on this album as I remember him. I didn’t begin to get it off again on him . until the first track of side two . . . Hey Jerome — What you doing living at your mother’s house? You 37 years old? Then such great routines as “Two Garbage Flies” came swarming back upon me. All right. Bo Diddley.
A letter to Unka Frank, M CP supreme Mothers — Live At The Fillmore — Reprise MS — 2042. What Kind o f Girl Did You Think I Was? 0, Mister Frank-The-Yank Zappa, you are my Favourite Male Chauvin ist Pig of 1970, 1971, and 1972. Because you do it with flair. And let’s face it, we’re all screwed in one way or another, but which of us is ready to show our glorioso, mon strous selves to the General Public? You, Honest Frank, you are. And you were in June 1971; when you construed and did perform Live A t The Fillmore East, with your oh-sogroovy band, The Mothers. I like the things you did to rock ‘n’ roll; I like the way you play your life out. Those rabid cosmopolitan rhy thms give me pneumonia, when they creep like guerrilla hot-rod slugs into mafiatic melody. I loathe you, be cause you’re a bigot, a smart-arse, and a dictator. I laugh at you be cause you’re funny about it. What’s more, you’ve convinced me you’re a genius, and not really mad at all. Now picture this . . . Chorus: “ MUDSHARR RK! ” Dialogue: (either Phlorescent Leech or Eddie): “That’s right! You heard right! The Secret Word for tonight is “ Mudshark Secret Word comes the Mudshark Arpeggio —” (Ian Underwood plays the Mudshark Arpeggio, on organ.) Dialogue: “ A marvellous little ar peggio! And now, the mating call of thé adult male Mudshark.” Chorus: (lovingly) “ Mah ah-ah-ah ah-ah Mud-shsh-shark . . .” Dialogue: “ The origins of The Mudshark are as follows . . . there’s a motel down in Seattle, Washington, called the Edgewater Inn. , “ The Edgewater Inn is built down on a pier . . . that means that when you look out in your back yard . . . you don’t see any dirt . . . there’s a bay out there or somethin’. And to make it even more interestin’ . . . in the lobby of the aforemen tioned motel there’s a bait an’ tackle shop . . . where the residents can go
down and, whenever they want, rent a fishing-pole . .'. and some preser ved minnows . . . and shlep back up to their rooms, open the window, stick their little poles outside, and within a few minutes . . . actually catch a fish of some sort, which they can bring into their room and do any thing they want with it, you know what I mean?” Chorus: “ Mud-sh-sh-shark . . .” Dialogue: “ Now in this bay there’s quite a variety o f . . . fish.” Chorus: “ Mud-sh-sh-shark . . .” Dialogue: “ Not only do they have Mudsharks up there, they have little octopuses you can catch . . . And all of these denizens of the deep .. .” Chorus: “ Mud-sh-sh-shark . . .” Dialogue: “ . . . come in real handy. Let’s say you were a travel ling rock ‘n’ roll band . . . ” Chorus (quivering): “ Mud-sh-shshark . . .” Dialogue: “ . . . called the Vanilla Fudge . . . And let’s say you checked into the Edgewater Inn with an eight millimetre movie camera . . . ” Chorus: “ Mud-sh-sh-shark .. .!” Dialogue: “ . . . enough money to rent a pole, and, to make it more interesting . . .” Ah Gee, Frank, why goon? You know the rest. All I can say, is that “ The Mudshark” is one of those few songs you hear . . . that you just know — for positive — you could not have done better yourself. I always knew Ian Underwood was O.K. since he Whipped It Out on that sax on Uncle Meat; but key boards, winds and vocals? I never knew anyone could say so much with out opening his mouth. I wish (no I don’t) I could say the same for Volman and Kaylan, (or should I say Phlorescent Leech and Eddie); where did you get those guys? The Theatre of the Criminally Insane maybe? Or, worse still, the Turtles? Still, there’s plenty to distract a nice girl like me from all that scary Latex Solar Beef stuff . . . e.g. Aynsley “ Rattlesnake” Dunbar, who, (along with Barriemore Barlow), plays some of the most awesomely aware drumming I’ve ever heard . . . and despite making out like crazy, never plays a roll, or even a beat too many . . . And Bob Harris, creaming out keyboards with Underwood; and Jim Pons, who perhaps should marry Aynsley, because his bass gets on so well with the drumming . . . Don Preston, (as well as having a few; tales to tell), really sounds bizarre with that squealing Mini-Moog synthetic thing in your “ Lonesome Electric Turnkey” —“ Peaches En Regalia” part of the encore, too. And Frankie, this album has the best mess of vocal chords I ever heard. Six voices, five singers. I thought that kind of thing was only supposed to go on in operas, not in reamy, steamy, rock ‘n’ roll concerts at the Fillmore. And can’t you just see what Rolling Stone would say? “ . . . Zappa has done it again. Utilizing the varied talents of the sauce of America’s rock musicians, Zappa, (who may even be a genius), performs one forty-five minute stream of vocal/instrumental harrassment, incorporating twelve com positions — which themselves enfold anything up to seven or eight separ ate parts . . . mind-boggling social implications . . . complex, inter twining rhythms . .. automatic tonal gearchanges . . . This album comm emorates Zappa’s switch of emphasis from instrumental technique to brazen social comment, through use of multi vocals and theatricality . . . ” Shit, I never understood all that stuff. All I know, my Catch-MeIf-You-Can, golden-fingered, Pop Star of a man, is that when you play me “ Happy Together” , I’d . . . I’d W, . Yours sincerely, Jenny Brown
