The septic tanks had wiped out the village of My Lai a few weeks before. It was now the eve of the Christian Christmas and a late, last night for shopping. BUY UP, BUY UP, and think of our boys dying for us in Vietnam. SPEND UP BIG, it might be the last Christmas before the Communists come and kill us all.
Dear old Adelaide was on a spending bender and the city was as full as a boot.
We assembled on the banks of the Torrens ('on whose sweet banks I often linger and plumb the bottom with my finger' - convict poet, a sarcastic bastard).
The Moratorium demo was to march to Victoria Square. We were led by a pack of priests and parsons on whose heels closely pressed the men of State. Donny Dunstan, Clyde Cameron (the silver fox), Trades Hall dignitaries and other assorted characters of like kind who had finally arrived at the conclusion that we Comms had known from the beginning - that the war was unjust, a yank power ploy, and that Oz should pull out. In the Criterion, back in Sydney years later, now M.H.R., Mick Young turned up fresh from his trip to China and full of praise for the NEW ORDER. A bit of a far cry from his shearer shed days when on the piss with shearer mates in the Gouger he was full of forebodings about the Peoples' Republic. (Funny thing history. Funny things people). Recalling past times in the Cri, he assured me he had always marched in the rear with Mary and the kids. Hmmm.
That's where we (the lowlife) were. In the rear. They'd given us all candles. Not quite sure what they were for, we occupied our time along King William St., inviting members of the constabulary to impale themselves. We'd even offer to light them first.
At the Square prayers were said and 300 crosses planted for those who had died. After these had been named for our blokes over there they must have run out. There weren't any left for three quarters of a million Vietnamese to say nothing of the yanks. Guilty and innocent are one below the ground.
Now dark, most of the masses went home to hang the kids - er Christmas trees - er presents. A few hundred loons gathered down the bottom end of Rundle St. It was after nine and the big stores were emptying out the customers, having first emptied out their pockets and purses. In the PROVOST headquarters, a rented shop where the resistance to conscription was organised, artists had recreated My Lai village. Thatched huts, gravel paths through scattered trees, little peasant stick figures in groups. Beautifully done and mounted in two sections on wooden packing cases.
These were dragged out and dumped in the middle of the main commercial drag, the old Rundle St.
People began pouring a cocktail, a la Molotov, over the miniature village. Petrol, shellite, thinners, kerosene. A nicely volatile brew. Made you think of napalm, popular with our 'cousins' over there.
About six of us lit it.
WHOOOOSH!
The heat drove everyone back twenty metres. The road caught alight. A smell of burning paint. Flames leapt several stories of the buildings and were grotesquely reflected in the sheets of window glass. Black smoke belched upwards.
Spectacular! You can say that again, Trev. Spectacular.
And Defective-Sergeant Wilshire shoved my arms up my back, wheeled me around the corner and another copper threw me in the paddy. I skinned a shin on the step en transit and won a sock of blood.
Through the reflected grill the fire roared on. And so, it seemed, did a thousand voices. Roars changed to shrieks, a mangling of fire engine sirens and human throats as the mounteds backed people into plate glass windows. Somewhere a pane shattered. More screams mixed with the clatter of horses hooves.
At the back of the paddy waggon a voice.
"Are you alright? Want a smoke?" and two cigarettes came through the wire grill. "Got a light? No? I'll get one." A yell from a copper. "What are you doing there?" A scurry of feet and I was alone again. I asked the now attentive guard for a light and he told me to get fucked.
Bailed next morning at 5.00 a.m. on condition I didn't go near the scene of the crime, I limped in the cold, dawn drizzle to the scene of the crime and drove home to reflect on the birth of Christ. Or it might have been Marx.
The case was listed for the Wednesday after Easter.
Burning a hole in a public thoroughfare, riotous behaviour I think it ended up, plus one I don't remember.
It was the Easter '68 Congress and the Party splits over the invasion of Czechoslovakia (not the whole story, it had much to do with attitudes to politics here, but that's another matter). Some finally formed the S.P.A. For mine, a combination of the 20th. C.P.S.U. revelations, Vietnam, and loyalty to Party leadership made the issue clear.
