The rebound

I continued to operate like a zombie. I worked around the island because I needed the money. I went to a concert put on by the Island Players at the Tennis Wharf community hall. My cousin Larry was in it; he now lived on the island, he still lives there at Elvina Bay. Larry could have been in the biz but he wisely chose not to. He’s a very funny man.

I enjoyed the show. I sat at a table with a few mates, among whom was Carol. I first saw Carol on the ferry about three years earlier. We had a chat, I found her pleasant. My brother and I put a set of front stairs on her house. I got to know her from that. I got along with her well, and I found her easy to converse with. It turns out she was born on 5 August 1953, exactly one year after me. I believe in the broad strokes of the zodiac, I’ve easily spotted a number of Leos, so there must be something in it. Carol and I were very much alike in many ways.

I walked Carol home. She was single, I was single, why not? I felt uncomfortable, ill at ease. It was awkward. I stayed the night but very little happened. We said our goodbyes and she made it clear her door was open if I wanted to come back. I walked home with mixed feelings. I thought, It’s all too much too soon. I hadn’t gone to the concert to pick up, I’d gone because I wanted company.

Two nights later I was back at Carol’s door. I needed comfort. It was a classic rebound relationship, and I was there for all the wrong reasons. Her house was already built, so I didn’t have to do anything. She encouraged us to go away on weekends and have fun camping or visiting friends – all the stuff I should have been doing with Rosa but had stopped doing when we became pregnant with Zadia.

I got a film called The Naked Country, made in Charters Towers. The film was directed by Tim Burstall and starred John Stanton, Rebecca Gilling, Tommy Lewis and me. It was a dreadful film. It was about the local blackfellas fighting the greedy landowner, and there were spears flying everywhere. I had a good time: Charters Towers is an interesting town, Townsville wasn’t that far away. Max, Nial and their kids and wives came on set for a couple of days. All good.

Another good thing to come out of the film is the following story. They used people from Mornington Island to play the tribe in the film, and they gave Neville a line to say. From Never Never experience Tom got the production office to set up a camp just outside of town. Carol and I camped there too. Neville’s line was, ‘You whitefella bring bullock to my land, no good.’ And then he throws his spear. Neville was so excited about it he went and got drunk at a pub the night before. Tom and I found him and took him back to camp. It was late and Neville decided to practise his line very loudly.

‘You whitefella bullock bring…Fuck. You bullock bring whitefella…fuck. You bullock…fuck.’

Hector was a big tribal bloke about 6 foot 4. He didn’t like Neville waking him. ‘Shut up, Neville, or I come up there and give you a flogging!’

‘Fuck you, Hector, I’m acting.’

Aunty was in charge of the group and when she spoke they took notice, so peace was restored. The next day we travelled to set in a bus, about fourteen blackfellas and us two whitefellas. Neville was still trying to get his line right and blowing it, over and over.

Hector got angry. ‘You shut your fuckin’ mouth, Neville.’

‘That’s it, that’s it, stop the fuckin’ bus, I’ll give you a floggin’, Hector.’

I jumped up and brought some calm to the proceedings. I sat next to Neville and helped him with his line.

‘Forget about the line, Neville. Get this picture in your head, try to see this whitefella bringing a bullock on your land and think, This is no good. Have you got that picture?’

‘Yeah, I got him.’

‘Okay, think of that picture and say the line at the same time.’

‘You whitefella bring bullock on my land, no good.’

‘You got it!’

‘I got it, I got it. “You whitefella bring bullock on my land, no good”, I got it.’

‘Yeah, acting is about how you feel, you have to feel I hate that white bastard.’

‘I hate that white bastard, I hate him!’

We arrived on set and were standing around the catering truck having coffee. John Stanton arrived, got out of the car and went straight to his caravan.

Neville yelled out, ‘I hate you, John Stanton, you white cunt!’

This stopped Stanton in his tracks.

I called out, ‘It’s all right, John, Neville’s just getting into his part.’

Stanton shook his head and went to the caravan.

I shot my bit, I got killed by a spear. I was sitting under a rock ledge watching the next scene. Big wide shot: the tribe is on the left of frame and John Stanton rides into the right of frame. Neville had his spear held back behind his head, cocked into his woomera (spear thrower). He yelled his line with great anger, ‘You whitefella come on my land with bullock, no good!’ Perfect. Then Neville threw his spear! Now, he’s a tribal man – he threw that spear over 100 metres. It missed Stanton by a metre. John was pale grey and speechless with shock. The director yells, ‘Cuuut! Why did you throw that fucking spear? You could have killed him!’