Sliding down the aisles at W ank Palace
Saint M orrison; Physeptone, or the harder stuff by Robert Adamson One night I ran away from home. It was in my pale blue ‘69 Holden, before it had a radio. I can’t remem ber exactly why I did it: probably had something to do with the inces sant complaints directed at me by my housemates. They had some in explicable aversion to Dylan’s voice, rising up and Sounding past the dawn. Anyway I drove aimlessly around the block until I came upon a house where Dylan — or even the Fugs, anything really — could be heard at a volume of a Sounding capacity. (We’ve all read, or imagined we’ve read, the last chapter of The Ticket That Exploded.) I remembered The Job. I sat in a far comer waiting for my chance to slip some Dylan onto the turntable. I needed a blast, a fix pretty badly. But on this fateful day the chance didn’t come to me. I was starting to feel hostile towards the music in the air; maybe even aggressive about the people com manding the sound gear. It was getting rough. I needed to be on the D-Train; Song to Woody, Leon’s hyped-up hard rain even PP&M doing Blowin’ in The Wind. ‘The Weight’ was too much to hope for. I started reading the odd parable on sleeves of old Dylan albums, Taran tu lar, yellow ish Rolling Stone interviews, photo copies of Sing-Out: nothing worked. At this stage I realized I was into withdrawing, muttering about how ‘nobody feels any pain’ etc . . . Joanie was singing ‘The night they drove old dixie down’ . . . I was down, listening. Slowing sucking in every whine, then desperately hang ing onto every pure word. The thing came to an end, I was about to do something that junkies usually do, something corny: like foam from the ears, rave on about my habit tell ‘em all. But then this peculiar sound came straight at me like a cannon ball, straight from the twin Magnavox. A strong high voice, clean, every phrase enunciated with perfect luc idity. Music tight and melodic. Yes, amazingly, the music was there behind the Voice. It was the Voice that soothed me at first — then
Van Morrison: wild images o f Customlines and gypsies. whole meanings fell into context, ‘as we sail into the mystic’ usually not my bag at all. Same old San Fran post zen junk. There was something different, the Voice seemed to bel ieve in what it uttered, word by word. The other side came up, the first track passed just like a good beat; then with the second band a line flew out at a thousand miles per second ‘I dreamed you payed my dues in Canada’ then more ‘My back was up against the wall . .’ I was off, away into this song: . . . ‘and Ray Charles was shot down, but he got up to do his best/Crowd of people gathered round/to the Ques tion, answered: yes . . .’ There was no doubt now this was the real thing . . . I headed for there right
Deighton: Old Chap or Great Gonzo? The above piece of kaliedoscopic purple prose is part of just one of many ecstatic reviews reprinted as a prologue to the paperback edition ‘This book uses every syllable of of Len Deighton’s war-is-hell novel its bulk to great effect . . . I n Bomber. Tolstoy and Balzac?! ‘—im the scope of it’s pity and it’s hard paled on a single spear of homicidal stare at the nuts and bolts of wrath!! Book reviewers! Sometimes I doom, the details of our elaborate wonder what a few of these guys folly and anguish, the peaks and are smoking . . . or dropping. It gulfs of our conditions it brings must be something else again. both Tolstoy and Balzac to mind. First off I’d like to say that And in our own century it will Deighton is not a reincarnated schiz be linked with Irwin Sharis THE oid, he’s neither Tolstoy nor Balzac. YOUNG LIONS in which, too, And, as for men being called from men are called from various des various destinies and places to be tinies and places to be impaled on impaled on a single spear of homic a single spear of homicidal wrath.’ idal wrath . . . well hell, why didn’t —Gwyn Thomas, The Western Mail. he call it the fickle finger of fate
Bomber — by Len Deighton. Reviewed by Alan Ferguson
have finally found something they have in common
MONIQUE loves her work COLOR R. cont. from 10.00am Sunday cont. from 1.30pm STAR A D U LT CINEMA 34B Elizabeth Street * * *
C A R N E Y - Leon Russell SHE 717 *L E O N RUSSELL & The Shelter People — SHE 705 *L E O N R U S S E L L —SHE 707 *A S Y L U M CHO IR — Leon Russell & Marc Benno SHE 708 ^ N A T U R A L L Y — JJ. Cale SHE 712 *JESSE, W OLFF & W H IN G S -S H E 713 *W ILLIS ALA N RAM SAY - SHE 715 *G E T T IN G R EA D Y - Freddie King SHE 706 *T E X A S CAN N O N B A LL - Freddie King SHE 714.
