Reality check

It was September 1974, I’d worked constantly since late ’73 and rang my agent to find out what was next. ‘Nothing,’ was the reply. It remained that way for a year. Life became a bit of a drudgery. Rosa and I were short of cash. With all this work coming in I’d thrown caution to the wind and bought a brand-new 900 BMW and we’d moved three times into more and more expensive dwellings. Rosa was a few months off completing her hairdressing apprenticeship, so her wages weren’t great and I wasn’t working. I decided to get my cab licence.

Driving a cab was the worst job I’ve ever done. I only lasted three or four months. There were five highlights, two of which made me quit.

The first one was funny. My shift finished at 3 a.m. and I was ‘gassing up’ back at base in Paddington. They played the cab radio through a speaker at the base. A cabby with a thick Italian accent came on. ‘Ello base.’

‘Yes, Twenty-Three.’

‘I gotta problem, baaase.’

‘What’s your problem, Twenty-Three?’

‘I gotta these passengers, baase, an they gotta na money, but they have a bagga grass they wanna pay me with, what I gonna do, baase?’

Suddenly all these other calls came in.

‘Take it, Twenty-Three, could be good shit.’

‘Check it for heads.’

‘Gimme your address, I got the papers.’

‘I’ll leave it to your discretion, Twenty-Three.’

For the one and only time, I used the Asian card. My great-great-grandfather was Chinese. I’m at the airport cab rank, there’s a cab in front of me. A middle-aged country woman got in the front cab and got straight out again. She came to my cab and got in.

I said, ‘You’ve got to go with the cab in front.’

‘I’m not goin’ in that cab, there’s a bloody Asian in there.’

‘Well, my great-great-grandfather’s Chinese, so get the fuck outta my cab, you fat-arsed bitch.’

I normally don’t talk that harshly about people’s looks, but she deserved it.

I picked a woman up from Town Hall in the city. She looked pale and distressed. She jumped into the cab, gave me her address in Surry Hills and said, ‘I’ve left my pills at home, I’m having a heart attack.’

‘Shouldn’t I take you to hospital?’

‘No, I’ve got to get my pills.’

‘Okay, okay.’

I raced towards her flat. She was making snorting noises, jerking and holding her chest. I hit the horn and tried to get through traffic. Cabbies noticed and base contacted me.

‘Are you in trouble, One Twenty-Five, do you need help?’

I quickly explained the situation and the cabs on Elizabeth Street combined to stop traffic and allow me through. It was amazing. I got to the flat, dragged the woman out of the cab, took her up a flight of stairs and into her flat. She dropped two pills and it was like a miracle. In no time at all, the pills kicked in and she was okay. She was very grateful and handed me some cash. For some reason I didn’t take it; I was in shock. I told her not to worry about it and left.

I was travelling up Bondi Road, I was sitting in traffic outside a dumpy terrace with Harleys around it and bits of bikes and shit on the front verandah. Six burly bikies came out and squashed themselves into the cab. ‘I can only take five passengers maximum.

‘Don’t fuckin’ worry about it. You know where the Capitol Theatre is?’

‘Yup.’

‘Take us there.’

I didn’t argue. They lit up cigarettes and one of them lit a joint. We were in the top end of Riley Street when they said, ‘Pull over here.’

‘But you said the Capitol…’

‘Just fuckin’ pull over.’

It was a dark part of the street. I smelt a rat. At the other end of the street was the well-lit Greyhound bus depot. I put my foot down and made small talk about taking them to the Capitol. They got more and more enraged. I think they were about to attack me when I pulled in to the depot; luckily there were a lot of passengers getting on a bus.

They said, ‘Fuck ya, we’re not payin’.’

Fine…

I was on Campbell Parade at the north end of Bondi Beach heading south. A surfie guy was running down the middle of the road, and about 200 metres further down, another much heavier guy was running. The surfie waved me down and jumped into the cab and gave me $5.00.

‘Take me to that cunt running up ahead’.

I did so. The surfie jumped out, caught the fat guy and started punching him in the back of the head. The fat guy was unsuccessfully trying to stab the surfy with a pocketknife. I drove to the south end of Bondi Beach, parked the cab and walked to the cliff overlooking the ocean. I’d recently seen Dirty Harry on the TV. I pulled my cab licence out and threw it into the sea, as Harry had thrown his police badge into the river.

Rosa’s parents were going back to Italy for a two-month holiday in September–October 1975. They said they’d shout us the plane fares, so all we had to do is find money for food, travel and accommodation. It was early 1975 and we had nothing. We’d moved yet again to Surry Hills. We had a three-bedroom house, so we got Herb’s friend Monroe to move in to save on rent money. I’d known Monroe for a couple of years by now. He’d migrated from Sri Lanka in his teens and went on to work with Herbie at the fruit-juice factory. He was an aspiring actor and I helped him get into NIDA. He was in the same year as Mel Gibson, Steve Bisley and Judy Davis, but more about that later.

