The Jarratts hit the big smoke

Dad got his job on the beef roads so we headed to Townsville after the holidays. Brian came with me in the Prefect and somehow ended back in Aramac for the last term to finish his Junior. I can’t remember how he got back. To get to Townsville, you travelled along a dirt track for 300 k’s through about thirty gates. It was a single track. Sometimes it was hard to see the road, especially on rocky terrain. The Prefect wasn’t built for it.

That drive made me realise what a big, dry, tough continent we live on. How we got through with a Prefect is thanks to Dad’s driving tuition. Sometimes the country turned rocky and you’d lose sight of the road (well, track). I can’t remember passing another car on that track, and we went through about three or four jerry cans of fuel before we got to bitumen. We hit the Flinders Highway, which runs from Townsville to Mount Isa, and we turned right towards Townsville. I’d only just got my licence, so I hadn’t driven on many major roads. I remember saying to Brian, ‘How the bloody hell do they have accidents on those things?’

We arrived in Townsville well ahead of Mum and Dad. They’d had a minor catastrophe. Dad was towing the famous wooden caravan along the same motherless track we’d travelled earlier. It must have had some dried grass tussock stuck between the tyre and the wheel well, and the tyre rubbing against it started a fire in the wheel well. By the time the old man had noticed it, the caravan was well and truly on fire. He got Mum and Barry to stand aside and he bravely unhooked the car from the caravan. Mum said she couldn’t see him for smoke. He ran to the car coughing like hell and drove the car away. They sat and watched the caravan burn to the ground with the old man coughing and Mum feeding him water. He’d suffered smoke inhalation. The caravan was chocka with family goods. Mum’s worst loss was that all the family photos were destroyed. Thankfully we’ve got a large family and Mum gathered a reasonable selection of photos from them over the years, a few of which are in this book.

Within a month of my parents’ arrival in Townsville, they’d bought a fantastic little house in Cape Pallarenda, a beautiful little suburb as far north as you can go along the coast from town. There was about 6 k’s between us and Rose Bay. They had a big shark-proof pool coming off the beach. A sweeping sandy beach about 10 k’s long, looking out at the majesty of Magnetic Island off the coast.

Class of 1970, the best

Life was idyllic. I had so much fun, especially in 1970. I had my licence, I had a great bunch of mates, male and female, we were one hell of a group and I had a great car.

My dad was overseeing the construction of a bridge over the Burdekin River. He got Brian and me a job on jackhammers making massive holes into sheer rock for the bridge footings. It was the hardest work we’d ever done. Brian was only fifteen but he was built like the old man. The boss was away when we turned up and the other workers kept warning us how shithouse life would be when Curly got back.

Curly arrived a couple of days later. We were in this bloody big hole jackhammering when suddenly the compressor was turned off. We looked up at this bloke built like Dad with absolutely no hair on his head or body. He looked down with his mean eyes and said, ‘Name’s Curly, I’m the boss and you’re the bastards.’ What an arsehole. The job became a nightmare, but the pay was good. It all ended sadly when Brian and I had the job of pouring petrol onto these huge mounds of trees pushed up by bulldozers doing the clearing. A heavy rain storm had put the fires out overnight so the trees were very wet. We poured petrol on them then stood back and threw a flame at it. It was working well, until I managed to pour petrol on a hot coal not quite doused by the storm. The flame shot back to the petrol can in my hand and it blew up the can, singeing my face, and my right arm was on fire. Luckily I immediately started banging my arm into the dirt and put it out. If I hadn’t done that, I would have suffered major burns. The downside was that the burnt skin was full of dirt.

Dad drove me to Charters Towers, a two-hour drive. The longest two hours of my life. I can’t tell you how painful a burn is; when I see someone badly burnt on TV my heart goes out, because that pain must be unbearable.

When we got to the hospital, they had to clean every tiny bit of the very dirty burnt arm, as burns are highly susceptible to infection. More unbearable pain. It was 1970 and they’d just invented spray-on plastic skin, lucky me. The arm was covered in zinc and then bandaged. That was the end of the job, so Brian and I returned to Pallarenda.

