We of the Never Never

I was about to head off to Mataranka in the middle of the Northern Territory to make We of the Never Never. A week before that I was going to the Logies: I was nominated for Best Actor for The Last Outlaw and I was also presenting an award. The night before the awards there was a rehearsal for the presenters. Afterwards we had a few drinks. I got terribly drunk with Barry Crocker; nice guy, I’ve bumped him a few times since, always a pleasure. I’d hired a car because mine was with my mechanic. I drove from the city to Church Point. I blacked out and I came to flying through the air. I landed in a culvert on Pittwater Road not far from Church Point. I jumped out of the car, and my head was bleeding. I knew that if I stayed, I’d be arrested as I was way over the limit. I ran down the road the best I could until I got to Church Point.

Being inebriated I decided to pinch a boat from out the front of the shops as the commuter wharf was further down and I wanted to get away before the cops came. I got halfway to Scotland Island when the outboard stopped. The owner of the boat had taken their fuel line. I then had to row a 16-foot boat half a kilometre in a southerly, with one oar, drunk. It took a while. I hit the shore at Bells Wharf and took the shortcut straight over the top of the island, instead of the road going around it. It was pitch black, I got lost and found myself getting scratched mercilessly by great swathes of lantana. Finally I was standing in my bedroom at God knows what time, scratched and bleeding from my head. I took the best course of action you can possibly take in that situation: I started to sob loudly to get Rosa’s sympathy. It worked until the next day. Rosa turned from sympathy to seething. And rightly so.

I went to a doctor the next day. I had concussion and a hangover. The doc got me off the hook with the cops and the insurance paid for the write-off of the rented car. I went to the Logies that night with a dreadful concussion headache. The world was swirling but I somehow got through it. I won Best Actor and my speech was appalling.

The following week, I flew to the Northern Territory to start work on We of the Never Never. It starred Angela Punch McGregor (my mate from NIDA days), Arthur Dignam, Tom E Lewis (star of The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith), Lewis Fitz-Gerald (who played Tom in The Last Outlaw) and me.

I turned up just before we started filming. We were staying at the Mataranka Hotel, about 100 kilometres south of Katherine. The hotel had a restaurant and rooms at the back and a typical open ‘tropical bar’ out the front. Out the back were two long rows of motel rooms separated by dirt about 10 metres wide and 50 metres long. This was to be christened ‘Lygon Street’ by the many Melburnians in the crew.

I met Tommy Lewis, who was to become a lifelong friend. He’s a very striking-looking dude: his dad was Irish and his mum was Aboriginal. He lived locally and his people made up the community used in the film. I offered him a joint, which was his first. Then I lost track of him. I went to the arrival party that night, no Tommy. I found him the next day. The dope had had a profound effect on him, and he said he went walkabout for hours, off his tree. It was the beginning of a love affair with the weed and I’m responsible.

For me, Never Never was a boring film, the script wasn’t very exciting and the production was incompetent. It was all about the love story between Arthur and Angela’s characters, it became a kind of Pride and Prejudice of the outback. Lewis, Tommy, Martin Vaughan and I played the drovers. We called ourselves ‘the Bee Gees’, from BG – background.

The only excitement I got was the droving sequences. There was a horse stampede sequence choreographed by Heath Harris. Heath had just finished The Man from Snowy River; he’d come off a horse and broke his leg badly. He had plaster up to his thigh and he stood beside the camera yelling instructions.

Tommy and I had been around horses since we were kids and my experience on horse movies had put the icing on the cake for me. We were the only two actors allowed to ride in this sequence.

As I wasn’t a double and could be seen close up, my job was to gallop up to the camera and pull up beside it as the stampeding horses went past me. There were about 100 head of horses. The stunt horsemen were to ride along the outside of the mob and turn them into a circle. This manoeuvre caused the mob to stop.

