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.

The handbag boys: a footy tragic is redeemed.

  I’m not going to deny it, I’m a footy tragic. To be honest, it’s even worse than that. I am an expatriate footy tragic, now long in exile in the United States of America.   America: the land of the free and the home of the brave. Let’s stop and examine that statement for a moment. When it comes to American football nothing is free, and judging from all the padding and helmets, it must not be easy to be brave.

  All jokes aside, I have never connected with our American cousin “gridiron” in any meaningful way. It’s too corporate. Seats to even the most meager of offerings, say the Jacksonville Jaguars V the Houston Texans are stratospherically beyond the reach of your average working class hero.  And the Super Duper Bowl? As Tony Soprano would say: “Fegedabouit” Those seats are reserved, much like congressional pews, or the Presidency, for Millionaires, Captains of Industry and made men who know where the bodies are buried.

  Joni Mitchell once sang. “They paved over paradise and put up a parking lot.” In the process of the money grubbing paving the dickhead developers mostly forgot about things like green belts and community parks. So, in my experience it is rare to see a couple of kids playing with abandon after school. Shooting pin point Joe Montana (A Geelong supporter if the truth be told) like passes at each other’s chests, or running into space too receive said pass and then  haul ass to the goal line for a mythical, magical, disco dancing touchdown. Nope, most American football is conducted on school campuses, and in the case of College football, it is a multimillion dollar enterprise, where hopefully for a 300 lb.  Offensive lineman, the road will lead to the gilded grass of the NFL.

  A place where the game of football has become a corporate Goliath, where players are traded like stocks and bonds on Wall Street. Neck injuries are common and can cruel the careers of the most gifted in the blink of an eye. In my time I have seen Joe Montana and Peyton Manning, Super Bowl winning MVP’s, shunted off like potato peelings, after serious injury dimmed their worth in their owner’s eyes. And to be sure, they are owned, their contracts the property of Billionaires and syndicates of Millionaires. Bloodless “Mr. Burn’s” who will slash and burn in the pursuit of glory and profitable operations, kicking a leviathan like Joe through the uprights and into retirement, or leveraging his old bones as trade bait for a younger stud at the drop of a hat.

  Sadly, it seems the suits at AFL house are determined to follow this wretched corporate example. Reducing the great game of Australian Rules football to a mere business proposition. A blunt equation of bums on seats, merchandise sold ratings points and broadcast rights banked. The fish rotting from the head and left baking in the sun. That makes me sad, because since 1857 we have raised, cajoled and encouraged a unique spectacle that has resonated across generations. Barely dimmed by the calamity of the world wars, in fact, even bringing solace and the comforting normal of the home front to our lads seized up as POW’s at the fall of Singapore. The resourcefulness and camaraderie of the diggers conjuring the great game amid the adversity of internment. Playing a full season of home and away games, replete with selection committees, clearances, tribunal sanctions and even a “Changi” Brownlow. The 1942 medal being awarded to Fitzroy’s Wilfred “Chicken” Smallhorn, playing in the company of St Kilda’s Peter Chitty, and other elite Australian sportsmen: and it’s still Victoria versus the rest of Australia.

  How great is this game? We are born into it, indoctrinated: the tribalism and ritual hammered into us at birth. Only a brave or ornery few straying from the rigid foundations of family barracking.  I am a Geelong man: a catter, and so it shall be till I draw my last breath on this mortal plain.  I wasn’t born or raised in Geelong, far from it.  Strangely my Frankston bred father had begun life as, of all things, a Collingwood supporter. There, I’ve shared the shameful family secret. Spun inside and out, and hung out to dry on the hills hoist by his experience in WW2, my Dad fell hard. Alcoholism and incarceration dogged him: the black dog a nefarious companion, always growling and close, teeth gnashing at his thigh.

  In the Heidelberg repatriation hospital he conspired a plan. He might be able to forsake the drink if he rode as far away as he could to a football match. Kardinia Park, long before the endless corporate rebranding, became his sober pilgrimage.  A four hour journey each way on the red rattler to South Geelong and the shores of the Barwon River. There, and only there, for one hundred minutes and the vagaries of time on was he was safe from his obsession. Captivated by the grace and dash of the Geelong flyer Bob Davis, scorching the wing and the proud bullocking of john Hyde defending for his life. Captain Fred Flanagan commanding and exhorting the team forward. Reg Hickey coaching them to a perfect victory in 1952, on that last delirious Saturday in September, over the now detestable Collingwood football club.

