The state of THE origins.

  Australian Rules football; our grand game that has thrived across 157 odd winter seasons, two clubs, Geelong and Melbourne being numbered as the oldest professional football clubs in the world, founded when America was on the cusp of a catastrophic civil war. The games’ beginnings a muddy scrape and scrum raging ragged across an ill defined oval, the rules evolving by committee, happenstance and confusion.  The code eventually demanding the rabid attention of generations stacked upon generations of Australians: the old, the new and the indigenous. Becoming the Antipodes unique sporting code. Played rough and tumble in the back blocks of flush, gold rush Melbourne, then spreading its hot gospel to all corners of the ancient continent. Played initially to build the stamina and fitness of cricketers in the off-season.

 What a spectacle it has become built on the back of rivalries declared and contested with bloody minded passion in leagues that have formed and thrived across those years. Each generation elevating its best to the summit of greatness, the names legend to even the most casual barracker. Chaz Brownlow, Gordon and Syd Coventry, Cargie Greeves, Changi Brownlow medalist Wilfred “Chicken” Smallhorn, Kevin Murray, E J, Jack Mueller and his mangled hand. The Geelong flyer,Big Nick and the big Cat,Polly Farmer. The Duck, Junior and Senior, Norm Smith and his medalists too.  A roll call of names, raised across a continent, that have filled volumes in the old testament of premierships, Brownlow’s and fairest and bests. Heroes, rogues and “good ordinary footballers,” and for the kids in the here and now, none mightier than the number stitched on a duffel coat, or as important as the club  colors.

 I’ve been lucky enough to travel some in my life and have always been keenly aware of the dichotomy of modern Australia and it’s ancient indigenous past. I was recently looking at a photo of the coliseum in Rome, an enduring ruin, guarding the ghosts of the bloody spectacles staged for the Empires’ unruly mob, and found myself wondering about our mob. What history would be written two thousand years from now?  What would someone standing in the post apocalyptic decaying ruins of the MCG, The Gabba or some suburban bog heap make of it all and how would they sort it?  Perhaps the names will have become ancient like Thermopylae or Gaul, the records eviscerated, the deeds done there now forgotten.

 When we create something it is usually christened with a name, or sadly in the modern world, branded.  For the most part thoughtfully, but not always, the Children of Frank Zappa and many other celebrity types being a prime example of Parental treachery.  “A boy named Sue, how do you do, NOW YOU’RE GONNA DIE!!”   The bureaucratic acronym of NASA. (Which does not stand for “Need Another Seven Astronauts.”) What story is locked up in a name?  I was named after my Uncle who was killed a generation before I was even an itch in my old man’s underwear. I often wonder about who he was, and why Grandpa Arthur named him so.

 How did I not become a Septimus or a  Decimus, a  Henry, or a Cadby?  Names all long planted in the Frankston cemetery  family plot, alongside my recently arrived Mum and Dad. All sleeping for a long eternity as the rumble of our road, the Wells road Bypass, rushes the commuters to and fro, East to West and back again.  Pioneer of the Mornington Peninsula Cadby Wells and his enduring tribute, a marble obelisk, topped with a hand pointing to heaven while also giving the finger to the suburbanites obliviously moving along his now bypassed road. And I thought to myself what’s in a name?  

 I’ve gone by Ron, Charlie, Rory and have been saddled with a couple of others across my years. But never Ronald, no one calls me that. In fact, my name is kind of an amusing mouthful that has sowed confusion with Cops, clerks and people gunning for me across four continents. I mean Ronald Alexander Joseph Charles P Wells. (The P quietly and mysteriously acquired in a California DMV office.) Now that’ a mouthful. For me, my names never were much of a burden beyond being a mouthful. Yet as I type this I wonder how it carries for a Sean Lennon or a Gary Ablett Jnr. Are there days when Junior wishes he was say, Harry Ablett and would that deflect the hulking shadow of his Father and the inevitable comparisons?

 Being a little OCD and having too much time on my hands at the moment, I start to obsess about the name thing as I patroled www.AFL.com.au for news of my Geelong Cats doings.  Maybe it’s the “Belong Geelong” page that sparks my thoughts and curiosity and poses the question. Who, what and why are we Geelong?  I mean, I know why we are the Cats, the name bestowed after a terrible shellacking in the 1930’s when a local smart arse paraded a black cat across the old Corio oval.  The following week the team ran out and walloped Collinwood for the four points, and the Cats were born. Cats were now lucky for Geelong.  

 But what of Geelong?  Obviously named after the city, but why were we not for example, Timbuktu?  Just who the fuck are we, where did we come from and who are the other seventeen ratty and inferior mobs running around?  I wondered if I asked a Richmond man or a St Kilda supporter, an Adelaide Crow or Heaven help us, a Giant about the state of their origins what would they know and when did they know it?  I pondered the Richmond Grog squad, Freo ferals, Joffa the Pie man and the wine and cheese eating yachtsmen basking in the success of a re jiggered South Melbourne. And, truth be told, I felt a little ignorant: a poor state for an enquiring mind.

 I wrote down the footy club names, most familiar across my lifetime, some new and foreign, others defunct their statistics a moribund footnote to their history.  I listed them alphabetically, as they had evolved from the VFA through the VFL and onto the billion-dollar juggernaut that is the AFL; twenty-one, in total, all with a unique history and social context.  In a flash I found myself cracking an Indiana Jones like bullwhip across my arse, popped a beer and got to excavating the facts buried deep in the bowels of the Internet.

  ADELAIDE CROWS.  Adelaide, the city of Churches, the place Paul Kelly was, cross his heart and hope to die, never going back too. Founded by Colonel William Light in 1836, the surveyor laying out a grid of wide streets by the banks of the Torrens River on the land of the Kuarna people. I conjure a mental image of Geelong legend and general shit disturber Sam Newman baiting the crow eaters as to their colonial origins on the Footy show.  Then smugly informing all in sundry of the tremendous admiration the Colonel had for Adelaide of Saxe – Meniningen . Queen consort of King William the IV.  Then flashing his wedding tackle as the South Australians choked on that mouthful of hamburger with the lot. Sam’s grizzled old parts are not a pretty thought.

 

  BRISBANE: Bears become Lions. With the maniacal zeal of Adolph Hitler the then expansion minded VFL coveted the ripe plum of Queensland’s rugby heartland. With no established local club to, in Bikie parlance, patch over, it fell to a rugged band of pioneers to lay the foundations of the code. The Suits plonking the ill provisioned and odiously named Bears down on what had once been Turbal & Jagera land. The Bears took their thumping’s in stride hemorrhaging cash, their early support being almost exclusively Mexican. (Victorians) They toiled at the coalface fruitlessly until they were forcefully amalgamated with the carcass of Fitzroy. The poor old Lions, everyone’s second team, packed off in chains to the shores of the Brisbane River, fittingly a former penal colony named for Scotsman Sir Thomas Brisbane a former Governor of NSW and a keen astronomer.  The QLD experiment finally blooming under the hard-nosed Hawthorn legend, and Collingwood savior Leigh Mathews.  Delivering three consecutive flags, thus softening the blow for the old time Roy boys, before shrinking like a hard penis in cold water under Michael Voss.