Unfortunately, there was a very fast pale horse out front and the outside horsemen couldn’t get to the front to turn them. They were moving out into a wide arc and heading for Darwin. There were no fences out there and we were about to lose the mob. There was only one horsemen in a position to head across country and cut them off: me. I had a very fast horse and I didn’t hesitate. I took off through the scrub, ducking branches and jumping fallen logs, slapping and kicking the shit out of my horse to keep it at full throttle. I had my eye on the leader and I was on song. I hit the clearing and cut the lead horse. I was waving and yelling and snorting and they came to an abrupt halt. Ten seconds later a big, tall blackfella screamed in on his horse. He pulled up, yahooed and slapped me with his hat and nearly knocked me over with his huge smile of perfect teeth.

Heath offered me a full-time job with the wranglers. I should’ve taken him up on it, I might’ve been better off. That was by far the most exhilarating ride of my life; the only thing that came close was the Ned Kelly Stakes, when the Gang and I raced at the Seymour race day during The Last Outlaw. We rode our horses fully kitted up in our Outlaw outfits. Mirth was explosive, and we won by eight lengths.

Things weren’t too boring off the set. There were a lot of rednecks in Mataranka, many of whom were employed on the film. Racism was rife. One of our blackfellas got drunk and made a mess of things at the bar. The little fat prick who managed the joint banned all blackfellas from drinking at the bar. Tensions were rising, so Tom suggested he and his people should set up camp out on location at the Mataranka Homestead set. The wranglers were already out there and I moved out there too. I loved it. We were camped on the banks of the Roper River, and Frank Manly’s catering bus was there too, so we ate like kings for three meals a day. I went to sleep to the sound of Peter playing didgeridoo. ‘I been to London to play the didge for His Majesty Queen Lisbath’. Donald Blitner, who played Goggle Eye, the chief elder in the film, slept at the front of my tent to protect me from snakes.

Our director had problems getting Donald to understand what he was supposed to do. He’d give instructions like he was instructing the Kings College rowing team. I ended up directing him: I learnt how to impersonate him and I’d say the line, he’d repeat it, get the hang of it and off he’d go. Beautiful man.

When we were still at the pub, Donald came into my room drunk at about 4 a.m. He woke me singing in language and banging his matchbox against his cigarette packet. I sat up blurry eyed and he’s singing, ‘Oomaraaa ingana de bodoowa – this mean big bird come down to boab tree; oonooomanawa inawanna gonamwa anonawanna goniwana byan nyana na wana – this mean snake come out of the tree and eat him that bird and he swim off down that river. You got five dollar for Uncle Donald?’ At least he busked for his five bucks!

When we moved out to the camp, Donald stopped drinking. He lived his life as a drover, and he was head stockman at Beswick Station where Tommy was raised. Tough man. He once got gored in the stomach by a wild bull. He got the two young men with him to hang him upside down, push his guts back in and instructed them how to sew him up with horsehair. When he recovered the bull was paddocked, so he ran that bull ragged before he killed him for meat.

I annoyed the crap out of Donald trying to work out the Dreamtime stuff and the ancestral stuff and the spiritual stuff. He said he talked to his ancestors and they talked back as clearly as we were talking. He always looked around to make sure no whitefellas heard him talking to them: ‘They think I’m a mad blackfella.’

Local whitefellas would say, ‘Blackfellas are lazy bastards, they sit around under a tree all day.’ That’s because a blackfella can, whitefellas can’t. Donald sat on a rug under a tree for hours on end. I asked him why. He said, ‘See that dead branch on that tree over there, hollow one that one, goanna in there. Tree to the right, honey ant in there. In them reeds on the river, goose in there.’ Blackfellas have incredible eyesight. Donald had his evening meal sorted if he needed it.

I was annoying Donald again one day at breakfast and I think he’d had a gutful. He said, ‘You know in dry time when the river dries up, turtle get stuck in waterhole, goanna come along, turtle gets on goanna’s back and goanna take him to the river, you believe that?’

I looked at him speechless, my white scepticism bouncing around in my brain.

‘That’s why you never understand, John, I tell noongar (child) that, they know it’s true. You whitefella, you believe in Jesus Christ. I don’t just believe, I know!’

