Chapter 14 – Soldier, Coming Home
1967 - Age: 22
Introduction: This year was very fragmented for me, with lots of stressful, disjointed incidents taking place. As usual, I felt more acted upon by external events than taking charge of my own life. That seems to be my particular karma.
Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote that it is sometimes better to travel than to arrive. So it was with my return to Australia. For two years I had looked forward to returning to my life, my friends, my future. Very soon after my arrival in Brisbane, I realised that I had returned to very few friends, a dark future, and a life that had changed forever. I felt as though I had never come home at all.
Coming Home: My return journey, in an old Hercules aircraft, was made in three stages. We first stopped two nights in hospital at Butterworth Air Force base in Malaysia. It had been scheduled for one night, but, after we were loaded onto the aircraft, engine trouble was discovered, so it was back to the hospital, then onto the same aeroplane the following morning. The second leg brought us to Darwin, where we spent a night in the hospital. I think there were half a dozen of us, with injuries ranging from minor bullet wounds (like mine), to stab wounds, broken legs and shrapnel wounds.
We arrived at a military base near Sydney around 8:00 p.m., too late for anti-war protestors to greet us. My brothers Austin and Allan met me, and drove me to the nearest milk bar, because I had an incredible thirst for a glass (several glasses) of plain, full cream, pasteurised milk.
Austin was his usual kind, calm, caring self – he paid for my milk. Allan, too, was true to his nature – he hectored me throughout our brief time together, wanting to know about the parts of my Vietnam service that I least wanted to discuss.
I was flown to Brisbane the following morning, and then spent the rest of my army career having regular physiotherapy at 1 Camp Hospital at Yeronga.
Lucky Robbo: As I walked up the hospital drive one morning, I recognised a gardener who was edging the grass beside the path. It was the Corporal who had returned home with mosquito-borne encephalitis:
Lucky Robbo
He slipped and somersaulted backwards,
I remember;
tumbled down the slope a little way –
we were climbing through the steep, wet mud
to Lever’s Plateau.
When we set him back upon his feet, he smiles.
Smiled completely:
mouth, eyes, all his face
as we knew he would.
He never died in Vietnam
though he was one of our first casualties.
Only stayed a month,
until a mosquito (insignificant, it seemed)
sent him home. Encephalitis
sounds much nicer than it is.
I saw him, shortly after I returned.
I was walking up the drive to One Camp Hospital
for physio. “Hallo, Rob!”
He paused, turned, took my hand;
the smile seemed the same, but he didn’t know me -
the empty eyes were already back
trimming the edges.
When Robbo returned home, we all envied him his life of ease, cruising through the world in his big old Chevy, attracting beautiful young women with his slow, lazy smile and his gas-guzzling Yank Tank. The stark difference between our thoughts and his reality shocked me.
Civilian Once More: At the end of June, after a day and a half of medical, dental, eye and other health inspections, the Army honourably discharged me, and most of the other soldiers swept up in the first National Service intake for the Vietnam War.
I went to board with my Brother Bert, and his wife Carmel, at 19 North Street Newmarket.
There were no debriefings, no farewell parties and, more importantly, no advice as to how to adjust to a world that had moved two years away from me. Even worse was that I had received no information, advice or training on how to cope with my war experiences, memories, guilt, shame and horror.
WORK 1
The Machinery Department: I did not want to go back to the Machinery Department; Graham Hudson was the only fellow worker I knew well enough to call almost-friend, and I feared being in the spotlight in a place where I had previously been fairly well hidden in the shadows of my insignificance
However, It seemed incumbent on me to negotiate my return to work so, two weeks before I was due to rejoin the Queensland Public Service, I called in to the Department of Machinery and Scaffolding, Weights and Measures (including, of course, the Division of Occupational Safety, with its Statistical Data Section). I was greeted as something of a minor celebrity, but for what, to me, were the wrong reasons – people all wanted to know what ‘IT’ was like. The only exception was Graham Hudson – he seemed genuinely pleased that I was back.
The Senior Clerk, Jimmy McDonnell, asked me if I wanted to return to the Department, or to move to some other part of the Public Service. He and I chatted quite civilly, though our faint dislike of each other seasoned our discussion. It seemed clear that he didn’t really want me back, and encouraged me to strike out into a new, adventurous direction. “Besides”, he added, “when you left us you were sixth in line for a promotion, but, alas, no one has been promoted in your absence, and two people senior to you have transferred in to the Department.” Ouch!
He contacted the Public Service Board on my behalf, and it seemed that they didn’t quite know what to do with someone returning to the Public Service from a WAR!
Perhaps I should have done the decent thing and died in Vietnam. It was reluctantly approved that I should commence duty with the Queensland Government Tourist Bureau (QGTB) in July.
OLD FRIENDS 1
Do you remember Peggy and Lesley, and the lovely letter they sent me on my entering the army? Well, here’s how that turned out:
The Letter
‘Callaghan was reading an old letter, dated 27th June 1965. This letter was written by two 18 year olds, Peggy and Lesley. Many times he had almost thrown it away, but somehow never could. In the light of what happened for Callaghan, during and after Vietnam, it caused him much anger and pain.
Dear Joe,
Sorry this letter did not reach you before you left Brisbane. However, the purpose of the letter is to convey to you our sincerest best wishes for your new life in the Army. Let’s hope that this new life will prove as interesting, exciting and fruitful as your past one has been.
Don’t forget! - there are many compensations for the lack of other pleasures which of course the Army cannot provide for. In such a service not all tastes can be taken into account. No doubt you are looking forward to the absence, for two years, of such trite, supercilious, superficialities as les femmes fatales. Of course your presence will be sadly missed by the clan. We are with you in spirit even though your physical form, complete with your euphonious voice, is one of our treasured memories.
However, as John F. Kennedy once said, the service of one’s country is perhaps the greatest, most supreme contribution one can make to his fellow beings. We are only few of the people who are eternally grateful to you for your sacrifice. Only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum need.
You, as many others before you, have not shrunk from this responsibility but have offered your service to help and maintain the gradually declining dominance of western society in the world.
Pardon my philosophising Joseph, but it is only an expression of my sentiments. Once again, may you be guided through the next two years safely. Please remember in your hour of greatest need and always, you are continually in our prayers and thoughts. May God and His Mother bless and protect you now and always. Love,
Peggy and Lesley.
Callaghan wrote back from his Recruit Training Camp at Kapooka – there was no reply. He called several of the group when he was assigned to 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment in Brisbane – no one was home, or, if they were, they were not available to take his call. He wrote to several of them during his early weeks in Vietnam, without response. The letter from Peggy and Lesley was the last communication he received from any of the group. Nobody answered his letters.
When he returned home, parents filtered his phone calls, and suggested it was not appropriate for a soldier, or an ex-soldier, to maintain any friendships with their daughters. On the one occasion when Callaghan was able to speak with one of the group, that person, though very uncomfortable and apologetic, made it very clear that they didn’t want anything more to do with him again, ever.’