  CARLTON: The Blues.  Once a formidable powerhouse, and dependable denier of Magpie flags reduced over recent seasons to a rabble: both on and off the  field, torpedoed by greed and grasp that would make a Wall Street trader blush. Given its pedigree and old boy patronage of high flyers and Captains of industry, the entitled, rorting Carlton man would be tickled pink to trace the suburb that names his footy clubs origin. The little sliver of suburb 2 KM North of the CBD being named for the London mansion, Carlton House. Built as the home of the Prince of Wales and a right royal boondoggle it was, it’s construction marred by mismanagement the old BLF couldn’t even fudge, and overreaching ambition. Derailed and adrift until architect Henry Holland,  with a bailout from King George the III finally battened down the hatches and righted the sinking ship.

  COLINGWOOD: The Magpies.  Loved and loathed, yet arguably the AFL’s marquee team, now lovingly cosseted by head office at the Lexus centre just a cakewalk from the MCG and a rattling two tram ride from Victoria Park.  In 1838 Surveyor Robert Hoddle defined the suburban boundaries of the Magpie horde, snagging a now clogged arterial road and future massacre site  for himself and naming the joint, quite fittingly, after an existing pub that bore the name of revered British naval hero, Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood  A hero of the Napoleonic wars, second only to Lord Nelson, who to his misfortune has no big time AFL footy club dragging his name across the muddy bog. Anyone who’s ever drank with a one eyed Collingwood tragic would see the irony of the club being branded after a pub. Maybe head office and Eddie could conspire another “Blockbuster” in honor of Admiral Collingwood’s victory at sea on what is known as the “Glorious 1st of June.” It has a certain ring to it, not unlike “the last Saturday in September” and is bound to be awash with all kinds of heroic military metaphors. All they need is a French team to get this done.

  ESSENDON: The Bombers.  The banned Bombers come crashing back to Earth having melted wax to fix their wings and then gone flying, like Icarus, too close to the Sun: a drama truly worthy of a Reg Grundy production. My maternal family were born and raised in the Essendon area, Mother being from neighboring Strathmore, the roots still deep, a number of her sisters having married Essendon men. Many times over the years I was bussed off to Aunts and Uncles homes stocked with Bomber crazed children who mocked my team, Geelong, as provincial hayseeds. Having never thought to enquire of the origin of the species I was curious as to how the Essendon footy club tracked on the historical radar. Not as grandiose as Carlton House, or as lauded as Admiral Collingwood the Windy Hill mob sprang from the immigrant longings of Richard Green who pined for the village of his beginnings: Essendon in Hertfordshire, England.  He timed it just right lobbying up on the banks of the Maribyrnong River in 1850 ahead of the frenzied dash to the gold fields to the North, prospering as the wurundder clan of the Kulin nation receded from the Australia’s landscape.

  FOOTSCRAY: The Bulldogs.   They’ll always be Franco Cozzo’s  “FOOT-A-SCRAY” to me. No amount of corporate rebranding and negotiation of the Bulldogs name will sway me. A spade is a spade and the Western Bulldogs are Footscray. With the Swans having gotten the Chocolates in 2005, it would be Footscray supporters who are noted as the longest suffering barrackers, having not saluted since 1954 when club legends, E J Whitten and Charlie Sutton roamed the Western Oval. It’s hard to reconcile the hardscrabble Western suburb with the lands of the Kulin nation, once bountiful in fish and game. A community built on successive waves of immigrants that have defined the suburb and footy club that carries the name of Foots Cray on the river Cray in Kent, England.

  FREMANTLE: The Dockers.  Freo  Dockers, the purple haze, “heave ho me hearties.” Upstarts from the west who’ve been thereabouts since shanghaiing Ross Lyon away from St Kilda’s free fall.  It’s hard to imagine what the Nyungar people made of the English ship HMS Challenger as it “heave ho’d” it’s anchor into the waters of what is now the Swan River in 1829. Disembarking a motley group of surveyors, masons, convicts and a hardy handful of free settlers. For the Nyungar, living in isolation across the centuries as they had, it must have been a jarring experience. I imagine, the modern equivalent being somewhat like a visit to Subiaco for a Collingwood supporter. Taking stock of his new surroundings the surveyor, Lieutenant Stirling, promptly branded the soon to be bustling Port, Fremantle, in honour of HMS Challengers Captain Charles Howe Fremantle, without whom the settlement may well have foundered.

  FITZROY: the maroons, the Gorillas, the Lions: Roy Boys to old timers still drinking in Brunswick street pubs. Nomadic, lost and bankrupted by a game accelerating to financial pragmatism and corporate rigidity.  A new gob smacking reality, where love of the jumper and staunch parochial support would no longer be enough to compete.  The ghost of Melbourne’s first suburb; namesake of former Governor of NSW, Sir Charles Augustus Fitzroy, and the winner of the VFL’s first premiership in 1900. Its raggedy remains sent packing in 1996, trundled off like a mad Aunt to a nursing home, when head office thought no one was looking and that nobody still cared.  Forced into a shotgun marriage with the foundering Brisbane bears for better or worse. Yet the records remain. The long history of the Fitzroy Football Club, a foundation member of the VFL, not so easily forgotten by those   who still care to remember.

  GEELONG: Pivotonians,Seagulls, Cats. A foundation member of the league,snagger of early VFA premierships and for over a hundred years, “the away” game. The team I barrack for. The club I have fretted and fussed over all of my life. Now a modern day powerhouse having been pushed to the brink of insolvency only to recover its’ standing through shrewd management and finally a soul searching rebirth of belief among the playing group. Sponsored by the FORD motor Co, the arrangement being the longest standing in worldwide sports history. The City and by extension the club, deriving its’ name from the Wathaurong word “Jillong” which translates as “Cliffs” or “land”  It is said, as goes the footy club so goes the city, an equation I don’t think the bean counters at AFL house have ever truly grasped.  When a young kid belts out the club song, all soprano and full of gusto. “We are Geelong, the greatest team of all…”  That whippersnapper, is invested with an almost religious fervor, a part of something that cannot be conjured in a boardroom and plonked down on an oval surrounded by grandstands and corporate facilities.

  GOLD COAST: The Suns, an expansion franchise plonked down on an oval surrounded by grandstands and corporate facilities, began competing at the elite level in 2011. No disrespect intended towards it’s budding supporter base. Having eyed the booming QLD market and decided it was worth a punt the AFL committed to the infrastructure and development needed too sustain a second franchise and the hyperbole it would need to survive. Australia’s sixth largest city, the Gold Coast,  a glut of gleaming spires shimmering off the sand, lapped by pristine surf. Hotels, Casinos, resorts and theme parks vying with the Suns for the attention of a ribald bunch of locals, Surfers, bikies, schoolies, tourists and hedonistic sun worshipers of all ilk’s. It seems fitting that the AFL having rolled the dice on a long-term future in the region branded the club after a city named and aggressively targeted for development by boom or bust real estate developers in the 1930’s

  HAWTHORN: The Hawks. Originally known as The Mayblooms, they should indeed be a happy team at Hawthorn, having risen from the VFA in 1925 to be underachieving, perennial also rans, before John Kennedy Seniors arrival as coach in 1960.  A hard taskmaster, Kennedy drilled his troops into a hard bodied win at all costs outfit, that has lived and thrived across more than 50 years. Various aggregations of “Kennedy’s commandos”  delivering a staggering eleven premierships, having contested seventeen Grand Finals. Some numbered amongst the most legendary games ever played.  It’s a little murky as to how the tony, upscale suburb acquired its handle in the Melways of history. The first crediting a conversation involving Charles La Trobe who was overheard to remark that the native shrubbery (Assuming pythonesque voice.) reminded him of Hawthorn bushes.  Alternatively, the The Hawks hood may have originated by way of the bluestone Hawthorn house, built by the toffily named James Denham St Pinnock which stands to this day.