‘It says I throw the spear, so I threw the fuckin’ spear…’

‘You could have killed him!’

‘I wouldn’t kill him, I’m not stupid blackfella, I miss him by that much,’ spreading his arms to show the measurement.

‘Bullshit! You could have killed him.’

Neville lost it. ‘You want me to kill him, gimme the fuckin’ spear, I kill him, I’ll kill the bastard.’

I was under the rock hanging onto my guts in stitches, it was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. I believe Neville: he knew what he was doing with that spear.

Not much else to report on that film; it didn’t do it for me, I’m afraid. The day we left for the Townsville airport was interesting. The plane didn’t fly until later in the afternoon, so we went into town to kill time. I was walking through a mall and saw a little kid throw­ing a tantrum, and his mother trying to bring him under control. His father walked over and belted the kid in the side of the head. Without even blinking, I belted the father in the side of the head and sent him sprawling. The gutless bastard lay on the ground looking at me with surprised eyes.

‘How do you like it, shithead? Get up and have a go.’

He just lay there.

‘Gutless bastard.’

It stopped the kid’s tantrum. I said to the mother, ‘Get him out of here and get that dickhead out of your life.’

I felt the hit on the kid’s head as if I’d copped it. I immediately regressed thirty years to when my old man had hit me. Lucky it wasn’t him; he would have got up.

It was now November 1984. Carol’s daughter Amber was five, the same age as Zadia. I thought it’d be great for us to go up to the Kyogle property for a holiday. Cliff and John Ley had converted a cowshed into a self-sufficient living space. Just as we were about to leave, I got a letter from Rosa.

The letter was heartfelt and very moving. All things considered, she wanted to come home and try again with me. She said she loved me and missed me. For Zadia’s sake she really wanted it to work out. She hoped in her heart that I’d feel the same.

I was over the moon. I thought I’d lost her forever and now I was in a quandary about Carol. I look back with remorse over my actions at that time. I loved Rosa deeply and that overshadowed all else.

I didn’t know what to do. I thought I’d have the holiday with Carol and give her the bad news later. At least finish on a high note.

Carol was a very bright, astute woman. She knew something was up. We got to the property, she got out of the car and walked up to me and asked me to tell her what was going on. I knew she was onto me and when she fronted me, my body language gave it away. I told her I was going back to Rosa. She got in the car and drove straight back out. I hitchhiked to Casino and caught the plane back to Sydney.

Back in an instant

Rosa didn’t want to live on Scotland Island. She never wanted to go there again. She found a downstairs duplex on the Pittwater at Palm Beach. I bought her a 1963 Mercedes to get around in. Again, I’m the idealistic idiot. I thought she’d receive my love with open arms and find a field of flowers to tiptoe through. Of course she didn’t. I was still working and living in our house on the island and that didn’t sit well either, so I moved in to the Palm Beach flat.

I had to woo her back and I wasn’t prepared for that. Our emotions were on a knife edge because of what had gone down. I don’t think either of us were prepared for that. How naive we were. If it happened now, I’d expect it, I’d be ready for it and I’d understand it could take months or years to overcome. Rosa and I had arguments, that wasn’t new – we’d put that down to being an Irishman and a Sicilian. That’s how the parents of my generation behaved too, so it seemed natural. We didn’t know you could learn to approach differences in a much more diplomatic way.

Rosa and I hung in there. We were both trying hard. After about a month, things got calmer for a while and we managed to get closer. We started making future plans and we had a few weeks of relative calm. Then we clashed about something, I can’t remember what. The next few weeks got icy again. One afternoon we had a huge argument. It came to an abrupt halt when Pearla, my brother Barry’s ex, turned up. I did the usual and went for a four-hour walk.

I packed my bags and left. I went straight back to Carol. I explained to Carol I’d made a mistake, that living with her was calm and peaceful, the way life should be. She took me back.

Five weeks later in April 1985, Rosa rang me with the news that she was pregnant. This knocked me over and I couldn’t cope. I hung in with Carol for a couple of months but I wasn’t there, I just wasn’t there. How could I give her love when the love for myself was empty? I had to end it, as I was an emotional wreck. I didn’t know what to do. I went and lived with my parents for a while. I’m not ashamed to say it: I needed my mummy. She felt I should go away for a while, maybe to my mates in Cairns, and then, when I was a little more stable, make a decision about whether to return to Rosa. She felt that going back to Rosa would be the honourable thing to do. She also felt I should tell Rosa that I was going away to think about it. She was right, but I foolishly didn’t want to give Rosa false hope in case I decided not to; in case it made things worse for her. God, I was confused.

