At 999 as it was commonly called. I remember weeks going by without going further than the local milk bar for cigarettes , milk and bread. lots of reading and talking.The front door was always open, you wouldn’t wanted to have answered it. Just a stream of people . Libertarianism was the dominant paradigm.
Paul Dixon and Anne Hetherington were at the centre of the mosaic. Paul another Tasmanian had shoulder length blonde hair,tall but fine boned , Greek god like.
He was my mentor. He turned our doubts into theories. We were Anarchists, we hated “the state”, property is theft. We loved the romance of the french Situationists, who believed the central contradiction in capitalism was the reification of labour by capital.
There were lots of us that lived in the house over the next 3 years.
Michael Price, dark prince, thin as a bean, intense fuzzy hair. A ball of energy, like amphetamine personifiied.His father was a silent movie actor and had worked with Boris Karloff. Who had buggered his son both literally and metaphorically . He went on to sell cocaine to the english aristocrats in the 1980s.
Greg Pankhurst, blond wistful,child of the earth,motorcycle fanatic, in” Spo-de Odee” the drummer, Steve Hill,not a pretty man, all a bit round and floppy not a bit of bone structure. the singer in Skyhooks that preceded Shirley Strahan, Toby someone or other..a madman. Khorshed Khan, my beautiful indian sister.
Philip and Frank Brooks. Both of them played a significant part in my 20s. Frank saved mine and philip’s lives in Thailand and Cambodia in 1975. lillian Leis our dark eyed gorgeous jewess. Browyn Stephens a wonderful musician. Hard drugs were yet to enter the scene.We were revolting. Politics is the norm, arguments about the Russian Revolution, where the anarchists were shafted by the Bolshevics . Anti Viet-Nam marches, the Springbok demonstration in Melbourne really stood out in its nastiness. Lots of horses, police with attitude, people getting hurt. ambulances, anger by the bucket loads. We had a plan to stop the match, we would make a bomb in a beer can that had everything in it but a detonator. Two of the group would take it into the ground , place it in a rubbish bin. Then call the authorities and say that we had placed a dozen bombs in cans throughout the arena. And just to prove our point, we will tell you where one of the device’s is minus the detonator. Bags were searched at the entrance to the ground and would have compromised the carriers, so we lucked out
There was also this crazy guy called Greg Hall who loved blowing things up and burning things down, including Philip Brook”s and my bookshop we set up in Hobart in 1973. Black Bobs in whats now the Mall in Hobart. We sold City lights editions of Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski editions from American Distributors rather than tradition in australian bookesellers of using English distributors. Very Beat you might say, way ahead of the Hobart psyche in 1973. We burnt it down on Christmas Eve in 1973. Philip and I were in Melbourne gaining evidence of our alibi.Greg built the bomb for The Springbok demonstration.Philip Brooks and I became buddies. His wonderful reckless abhorence for authority was just the tonic. We never paid for any air travel , a chequebook was all that was required. We would fly to Hobart regularly. Philip’s father was Ken Brooks. Frank was living in Nepal. He would send philip kilos of excellent hashish. Philip would sell it and send frank half the turnover. Making both their lives reasonably comfortable. With Philip there was always a scam. Insurance, drugs, and gambling were the modus. He would steal your car for you and dispose of it by fire or a cliff somewhere down on the peninsula or the Otways, or just set fire to it somewhere, one of the funnier locations where we burnt this old MG sedan was on the fareway of the Kew Golf Course. Providing the members with a new obstruction during the next morning’s round.
I remember going to La mama and seeing Tribe do a show called “the Last Look at Sadness” with Carol Porter, Frank Starr, Alan Robertson and Jan Cornall Fay Mokotow and Jane Clifton. I fell in love with Carol. Carol , the beauty that underplays itself. Bright red hair, just shoulder length, fringe, the burningest of blue eyes. Shy as shy. Carol was a painter who had turned to the theatre, working in the company called “\Tribe” which was formed by Doug Anders. (the first graduate from N.I.D.A.) in 1970. Everyone, but Jane Clifton lived in an old rectory in Lambert road in Toorak. i found a 19th century script of Punch and Judy. So the Melboune Anarchists and Tribe combined energies and the script was realised with a performance at the National Gallery in St Kilda Road. The bug had well and truly bitten. My aspiration was to be a part of this new theatre movement that emerged around Carlton in the early seventies. First was “the Weight” by Phil Motherwell, our darkest of princes and my mentor after Paul went to London in1976.”The Weight” wasPhil’s first full length play, I hovered around the outside of the production, Just helping out, Gary Waddell played the central character My next dramatic adventure was playing a dog in Peter Lillee and Cosmo Topper”s “Gone To See a Man About a Dog”. at La Mama. i played The Preston Piss Pointer , a ratbag in a bad dog suit, with a picture of Rolf Harris pinned to my tail. Peter and Cosmo Topper were a wonderful combination, the sum of their parts to the power of the linear equation. Absurd the word.Helen Garner loved them and came and saw the show a couple of times as I recall.
They also published comic strips together, and then “Mechanics in a Relaxed Manner”.a play at The Pram Factory Paul Dixon directed that one too. with a big cast, lots of music, The wonderful Sally McNay. Our Jean Harlow, laconic as all get out. Blonde and buxome , the watts in the room rose when she came into the room. Cheeky. The droll Terry Meadows with his love for country and western music.. Peter Lillee and Cosmo formed a band that was a precursor to “Sports” and Jo Jo Zep and The Falcons. They were called The Pelaco Brothers. Their first gig was at the Kingston Hotel in Richmond. They didn’t have a name for the band at that moment. Peter looked out on the richmond Horizon and there was a gigantic sign on top of one of the buildings PELACO. And the band found its title. Joe Camilleri was the sax player. Steve Cummins the singer. Saturday afternoons at the Kingston Hotel were very fantastic. Undiscovered talent by the gross. They had some kind of falling out that was never shared around in detail. Their separation lead to the formation of “The Sports” with Martin Armiger and Steve Cummins. Martin had a band called “The High-Rise Bombers” who had this young singer Paul Kelly from Adelaide. They played this wonderful gig at the back of a cafe in Lygon Street. I went with the beautiful Paula Dawson , a platinum blonde sculptress.It was late summer and the space was covered in vine leaves.
The Year Lacertis at La Mama was our next show. This very strange play about leprosy. With Phil Motherwell, Gary Waddell, Anne Hetheringtonand Evan Richards We were all still groping around in the dark. All we knew of theatre techniques had come from journals like the Tulane drama review, a bit of Antonin Artaud, Grotowski, Meyerhold and Brecht. Just edge .
memoir