   The MELBOURNE’s: The Demons. The kangaroos and The Swans.  Melbourne, once stodgy and Victorian.  The land of the six o’clock swill, multiple seasons in one day and rattling trains that never ran on time. Rebirthed as a rock n roll mecca and regularly touted as one of the world’s most livable joints in the world. Its vibrant heart an urban agglomeration, sprawling into a quirky patchwork of suburbs, spread across all compass points.

  John Batman, having decided it was a bonza place for a village, sat himself down on the banks of Merri Creek, with eight elders of the Wurundjeri people and signed a treaty for use of the land that would become the City.  The treaty was later annulled with much ado and fuss in New South Wales, with bitter rancor to the validity and understanding of the wurrundjeri as to the ramifications of such an alien document.  Formalized in 1835 and named by Sir Richard Bourke in honour of of the British Prime Minister of the day, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount of Melbourne and finally declared a city by Queen Victoria, who jagged herself a whole State in 1847.

   The parklands on the edge of the Yarra River being the site of the evolution of the code under the aegis of Tom Wills, H C A Harrison and others, evolving out of meetings at the Parkland Hotel in 1859. Wills making vigorous arguments for the nurturing of strength and stamina that would help sustain the youth of the colony, while developing hearth and home. It must have been a grand time to be a young Melburnian in those years as, propelled by the explosive growth of the Gold Rush, the city rose to a place of prosperity and promise that would endow generations not yet born.

 All right, moving right along, having established Lamby as the namesake of a few footy clubs that have competed in the big leagues that became the AFL, one asks. How now brown cow?

The once proud Demon’s foundering, seemingly bereft of hope, having fought off a merger and retained the 2nd Viscounts identity remain perilously placed. It will be interesting to see what the suits at the old Harrison house have in store for the grand old flag of the Melbourne footy club. Me? I’d be sharpening my pitchfork if i was a member.

  Sydney’s absorption of the South Melbourne footy club in 1982 left a hole in a lot of hearts. People like Harry Hill, my good mate Tony’s (RIP Brother) Grandad. He’d followed The Bloods from the get go in the VFL. His bloodstained Angels playing out of the Lake oval last saluting in the 1945 bloodbath defeat of Carlton. The ghost of The Bloods rise as Sydney, especially their gutty win in 2005, warmed a lot of old South Melbourne souls. Sadly Harry Hill having been staunch to his club for 80 plus years never lived to see the high powered success of the modern era. I hope him and me old mate Lumpy Hill are enjoying a couple of cold cans, perched high in the celestial grandstand, as the 2014 Swannies try to salute in the weeks ahead. Crack a cold one for me Lump, I’ll see you in awhile mate.

  I was noodling about on Facebook a few weeks back in the wee California hours, and rolled over a photo of an old friend and her Daughters down in Hobart. They were all set up in anticipation that their club, The North Melbourne Kangaroos, might prevail for the four points. All buttoned up in their club colours they looked really happy. Happy, and lucky to still have a club. Unfashionable from their beginnings, the shinboners, a name thought to have come from the 19th century abattoirs in and around the suburb, and considered an appropriate nickname  for a club from a tough working class part of town. The last team in the VFL to bring home the premiership bacon. Handsomely coached by Ron Barrassi on field and superbly administered off field by Allen Aylett. As i write this and think of the tribulations of The Melbournes, the words of the North Melbourne  motto; “Victoria Amat Curam”resonate. (Victory Demands Dedication)

  PORT ADELAIDE: The Power. Like The Crows they were handed the moniker of the city that also bears MS. Adelaide of Saxe – Meniningen . Queen consort of King William the IV’s name by Colonel Light.  Unlike The Crows, they were not a construct of a rabid AFL,  insistent on Uber Alles domination across the wide brown land. No siree. They were the dominant monster in the charged, highly parochial SANFL. Wearing black and white vertical stripes on their guernsey, the then magpies as Port Adelaide was long and proudly known, racked up an impressive 36 flags,notching 6 in a row and in 1890  whipped VFA premier; South Melbourne for title “Champion of Australia” Something i would surely stick up Sammy Newman if i was a South Australian. In 1990 when the club wanted to marry into the AFL their application was branded as treacherous and after a rancorous legal battle that forced the immaculate conception of The Crows, The soon to be rebranded Magpies were left to stew. Finally rising in 1997 in Eddie McGuire’s gunsights.

  RICHMOND: The Tigers. The Richmond footy club. While scratching around for the dirt on the early Richmondites then Wasps i was surprised to find they were considered a pussified lot early in the business. Being led, as they were, by influential parliamentarians who pushed sportsmanship, fair play and a sort of “Tally ho, old Chap” approach to the game. Once firing a player for using a gob full of cuss words on the playing field.Not the harden the fuck up, shirt front hard at the ball, Tigers of Jack Dyer and Francis Bourke that i thought i knew. Although, God rest him, Tom Hafey was known for his civil teetotaling ways. Formed a couple of long punt kicks to Punt road on the land of the Wurendjeri, the former Parish of Jika Jika, morphed into Richmond. The name being co opted for suburb and footy club by way of Richmond on Thames. Palace and home digs of Tudor King Henry the VII. So named in honor of his early honorarium The Earl of Richmond.  I must concede a soft spot for the Tigers and give a shout out to my mate Wobbly Warwick Brown and his long suffering boy Arlo, whose 15 years of life have been spent barracking in vain. Their Tigers having rocketed into Ninth possie as i type and in line for a tilt at the silverware. May you sing Jack Malcombsons’ grand song “Oh, we’re from Tigerland” with gusto.  That is unless you play Geelong, at that point you can go to buggery for all i care.

  ST KILDA: The Saints. God bless their little cotton socks. It truly must be a hard road to “Go the Sainters !!”  I almost felt sorry for them when my Cats bushwacked them in the 2009 Granny. Almost, being the key word,having drunk from a cup of dust six times in my own life. The club, founded in 1873 in the land   the Kulin People called Euroe Yroke, is a foundation member of the VFL, and bar Barry Breen and a sly point in 1966 they’d be 118 years- nil for the silverware. A truly wretched road to hoe for long suffering barrackers. The Saints carrying a lonely burden for their seaside suburb and namesake Lady Grange, once imprisoned by her scumbag Husband on hintra, the largest Island in the St Kilda archipelago west of Scotland. Her name being carried to the foreshore, of what was at that time known to early  settlers  as The village of Fareham, on the sloop Lady of St Kilda which lay moored offshore in 1841. Admired as a thing of beauty by Charles Latrobe and James Ross Lawrence over a few ales, they conferred the name St Kilda on the  future suburb and football team. This suburban rebirthing probably also worked out pretty well for the great Australian magpie of song, Paul Kelly. “From the village of Fareham to Kings Cross” not having that je ne sais quoi.

    The SYDNEYs:  Swans and Giants. On a summers day, January 26th, 1788, Captain Arthur Philip came ashore and ran up the British colours on the lands of the Cadigal and Eora people: their home of 30,000 years. He is to be commended for his impeccable timing, arriving  as he did on the back end of the future cricket season, guaranteeing a  summer public holiday to all Australians. Now a freshly minted Governor, he decided on the name Albion, before swerving and deciding on honoring Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney. It could have been worse. He could have knocked it for six and out and gone the Earl of Sandwich.

