Garrett Bound

The talk of politicians
The sentences of cynics
…They’re all talking shit to me.
- ‘Brave Faces’, Midnight Oil. 1981.


Ladies and Gentleman, where the hell is Peter Garrett?
Once the inspirational vocal infusion of fire and peace loving vitriol, the chrome domed rock enigma appears to have been caught in the dirty, perilous vortex of party politics. Wedged between rock n roll and a hard place, Garrett gravitated towards the latter; the filthy, frustrating, grandstand of absurdity where people in suits yank the rusty strings that pull and spin the institutional cogs of this crazy thing called Democracy. I just don’t know if he’s going to get out alive.

I’m not normally the type to fall for the human want to glorify their own kind and spin tales of the ‘hero’. Heroes are the protagonists of myth and myths are but stories lullabyed to help us form some semblance of meaning as to why we are such strangers in a very strange, infinite land. However, if there was ever someone in public life that I was forced to elevate to a pedestal of adulation, then Oils-era Garrett is probably the closest thing to it. Garrett is the seminal pub rock Prometheus who stole fire from the political gods of his day. Yet Prometheus Garrett now appears to be suffering a comparable fate to that of his ancient Greek counterpart.

As president of the Australian Conservation Foundation in the 80’s, Garrett assisted in campaigning with fury against the construction of Tasmania’s Franklin Dam. The Unions, the media and the High Court all backed the project, yet after 18 months and $67 million spent, the dam was dropped – testament to what is possible with tenacious demonstration and protest. Today, Tassie faces a new Franklin. The $2 billion Gunns Mill in the Tamar valley is set to go ahead, thanks to predictable bi-partisan support from the Canberra Labiberal party. The once anti-Franklin campaigner Garrett has said that he personally has no problem with the Mill – a project set to destroy 2000 square kilometres of native forest over the next quarter century whilst dumping 64,000 tonnes of toxic effluent into the Bass Strait every day of operation. I cannot believe that this is the real PG speaking.

Oh get down, getting down, so much money in the ground
For the people who don't deserve it now
It's a circus we're the clowns as the giant ones disown
Every bit of something we call home
“Stand in Line’ - Midnight Oil. 1971.

Garrett totally ripped apart every stage that Midnight Oil graced, night in, night out for a generation of twenty five solid years. He espoused transcendent visions of ideal that most humanitarian minded people could resonate with and get behind. If ever there was a musical entity that could wake the dormant rebellion lurking in an otherwise unsuspecting member of the Australian populace – rat bogan or otherwise - then Midnight Oil, with PG at the forefront were certainly the ones with the power and juice to do it. Garrett and the Oils took fire from the Gods and fuelled every person who came to see them.

I miss the Garrett of old; the cro-magnon browed, freakishly unco, whirling dervish of chugging 80’s rock. I miss the soapbox diatribes, his poor sense of fashion, his brutal on- stage assertions telling Malcolm Fraser to “get fucked”. I miss his venomous critique of the political wankerdom that he now finds himself immersed in. I know that I am never going to hear the words “US Forces give the nod: It’s a setback for your country” sung, screamed or even uttered from his mouth again. And considering I’ve never actually seen the Oils perform live, I can tell you that’s more of a downer than Alexander is.

Yet I maintain the hope that this initial period of lost credibility might be a means to an end. After pinching the fire from Zeus, Prometheus was chained to a rock as punishment whilst, on a daily basis, a belligerent eagle consumed his regenerative liver. Garrett is currently chained to party politics, with a belligerent ‘big L’ liberal eagle swallowing his credibility on a daily basis. But eventually Prometheus was freed from those chains by Heracles, who shot the well fed eagle to death in a great big livery mess. If Garrett can hold out until November 24, with hope and luck the electorate of Heracles will blow away Garrett’s smug conga dancing eagle to death and the bespectacled rodent riding on its wings. As for the chains…well, party politics aint likely to change anytime soon. But at least that bloody eagle will be gone.