Luckily I’d saved enough money to buy my first decent car. I bought a light-green 1958 FC Holden panel van, and I called it the Wasp. Mum very kindly made up a special mattress to go around the wheel wells. ‘I just wanna go camping in it, Mum…’ Yeah, sure you do.

I went out the next Saturday night to get laid. I had the perfect vehicle for sex, booze (no drugs…yet) and rock ’n’ roll. Pick up a coupla mates, grab a few beers, off to the Sound Lounge, pull a chick. Nial did, so I had to go for a long drunken walk along the Strand to give Nial enough time to christen my fucking fuck truck! Fuck!

I was drunk from about Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve. By the time New Year’s Eve came around I was far too sick to get drunk again, so I offered to be the designated driver. I brought my dad’s klaxon horn with me to blast away at midnight. You wound a handle on the back of this thing and one hell of a noise came out of the horn shape at the front.

The handle was broken and I was trying to fix it. I was sitting in the front seat working on it when these cops came up to the car.

‘What are you doing, Jarratt?’ (They knew me by name, ’nough said.)

‘I’m fixing this klaxton horn to give it a burst at midnight.’

‘Intending to disturb the peace, Jarratt? Get in the car.’

‘Bullshit.’

Whack!

‘Watch your language. Get in the car.

They threw me and the horn into the back seat of a Cortina. A cop sat on either side of me, the sarge sat in the passenger seat and another cop drove. The car smelt like a brewery.

Sarge said, ‘You’ve been drinking, Jarratt. You’re under twenty-one.’

‘No I haven’t!’

The Sarge slugged me with a backhander to the side of my face, the cop beside me elbowed me in the ribs, and this continued every time the Sarge finished a sentence.

‘You’ve been fuckin’ drinking.’

‘There’s blokes been drinkin’ in this car but I’m not one of them.’

Whack…

‘We’re gonna take you home to your father.’

‘Twelve Bay Street, Pallarenda. Take me home, my old man hates coppers, he’ll take all of you out…’ whack…‘Hey, you’re going the wrong way, take me to the old man, I want you to.’

‘Shut ya fuckin mouth’…whack…

‘Too gutless to take me home, huh?’…whack. All this time the jerk beside me keeps elbowing me in the ribs, so I memorised the number on the badge on his sleeve.

They threw me out of the car about 10 k’s north of Townsville. The sarge got out and started kicking me. He landed a severe kick behind my knee and I could feel it bleeding through my pants.

He said, ‘Fuck off, go on, get goin’.’

I’d lost it by then. I looked the fucker in the eye. ‘I’m not fuckin’ movin’, mate, even if you kick me to death.’ I must have made an impact. He just silently got in the car and drove off. It took me over an hour to hobble back, but I got a lift partway.

The old man was livid. He took me to the cop shop and cleverly asked for the klaxon horn first. They gave it to him and he gave it to them. He told the chief copper the story and we ended up getting the sarge demoted.

Six months later, I was in the Golden Room coffee lounge. A couple of coppers came in to do the rounds. I recognised the number on the cop’s sleeve: it’s the prick who elbowed me in the ribs. I went out to their cop car in the back lane. There was a 1.8-metre paling fence bordering the property and another fronting the street. I hid on the corner of the two fencelines, hidden by the street fence. I saw their heads bobbing along as they approached the car, my man conveniently in the front. As soon as he broached the street I king-hit him. I can still feel his nose squishing on my fist to this day. I took off and the arsehole’s mate went down to see if he was all right, giving me a head start. They never caught me and they had no idea who’d thumped him.

I often think to myself that bloke could be sitting in front of the TV with his busted nose watching me: ‘Jesus, I like that John Jarratt, the bastard makes me laugh!’

In January I got into more trouble. I decided to go for a drive north in my new car. Up to Cairns and back in four days. Me, Max, Brian and twelve-year-old Barry. We had a great time, the car went well and Cairns was beautiful, much greener than Townsville, surrounded by rainforest mountains, still a sleepy Queensland town back then, weatherboard everything and everything on stilts. I love Queensland, pity it’s too far from everything.