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“Monique” at the Star Adult Cinema, No director, and cast but that of Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. course isn’t the point. “ R” Certif icate is the operative censorship clas by Colin Maxwell Talbot sification, and for windy days, con A cold, blustery Melbourne day. tinuous session is the medium. The wind is whipping the hems of - Now the thing about continuous the maxi skirts and mackintoshes session is that it doesn’t m atter and pushing rain into people’s faces. when you enter or when you leave, In Bourke Street there’s a yellow because you haven’t come to watch bin and in this bin is today’s Sun, a plot. What you’ve come to see is a little scrunched up perhaps but a tit and bum show with maybe a bit of crutch and some bodily con nevertheless readable. Being careful not to be observed tact if your luck is in. Usually the you turn to the entertainment guide idea is not to have women walking and there, tucked away between around with nothing on, because “ Godspell” and the “ Red Garter” is that takes the voyeurism out of it. a one-inch advert for the Star Adult For chrissake you’ve got to have the women dressed in sweaters/frilCinema. ‘ led pants/leather/black fish-net stock A continuous session. It’s not easy to find adverts for ings, which are preferably ripped off the Star. They are especially hard by the marauding male. But that was to locate in the Age, possibly be in yesterday’s paper. Everyone knows. With a continuous session if you cause they are not there, likewise in Truth. But in the Herald and the blend in well with the scenery, you Sun you can usually dig them up can in theory stay in the theatre all day and see the same flashes maybe after a reasonable scrute. a dozen times. Some do. This one says: ♦ * * Bill & Jean
away, I knew exactly what to do. ‘ . . . I dreamed we were playing cards in the dark/wasn’t very hard to do . . .’ Was this my ‘physeptone’, an antidote? (I had to kick my habit fast, Dylan hadn’t done anything for over a year, and nothing in sight. I’d shot up the last track on StageFright. ‘The Rumor’ dwindling in my veins; soon there’d be nothing left, an empty stylus — skeleton keys in my brain.) I listened hard and finally reached over for the record cover. Van was no Dylan as far as looks, wasn’t even an American; and most disturbing of all — didn’t even write parables on his record sleeve.. His material was good stuff though: wild images of Customlines, gypsies
etc . . . but there it was — the image of all pop images: The Radio. He sang ‘ . . , lala la la lee le lar la turn it up, la la la turn it up, turn it up . . . that’s enough.’ Then around to the final track on the first side, and as I ‘sailed into the mystic’ I was taken along on waves of sex, drums, guitar electric, acoustic . . . strange horns, until I was thrown onto the rocks of the last line ; . . ‘too late to stop . . . ’ Too late to stop. Well, it’s been a long and harrowing journey, but with the help of four of Van’s L.P.s I’ve almost kicked D. Maybe there’ll be contra-indications? Anyone notice that Van was singing and writing with Jamie Robbie Robinson on Cahoots? O Belfast Cowboy, I wanna roo you.
and be done with it? Bomber is a book about war. i.e. one bombing raid over Germany in WW2. It’s war without the over charged emotions, that first-hand experience brings with paranoid blubberings into print. It’s not one of those satirically black-funny war books written by some cynic with a chip on his shoulder. Bomber tells you straight, exactly what it’s all about. Unfortunately this book will not be read by many of those in on the counter culture thing. It’s got that establishment feel to it . . . brings both Paul Brickhill and Richard Pape to mind. (Thank you Gwyn Thomas, The Western Mail) At first glance Deighton’s writing and point of view are very ‘Old Chap’ . . . even a little heavy. Get right into it though and Bomber grabs you by the balls and swings you round the room. This book deals in realities. The accurate
kind. There are no superheroes. Acts of so-called bravery are made by men because — (a)They’re shit scared, (b)they want to get home alive, (c)they’re high (Booze and benzedrine)or (d)they’re insane. Then again, if you’re into tech nical detail; like how a Junkers 88 nightfighter j destroys a Lancester bomber, the depth of the indentation in the ground, made by a man falling alive, 14,000 feet from an aircraft, or the effect of saturation bombing on a small-size city. You’ll find them all plus many others in Bomber. Like I said, this book is even a little heavy and it’s not Vietnam or the Middle East — fashionable places, to write about nowadays — where they play around with better ways to kill people. But then, Len Deighton always did have a liking for taking the piss out of swinging things. Look what he did to James Bond with The Ipcress File. ____________ '
ing up McLeay street watching every body watching everybody else wat ching everybody else, decided to slope into this theatre and relax. We are led into the darkness, and a musky smell pervades. Something like being in a wholesale fish market at midnight. Down the aisle we are taken and on the screen “ The Touch ables” are touching each other up. There is a rustling like a thousand cicadas are about to take off, and we seem to slip down the aisles on some smooth sticky substance. The usherette sushers us along a row The Star Adult Cinema, some where we see two vacant seats. We times known as the Star Masturbat- arrive. orium, sometimes as the Star Wank But Tank, is reminiscent of that little Suddenly theatre in McLeay Street, Kings Goddamn . . | Cross. This one is upstairs and it’s A bright scene causes the theatre the sort of dump you wouldn’t want to light up, and there we stand. to be seen walking into unless Marlon Two vacant seats in the hall and Branflakes was starring in a re-screen the rest is absolutely chocker with ing of The Wild One and this was single men in long raincoats and the only theatre showing it. Other hats on their laps. And they are wise you walk in with a lady, if like all climaxing, or at least in the my good self, you are of the male heat of the moment it seemed so. Barry Humphries’ line from “ A variety, so you can see Marylin Richard starring in The Touchables Load of Olde Stuffe” comes home— without the whole world thinking about the man sitting in the picture you are going in for a subtle tug. Be theatre next to Edna — “ If you want cause it is important to some people to it, it’s under the hat!” know that the whole world is not We quickly leave. thinking you are walking into a * * * theatre because you are deficient in the department of the willingness Mackintoshes and caps on sale at the door. Gloves for hire. Gondolier of a woman/any other to get it on. That’s what society does to people. leaves for row seven in two minutes. • Anyway it happened that a young Floating on a sea o f sprog. * * * lady and myself, being sick of walk
The film before Monique was called Nude Paradise. This was on two months ago with a “ reveals all” banner but it was only rated “ M” . Everyone knows that “M” films are pretty tame. So we didn’t go. We also missed The Sexy Dozen rated “ R” , . Bedroom Mazurka rated “ R” and Dagmar’s Hotpants rated “ R” . Still, everything seems to be rated “ R” these days, and you’ve got to be a bit choosey about your hard-on material. * * *
The Star Wank Palace is a longway downstairs. Walking into it, you get the feeling you are heading into a public urinal for a bit of relief, a desire which is not out of the ques tion at the Star. Of course one is much too busy trying to avoid being noticed entering to worry about things like that. You pay $1.60 to the lady while making out you are surprised at what is on because you thought it was maybe a newsreel theatre, or a conference on public morals, and then enter. Inside it’s small. So is the screen. There are about 50 people in here. Apart from my lanky wanky compan ion (who says he thought it was an art movie) everyone bar the usher ette, myself and one old lady, is male over-40. The patrons sit one seat apart from each other. Shortly after each titillating (presumably) piece is flashed, there is a rush for the door marked “toilets” by a num ber of patrons. Leon Uris should have been there. And the plot? Monique is an au pair girl who moves into Bill and Jean’s house to look after the tots. She fucks Bill, she fucks Jean, she doesn’t fuck the kids. Bill finds her fucking Jean. Bill, Jean and Monique fuck together. A suburban orgy. One couldn’t help noting the large amount of rustling from one section of the audience when the two small children were shown taking a bath naked. Guess it’s their trip . . . . . So we leave.