I got two cleaning jobs and Rosa got a night job as an usherette at the Regent Theatre. Our lives became work, save, work, save and save some more. I didn’t get any acting work. My agent said it would turn around when the two films I’d made were released.

The Great McCarthy was the first to be released in about June 1975. The film was quite a good comedy romp but the marketing for it was pathetic, so nobody knew it was on. They did their best with the money they had. The night after the premiere, the movie PR team organised a dinner with journalists. It was a pleasant enough dinner with about ten of us. One of the journos was very camp and I played up to him and had a few laughs with him. He was an all-right guy, but he’d had far too much to drink. I was coming out of the men’s toilet and met him at the door. He threw his arms around me and thrust his tongue down my throat. I pushed him away and right-crossed him, knocking him out cold in the hallway. I stepped over him, went back to the table, excused myself and left.

Europe

We’d managed to save quite a decent pool of money and flew to Europe with Alitalia on a DC-10 aircraft. Rosa and I were so excited. The furthest I’d been off the mainland of Australia was Magnetic Island. To be going to another country, another culture, bloody Rome for Christ’s sake. My trip to Europe with Rosa is a highlight of my life.

We arrived in Rome late afternoon jetlagged out of our heads, and we were driven to an outer suburban hotel. I was already fascinated: even the apartment blocks looked ten times older than anything in Australia. The next day we went our separate ways. Rosa’s parents went to Sicily and we went to a backpacker hostel in the city. We settled in and went sightseeing. We visited the ruins and the Coliseum.

It’s always staggering to witness these achievements. It’s amazing what you can do with brilliant architects, mathematicians, thousands of slaves and lots of antiquated tools. There you have it, a Coliseum.

On our way back to the hostel, we crossed a bridge and on the other side was a fruit stall. The fruiterer was asleep in his car beside it. He was in his mid-thirties, his hair was matted, he had rotten teeth and he looked hungover. He didn’t seem too happy to serve us. Rosa asked for some bananas, and he slid two rotten ones into the bottom of the bag. Rosa protested she didn’t want the black bananas and this started an argument. I thought Rosa was getting into the swing of bartering until she said ‘fanculo’. The fruiterer spat on her and I started punching him.

I was winning until the fruiterer’s mate turned up and threw me into some empty boxes. He then held onto the fruiterer, who looked like he wanted to kill me. I grabbed a hysterical Rosa and got out of there. We walked down the street and Rosa was sobbing. I sat her on a bench and tried to calm her. She looked wide-eyed over her shoulder and yelled, ‘Look out!’

I spun around to see the crazed fruiterer running towards me like a madman. He ran into me and grabbed me, then he sank his rotten teeth into my chin. I managed to get him in a headlock and dropped onto the footpath. I was now very angry. I started rubbing his face up and down on the concrete.

Rosa was yelling, ‘Let him go, let’s get out of here.’

I was not going to let him go. He was a fruiterer: he probably had a knife. Finally two big Italian soldiers turned up and pulled us apart. I went back to the hostel and tried to get drunk on Italian beer, but it’s not possible.

The next day we went looking for a second-hand car. This was my idea. It would have cost over a thousand bucks to tour by train and it was very limiting. We found a 1964 Fiat, a bit rough but mechanically good, just what I wanted. It cost $300 and I sold it two months later to a wrecking yard near the Rome airport for $50.

It was going to take four days to get the car paperwork done.

We decided to take the train to Venice and back. It was a beautiful trip up and back, travelling through the middle of Italy by train. The train travelled on a long bridge across the bay to Venice. We arrived in the early evening and walked out of the station to be suddenly cloaked in this ancient floating city. We took a narrow pathway past quaint shops and bars until we came to a historic boutique hotel. We were given a room and made our way upstairs to it. We opened the door to our little room and it was…Italian, beautifully Italian – I can’t think of a better description, so romantic. We pulled the velvet curtains to reveal the canal. At that very moment about ten gondolas tied together floated past. On those gondolas was a crowd including a number of tenors from the Milan Opera singing their hearts out. Then we went to bed. Welcome to Venice.

We finally acquired the car after six days of bureaucratic bullshit. We headed north out of Rome and up the west-coast motorway. I checked the map and found Pisa. It was only a three-hour drive, nothing for an Aussie. We got to Pisa around lunchtime and followed the signs to the Leaning Tower. Luckily we found a car park in the street close by. We had a good look at this fabulous round building on a ridiculous lean. Rosa is fearful of heights, and the Leaning Tower made her feel woozy.