We ended up heading to the Atherton Tablelands, rope-swinging at the crater lake, Lake Eacham. I wasn’t supposed to swim with my burnt arm, but I did. I hit the water and a sheet of skin came off. To this day, if you look closely, the skin on my arm is a bit speckled and you can see scarring on the back of my right hand.

We were broke by the third day and hungry, too. I had to keep the last few bucks for petrol. We drove past about ten clumps of jungle bamboo. As we passed the last clump, I noticed it was full of pheasants. I hit the brakes. I had an idea – we had a slug gun.

We shot at a pheasant in the first clump but didn’t kill it, just hurt it. The whole flock scrambled and half flew into the second clump. This continued until we ended up in the tenth clump about 400 metres from the car.

Suddenly from a house across the road sprang a fucking ranger, shaking his fist and yelling. We took off for the car. He chased us screaming, ‘Come back here!’ What is it with these officious red-necked bastards in the world yelling ‘Come back here!’? Do they really expect you to stop and come back? Dickheads.

The back of my panel van was open. I grabbed Barry by the back of the neck and threw him in from about 4 metres away. We all clambered in and took off. The ranger had raced back and jumped into his four-wheel drive. I pulled onto the road as he pulled out of his driveway. I had half a k on him but he was gaining. I could only get 120 kilometres per hour out of my heavily laden car. Maxy’s screaming out, ‘He’s gonna catch us, he’s gonna catch us, we’re fucked!’

Luckily we hit the town of Herberton. (I can drive, I’m good at it – I did all the driving stunts in Wolf Creek, bar one.) You come to the bridge across the river at Herberton from a sweeping corner, suggested speed 70 k. I hit it at 120. Bend out at the other end, also at 120 k. Hit the T-section and turned right on the highway to Cairns in a four-wheel drift. Straight back up to 120 k. Looked in the rear-vision, no ranger four-wheel drive, I’d lost him. I headed out of town, turned left off the highway and drove up a street. We sat there for a minute and the ranger roared past towards Cairns. We went back down the hill and headed west to Ravenshoe. We filled up with petrol and Max was freaking.

‘You can go to jail for shooting natives, ya know. I’m throwing my red board shorts away, they’ll recognise them.’

He threw them in the bin. Whatever rocks ya boat, Max. We all love Maxy.

I still wasn’t taking school or myself seriously. I got along with most teachers who understood I was there for the good times and the laughs, and that getting anything else out of me was a waste of time. I was honestly there because I’d met the best bunch of people, so great that they still feature in my life every day. The other reason was because I wanted to be part of winning the Rugby League inter-high-school comp. Speaking of Rubin, he fucked that up and he’s spent a lifetime being reminded, especially from my old man.

We were undefeated. The grand final was between Town High and Pimlico. It was a tough game, we were neck and neck and in danger of a draw. With five minutes to go, we threw the ball out along the line, there was an overlap, Nial flipped a beautiful pass to Rubin on the wing, the line was wide open, he fumbled the ball forward, knock on.

Dad was there. ‘Jesus H Christ, Rubin, do you need a bloody bucket?’

The grand final was a draw. Rubin Doube became Buckets Doube until the day Dad died. ‘At least I won’t be called Buckets any more,’ said Rub. Bullshit, Buckets, we’re putting it on your gravestone. Rubs, one of the greatest, nicest, most generous bastards I’ve ever met.

There were a couple of teachers who hated my guts, most prominent being my form teacher and my biology teacher.

I only ever did one thing for Miss Biol and I made a mess of that. We used to dissect live animals in those days, usually mice, but we used cane toads. As I’d been in trouble before for chasing girls around and attacking them with cane toads, she got me to collect about twenty-odd toads to dissect.

I collected a bag full of them and brought them to class. After about five minutes of girl-scaring, we knocked the toads out with chloroform and cut them open still alive to look at their innards working: boy heaven, girl hell.

I got bored with this so I killed two toads, skinned them, pinned them out and salted them, starting the tanning sequence. I eventually sewed them together and made quite an ugly tobacco pouch. We should start using toadskin for bags, shoes, all sorts of things, the skin is fantastic. Anyway, Miss Biol wasn’t amused and kicked me out…again.