  And so a family tradition was raised. The old man got better but he was never over the obsession. Saddled with two little boys too raise football became everything: and we embraced it as a family. It was the manly hug of a Father to a son.  All the while  Mother creasing her brow as the puffy  impacts of under 13’s gave way to teenage backhands and flat out Murrumbeena under 16’s mayhem in the goal square. The boot studder oppressed teenage umpires and a few Dads’s wading weekly into the mayhem, with all the authority of a GTV 9 big time wrestling referee. Those suburban stoushes taught me so much. How to stand your ground and not show weakness, carry a hurt, and most importantly; be part of something bigger than yourself with your mates.  Something you all worked for: small parts of a bigger whole.

  It is  hard to conceive a time in the 21 st century when a couple of brothers could slip away from their Dad in the grog and fog of 30,000 people, jump the fence and run to the man who had just kicked 100 goals before  their  young wide eyes: and the cops were as happy as the kids.  Mobbing the man with glee, already planning Monday’s Shakespearian reenactment on the school turf. A simple pat on the back, a grin, a tousled head, the gratification  of being part of the history. Doug Wade. Peter Hudson: that Collingwood bastard Peter McKenna: all kicking whopping tons whispering towards Bob Pratt’s mythical 150 goals. Running a victory lap with Bobby Skilton (I always had a soft spot for poor downtrodden South Melbourne.) and his fairest and very best Brownlow medal. Going into the rooms with your Dad and feeling Gareth Andrews great paw on your shoulder. Feeling the heft of the knowledge as he warmed a few soft hand balls to you. Age 9, and already part of the team.

  I have always thought it was better, during the fallow years, to be a Geelong supporter as opposed to a “pie” man.  Too be accused of having hand bags by Lou Richards was one thing but to be shellacked year after years in Grand Finals would have raised blisters.  1967 was a tearful hunkering down at a flat in Sorrento. 1989 flush, and married, visiting like King Farouk with a Cadillac was a bitter jagged pill to swallow. Even with Gary Snr running amok we couldn’t get the job done.  Listening on a shortwave radio from a bar in Timbuktu in 1992 was sobering.  1994 finishes beaten to within an inch of your faith by the upstart West Coast Eagles.  Going back to back in 1995 and lying, cheating, tanking Carlton owns you.  Bugger!!  Surely there is no God and I have lost my faith.

  My, Dad, Charlie, died in 1999, on a cold Saturday in July. He had the Geelong game on the wireless when he slipped away. I was in California out around the Farralon Island’s fishing. My ex-wife called me on the new fandangled cell phone and squared me up with the sad news. What she said sobered me up pretty quick. “Charlie’s dead. Your Mum said Geelong beat Collingwood by three points and he just closed his eyes and went, with a smile on his face, sitting in the “comfy” chair.” In the mad scramble too transit the miles this pasted a broad smile too my sad face. He had at the death defeated Collingwood one last time.  (Catters 19.14. 128. D Pies 19.11. 125.) this was the last time the suits at AFL house required Collingwood too travel to the shores of the Barwon river.  The current mob would need to crack out the Melways to find their way back. This was a wooden spoon year for the club and obviously the suits at AFL house would have to find away too ease the stresses of the premiership cakewalk for their marquee team.

  Work and family have led me to stray far from the muddy winter bogs of VFL & VFA suburban grounds. Far from a time when a kid could be just  a kid and Kick the footy with his mates, scoff a meat pie and sneak a can of VB from an unsuspecting Esky. Singing the club song in victory and bearing the despair of defeat as a man must learn to do. Mum knitting a beanie and darning footy sock hand me downs, as Harry Beitzel umpired the panel in a ghostly black and white world. And, Mr. Demetriou, we didn’t need a clash Guernsey too distinguish between the Tigers and Bombers or the emaciated Kangaroos battling the detestable magpie mob. Much less warmed over meatloaf.