*****
ARMY MATES
Battalion Marching Home: I watched the Welcome Home March when the rest of my Battalion returned home, then went to the then Botanical Gardens, in Alice Street, to add my own welcome. Although I was in civvies, I had expected my relationship with my closest mates to be unchanged, but there was a barrier between us.
Some years later, I learned that, on their way back to Brisbane on the aircraft carrier, they had been briefed on the probable unfriendly welcome they would encounter. To protect themselves and each other, they formed a defensive circle, to stand against the enemy at home. I had been back for a little over a month, but I couldn’t get inside the circle at that time.
Loneliness: At that point I felt incredibly lonely – I was unwelcome at my family home in Maryborough; my mother and stepfather had not forgiven me for my conscription. The world I knew before the army had spurned me, and even now, the people who had experienced the same horrors and dangers in Vietnam, had moved away from me.
I drank with two or three C Company members in the next few days, but they were those who had not been among my particular friends, or in my platoon. They were people who themselves had formed few friendships in the army.
Bill Warren: One man I became close to in those days was Bill Warren. He and I spent several days in several hotels, and he asked me if I would come on a double date with his girlfriend Robyn, and her girlfriend Jan.
ROMANCE 1
Jan: Thanks to Bill and Robyn, Jan and I became very friendly in two or three meetings. We went to the Stradbroke Handicap Day at Eagle Farm racecourse, where I backed the winner, Mr Hush, for what was a big bet for me, at five to two odds.
Bill and Robyn were married in Gympie, where Robyn and Jan (bridesmaid) grew up, and I became best man I think because I was going out with Jan. I stayed with Jan’s parents, who owned a music shop in Gympie.
Jan’s dream was to become a professional singer, and she spent most of her days going to auditions. In August, she was engaged for a revue show at the Grand Hotel in Coolangatta, with Syd Heylen the Director and Star. Syd was a knockabout vaudeville comedian, but he later found a new and lucrative career on the long-running TV soap, A Country Practice.
So Janne moved to a small flat at Surfers Paradise, and I travelled down most weekends, sometimes to watch the rehearsals, sometimes to just wander round with her, having lunches and coffees and dinners.
I had neither car nor driver’s licence, so I travelled and from by McCafferty’s Coaches. On my way home one Sunday night, I was inspired to write my first piece of nonsense verse (or doggerel, or rhyming drivel), although I have no idea where the words came from. I do know that the plot (and to some extent the rhyme scheme) was partly pinched from a much longer, much better poem. See if you can guess:
The Sparrow
(With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe and his bird).
For an hour I’d been abed,
When brilliant thoughts raced through my head,
So I leapt up from my dreams and paced the floor;
And in words I tried to capture
My so-ecstatic rapture,
When I heard a gentle rapping, tapping, zapping on my door!
I threw quite wide the portal,
Though I wondered just what mortal
Would seek to gain admission at such a midnight hour;
‘Twas a tiny little sparrow,
Who in voice, both high and narrow,
Said, “My birdbath’s out of order. Could I kindly use your shower?”
“Though I don’t suppose you’d know it
(And I have no proof to show it),
But bird laws are much stricter than what you have ever saw!
Sparrow tribes are ultra-clannish,
Should I miss my bath they’ll banish
Me to life among my inlaws”, quoth the sparrow, “Evermore.”
I had heart not to be callow
And refuse the little fellow,
So I showed him to the guest towel and the soap.
With a touch of hesitation
He expressed appreciation,
Saying: “Men like you will always fill we little guys with hope!”
Once again, I soft-shoe shuffled,
When I heard, distinct yet muffled,
A voice, a trifle reedy, raised in song.
Put my ear up to the keyhole,
Heard what sounded like a Creole
Wife lamenting for a husband what went wrong.
When he came out, smeared in talcum,
Offered thanks, I said, “You’re welcome.
But, pray tell where on earth to sing you learned?”
Answered he, “It’s not so strange,
I won a scholarship exchange;
And a year in New Orleans is what I earned.”
“When they asked what course I might select.
I thought I’d study dialect,
And my company abroad was purely Southern.
You’ll have noticed when I sang,
My accent’s marked twang;
And I wouldn’t change it now, for any other’n.”
He continued, “Dear and kind sir,
If you really wouldn’t mind, sir,
Might you lend to me your mirror, and a comb?”
Then his little claws he cleaned,
And his ruffled feathers preened;
Said, “I thank you once again, sir, now, I really must fly home.”
I cried, “What would people think,
If I offered you no drink?
Tell me, which would prefer, some wine, or beer?
If your little wings you’ll turn off,
We’ll get stuck into the Smirnoff!”
(I got drunker than I’d been in many a year.)
When I saw him to the gate,
At an hour awful late,
He donned a helmet, and one flying goggle.
Then he flew off in the night,
With a weaving, drunken flight,
I waved him out of sight with mind aboggle.
Jan became very fond of the Gold Coast lifestyle and, after the show ended its run, she stayed in Surfers Paradise, sleeping late and going to bed around daylight. I became a comfortable, bad habit she wanted to give up. Towards the end of 1967, we parted, promising to be friends. We had shared a special friendship, but I think we both knew that it wasn’t a forever after relationship. I never saw her again, but wrote a song that portrayed temporary broken heartedness as life-long tragedy.
Winter – Down the Coast
When you left, with high hopes burning,
When you left, with high hopes burning,
To fulfil ambition’s yearning,
You said soon you’d be returning
From the coast.
So I covered my depression,
Yet I soon got the impression
Secret thoughts had gained expression
Down the coast.
All that matters does not matter,
All the problems quickly scatter
In the superficial patter
Down the coast.
You are seeking something other
Than the best I had to offer,
And you think that it is waiting
Down the coast.
Love is just a passing token,
Truest thoughts are never spoken,
And my heart is lying, broken,
Down the coast.
Yet I really shouldn’t comment,
Though my mind is in a torment;
I think love is always dormant
Down the coast.
As the summer leads to autumn,
So my sun gave way to shadow;
And my future dreams are dying
Down the coast.
ARMY MATES 2
Mal and Carol Black: During my last few months in Vietnam, the Acting Sergeant of 9 Platoon, Corporal Black, and I got on very well together, and we saw a bit of each other after the Battalion came home.
He married his sweetheart, Carol, and fairly soon afterwards they were off to Malaya (as Malaysia was then known – I think). I said that I would write to them and, remembering how much I would have appreciated getting mail in Vietnam, I sent them several letters. We’re still friends.
SOCIAL LIFE 2
Graham Hudson, Me, and the Squashed Game: Graham Hudson asked me one day if I would like to play squash. I had never played, but I thought it would be fun. We met a couple of his mates at a squash court somewhere near Enoggera.