I pulled out onto the street, but I still wasn’t used to left-hand drive and looked the wrong way. A car scraped itself along my front mudguard. The driver pulled up and got out of his car. I did a U-turn and took off.

Rosa started yelling. ‘What are you doing? Stop, you’ve just had an accident!’

‘If I go back our holiday will be over. I was in the wrong, we could be in Pisa for days and lose the car.’

‘No, stop, they’ll follow us, the police will get us, stop!’

‘No they won’t, let’s go to France.’

Four hours later we were on the French border. Luckily Rosa was wrong, and the police weren’t there to meet us.

We went to Monaco. Rosa suggested we slow down or we’d do the entire tour of southern Europe in four days.

We stayed in a camping ground on the outskirts of Monte Carlo. We scrambled through our clothes and found the best we had. All togged up and nothing in our pockets, we wandered through the famous Monte Carlo Casino trying to look rich. Monte Carlo is a beautiful place on the Mediterranean. We found a quaint restaurant with pleasant views of the harbour. We were in trouble now because we didn’t speak French. We were young and unworldly. I looked down the menu and sound something that looked like steak: steak tartare. I received a blob of raw mince with a raw egg in half an eggshell on top. I asked the waiter to cook it. She went to the chef, whom we could see from our table. He looked at me, snarled, put the mince on the hotplate for two seconds, turned it, cooked it for another two seconds and put it back onto my plate. I couldn’t eat it.

We wandered on in the Fiat through Cannes and Nice. We were on the Spanish border; it was late afternoon. We sat down to a meal at a large restaurant attached to a service station. I got through the main meal and ordered what I thought was fruit salad. They brought out this basket full of fruit with a large plate and a knife. I looked at it in astonishment and said to Rosa, ‘I’ve done it again. I’ll eat everything except the watermelon.’

The waiter came out and was shocked by how much fruit I’d eaten. I was only supposed to take two or three pieces of my choice. It cost us a lot to feel bloated that night.

We did the Paris thing: the Seine, the shops, the Eiffel Tower. The one that knocked my socks off was the Palace of Versailles. The palace was incredible enough, but the grounds! You looked down the centre avenue of the gardens and it shots off to the horizon. That’s not a garden, it’s a country.

I wanted to speak English again. We boarded the ferry at Calais and travelled across the famous English Channel to those brilliantly white White Cliffs of Dover. Driving into London, bloody hell, what a nightmare, it made Sydney traffic look good. We somehow found our way to Earls Court. We did the touristy stuff and then found Dom Guard from Picnic at Hanging Rock. He was determined to show us as good a time as we’d given him in Sydney. He, his mates and girlfriends took Rosa and me on a pub crawl. It was fabulous. It was 1975, the music was great. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was number one. There were great bands in the pubs Dom took us to. We went on until the wee small hours. About halfway through, they had me drinking pints of Guinness while they sang, ‘Drink it down, down, down.’ They didn’t scull any and they all ended up legless. I had to drive them all home.

Dom had never been to Westminster Abbey and he was keen to come with us the next day. I swung round to pick him up. Too hungover, weak as piss. Love ya, Dom, if you’re reading this, be great to catch up with you again one day before we die.

We drove from London to Southampton and took the ferry back to France. I like travelling at sea and this was a longer voyage. We drove through France to Switzerland and back into the north of Italy. We were behind schedule and we needed to get to Sicily, so we drove with purpose from one end of Italy to the other.

Finally we made it to the toe of the Italian boot: Reggio Calabria, the gateway to Sicily. We drove our trusty Fiat onto the car ferry. We took the short voyage to Messina. We drove onto Sicilian soil into the city where Rosa, her sister and her mother had boarded a ship bound for Sydney seventeen years earlier, in 1958.

Back to the island of her ancestors, where her family had lived for hundreds of years. Since before Rome, invaders would march through Sicily on their way to Italy and back through after they were conquered. Sicily has been influenced by many and varied cultures, and it was by far the most beautiful place I visited, in many ways.

We drove south for about an hour to Carmela’s father’s place in Casalvecchio. I meet Rosa’s Nonno, ‘The Rooster’, so called because he sadly lost his first two wives and was married a third time. He had many children. He was a pleasure to be around, a lovely, lively man. Rosa’s parents and I then drove way up into the hills to Charlie’s father’s home in a farming village called Petra Bianca. The road crept up the lush green hills through vineyards and olive groves to the little whitewashed village nestled neatly into the hills. We were met by Charlie’s father and his second wife. They took us down to their quaint house, the house of Charlie’s youth. Nonno showed us his flush toilet, his radio and his electric stove, thinking we’d be interested in the mod cons of his two-storey stone cottage.