I actually got quite sick of Miss Biol’s punishment. I decided I’d behave myself and keep quiet during her class as she had no sense of humour. She was one of those who fawned over her little pets and crucified the ones she hated. She hated me most.

The funny thing is, I shut up long enough to start to get really interested in biology. I was sitting there with this textbook called The Web of Life, a big, thick, hardcover book. I’d been behaving for about three weeks and it was driving Miss Biol crazy.

I was sitting next to a couple of her pets and they were talking, so I actually couldn’t hear what Miss Biol was saying. I turned to them and said in a low voice, ‘Shut the fuck up, will ya, I can’t hear what she’s saying.’

Immediately Miss Biol pointed at me and said, ‘Get out of this class. Disturbing the peace again.’

‘I was just…’

‘Get out.’

‘But I…’

‘Get out.’

I picked up The Web of Life and I threw it at her head. It flew past her right ear and hit the blackboard. I got up and left.

‘Go to the headmaster’s office!’

‘Go fuck yourself.’

All hell broke loose. I was threatened with expulsion. My class­mates came to my rescue and explained what had happened. I got out of it by the skin of my teeth.

In a backhanded way, I got my revenge on Miss Biol. My brother was at the bus stop at school with about 100 other kids. Four white boys got stuck into an Aboriginal boy. Brian stepped in to help him, then more whitefellas joined in so all the blackfellas joined in and suddenly it was an all-in brawl.

Miss Biol and Mr King came running over to break it up. Miss Biol grabbed my brother from behind to drag him away. Brian was hitting everything that came his way by now, so he spun round and right-crossed Miss Biol, thinking it was another student. She went down like a bag of spuds and passed out.

The fight stopped immediately. Mr King went to her rescue. She came around, saw Brian and went nuts. Brian was dragged before the headmaster, and Miss Biol was baying for blood. Thankfully, Mr King was sensible and explained to the boss that it was an accident. In the end, Brian got caned for fighting and that was the end of it. He came home and told us the story. I must admit, I saw the funny side. It made my day.

The form teacher was a nasty stickybeak busybody. She was an easy set-up. We were having weekend parties, usually every Friday night, famously called Senior Parties: in a house, on a beach, at the weir, up Castle Hill, all over the joint. Loud music, lots of grog and lots of loving. Cars were rockin’ and we were rollin’. I usually got too drunk to score, so then I’d get angry and want to hit someone. I wandered out in the scrub to take a leak one night and I almost pissed on two blokes, Jimmy and Rob, hiding. They looked at me with scared, startled eyes.

I said, ‘What are you hiding from?’

They said, ‘You.’

If Nial was at the party, he’d punch me in the guts for two reasons. One, to calm me down, and two, to make me throw up so’s I wouldn’t be too hungover to play football the next morning. One time we had such a big piss-up the night before that we turned up drunk. I played the best first half ever while I was drunk and dangerous, and the worst second half, as by then I was hungover and sick.

The drunken-night trophy, however, goes to Nial. Nial is stubborn, and if he makes up his mind to do or not to do something, it’s very hard to persuade him to change his mind, especially when he’s drunk. He very rarely gets drunk, mostly because he’s so bloody big that he’s got to drink a hell of a lot to get there. He’d broken up with his girlfriend, so he got drunk. He decided he was going to get on his motorbike and go to Brisbane and he was about to do it. We thought we had to stop him or he’d kill himself. But how? We couldn’t hold him and we couldn’t fight him, there was only four of us, we didn’t have the numbers, we were sixteen short. Sooo, I got the wheel brace out of my car and walked up behind him. I held the wheel brace up to belt him, but I hesitated. Because I didn’t want to hurt him? Bullshit, I was scared. Then the most gut-dropping feeling I’ve ever experienced…

He turned around and his face looked like the devil. I ran and the other three ran. We piled into my car, the bloody thing never started first kick. Suddenly Nial was standing at the front of my car staring angrily at me. This was a 1958 Holden made of solid steel. The bonnet had a roll at the front, which was strong steel either side of the bonnet emblem. He lifted his bloody big arm up and hit either side of the emblem, making two fist-sized dents in the steel. That could have been my head. The car fired and I reversed away at approximately 100 miles per hour.