To put this evening into perspective – I was an awkward, reasonably unco-ordinated, left-handed person who had rarely played sport during childhood, and I had a left leg which was still quite thin and wasted from the gunshot wound.
One of Graham’s friends asked if I wanted to play a game with him. Although I lumbered energetically all around the court, he beat me really easily (I think the score was Him 9, Norm 0). As we walked from the court (he walked, I sort of staggered), he asked (quite hesitantly) “Um, you weren’t spastic as a child, were you?” Squash has never held much appeal for me since that night.
Welcome to the RSL: While I was in Vietnam, one of my mates and I decided that we would travel around Australia together on our return, walking into every RSL Club we found, and drinking the free beer that we believed old diggers would buy us.
That didn’t happen, because he came home earlier than I did, and I never saw him again, though I tried several times to contact him. Vietnam messed him up even more than it did me.
I walked into an RSL Club one night, intending to have a beer or two in memory of our friendship. Some years later I wrote a short story which included the details of what happened that night:
‘He found no solace there, no friendship, no free drinks. Vietnam vets were treated with contempt by the members of the RSL.
They recognised him when he walked in, that was easy – Vietnam vets came back thin, and haunted, and afraid, old men’s eyes in young men’s bodies. When he bought a beer, he sat at the bar, and waited to see what would happen, whether someone would buy him a beer, and accept him as a comrade in arms.
A few members drifted up to him during the half an hour he spent there. He saw the scorn in their eyes, felt the anger in their words, and knew he would find no comfort here.
One said, ‘How could you call that a war?’
‘Nasho?’ asked another, and, when he nodded, added ‘You’re not welcome here, mate. This is a place for real diggers.’
He had finished his drink, and walked out. And hadn’t come back for thirty years, and then only as a social club member, to take advantage of the cheap meals, and when no one would recognise him for what he once had been.’
WORK 2
Welcome to the Travel Industry:
The headquarters of the Queensland Government Tourist Bureau, when I arrived, was on the ground floor of the then State Government Insurance Office building on the corner of Adelaide and Edward Streets. It was in this building, on the fifth floor, that a younger me had conquered the world of Statistical Data.
Apparently the QGTB didn’t quite know what to do with me, so I was placed in the care of a small, balding Englishman, Austin Lloyd, the manager of the Publicity Section. My mission was to maintain a press clipping service, wading through the daily newspapers of Queensland, cutting out any and every story impacting on tourism in the State, and pasting the clippings onto green typing paper. Mr Lloyd maintained his finger on the pulse of all new developments by skimming through the fruits of my labours.
Apart from Austin Lloyd, our section consisted of: Charles Fleetwood, a solidly built, man, flamboyantly dressed, who towered over everyone else in the QGTB. Charles had shrewd, appraising eyes, a booming laugh, and wore colourful ties that were the envy of all who saw them. He was a classically trained pianist, and regularly played dinner music at one of the leading hotels.
Miss Fiona Coombe was our graphic artist, who did the artwork for our brochures; she was a quietly spoken, gentle spinster, and I never heard her raise her voice, or say anything detrimental to or about anyone. Sandra and Jean were our stenographers, both friendly.
Jean and her fiancée flew kites together at Redcliffe most weekends. Sadly, sometime after I had moved to the Melbourne office, Jean died suddenly.
Something I learned in my time in that office – the power of suggestion. There was a man in the Accounts Section, named Fred, in his mid-forties, with a pleasant nature and a little pot belly. One day, one of the younger clerks said to me, “Do you want to watch me send Fred home sick?”
I, the innocent, said, “You can’t do that!”
“He said, “Just watch me!”
I did. He walked up to Fred’s desk, stopped suddenly, and said, “Fred! Are you okay, mate?”
Fred looked up, a little alarmed, and replied, “Yeah, sure. Why?”
“You just look really pale, and a touch greenish.”
“No”, said Fred, “I feel fine.”
Ten minutes later, an accomplice walked to Fred’s desk, and asked similar concerned questions. Fred was off home within ten minutes.
I didn’t shine at my work; my heart wasn’t in the work. Mr Lloyd, in a frank, informal chat, told me that I was far too slow at doing the job. This may have been partly due to my having a low opinion of what I was asked to do, and partly because I believed it essential to read every comic strip in every paper.
Now that I was in the tourist bureau, I wanted to be doing something more glamorous – I wanted to become a Travel Officer.
SOCIAL LIFE
Big Dreams, Empty Reality: On Friday nights I went to the Embassy Hotel in Edward Street, and drank with a dozen or more other staff members, including several of those who worked on the counter.
I didn’t really enjoy those evenings, but they helped me to numb my thoughts leading into the weekends, by the combination of lots of beer and idle conversation:
Friday Night at the Embassy Hotel, 1967
Everyone drinking, nobody thinking;
Everyone joking, constantly smoking;
Chook raffle sellers are jovial fellers;
Can’t stop my clowning, help me, I’m drowning.
I became quite friendly with Darcy Wiemers, who worked in Records, and we often went from the hotel to a nearby Chinese restaurant to continue our drinking and our earnest conversations.
Darcy was a part-time poet who had one of his poems published in the Toowoomba Chronicle, so I held him in some awe.
We often went to the races at Doomben or Eagle Farm on Saturdays, then followed up with an evening at the National Hotel Disco, where we believed, if we were drunk enough, we could make beautiful girls deeply attracted to us.
I always wanted to do something meaningful every weekend, to put foundations under my dreams; the problem was that I didn’t have any real dreams, just some vague notions of becoming a successful author, ruling the world, and being as rich as a smallish country. Some years later I wrote a story about one such weekend, and the following story won first prize in the North-West Star (Mount Isa) Short Story Competition:
With Purpose, Through the Wasteland.
Friday – dragging wearily down to its five o’clock close. The barriers falling ever so slowly, freeing me from this worry-covered, file-cluttered desk. Freeing me from this prison of crisis and paper till distant Monday.
The wonder of the weekend is almost mine. This will be my weekend.
I will fill it with fabulous achievement! Perhaps, perhaps I will write a poem; and maybe – maybe I will read it to some sweet appreciative someone, someone who is sad and lonely. And maybe I will make her happy. Yes! I will do it! Action is my catch-cry!
“Feel like a beer, Joe?”
“Huh? Aw, just a couple, Danny. I want to do a few things this weekend.”
“That sounds familiar. What’ve you got in mind?”
Tell him. I want to write a poem that is more than a poem. Answer him honestly. Capture the concrete thought.
“Well, I don’t really have any plans. It’s just that I don’t intend to waste this weekend. All I seem to do these days is drink, and I must be good for something else.”
“Come on then, maybe a coupla beers’ll give you some ideas/”
The last chook raffle has been drawn for the night; I have maintained my unbeaten losing record – the floor around my stool is littered with discarded tickets. Down there, on the cold marble, among the ash and the spilled beer and the soggy butts and the restless, crumpled tickets, I look for my way out.