My eyes were popping at the massive woven poplar baskets used for the grape harvest, and the massive leather wineskins. The beautiful little courtyard outside the kitchen had a view of the steep hills weighed down with crops that kept plunging all the way to the Mediterranean many miles below. Nonno took Rosa and I upstairs to our room. He apologised profusely for making us sleep in the drying-rack room. Beyond our bed were woven racks, about 2 metres by 1.2 metres. On the racks were various fruits and vegetables being dried, beyond which was a window and through that window, beautifully framed, was Mount Etna. I looked out, mesmerised by the volcano, snow-capped and smoking. It is huge: 11,000 feet high and 460 square miles wide. One quarter of the Sicilian population lives on it. And Nonno was apologising for putting us in this fabulous room. We loved it.

I was fortunate enough to be part of the grape harvest. Sicily is an ancient civilisation; it has the second-largest wine industry in Italy, dating back 4000 years! That’s 2000 years of hangovers before Christ was born.

First up we had to take the big empty baskets up the hill to pick the grapes. I was with Charlie, a local woman and her two kids. We filled the three baskets while the kids played. I asked Charlie how we’d get the baskets to the crusher. He said we’d carry them. These baskets were 45 kg each. I thought, There’s three baskets and only two men. Next minute Charlie hoists a basket onto the woman’s shoulder. Now this woman was solid, fair enough, but she was only 5 foot tall. Off she went with the kids skipping behind her; strong woman. I was next. The basket made my skinny legs wobble; it was bloody heavy. Then Charlie threw his own basket on his shoulder; strong man.

‘Hey Johnny, I don’t need da Mafia.’

The crushing of the grapes was like a village festival. The grapes were piled into a concrete tank-type structure about 6 metres in circumference. The walls of the tank were about a metre high and the floor was on a slight slope. Men, women and children jumped in with very clean gumboots and we walked in a circle stomping the grapes. The grape juice flowed to outlets on the downhill side of the tank, then into a gutter that flowed into containers. It was hot work and there were a few cups on hand to scoop up some grape juice. I drank a lot of grape juice that day.

The squashed grapes in the tank were placed in another container and pressed again to get every last drop. A massive weight went into the top of the container, using a lever system to lower the weight in. The fulcrum was a pole about 4 metres long and 400 mm wide. Charlie picked this pole up by himself and put it in place. Why? Because he could.

That night I woke with a full-on stomachache. I raced outside and threw up. Carmela heard me and came to my rescue, Rosa slept through it. I’d had many cups of pure grape juice, equivalent to about 5 kg of grapes. All that juice had started fermenting in my stomach. Poor Carmela couldn’t help laughing over it.

It was a sad day when we left Sicily. Nonno cried. He was built like Charlie but a lot taller, and was one hell of a tough dude in his time, so it was sad to see his big frame shaking with tears. Charlie kept it together. He took a walk and went behind a tree for about fifteen minutes. He regathered himself, said his goodbyes and got into the Fiat for the trip to Rome Airport.

We arrived back in November 1975.

We stayed with Rosa’s parents because we came home broke. Picnic at Hanging Rock had been released and it was a big hit. It made it into the Cannes Film Festival and received rave reviews. I missed the premiere in Australia and I wasn’t invited to Cannes. In those days, Australian actors were considered second-class. During the Picnic shoot, the English actors stayed in first-class accommodation and the Australian actors stayed in a motel on the highway.

I was asked once by a journo in the seventies, ‘Who is your favourite actor?’

‘Hard to say, I have quite a few I admire…’

‘Just name one then.’

‘Okay. John Hargreaves.’

‘No, I didn’t mean Australian.’

Oh, internationally you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘John Hargreaves.’

In our day, Mel was the only one who cracked it. He had a dream run: Mad Max, Gallipoli, Mad Max 2, The Year of Living Dangerously. If he’d only been in one hit film, I doubt whether he’d have made it at that time. Things are different now, thank Christ – half the big stars in the world are Aussies. Russell’s come a long way since Romper Stomper. If that was all he’d done in the seventies rather than the nineties, I don’t think he would have made it. It’s not just your ability as an actor to make it internationally, you’ve usually got to have a hit Australian film to go with it. With the exception of the very gifted Anthony LaPaglia who just sat in the States pushing until he cracked it, just about every Aussie star’s career started with an Aussie film.