Sometimes my profession has allowed me to escape life’s turmoil at the right time. I was offered a guest role on Five Mile Creek, an Aussie–US Disney Channel Western. I really needed to loosen up. I had a great fortnight with a wonderful bunch of people. I got there on the Friday and Michael Caton offered to put me up in a mansion in South Yarra that Disney was paying for. Caton and Louise Clark, whom he lovingly called ‘the Yank’, lived in the main house and eighteen-year-old Nicole Kidman lived in the converted stables at the back of the property. Caton fell in love with ‘the Yank’, who played one of the leads in the show. They were a fun couple.

The director, Kevin Dobson, was an old mate from the Outlaw days. One of the leads, Rod Mullinar, was a mate but we’d never worked together before. Jay Kerr played Rod’s buddy in the show. He was a 6 foot 4 big bad Texan cowboy and a bloody good actor. On the first day on the set, we all had to ride into shot, settle and do the dialogue. The horse wrangler was Bill Willoughby, the guy who king-hit me in the ear on Never Never; no love lost. He gave me a horse that was jumping all over the place before I got on it.

‘You reckon you can ride, Jarratt, so I’ve given you a decent horse.’

This wasn’t a decent horse. This was what’s called a mongrel. We rode into shot and this horse was jumping and twisting and going sideways out of shot. I complained that the horse was no good, and Bill indicated that I was no good.

We did a second take. The horse was really geed up and it went everywhere, so I got off it and let it go. It bolted.

Bill got angry. ‘Why’d you let the fuckin’ thing go?’

‘It’s a decent horse, Bill. A man with your capabilities shouldn’t have much trouble catching it.’

I got a decent horse after that.

We had a very interesting night at the Hard Rock Cafe on Friday night. Another series was in production called The Dunera Boys about Jewish migrants during World War II. It starred Bob Hoskins. A bunch of the young cast were in the booth beside us.

They got drunk and a bit abusive. One in particular was shitty that Jay was keeping an Aussie actor out of work. We pointed out Bob Hoskins was British, but that didn’t make any difference to this drunken fool. Jay wasn’t taking any notice until this idiot called him a Yankee cunt.

‘You called me a Yankee what?’

‘Cunt.’

The man monster grabbed this fool and started belting him. It took four of us to drag him off. Kevin took Jay outside and I had hold of the drunken idiot. He was crying crocodile tears and yelling, ‘Let me at him.’

I said to him, ‘Now why don’t you just leave the big bad man alone. Sit there and have a good cry and we’ll be on our way. Thanks for fucking our night up.’

Poor old Jay was very upset at what had happened. He wasn’t aggressive, he was a great bloke.

Something else he said stuck with me; I don’t know why I remember because at the time I couldn’t see it happening. He said that Nicole was going to be a big star, she had that certain something and she looked magnificent. She is gorgeous inside and out, and you couldn’t ignore her beauty. It was Caton’s job to keep an eye out for ‘Young Nic’ (Caton has a pet name for everyone). Caton and Louise flew to Uluru the following weekend and told me to look after Young Nic. Okay, no worries.

Video recorders were brand-new in 1985. It was exciting to put a movie on any time you liked, it was the height of modern technology at the time. Nicole had rented Endless Love, starring Brooke Shields, for us to watch after dinner. So there I was, single, thirty-three, sharing a lounge with an unknown eighteen-year-old Nicole Kidman in her PJs, watching a Brooke Shields film. ‘Look after Young Nic while we’re away, J J.’ Thanks, Caton! I remained the gentleman for the duration of my weekend watch.

I returned to Sydney and the darkness rushed back into my life like a black storm. Welcome back to your life, John. Fight or flight? I decided I wanted to be alone. I couldn’t face anyone. I packed my FJ ute and headed for Kyogle with my dog, Georgie, in the passenger seat. I was in the car in front of my parents’ house ready to go, and I started to cry again. On cue Georgie jumped on my lap and gave me a cuddle.

I went to Kyogle and started to clear acres of lantana from around the creek. For two months that’s all I did. I took my FJ ute down to the creek, wrapped a steel cable around the lantana and dragged it out. Then I could get to the roots and dig them out. I’d make a huge pile and move along to the next section of the creek and continue the process. All day, every day for two months. Mindless work that allowed me to think.