Then the party's over, it's a free-for-all
I'm under the table, I got my foot in the door
- Naked Flame. Midnight Oil. 1979

Fuzzy Muff

I can’t talk for long…
It’s too risky. I can’t take any chances at the moment. None whatsoever, Bucko. So just back off. BACK OFF fool!. I’m layin low…blinds are shut, eyes are peering clandestine through parted slats, and it’s just me now…me and me alone.
The fuzz are on my tail. The fuzzy muff. The boys and girls in blue. The heat. The man. The purveyors of pork produce. I’m, layin low, y’see; layin low and shelving out a little downtime before my next move.

Last night I celebrated the commencement of my long weekend via the usual means – a night of good times, laughter, and customary swathe of alcohol. It was a brilliant night; I caught up with old work mates that I hadn’t seen in a good three years; folks I’d come to know through a past foray into fashion retail during my much heralded Surf Dive N’ Ski tenure (aka Muff Dive n Ski/Surf Divinsky).We kicked on and on until the wee hours, before the better part of Melbourne city was left painted red. As reality and exhaustion hit, my subconscious mind delivered a message that it was high time for me to get the hell out of whatever iniquitous den I’d found myself in. Some place called Ping Pong – a vast, split level meat market where everyone seemed at least a decade younger than me and the cohort I was travelling with. We drank tequila and showed the youngsters a thing or two about the art of dance. I trundled up Flinders Lane from William to Swanston, stopping briefly by my place of work to have a bollocked conversation with the hostel Night Porter.

I trundled up along Swanston street, contemplating a sobering walk home, but instead opted for a lift, eventually hailing down a yellow sucker after a pitiful attempt at footing it back to Fitzroy. I made it to Lonsdale St and that was enough.
The cab ride was nothing unusual, nor anything special. My Indian driver seemed friendly enough. I mumbled the acceptable array of sparkling cab repartee, ‘how was your night?’, ‘been busy?’, ‘anyone ralphed in your cab tonight?’, etc, etc…I’m always thinking of ways to expand drunken cab comminique but I seem to fall back on the regular horseshit. To be frank, the cabbie was probably doing just fine without my inane banter and bloated verbal runoff.

We pulled up a few cars down from my house, and suddenly the night took a very unexpected turn.

My vision was inundated with the luminous flood of flashing red and blue. We were surrounded by police. With a clear, if not hazy conscience, I wished my cabbie well and handed him some cash – the conviction crossed my mind that he was in the deep end and had been smuggling automatic weapons mid-shift, if not operating an unliscenced vehicle or stealing candy from children.
It wasn’t to be the case.

Enter Cam Hassard – public enemy number one.

The cabbie got out of there quick smart with my 10 spondoolies, delivering ‘Hassard: Renegade’ into a swarm of hardline Johnny Ossifers. I was surrounded. Five blokes, one chick; in not one, not two, but THREE police vehicles. Evidently some shit was up; otherwise it had been a very, very quiet night for our local constabulary. I remember thinking it was a nice touch that they’d covered the vehicular spectrum quite efficiently – meeting me in one divvy van, one squad car, and one unmarked blue holden; just to cover their bases.

I was confronted by fuzz.
“What seems to be the problem?”, I asked.
“You tell me”, replied a dumpy cop sporting a thick molester moustache.
It’s funny how you talk to cops like they do in the movies. I could have just as easily retorted, “How the bloody hell are ya China, what’s the craic!?”
It felt as if was in the process of being ‘Punk’d’ and I wondered who was responsible.

Because I failed to note down anyone’s real name, and for the sake of clarity in the following reel of events, this first ossifer’s name shall from here on be ‘Dumpy Moe’. Evidently it was his turn at assuming the lead role in this particular drama, his moment to shine amongst his admiring peers

A second unsavoury protagonist in yellow reflective vest arked up in between Dumpy Moe’s textbook diatribe. This scallywag will be referred to as ‘Vesticles’.
“Do you think it’s a good idea to let police car tyres down!”, Vesticles belched.
Vesticles wanted answers damn it, and stat! Inhaling a stick of nicotine, the cancerous drug seemed to supply Vesticles with confidence to project his fearful timbre with profound assertiveness. I reasoned that he must have taken up the habit in order to quell the disdain at how bald he’d become over the years; how unattractive he had been to the opposite sex for the majority of his life.
Chang on, Vesticles, I summoned. Inhale that glory stick and give me your worst!