  In 2007 my drought broke and a victorious rain soaked me to the bone. My team, The Geelong Football Club, second oldest in the world, were premiers. I was a wee lad of three the last time they had saluted, and now here I was, a middle aged man with flecks of grey hair and a child of my own. I wasn’t barking instructions at the players from the great southern stand, nor was I marking goals, behinds and other statistics into the footy record as father had all those years ago. I was in a bar in San Diego, California when the wave soaked the shore. A dingy little joint with a quasi Aussie theme, surrounded by the mighty San Diego Lions footy club: our hosts for live grand final coverage on that glorious last Friday night in September.

  It had been a hard year. I had just separated from my wife and was staring down the barrel of starting over, a daunting prospect for a man in his late forties with no family and few friends in the region. As was my routine in exile, I had dutifully followed along, charting the home and away season as it unfolded, often rising at 3 AM to listen to the absurdly comical Rex Hunt as he narrated the action in real time.  As was my way I didn’t get too revved up when the boys dispatched the hated Magpies for the right to confront the Power. I’d been there, done that. But I was confident, as I explained a few of the complexities of the game to the locals, that today would be the day we were relieved of the burden we had carried as a club and a family for forty four years.

  It was a romp from start to finish. Port Adelaide were never in it. My money was on John Scarlett’s boy for the Norm Smith, maybe freshly minted Brownlow Bartel, or one of seniors’ sons. Seeing that reformed scallywag Stevie J take the medal was icing on the cake. The beer flowed and the song was sung with gusto and then sung again and again. Once more, there could be no doubt, we were truly the greatest team of all.  I wove my way to the Pacific Ocean and stared long and hard into the night looking to the west, bridging the 12,460 kilometer gulf in my mind. Remembering all the bitter hurts and disappointments that had just been so joyously lifted from my shoulders by 22 men, now bonded as one in the record books and I felt the gleaming twilight of the MCG as surely as if I were truly there. Thunder cracked ominously overhead as I said my thankful half pissed prayers and had a good chit chat with dear departed Dad about the game that had just unfolded.

  2008 was dawning and it would prove to be the year that we ran out of money. America was broke and everywhere you looked people were hurting, losing homes and jobs hand over fist and I, a son of two shores, was caught in the bitter grip of that harsh American winter. Increasingly, as resume after resume was sent to the oval file and hope was waning, footy sustained me. My brand spanking new girlfriend would sit and listen with me as we endured the cold together. She shared my pain when the Hawks humbled us and popped the champagne when we came from behind to deny the Saints. That moment is burned into my psyche. Saint Nick skews it off the boot and Harry Taylor marks un opposed on the half back flank, chips it to Enright, to Stevie J stabbing a centering pass to Ablett, swatted away by a desperate Saint, a mercurial toe poke from a running Mathew Scarlett to a now recovered Junior making a last mad dash forward. A booming kick to the edge of the square, a crumbing hand pass from Varcoe to Chapman. Chapman swings onto his left foot and delivers a win at the death. You could almost feel sorry, for the Saints, almost

  Many of their tribe are close friends and I spent many a Saturday at Moorabin watching Robbie Muir go berko, I was on the fence up close and personal when a decaying fabulous Phil Carmen decked out in Essendon togs head butted the boundary umpire.  Even premiership hero and Coach Alex “Jezza” Jesaulenko, now out of favor with Carlton’s suits, couldn’t help the poor hapless bastards. They were clearly the team to beat in 2009 but we had denied them, and the sting lingers a lifetime. Having endured five drubbings, I know the feeling well.   Surely it would be too much to ask for a blessed third premiership in five years. The nattering nabobs of negativity had drawn a line through my club. The corrupting lure of money had hooked the biggest fish in the game and the coach had decamped for his heartfelt home. The general consensus was that the premiership window was well and truly closed. It would take more than Viagra to stiffen my cats for another crack at the cup.

  When Rookie coach Chris Scott made his way to the bench in the dying minutes of the 2011 decider, embracing the players and supporters, as the clock soaked up the last hopes of the magpie mob, it washed over me. I could die a happy man, we had crushed Collingwood in a grand final and I had seen it with my own eyes as had my Dad before me, as he struggled with his sobriety in 1952. Sitting on my couch in San Diego summer was waning and autumn was in the air. It finally felt like there was some momentum, things were improving. I didn’t feel smug as I added the hardships of the last five years and rounded off the sum to a nice even number. It would have been so easy to just quit and walk away, but the love of a good woman and the Geelong footy club had sustained me, as they had my father before me. This great and spectacular indigenous Australian game brought hope, passion and light into dark spaces: much as it did for our boys incarcerated by imperial Japan in the bleakest days of the Second World War.