October 21 — November 4
The Digger
Supplement I
MELBOURNE FLYER Midcity V: JButterflies Are Free. 200 Bourke St Odeon: Frenzy, 283 Bourke St Rivoli I: Garden of Finzi-Continis Rivoli II: Just Before Nightfall Rapallo: A Man Called Horse & Little Big Man Star: Monique Swanston: The Candidate, 125 Swanston St Roma: Bedroom Mazurka, 255 Bourke St Times: The Body Trak: Macbeth — Coming 2001 (wow!) 445 Toorak Rd.
Films The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (Capitol) A Man Called Horse (Rapallo) Blushing Charlie (Dendy Brighton— Butterflies Are Free (Midqity 5) Bedroom Mazurka (Roma) Bedazzled (Atheneum) The Body (Times) The Bookseller Who Gave Up Bathing (Eastend 3) Billy Jack (Australia 1) The Bride Wore Black (Dendy Malvern) Clockwork Orange (Eastern! 1) The Charade (Dendy Malvern) Cabaret (Mdcity 1) The Candidate (Swanston) Dr. Fibes Rises Again & Dracula ‘72 (Albany) Decameron (Eastend 2) Frenzy (Odeon) Fiddler On The Roof (Midcity 2) The Godfather (Barclay & Chelsea) The Garden of Finzi-Continis (Rivoli 1) Gone With The Wind (Metro) Joe Kid (Forum) Just Before Nightfall (Rivoli 2) Little Big Man (Rapallo) Last Picture Show (Australia 2) Monique (Star) Macbeth (Trak) Thè New Centurions (Midcity 3) Ryan’s Daughter (Balwyn & Cinema North) Running Scared - watch for Rentadick (Forum) Summer of ‘42 (Australia 1) Sabata (Esquire) They Shoot Horses Don’t They (Atheneum) What’s Up Doc (Bercy) ZPG (Midcity 4)
Film Societies Membership in a film society means you get to see more movies for less money. And if you take an active part in the society, you’ll get to see the films you want to see, instead of the films the big chains want to shbw you. Film societies can only admit members, so you need to join. Here are the addresses of some reasonably societies in being. Check them out — if none suit your particular taste, find some friends and start one of your own. We’ll help if you want to list it. Membership is available to the public
Cinemas Albany: Dr. Fibes Rises Again Atheneum: They Shoot Horses Don’t they & Bedazzled Australia I: Summer of ‘42 & Billy Jack Australia II: Last Picture Show Balwyn: Ryans Daughter Bercy: What’s Ud D oc Barclay : The Godfather Capitol: Adventures of Barry McKenzie Chelsea: The Godfather Cihema North: Ryan’s Daughter Dendy Malvern: The Charade & The Bride Wore Black Dendy Brighton: Blushing Charlie Eastend I: Clockwork Orange, 100 Bourke St Eastend II; Decameron 100 Bourke St Eastend III: The Bookseller Who Gave Up Cathing, 100 Bourke St Esquire: Sabata, 238 Bourke St Forum: Joe Kid & Running Scared 154 Flinders St . Metro: Gone with the Wind Midcity I: Cabaret, 140 Bourke St Midcity II: Fiddler On The Roof, 140 Bourke St Midcity III: New Centurions, 140 Bourke St Midcity IV: ZPG, 200 Bourke St
A U S T R A L I A N
Adult Education Association Film Group: 251 Princes St. Pt. Melbourne. Australian Hungarian Film Society 110 Riversdale Rd, Hawthorn Balaclava Film Society: C/- FI. 3, 78 Hotham St. East St.Kilda Beaumaris Film Society: C/- No. 8 Timms St. Cheltenham Blackburn/ Mitcham Film Society: C/- 56 Lucknow St. Mitcham Box Hill City Film Society: 17 Salis bury St. Mont Albert Camberwell Film Society: C/- 222 Belmore Rd, Balwyn Catholic Film Society: C/- 15 Howard St. Greeiisborough. Caufield Film Society: C/r 2 Harlington St. Elstemwick Coburg Film Society: C/- 45 Royal Pde.. Pasco Vale Croydon Film Society: C/- 4 Stanley Gve. Canterbury Eltham Film Society: C/- P.O. Box 152 Eltham Fitzroy Film Society: €/- P.O. Box 168 Fitzroy .IVanhoe Film Society: Q/- 32 Lucerne Cres. Alphington Melbourne Film Society: C/- 53 Cardigan St. Carlton Mordialloc Film Society: C/- 14 St. Cuthberts Ave. Dingley Moving Clickers Film Society: C/- 8 Glover St. Sth. Melb. Northcote Film Society: C/- 147 Collins St. Thombury Oakleigh Film Society:
C/- 5 Westbrook St. Chadstone Frankston Film Society: , 5 Westbrook St. Chadfetone Surrey Film Society (Canterbury): FI. 3, 15 St. Leonards Crt. Sth. Yarra 314 Film Society: Cl- C.S.I.R.O., 314 Albert St. East. Melb. University Film Group: C/- 241 Peel St. North Melbourne.