The interrogation continued. Dumpy Moe and Vesticles hogged the limelight whilst another bald cop took down my name and address with the fervour and nonachalance of an overworked Italian waiter at Marios. Later I was asked to pose for a photo.

Dumpy Moe’s ego had not been checked at the door and oozed like pus, blindingly, from every pore in his moustachioed stump of a body.

For those who came in late;
‘our hero has been lured into a concentrated sting from the establishment by a non-conversational Indian cab driver; allegedly capping off an enjoyable, legal evening with a good ol’ fashioned spate of squad car tyre slashings and was now being accused of the aforementioned criminal action on the strength of a ubiquitous(and unfailing) Big Brother surveillance system as well as sworn testimony of at least three reliable eyewitnesses. Water tight.

Ahhh. The slashing of cop tyres. Nothing really goes down as smooth. Just keep that bottle o’ Ballantynes and your Johnny Black aged a dozen years back on the shelf thanks - I’m gunna head out n’ slash me some black pig rubber. The only nightcap in my book.


Dumpy and Vesticles walked back to their divvy van and conversed amongst their brethren. I stood at the centre of everything, this bizarre scene. I smiled wryly at the lone female cop standing on the footpath, half believing that I had indeed run amok along Flinders Lane with a broad, sharpened knife. She smiled back. I sensed her knowledge that they had come all this way for the wrong guy.

Minutes passed, and finally Dumpy returned. But for a brief, though rather telling, sideglance Dumpy and I locked eyeballs as he reeled off his man talk. The pus of his ego bubbled and dripped; Vesticles had finished his cigarette and drilled me once again about how ‘letting down police car tyres is not on, and highly dangerous’. Thank God for his pep talk. Six years of private school education, seven years since, and somehow this fundamental tenet of life knowledge had slid past my otherwise solid elementary morality. Thankyou Vesticles. For the love of God, thankyou for this life lesson.
Vesticles, you truly are a mammoth douche.

Dumpy Moe concluded the evening’s proceedings with a stiff diatribe regarding the pressing of charges, should the evidence conclude that I was indeed the alleged criminal protagonist. No doubt the description filed went something like ‘Male, not short, kinda hairy…average at taxi conversation’. Dumpy’s diatribe was the verbal equivalent of a man whipping his regrettably tiny appendage about in a victorious, circular motion; unable to concede any ground; nor the notion that such disproportionate resources had been wrongly dispatched in order to sting and intercept an innocent, drunken renegade. You could smell the justice; potent and thick, like a cab driver’s armpit.

So, people, that’s why I’m layin’ low. The fuzzy muff are on my tail and I can’t afford to take any chances. I’m shacking up in this little room and planning my next move. At least now I’m armed with some fresh material to throw at the next cab driver. And if that doesn't go smoothly, i'll probably just slash his tires.

Jammin with the Clivester

At last, my chance to become immersed within a world of unabashed arts-wankerdom. The pair of fat, black-rimmed specs I purchased last month would enter their prime – my ticket to blend chameleon-style in with the highest of the brow, the leftest of the wing, the bookfest literati at the annual Melbourne Writers Festival. I would schmooze and survey, eye off proceedings and breathe in literature, poetry, and intellect on tap. I would drink verses and prose up like aged wine and rich port.
Oh the virtues of a highbrow existence.

It would come via a catch - somehow I was to be a technical go-to man for the venue’s sound requirements. I would be riding the sound desk and thrusting microphones in front of assorted notable literari so that their words of deep thought and reflection might be heard by all. Despite my experience amidst the shadiest of rock pubs and live music venues over the years, I could not be deemed a sound engineer. I have not a tat, a piercing nor a single pair of cheekhugging black jeans; I wash daily, I shave occasionally, and I yet to suffer the wrath of tinnitus. On top of all this, I am partial to a loss of bowel when I glance an eye over a sound desk, wondering deeply what all the little knobs do, like an overexcited twelve year old boy visiting the cockpit of a jumbo jet for the very first time. Visually, characteristically and vocationally, I am an ambitious choice to be put in charge of acoustic logistics for this highbrow event.