Bang! Donald was the real deal. Every community, every race, every culture, no matter how distant and isolated from each other, has a spiritual base. There’s gotta be something in it.

In 1988 Donald got a gig on a miniseries I did called Naked Under Capricorn. It was shot in Alice Springs. I had a couple of days off so I decided to go to Uluru. Donald said, ‘Don’t you climb on that rock, it’s sacred.’

‘Why not? I’m not a blackfella.’

‘I don’t come to Sydney with a ladder and climb on your church roof.’

He was so wise and complete, I miss him. I’m sitting here now trying my best to communicate with him. Trying to break open the whitefella block between here and the afterlife. It’d be easier to walk to New Zealand.

There was a lot of racial tension going on. I was still in my twenties with a lot of immature Irish rebel still flowing through my veins. I decided to take a busload of my fellow campers to the Mataranka bar they were banned from. There were about a dozen of us; we swaggered up to the bar and sat down. The nervous barman said weakly, ‘We’re not allowed to serve alcohol to the blacks.’

‘What are you having, Roy?’

‘I’ll have a Coke, thanks, Johnny.’

‘What are you having, Jamie?’

‘Coke too, please.’

‘I’ll have lemonade.’

‘They got Passiona?’

And so on: we all had a soft drink each. The barman walked out the back and returned with the fat-arsed manager.

‘What’s your problem, Jarratt?’

‘I’m thirsty.’

‘You’re a smart-arse, aren’t you?’

‘Nah, just thirsty.’

‘Go on, get out of here, and take your black mates with you.’

‘When we’ve finished our soft drinks.’

‘I’ll call the coppers.’

‘You do that. By the time they arrive we’ll be gone.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘No, sorry, you can’t, I’m straight.’

That night Tommy was playing pool at the bar. The fat bastard came into the bar and punched Tommy in the stomach. Tom didn’t hit back because he’s been around long enough to know he’d be beaten up and thrown into a cell. I found out about it and went to the hotel. I found the fat bastard walking down the hallway and shirt-fronted him.

‘If you so much as touch a hair on Tommy’s head, I’ll bounce you off these walls like a beach ball, you fat cunt, do I make myself clear?’

He raised a fist to hit me.

‘Please thump me. Give me an excuse to start spreading you around.’

He went to water and said nothing. I walked away.

The wrap party was coming up. The production office was worried about the rednecks and blackfellas fighting, and they called me in. I said I’d make sure the blackfellas stayed off the grog for the night. I explained to them it was just one night and let’s show the world that blackfellas didn’t have to get drunk to have a good time. We ordered a few cartons of light beer and God love them, they didn’t get drunk. I did.

The party was held outdoors and it was going just fine. I was dancing with one of Tommy’s sisters, Barbara, a big, lovely, bubbly woman. This bloke came up to me; he was the bull catcher for the film. He wasn’t tall but he was broad and muscular, with arms like tree trunks and no front teeth.

He yelled at me, ‘You black-lovin’ arseho–’

He didn’t get the word ‘hole’ out because my fist hit his mouth. My old man taught me well. ‘If ya gonna get hit, hit first.’ I hit him hard and fast and kept hitting him all the way to the ground. One of the wranglers, Jim Willoughby, dragged me away.

‘He’s had enough, J J.’

Then his brother Bill king-hit me in the ear. The bastard, he was supposed to be on my side. So I started on Bill and Jim dragged him away, calling him for everything.

I was revvin’. ‘Any one else wanna go, huh? Huh?’

The party was over, and we went back to Lygon Street and kicked on. About an hour later a big mob of Mataranka rednecks were standing at the top of Lygon Street. It was like the OK Corral. It was on, an all-in brawl, a whole lotta thumpin’ goin’ on. I’ll never forget the sight of Heath Harris sitting on the ground with his broken leg taking rednecks out with his crutches. The crew won. Great night.

I broke my little finger but I put the bull catcher in hospital. For a long time, poor old Tommy had to carry a shotgun in his car when he went through Mataranka, because of me.