Travelling back from Sydney in the mini with Rob Durbridge and Bob (Fuck not Fight) Hall we camped under the Murrumbidgee road bridge and had my last meal for a while, a beetroot sandwich. We mulled up and mulled over what to do. The sweet sherry helped us decide to "Pull 'em on." "Go for broke." "Get outside the system."
"Don't play their rules", and so on. Very heady stuff. Like the sherry.
To regress. At the Congress I raised with Elliot Johnston the germ of the idea of trying to disrupt the judicial process. He was solid. Against. Of course, he had not yet become a Supreme Court judge or Royal Commissioner, he was only a common Q.C. Good old Johnny. Neither convinced the other. Then, being him, he gave me a run down on possible court procedure and asked who the beak was. I didn't know but EJ had done his best. Both ways.
Back under the Murrumbidgee bridge we went to bed. Four poster, brass rails and all, honest.
Court assembles.
Me and a couple of others don't stand up as Justice Elliot enters at 10.00 a.m. sharp. A good start. No confusion. Elliot was his surname. No relation to E/J.
So I started. Steady at first, then in a torrent.
"I don't recognise this institution - it's all part of conspiracy. And this bloke with the wig is part of it too and people are dying in Vietnam and the Australian Government's ratshit and up yers all" or something like that or maybe not like that all. You get the idea. Must check the transcript one day. If they followed the babble that is.
There was a bit more of this and Elliot warned me a couple of times to ease off.
The first witness was a poor old codger from the Dept. of Frogs and Toads, who gave evidence of this hole burnt in the road, it's dimensions, how it must have been caused by a fire and how much it cost to repair. Bloody pathetic. Did I have any questions?
Yair. What did he think of Vietnam? Of murder? Did he have any kids and the like?
To all of which Elliot told him not to answer as it had nothing to do with the hole in the road. "Question disallowed," over and over and over. He started to sound like a cocky. In between he'd bang the gavel. Then the old bloke left.
Then Wilshire, who said how he saw me light the fire and gave a fairly accurate description of events.
Questions?
Yair. What did Wilshire think of Vietnam? No opinion. Did he think young men should be conscripted? Not his business.
A bit more of this and ... What do you think of this court condemning young Australians to die for amerikan imperialism?
That did it.
Elliot banged his gavel in exasperation.
"You have no respect for me or this institution," he says.
"How can I have respect for you or the court, when its you who are jailing conscientious objectors?"
Trumped.
He gave me fifteen days contempt of court.
UNSEEMLY WORDS........
'"WHAT DID YOU SAY TO THIS GENTLEMAN
WHILE THE ALTERCATION LASTED,
DID YOU INSULT THE MAN IN ANY WAY?"'
'"I CALLED HIM A WORSHIP YOUR BASTARD"'.
Denis Kevans.
He then adjourned for breakfast or lunch or something and I'm marched into the lock-up. No longer a free man and the main case still to come. After the recess the court was packed and someone told me they heard the other copper witness was a Viet-vet. Ripper.
The word had got round about the circus and a mob, mainly uni students turned up and somehow I was allowed in the body of the court, surrounded by supporters who helped phrase questions.
The young cop was real easy. Asked similar questions as the others the boss tried to short-circuit every attempt to raise the politics of the bust. Question not relevant, question disallowed, don't answer that, until quite flustered he stopped me before I could even ask a question.
This was too much for Keith Darwin. In his bikie leathers he jumped into the well of the court, raised his arm in a nazi salute, and yelled,
"SIEG FUCKING HEIL!"
Well done, Keith. They jump him. They march him to the bench and the beak gives him an instant lesson in proper manners.
"Seven days contempt," says Elliot. I had a mate!
The rest doesn't matter. Guilty on all counts, fined something that sounded nasty or a unheard jail term and off to the cooler.
Word travels ahead and fast. Through the portals of old Adelaide goal and the screw on the desk says.
"So this is the bloke? You can't tell the judge to get fucked and get away with it, you know."
HE was telling ME?
Adelaide Goal was old. Real old. A mile from the city on the road to Port Adelaide. Narrow, two man cells about five by three. One small light and a grill high up. A couple of hours a day, mote ridden sunlight would beam in. Mostly dark and dank. And in the corner the bucket. The shit bucket.