At night I’d cook on a two-burner gas cooker. I’m the world’s worst cook. Meat, mashed potato, vegies or salad, fruit for dessert. Very bland but very healthy. I’d light the firebox, which had a wet back that John Ley had installed. This system heated the copper pipes at the back of the fire. Water from a tank on the roof passed through them, and the resulting hot water went into another tank on the top of the roof. A shower was set on the outside wall facing the property. I showered under brilliant stars and sang my heart out. I composed a song in my head about one day getting back with Rosa. It was called ‘I Dream the Most Childish Clichés’. I started reading books prolifically for the first time, as there was no TV or electricity, just kero lanterns and candles. I read nonfiction, mainly. History, biographies. I loved a book about how New York evolved from hilly tribal land to the greatest city on earth.

I think I was deeply depressed. I felt nothing, numb. I was in a bad way, I needed help. I was alone for two months, didn’t hear from anyone, didn’t see anyone. I rang my mum once a week reverse charges and talked to her for an hour or so. I can’t remember what I talked about, but her phone bills must have been high. I’d lost the will to live and I couldn’t be bothered killing myself. I couldn’t do it because of Zadia and the new baby. I must have called Zadia, I can’t remember.

I was offered the lead in a film called Australian Dream alongside Noni Hazlehurst. It was one of the rare times in my life I agreed to do a film without reading the script. I was a great admirer of Noni’s work, and if she was in it, that was enough for me, although I hadn’t met her at this stage. The film was shot in Brisbane, only three hours from Kyogle. I packed my ute, put my faithful companion Georgie in the passenger seat.

She was eight by then and had another five years left; she was a great friend. I could take her on film sets and she never got into shot. I had her with me on The Last Outlaw. She knew ‘Get behind the camera’, and most of the time I didn’t have to tell her. In all my time in movies, Georgie is the only dog who’s ever been allowed on set. Bizo and Peter Hehir decided they’d have her walk along with them as they approached camera, not a problem. We did the shot, then we went into a loose two shot.

Bizo asked, ‘Do we need Georgie in?’

‘No, we won’t see her.’

We did the take, the director said ‘cut’ and Georgie was sitting between them, in continuity. She was never caught on camera unless she was supposed to be there.

After being away eleven weeks on We of the Never Never, I arrived home at about 8pm. We lived about 2 kilometres from Church Point on the other side of the island, on top of the hill. I rang a mate who lived at the bottom of that hill to jump in the boat and come get me. He turned up and there was Georgie up at the bow, wagging her entire body.

I said to my mate, ‘Thanks for bringing George.’

‘I didn’t. I was about to back out when this black shape jumped on board.’ She knew somehow.

Australian dream

I arrived at the director Jackie McKimmie’s house in Brisbane early evening. I was introduced to her husband, Chris, and her two teenage boys. Noni and Graeme Blundell joined us and we had a very pleasant meal together. We all got along famously.

The film was about an average suburban housewife living with her husband, a butcher and a candidate for the up-coming election. The husband organises a birthday party–election party and I’m the lead singer of a hired band. The wife has fantasy dreams about me and the reality in the back of a car at the end is a disappointment. It wasn’t a bad film, but it didn’t do well.

Noni and Graeme were great to work with: they were both fun and witty. We were all Leos, so it wasn’t dull. It felt good to be able to sink my teeth into this film after so long, literally, in the wilderness. It eased the weight on my mind somewhat, a distraction from the disintegration of my family.

The last thing I wanted was another relationship. I just wanted to do my job and go home. After the first week, we all went to a restaurant together. We’d all had a few drinks and we walked back to Jackie’s. I was about to get in my car and head back to my motel when Noni suggested I’d had too much to drink. They offered to let me sleep on their couch; Noni was staying in their spare bedroom. They all went to bed and Noni made coffee. We were drinking coffee and Noni made advances towards me. I was taken aback: I really didn’t see this coming and I didn’t really want it at this stage. One thing led to another, but I have to say it was awkward on my part. I’d been separated from Rosa for eight months, but it was still awkward. Then I thought, Oh well, it’s fun. I’m not exactly cheating on anyone, why not have a fling. That’s all I thought it was and Noni felt the same.