The next day I said goodbye to all my blackfella mates. I was so moved: they started crying, Donald was inconsolable. Sober blackfellas are amazing people, so in touch with their feelings and the world around them. Of course the rednecks can’t cope with them; they usually see them drunk around the pub that they’re getting drunk at themselves. That’s just a recipe for disaster.

The big three blackfella actors are David Gulpilil, Tom E Lewis and Ernie Dingo. Today, hallelujah, none of them drink. Ernie never did; Tom drank a lot but gave it away twenty years ago; David nearly drank himself to death, but he did Charlie’s Country sober and used it to help him get off the grog. He’s been sober since 2011 and no cigarettes either. He worked on a short film with me recently. Why, because he found out I was working on it, which was very humbling for me. I believe he will remain clean and sober. I can’t tell you how pleased I am for him.

One film after the other

I just kept doing one film after the other. I know I sound up myself, but I haven’t got the space to mention all of them. My next film was Next of Kin, a classic horror film set in a mental hospital. I was the boyfriend of the lead character, a hapless victim played by Jacki Kerin. I end up rattling down the hall, dead and bloody in a wheelchair, and bump into a screaming Jacki. Quentin Tarantino loves this film.

He was most intrigued about a crane shot. I had a drink with him in 2003 at Circular Quay and filled him in. The crane starts high and wide, looking at a lonely service station. Our heroine runs out and jumps into a ute. We follow her into the car. The camera ends up in the back of the ute, they tongue the camera off the crane and attach it to the ute. The ute takes off, with the camera looking at the back of the driver’s head. The crane meanwhile is panned out of shot, and the camera turns 180 degrees and takes in the shot of the garage blowing up. Suddenly the evil villain sits up into shot with a knife in her hand, screaming through her mutilated face. They only had one go at it. They rehearsed it all day the day before. Amazing camerawork.

The cameraman was the late great Gary Hansen, who also shot We of the Never Never. Like Charlie Rossini, I only knew him for a year and we’d become such great mates, I spoke at his funeral. Shortly after Next of Kin, Gary was shooting a doco in the Snowy Mountains when the chopper he was filming in hit powerlines. His camera assistant Johnny Jasiwkowicz (J J, like me) also died. I have a photo Gary took of us two J Js when we were doing Next of Kin. We were working in a graveyard and Gary suggested we run towards him and leap in the air. Spooky photo. (See the picture section.)

Gary was salt of the earth and we had a lot in common. He loved the Australian bush. He published a brilliant book of Australian landscape photos and Tom Keneally wrote accompanying pieces to the visuals. He had a great sense of humour: we had chooks at the Mataranka film set. He collected the eggs, got in his car and drove around egging cast and crew. He was larger than life and an absolute pleasure to be with. He won a posthumous AFI award for best cinematography for We of the Never Never. Onya Gaz.

I did a kids film called Fluteman next. It was a kind of modern-day Pied Piper. I didn’t like it much, and it didn’t do very well. I loved the cast, though. Michael Caton and Johnny Ewart were hilarious in it. The upside was that it was shot in Sydney, so I didn’t have to go away, for a change. I had my hair curled; I looked good with curly hair. My favourite photo of Zadia and me is from that time. (See the picture section.)

The Settlement is one of my favourite films, shot in Brisbane in 1982. Set in the fifties, it was about two itinerants who meet up with a wayward girl and form a ménage à trois. They acquire a shack on the outskirts of a small country town, which causes the straitlaced locals to revolt against them.

Bill Kerr played my older mate and Lorna Lesley played the girl. Bill Kerr lived in London in the sixties and he was a regular on Hancock’s Half Hour. He played the coach in Gallipoli: ‘What are ya legs?’ ‘Steel springs.’ He was amazingly talented. He tried to teach me the soft-shoe shuffle. One great moment of my life. We were in a room with a stand-up piano. I was in a lounge chair and Billy sat at the piano, playing ‘As Time Goes By’, and did the perfect Humphrey Bogart impersonation.