  It took the Sydneysiders a long time to get with the program and embrace real footy, having long prefered  rugby,  and its ugly rolling mauls. It was a brave punt by the then VFL to shunt the flailing South Melbourne to the lonely North, to convert the non believers. Rebranded as the Sydney Swans and adding an opera house to the blood stained angels guernsey it required the patience of Job.  Thirty two years down the track beyond pink helicopters, Dr Edelstein and Warwick Capper, the bones of the bloods thrive as the Sydney Swans. I hope Harry and Tony Hill are smiling from that celestial grandstand.

   Andrew Demetriou, whose judgement forever saddled the Punt Road end with, The Meatloaf pocket, was on a roll. Pocketing a seven figure executive salary from the peoples game, a number that would leave Tom Wills and H C A Harrison numb, embarked on further expansion to Sydney: now a viable “market.” Conjuring with his suits and bean counters The Greater western Sydney Giants. I live in America and it’s been obvious to me for years that AFL house has long looked to American sports and its franchise properties, now long beyond the supporters influence, as the great games future blueprint. There’s not a lot out there on the origin of the Giants nickname. Maybe it came by way of the storied San Francisco Giants, who left Gotham and went west young man. Perhaps Andrew was watching Abbott and Costello in Jack and the beanstalk and fancied the two fools at large in the Giant’s lair.

 WEST COAST; The Eagles. The first national push to the continents western fringe, established 1987, were a pretty successful mob from day one. What’s to say of them having claimed an entire coastline, eschewing a city, heaven forbid a humble suburb. Maybe the folks in the WAFL were taking it easy, smoking some pot, digging the soft west coast rock of The Eagles and a light bulb exploded. As to the nickname, I’m gonna say it’s a wedge tail eagle. I have a tattoo of one on my back, i’m going to compare it to the logo. Well, it looks a bit like the tattoo so I’ll stick with a wedge tail.

UNIVERSITY: The Professors, The students, The Shop. Organized out of the University of Melbourne,  they could arguably have been whacked in with the other sprouges of Lord Melbourne, but they're a unique proposition. They got cracking early in the piece in 1859, playing all the clubs that would congeal into the VFL, eventually being inducted by unanimous vote with Richmond in 1907. There tenure was a slog to the bitter end. Playing only seven seasons for a wretched win loss ratio, losing their last 51 games on the trot. Arguably the earnest scholars were done in by the first push for professional  player payments, leaving them undermanned at the coalface. They played seven seasons never making the finals disbanding in 1914, with war in Europe raging. Yet the club lives to this day, competing in the VAFA, and its records are still counted in VFL/AFL history.

  Well that was a great gob full. If you’re still with me, onya and congratulations. As i write this I’m dealing with a severely broken ankle and the down time has allowed me to look back at the names, places and times that shaped the great game. Fondly and with whimsy for simpler times.  I learned a lot about footy, history and Australia’s past and future, and feel edified by the effort. Yet my effort is but a sketch. the shadows of the stories grow longer by the year and there are so many others to be told. The Grand final will soon be upon us and I’ll truck on off to the San Diego Lions pie night as i do each year. I’ll pony up a few bob to support the Lions as they confront the game with all the vim and vigor  that was mustered across 157 winters. I’ll smile knowing the love of the game lives at the grassiest of roots. And if your ratty mob makes it through to September, then good luck. Carna Cats, um... Pivotonians,er...Seagulls.

CODA.  I would be remiss not to include this in something called The state of THE origins. As we ponder our place in an angry, often confusing world, where music, art, sport and mateship unite and bond communities, hearth and home.

Extracted from Wikipedia’s “Origins of Australian football.”  

     Some historians, including Martin Flanagan,[ Jim Poulter and Col Hutchinson postulate that Tom Wills, who was the son of a politician and a squatter and was educated at Rugby School in England in the 1850s ] could have been inspired by indigenous Australian pastimes involving possum skin "ball" games (sometimes collectively labeled "Marn Grook").

Anecdotal evidence of such pastimes appears in the 1878 book, The Aborigines of Victoria, in which Robert Brough Smyth relates that William Thomas, a Protector of Aborigines in Victoria, had witnessed Wurundjeri Aborigines east of Melbourne playing a "football" game in 1841.

  The account appears to fit the general description of the traditional game of Marn Grook. This appears to be the earliest record of Europeans observing such pastimes. William Blandowski's 1857 sketch of indigenous Australians in Merbein clearly depicts children playing a form of "football". Further research has established that this may have been a separate game (possibly Woggabaliri). Written record of such traditional pastimes is otherwise scant and as there is no known record of these pastimes in traditional Indigenous Australian art it is not possible to trace its history further.

  The Marn Grook connection is argued as follows. Wills arrived in Victoria's western district in 1842. As the only white child in the district, it is said that he was fluent in the local dialect and frequently played with local Aboriginal children on his father's property, Lexington, in outside of the town of Moyston.] This story has been passed down through the generations of his family.[29] The tribe was one that is believed to have played marngrook. However the relationship of the Wills family with local Djabwurrung people is well documented.

  Jim Poulter has argued that there was a direct link between the Australian rules football and sports played by some members of the indigenous Australian population. Poulter argues that Tom Wills had knowledge of Aboriginal oral traditions and language. However, when the rules of Australian rules football were codified, the status of Aboriginal culture in Australia was such that Wills may have been disadvantaged had he mentioned any connection, and as such "had no reason to mention this in discussions".  Col Hutchinson, former historian for the AFL wrote in support of the theory postulated by Flanagan, and his account appears on an official AFL memorial to Tom Wills in Moyston erected in 1998.

   

Follow that dream: the fairytale of Jonathan Simpkin.

 It's hard to muster much enthusiasm for today's Grand Final, my cats having been turfed out last week by the worthy old foe. None the less, I will be tuned in, and will have an oar in the water for Fremantle.  It's been a topsy turvy season for the grand old game, with Essendon being accused of all kinds of shenanigans, while trying to get a leg up on its equally sheisty competitors. Ross Lyon; a coach who went west for the filthy lucre is poised to be blessed with the bounty of all the marbles, AND all the tea in China. While a number of his colleagues have received the long clearing kick from the backline. Punted into oblivion, their years of planning, training and scheming now just an asterisk of failure beside their names.

     But there is hope for the hopeless. The success of Mathew Knights at the cattery being catnip for their clouded ambitions. The late, great Steve Connolly's brother, Rohan, just asked me via the magic piano, if I thought Lance "Buddy" Franklins holding out on signing an already lucrative playing contract, would affect his performance in today's Grand decider. I replied, I bloody well hope so, and clicked send. May he be blighted with "TURF TOE" and be put out to pasture, that Fremantle may deliver the coup de gras. Once  again the specter of La Bron James and his "I" statements looms large across the one professional team sport I still love.  For a week I have followed the soap opera of Richmond’s Dustin Martin, as my ever hopeful and hungry, one eyed fellow footy tragic, Warwick brown, wrings his hands and frets as to Master Martin’s ambitions.  I now know that widdle Dusty had it wuff gwoing up. (Sic) I learned that his Dad is a big bad Kiwi “bikie” who looks nothing like Jax Teller, and other useless things about a still slim life of twenty one years. Reality never does look real until it’s too late.

    How ironic for Dustin, and his one valuable commodity. The one that separates him from the reality of an industrial award and a factory job in Clayton, that he has had to retreat from his Oliver Twist demands of “Please Sir, I’d like some more!!“  To be confronted with the reality that his troubled stock price is a little off the mark, hobbled by the knowledge that market forces are in play. Will the Tiger army have him back with his yellow and black tail between his legs? Of course they will, but on less money.  Because money talks and bullshit walks, right, yar bloody well right it does.  It truly is a razors edge for professional athletes, one that divides the glory of awards and accolades from pain and obscurity.  The best hope being a Mathew Eganesque reinvention of the self, the worst being a faded Jim Krakouer drug mule drive into the western desert sunset. As Bruce Springsteen gurgles his way through the hoary verses of “Glory days, that pass you by in the wink of a young girls eye.”