think, you need to be admitted ask him for advice oh whtfre you should go for help.
Help!
If you do go into hospital make sure you apply for sickness benefits from the govern ment. The Social Worker at the hospital will help you do this.
Psychiatry You have a hang-up. It’s too heavy to han dle. You decide — presumably because all other psychic support systems don’t appeal — to seek psychiatric aid. Here’s how.
Melbourne Filmmakers Co-op Sunday 22: Collectionf rom Sydney Filmmaker Paul Winkler includes, ‘Neurosis’, ‘Scars’ and others. Oct. 26 & 29: Sydney Filmmaker Peter Kingston introduces collection of his films plus ‘Jam on His Face’ record of the battle of film and paint, guided by Bret Whitley monitored by Peter Kingston. Plus: ‘Dr. Kingston’s Case Book’ more disturbing than any other horror movie, and ‘In Search of Leichhardt.’ November 2: Collection of films by Melbourne Filmmaker Peter Tanner, includes ‘The Curse of Laradjongran’. Melbourne Uni Union Theatre Oct. 21: ‘Viridiana’ by Buñuel. Oct. 2 4 -2 8 : Ballet Victoria. Wed. - Sat. 8.15pm. Vincent Film Library The t Vincent Library contains all films com pleted under the experimental Film and Tele vision Fund and some Australian Film Award winning films. These films are available for hire and a catalogue may be obtained for one dollar from the Vincent Library, P.O. Box 165, Carlton South, Vic.
Theatres La Mama ‘The War Is Over’ by Kris Hemensley. Starts Oct. 20. 9pm Friday, Sat. & Sun. Her Majesty’s Theatre ‘No, No Nanette’. 8.15 nightly. Last perfor mance Cyd Charisse - Nov. 4. Playbox Theatre ‘Godspell’, Mon—Thurs. 8.30pm. Frid, Sat, 5.40 & 8.30pm. Comedy Theatre ‘The Mating Season’ with Sid James St. Martin’s Theatre Starting Oct. 25. ‘Birds On The Wing’. By Peter Yeldham. Week nights 8.15; Sat, 8.30; Sun. 2.30. Claremont Theatre ‘Flash Jim Vaux’ Thurs. through Sun 8.30pm a colonial Australian musical — til Nov. 19. Russell Street Theatre A Totich of the Poet’ by Eugene O’Neill. Oct. 24—Nov. 18. Melbourne Üni Guild Theatre ‘The Boys In The Band’ November 15—19. Pram Factory Joss Adams by Alma De Groen. ‘He Can Even Swagger Sitting Down’, on George Wallace by John Romerill.
Emergencies: Phone Personal Emergency Ser-, vice on 41-5678. Other Things of Interest Clinic of the Victorian College of Optometry: I 374 Cardigan St., Carlton 3053, Phone: 347-2166; 347-2490. Provides optometry services for those un able to afford normal fees. Free eye examination for those on social service pensions, their dependents and any one else who can show they cannot afford normal fees. Reading glasses cost $10 to $13.
Private Psychiatrists You need not necessarily be put off by the cost. If you are thinking of going to a private psychiatrist, the first thing to do is join H.B.A. or some other medical bene fits association. If you are hard-up ask the psychiatrist to lower his fee — many will do this if you really can’t pay (but you must be in HBA) Remember the first visit always costs more than later visits (you get a bigger HBA refund too). At the moment, because of the HBA re fund system, it may work out cheaper to have individual therapy than group therapy. To arrange to see a private psychiatrist you can get a local doctor to refer you or phone the psychiatrist’s office and ask for an appointment. If you phone the psychiat rist direct, you should still get a referral notice from a local doctor — you need it to get the maximum refund from HBA. Private psychiatrists are heavily booked — you may have to wait up to six months for your first appointment. The hardest part is choosing the right psy chiatrist. Seek advice from a sympathetic doctor or social work agency (if a student — ask your student counsellor). If you’re not satisfied with the psychiatrist, try another one — but give the man/woman a chance; first impressions can be misleading. It is. quite useless to keep changing from one psychiat rist to another all the time.
VENEREAL DISEASE Health Department, 136 Gertrude St. Fitzroy. If under 16 years, you must be accompanied by a parent/guardian or have written consent. Various hours for men and women on week days. Tel: 411954. For women and girls only — Queen Victoria Hospital, Tel: 666046 and Royal Women’s Hospital, Tel: 340951. Note: There are a lot of things going around that produce sore genitals besides syphillis and gonorrhoea, but government clinics seem best at diagnosing and treating the traditional diseases. However, everybody ought to get over this bashfulness about going down to VD clinic every so often. There are the usual ethical reasons — why share an ill with people you like; But beyond that, The Digger recommends Vd clinics as entertain ment: they are usually friendly, reasonably efficient places, and |h e staff make great jokes. One micropathologist we know tells such good ones that it’s a pleasure to repeat them, when you’re conferring with your friends about the results.