Part of the action was a tent boxing sequence. My opponent was a famous stuntman, Peter Armstrong, a big man and an ex-wrestler. We worked out the boxing sequence. He was supposed to throw a left–right combo. He went right–left. I threw my head away for the left and copped a right-cross fair on the button. He nearly knocked me out – it’s the hardest punch I’ve ever copped. He was devastated. He dropped both gloves and begged me to hit him. He showered me with gifts and T-shirts from his time on LA movies. Pete was a legend, and I’m almost honoured to have been thumped by him and not fallen over. Jarratts have hard heads, and what we lack in talent we make up for in staying power.

Chase through the Night was a miniseries made in late 1982. For the first time I played an out-and-out dummy. I was part of a crime gang. There were three of us: Number One (Paul Sonkkila) was the brains, Number Two (Scott McGregor) was the nice guy, and Number Three (John Jarratt) was the comic numbskull. I loved this comic role that bordered on slapstick. My relationship with Rosa was not good and I was very sad at the time. I was pleased to be able to do something that made me laugh. We held this little town hostage, including a bunch of teenagers. The female lead was played by a sixteen-year-old Nicole Kidman. She was great then, she shone. Don’t believe what the papers say; she is just as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

As I’ve already mentioned, my weaknesses at the time were tunnel vision, manipulation and idealism. I’d see the glimmering, shining end result and fail to see the amount of hard work it would take to get there and the things that could go wrong.

Here’s a list of the things I took on between late 1981 and 1984. I bought my horse from The Last Outlaw. Horses take a lot of looking after and they cost money. I agisted the horse at Bert Carlon’s farm in the mountains, two hours away. I masterminded the acquisition of 100 acres with the Kelly Gang nine hours from Sydney at Kyogle, to build a mansion on. I finished my first house, put it up for rent and took my family across the road to live in a shed while I built a house on a block of land I’d just bought behind my first house. I helped to rebuild a house for Charlie’s widow. I spent every second weekend for a year helping Dad turn a shack into a duplex with a pool and a massive sandstone studio. I made five films and two TV shows. When I was home, I worked five days a week with Rossini’s Raiders.

The Outlaw property

While we were shooting The Last Outlaw, I thought it’d be a great way to keep the team together if we bought a country property we could all contribute to. We used to visit Michael Caton a lot in Melbourne (we called him the ‘Surrogate Outlaw’). The partnership ended up being me, Steve Bisley, Peter Hehir, Michael Caton, Ric Herbert and John Ley. Out of that crowd Peter, John Ley, Bizo and I had building skills. I came back from doing The Last Outlaw and told Rosa it was all decided, we’re buying this property. She was totally against it and was pissed off that she wasn’t consulted. I didn’t care, I’d already made up my mind.

We went on a recce up the North Coast and found the most beautiful 100 acres you could hope for. You drove into a lush green paddock on a rise looking towards a mountain, a perfect house site. A creek ran through at the bottom of the rise. It boasted the best swimming hole in the district: the creek cut a 30 metre by about 300 metre cliff, below which sat the swimming hole, surrounded by God’s rainforest garden, with the odd rock island in the middle to sunbake on. Beyond the creek about 70 acres rolled up a gentle hill into a eucalypt forest. Where? Kyogle, nine hours from Sydney and an hour and a half due west of Byron Bay. Yeah sure, we’d visit that place frequently. Stupid.

Christmas 1981. We turned up with wives, kids and camping gear to start building the house that Peter had designed. Pete has a heart of gold, he’s still a good mate to all of us. He was raised in an orphanage, he’s very bright and in those days he knew everything. All there was to know about acting or building, he knew. A recipe for disaster. One of the best actors I’ve ever seen, a producer and director’s nightmare. He ended up leaving the biz. His famous saying is, ‘I look back on my career and all I can see is smouldering bridges.’ Needless to say, he got up everyone’s nose at Kyogle.