Tomorrow’s certainties curl insidiously around me, mingling with betting coups which should have been, and ghostly champions greater now in retrospect than they ever were on the track.
Tomorrow, old son, I will write my poem.
Bullshit! Tomorrow I will go to the races and lose.
Long ago, the family men have scurried anxiously home. The night has dissolved the last drunken punter. The dapper glamour boys have all silently melted away to their secret waiting trysts. We alone have stayed – Danny and Joe – and ten o’clock closing rolling implacably down on us.
I wanted to talk to Danny about poetry, but the night has flickered by with small matters. Danny has written poetry. He could tell me how to start. It is in me, love and life, joy and pain and death, waiting to erupt. But not tonight; tomorrow.
“What d’you reckon about a meal at the Chinese joint, Joe?”
“Sounds pretty good to me, mate.”
How many Friday nights have ended here, with the braised pork and the bamboo shoots? Looking gravely across the table with our desperately tired eyes; mouthing forgettable words, slurred by fuzzy tongues; squeezing the last of the evening towards its expected anticlimax. There is no poetry in cold coffee.
Saturday morning. Half of it already eroded by sleep – the long, unwilling climb from the heavy. Dreamless pit. My head is agony, my gut struggles to reject its unwelcome, unsettled contents.
To lie abed is to die in abject misery – to get up is to start the banshees screaming through my skull. Carefully, slowly, ever so slowly, slide the legs to the floor; gently, gingerly, ease the torso up into a sitting position.
It’s no good. Caution never aids a jot, it always tears my head apart.
I concentrate on the only miracle available – the kitchen, and the Alka-seltzer.
Still seedy, but the little bubbles do their work well. Some semblance of life stirs at the corners of the eyes – a trembling hand jostles a too-hot cup of tea. A rueful smile hovers at the edges of my mouth, confessing my folly, satisfying the faintly-disapproving – but tolerant – boys-will-be-boys expressions of my brother and his wife.
Signs of life increase perceptibly as the morning wears away. The drone of the radio assumes new meaning. Bert and Cliff and Vince discuss possible winners in three states, interspersed with lively chat about the sportsman’s beer. My uneven scrawls soon deface the racing page, denoting scratchings, best bets, and my personal selections.
Danny arrives as the morning departs.
“Goin’ to the races, old son?”
“I reckon, Dan. Send some of them satchel-swingers climbin’ up their stands.”
I don’t believe it; he doesn’t believe it, and they won’t believe it. It’s as big a laugh as me talking u-beaut, true-blue, dinkum Aussie.
“Gee, you sound pretty confident, Joe.”
“Studied the form this morning, mate.”
I surely had. Through the haze of half a hangover. Why not stay at home. My life just seems to float from one losing bet to another smoky bar; make a start on this epic masterpiece, stop wasting time. But, how would it be, if all my horses romped home and me without a cent on any of them? Don’t be such a pessimist. To the track!
“How’d you come up after night, okay?”
“Bit crook to start with, but getting’ better by the minute. How about yourself?”
“Yeah, me too, but I could really go a heart-starter now.
Five to four the field. And I take the value bet, the thirtythree to one shot that won two starts back, in a maiden at Esk, for crying out loud. Then a panic saver on the twelve to one chance that a little old lady’s dollar has backed into tens.
The day’s approximate score card: twentythree bets – four winners, three placed, seven changes of mind that threw me off the winner – net loss, eighteen dollars, plus entrance fee, plus two hot dogs, And the bread was stale.
“Bastard of a day, Dan.”
“Yeah. They really gave us a roasting, didn’t they? D’ja reckon we oughta try and get a bit back at the trots tonight?”
“They can bloody well keep it, for mine. I’ve given ‘em enough already today.”
“That’s fair enough, too; we might give ‘em a miss tonight. What are you thinkin’ of doin’ tonight, then?”
Who, me? I’m still stunned by the day. I should stay home, and get busy on my poem. Do something, that’s the way to clamber over depression.
Who, me? I’m still stunned by the day. I should stay home, and get busy on my poem. Do something, that’s the way to clamber over depression.
Ah, what would I do at home? Sit and brood, brood and sit. Scream at Bertie’s kids, kick the cat. Better to go out on the town; cheer up. Start afresh tomorrow. There’s a whole new day a’waiting, and I can get a few clues from Danny tonight.
“Maybe we could throw the good gear on and hit the Nash or the Lands Office. Win a few hearts?”
“That sounds tremendous, old son; we can’t have bad luck with everything. Anyhow, the beer’s nice at the Nash, if nothing else works out.”
The man before the mirror, the ritual nearly completed; the shave, the shower, the anointing with the sweat-smothering lotions.
Uneasy blue eyes hammer into their own reflection – tell me how handsome I am. Tonight is mine! They’ll fall over each other in the rush. Those eyes, those deep, hypnotic eyes, and just the thinnest suggestion of a smile. How they’ll love me.
The mirror mocks the man – the light is false, touching the eyes with a harsh and empty glint. Loaded toothbrush hovers ludicrously in awkward, upraised hand. Impatient now, I whip brush to mouth, hazard several hurried, indiscriminate strokes, sweep the brush down beneath the running tap. Spit into the basin, rinse the mouth, leave the room.
The mirror chases me, it gives me no moral support, no self-confidence; it confirms nothing. It swallows up my living, breathing self, and spits back a cardboard cutout image – lacking depth, devoid of fire.
Uncertainty rages within – am I handsome? What is handsome? Are those eyes really hypnotic? A closer recollection seems to find them bloodshot and afraid, the smile weak and wavering.
How can I impress the evening’s gentle, waiting girls? They will only see what the mirror has shown me. My soul is bright, and burning, but it lies buried deep within the mazes of my mind.
Should I say, ‘Look at my mind! Ignore this face! That is not the real me. I am a would-be poet, haunted by deep and sorrowful longings, torn by tender, gentle feelings aching for release. But laughing strangers will not penetrate my shyness. I have laughter too – believe me! But it must wait until you know me well.
No, I will not tell them that. As always, when I am half-pissed and loud and vulgar, then I will force myself upon them, crude, and raucous, and … ashamed.
The night has not gone well. Unfortunately, the dance floor is almost empty; I cannot hide my unlearned shuffle here. No passionate adoring femmes sit here alone, or even in warm, inviting twosomes. These six and seven at a table daunt me; worse, they ogle me! They laugh at me! I am ill, my head aches, I am inadequate.
“Tell me, Danny, how do you go about writing poems? I mean, how do you start?”
“Shit, mate, you don’t want to talk about poetry now! That’s something you do when there’s no beer to be drunk and no birds to be won. Tonight is for living!”
“No, seriously, I want to write something. When do you write your poems?”