I stare on behind the sound desk in a halogen lit, wooden floored Malthouse theatre bagging room. It hits me how I regularly seem to find myself in the most unlikely of situations. At first seeming like any other moment, chameleons in their own right, blending seamlessly with the continual video reel of my life narrative. Then the mind adjusts, punctuates the video reel and comes to its senses. The scene before me deserves recognition as something out of the ordinary. In this otherwise empty room I watch on as Clive James and a sensual, sequined ring-in called Kathy dance the tango before my eyes, the two of them swirling and smoothing ever so sultrily together in sync across a gleaming dance floor. As I tweak the sound desk knobs to enhance their latin soundtrack, my mind is forced to admit the true bizarreness of the situation before me. I am engineering sound. For Clive James. So he can dance the tango with a gorgeous exotic woman. I drink the moment up. A trickle of festival punters crawl silently into the theatre to witness the impromptu performance. He frowns deep in concentration, momentarily displaying glimmers of a Sydney-born lad that had not yet breathed the soot of London, gently manhandling about the room this intoxicating minx at least half his age. He divulges that Kathy is akin to driving a Porsche 9/11. Kathy informs Clive that he is an excellent driver. There is the return of a familiar, perhaps distant quiver of life for Clive down south.

I continue looking the part in my fat rimmed specs and pretend to know what I am doing. I am no sound man, and have much to learn in the ways of arts wankerdom.
I am the multitasking chameleon.
Oh the vitues of a highbrow existence.

Bargearse R.I.P

26 May 1928 - 27 July 2007

He came. He ate. He farted profusely.
This weekend, the world mourned the loss of Australia's finest crime-fightin', beer-swillin', fashion curtailing, kipper devouring senior sargeant of all time.
Bargearse lit up our prime time screens (and thankfully not his brutal flatulence), with immortal moments, titles like "Where's me bloody Donuts", "Where's me bloody Dim Sims" and the unforgettablly gripping "Where's me bloody Chips". An avid ambassador of the Dutch Oven, bargearse made our world a safer, more c02-beaten place to live and breathe.

Bargearse - Rest in dutch Peace.

Why the Rodent gets up my Goat

My bespectacled eyes gaze up toward our regal, amber-lit Treasury building, its palm trees still and damp amidst a sheen of freezing chill. Upon the outskirts of a city that hasn’t yet pulled itself out of bed, a tram clacks and rumbles - the only sign of life short of a lone Sri Lankan courier on the other side of Spring st. He’s got baked goods. I want baked goods. He could be from Bangladesh. Possibly India.
It occurs to me that this is not important.

I twist my scarfed-to-the-hilt neck up to my right. At the top of the treasury steps, puncturing the darkness, luminous rays of showbiz light drench a familiar looking political-type in a suit. It appears to be Kev Rudd, cock of the walk, the people’s man, the bloke who would be Prime Minster conducting a live to air interview. I stare up at Rudd’s manboy face and out of the blue am hit with an irrational urge to conduct a Benny Hill style noggin slappin’ and/or wedgie of the atomic persuasion on our would be PM. I ponder how an electorate might warm to Rudd being blinded on national television from to Y-fronts being stretched from the back of his ass to the hair of his chinny chin chin. I refrain. I kinda like Rudd, and in many ways I have no choice but to like him, because ultimately I really, tremendously loathe the alternative.

Since his inception as national leader John Winston Howard has always found himself firmly up my goat, and recently I’ve forced myself to examine exactly why this is. Sometimes it’s all too easy to find yourself adrift in a conditioned state of loathing for this particular rodent. Perhaps it’s to do with a lingering feeling of disappointment from that night in ’96 when PJK’s Zegna-panted rear was turfed from office, replaced by a pragmatic, unconvincing and unlikely goose. Though a young lad of just 12 years, i dug Keating’s charismatic sass, his gall and chutzpah and soft spot for the Arts. Understandably I was duely unimpressed with the stale, regressive alternative, and it’s something I’ve never been able to shake. Howard managed to get away with branding Keating an arrogant elitist for having a greater picture and sense for the truth than him, and this I failed to dig.