A peephole for the screws and below it a small trap that swung down to pass the morning burgoo and tea through. And so you ate, or Noah did. Then you carried your overnight excavations, in line with co-residents, through the cell block and out to the latrine sluice where you emptied her. A shit, piss and vomit combination soup with no added MSG.
Good for the ego of one of the bribed aristocracy of the working class as Len (the late Vladimir Illyich one) once classified me.
In the slot the brew tended to hang five a bit but you got used to it. I'd try to empty out the before lockup so it was mostly Noah's.
Noah.
My intimate companion for the first week.
He was one of those pickled sort of blokes. Something had preserved him. You're not wrong. The grog. It had to be.
After all he had survived France in 1917, the hunger of the bagman in the depression. Got a job in the second world war because his young bloke went instead and he took his job as a garbo/shit conveyer (as he called himself). His missus left him and took the other kids. On the piss ever since. Now he lived in squats with other derros, waiting for pension day to hit it hard, then waiting for it to come round again. What more can I say? Lots actually but no more.
This was home when the deserted building wasn't. And he told me he was content enough, not happy but content.
That breaks me up still.
'A LAND FIT FOR HEROES TO LIVE IN'. MY POOR FELLER COUNTRY.
And seeing that the contents were mostly his, he'd mostly insist on being our representative on the long grey line to the sluice.
A man of great principle, Noah.
Not sure of when the thought of not eating originated. I knocked back the evening meal, the next morning burgoo and settled for tea with sugar. Bypassed the midday lot and the beetroot sandwich of two days ago had passed through the system (mine and theirs). That night the wing officer made me pick up a serving and ordered me into the slot. "Orders." he said. This pleased my old mate who picked around what he wanted. After a couple of days they made me take the night (4.00 p.m.) handout into the cell and a screw followed me in. He ordered me to report to 'Floorboards' next morning. He lifted the lid of the dixie and waved it over the pale looking curry concoction so that the.vapours filled the slot, leered at me and said. "Take it with you first thing. We'll see if you're fair dinkum."
Noah said. "If you have, to do it, don't worry about me. 1 was only gutzing anyway."
So every meal for the rest of my time I'd report to the wing head, Floorboards, big and Yorkshire, so called because of the size of the grip he had on the world. He'd open the dixie, shuffle his huge plates of meat under the desk, solemnly announce in a deep voice, "food oontooched", enter same in his day book and gesture me out. Sometimes he'd give a sad shake of his head as he did as though all this was beyond his comprehension and a total waste of his time. The Governor must have his reasons but to Floorboards this was one of those mysteries of life that did nothing but disturb the even tenor of the ever ongoing monotony of his routine.
After the Friday demo the word was about that I was on a hunger strike and kitchen trustees would hand me little packets of sugar which piled into the black tea made a sweet charged brew, ("you need it for energy," they said).
Just after lock-up that Friday about five o'clock, we could faintly hear a lot of voices yelling and the crackled distortion of a loud hailer.
By grabbing the bars of the grill high up and hanging there, 1 could make out that people were making speeches outside the goal walls and others in unison calling for the release of political prisoners. Weren't we all? Then the voices faded into nothing.
About midnight the silence in the sleeping goal was ever so quietly broken by the murmur of two voices in the exercise yard. Hauling myself up on the grill again I could hear a warder telling his mate, who had just come on, about the 'disturbance'.
"About five hundred were outside. They marched from town about those two commos we've got," said one. I wondered if Keith cared for the identification.
"I wish." came the other disembodied reply, "that some bastard would demonstrate for us." And they went on to discuss their lousy lot in life. The crook conditions and the rotten pay.
"Poor bludgers," I thought and dropped off.
Some days later during a tea break from working, shifting rubble near the back of the gaol where construction work was being carried out, one of the blokes handed me a pack of sugar and said. "Did you ever hear about them finding that safe dumped under Glenelg jetty?" I thought I had so he continued.
"I did that job. I was loaded for months. Everyone was me mate. Friends I never knew I had." Wistfully. "Then I got busted. And all those great people I shared the roll with, where are they now? Nobody wants to know about it. Nobody visits except the missus and the kids. And you and your mate can get a big mob to come and yell for you. How come?"
So we discussed the meaning of life and related matters.