  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not banging on these guys for putting their hands up for a fair share of the pie. I do it every day.  I try and sell my services to the highest bidder and sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Only the slimmest loyalty is demanded of me as I ply my trade in shark infested industrial waters.  It’s the way the world works. The old chestnut of, a closed mouth never gets fed, being one of the truest and best roasted chestnuts I know. Life is short and you are a long time retired. (Unless you are a great Grandfather who happens to sing for the Rolling Stones, but that my friends, is a life seemingly immortal in a transient world.) Most of us are on an egg timer and time is running out. Life is finite.

  This year I missed most of this footy season.  I consumed it in typed snippets, lovingly snail mailed from the home front. I followed my Cats tilt at the flag with a damp enthusiasm, not unlike a man who consumes powdered eggs and soy bacon.  You eat it up and it does the job of nourishing you, sort of. I was hogtied by my own continuing ballad of good and evil and prevented from roaming free across the paddock, from scouting the ball as it clears the pack, that I might blaze away at the big sticks.  My trap sprang shut and my ambitions for season 2013 were in a crimp of my own making.  It gnawed at me, especially as my always whacked out circadian rhythms settled down to sleep, knowing that half a world away it was game on.  It was a surprise to wake one morning and find a preliminary final in the offing and realize Scotty had beamed me up. That I had been delivered that I might barrack, or in the local vernacular, root for my team, and catch up on all that had unfolded while I slept - The good, the bad and the ugly.

 
   Charlie Dickens knew how trouble finds good, yet flawed men, and exploits their passions.  “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” (SIC) Alas the Kennet curse was defied and 2013 ended with a whimper not a bang and left us with only two prize fighters still on their feet. Warily eyeing each other across the ring as my mob, and  what has become of South Melbourne slunk away to enjoy cold beer, fancy dress and a mad Monday.

   So here we are, ticketless to the big dance and feigning mild interest on that last Saturday in September. Can Ross Lyon justify the faith of the suits, the bankers, the emotionally invested members and deliver the holy cup west, or will the tightly wound little Hawk, Alistair Clarkson deliver the heave ho off the top rope in the battle royale? Only time and tide will testify to the result and it will only matter to those who truly care. For the rest of us the comings and goings have already assumed center stage. The futures of the Dustin’s, the Daisies and the Didak’s pose questions begging answers. But what of that most loyal servant and stealer of Grand finals past, Paul “Chappy” Chapman.  What will become of him and his dodgy hamstrings? Will disgruntled Don, Steven Crameri, be a Dog come springtime? Just like any society it seems there is only care and concern for the elite in the headlines.

   The Aussie battlers will be left to rove the pie crumbs and fall in where they may, until they once more find the opportunity to strut across the stage in full costume. The blokes numbered twenty two plus in the clubs footy equation, the ones who make up the list numbers and staff the twos. On a fair quid, but not in the big time, their names known only to diehard members and the now, surplus players own kinfolk. There will be small notices in the fish wrap and one or two will wriggle through the net and go on to greatness. The rest will pack up their what ifs and move on further down the road. It’s become a ritual when the contractual umbilical cord is cut and the now drifting player is floated free, that he is feted as a top bloke and a most staunch, clubless, club man. It will be noted that he came in via the Mordialloc under 16’s and that he was just happy to be around the club rubbing shoulders with the likes of an Abblet, a Watson or a now balding Chris Judd.

 Last Monday gone, with the sting of losing a preliminary final still a stone in my shoe, I cast an eye at the Brownlow medal count. I‘ve always enjoyed the Brownlow. Over my 50 plus years it has become predictable and comforting, much as a warm bath is in winter time. Maybe it’s because Charles Brownlow was a Geelong man. Perhaps it’s the plunging necklines of the WAG’s dresses, or the opportunity to watch a drunken dickhead like Brendan Fevola throw his livelihood away. I really couldn’t tell you why it gets my unbridled attention: just that it does.

  It was delivering its usual rubber chicken, stage managed drama, with the expected suspects loosening their ties and trying not to look like imbeciles as the votes were tallied. Those eliminated from the upcoming big day out nursing Crown lagers, seated as they were, in a tight knot of tables. Elbow to respectful elbow with their club brothers and peers from the other teams that are the spine of the competition, their mere inclusion trumpeting the success of their young lives.  It was a tight race boiling over into round 23 with my man Joel Selwood of the Geelong Football club charging heroically to the lead. My team, the club of my Father, the second oldest professional football club in the world, founded when America was on the cusp of a catastrophic civil war, was about to add another trophy to its heritage. Fair compensation for a season denied.

  It was a nervous wait, for bringing up the rear was the son of the gun, who would ultimately deny Joel a well-earned victory. The gum on his shoe, Gary Ablett Jr, who had left Geelong high and dry too graze in the golden, pastures of the Gold Coast. The son gone for the sun, the well-respected veteran of our wars saluted and remembered at the setting of the sun. His Dad, Senior, the greatest to ever play the game- and I’ll fight you Shinboners,  you Dogs and Hawks on that score if  you have the heart to step outside. A young man who has my respect, because he dared to make a run at his own dream, and chose to follow his passion and his heritage. I always thought, or perhaps wanted to believe that Gary Ablett Jr, Jacob Dylan and John Lennon sons would be the best of mates. That should their worlds collide, on an end of season/tour trip in Las Vegas they would compare notes, and salute each other’s courage for daring to follow their Fathers. (Maybe they could all shag Miley Cyrus and St Kilda players could film it on their I- phones and share it with the twitter verse.)

  At length, as the cameras record history in the making,  Gary crosses his fingers hoping for a two vote that he might tie and share the accolade with Joel, binding them for eternity in the old testament of premierships and Brownlow medals, as they are sliced and diced in the years yet to dawn.  He is humble in the knowing that he is going to win. He plays for a team that is finding its future week by week, day by day. When the confetti drops and the champagne flutes are filled, he speaks with passion, even profoundly, about his Dad, and his brother Nathan who found the coalface too daunting. He talks about mates at Geelong and Torquay, surfing, skateboarding and how he just wanted to say bugger this dream of playing footy at the elite level. For him, for a while, the Modewarre under 16’s was enough, just as the Mordialloc under 16’s and the rest have paved a respectable exit for the delisted lesser lights of the competition.

  It’s a cruel game is Australian football, a hard game, for hard young men. I’m going to let you into a little secret. The most scared I have ever been was when I was in an all-in bar fight at the Seaford Hotel. I was a young member of a club; we paraded our specialness and collective invulnerability ahead of our arrival. A small guy, a rover, stepped up. Words were exchanged and Hell boiled over. I was smacked across the face with a bar stool and a young bloke was on top of me trying to gouge my eye out. Buried under the pack I found courage and strength I didn’t know I owned to rise up, beat the dog off and find my way home. My blokes had scattered, roaring away, road rebels all, but the local footy club stuck to the consequences.

