Big Blue Sky Page 8

  I saw their ad in The Sydney Morning Herald of all places. It stood out in a sea of ‘Situations vacant’ ads for cleaners, labourers, car detailers and so on.

  I rang the number and spoke briefly to an up-tempo voice—‘I’m Rob the drummer’—and headed off to the audition, which took place in the hall of Sydney Grammar School. Here I was, back at the very kind of school I’d only just escaped four years earlier.

  This ‘What am I doing here again?’ sense of deja vu, was a foretaste of an experience that is common to the touring musician whose working life goes around in ever-increasing and then ever-decreasing circles. Inevitably you find yourself back in a town or venue you never dreamed you would return to and, in some instances, after shaking the dust off your shoes, had vowed never to visit again.

  To my grown-up eyes (I was all of twenty-one), the group I encountered—Jim Moginie, Andrew James and Rob Hirst—appeared to be mere kids, although they had just started at university. But there was no question they could play.

  Jim, the guitarist, stood stock still and fixed his eyes on some imaginary point in the distance. The bass player, Andy, was likewise singularly focused on his instrument. The songs thundered, a waterfall after heavy rain, as the boys’ fingers flew up and down their respective fretboards. Rob, grinning under a shock of black, spiky hair, smashed at his drums in a flurry of staccato movements as the sound cannoned off the walls of the genteel school’s hall.

  There were no other obvious candidates for vocalist. After all, what self-respecting Sydney musician would be reading the daily newspaper looking for a gig? To top things off I had a PA, so the arrangement was sealed and Farm’s tour of places bands rarely played was confirmed.

  I drove by myself in Bess, surfing all day and jumping up on stage at night, as we headed down the coast, sleeping in caravan parks, under our cars and, once we were further away from the bigger towns, on the beach.

  It was do-everything-yourself touring. This meant booking the halls, putting the posters up on telegraph poles and in the windows of shops, loading the gear in and out, manning the ticket office, administering first aid. This was a new school of rock for me, with more subjects to master.

  Then there was the climax of this frenetic running around: doing the show each night to mixed crowds of locals, holidaymakers, hoons and music fans of all ages.

  There were plenty of magic moments of take-off, even if Farm was jamming on a twelve-bar. With zinc cream still smeared on my face from a day out the back, the power of the unit exploding behind me was a wonder. Other than Rob, no one seemed much interested in interaction with the crowd. Friends who could play sax and mouth harp and were helping on the tour jumped up during the set as we blistered through a diverse range of cover songs—Cream’s ‘Crossroads’, Jethro Tull’s ‘Locomotive Breath’, the Doors’ ‘Roadhouse Blues’ (which by now I was very familiar with)—and a smattering of originals the boys had been notching up.

  It was more intense than Rock Island and I admired the chutzpah of my temporary band mates and their team of fresh-faced helpers, schoolfriends Rob had recruited for the jaunt, rewarded with free beer and the promise of good times. That this was a temporary arrangement was understood by all. I was due to return to ANU to finish my law subjects while they continued their studies in Sydney. Farm would keep looking for that elusive permanent vocalist. Accordingly, once the tour was over, we shook hands and went our separate ways.

  Back in Canberra, Rock Island soldiered on for another six months. I’d now been on stage with a band that could play just about anything, with a ton of push. The experience had opened my ears a whole lot more, and I couldn’t see us going any further. In any case, we were part-timers, and I needed to make up ground with my law studies or I’d never graduate, something I’d promised myself I would do. I didn’t want to throw away four years of study—and who knew how handy a law degree might be in the future? Very handy, as it happened.

  Damian got married young and Richard Geeves was concentrating on finishing his master’s degree. My first band was fading to black.

  …

  Throughout Rock Island’s brief career, a storm had been building in the real world. After twenty-three years of conservative rule, the penny had finally dropped. It was time for change.