He grabbed me by the throat one day. I looked him right in the eye as a lion would his prey and informed him of what would happen if he didn’t let go. He slowly released his grip, got in his car and returned to Sydney. Cliff, my mate and neighbour on the island, took over his share. We ended three weeks labour with sixteen large poles in the ground forming the octagonal shape of the ‘future homestead’.

We did enjoy ourselves. We managed to drive to Byron a few times between building. There was a lot of tension, though. Bizo and I ended up yelling at each other for the first (and hopefully last) time.

We rarely got back to the joint. Cliff and Johnny Ley spent some time turning the cowshed into living quarters. I went back once with Bizo to plant an orchard, which a neighbour was going to nurture; he didn’t and the trees died.

We drove up in my freshly painted, restored 1959 FB Holden. Steve was driving as we came down the hill into Murwillumbah at night. We went around a corner and ran into a cow. Bizo sat there distraught.

‘Jack, mate, fuck, I’m sorry, I’ve smashed your beautiful car.’

‘Fuck the car, we passed a semi coming up the hill, get off the road!’

Bizo managed to drive off. The semi came around the corner and ran over the injured cow. The truckie called the cops on his CB. We cleaned the car of empty beer cans and hid our stash.

We spent two days going to the wreckers for a mudguard and a bonnet and repairing my car. We planted the orchard and drove home again.

The second house; the end is nigh

I still had a fair bit to do to finish the house. I was kind of hoodwinked by my father to buy the chalet-styled kit home for monetary reasons, and I just couldn’t embrace it. The council made me compromise from the get-go; they were a pain in the arse. From the beginning, I wanted to place the house in the middle of the block, so I removed two big sturdy gum trees. The council then said I couldn’t build there because it was a sloping block and removal of the stumps would cause slippage problems. I’d lost two good trees for no good reason. I won’t bore you with the rest, but I felt I was living in the house the council wanted, not the one I wanted.

There was a block of land next to Cliff’s place for sale, directly behind where we were living. I wanted to buy it for a number of reasons. The block and Cliff’s block were long, thin rectangles. If you divided the block down the middle you’d end up with two very usable squares. Cliff’s house would be on the front square and I’d build my house on the back square. The back square was serviced by a road, so all good. Cliff loved this idea. I worked out a plan to build my house where the shed was on the back of Cliff’s block. I said to Cliff, ‘Let’s just do it and subdivide and put the plans in for the house after I build it.’ If I sold my house, I’d have enough to pay off the new block and pay for the new house. I’d be in my early thirties with no mortgage!

I explained all this to Rosa and she didn’t want to know. We had a huge argument and I said I didn’t care, I’d earned the money, I was buying the land. I got a mortgage and bought the land. I had to rent out the house with a ‘For sale’ sign on it. I couldn’t afford two mortgages. It’s hard to sell a house when there’s a six-month lease on it, and it wasn’t as easy to sell as I’d hoped.

Rosa, Zadia and I moved into the shed at the back of Cliff’s block. I set up a makeshift kitchen and we had to share his bathroom. Things weren’t too good for Rosa and me. The angrier she got with the crap I was laying on her, the angrier I got at her for not supporting my crappy plans.

Through all this, I was going off on location, then coming back to work five days a week with Rossini’s Raiders. I walked in and out of my building job whenever I had to. My old man was asking for help with his new house build, turning a shack into a duplex with a pool and a massive sandstone studio. I had to help him because he helped us. And I’d started work on our new house. Rosa never knew that I hadn’t put the plans through council or subdivided. She had started a full-time arts course in the city. She drove there five days a week and I looked after Zadia, who’d just started school. Rosa got her ready in the morning and she arrived home off the ferry at 3.45 p.m. I had to knock off for when she came home, so it was easy to keep things from Rosa. Deceit never works. How naive and stupid I was.

I kept the lantana patch on my front boundary to hide my building. An island local Dave Lahm used to drive the council building inspector around. They were driving below my place and the inspector looked up. ‘Stop!’

Lahmy hit the brakes.

‘There’s a building up there.’

Yeah.’