I had a bits-and-pieces year in 1976, but it got me by. I played a bad guy in an ABC drama called The Outsiders. I played Bob in The Emigrants, a BBC show about migrants. A Matlock and a Bluey for Crawfords in Melbourne. I did the Matlock with a sixteen-year-old girl called Sigrid Thornton. Six episodes of a soapy called The Young Doctors, playing a chef. These roles were a walk in the park and I can hardly remember them. I do remember a play I did called Bees at Nimrod Street. That was fun.

My private life was more memorable. After Christmas I went househunting. I found a huge 1920s brick house on Bondi Road. I figured we could get at least three boarders to share the rent. Monroe asked his NIDA students if any of them were looking for a room. He found one; her name was Judy Davis. Judy was a shy person and she kept to herself. The rest of us were very social and quite rowdy. She seemed to handle it.

Monroe had moved into a grubby ground-floor flat around the corner. He shared it with his two NIDA mates, Mel Gibson and Steve Bisley. They were great blokes, fun to be around; we partied at their place and they partied at ours. We became mates. Steve is still a close mate, he’s more like a brother, a beautiful bloke. Mel has lived in the States since the eighties so the tyranny of distance has turned him into a distant mate. We stay in contact via emails and we bump into him now and again either in Oz or the US.

Monroe, Mel and Steve lived on the smell of an oily rag. Mel drove an EH Holden. You opened the boot by putting your hand through a huge rust hole and clicked it open from the inside. Steve had this bloody big van. They had dustcoats, and one day they went in Steve’s van to a posh hotel. They walked to the outside pool area and took all the garden furniture to furnish their flat with. No one said a word to them, thought they were tradesmen or something. Another time I walked into their flat and Steve was playing a pinball machine. I was just about to ask when he said, ‘Don’t ask!’

Steve and Mel were as thick as thieves. They had similar humour – both witty and quick off the mark – and told a great yarn laced with caricature and impressions. Mel loved a practical joke and disgusting things. His nickname was Pus or Gibbo and Steve was Bizo.

Partying and pub culture was the go in the seventies. Drug experimentation was high on the list. A bottle of Scotch and a bag of weed were the norm for me and I was a happy boy. Occasionally I’d experiment with other drugs, but not on a regular basis. If you were in the money, cocaine became regular, so more often than not cocaine didn’t play. We got onto some magic mushrooms one night, gold tops. We chopped them up and put them on slices of toast. We were watching the late, late movie, off our tits, when I realised Herbie was missing. We lived on Bondi Road. I walked out and there’s Herb standing outside the all-night hamburger joint, which was run by two big Greek guys. At this hour the patrons were cab drivers, coppers and people staggering home from a big night. Herbie had a distinctive hysterical laugh. He was off his face laughing and pointing at the people inside the shop. They were all looking incredulously back through the glass at him. I rushed across and whisked him away down the street. We made our way to Bondi Beach to watch the sunrise. We were sitting on the empty beach, tripping. As the sun began glowing in the sky, Herb said to me, ‘The white caps are turning into seagulls and flying away.’ I looked at the white caps and sure enough they turned into seagulls and flew away for me too. We were sharing the same hallucination.

Towards the end of the year I was offered a role in a film called Summer City, about four surfer mates going on a surfing trip up the coast. The producer, Phil Avalon, was playing one of them and they were having trouble casting the other two. I said that I knew two blokes who’d be perfect. I went along to NIDA to watch the odd play being performed by Monroe’s crew. Even then, the three big stars out of that year shone: Mel, Steve and Judy. My cousin Wayne Jarratt was in that year too. He was good, and I seriously felt we’d compete. Unfortunately, he died of a brain tumour not long after he got into the biz.

Mel and Steve got the parts and filming coincided with their Christmas break. I should have given up acting there and then and become a casting agent. I was doing a show for the Sydney Theatre Company at the Opera House at the same time. Summer City said they’d work around me. It nearly killed me: I worked at Catherine Hill Bay, near Newcastle, during the day and drove back to Sydney in the late afternoon to do the stage show.

The play was called The Season at Sarsaparilla, written by Patrick White. It was directed by Jim Sharman of Rocky Horror fame, and starred Bill Hunter, Max Cullen, Kate Fitzpatrick and Robyn Nevin. I worked with Julieanne Newbould, who is now Paul Keating’s partner. I shared a dressing room with Max Cullen and Bill Hunter, who drank a lot. During interval they drank a schooner each and considered me a wuss for not joining them. Then they found out I was a NIDA graduate and thought I was an even bigger wuss. I got sick of their lip and brought in a buddha stick each. Bill and I slowly got through ours. Max didn’t touch his, so I had a go at him and Bill joined in. Max snapped the buddha stick into three equal parts, sprinkled his entire third into a joint and started smoking it. We had to be on stage in twenty minutes. Bill and I took up the challenge and smoked our third.