“Hell, I only did it as something to do, when I was in Melbourne. There was a course in it at night school, so I took it. Helps to pass the time. But listen, there’s a woman over there just dyin’ to dance with me. Why don’t you get up with someone?”
After that, how can I get up? Poetry only helps to fill an empty day, when the beer is off and the girls are scarce. Crumble, tumble goes another illusion.
What is important in life? This flat, unwanted beer, this stuffy, stifled room, the ear-destroying din. They seem to be. I do not want this cigarette. I do not want the hollow gaiety of tonight. Come on Danny, let’s get away from here.
He dances on unheeding; and I drink on, regardless.
Sunday morning batters me unmercifully awake. I do not welcome it; I want to hide from it, enveloped by my blankets. They are too stifling – my angry, buzzing head craves air.
My mind gropes back the evening. I flinch in shame, try to push away the montage of embarrassment. All the pictures run together. Me, falling with her on the dance floor. Me, vomiting beer endlessly in the toilet. Me, running, crying, laughing loud and being laughed at. Worst of all, I remember the pity in her eyes.
Come into today, forget the bitter memory. What will I do today, with this abused and aching body?
Oh, let me first get better. Alka-seltzer, my love, I come lurching slowly to you.
Tradition demands that the Sunday papers be read before any other task is even looked at. Besides, it is nearly lunchtime. The routine is unchanged – flicking through the sensational stories, pausing to glean the more sordid snippets from such exotic-sinful-slanderous-scandalous headlines as catch my jaded eye; lingering guiltily over the funny pages; shuddering at, but absorbing, every line of racing news.
Lunch settles comfortably, lazily. The day meanders smoothly along. I am relaxed, mind pleasantly empty. Life should be all like this, just sitting, without the want or need to do anything.
My brother suggests a quick game of crib, and we quietly while away the afternoon.
Suddenly, surprisingly, it is teatime. The meal jolts me to awareness. I rise determined from the table, and adjourn swiftly to my room, thereby also escaping the washing-up. It is time.
MY poem surrounds me and, when I try to capture it, escapes, leaving me frustrated and annoyed. The moment has passed. I cannot write poetry. Indeed, what can I do? Am I just here to make up the numbers, to sit and wear away my time? For all my proud education, for all my hard-bought experience, I can accomplish nothing. I have no direction, no purpose. Is my entire life to comprise an unending string of meaningless workaday weeks punctuated by wasted weekends?
The crisis passes. I evade the issue, and turn to mundane matters. It is time, indeed; time to write a letter. Who suits my mood? Sorting through the faces in my mind, discarding, remembering, seeking the person to match a feeling, or induce one.
Maybe Bill and Connie. Yes, I think they are right for a letter. Unlatch the year-old, hardly-used, portable typewriter, feed in the paper, and begin.
‘Dear Bill ‘n Connie baby,
Here I am again, late and apologetic, with no excuses save my chronic and habitual laziness. How goes the war? One can see you clearly, furiously protecting us all against the inscrutable oriental menace, by means of judicious and expertly-timed manoeuvrings.
I remain trapped within the toils of this bumnumbingly great and mystifying, mystified public circus, and I am, as is my wont, or my will ,busy looking busy. The world hurtles past at breakneck pace outside this secure cocoon, whilst we within meander, snail-like and aimless, towards our distant days of roses in retirement, soaking up sun in Surfers, twenty years after we’re past enjoying it.
Mustn’t worry, I suppose. I have to pass the time somehow, and at least the money’s good.
Once in a while, I wish I’d stayed in the clutches of the army, after my two years were up but, If I had’ve I would’ve wished I hadn’t.
Lately, I’ve been obsessed by a desire to write poetry, of all things. One of the guys in the Department writes some pretty good stuff, and I have had dreams of becoming an instant poet. Not the nonsense rhymes I used to write, but deep, meaningful stuff.
So far, whenever I try to get something down, it comes out like this:
A timid young cheese
Got down on his knees,
And prayed for some ease
From his dreadful disease;
He was gay, he was bold,
He was friendly, not cold;
But the truth must be told –
He suffered with mould.
Not the most deathless verse you ever heard, was it? I haven’t been game to show it to Danny – he writes deep and dismal stuff, full of the darkness and pain of life, absolutely bristling with obscure meaning. I don’t know enough about life or poetry to do that. (After all my admiration of his brilliance, I have just found out that he studied poetry at night school, and I don’t think I’m all that keen).
Besides, life has me stumped at the moment. It seems to follow a continuing pattern of five-day trivia followed by two-day boredom. Each weekend leaves me depressed, with the thought that nothing has been accomplished, everything remains the same.
Goodness, aren’t I the gloomy one tonight! And what’s so bad about not doing anything with life? If I don’t do anything, then I can’t do anything bad.
And really, weekends aren’t such a waste of time – here I am, writing to two of my very favourite peoples; surely that must rate as an achievement of merit?
(Particularly when I write so rarely, I hear you whispering in the background). Not to worry, this literary dream is probably another of my celebrated passing phases, forgotten soon, to recur briefly three years hence. (Expect your next letter three years hence).
Thus seems the vagabond nature of my strongest passions, reading, writing, racehorses, women (mind you, the desire for the last one is always strong and unwavering – it is they who stay with me only a while, and infrequently at that. I know, it’s me).
The hour, as they say, waxes late. We have come to our final segment, the standard section. I am well, and hope you are also; the weather here is lousy, what about there? Give my regards to each other and have a happy birthday, Connie.
Tomorrow will shortly be with me, and this letter is all that stands between me and an utterly desolate, wasted weekend.
So you may feel happy that you have spared me the agony of a regretful, self-disgusted Monday morning, and that you may make your weekend wonderful by writing a reply. Fond regards,
Your old mate,
Joe.’
And that, old son, is this weekend. Bed, and Monday, and Danny. We will probably hold a post-mortem, and pronounce it falsely marvellous.
Then lift our hearts in gleeful expectation of our next wonderful weekend. And Danny will declare, joyfully, “Only five more days to Friday, mate.”
What will I salvage from next weekend? Much more, I hope, than one lousy letter. To bed.’
ROMANCE 2
Judith: Mal and Carol, in one of their early letters, let me know that Carol’s sister, Judith, wasn’t seeing anyone, and maybe might like to meet me. After a very nervous first meeting with Judith and her parents, we went out for a few months, and we got on very well. But, one night we went to an engagement party in an Anglican Church Hall in Wardell Street, Enoggera, and Judith begin talking about US, in terms of a future together. I knew, right then, right there, that it would never work out very well. There was no ‘magic’ between us, just solid friendship.
We had a long and tearful conversation that night when I took her home, but it was better, for both of us, to have that one, long, painful session than a lifetime of painful sessions.