Out-patient Clinics Psychiatric services are provided by Men tal Health Authority clinics and the psychiat ric units of large general hospitals. These ser vices cost little or nothing. Most people are seen as out-patients (i.e. you don’t actually live in). Get your local doctor to refer you. Malvern Clinic, 321 Glenferrie Road, Malvern, 3144. Phone: 20-1520. Observatory Clinic, Birdwood Ave., Sth. Yarra 3141. Phone 63-7621. Prince Henry’s Hospital, St. Kilda Rd., Mel bourne. Phone 62-0621. Bouverie Clinic (for children): 233 Bouverie St., Carlton. Phone 34-1720.
BOOZE AND DOPE Alcoholism Clinic: St. Vincent’s Hospital, Victoria Prde Fitzroy Handles medical and social problems resulting from alcohol. Tele: 410221 ext. 704. Alexandra Clinic: 6 Alexandra Pde Fitzroy offers treatment for alcoholics. Tele: 415738
Hospitals If you feel you are not coping to the extent that you want to go into hospital for a while, Larundel is probably the best and most friendly psych, hospital in Melbourne. Larundel Psychiatric Hospital, Plenty Rd., Bundoora. Phone 467-2911. Again get your local doctor to refer you, or if necessary, go out and see the admitting doctor. If the doctor at the hospital doesn’t
Alcoholics Anonymous: 104 Wellington Pde, East Melbourne where alcoholics get together to discuss mutual problems. Tele: 415384/5385. Bouyancy Foundation of Victoria: 236 Drummond Street, Carlton. Offers O.D. assistance, treatment and research into drug dependence. Tele: 347-5166/5323.
Melbourne:
Azteqsi Carson, Gerry’s Joy Band, Chain, Friends, Highway, Coloured Balls, Langford Lever, Talabene.
Interstate: BOOKINGS FOR AUSTRALIA’S TOP GROUPS PHONE: 51-0661
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No. 1 Spring St. City 63-2513 Saturday 21st: SESSION, JADE, GARY YOUNG’S HOT DOG Sunday 22nd: MATT TAYLOR PHIL MANNING & TALABENE, SESSION Saturday 28th: FAT ALROY, JADE, SESSION, DOODIE, SCOTT PILKINGTON, STRIPPER Sunday 29th: WOLFE, BLACKFEATHER
stripes 355 Exhibition St. City
Sat 21: GARY YOUNG’S HOT DOG; MATT TAYLOR Fri 17: JADE, LA DE DAS Sat 28: WINCHESTER; LA DE DAS Fri 3:. MADDER LAKE; CARSON
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Sat. 21: Middle Earth, Miss Universe, Carson Sun. 22: Carson, Dutch Tilders Wed 25: Country night with John Graham Thur 26:. Musos Night with Friends Fri 27: Wolfe (N .Z .), Friends Sat 28: Tank, Madder Lake, Blackfeather Sun 29: Carson, Dutch Tilders Wed I : Country Night, John Graham Thur 2: Musos Night with Friends ADM ISSIO N WED THUR FRI $AT SUN
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The Digger
Supplement II
October 21 — November 4
jlgKgBb]MELBOURNE FLYER
H urley’s not jaded, but the W ild O ne is dead Place: Preston Town Hall Date: Friday, 13th October Occassion: 3XY Concert: Johnny O’Keefe’s 20th Anniversary It was Six O’Clock and the place was a‘reelin’ and a’rockin’. Back to those blissful pre-Beatle difys when rock and roll meant white socks and a duck ta il. . . well, almost. Preston Town Hall was rocking to the sounds of Jade Hurley, Ray Hoff and the Offbeats, Bobbie and Laurie and Johnny O’Keefe. Back in those days, the cool kids played at being jazzers because there is nothing cool about rock and roll. “ I wanna hear you stamp those feet.” “ I said, I wanna hear you stamp those feet.” And pretty soon the whole hall was stampin’. But this was last Friday night and it was Jade Hurley, now aged 30, showing today’s kids how the old time rockers really got it on. “ D’ya wanna hear ‘D’ya Wanna Dance!?” There was a flicker of recognition downthe front. Hadn’t the Tremeloes had that out at some time in the dim dark past? “ Well, thisis the Bobby Freeman version.” The original and the greatest. Wearing tight white pants, white skivvy and conservative double-breasted navy blue jacket, Jade Hurley attacked the piano and won an audience of which the majority was un born in 1956. Half sitting, half dancing at the piano, his pelvis thrust towards the audience, he singled out young girls (most of whom were yet to face the trauma of their first period) and with those long calculated stares made them feel something they had never felt before. It could have been ‘59 because for Jade Hurley it still works. “ The greatest thing for kids would be for the rock and roll era to come back . . . there are so m a i y great artists working around clubs.” But ilade is not one of them. He plays occasion ally to country audiences and Friday night was his first big gig for six years. Hurley lives in Deniliquin now with his wife and five year old child and earns his living as the Assistant-man ager of Radio 2QN. The chance to appear with Johnny O’Keefe, the King of Australian rock, at his 20th Anniversary Show was too good for Jade to miss. He was proud to be on the same bill as O’Keefe who he sees as the greatest of .Australia’s few surviving links with his musical past. Jade rejects the music which came out of the late 60’s in the hope that his sort of music will take off again. He is living in a dream of the rock past however, on stage he makes it work for everyone. “ Let’s start the rock and roll revival right here at Preston tonight.” For awhile it seemed possible but when Hurley left the stage he took that dream with him.