  A new ship of state was ploughing through the political waters of the country, with a giant captain at the helm, and I was one of many willing passengers on full alert for the journey. Less Queen Elizabeth II and more turbo-charged tug, the great new Labor vessel was pushing and prodding us into relevance with a long overdue priority list that had been locked away by the forces of caution and retreat for many years.

  For the patricians who’d ruled for over a decade it was an affront to the natural order.

  For those patriots who longed for change, for contemporary ideas to emerge from hibernation, it was a gale of fresh air.

  The first couple of years of the Whitlam government had, by any measure, been fireworks spectacular. Captain Gough had been plotting out this voyage for most of his working life, and even though his crew lacked experience, he knew only one way: crash or crash through. No matter how large a wave was looming, nor how sound the counsel to slow the vessel a little and make for safer ground, he neither slowed nor changed direction.

  To the passenger watching from below deck, it was both thrilling and unsettling: there was always a sense of imminent disaster. Sure enough, the tumultuous voyage quickly came to an end—and by devious means at that—and the ship foundered and sank. But Australia would never be the same again, and the lessons learned—the need for probity, discipline, policy rigour and economic responsibility—were of great value to the Labor governments that followed.

  Whitlam’s ascension to the leadership in 1967 had finally made Labor competitive. For the generations born in the 1940s and 50s, the opportunity to reset the agenda had to be grasped. Labor’s breathtaking start, after victory in 1972, is now political legend. Establishing diplomatic relations with China, ending conscription and seeing off the war in Vietnam—which included releasing seven conscientious objectors still in prison—putting in place measures to protect the Great Barrier Reef, introducing Medibank, establishing the Australia Council for the Arts, abolishing university tuition fees, instituting an Australian honours system, passing the Racial Discrimination Act, instigating SBS TV and ABC youth radio station Double J . . . on and on the ‘must-do’ boxes were ticked.

  This was a government unlike any before it, drawing in anyone with a serious interest in politics, even more so if you lived and worked in Canberra, where you could smell the action up close. It was a government quick to make decisions and usher in big reforms, but was brought undone just as quickly by Whitlam’s overconfidence and the ineptitude of some ministers. Labor enthusiasts watched in horror as a succession of political crises unfolded when the government’s attempts to borrow money off line from Middle East sources unravelled. There were months of high drama as ministers resigned or were sacked, the economy was fragile, the air filled with claims of incompetence.

  Soon the Opposition leader, Malcolm Fraser, smelled power and the press smelled blood as he determined to force the government out. The Coalition, with the numbers evenly balanced in the Senate, settled on the tactic of refusing to pass the budget through the upper house—the first time this had ever happened. The nation was brought to the verge of a standstill as the government faced the very real prospect of having insufficient funds to pay the wages of public servants or the defence forces.

  In Ainslie, stepping up the study necessary to make up for a year away, I was closely monitoring the unfolding drama, unsure of what the circuit-breaker might be. After weeks of building pressure, at home with my housemates on the afternoon of 11 November 1975, we listened in disbelief to radio reports that Whitlam had just been sacked by Governor-General John Kerr, a man Whitlam himself had appointed. Surely not, just ten minutes down the road, in our easygoing democracy?

  We jumped into some
one’s old car (I don’t remember whose) and tore down the main thoroughfare, Commonwealth Avenue, over the lake and shuddered to a halt across the road from Parliament House.

  Breathless, we joined the crowd of people pouring in from surrounding office blocks and off the street to hear the reedy tones of the governor-general’s official secretary, David Smith, echoing from the steps across the forecourt, announcing the dismissal of an elected prime minister to the bewildered throng.

  Then came Whitlam’s now-famous riposte: ‘Well may they say God save the Queen (pause) for nothing will save the governor-general.’

  Cheers and jeers swelled around us as the significance of what they had just witnessed dawned on the heaving crowd. Malcolm Fraser and the conservative forces had abandoned accepted practices that held the Westminster system in place, so desperate were they to get their hands on the levers of power. The man who’d previously said ‘I’m not one of those who believes that any means are justified by the ends’ had changed his tune.