From time to time Keith and I would get involved in these kind of talks. At other times the yard screw would break up our little discussion groups. One Dutch pig had it in for us. He pulled me off the line one day, made some reference to "shit stirring boofters" pushed me into a cell where the trustee barber (he'd have to be trusty with access to scissors and razor) did service and ordered a short back and sides. A short, short back and sides.
Durbridge came to visit. We chatted about the Moratorium, things in the goal, families.
On the Friday before due for release, filling a barrow at the back wall, a warder shepherded down the Governor of the gaol. In his hand a sheet of foolscap, blazoned with the masthead - 'GRASSROOTS'.
The Adelaide left student publication quivered as he fulminated that it was all a pack of lies. I wasn't being mistreated, if I wanted to refuse food and medical treatment that was my problem. His staff were not a pack of fascist torturers, and where would they get such shit from?
Thanks Rob. Although I never got to actually read it, it did seem that imaginations had run riot. Nonetheless I gave him some back, especially about the Dutch hoon. The Guv buggered off and next day the screw from the land of dykes was gone. Maybe just a coincidence.
After about eight days another visitor, a legal. Elliot Johnston passed on the Party news, family business. I told him that pens were impossible to get and how about letting me have one of those sitting in his top pocket. After some hesitation he dropped a biro at his feet, edged it over unseen by the guardian angel. When he stood up to leave I bent down and secured it in my boot.
You wouldn't want to know. That night when starting to write on the paper Noah had got from somewhere, nothing happened. Yes. Notorious. No ink left.
Not to worry. Noah to the rescue again. Next day he negotiated the use of an old type nib pen and a small bottle of wierdly coloured purplish ink. He was discharged next day and I like to think he found a good squat in the big derelict house in the paradise that he told me would finally come to those with the patience.
NOAH. One of nature's gentlemen.
It was a breeze actually. Nothing much of note happened. The days just fold into each other. The black mob played it close and I stayed with the white crims. Except one day at the finish I was doing pushups in a corner of the yard and a Nunga sauntered over.
"How come you ain't eatin? Gotta eat. Ya don't eat, ya don't shit. Ya don't shit, ya die. Anyways, ya mighters well knock off that business, ya shiela's gone." He nods and shambles off, grinning.
Come to think of it, I'd never seen a blackfeller, apart from boxers or footy players, do a push-up.
Sunday, second week, in the afternoon, we all take our stools into the wing block for the pictures. Corrective Services all over the country must train a special cretin to select the weekly cultural input. Almost always yankee bullshit. This one was a beauty.
On an unnamed (ho ho) Island not far off the coast of Florida, the cowardly Communists had imprisoned an eminent scientist and his beautiful daughter. To the rescue, via some convenient underground tunnels, comes Lloyd Bridges and his fearless companions. No wuckin furries. Truth, justice and the amerikan way triumph.
As it should be.
"It must have been hell for you," says Lloyd dripping water. "Not really," says the prof., "grey walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage."
Well, I mean to say. First a stool hit the wall and as though on cue several voices cried, "Bullshit" - and other niceties. A bit of a scurry up the back, off goes the projector, on came the lights and we were herded into our slots. Ungrateful bastards!
Then, fifteen days were up.
They give me my gear and the books Jo had sent and to which I had been denied access. One was 'The Life of Jesus'. Terrible wicked sort of sense of humour that lady of ours in the Peoples' Bookshop.
Jarret met me at the gate and we drove to Adelaide Uni where a meeting was starting. Pretty much off the planet I spoke some incoherence about gaols and Vietnam, then Don said that Liz and Elliot wanted me to stay at their place in the hills until over the effects of incarceration. So off we went.
Things got a bit hazy, the more so when we stopped at the Feathers for a couple of pints. After I nearly fell off the stool Don wheeled me out and we headed for the frightfully bloody English Adelaide Hills.
Plied with chicken broth and other goodies I went home to Henley after a few days. Great to have great friends, ay?
One more little thing. That first night out there were birds that sang, stars that shone, trees that whispered and waved. Those who have ever been inside will understand.
I woke as usual before dawn. I sneaked out and decided to run to the top of The Summit. Well, I ran a little but had to walk up the steep bits. Then there was a sudden urge to do something I hadn't done for about ten days.
Shit.