Compere for the evening, Stan the Man, the ■Rocky Jockey of the fifties,meant nothing more than 3XY to the children in the audience. Among the 1200 present a few remembered, like the Mum who had dragged 15 year old Neil along because she wanted to see Johnny, but was too scared to brave it alone. For Rofe it was a night of nostalgia — back on his home ground with all the old artists, his hair slicked back, using the old patter on the only thing in the hall that was new— the aud ience. For them the nostalgia could not work. They had come to see the legend O’Keefe and except for him, Bobby and Laurie were the only artists with a place in their past. “ Do you want to hear another song from Jade?” “ Yeah. His last one.” Name? They could not remember because the song was new to them and Jade Hurley threw himself back into the Diamonds’ “ Walk ing Along.” There was no need for Jade Hurley to plaster his hair back the way Stan Rofe did — his hair has never come forward. following Jade Jurley came Ray Hoff and his Offbeats who may have been there when it all happened, but haven’t been back there since. With long hair and checkered suit the image and music was ‘72. Bobby and Laurie brought a tear to a young girl’s eye as she remembered the gonk-throwing days of the Go Show that she had watched when she was just a kid. For the first time in the even ing the kids knew the words and could shout requests. In spite of the promoters’ efforts to recreate the atmosphere of the late fifties, the kids were more interested in reliving the mid sixties. Bobby and Laurie gave them what they really wanted, obviously happy to be playing together again for just one night. “ How can there be a rock and roll revival when rock never died? It’s all rock, isn’t it?”
It may be nice to have a record top of the charts after all these years, but once you have been King you don’t need it; or if you cb, you have forgotten how to show it. Why look the little girls straight in the eye when girls like that have had your photo staring down at them from their walls for years? Why be a person when you can remain a myth? Flash clothes, a touch of mock humility (Liberace-type bows), a bit of class . . . they all add up to being a star. But it did not really work like that on Friday night. Johnny may have had his twentieth anniversary in Show-Biz, but his coming of age at twenty-one might be his un doing. The songs were great, and they were all there. From ‘Over the Mountain’ to ‘Shout’, from ‘She Wears My Ring’ to ‘Ooh Poo Pah Doo’ (it even made you forget Thorpie’s version) and a couple of newies were thrown in for good measure. The voice still hits every note it wants. Just close your eyes and you’re back in the days of 6 O’Clock Rock. But that was it. Who wnats to close his eyes at a live concert? You can listen to a record at home with your eyes open. Johnny is old and though he may have reached the audience in the closing stages, he lost them quickly and probably forever as he left the stage. No more cries of ‘We want Johnny.’ Perhaps you would have to be naive to ex pect Johnny O’Keefe to be unchanged after 10 years, but then you would have to be naive to have gone to the Preston Town Hall on Friday night anyway. By Margaret Macintyre and Julie Foster
MADNESS Anyone who has a psychiatric problem can seek a referral from a local doctor. The doc may be able to direct you to someone who can assist. Not all GPs are sold on psy chiatry, however. The Mental Health Authority: is responsible for diagnosis, treatment and care of the mentally ill. Out-patients clinic, sheltered workshops, training centre, long or short term psychiatric hospitals. A Government agency, which receives mixed reviews. If you figure its an emergency, telephone Personal Emergency Advice Service at 415678.
Easy Rider Wed 25th: Clydehouse Thur 26: Blackfeather Wed 1: Clydehouse Thur 2: Carson Iceland Sun 22: Co. Caine Garrison Sat. 21: Middle Earth; Miss Universe, Carson Sun 22: Carson, Dutch Tilders Wed 25: Country Night with John Graham Thur 26: Musos night with Friends Fri 27: Wolfe (N.Z.), Friends Sat 28: Tank; Madder lake, Blackfeather Sun 29: Carson, Dutch Tilders Wed 1: Country Night, John Graham Thur 2: Musos Night with Friends.; Q Club Sat 21: Carson, Capt. Matchbox, Fat Alroy Sat 28: Matt Taylor & Talabene, Session, Wolfe. Berties Sat 21 Session, Jade, Garry Young’s Hot‘Dog Sun 22: Matt Taylor, Phil Manning’s Talabene, Session Sat 28: Fat Alroy, Jade; Session, Doody Scott Pilkington (stripper) Sun 29: Wolfe, Blackfeather
Pubs
Day Nurseries: Broadmeadows: 415 Camp Rd. 3093388 Flemington, Debney’s Park, Nt. Alexander Rd, 334629 Melbourne: 275 Exhibition St. 6621782 North Melbourne: 28 Howard St 301592 Prahran: 19 Princes St, 511633 Preston: 260 Gower St. 4781088 South Melbourne: 314 Coventry St 696111; St Kilda: Chapel St, 940251
The Abortion Law Repeal Association offers:—
pregnancy counselling
Discos
Sebastians Sat 21: Gary Young’s Hot Dog; Matt Taylor Fri 27: Jade, La De Das Sat. 28: Matt Taylor, Miss Universe Fri 3: Madder Lake, Blackfeather
Help! The Victorian Council of Social Service is at — 107 Russell Street, Melbourne. Phone 63-9769. Contact them if in need of information about any Social Services. Watch this page for details about their lectures (held frequently).