I was stoned out of my tiny mind. I never worked drunk or stoned; Bill and Max, however, were used to it. They got through the show with flying colours, but I didn’t – I left pauses you could drive a Mack truck through. When I got the line out it made little sense. At the end of the show I was sitting in my make-up chair, freaking out. The door of the dressing room flew open and in stormed Julieanne.

‘Don’t you ever walk on a stage with me drunk again, you bastard!’

I was stoned, Julieanne – again, I apologise; I learned my lesson.

We were all conned on Summer City. Phil Avalon didn’t have the budget together and we kicked and scratched our way through it. I really don’t know how we did it, but for some strange reason we all pulled together and got it done. Not for Phil’s sake; we were all pissed off with him at the time. Pity, looking back on it, because it wasn’t a bad yarn. If I had hold of it today, I’d do a lot more work on the script, which wasn’t ready. Given the cast we’d assembled, with the right budget and script, it could have gone somewhere. I was a bit try-hard, Phil wasn’t the greatest actor going around, but Steve and Mel were great, especially for a couple of greenhorns not getting much help. Mel is one of the world’s great actors, and there’s a scene in Summer City where he cries over Steve’s character’s corpse: it’s knockout. As I said, great actors are born, not made.

Two great things did come out of Summer City. The first was that they gave Dad a cameo appearance playing an angry old man. If I ever need to see Dad, I just fast-forward through Summer City and find his scene. He did it very well, and if you ever see it, you’ll know where I got my talent from. He was in his fifties and hadn’t worked hard manually since he left coalmining almost twenty years earlier, so he wasn’t the hulk you see in the photo in the picture section. But he was still formidable. He had a part-time job at the El Rancho drive-through bottle shop. I was twenty-five at the time and I thought I could take him. Three young punks in a Volkswagen took a carton of beer off Dad, refused to pay and started to drive off. Dad opened the passenger door and pulled one guy out and drove a savage punch to the side of his head, KO’ed him. The driver, meanwhile, ran around and flew into Dad. Dad walked through his punches, took hold of him and threw him against the car. He banged the guy’s forehead into the windscreen twice and KO’ed him, too. The third guy sat in the back. Dad went in for him. He was yelling, ‘Don’t hit me, mister,’ and trying to exit through the other side. Dad dragged him out and hit him. Maybe I wasn’t good enough to take him.

The other good thing about it was that I met a legend, Ross ‘The Nail’ Bailey. He’s still my mate. Ross taught Mel and Steve how to surf. He was the funniest guy with the best stories. He was also a muso: blues harp and sax are his instruments, and he still plays gigs at seventy in and around Newcastle. Ross was arguably the best surfer in Australia in the late fifties and early sixties. He was great before the pro circuit. He was famous for surfing a 30-foot swell in Merewether in the early sixties. Big boards, no leg-ropes, no wetsuits. Google him, it’s worth it. What a guy.

The Pittwater

Summer City took us to Christmas 1976. Early in the new year we moved to a little cottage in a tiny settlement opposite Palm Beach called Coasters Retreat. The only way to get there is by boat. We were just back from the water. Our view was across Pittwater to the mouth of Broken Bay; the centrepiece was the majestic Lion Island. This part of the world has everything for me. It’s picture-perfect, easily one of the most beautiful places on earth. The water, the bush, the gum trees, the hills and escarpments, the waterfalls, the wildflowers, the peace and the serenity. ‘How’s the serenity…so much serenity.’ (The Castle, 1997)

There was a public wharf at Coasters. I bought a 4-metre Hartley timber half-cabin boat with an ancient 50 HP Evinrude. I wasn’t used to boats and I didn’t know how to anchor it properly. The anchor let go and the boat drifted under the jetty. The tide came up and crushed the half-cabin. I suddenly had an open boat. A couple of days later the Evinrude shat itself, so I had to fork out for a 20-horse Mercury.

Marcus Cooney was a playwright. His most famous plays were Hamlet on Ice and Henry Lawson – In Between the Lines. He was a mate of Bill Hunter and Max Cullen. I got to know him through them and that’s how I ended up at Coasters. Marcus lived a little further north at Mackerel Beach. He saw what I’d done to my boat and immediately christened it the HMAS RS.

Marcus was a big bear of a man: about 5 foot 10, with long hair and a beard, a big chest, a big gut, big arms, big legs and a gruff voice, great bloke. Every Friday he would catch an early-morning bus from Palm Beach to the city, his trusty leather briefcase in hand, to see his agent and his publisher. He wrote plays, novels, how-to books, anything to make a quid. After he’d done his business he’d go and get rolling drunk at the East Sydney, the ‘Actor’s Pub’, old-school drunks. We were new-school, drunken drug addicts.