Crawled under the locked toilet door and strained for a long time. Finally, plop. I looked down and there was a small black pebble-like object. And I thought to myself.
All that for a coffee bean?
Dear old Adelaide was on a spending bender and the city was as full as a boot.
We assembled on the banks of the Torrens ('on whose sweet banks I often linger and plumb the bottom with my finger' - convict poet, a sarcastic bastard).
The Moratorium demo was to march to Victoria Square. We were led by a pack of priests and parsons on whose heels closely pressed the men of State. Donny Dunstan, Clyde Cameron (the silver fox), Trades Hall dignitaries and other assorted characters of like kind who had finally arrived at the conclusion that we Comms had known from the beginning - that the war was unjust, a yank power ploy, and that Oz should pull out. In the Criterion, back in Sydney years later, now M.H.R., Mick Young turned up fresh from his trip to China and full of praise for the NEW ORDER. A bit of a far cry from his shearer shed days when on the piss with shearer mates in the Gouger he was full of forebodings about the Peoples' Republic. (Funny thing history. Funny things people). Recalling past times in the Cri, he assured me he had always marched in the rear with Mary and the kids. Hmmm.
That's where we (the lowlife) were. In the rear. They'd given us all candles. Not quite sure what they were for, we occupied our time along King William St., inviting members of the constabulary to impale themselves. We'd even offer to light them first.
At the Square prayers were said and 300 crosses planted for those who had died. After these had been named for our blokes over there they must have run out. There weren't any left for three quarters of a million Vietnamese to say nothing of the yanks. Guilty and innocent are one below the ground.
Now dark, most of the masses went home to hang the kids - er Christmas trees - er presents. A few hundred loons gathered down the bottom end of Rundle St. It was after nine and the big stores were emptying out the customers, having first emptied out their pockets and purses. In the PROVOST headquarters, a rented shop where the resistance to conscription was organised, artists had recreated My Lai village. Thatched huts, gravel paths through scattered trees, little peasant stick figures in groups. Beautifully done and mounted in two sections on wooden packing cases.
These were dragged out and dumped in the middle of the main commercial drag, the old Rundle St.
People began pouring a cocktail, a la Molotov, over the miniature village. Petrol, shellite, thinners, kerosene. A nicely volatile brew. Made you think of napalm, popular with our 'cousins' over there.
About six of us lit it.
WHOOOOSH!
The heat drove everyone back twenty metres. The road caught alight. A smell of burning paint. Flames leapt several stories of the buildings and were grotesquely reflected in the sheets of window glass. Black smoke belched upwards.
Spectacular! You can say that again, Trev. Spectacular.
And Defective-Sergeant Wilshire shoved my arms up my back, wheeled me around the corner and another copper threw me in the paddy. I skinned a shin on the step en transit and won a sock of blood.
Through the reflected grill the fire roared on. And so, it seemed, did a thousand voices. Roars changed to shrieks, a mangling of fire engine sirens and human throats as the mounteds backed people into plate glass windows. Somewhere a pane shattered. More screams mixed with the clatter of horses hooves.
At the back of the paddy waggon a voice.
"Are you alright? Want a smoke?" and two cigarettes came through the wire grill. "Got a light? No? I'll get one." A yell from a copper. "What are you doing there?" A scurry of feet and I was alone again. I asked the now attentive guard for a light and he told me to get fucked.
Bailed next morning at 5.00 a.m. on condition I didn't go near the scene of the crime, I limped in the cold, dawn drizzle to the scene of the crime and drove home to reflect on the birth of Christ. Or it might have been Marx.
The case was listed for the Wednesday after Easter.
Burning a hole in a public thoroughfare, riotous behaviour I think it ended up, plus one I don't remember.
It was the Easter '68 Congress and the Party splits over the invasion of Czechoslovakia (not the whole story, it had much to do with attitudes to politics here, but that's another matter). Some finally formed the S.P.A. For mine, a combination of the 20th. C.P.S.U. revelations, Vietnam, and loyalty to Party leadership made the issue clear.
Travelling back from Sydney in the mini with Rob Durbridge and Bob (Fuck not Fight) Hall we camped under the Murrumbidgee road bridge and had my last meal for a while, a beetroot sandwich. We mulled up and mulled over what to do. The sweet sherry helped us decide to "Pull 'em on." "Go for broke." "Get outside the system."