  It is to Whitlam’s credit that, while exhorting supporters to ‘maintain the rage’, he made clear that this was to be by peaceful demonstration, and then through the ballot box.

  I maintained the rage at this breach of our democracy, as did many others. There were plenty of us at the mass rallies to protest Kerr’s and Fraser’s actions. I called around to my friends to ask: ‘You going?’ No one needed to ask where. We all knew and we were out in force. But overall the public mood had soured; the stuffing had been taken out of Labor. The brief golden age was over, and in the bruising election that followed, Labor was thrown out of office.

  And I returned to Sydney. I’d been back a few times since the previous summer to play with the Farm crew, who’d been trying without success to find another singer; apparently no one could crack it.

  Maybe we could do something together, I mused—but I’d have to go back to the city of my birth to give it a try.

  5

  A WEIRD MOB

  RETURNING TO LIVE in Sydney in 1976 was part pleasure and part shock.

  The pleasure lay in anticipating the possibilities ahead, with a band that just might amount to something.

  The shock was the increased pace, back in the hurly-burly, surrounded by screeching and clanging, getting familiar with the big sprawl after the quiet of the small bush capital.

  Along with a friend who, like me, had decided to transfer to the University of New South Wales to finish his law degree, I headed out to Kensington in the city’s east to enrol.

  The law school was located in an ugly ten-storey building at the top end of the campus. Wherever you looked there were cement paving and plain buildings; unlike the picturesque ANU, there was very little grass and few trees.

  As we queued for the lifts to go up to the faculty office to finalise our applications, my friend suddenly said, ‘This is too much. I’m going back to Canberra.’ And just like that he walked off.

  I headed in alone to begin my last eighteen months of stuttering study.

  This time, I was determined to be disciplined. Whatever else was happening—be it a big surf running or casual work at the local squash court—I had to go out to the campus for lectures, put the time in at the library and finish my degree. That it was a sterile and crowded environment compared to ANU helped, for there was little to do on campus other than to stick your head into a textbook.

  …

  Back in Sydney, I moved into Eton Road, Lindfield. Mum had chosen to stay on there after Dad died and my brothers were constantly in and out.

  It was a brick and timber two-storey house, built, so the rumour went, by a retired sea captain who still haunted the upstairs and could be heard rattling around at night. I loved this home perched on a ridge at the end of a street looking over the treetops of the Lindfield valley. There was a large liquidambar in the backyard, and we’d sit in its shade on summer evenings and on the weekends when the barbie would be fired up. This was where my sunny-natured mum was in her element, with a few friends around to gossip and debate the night away, a drink in hand, ready to welcome all comers.

  The rooms were laid out according to a formula only the captain could have known. My bedroom was downstairs, at the front of the house, along with a tiny kitchen equipped with a small bench and op art Jetsons-shaped stools we’d squirrel onto for breakfast, a tiny front study, and a lounge and dining room that faced the rear yard.

  Upstairs was my parents’ bedroom, and those of my two younger brothers; Andrew’s was three times the size of the others, under a sharply pitched roof with the beams not quite square. It was all a bit mad.

  However, facing north meant the transit of the sun was perfectly in sync with the habits of the household: starting from the bedrooms in the early morning, then warming the linoleum under our feet in the kitchen, by late afternoon the sun’s gentle, amber light would stream into the living room. To this day, I can’t believe how dumb it is to design houses any other way, especially on greenfield sites where planning can start from a blank page.

  I would drive across the fabled coat hanger after the morning’s peak-hour rush had subsided. Craning to glimpse the sails of the Opera House, glimmering in the sunlight, I was seeing Sydney with fresh eyes. I’d put in the requisite hours on campus, then head back home in the evening, content to spend time with Mum as friends—hers and increasingly mine—dropped by. The rest of my days were taken up with odd jobs and, having reunited with my band mates from the previous summer, rehearsals with whoever made up Farm at the time.