    The group, the pack, the belonging, and then you’re gone cut from the protection of the tribe. A prospect waiting in the wings hoping for the leading lady too turn an ankle and surrender the colors.  I turned on the internet a few days ago and visited the Geelong Football Clubs website.  In the twilight of my day, Cameron Yeardley and Ryan Bathie, strapping young men once considered to be the foundation of a bright future had been dispatched.  I surfed over to Adelaide and Stiffy Johncock had also surrendered to the call of time. Tough calls on young men, and grey beards made through gritted teeth. Yet as always a hero is required, especially on the last Saturday in September. The twitter twittered, and poor Brendan Whitecross’s knee was possibly forever fucked. With barely a minute to midnight, who could step up? Enter Jonathan Simpkin, having just played a dominant role, in the not quite ready for prime time VFL Grand Final, he stood fit and poised to run out for the franchise. A rejected Swan, a neglected Cat now rebranded as a mighty Hawk.

  As he was at Sydney and Geelong, he was a hopeful and optimistic young man, just happy to be in the big time. It was almost Podsiadlyesque.  He was obviously charged up, yet quiet and adamant that he could stand the test.  He had followed his dream and it had led him to the MCG on that last Saturday in September, the dream of a pig skin chasing child soon to be realized. As the greats of yesteryear looked on from the grandstand he lined up on the bench, the green substitute vest advertising his arrival as the 22^nd man picked. The last spoke in the wheel: the envy of the 352 other wannabes, pushed to the sidelines through a brutal twenty five weeks of attrition.

He played a handy role, burning on in the last quarter, providing some fresh dash and the clichéd “big body” when Fremantle were challenging.  Finishing his grand final dream with the rubber down and the shiny side up, six touches, a medal and a lap of honor with his more well regarded colleagues. The tall handsome leading man, who would soon fly away from Glenferrie leading the parade.  A grin splitting his face from ear to ear, knowing in his heart, that come the autumn season he would no longer be everybody’s best buddy. The now delirious mob would soon be hooting and hollering for his head on a pike. The Fremantle Dockers lay sprawled and gutted on the turf. The defeated coaches, already scheming for another crack, the “what ifs” leaden in their guts. Perhaps a recycled veteran ala Brian Lake, maybe an out of contract  and rejected J-Pod leading out of a forward pocket . That could be the margin of victory.

There’s a lot I don’t care for in modern footy, and one of my good football mates on line feels the same way. He no longer wants to watch the game. He’s even sworn off the community cup.  He hates Andrew Demetriou and his Meatloaf coveting suit with every fiber of his being. I sent him a video of Leigh Mathews ironing Andrew out, with the now near banned “bump” and even with the prescribed ten plays, he remains on strike and won’t put his duffle coat back on. Today, as the storm tossed ships lay safely docked in their friendly home ports, the crews will disembark. Some battered by the tempest will throw their Jonah’s outboard to the tide. Before the champagne has been guzzled down the soaring Hawk Buddy boy Franklin WILL fly the coop. The odious, tanking, salary cap rorting Blues will hold their collective breath until they turn purple and the cratered Bombers will try to fly, up, up, to win the Premiership flag.

 I find myself wondering about my own dreary old duffle coat, long gone into mothballs. The number five I stitched onto the back of the colors worn proudly across the generations of my life. The revered number carried into battle by Polly Farmer, G Ablett Snr and nimble little Travis Varcoe.  The patron saints of Grand dreams contested on that last Saturday in September. There’s a cold wind blowing and I can feel it in my bones, change is coming.  The Grand Final is now just a statistic and it is time for some to be pushed and some to be shoved, while others will march off into the sunset on their own terms heads high, backs straight.

It’s going to be days, if not weeks, before the dust settles and the horses are traded.  Names I have come to know across a decade will be gone and the statistics attached to those names will dictate my feelings. I might even bite my lip when the Hell’s Angels favorite player, Allan Didak is put out to pasture, and I fucking hate Collingwood.  The lamentation of the hypocrite in me demands that I give a teary farewell to the great spine of the Geelong Football club, Josh Hunt, Joel Corey, James Podsiadly and most egregiously Paul Chapman. Even as I am wondering if they’ll stitch us up next year, as they seek to continue their careers in foreign colors.  I’m already crossing my fingers, hoping that the unsung premiership hero, recruiting guru Stephen Wells, is down at the muddy creek scouting shiny stones.

I now live far away from the penetrine and orange slices of yesteryear and I wonder why I still care about grey Melbourne winters and football.  I suppose it is because the code was beaten into me on the muddy bog of Murrumbeena Park, long ago when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.  The dreams of a young boy now gone salt and pepper grey, but still loyal to the club, haunt me. The cynic in me co-signs the agreement that this is the way it is, but what is left of my wide eyed wonder hopes that there’s one little boy with a duffle coat, and that as he cuts away the brown and gold stitching of number 23, now worn and gone, that he can still summon the dream.  Because if he can’t the game means nothing. It’ll be just another day at the office for the businessmen. That little boy is out there, because I know him and I’m hoping, just hoping, that he follows that dream as flawed as it now is, and sews Jonathan Simpkin’s number 32 on the back of that duffle coat and wears it loud and proud for as long as he is able. That the little boy believes in the fairytale of Jonathan Simpkin, the rejected Swan, the neglected Cat, the mighty Hawk who lived his dream.

 I can hear music: my life.

I’d never given much thought to being a singer, much less a writer of songs. A composer: such a lofty aspiration. To be sure, Brian Wilson is a composer.  In the writing of his epic catalogue of songs he has I become immortal. Much as the Bach boys, the Beethoven boys, the Bartok Boys who preceded him have. We mortals will be dust, but Brian will endure until the Sun turns nova and scorches the last feudal remnants of our kind off the mother ship. I sometimes derisively refer to the hoary old aggregation that the odious Mike Love trots out, for seemingly endless summer tours, as “The Beach Men.”  For without Brian, the non-surfing, teen angst chronicling, son of the California sun, there are no boys on the beach, just greedy men, lingering without a purpose beyond peddling nostalgia and watered down beer, year in and year out. The hot wax of yesteryear still wolfed down by an insatiable audience now grown.  Men and Women eager to relive a dim boozy memory of better days; a time before responsibility crashed the party. Before the Beach Men’s audience became their Mothers and Fathers.

Paul Kelly: the gifted Australian magpie of song, once wrote a toe tapper called “Going about my Fathers business.” Much like my own father before me I became a parent late in life. Sometimes I have to step back and check myself as I catch my tongue talking to my daughter in the voice of my own father. The same inflection and tones wrapped around familiar phrases, most of it for the good. “Brush those teeth till they’re white as pearls.”  “Figures are fun.” Alright tantrum tosser, that’ll do, it’s time for bed.”   She’s a good kid and lights up my world.  She’s shown some interest in music, she has a violin, a guitar and a keyboard, but nothing has really taken hold as of yet: much as it was for me.

In primary school I somehow managed to get myself singled out and enrolled in the school choir. For a football mad kid, growing up in a town where “footy” and sport in general, are almost religious rites, it was a dire position to find one’s self in. It was in the fifth grade; right at the age my Grace is now, when I was shanghaied from all things sporty for three periods a week.  From God only knows where a music teacher had been shipped into our world.  Mr. Gaudie, who in hindsight was as camp as a row of tents, came into our classroom abruptly barking orders. First he lined up the girls. They were all pretty eager for a turn and he cocked an ear to them singing the national anthem. (The old one.) He’d listen, with a scrunched up nose as if divining water in mud and circle back, cutting girls from the choir herd as he saw fit, and reducing twenty two to sixteen blessed divas.