"Don't play their rules", and so on. Very heady stuff. Like the sherry.
To regress. At the Congress I raised with Elliot Johnston the germ of the idea of trying to disrupt the judicial process. He was solid. Against. Of course, he had not yet become a Supreme Court judge or Royal Commissioner, he was only a common Q.C. Good old Johnny. Neither convinced the other. Then, being him, he gave me a run down on possible court procedure and asked who the beak was. I didn't know but EJ had done his best. Both ways.
Back under the Murrumbidgee bridge we went to bed. Four poster, brass rails and all, honest.
Court assembles.
Me and a couple of others don't stand up as Justice Elliot enters at 10.00 a.m. sharp. A good start. No confusion. Elliot was his surname. No relation to E/J.
So I started. Steady at first, then in a torrent.
"I don't recognise this institution - it's all part of conspiracy. And this bloke with the wig is part of it too and people are dying in Vietnam and the Australian Government's ratshit and up yers all" or something like that or maybe not like that all. You get the idea. Must check the transcript one day. If they followed the babble that is.
There was a bit more of this and Elliot warned me a couple of times to ease off.
The first witness was a poor old codger from the Dept. of Frogs and Toads, who gave evidence of this hole burnt in the road, it's dimensions, how it must have been caused by a fire and how much it cost to repair. Bloody pathetic. Did I have any questions?
Yair. What did he think of Vietnam? Of murder? Did he have any kids and the like?
To all of which Elliot told him not to answer as it had nothing to do with the hole in the road. "Question disallowed," over and over and over. He started to sound like a cocky. In between he'd bang the gavel. Then the old bloke left.
Then Wilshire, who said how he saw me light the fire and gave a fairly accurate description of events.
Questions?
Yair. What did Wilshire think of Vietnam? No opinion. Did he think young men should be conscripted? Not his business.
A bit more of this and ... What do you think of this court condemning young Australians to die for amerikan imperialism?
That did it.
Elliot banged his gavel in exasperation.
"You have no respect for me or this institution," he says.
"How can I have respect for you or the court, when its you who are jailing conscientious objectors?"
Trumped.
He gave me fifteen days contempt of court.
UNSEEMLY WORDS........
'"WHAT DID YOU SAY TO THIS GENTLEMAN
WHILE THE ALTERCATION LASTED,
DID YOU INSULT THE MAN IN ANY WAY?"'
'"I CALLED HIM A WORSHIP YOUR BASTARD"'.
Denis Kevans.
He then adjourned for breakfast or lunch or something and I'm marched into the lock-up. No longer a free man and the main case still to come. After the recess the court was packed and someone told me they heard the other copper witness was a Viet-vet. Ripper.
The word had got round about the circus and a mob, mainly uni students turned up and somehow I was allowed in the body of the court, surrounded by supporters who helped phrase questions.
The young cop was real easy. Asked similar questions as the others the boss tried to short-circuit every attempt to raise the politics of the bust. Question not relevant, question disallowed, don't answer that, until quite flustered he stopped me before I could even ask a question.
This was too much for Keith Darwin. In his bikie leathers he jumped into the well of the court, raised his arm in a nazi salute, and yelled,
"SIEG FUCKING HEIL!"
Well done, Keith. They jump him. They march him to the bench and the beak gives him an instant lesson in proper manners.
"Seven days contempt," says Elliot. I had a mate!
The rest doesn't matter. Guilty on all counts, fined something that sounded nasty or a unheard jail term and off to the cooler.
Word travels ahead and fast. Through the portals of old Adelaide goal and the screw on the desk says.
"So this is the bloke? You can't tell the judge to get fucked and get away with it, you know."
HE was telling ME?
Adelaide Goal was old. Real old. A mile from the city on the road to Port Adelaide. Narrow, two man cells about five by three. One small light and a grill high up. A couple of hours a day, mote ridden sunlight would beam in. Mostly dark and dank. And in the corner the bucket. The shit bucket.
A peephole for the screws and below it a small trap that swung down to pass the morning burgoo and tea through. And so you ate, or Noah did. Then you carried your overnight excavations, in line with co-residents, through the cell block and out to the latrine sluice where you emptied her. A shit, piss and vomit combination soup with no added MSG.