For over decade now, a plethora of reasons for me loathing this rodent have amassed and congealed into a thick, hearty anathema for which he shall never be rid. The extinguishing of Native Title, castration of a Reconciliation process and the election-stealing lies about refugee children being thrown into the sea began to sow the seeds of my discontent. Then came the refugee detention camps, Iraq, our unquestioned suckholing of the American establishment and a myopic, ideological drive to embed our once humanitarian beacon of a nation into the United States’ imperialist, warmongering agenda. For using fear to control a populace, for using race to divide, for lying and lying when caught out about it. We may be governed by a government of many but the leader is responsible for setting the measure and tone of a nation. It is here where the man’s true colours have shown. A measure too short, a tone too mono and a colour too white.

For these reasons and more I chose not to atomically wedge Kevin Rudd on national television. I think we're going to need him.

The other alternatives have come and gone throughout the years. Beazley’s one and only moment of glory arrived and went when he ate a whole chicken in Question Time after using it to debunk Howard’s GST proposals. Crean was…Crean. Latham never eased enough squeeze for my taste, though anyone who candidly describes John Howard as an ‘arselicker’ and his cabinet a ‘congaline of suckholes’ deserves a partial credit for audacity. So it comes down to our man Rudd. Cock of the walk, or just a cock? And would voting for a sprightly cock be any better than voting for a fatigued goose?
This self-asserted pundit argues a fervent ‘yes’. And when the day finally arrives, a newly toned and measured country may sigh a fresh breath as the rodent and his congaline are sent packing, dancing back into the white dust-lined annals of history.

High Eight Us

Hiatus.
Spiffo word that one. Say it a few times in a row, say it few more after that, and as the syllables start to roll off your tongue with rabid haste, it just sounds plain weird. However the word hiatus is central to the following confessional.
It has come to my attention through esteemed colleague in literary shadiness, Buckmaster that it has indeed been not one, not two, but THREE long months since my last blog posting. Quite frankly, I was dumbfounded as to this revelation. Where on earth had these three months gone and how had I managed to ferret them away with little to no attention to the continuity of the juicy minutiae of life? I was certain that life had gotten no less juicy - colder perhaps, but still swarming, bulging thick and rife with minutiae of the juiciest blend. It seemed that time had simply gotten away, eluding me as I got comfier and comfier dozing away on my laurels, jamming the time choc full with certain nondescript ferreting. I’d neglected the breakfast and the dog that laid claim to it, and though critically undernourished, it lives. Let it be known that Time as the bringer of death itself has failed to achieve its ultimate expression in this regard. The Death According to Dool? A premature prognosis, surely. The extended, accidental hiatus according to Dool? Quite possibly.

For the sake of pedantic clarity do not be confused into thinking that I have contracted a three month natural fissure, cleft or foramen in a bone or other structure (thanks Dictionary.com). The hiatus that I refer to is this very break in the continuity of the work, series and action – this here dog’s breakfast compendium, this précis gospel on life itself.

For posterity, I declare this accidental hiatus over and hereby enact a new chapter in the life and times of the Doolblog.
A fresh fisting of juice, a smorgasbord of minutiae, a fat fried literary breakfast and a brand new juiced up dog to go with it.

Down on the Corner

Trendies traipse the footpath past cafes, bars and expensive salons. Old Greek men linger, smoking cigarettes in zippered loafers and blue wool slacks, whilst elderly ladies push pleather shopping carts over cobbled gutters. Faded department storefronts speak languidly of consumerism’s past, their interiors now at odds with the reputations of the golden era that spawned their inception.
Smith St is gritty and raw, grimy and real. It is a veritable melting pot of characters and lives, Collingwood’s rich heart and tainted soul.
On the corner of Moor and Smith sit the Aborigines. They lounge with longnecks of VB and Draught, parked at the benches under the leafy trees, each day losing their minds to the drink and repeating it all the next. This corner is their turf. Sitting around, seeing out their sombre days, wasting in numbers, together under that tree.
Washing away their lives with the grog.