  Sadly for me that generational chain is probably broken. My life delivered me to America and in a way I have become her son too. There was no grand plan, just a Darwinian evolution. I hoe my little musical row with my band in San Diego and raise my daughter as a divorced Dad with my partner Michelle. Grace is a funny kid, a very pink and girly, girl. She doesn’t have much interest in sport. Although she recently announced she may try out as a cheerleader, for her school-The Hawthorn Trojans.  Too quote Dr Smith. “Oh, William, the pain, the pain” She’s a tall girl and more than one person has suggested I push her towards basketball. Sport often being the key to a good scholarship and tertiary education in America.  But I’m of the mindset that I’ll encourage whatever she chooses to do, for ultimately she will have to be responsible for her life decisions.

  Its round 19, 2012. My Catters had been giving Hawthorn a toweling, but the worthy old foe has fought their way back into contention. The match is hanging by a thread. It’s nearly 5 AM in Southern California, and I can hear the hum of traffic as the grinding commute revs up. I shut it out and concentrate on the call. It appears the Kennett curse will be broken. Suddenly a fast leading Tom Hawkins marks 50 meters from home. 12,460 kilometers and 50 meters from goal my heart is pounding. The siren sounds as the ball kisses Tom’s boot and sails majestically through the goal posts far above the dejected backmen’s  reach. The Hawk is mobbed, Lazarus has risen.

THE DOUG JONES INDEX: heartbeat of America.

I think it's time for a new fiscal index; THE DOUG JONES. It seems every morning I get up and there is breathless adulation for the transactional bliss on Wall Street and the sacred beating heart of his step brother the DOW JONES. The market is bullish. Trump is coming up trumps so to speak. The investor class is in the clover. But what of poor old main street?? That pathetic strip mall far from the coveting, speculating, manipulating, gilded pavement of Wall Street. It has become a dark and dispiriting no through road. Where boot leather is worn thin and patience and serenity are frayed. Perhaps if we woke up every morning and brewed the coffee while THE DOUG JONES was sliced and diced ad Infinitum things would change globally. Imagine if that surly bear turned bullish and the DOUG JONES rose to unprecedented stratospheric heights on quarterly news of higher test scores in schools. Less productivity lost to idle factory floors. Real savings squirreled away for a rainy day, earning solid meat and potatoes interest. Safer neighborhoods where families count and don't hide behind iron bars. Where the average main Streator’s kid doesn't have to consider a quid pro quo arrangement with the pentagon to get a shot at a tertiary education. (The money hoarder’s children most certainly do not consider such a Sophie's choice.) So, I think as the photo says, it's about time that the Wall Street squires were taxed at the same rate as the sweat of the brow. Don't get me wrong here; I'm sure it is good that some of the lucre will trickle back to Grandpa when he can no longer hoe the row. And that's a good thing right? But it doesn't add up to a hill of beans if living standards are constantly in decline. Sadly, while the current news from the corporate temples is an ecstatic, backslapping. Margarita guzzling PARTAY!! For most of the folks I know, it's a bit of a wake and a long vigil at the flag draped coffin of the middle class. I think it is high time we took a breathless look at the sinking main street numbers. DOUG JONES INDEX, I say it is time to step out from your puffy step brothers shadow and show us all what we're truly worth>

Big Bells and brass balls: paddling out at Bells beach on a big day.

   You crest the hill in the old Holden and you’re craning your neck to try and get that first glimpse of blue swell lines cut up and stacked upon the horizon. Powerful lumps of raw energy that have rolled relentlessly across the vast waste of the Southern ocean ready to expend all their force on the weather beaten shores of the Gadubanud  people.  You’re riding with three mates: good mates.  Peter “led balls” Leddin, John” Fozzie bear” Foster and Pete’s older brother Bernie: our surf shepherd.  More like brothers to you than your own blood. It’s bloody freezing but the steaming coffee you’re cradling is working its magic on your groggy metabolism and the building excitement boiling in your blood. Surf is up!!