The conflicting purposes of Rofe and the audience were more apparent by now and the cries of “ We want Johnny” were cries of exas peration rather than of eager anticipation. Af ter a rather raucous but powerful rendition of “ Me and Bobbie McGee” from Margaret McClaren, a member of Stuart Park, Johnny’s backing group, the King appeared . . . If you had missed Johnny in his round of the pubs in the last few years; if you had never dropped in and seen him at a cabaret, you might have been surprised to see Australia’s King of Rock, our own “ Wild One” , appear in his double-breated off-white suit with heavily embroidered lapels, red shirt with flashy cufflinks and two inch heel boots. Throughout the performance his shirt remained unruffled; his Rinso-white bow-tie moved not a fraction. The Mild One.
Housing: Metropolitan Fair Rents Board. (Rental In vestigation Bureau): 435 La Trobe St., Mel bourne deals with excessive rent complaints, or problems with conditions and can proceed against landlords. Tel: 600361. Note: Fair Rents is, in our experience, a fair dinkum service. They are not a PR agency for landlords: however, they are more likely to make the landlord fix the place up than get hip to drop the rent. Often, mentioning Fair Rents is a good negotiating tactic.
A ll the possible alternatives can be discussed
In Melbourne, ring 94-1630 or 94-1540, between 7.30 pm and 9.0 pm, Monday through Friday. The organizers hope to announce a weekend service, soon. The AB O R TIO N LAW REFO RM ASSOCIATION postal address: P.O. Box 135, Carlton 3053, Vic.
STARVING If you’re actually without the means to buy a feed, there are some places that will give you food. They are located in A’Beckett St., and off Lonsdale St., in the city, above Exhibition Gardens in Carlton, in Fleming ton Rd., and in Brunswick St., Fitzroy. For precise details of the service (you must be punctual) ask someone who looks like they use these services regularly. FAMILY PLANNING
Catholic Family Planning Centre: 21 Brunswick St. Fitzroy (for ovulation method only) Tel: 417479. Brotherhood of St. Laurence: 75 Brunswick St. Fitzroy. Tel: 414155. Family Planning Association: 509 Collins St. Melbourne. Tel: 612108 Queen Elizabeth Hospital: 96 Keppel St. Carlton. Tel: 3471374. Queen Victoria Hospital: 172 Lonsdale St Melbourne. Tel: 666046 ext. 509/510. CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING Gay Liberation Front Box No. 85, Union Bldg, Melbourne Uni.
Financial Problems: Central Methodist Mission, 148 Lonsdale St Melbourne provides counselling and assistance for needy families. Tel: 6622355. State Schools Relief Committee: 21 Lincoln St. Ri chmond has clothing, footwear, uni forms for children referred by headmasters. Tel: 425300. Free Travel to Hospital: Apply to Health Department, 295 St. Melbourne. For those on low or no income. Should apply in ad vance. Tel: 676384.
Victorian Secondary Students Union 354 Rathdowne St. Carlton Draft Resisters Union Box No. 73 Union Bldg, Uni Melb. Socialist Youth Alliance Box No. 55 Union Bldg, Uni Melb. Women’s liberation Box No. 105 Union Bldg, Uni. Melb.
Southern Aurora Wednesday 25th—Saturday 28th: Blue Echoes Sandown Park Hotel Monday through Sunday — showband “ The Dove” South Side Six
Mon through Saturday: The Impressions; Saturday 21: Friends; Sun 22: Pendulum; Wednesday 25: The Delltones; Sunday 29 Blackfeather Waltzing Matilda Mon through Sunday: The Vibrants; Wednesday 25: Billy Thrope, Bev Harrell Kortums Moreland Hotel Friday & Saturday: Yeomen Dorset Gardens Sat 21: Bev Harrell Fri 27: Johnny O’Keefe Saturday 28: Johnny O’Keefe Tottenham Hotel Thursday to Sunday: Cycle (S/B) Sat 21: Jack Carmelo Sun 22: Bev Harrell Thur 26: Russell Morris Fri 27: Delltones Sat. 28: Delltones Pier Hotel Sun 22: Garry Hyde Tradition, Bev Harrell Sat 28: Len Teale; Liz Harris Sun 29: Christine Roberts Winston Charles Sun 22: Orient Express; Christine Roberts Tues—Sun 29th: Vibrants, Delltones Top Hat Cabaret Sat 21: Denise Drysdale; Floorshow from Mon to Sat. Distillery Sat 21 & Sun 22: Mike Preston Tues 24 to Sat 28: The Sound; Bev Harrell; Tony Pantano
TO LIST YOURSELF, OR TO PLACE AN ADVERTISEMENT IN THESE PAGES, TELEPHONE TERRY CLEARY ON
uuea OCTOBER ‘72
155 W IL L G ST. PllAHllAN f Open till 9.00pm Wednesday and Thursday till 9.00pm Friday & all day Saturday
CLUB
Records: LP’s only. Also large range of imports. Secondhand albums bought & sold.
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The Mothers of Invention MS Just Another Band from L.A. 2 0 7 5 I ALSO Mothers — Live At Fillmore MS2042 Waka/Jawaka — Frank Zappa MS2094 Foghat (formerly Savoy Brown— BR2077 Discover America — Van Dyke Parks BS2589 Ace - Bob Weir BS2627 Trilogy — Emerson Lake & Palmer SD9903 Full Circle — The Doors ERS75038 Tiptoe Past The Dragon — Marlin Greene ERS75028 Trout Mask Replica — Cpt. Beefheart 2MS2027 Ask for these and other October releases , wherever our kind o f records are sold.
written by katharine susannah prichard and directed by john smythe
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