One afternoon down at Smith St Safeway Liquor I joined the queue of people waiting to purchase their booze. Directly in front of me a dark frizzy haired woman tipped one of her VB longnecks off the bench, averting a floor smash with a swift last minute catch. The woman made a bit of a commotion. She turned to face me.
“Lucky I caught that one ay?”.
The woman was quite tall, full lipped, roughly middle aged and visibly indigenous. I recognised her from the corner. She got talking to a blonde girl ahead of me, and occasionally glanced behind to include me her chat. She’d been drinking heavily and talked at us with a husky thick voice, but not in a threatening manner and hardly overbearing. The richness and candour in her voice drew me into her words and cradled my attention. She reeled off jive, something about how she’d been here earlier, what her fella was up to, how she needed to get the grog back to her mates on the corner. The blonde girl seemed a little cautious, and the store attendant behind the counter eyed subtly to see where the security guard was. I made some small talk with the woman and she went on to dominate the chat.
“Buried me brother today…gunna drown me sorrows a bit”.
She informed me matter of factly that her brother had been stabbed to death in a backstreet in Preston five days earlier.
With little repose, she presented to me a picture she’d been holding. It was a blown up police photograph of an old grey haired fella sitting cross-legged and handcuffed on a kerb, flanked by two indigenous women and a couple of officers.
“Not a bad shot is it ay?!”, she asked with relative enthusiasm.
She began to sway her head gently from side to side, noting the two ladies in the shot.
“These are me sisters”.
She directed my attention to one of the ladies.
“…Lost her last year”.
She pointed to the older man in handcuffs, parked helplessly in the gutter.
“Lost ‘Im few months ago as well”
I stared into the sadness permeating her deep brown eyes, bagged and welling. She pointed to the other woman in the photo.
“Can’t afford to bloody lose her”, she stated with pity, her tone amazingly measured and more reflective than remorseful.
I was taken aback, transported to another world. I continued staring into her eyes. They were nothing but hazy wells of sadness and sorrow; in looking through them, I saw into her life. It was full of pain and sadness, routine tragedy and the acceptance of misery. The death of her brother was just another ‘fuckin’ one of ‘em dying’. Like the others, she would accept it. And as she had done before, she would drink these longnecks to drown and forget.

Most days I still walk past the corner slightly unsettled and wary. I dislike that I feel this way. There’s normally about fifteen of them, young and old, bound in alcoholic solidarity, a united clan. They belch out yelps to disarrayed mates over the road, all the while imposing an unmistakable presence and shady vibe on the whole street. The trendies and elderly stick out like sore thumbs, and so do i. Through a five minute booze purchase at the local supermarket, I gained an amazingly emotional insight into a world I’ll never have to be in, know, or endure. I felt deeply for the woman, wondered what must go on in her head, wondered how she deals with the ongoing sadness in her life, and the lives of those around her that sit by the corner day after day. I understood then how important it was for them all to stick together, to rock in the same boat, present a united front and get through life with arms linked. All they had was each other, and none of them could afford to lose anyone else. I’ve crossed that street before to avoid the confrontation. I hate that fear could do that to me, and refuse to cross anymore. I don’t fear these people. They are me. I love these people. I hate that they have to be there every day drink away their humanity. I hate the emptiness and sorrow that I saw in that woman’s eyes. I hate that she had to bury her own brother that day and lose another family member and friend to her adverse existence. I hate the hopelessness of the situation.

The Smith Street corner is just a microcosm of a much bigger theme, our collective failure to imagine and empathise on a grand scale, to have a go at sensitively righting some enormous wrongs committed in our past, however frought with emotional difficulty such an undertaking might be, however steep the upward slope. To acknowledge that we are bound together in humanity and do what needs to be done.



"It begins, I think with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask, how would I feel if this were done to me? As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded us all.”

- Paul Keating. Redfern Address 1992