Marcus always managed to pour himself onto the last bus back to Palm Beach. My phone would ring around eleven-ish for me to go and pick him up. This was the one thing I’d do for him on a regular basis. One night in July it was blowing a southerly gale. To get across to Palmy I had to ‘snake the trough’ (weave my way along the valley between the waves), otherwise I’d get soaked. The waves were between 1 and 2 foot, which is pretty rough for the Pittwater. As I approached the Palmy jetty, I could see Marcus’s massive frame swaying in the breeze. Here’s the funny thing: he never admitted he was drunk. I nosed the boat in for him to step onto. The bow was rocking up and down like you wouldn’t believe. Marcus stepped on with his great weight, which increased the instability. He lost his footing and fell into the bitter cold Pittwater. He somehow kept his briefcase relatively dry. His forearm with fist holding the briefcase was thrust above the water like he had hold of Excalibur. His head slowly emerged from the water and all he said was, ‘Bit rough tonight.’ He was so bright, witty and funny. I loved the big bastard.

Nineteen seventy-seven was the year of the telemovies for me. First up was Plunge into Darkness, which was shot in Sydney. I played a bad guy with Tom Richards. I can honestly say I don’t remember even the tiniest thing about it; it’s like it didn’t exist. The only thing I remember was a quote from the director, Peter Maxwell. A young actor started acting before ‘Action’ was called. Peter called, ‘Cut,’ and said, ‘My job is to say “action” and “cut”. If I only say “cut”, they will only give me fifty per cent of my wages.’ And that’s all I remember.

I do remember something else that happened at the time, vividly. Rosa was pregnant. It’s what we wanted and it was very exciting. I couldn’t wait to have a child. We lived in a beautiful place to grow a baby for nine months. Poor Rosa was one of those women who suffer morning sickness all the time, for the whole nine months. She also overheated, so she would be lying outside in a T-shirt in the middle of winter. I know she felt ill, but my God, she looked more beautiful than ever.

Okay, time to get serious. A Jarratt starts a family, a Jarratt builds a house. Further down the Pittwater was an island, Scotland Island. Hardly anyone knew about it in those days. To build there you needed to bring the materials across on a barge and truck them to the site. A block of land was cheap, and we found one with views straight up the Pittwater for $11,000, about a quarter of the price for similar land at Church Point on the mainland. These blocks were one back from the waterfront. I bought a chalet-style kit home for $35,000 and we had a house for $46,000.

My agent called about this film being cast called Mad Max. It was written by the director, Dr George Miller, who was a medical doctor who’d never made a feature film before. His mate Byron Kennedy, who was equally inexperienced, was going to direct it. They were going to smash cars and motorbikes all over the place and you were required to do a fair bit of the driving. There were stunts from one end to the other and they had bugger-all to make it. Sounded like a shitfight to me. I already had a film with the SAFC to do in Adelaide called Sound of Love, which was fully funded and made by professionals. I chose that. Mel and Steve didn’t have a lot of choice at the time and ended up doing Mad Max. Poor bastards.

In Sound of Love I played a Grand Prix racing-car mechanic who goes deaf from tuning noisy engines without ear protection. It was a very interesting film. We had to make it up as we went along a bit. Because this guy went deaf and he couldn’t do sign language, everything had to be written down for him. That was very challenging, as the film could have become very boring after a while. We found a way to keep it entertaining and we ended up with a poignant, insightful film.

Playing a deaf person taught me a lot. In many ways, being born deaf is as tough as being born blind. Blind people can communicate better because they can develop vocabulary, music and mathematics. It takes a deaf person a lot longer to grasp these things. You can at least see maths and literature but you can’t see music.

I came back from Sound of Love to a lovely pregnant wife and the wagging tail of our black Labrador-Kelpie-cross puppy called Georgie. We’d bought her at the pound in February. She was all alone at the back of the cage, shaking all over. I fell in love with her straight away. She was one of the warmest, most intelligent beings I’d ever come across. She is on the small list of the best friends I’ve ever had.

Thankfully, my next job was a play for the Old Tote. We rehearsed in the city and the play ran at the Parade Theatre, so I was home every night during rehearsal and every night during the run.

The play was crap and failed dismally. The good thing about it was that I met Ross Thompson, a wonderful screaming queen, and Michele Fawdon, who was later to become a close friend. Ross lived at Whale Beach and I gave him a lift home every night. He cracked me up. He put the word on Mick Jagger once and Mick said, ‘I’m not into that at the moment, is that aw right?’ He used to playfully come on to me when I was trying to drive and I just threw the Mick Jagger line at him. I lost track of Ross over the years, but it happens.