  By now, the basic subjects that all students need to pass, like contracts and commercial law, had given way to electives, and there were some interesting options from which to choose. The law school was a relatively new addition to the university and its founders, led by the first dean, Hal Wootten, wanted the law to play a constructive role in society, with an emphasis on areas such as social justice and Aboriginal rights. It felt like an institution with a beating heart.

  One of my choices was penology—the study of prisons—as I was thinking of becoming a barrister and practising criminal law, spiced with some international subjects like air and space law, anything out of the box and interesting. We visited jails in the Sydney area, including the Long Bay Remand Centre, still the biggest prison complex in the state. (In later years I would return in quite different circumstances, when I was a member of federal parliament. I tried to get there when I could for National Aboriginal and Islander week—the week of celebrations organised by the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee [NAIDOC]—as there were lots of Pacific Islander and Aboriginal inmates in this jail and visitors and senior figures supporting their culture might help turn prisoners’ heads around a bit.)

  But it was the visit to Parramatta Gaol, half an hour west of the city, that had the greatest impact on me.

  While I understood the need for imprisonment in some circumstances, seeing a small, barely furnished prison cell for the first time brought me up with a start. Inspecting the notorious Circle at the colonial-era Parramatta Gaol was like touring the set of The Silence of the Lambs. The Circle took the deprivation of liberty to the extreme. It was an internal cage, with spokes leading to various corridors that high-security prisoners could access in order to exercise for a limited period before returning to their cells. Constructed of steel and wire and concrete, its design left inmates with no possible means of seeing others—unless they too were in the Circle—or the outside world, even if only as a flash of sky above the stone walls of the prison. The inmates were being treated like animals. There was no other way to describe it. Who could fail to be surprised if, in the absence of any meaningful attempts at rehabilitation, they reoffended once they were out of this state-sanctioned hellhole?

  During the late 1970s, in the flow-on from the anti-war movement and the surge of women’s liberation, prison reform had become a more prominent issue.

  In time the Circle went, as Parramatta Gaol and several other prisons were either closed
altogether or modernised, and steps were taken to make prison administrators more accountable and rehabilitation and treatment efforts more comprehensive.

  Unfortunately, the momentum for reform stalled in the 1980s as simplistic calls for law and order and sensationalist coverage of isolated notorious cases became the norm. The political and media warriors of the ‘lock ’em up and throw away the key’ school were banging the drum ever louder, happy to ignore the fact that countries like the US, with one of the highest imprisonment rates in the developed world, had one of the highest homicide rates as well. Or, closer to home, the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men were many times more likely to be in jail than any other group.

  The Christian gospel is unambiguous about keeping a weather eye out for prisoners and widows, but these sentiments were conveniently ignored by the noisy punishers, who held themselves up as defenders of the Judaeo-Christian ethic to which they barely paid lip service.

  It is too easy to blame the powerless, and those who have fallen, no more so than from the great bully pulpit of a radio station microphone. I used to drive past the Long Bay jail often and think how simple (and heartless) it is to talk about locking people up and throwing away the key. Some people need to be in jail to protect members of society and to do the time for their crime, but for many jail is no solution. The harder task is to try to assist individuals to recover their potential before they are released. So too in areas like mental illness and education, society needs to allocate the time and resources to maximise every person’s chance of leading a fulfilling life, reducing the likelihood they will end up in jail.

  …

  Between law lectures and casual jobs, I started to spend more time in a garage at the rear of a house in Chatswood, owned by Rob Hirst’s father, where Rob and various students lived. The garage was the new line-up’s rehearsal and writing space (although we also took over the lounge room on occasion). The walls were covered with carpet underlay and egg cartons; there were no windows or ventilation, just four suburban boys, dreaming of a life of music, crammed up against speakers, amps, drums and assorted paraphernalia. It was usually stinking hot, always loud and close, with a stale, sweaty odour thickening the air—a good training ground for what lay ahead.