‘It’s on the back of Cliff Kane’s block.’

‘Yeah.’

‘There’s no building approval for that!’

‘Oh.’

He jumped out of the car and headed for my place. He found me cutting timber. I saw him coming, and I knew who he was.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m building a house…’

‘Why?’

‘This way I can build the house I want, instead of putting in the plans first and building the house you want.’

‘It’s on the back of Cliff Kane’s fucking block!’

‘It’s all right, I’ve bought the block next door, we’re going to subdivide down the middle.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘I’m putting a bloody demolition order on this!’

‘Hey! Don’t yell at me, mate. I knew you’d put a demo order on me, but there’s already a precedent: a retirement home was built without plans, you put an order on it, they submitted the plans and you passed them. That’s what I’m going to do.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m putting an immediate stop-work on this.’

‘No worries, see you at the next round-up.’

I’ve never been good with authority. Blame it on my daddy.

The cat was out of the bag. Rosa found out and all hell broke loose. We had a big fight and I ran away. That’s how I always coped with adversity, right up until fairly recently. Hopefully that’s the last of the many defects I’ve had to conquer over a lifetime. If I argue with someone and I can’t hit them, my first instinct is to run away. It’s called fight or flight. I sometimes used to run but not go anywhere. I’d run behind the veil of a drug, mostly dope, sometimes booze.

So Rosa had to put up with a driven, deceitful, tunnel-visioned, manipulative, addicted, alcoholic, workaholic nutcase. She had her problems too, but pretty minor compared to mine. We really weren’t getting along very well at all at this stage.

Rosa and I went to a fancy-dress party. As our relationship at the time was tumultuous I thought it would be funny to go as a priest and a nun. I brought the costumes home and she couldn’t see the funny side. Neither can I, now.

The party was ‘out there’ and I got very drunk very quickly. Rosa wanted to go home. She tells me she looked into my glassy eyes and it was almost like I wasn’t there. She left me there. I was among the last to leave, around 3 or 4 a.m. On the way home an indiscretion happened that I don’t wish to discuss any further. I was found out and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back on my marriage. It should never have happened.

We broke up. I went to my brother Barry’s house on the island. I was a mess, completely shattered. I knew this was different to the odd times I’d run away. For a start, I’d never been kicked out before. I went into a dark hole I’ve never been in before or since. The universe gave me Rosa, my Garden of Eden, and I turned it into the Land of Nod. I felt like my arms and legs had been cut off.

I was still. I stopped still and I couldn’t do anything. For the first time since I’d cleared the block of land back in 1978, I stopped. I didn’t do anything: no drugs, no booze, no work. One evening I walked down the road and looked up at my house. I could see the two shapes moving around the lounge room. Rosa and Zadia. It was like watching a movie, they were right there but I couldn’t touch them, I couldn’t be with them. My two angels up there and I was down the hill in hell. I wanted to end it, I wanted to die. There was a small bridge leading across a gully to a property. I saw a skeleton under it. It wasn’t there, but I saw it. A voice said to me, ‘You’ve got a daughter, you can’t die, you’ve got a daughter.’ My dad often said things like, ‘The gutless bastard’s got kids, he has no right to kill himself.’ That’s as close as I’ve ever come to suicide.

I managed to drag myself back to work. I was walking around like a zombie. I just had to get back with Rosa. When I make up my mind to do something I normally do it. I think I just wore her down. It wasn’t the way to do it. I needed to heal the wounds, show more compassion, learn something from my mistakes, take it easy. I just wasn’t like that. I had it in my head, I want her back and I’ll be a good boy. It was like ice between us: she didn’t trust me and why should she? She was wary of me and I couldn’t please her; I was on trial.

By this stage I’d built the lounge room, the kitchen and a bedroom divided into two. I spent all day plumbing the sink taps off Cliff’s tanks and putting the drainage in as well. Rosa came home from the art college just as I’d finished sweeping up the sawdust. There were a lot of dirty dishes beside the sink. I proudly turned the taps on, filled the sink and pulled the plug out to show off the drainage.