Nial got on his bike and headed south. The next day we were all worried sick. The day after he rang from Bowen, two and a half hours south. His bike had broken down. Dad had a work ute, so we drove down and picked him up. We threw the bike in the back and headed home. We sang songs as usual, I remember one of the songs was ‘Without Love’ sung with gusto. It was a hit by Engelbert Humperdinck. Dad called him Angle Iron Lumpy Dick. Nial loved Dad, they shared a birthday. Nial lost his dad when he was a kid, and I think Dad was a bit of a surrogate father to him.

Towards the end of the year, Rubin decided that one party a week wasn’t enough, so he invented the Wednesday Night Blast, to get us through to the weekend. We were an untidy rabble by then. We decided to set Miss Form Teacher up. Whenever she was in earshot we’d talk about who was going to sterilise the needles, or ‘How much did you get for your mother’s jewellery?’, or ‘The shit’s in my locker, I’ll keep it there until Friday afternoon.’ A few weeks went past and suddenly the cops turned up and went through our bags, lockers, cars and desks. Nothing. They asked about heroin. We were wide-eyed little innocents, and Miss Form Teacher had steam coming out of her ears. Next we were herded into the classroom and the cops gave us a lecture on drugs. It was a great Friday afternoon, by all accounts.

At the end of the year, Miss Form Teacher wrote the references for us to take out into the world to find work. My reference was so bad that in retrospect, I think I should have framed it. Instead I marched into the staffroom with it in one hand and a toilet roll in the other. I said to Miss Form Teacher, ‘Please rewrite my reference on this dunny roll because it’s shit.’

Oh brave new world

I played prop in the front row. I was too skinny for a prop but I’d grown too tall for my favoured position, hooker. So having me loose head gave us two hookers in the front row. I had a hard head, so I could handle opposing big bastards clashing heads with me. Chris Cummings was the hooker and a good mate.

Chris had a strange activity outside of school called amateur theatre. I knew about it but I didn’t take that much notice. I asked Chris what he was going to do when he left school, and he said he was going to audition for NIDA. I said, ‘What’s NIDA?’ Turns out it’s the number-one drama school in Australia.

‘How do you get in?’

‘You have to audition.’

‘What senior results do they need?’

‘None, you’ve just gotta pass the audition.’

I remembered what the headmaster from Longreach had said: ‘You’d be a good actor’. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with my life at this point. I responded to Chris, ‘I’m in, what have we gotta do?’

Chris organised everything for us both. NIDA sent us a bunch of speeches. We had to do one Shakespeare and one generic piece. I chose Hotspur from Henry IV and The Play by C J Dennis.

Chris’s amateur theatre mate helped us with the pieces. Then we jumped on a bus to Brisbane (there were no cheap flights in 1970).

Chris and I were sitting outside the Twelfth Night Theatre shitting our pants, along with the other aspiring actors. Chris went in first. It felt like six years later when he came out. He had a big smile on his face.

‘I think I nailed it.’

‘Onya. mate.’

In I went.

I walked onto the stage of this quaint little theatre. One person sat in the auditorium, John Clark. He seemed like a pleasant Aussie bloke. I was expecting some toffy-nosed bastard. It turned out he was the artistic director, the boss man of NIDA, but thankfully I didn’t know that. He became my friend, and still is.

I did my two pieces, didn’t miss a beat. I knew them backwards. John responded positively. So far so good. Then we had a bit of a chat, he asked me about myself and through the conversation I found out he was from Tasmania. Then he asked me to describe the theatre. I went pale and my hands started to sweat. I’m colourblind and I thought that if he found out, maybe I wouldn’t be accepted. I described the theatre without using any colours. Got away with it.

We travelled back to Townsville. We wouldn’t get the results until January. Back at Pallarenda the family sat down to discuss the future. Brian had always wanted to be a mechanic, preferably a diesel fitter, working on things like bulldozers. We had an uncle in Sydney who worked for a firm called Tutt Bryant. Their business was heavy machinery and Brian could do his apprenticeship there. I’d decided that NIDA or not, I was going to be an actor. I’d got the bug, and I’ve still got it. My nanna wasn’t too well and Mum wanted to be closer to her, so we all moved to Sydney in December 1970.