TOMORROW ISN’T YESTERDAY
You Can’t Go Home Again: My brother Bert held a ‘Coming Home’ party for me, which began at the Capalaba Hotel, and finished at his and Carmel’s then home at 19 North Street, Newmarket. The guest list was much the same as the one for my going away party, and I got fairly drunk.
I wrote the following story in Townsville in 1973. We were living in a flat in a lovely old house in Fryer Street, North Ward, and I had joined the Townsville Writers’ Group. At the time, I fancied myself as a poet, but one evening I found a photograph of me cutting my cake at my coming home party.
The cake, in the shape of a map of Queensland, was beautifully iced, with the major towns embossed in lovely lettering. I was holding the knife high above my head, about to bring it down onto the cake, and my face was twisted into a dreadfully grotesque leer.
When I looked at the photo, I thought of writing a funny little story or piece of nonsense verse. However, the story took its own path, and, to my surprise, won the first prize in the inaugural Townsville Literary Competition, then followed up the next year with equal first prize in the Adelaide Festival of Arts Short Story Competition for writers under the age of 35. (Yes, I WAS that young once)!
Here it is. Please note, there IS one very naughty word in it.
Tomorrow Isn’t Yesterday
The guest of honour, swaying slightly, spilled beer down his shirtfront. Both bloodshot eyes surveyed the dampened shirt, and a ripple of concentration worried round his forehead. It was a warm night, and the beer was cool. So, he was lucky to be sprinkled with cool beer. The ripple vanished, reappearing immediately as a lopsided grin.
Somewhere in the throng a familiar voice talked about him. As the words floated to him through the haze the smile reached up and touched his eyes. Bruvver Bert was being concerned again.
Broken phrases filtered through.
“Thin? A mere matchstick! Gee, lost weight. Been through a terrible lot. Quiet, isn’t he? Strain – hard to adjust. Isn’t he thin?”
A question, seeping through from a blurred form beside him, wiped his face blank. After a long moment, the blur shrugged, flashed solemn teeth in an understanding smile, patted his shoulder, and drifted aimlessly away.
Bastards! He fumed beneath the emptied face. What was it like to be there, they ask. But that isn’t what they want to know. They want blood. Did you kill anyone? What did it feel like, to kill someone? Then why the hell don’t they ask me what it was like to kill someone?
Another shadow, another smile, another innocuous question. He blinked rapidly to clear away the mist and push away the anger.
“Oh, it’s not such a bad place, but I wouldn’t go there for a holiday, hahaha.”
That wouldn’t hold ‘em, too bloody tired and worn. Now come the knives, digging for blood.
“But, did you see any action at all?”
Can’t avoid that one. Always, they wanted the blood, and always, it hurt to remember. Why, for Christ’s sake, can’t I keep it bottled away from the world? Why must they always try to unscrew the bottle? Hey, that wasn’t bad – keep the blood bottled, and your blood’s worth bottling. Dad would’ve loved it.
“Sorry, just something funny I thought of: Action? Yeah, we spent a fair bit of time out in the field.”
The vague shapes clustered close. This was what they wanted. Authentic war stories. The meat of the evening fresh from the butcher. Fuck ‘em! I won’t give ‘em anything – not a bloody morsel! Be resolute. Grim and granite-jawed rock of iron resolution. Tell ‘em bloody nothing.
The grim and granite-jawed rock spilled his beer. A kindly hand with an ice-cold bottle topped up his glass.
Bruvver Bert came whispering through again. “All his friends, nice – yes, beaut surprise; has been a bit moody. Can’t blame.”
Yes, Bertie, it was a nice welcome home party.
With the same cast as the nice going away party. But it wasn’t the same, not the same at all. He summoned up the half-recalled memory. There had been beer. Lashings of beer, And cigarettes. Far, far too many cigarettes. And people. These same people, swept up in the false gaiety of a sad farewell. And there had been a cake. Right at the climax of the evening, a bloody great, icing-covered, sweet and sickly cake. And he had laughed and thanked Bruvver Bert for the surprise party and the surprise cake, as he washed a choking slice down with beer, hoping it would stay settled in his gut, It hadn’t. Please, Bertie, he pleaded silently, no bloody cake. I hate cake.
He came back with a start and an off-guard apology. “Sorry, I was years away.”
“Were any of your friends hurt at all?”
Friends! You are my friends. Mates! That’s what you get in the army. Like relatives, you take what you bloody well get, all chucked together in adversity. You live in each others’ pockets, bound by a fear much tighter than friendship. And then, when it’s over, you drift away and apart. Friends are personal choices. But that doesn’t matter. All they want is blood. Well, give ‘em blood. NO! I won’t. Fuck‘em.
“Yes, a few mates were hurt.”
That won’t hold ‘em. Nowhere near enough. Think!
“One of the blokes in our company was the first in the battalion to get killed.”
Why in hell did you say that? That’s what they’re after. Too clever, you silly bastard. They’re still thinking friendship: they reckon we were closer than arses to underpants. All clucking and whispering in a joyous orgasm of sympathy.
“How does the loss of a mate affect you?”
Tell the truth. Shock ‘em stupid. Bloody won’t believe me.
“Well, you have to joke about it, to stay sane. If you brood on it, you crack up.”
That hit home, all right. Soon, they’d really get into it.
Where was the Joe who went away, smiling Joe of the weak pun and the gentle poem? No one wanted laughter now, when blood was in the offing. They thirsted for blood, for strong men and heavy drama. Everyone wanted visions of hate filled faces over snipers’ sights, of tracer bullets ripping brightly through night-black jungle and slant-eyed bodies, tearing, shredding: the twisted flesh jerking in oceans of technicolour blood. Tell us, they begged, let us live it all through as you recall the painful memories. Only the veneer of civilised behaviour held them to their round-about questions.
It would come. They don’t know how to ask it yet, but they’re working on it.
Now the group is dissolving, the murmurs are melting away. Someone, as eager as the rest, has interpreted silent blankness as stoic strongman tragedy. Watch the misty shapes fade away.
The strong, silent stoic stood alone, drinking his beer. Some of it dribbled down his chin. His eyes were glazed with memory. Or with alcohol.
“Very lucky,” averred Bruvver Bert, somewhere, to someone. “Could’ve lost the leg – went straight through, missed the bone. Wastage: inch lower, kneecap gone. Gee, certainly lucky.”
There was a thought which ebbed and flowed at the corners of his consciousness. With agonised effort, he concentrated, trying to pin it down. He felt it hammering importantly for release. Triumphantly, he seized it, and set it in his mind.
“Do you know,” he stated firmly to no one in particular, “Do you really know what I looked forward to most on coming home?” the words slurred as he repeated them emphatically. He tongued his lips to wipe away the furriness.
He had them now. The silence clamoured expectantly. The shapes watched and waited. The pause lengthened. This was desperately important, but he couldn’t quite remember why.