Then it was the boys turn.  Unlike the girls we were individually drilled so crafty old Mr. Gaudie could not be snowed by a group effort of awfulness.  We stood on a little raised up platform, much as lambs at the abattoir, and were each asked to sing the theme song of our football club as a solo turn.  Wayne Fitton murdered   the Richmond Tigers grand song so thoroughly there is probably still a bench warrant for his arrest somewhere in a dusty drawer at the local CIB.  Wayne Searle succeeded in kicking up such an awful yodel on the North Melbourne Kangaroos song that he was stopped after one lusty stanza, and was, with a winning grin, sent packing from the room. Four lads were picked and all looked a little concerned about their prospects when I was offered up for the sacrifice. “What team boy?” “Ah, the Cats, sir; Geelong.” “Right then, and don’t muck it up.” With that he cued the ever malicious Miss Miram on the piano. It must have been the familiar melody and the pride kicking in. I began with some gusto.  “We are Geelong the greatest team of all. We are Geelong we’re always on the ball. We play the game as it should be played, at home or far AWAY.” That one note buggered my ambition to ditch the school choir. I had shown him a big set of lungs and was booted like a Billy Goggin stab kick onto Mr. Gaudies musical palette.

I remember my shit heel of a brother mocking me mercilessly, but the blossoming, bosomy Bingham sisters seemed pretty encouraging.  Surely that was a good sign.  I can still hear the songs we were assigned in my head. “ Picking up pebbles, Edelweiss and some sort of cool Russian folk song that I do not know the name of anymore. “Full to the brim is my fine Koorabuska” is the first line. I remember thinking what the fuck is a Koorabuska, and why am I required to be singing this? Oh well, it was out of my hands. Rehearsals where held and then dress rehearsals and finally our big day came at the Caulfield town hall. We were bussed in, trotted out, and delivered our mangled trilogy to much parental excitement. All I can say is, I aped the words, reading the blue crib notes on my palm and then was flushed from the obligation back to the familiar playing field of high jump, British Bull Dog and the half back flank.

They say hindsight is truly 20/20; and it is. I did not appreciate I had been given entre to something that would come to mean so much to me and consume such a large part of my life. I once had a conversation with a bass player friend who is the same age as me less a day. He asked me what was the first song that really grabbed my attention. Without batting an eye lid, I said, “Like a rolling stone” by Bob Dylan. I remember being the one tasked with flipping the 45 RPM record over on the turntable so all near seven minutes of it could be consumed in one sitting. The aforementioned bosomy Bingham sisters sitting in rapt attention, as if at a lecture on a University campus.  My older brother paying respectful homage to Linda Bingham’s tits. All the while trying to worm his way closer to them, under the pretense of craning his neck to better hear the message wheezing forth from Bob, stationed far, far, away on the front lines of American Rock n roll. Poor old K Man.  He had no older brother or bosomy neighbors to guide him from the sugar of the Partridge family. His was a lonely pilgrimage to the company of other likeminded souls and “Get your ya ya’s out.”

I have always found it to be a funny and ironic how we find our way to music. For me, as youngster it was by way of AM and then FM radio and other peoples record collections. Expansive catalogs often alphabetized. No $1 dollar “I tunes” flushable auto tune landfill bound garbage.  It was a room where you might run across Frank Zappa or Lou Reed, Big Mama Thornton Wanda Jackson, Slimy Watkins. The pop symphonies of Buddy Holly and the records produced by Phil Spector. Who would eventually end up murdering a beautiful Californian woman after years of unchecked threatening behavior.  Growing up in Australia, as I did, there were also the locals to be considered. Zoot, Daddy Cool ,Masters Apprentices, Radio Birdman, and so many others who now only live on in the dim  recesses of memory, or exist in the ether of the You Tube universe, waiting patiently for you to revisit their three minutes of glory. I still remember the story of Ziggy Zimmerman. The last boy in line at school!!

I’ve always felt a little sorry for American teenagers who are hobbled by the ongoing restraints of a 21 and up licensing law that prohibits them from being on grog drinking premises. When I was a whippersnapper the pubs were the place to find good locally produced music, a few sly drinks and maybe even meet a few girls. Melbourne pubs were a gritty rock n roll battlefield and her soldiers are legion. Some have risen; others have fallen by the wayside, and us who were blessed bystanders dunked ourselves every night, because there was always someone treading the boards worth seeing.  

A typical week might be Sunday at the Pizza joint on Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, listening to two sweet long forgotten angels push a robust blend of covers and originals. Monday would begin the real shenanigans with Paul Elliot’s Gong show at Macy’s. (Where I was once crowned king of the Elvis impersonators at the “Elvis Presley is alive and well and living in Melbourne” show.)  Tuesday, more often than not, would be a quick scoot on the tram to the London Tavern to see Sidewinder, who blended classical violin tones with Blues grit and bought the house down every time.  Wednesday, if you didn’t give the liver a night off, would find you out of place at some WOG night club, as Paul Kelly and the Dots churned out songs to a disinterested gaggle of geese. His brilliance and the radiance of his songs still   lingering beyond the horizon, music still beyond his reach. Thursday, with Friday firmly on one’s mind,   might coax you out to see some band from Sydney or Adelaide, maybe even from far flung Perth. Just a punt really, but it was always a dollar well spent at Storey Hall, or one of the other student union campus gigs. Bastions of education, flogging strong bow cider; where you could get your head filled up with political action slogans by girls with European armpits. The ones who wanted to lynch Malcolm Fraser at sunup. The Saints, Radio Birdman and The Elks. All moving across the landscape with a moving target on their young modern brows.

 Friday and especially Saturday nights: a night so big it has its own lexicon of songs about fighting , drugging, sexing, dancing, car crashing  and fucking shit up. No one ever wrote a song about Saturday night where they tucked themselves into bed with Ayn Rand and a cup of hot Cocoa at sundown did they.  Yup, those were big nights not to be squandered. Maybe you’d head out to see Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons with fifteen hundred other sweaty lugs. The Hunters & Collectors, or some big shots from the UK in over their heads with the local support boyos, perhaps enjoy the Bogan delights you closeted like a homosexual proclivity: Cold Chisel and the Angels.  Tinsley Waterhouse was always a good bet at some pub in Brighton that today would require a global positioning satellite to stray back too. Sweat and beer flowing through the body: shouting, always shouting the words to Western Union man or I’ve been dreaming.

Pub rock they called it, perhaps a tad dismissively. For me it was college. Campuses attended, notes taken, I’s dotted and T’s dashed.  I still try too shimmy a little bit like Joe Cameleri, slouch a bit like Paul Kelly, be proud and take no bullshit like Renee Geyer in a loud room. More often than not it works as I hoe my own meager musical row.  I can firmly blame Jim Massoco who loaned me an Ibanez guitar and showed me how to form a D chord. I pounded that chord like a nail into wood and surfaced months later searching for others.  The majors and the minors, the poor pitiful and neglected diminished chords and the freaky pornographic augmented ones  , with their karma sutra fingerings stuttering  across the fret board, all lurking in the underbrush  surrounding the overlords, G, C and D major.

I was regularly seeing people a few scant years my senior performing locally, and with the hubris only a young man could muster, said: “I can do that.”  But I couldn’t. Finding collaborators, not to mention, locating reliable accomplices would be a challenge. I can’t remember how many times I trekked off with my crap gear looking to play with someone and walked away busted flat in Moonee Ponds. A generation before texting, social media and the other digital conveniences that have stripped music bare of its mystery, it was a far more challenging prospect. Trips into record stores to post a hopeful flyer with little tear off tabs as the cool Archie’s and Jug heads looked down their noses at your intrusion into their hipster sanctum. An ad in the local music fish wrap of the day. The bored operator half-heartedly taking down the text (old school) you had carefully arranged into 28 words or less. Managing to tag Lou Reed as “Lou Read” Perhaps a small act of sabotage to make you look like a wanker to the people you were courting. And all the ads concluded with the small sentence. “No time wasters.” Was I a time waster? Some days I felt like it.