  Last night’s boozy boogie in the city seems a million years and miles ago. You’ve made the morning run to the coast with your best mates and your expectations are about to be rewarded. The sun is up fresh and raw in the late April morning, the mist still wrapping its wispy tendrils around the coastal scrub. It’s the best time for waves in Southern Australia.  The pre- winter Antarctic swells are consistent and the wind still delivers pristine offshore conditions at regular intervals.  The brass balls and freezing cold ferocity of storm ravaged onshore July and August are still being safely kept at arm’s length.

  In another twenty odd years a lot of the pastures to the east will be subdivided up and parceled into ¼ acre blocks all the way back to Jan Juc. Roads will be cut in and street lights will light up the asphalt. The folks who found the “sea change” lifestyle so appealing will have cluttered the coast with houses beyond their needs, big foreign cars and clogged the waves with snotty little grommets. Kids that have grown up within sight of the waves and been lured beyond the sand will populate the line ups with snarky fuck you-ness. Sadly, they have come to take the majesty of it all for granted, over indulgence being their ruin.   Frantic little “oy mister, misters” constantly hassling inside of the older blokes: age before grace, said no one ever.  To the west the tourism pimps at head office will rebrand the undulating Great Ocean Road “The surf coast”  From the Torquay foreshore all the way out to the majestic crumbling beauty of the twelve apostles.

  The cash will come rolling in, fat green wads in metaphorical seasonal waves. Quaint little hamlets like Lorne and Apollo Bay will blow up into obscene brawling magnets for city slickers. There’ll even be rock concerts and traffic snarls limping past places whose names are cemented in your memory forever.  Wye River and its snug harbor of a pub.  Separation creek and the wreck of the W B Godfrey, her anchor still visible above the reef, a grim reminder of the wretched mismanagement of the ship.  The well rutted road cut through the bush to remote Moonlight heads, where with the right factors in play, it is easy to imagine you are the last humans on Earth. 

  I don’t know any of this is going happen.  I am still young and the world is still an unfolding mystery.  Elvis Presley will fall of his perch in but a few short months and that sad event will  forever be a reference point of departure in my life: a time of leaving and change.  For the moment my feet are firmly planted in the present.  It will be years before I realize this was one of the greatest gifts I would ever be given. I’m not looking forward beyond this moment to the changes and storms that cloud a man’s life. The long road I will travel to the future will slowly be revealed, but only as I move along it.  For the moment I am here in a special harmony, the transcendence of the blended doings not yet reduced to a memory.

  Bernie Leddin jerks the old HK Holden (the Bernie mobile) onto the gravel shoulder at the crest of  Bones road and four gangly young men tumble out pushing and shoving to be first. Fit as trout’s and eager as we will rarely ever be able to be again. Lingering summer tans rising in autum goose bumps, four mates bantering in the antique language of the times. “A hoot man. I’m stoked mate. These waves will be so pogilant. Fucking grouse mate” The boards are battened down on the racks waiting.  A motley collection representative of the trends of the day. Single fin pin tails and rounded pins all just a wee bit shy of seven feet. All with a few home patched dings.   The creations of the backyard shapers whose names have not yet built a multi billion dollar global industry. Klemm Bell and Hot buttered Terry Fitzgerald.  The morose but not yet suicidal artistry of Alan Oke planing his legacy  into foam blanks in a Mordialloc store front.  His work a wonder to those of us involved in the knowing and the doing of the surf tribes of Southern Australia.

  In hindsight we probably looked like a bunch of dags, living as we were in what would come to be considered the least fashionable decade of the twentieth century.  Shagged hair cut like a mutated amalgam of poor doomed john Lennon and Greg Brady, whiskers sprouting. Decked out from head to toe in finery that would send a hippie bolting for the nearest showers and spa boutique.  Beanies and knit caps too warm the noggin.  Eyes still too eager for life too require hiding behind the fade of sunglasses. Puka shells adorning necks not yet fattened by the demands of work and responsibility.  Gaudy Hawaiian print shirts worn under snugly buttoned duffel coats warm corduroy dag daks and either thongs with socks or the precursor of the green recycling of future days. “Treads” Old radial tires cut into sturdy footwear.  Sweet Jesus, what a ratty mob.