Good for the ego of one of the bribed aristocracy of the working class as Len (the late Vladimir Illyich one) once classified me.
In the slot the brew tended to hang five a bit but you got used to it. I'd try to empty out the before lockup so it was mostly Noah's.
Noah.
My intimate companion for the first week.
He was one of those pickled sort of blokes. Something had preserved him. You're not wrong. The grog. It had to be.
After all he had survived France in 1917, the hunger of the bagman in the depression. Got a job in the second world war because his young bloke went instead and he took his job as a garbo/shit conveyer (as he called himself). His missus left him and took the other kids. On the piss ever since. Now he lived in squats with other derros, waiting for pension day to hit it hard, then waiting for it to come round again. What more can I say? Lots actually but no more.
This was home when the deserted building wasn't. And he told me he was content enough, not happy but content.
That breaks me up still.
'A LAND FIT FOR HEROES TO LIVE IN'. MY POOR FELLER COUNTRY.
And seeing that the contents were mostly his, he'd mostly insist on being our representative on the long grey line to the sluice.
A man of great principle, Noah.
Not sure of when the thought of not eating originated. I knocked back the evening meal, the next morning burgoo and settled for tea with sugar. Bypassed the midday lot and the beetroot sandwich of two days ago had passed through the system (mine and theirs). That night the wing officer made me pick up a serving and ordered me into the slot. "Orders." he said. This pleased my old mate who picked around what he wanted. After a couple of days they made me take the night (4.00 p.m.) handout into the cell and a screw followed me in. He ordered me to report to 'Floorboards' next morning. He lifted the lid of the dixie and waved it over the pale looking curry concoction so that the.vapours filled the slot, leered at me and said. "Take it with you first thing. We'll see if you're fair dinkum."
Noah said. "If you have, to do it, don't worry about me. 1 was only gutzing anyway."
So every meal for the rest of my time I'd report to the wing head, Floorboards, big and Yorkshire, so called because of the size of the grip he had on the world. He'd open the dixie, shuffle his huge plates of meat under the desk, solemnly announce in a deep voice, "food oontooched", enter same in his day book and gesture me out. Sometimes he'd give a sad shake of his head as he did as though all this was beyond his comprehension and a total waste of his time. The Governor must have his reasons but to Floorboards this was one of those mysteries of life that did nothing but disturb the even tenor of the ever ongoing monotony of his routine.
After the Friday demo the word was about that I was on a hunger strike and kitchen trustees would hand me little packets of sugar which piled into the black tea made a sweet charged brew, ("you need it for energy," they said).
Just after lock-up that Friday about five o'clock, we could faintly hear a lot of voices yelling and the crackled distortion of a loud hailer.
By grabbing the bars of the grill high up and hanging there, 1 could make out that people were making speeches outside the goal walls and others in unison calling for the release of political prisoners. Weren't we all? Then the voices faded into nothing.
About midnight the silence in the sleeping goal was ever so quietly broken by the murmur of two voices in the exercise yard. Hauling myself up on the grill again I could hear a warder telling his mate, who had just come on, about the 'disturbance'.
"About five hundred were outside. They marched from town about those two commos we've got," said one. I wondered if Keith cared for the identification.
"I wish." came the other disembodied reply, "that some bastard would demonstrate for us." And they went on to discuss their lousy lot in life. The crook conditions and the rotten pay.
"Poor bludgers," I thought and dropped off.
Some days later during a tea break from working, shifting rubble near the back of the gaol where construction work was being carried out, one of the blokes handed me a pack of sugar and said. "Did you ever hear about them finding that safe dumped under Glenelg jetty?" I thought I had so he continued.
"I did that job. I was loaded for months. Everyone was me mate. Friends I never knew I had." Wistfully. "Then I got busted. And all those great people I shared the roll with, where are they now? Nobody wants to know about it. Nobody visits except the missus and the kids. And you and your mate can get a big mob to come and yell for you. How come?"
So we discussed the meaning of life and related matters.
From time to time Keith and I would get involved in these kind of talks. At other times the yard screw would break up our little discussion groups. One Dutch pig had it in for us. He pulled me off the line one day, made some reference to "shit stirring boofters" pushed me into a cell where the trustee barber (he'd have to be trusty with access to scissors and razor) did service and ordered a short back and sides. A short, short back and sides.