One day I got a call from a bass player who was actually gigging with a mod influenced band I had seen. Bonza said I, as I worked on the three most heartfelt treasures that I was sure would dig a trench  and lay the foundations for a band. Mr. 5.15 turned up. He was an obnoxious ass. In about 15 minutes he polished off the beer I’d bought for our musical mind meld, made a half assed attempt at a song and grandly announced his time had been wasted. But I was far from crushed. I had seen his measure and found it wanting. Mr. 5.15 was all about the boot heels, the tour T shirt and the hair. He was about looks, not songs and for me that was the key to the car.

Eventually I succeeded in socially networking with the local butcher while picking up some sausages and mincemeat.  “Me sister’s a drummer, ya oughta call her.” He gave me Charines’ number. We agreed to meet, she being into Credence Clearwater Revival, while   I cast an admiring eye at Lou Reed and John Cale meant it was an obviously well fitted shoe. “Chaz” rocked up in a V8 Holden Kingswood. She had tattoos before women commonly had them, and within minutes announced she fully intended to have a sex change and become a man. We became fast friends. Her girlfriend Jenny sat loyally at her side, a half pissed Yoko Ono. As we cranked away, our Pied Piper noise lured other rats to the ship. Scott, Greg, Sticky the French polisher, and we became a nameless mob of noise and feedback. We were a band.

There were some ramshackle gigs filled to the brim with young embarrassment. Ways were parted and good byes exchanged.  Motorcycles, larceny and destruction became the addiction.   Music was forgotten. Within a few years I was up to my ass in trouble and I figured it was time to save my sorry future, by hook or by crook. I’d had a big score which put a fat wad of cash into my hands. A passport was acquired and a trip was booked, that day by day, evolved into the next twenty four years of my life. I had a dilemma to face. Take a surfboard or a guitar? A motorcycle was obviously impractical given the airlines gouging weights and measures fees

I packed the guitar and headed towards the future: an old friend riding shotgun. In the heat of South East Asia I first began to imagine songs again. But they were crap. I had no voice; I had to find a life to put into the songs. I promenaded a few around and tried to begin.  Over the next few years I moved around a lot. I am grateful for all the miles I ticked off.  The friends met and the experiences shared.   It’s always nice to be able to tick of iconic things you saw.  Buildings, beaches, wonder of the world.  Places where men who gave the full measure of devotion rest peacefully.  It informs you and you have quiet time to reflect. So the scribble comes: and I’m writing songs.

Songs that for the first time I felt deserved an audience. I’ve never made much money from it but that was never the ambition. It was the writing of a story that mattered to me. A lot of singer songwriter’s talk up how their songs are not literal or about them. I call bullshit on that one. I have come to realize that my songs are the core of the life I’ve lived, and there are a lot I don’t trot out in public. They’re strictly personal mental health notes. Yeah right, Ronald Alexander Joseph Charles Wells talking therapy… It’s okay, you can pick yourself up off the floor now. But it’s true. Without their cloak of protection I’d be an empty husk.

 Just yesterday I was casting an admiring eye over a photograph of a Zundapp motor cycle a friend had posted on Facebook. He reminded me that I am probably the only songwriter in the world to use the word Zundapp in a song. It made me smile and eased me through a very odd day.  He’s a dear friend and collaborator who lives far away, who, the way the deck is stacked, I will probably never have the opportunity to play with again. Like Chaz, Sticky, Greg and so many others he rides with me and every time I sing the songs we worked on they’ve got my back and I’ve got theirs. Every few years when they do the rock and roll Hall Of Fame  induction thingy and you see some asshole like Axl Rose or John Fogerty throwing a hissy fit about his band mates and declining the honor, guys who’ve made millions and live charmed bejeweled lives, I just wanna smack the snot out of them. Perhaps in retrospect it was good not to make a boatload of cash, if it would mean wiping the camaraderie and love of the work off the map.

I guess I am writing this down because things have been really hard for the last several years. A lot of things on a personal level have been lost. Business, relationships houses, money, opportunity, legal troubles. I tell you, it’s a fucking long laundry list, and it’s not just me. Its people I love and care about too, from all walks of my life. Yet, the one constant has been my friends made through playing music. The truest, staunchest most real bunch of folks who have shared my road and helped write my book. Last week my band “The Cactus 5” played a gig at one of our regular spots.  It had been a shit week of trying to collect money from a difficult and challenging construction job where the principals had not been straight up with me. I was feeling strung out and strung along. Driving to the show I remarked to my gal that the band and the music were the last saving grace in the life equation. I hated to be forced to admit it, but I felt like a beaten man. My appetite for living was gone; I had no hunger in my belly and a big hole in my heart.

We got to the gig and I made my usual half assed attempts to set up. My voice had been bugging me for a few days and I thought, I’m gonna suck. A cuppa tea and a bit of too and fro with the band about the set list and it was game on. The lights came up and we powered through the first song, “Don’t look back” and I felt the familiar warmth and camaraderie wash over me and I thought of how many times the brotherhood of the Cactus 5 has had my back as the life lights dimmed. I found a tear in my eye and was grateful that I was a singer of songs, and I felt the heft of all the people I’ve ever played with on my side and felt like nothing could stop us. Later in the evening we were working through a jazz tinged bit of a song “Jack the giant killer”, I don’t play much on this bit so I stepped back and just listened and was proud of what we have created.

At length the gear was packed away, hands were shaken beers were drunk and it was time to get back to the normal, but I felt the spring in my step and the weight light in my heart.  I thought of all the people I’ve played with over the years and how much that they have given me, and how it has been the greatest gift I ever received. I thought of Mr. Gaudie (probably now long gone) and Miss Miram and room 3C where my voyage began at Hughesdale primary school PS: 3166. I wondered how it had all worked out for my other force fed choir brothers. I know the Wayne’s: Fitton and Searle had rough lives and John Tantrum, who picked me up driving a cab around the time I was burying Mother had been put through the wringer that is life.

I have a conservative friend and he’s always a feared how the government’s coming for his hide. I gave him a bit of stick a few days ago. Mate, you bitch and bitch about the teachers union but I never hear you cracking the shits about the prison guards union. The entrenched Einstein’s In charge of running the show where I live have clipped education in music and arts program to the bone while guaranteeing the welfare of guys like Richard Ramirez. (Thankfully, finally dead today.)  7K per student, 80 K per inmate. Not an investment Warren Buffet would bet on. But by the grace of God Little Steven is coming to the schools with his “Rock n roll forever’ foundation Hallelujah!!

My daughter is ten, an interesting in between age; she recorded herself tonight singing Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” on her “device”. She was joyful and I realized the apple had not fallen far from the tree.  I had a broad happy smile, that soured a little as I wondered where so many other kids would find their Mr. Gaudie, whose parents aren’t singers of songs and don’t know that they need him. We were riding back to the box tonight, a room I am renting, as stuff gets sorted. I’m renting it from a friend met through singing songs and “I can hear music” by the Beach Boys came on the radio. I quietly sing along: wouldn’t want to embarrass the ten year old. It washed over me, how happy and thankful I was for all the miles travelled, all the songs sung and for my life. If I ever played music with you and you’re reading this, I love you and thank you for the gift you gave me.