  Surf trips are ritualistic affairs. Be it an after work scoot to Point Leo, a romp around a continent, or for the lucky cashed up few, exotic global jet setting.  It usually begins with a discussion and a loose plan between mates.   Destinations and options debated much like parliamentarians enact the laws that bind us.  Necessities and provisioning to be considered and equity for the passage pooled in a kitty.  The needs of the group and personal preferences discussed and passed in code along rotary dialed phone lines.  The days of a click on the computer mouse and a surf cam shot of the beach are still things belonging to an alien future some of the mates would not live to see. 

  On this April day we had collectively delivered our self by way of the isobars and dead reckoning of wind and tide to the west coast: gateway of the yet to be named and exploited  surf coast. Our bountiful option of waves lay like a smorgasbord before a fat man.  Slightly to the East lay “Boobs and Steps”. A crunchy left and right hand combo that smashed against a sharp shallow reef. It was just a sly unlocking of a farmers gate away but it could be a dicey day there if the swell kicked up a bit. The peeling fast right of  “Winkipop”  named after  a slang word for quick  available sex in the sixties beckoned  and even lazy centreside  and its neighbor Southside showed a flash of attraction to surf horny young men. But our direction today was cast in stone much as the sword in the mythical stone of Arthurian legend.  Bells beach and all her naked power lay but two clicks down the hill baiting us with her siren song.

  Bern pulled the HK past the welcoming white wave at the west car park. Really nothing more than a misshapen mud packed flat above the cliff. It was stacking up line on line to the horizon. A relentless surge of roaring classical foaming shapes easy 8 to ten feet and rising. We watched as a monster set closed out the bay all the way to winkipop. To be honest each man left to his own devices would probably have snuck back around the headland to gentle Anglsea or Point Roadknight but like the men of the western front who had gone before us, who answered their superiors whistling summons to action, retreating from the call could not be considered. One lonely bloke stood on the sands below us eying his options: he did not look too keen looking back to us atop the cliff and waving.

  Foz Foster unstrapped the boards and we pulled the thick neoprene wetsuits from back packs and began suiting up much like astronauts preparing for the hostile void of space. Jerky banter, observations and challenges being dished out to a man: this was a big day rising. Another car pulled in, two blokes got out blowing into and rubbing cold hands.  They didn’t say much to our tribe.  Just a “G’day grumbled into the dirt as they began to prepare with a watchful eye on the horizon.   
  The sand at Bells when a big swell is running cuts the beach violently so as when you face the water it’s a mad scramble down to the shore break and a banzai leap of faith across the top of the crashing wave. You scramble madly arms digging and scratching to gain the momentum too pass beyond the breaker.  When clear of the soup you start paddling purposefully forward a glance across your shoulder and the quiet bloke in the car park is now jabbering in your ear, bonding with you as you paddle strung out in a line.

  Lead balls Leddin is leading the way and you feel the quick relief of pissing in your wetsuit. Warm and sobering for just a moment around shrinking private parts.  The first guy off the beach is now far out beyond the lineup and for a quick moment he reminds you of an un-moored sphinx drifting off to Tasmania. A set pulls up, a big one, and the poor bugger is too slow to get over. He duck dives under, you blink and see his purple board sucked up over the falls his leash dragging him like a rag doll behind it. While the wave, a perfect creation, delivers itself to the shore. And for a moment you believe in a God you thought you had left behind in dusty Sunday school books.

  It’s getting bigger and you’re in a cluster bobbing and waiting together, eyes pinned and glued to the wraith like shifts on the horizon. You look back to the beach and more black neoprene bodies are making the trek from the shore.  Some cars pull away cutting new ruts into the mud. Bernie and Pete are a little to the outside as the monster rears up and it’s time to go. The other unknown bloke from the car park hoots encouragement. A banshee screams of unbridled adrenalin.  You turn, back neck and shoulders arched, feet kicking  for a little more momentum, arms scalloping into the blue water in a biting frenzy and you rise, and rise brutally aware of the energy sweeping you up, up and on. The wave feathers and peaks steep. You are alone looking down the line, committed as you step into the liquid.