Rosa said, ‘You could have done the dirty dishes.’

I was still in purgatory. A sensible man would have ridden it out and kept working towards redemption. Not me, I wanted it now. Patience and tolerance weren’t strong points for me.

Not long after, I brought a big box of vegetables home. Rosa and I got into an argument, I can’t even remember what it was about. I lost my temper, and I had a doozy of a temper. Rosa had put up with it in the past, but no more; those days were gone. I threw the vegies at the rock wall, at the house, onto the courtyard; they exploded everywhere. I called her for everything and did my usual flight. Rosa had had enough: she needed a complete break.

Rosa came to me and said she was going to Italy for a while with Zadia. Rosa is one good-looking woman, so my heart sank. I thought she’d meet a rich, handsome Italian man and I’d be flying to and from Italy to see Zadia. I was sure it was over now. I kind of came to grips with it and started to try getting back into life.

I lived in the house but I couldn’t bring myself to do any work on it. I saw it as part of the problem. I never worked on it again, which was dumb. If I’d finished it I would have got a good price. It was sold as half-built, not even that. I sold the A-frame, owned the new property outright and didn’t get the profit. No mortgage at thirty-three.

My wife and daughter were sitting pretty. It’s what I busted a gut for and I blew it.

At this stage of my life I’d never sought any help for my behaviour. No counselling, nothing, it hadn’t even crossed my mind. I thought I was a good bloke, better behaved than a lot of the men around me. There were a lot of local workers around the island and the bays: barge operators, jetty builders, house builders, electricians, concreters, tilers, carpenters, plumbers, ferry operators, outboard mechanics, boat builders, slip operators. We used to drink illegally at the ‘Church Point Arms’, a park beside the general store, next to the grog shop. Many of this crowd used to drink there every afternoon at beer o’clock, and they’d still be there at 9 p.m. around a fire drum in winter, but I wasn’t one of them.

I did what my father did, because that’s what I’d learned unconsciously. I worked all day at my job and spent all weekend building a house for my family. Dad did that all his life. So did I, up until four years ago, but never as full-on as in the early eighties. Dad had a bad temper and he said he couldn’t help it; it was the way he was. I had a bad temper and couldn’t help it (so I thought). I got it from my father. Dad loved Mum and his sons very deeply; he would have cheerfully died for us. But he took Mum for granted. He worked his guts out, he did what was expected of him and felt she should be grateful. I did the same thing. He took Mum for granted, I took Rosa for granted. I didn’t think I was anything like Dad at the time, but in so many ways I was just like him. I never belted my kids and I told my kids (and still tell them) how much I love them and how wonderful they are. Why? Because every time I sat there heaving with the pain from a hiding, being told I was an idiot, I swore I’d do the opposite when I had kids. If only Mum had taught me to tell my future wife how much I loved her every day, to never yell at her or call her names. To take time out to be with her and our kids, and take her on a holiday, often. Instead my mantra was I’m gonna own my home outright by the time I’m thirty-five. I beat it by two years. I owned my home but it was empty.

Zadia was gone. She was only five, and she was gone. I was on my own in our home, watching kids TV. My left arm reached out to where Zadia’s shoulders usually were; my arm fell flat and I started to cry. Georgie, my dog, got on my lap and put her paws around my neck. This was not unusual: this dog was amazing, she knew when I was suffering. I didn’t talk to Georgie in words, I talked in sentences and she understood. I thank God for her. I was never alone, thanks to her.

I was on the swing at Tennis Wharf at the bottom of our hill, singing ‘Mary Channel Tree’ over and over. When Zadia was two she sang this song she’d made up, on the swing, over and over. She could talk fluently at two, she was and is a stunning person inside and out. She is an absolutely divine creature with an extraordinary future in front of her. At four she was our referee. The peacemaker between her fractured mother and father, not good, not good at all.

I fucking blew it, I was always going to blow it; I had the right heart, but I was an emotional desert with no life skills. It took me another twenty-five years to grow up, to learn how to live.