Durbridge came to visit. We chatted about the Moratorium, things in the goal, families.
On the Friday before due for release, filling a barrow at the back wall, a warder shepherded down the Governor of the gaol. In his hand a sheet of foolscap, blazoned with the masthead - 'GRASSROOTS'.
The Adelaide left student publication quivered as he fulminated that it was all a pack of lies. I wasn't being mistreated, if I wanted to refuse food and medical treatment that was my problem. His staff were not a pack of fascist torturers, and where would they get such shit from?
Thanks Rob. Although I never got to actually read it, it did seem that imaginations had run riot. Nonetheless I gave him some back, especially about the Dutch hoon. The Guv buggered off and next day the screw from the land of dykes was gone. Maybe just a coincidence.
After about eight days another visitor, a legal. Elliot Johnston passed on the Party news, family business. I told him that pens were impossible to get and how about letting me have one of those sitting in his top pocket. After some hesitation he dropped a biro at his feet, edged it over unseen by the guardian angel. When he stood up to leave I bent down and secured it in my boot.
You wouldn't want to know. That night when starting to write on the paper Noah had got from somewhere, nothing happened. Yes. Notorious. No ink left.
Not to worry. Noah to the rescue again. Next day he negotiated the use of an old type nib pen and a small bottle of wierdly coloured purplish ink. He was discharged next day and I like to think he found a good squat in the big derelict house in the paradise that he told me would finally come to those with the patience.
NOAH. One of nature's gentlemen.
It was a breeze actually. Nothing much of note happened. The days just fold into each other. The black mob played it close and I stayed with the white crims. Except one day at the finish I was doing pushups in a corner of the yard and a Nunga sauntered over.
"How come you ain't eatin? Gotta eat. Ya don't eat, ya don't shit. Ya don't shit, ya die. Anyways, ya mighters well knock off that business, ya shiela's gone." He nods and shambles off, grinning.
Come to think of it, I'd never seen a blackfeller, apart from boxers or footy players, do a push-up.
Sunday, second week, in the afternoon, we all take our stools into the wing block for the pictures. Corrective Services all over the country must train a special cretin to select the weekly cultural input. Almost always yankee bullshit. This one was a beauty.
On an unnamed (ho ho) Island not far off the coast of Florida, the cowardly Communists had imprisoned an eminent scientist and his beautiful daughter. To the rescue, via some convenient underground tunnels, comes Lloyd Bridges and his fearless companions. No wuckin furries. Truth, justice and the amerikan way triumph.
As it should be.
"It must have been hell for you," says Lloyd dripping water. "Not really," says the prof., "grey walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage."
Well, I mean to say. First a stool hit the wall and as though on cue several voices cried, "Bullshit" - and other niceties. A bit of a scurry up the back, off goes the projector, on came the lights and we were herded into our slots. Ungrateful bastards!
Then, fifteen days were up.
They give me my gear and the books Jo had sent and to which I had been denied access. One was 'The Life of Jesus'. Terrible wicked sort of sense of humour that lady of ours in the Peoples' Bookshop.
Jarret met me at the gate and we drove to Adelaide Uni where a meeting was starting. Pretty much off the planet I spoke some incoherence about gaols and Vietnam, then Don said that Liz and Elliot wanted me to stay at their place in the hills until over the effects of incarceration. So off we went.
Things got a bit hazy, the more so when we stopped at the Feathers for a couple of pints. After I nearly fell off the stool Don wheeled me out and we headed for the frightfully bloody English Adelaide Hills.
Plied with chicken broth and other goodies I went home to Henley after a few days. Great to have great friends, ay?
One more little thing. That first night out there were birds that sang, stars that shone, trees that whispered and waved. Those who have ever been inside will understand.
I woke as usual before dawn. I sneaked out and decided to run to the top of The Summit. Well, I ran a little but had to walk up the steep bits. Then there was a sudden urge to do something I hadn't done for about ten days.
Shit.
Crawled under the locked toilet door and strained for a long time. Finally, plop. I looked down and there was a small black pebble-like object. And I thought to myself.
All that for a coffee bean?