Zadia

Five a.m., 18 October 1977. Rosa’s waters broke. We both jumped out of bed panicking.

‘The baby’s coming, the baby’s coming, the baby’s coming!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I think so.’

We stood there looking at each other for a while, like a couple of zombies. Suddenly Rosa had a huge contraction.

‘The baby’s coming, the baby’s coming, where’s my bag, where’s my bag? There’s my bag…’

‘Now don’t panic, I’m not panicking…’ (I knew straight away I was panicking), ‘wallet, car keys, let’s go.’

We made our way gingerly down the path to the jetty with the aid of a Dolphin torch. I brought the HMAS RS around and placed Rosa gently into the boat. Off we went. The boat leaked and I developed a wiggling method to slosh the water into my little square bailing bucket. I had that bucket for six months, but I finished bailing and threw it away. I was panicking and Rosa was screaming with contraction pain.

We had a little 1964 Hillman Husky station wagon. We left the Palm Beach car park at around 6.30 a.m. The best place to give birth in Sydney was the Paddington Women’s Hospital, a looong way from Palm Beach. We were flying through Newport and Rosa was having massive contractions. She was putting a lot of weight on the bucket seat. Suddenly the back of it snapped and Rosa fell back with it and did the rest of the trip lying back with her head on the back seat.

I was frantic. ‘What about Mona Vale Hospital?’

‘Nooo-wa! Paddington!’

We hit the Wakehurst Parkway, single-lane for about 8 k’s, in peak hour. I drove the whole way up the table drain. Onto Willoughby, and the contractions were getting worse.

‘Whaddabout North Sydney Hospital?’

‘Paddington!’

We finally arrived outside the main door at Paddo Women’s. I was trying to drag a hysterical woman doubled up with pain out of the car. Nurses heard the noise and came out, then went straight back in to get a wheelchair. We put Rosa in the wheelchair and the force of the contraction made her lurch straight back out again. We managed to get her into the ward and onto a bed. She was already dilated and Zadia was well on the way. If we’d taken any longer, the baby would have been born in the car.

The head was crowning, Zadia was nearly with us. But I was extremely alarmed. Every time Rosa pushed Zadia’s head would come out, and it was pointed, flat on each side! I was thinking, She can’t possibly be alive with a head shaped like that. I looked at the doctor and nurses, but they didn’t seem worried. I thought they were used to these situations and knew how to keep a poker face. Next thing, pop, out came her head and it bounced straight into a perfect rounded shape. Nobody had told me that a baby’s skull is in four plates when it’s born and they flatten out to get through the birth canal.

My God she was beautiful, she was a perfect dark beauty like her mother. Lots of dark hair, big brown almond-shaped eyes, a full mouth, olive skin, a bubble bum, perfect, beautiful. We made her, she was ours, no one else’s, always ours, still ours – you can share her but she’s ours. We made her name up. We were looking through a flower book and didn’t get far.

‘Azalia? What about Zalia?’

‘No, it’s a bit weak.’

‘What if we put a D in it, what about Zadia?’

We got Zadia home and stayed at Coasters until just after Christmas. It was a delightful place to introduce Zadia to the world. Georgie loved her; she was Zadia’s dog even then. We needed to get a rental on Scotland Island so that I could start work on the house. We lucked out and got onto the place next door.

My father, Rosa’s father and I built the house on the island. My brothers, cousins and mates chipped in when they could. My father was a bloody nightmare: he was the one who knew exactly what to do, and because Charlie and I didn’t, there were times he treated us like idiots. He didn’t know how close he came to a smack in the mouth. If family hadn’t been involved, Charlie would have jobbed him for sure. Apart from that, their dedication was unbelievable. Initially, they both took a month off work when we got to floor level. It was a steep block: the galvanised pipe posts at the front were about 3 metres off the ground. Brian could weld and he put all the steel posts and bracing in for me.

Because it was a kit house, it was pre-cut. Once the floor was in, it was pretty straightforward and went together fairly smartly. There wasn’t much in the way of power tools in those days, so there were no battery tools. We had an 8-inch circular saw, a couple of electric drills, a planer, a belt sander and an orbital sander. Lots of hand tools.

Dad brought a caravan over he and Mum slept in that, and the two mums kept us fed from the van. Charlie and Carmela slept in the rental with us. We got the frame up by the end of the four weeks. I started cladding and finishing and the two dads came every weekend. By around about May we were in the new house. We still had plenty to do, but it was very liveble. It took about another year to get it finished. The following Christmas Day I was up the ladder painting the back wall. My mate Cliff from across the road yelled out, ‘Are you tripping?’ He’s still living there and still a good mate.