“What I would have given quids for,” heavily underlining each word, “was a pint of good old full cream milk. Plain old cow juice.”
The hush dissembled into uncomprehending murmurs. The hazy listeners didn’t understand. What the hell was so funny about it, anyway? Milk. Of course! He remembered vividly that driving, half-crazed, raging thirst for milk – and yet, here he was, drunk as a skunk, and not one drop of pasteurised had passed his lips all night. Para-bloody-doxical! Simple enough to work out, however. When you have the little luxuries of everyday life, you don’t want ‘em, but when they’re missing, you want them, oh, so much.
It was like friends. These people. Friends. These are your friends. Who you almost wept over when they did write or because they didn’t. Who meant so much when they weren’t there and who mean so little now. Because they don’t know. They are whispers and I want statements. They are questions and I am seeking answers. And they don’t know how to approach me. Because I am alien. I am a mongrel mixture of big words and little words, an uneven blend of commonness and refinement. I no longer fit in where I once did. I should, yet I can’t.
Why am I drinking so much beer? There is so much beer, so why should I want it? If I liked it, I wouldn’t be spilling so much. Ah! Beer fits the image of the rough, tough man of action. I can’t step out of character. But, who cast me as that? I am only me. Yes, but this is what my public wants, here, now, tonight. Hard, bloody, uncouth.
The rough, tough, rugged man of action dropped his glass. It hit the floor but did not break, and beer sprinkled his shoes and splashed the floor. Lithely, he swooped down to pick up the glass. Unexpectedly, he landed heavily on the worn lino. Slowly, awkwardly, he stumbled to his feet. At least he had the glass. And a wet arse. The situation called for another cigarette. He fumbled one somehow from the packet and accepted a light from a hand which stretched down from a smiling cloud. He mumbled thanks, and retreated into his fuzzy mind.
Another voice was pounding at the curtain. What was the question? What WAS the question? Search and recall. Search and destroy. That’s more like it. You are tearing me down with your questions and you are tearing yourselves down too. Think. Hold hard. Regroup. Smile, be nice. What did he say? The bastard. This is the start of the big ones. Did I ever have to shoot at anyone. Not, ‘did I’, but ‘did I have to’. Cunning. How do I approach this? The track is treacherous, the way is fraught with booby traps. Control your shattered, scattered self-control. It is hard to be funny, when you are drunk, and self-pitying.
“Well, I WAS in the infantry, and we WERE taught to obey orders immediately, without asking questions. So, on some occasions, I did shoot. Mind you, I was always a lousy shot.”
Too stilted. Have to pad it out, get them off that one. Make it clear.
“Actually, I don’t think I ever shot anyone, and I hope to never find out that I did.”
That might shut ‘em up. Doubt it. They haven’t had their blood yet. Why don’t they let me forget it? Hell, why forget? You are a momentary hero. This is centre stage and you’re right there, in the middle of it. Isn’t that what you’ve always craved? Adulation. Here it is. You can feel them, hanging on words. NO! Not like this, Of course I want to be admired and esteemed and befriended – doesn’t everyone? But, not like this. For something else. Not for this. Not for talking death and blood and glory, for slashing bare the memory of maimed flesh and sightless eyes, for vomiting out the horror of a bullet-riddled, maggot-eaten, fly-infested, seven day dead body.
The momentary hero shivered. The ghostly half-seen faces shimmered close around him. An invisible hand refilled his glass from a visible, tilted bottle.
People hurt. He only wanted yesterday back, the happy warmth of friendship. And they only wanted the war. To shoot and be shot at. The fear came back, the soul-wrenching feelings of dying, violently, so far from home.
His fingers locked tightly round the glass as the dread flowed back into his churning gut. He heard clearly the whine of bullets through bamboo, and he saw himself clutching at the hard dirt, sweating and waiting for eternity. He peered again through the sight of the black Armalite, but he couldn’t see anyone out there. But they were there. They were shooting. Little Bill lay pale and shaking, cracking weak and painful jokes as his blood soaked into the dry grey dust from his shattered, severed arm, torn off at the shoulder. Joe was glad he couldn’t see them, and he set his Armalite on single shot instead of automatic. It was justified, you can’t shoot what you can’t see, and he never wanted, ever, to see anyone. The feeling ate deep into his mind again, of wishing to die himself, almost, rather than to kill another. And wanting so utterly to live.
A friendly arm draped itself around his shoulders, jostling him, startled, back to the party. They had gathered close again, and expectancy and settled heavily on the room. Something was Going To Happen! It happened. Yesterday returned. The out-of-focus Bruvver Bert, with due pomp and self-importance, placed a bloody great icing-covered cake before him! He loathed cake. Particularly iced cake. Especially iced cake with a red flower and a blue map of Queensland on it. This cake. Yet, here it was again. The nightmare as before.
“Oo, lovely, cut it, isn’t it gorgeous? Almost a shame to cut it”, babbled the blurs, arranged haphazardly around the room.
A knife was placed in his reluctant hand. He raised it high and contorted his face into its most grotesque setting, held the pose. Someone clicked a shutter, and the knife plunged savagely down through Queensland, embedding itself somewhere near Emerald.
A camera! Why would anyone want to take a photograph? Photographs brought back the past. And he had sought the future in them. All of them, flat black and white snaps, and glorious three-dimensional mental pictures in living colour. He had fed his memory on these people. Beautiful was the tapestry he had woven about them, dreaming happily by recalling the past. Now he knew. Tomorrow could not be built on yesterday.
Because it was tomorrow, and they were here, but unrecognisable in their stuttering, vague and merging shapes, so totally different from the sharp, clear pictures he had carried for twelve months. Grand illusion crumbling to empty disillusionment. They were the right people, but it was the wrong time. The only part salvaged from the past had been the cake. Perhaps, it was always going to be like this.
The guest of honour stood beside his cake, a huge and heartless hammer crushing his dreams, relentlessly pounding at his caved-in mind, forcing the silent tears out into the corners of his eyes.
What a bastard! What a bloody, rotten bastard!
****
FAMILY
I found very few constants in my life when I returned. My mother and stepfather still had their home and their hearts closed to me; my ‘friends’ at social tennis didn’t want to know me;
My brother Bert and his wife Carmel were unchanged; I received the same wonderful acceptance from them which they had always given me – they were family, as was Austin, and his wife, Win.
A word about my brother Bert – I have thought for many years that he is probably the nicest of all six brothers (yes, including me). I love each of my brothers, for different reasons, and each of them is unique in his own way, but for me, Bert’s uniqueness is that he is just one heck of a nice man. I told him this a week or two ago, and I just wanted to share that with the rest of the world.
Bert and Carmel took me into their home, and being with family provided me with a fragile stability for a time.