We sold my ’58 FC Holden panel van as Dad had got onto a cheap ’63 EJ Holden panel van. It was a rust bucket. We packed the EJ to the gunwales. Dad made up a special tow bar with two threaded lugs for our World War II WLA Harley. We took the front wheel off and bolted the front forks to the two lugs. We looked like the Beverly Hillbillies. Brian and I went in the EJ. Dad, Mum and Barry were in Dad’s new Torana. We travelled in convoy. The back was so packed that the front wheels were just touching the ground. The steering was dangerously light. Just as well I’m a good driver.

We drove into Sydney’s north and down the Pacific Highway to the Harbour Bridge. I was petrified driving in this kind of traffic in an overloaded car. I refused to get out of the middle lane, especially going over the bridge, that was almost beyond me. We must have looked a sight with a bloody Harley being towed behind. I was very pleased to get to Nanna’s in Chippendale. Luckily the terrace across the street was available for rent. We moved straight in.

In those days, the word ‘unemployed’ belonged to the Great Depression. You could get a job very easily. I chose a job doing sewerage maintenance, because you got a shitload (literally) of money for working with poo.

It was a hoot working with the Poo Boys. There was the ganger, a muscled guy in his mid-thirties; the bikie, who had a lotta hair and looked like a bikie; two Kiwis, regular blokes who took the job for the poo money; and Tom, an old prospector who’d had enough and chose an easy job in the poo.

I was a long and skinny eighteen-year-old. The boys joked that I’d been employed because of my shape and they were going to rope to my wrists and ankles and use me like a rifle pull-through to drag me through the sewer pipe to unblock it.

The funniest thing that happened was when I was working with old Tom. They were widening the road and we had to reroute the pipes. The road was at the bottom of a hill. On the ridge of the hill above us was a row of houses. Their sewer pipes were now poking out the bank of the widened road. Tom and I walked up to each house as we repaired their pipe below. They were instructed to not flush until we gave them the all-clear that their pipe had been rerouted. We’re down fixing a pipe. Tom is bent over at right angles to the bank. First we heard a gurgle and next instant thwack, a big turd and paper hit Tom right in the ear. I pissed myself laughing. The turd broke in half when it hit the ground.

Tom was a very quiet laconic bushy. He picked up the turd and walked up to the house above. A new Australian Greek woman answered the door. She had very little English and obviously hadn’t understood the first message. This time she understood emphatically.

Tom said, and pointed accordingly (and I’ll never forget it): ‘No shitty in toilet. Shit in ear. No shitty in toilet!’

‘Oh, oh, oh…so sorry, so sorry…’ and she shut the door.

The two Kiwis and the Bikie thought I should be introduced to the Sydney high life. They took me to a strip club in Kings Cross on a Wednesday night (they stripped naked during the week). We were sitting in this seedy joint, crammed around tables covered in booze, a poky black stage with splashes of red, and a red fake velvet curtain. We had a seat right down the front, inches from the stage. The first couple of acts were OK but they all looked a bit seedy. The Kiwis said they were all smack addicts – finally came face to face with this drug called heroin.

The third act was the headliner. I must admit, she was quite a woman, not as seedy as her fellow strippers. She striped naked and started to gyrate almost into the Bikie’s face. The Bikie was built like a truck; he was drunk and he was whoopin’ and a-hollering. Next thing, he put his arms around and grabbed the cheeks of her arse in both hands. She started screaming, then he buried his face in her crutch. Bouncers descended from everywhere and started thumping the hell out of the Bikie, but they couldn’t prise him off her. I got up and left them to it. The Bikie took two weeks off work to get over his beating.

I was walking along the footpath back to my EJ, which I’d parked at the bottom end of Victoria Street. I spotted my car across the road. There was a bloke at the driver’s side with wire, trying to break in. There was a pantech truck parked opposite my car. I crept around behind it and ran straight across the road. The bloke turned his head towards me and I thumped him. He hit the road, bounced straight back up and took off holding his cheek. From a safe distance he yelled every four-letter word he could lay his tongue to. Welcome to Sydney.