Although Bert and Carmel treated me with unfailing respect and affection, I was unable to respond in kind, except at a superficial level. I guarded my anger, my pain, and my true emotions behind a wall of shallow good spirits and empty witticisms. Unfortunately, my anger sat just below the surface, and my quick, sarcastic temper burst out with very little provocation, many times a day.
OLD FRIENDS 2
I hold loyalty in very high esteem, and I have been blessed in my life with some friends who have remained true through all the years, the ups and the downs, of my life.
After Vietnam, among all the disappointments, there were a few people who welcomed me back with affection and undiminished regard, even though I was changed in so many ways.
When I visited the Department of Machinery I felt deeply ill at ease with the people I had known; although Graham Hudson greeted me and treated me with the same openness and direct almost-friendship as he had always shown me.
Most of my other friendly acquaintances didn’t seem all that friendly anymore, but there were a few incredibly special, warm and caring people who deserve much more than honourable mention.
Closest to my heart, then and now (excepting, of course, for Margaret, the Love of my life, and our family) were (and are) Bunty, Peter and Wendy Hitchener, Ron Phillips, and Graeme Pinniger. (Shut up Gary, I never met you until 1968!) Oh, all right, and Gary Smith, who I may have met just before the end of 1967.
Others in my lifelong friends group at that time (and now) were Ernie and Ellie Emmanuel, Bill Weir, and Graham Hudson.
Another totally non-judgemental and accepting group comprised all of the people I had met in my time with the Brisbane Arts Theatre, which is why I maintain my membership, and donate a little money to the theatre every year, although we rarely attend performances. (One little-known fact about the Brisbane Arts Theatre is that Bill Weir is the longest-serving continuous membership member of the theatre. Well done, dear friend William!)
Burbong Street Indooroopilly: Bunty, Peter and Wendy Hitchener, if anything, cared more for me, if this were possible, than they had before I went away, as did Ernie and Ellie Emmanuel. Bunty had bought a house in Burbong Street some years earlier, and this became something of a refuge for me, a place I could stay a night, a weekend, or probably forever, if I had wished to. As it was, I visited very frequently, and much beer was drunk, many feeble jokes made, usually with a few very dear friends of Bunty’s.
I sincerely believed that Paul Simon’s words and music on The Sounds of Silence album had done much to keep me mostly sane and alive in Vietnam; I scoured record stores on my return, buying every Simon and Garfunkel record I could (including a re-release of the sole album they had made as high school boys, under the name of Tom and Jerry).
Bunty and I played these albums, not quite continuously, but very frequently, because we both loved the lyrics. One day I bought a new album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, which contained the very catchy 59th Street Bridge Song.
On arriving at Burbong Street one Friday night, I told Bunty that I had forgotten to bring the new album with me. She demanded that I sing as much of it as I could, and that is how I lost my voice, rendering that one song (which she thought was incredibly joyful) probably a couple of thousand times. (Yes, I have a gift, too, for exaggeration).
The Hitchener record collection contained two particular long-playing albums which were played a lot: The Tokens’ The Lion Sleeps Tonight and an album by an Irish group called Them, titled Here Comes the Night. The vocalist was a 17 year old with an incredible voice, named Van Morrison.
One of the Hitchener friends was a young student, Tom Parks, who was known, then and now, as Fred, to avoid confusion with another Tom. Fred also became one of my closest friends, and, in 1971, he married dear Bunty.
Julius Street New Farm: Ron Phillips and Graeme Pinniger either were in, or going to move into, a beautiful flat in Julius Street at New Farm, right on the Brisbane River. They asked me if I would like to move in with them. At this time I was going through a rough patch at Bert and Carmel’s home, through no fault of theirs, so I jumped at the opportunity.
Ron and Graeme (and Gary, when he moved in with us) accepted me totally as I was, and I found my greatest peace here, and at Burbong Street. I must have been difficult to cope with, because I had changed, and not really for the better. Very soon after my return I realised that, instead of being the heroes we had imagined ourselves to be, before we flew off to war, Vietnam veterans were now the villains. I was angry, bitter, and highly suspicious of almost everyone I knew, even those who truly loved me.
I don’t know what would have happened to me without those few caring people, whose love and acceptance gave me the strength, and possibly the courage, to continue. Under the surface, I was very brittle, very angry, very uncertain.
ROMANCE 3
Kerri: Graham Hudson and I went to a party once, for his friend Barry’s birthday. The friend had a young girlfriend, named Kerri, who seemed fascinated by my having been to war.
During the evening, I invited Graham, Barry, and Kerri to our Christmas party at New Farm. Graham and Kerri came, but not Graham – he and Kerri had parted company.
Some time after 2:00 a.m., when all our guests had gone home, I answered a knock at the door. It was Kerri. She lived in an Anglican Church home at New Farm (which I had not known), and had arrived home too late. They had locked her out. (NOTE: I never really knew if this was true or not, but, at 2:00 a.m., it sounded plausible).
Kerri slept the night in our lounge room, but made it very clear she had designs on me. We sort of went out for a little while, but I never felt quite comfortable with her. My relationships with all of my girlfriends had been quite chaste (except for that one night at Highgate Hill before I joined the army), but Kerri didn’t seem to want that. And she was so young, only 18, and me a seasoned old timer of 22. I never felt that Kerri was THE ONE with whom I wanted to share the rest of my life, so our togetherness did not last long.
Within a few months, she went back to her parents, who were living in New Guinea.
So, at the end of 1967, I was in a good living situation, with friends who treated me always with care, laughter, and no reservations or hesitations. I had a great relationship with my brother Bert and his family (especially after I moved out), and with the Hitchener family.
At work, I was in the right place, but the wrong job. I knew that I could be a fantastic Travel Officer, just as I knew that I was a lousy publicity clerk.
My health was not good – had a, stiff neck that constantly ached. One Sunday, the Tourist Bureau sent me on a FREE gold-digging tour run by one of the tour operators. One of the paying customers was a chiropractor, who paid close attention to my neck – he told me that my spine was out of alignment, but that he could fix it. He cracked my neck a few times on the spot, which seemed to make it feel better, and I then embarked on a series of treatments that cost me more than I could really afford.
My mental health was not good. On the surface, among friends, I showed a great sense of humour, albeit I had a very short fuse. At work, I quickly became known as an angry, sullen bastard with a sarcastic mouth.
I was a clown on the outside, and a tragedian on the inside:
The Nature of Clowns
It seems that all clowns
Hover at the edge of sadness;
Smiling outward to the world.
Their paradoxic, face-bisecting smiles
Accentuate the haunting public face
Which shields their inner anguish.
I think that I have always been a clown,
Sometimes making people laugh,
But never really feeling
The joy inside; the laughter
Of the world outside my smile
Is built upon
The sadness of my life.
And yet, there have been moments,
More than moments, often,
When part of me has laughed aloud
At the same time that
Another part
Seems to choke upon
Its own despair.
That, dear readers, is how I remember 1967.