By mid-September the film was over and Georgie and I drove back to Mum and Dad’s in Sydney. It’s a ten-hour drive. I’d had the two-month sabbatical at Kyogle followed by a five-week distraction on the movie. The fling with Noni was interesting and fun, it took me away from the all-encompassing dark place my soul was sitting in. My baby was growing in my true love’s womb and I’d tried to detach and disappear from that. Fight or flight, that was me, and I’d been in flight mode for six months.

I thought about that for ten hours. By the time I arrived in Sydney I was back in fight mode. I’d fight again to see if I could knock down the blockade and return to my family. I was such a bull-at-the-gate dickhead: no finesse, no understanding of the magnitude of the hurt that a deserted pregnant woman would be experiencing. I turned up to Rosa’s and she came to the front door, heavily pregnant and beautiful beyond words. I announced my prepared speech, concocted over many hours of driving south. It was the performance of a desperate man, no, boy. Rosa simply said no and shut the door on me. It would remain metaphorically shut for ten years.

It was time to take care of business and move on. We sold the half-built house on the island to a good friend of ours for a song. I gave everything we had to Rosa and Zadia bar my clothes, car and tools. In those days it was simple if you were not contesting anything, so because of that we used the same solicitor to save money. I contacted Rosa and we went to the solicitor. I turned up at his office and Rosa was already there waiting. We did the deal, Rosa gave me very little eye contact and only spoke if she had to. That sealed it for me. I’d lost the love of my life.

I mooned around my parents’ house and passed my time helping Dad put a big timber deck beside the pool. We had to secure the joists and the rail posts to a concrete slab before we could put the decking on.

I had to go into town one day and Dad was on his own. Being an impatient bastard, he worked on his own. A ramset gun is basically a gun that fires nails into timber like a bullet. Dad had hold of a joist with one hand, the ramset in the other and he fired the nail that was supposed to go through the timber and into the concrete. It didn’t: it hit the concrete and bent the nail, which flew in Dad’s direction. He was crouched over and it hit him just above the knee and came out his upper thigh, just missing the family jewels. It hit the sternum bone in the middle of his chest. It stopped with the head of the nail protruding out of his skin. There was blood flowing everywhere.

Barry was living downstairs at the time.

Dad called out, ‘Barry! Barry!’

Baz ran down from the house.

‘I’ve shot myself with a ramset nail, ring an ambulance, don’t tell your mother.’

The ambulance arrived and they tried to get him on a stretcher. He refused to stand up because he felt it would pull the nail head under his skin. So he walked to the ambulance in a hunched position.

Dad was in with a doctor and a number of interns and they were struggling to remove the nail. By now my brother Brian was waiting just outside. Suddenly Dad’s booming voice thundered out.

‘Brian, Brian!’

Brian raced in, spreading interns. He got to our father. ‘Yes, Dad?’

‘Get those bloody pliers and pull this nail out, these blokes are too piss-weak to do it.’

‘We’ll handle this thank you, Mister Jarratt. Brian, we won’t need your help.’

The doctor warned Dad that the hole in his leg would take a while to mend and it could get infected. He came back a week later and the doc couldn’t believe the improvement. ‘This is remarkable, what have you been doing?’

‘I pour peroxide down each end of the hole and I scrub each end with a scrubbing brush.’

‘Christ, man, doesn’t that burn?’

‘Too right, but if it’s not stingin’ it’s not healing.’

I’d auditioned for the lead role in a musical The Sentimental Bloke at the Melbourne Theatre Company. My agent Bill rang me with the news that I’d got the part and he passed the phone to Noni, who was in his office at the time. She asked me how I was and if I would like to meet her for coffee. I agreed to meet her at Bondi Beach the next day.

We had a coffee, followed by a walk along the coast path. It was very pleasant and it felt good to be alive for the first time in a long time. She told me she couldn’t get me out of her head and that she’d missed me. I told her I’d missed her too, and that I’d really enjoyed our time on the film.

My conscience started talking to me. No, no, this is too soon…Don’t be silly, she’s really nice, you need this…But I’m fucked up…This will straighten you out, you’ve got to get on with your life.

Noni and I started going steady. Yeah, ‘steady’ is a good word.

I arrived in Melbourne in November to rehearse the play. I found a small house in Port Melbourne to rent. I hadn’t done a musical since The Fantastics at the Bondi Pav in 1974. This was a big production with difficult music. I had to learn a mountain of dialogue and it was poetry, rhyming couplets. I had 80 per cent of the words to learn. I had to be exact; you can’t improvise poetry. Graeme Blundell directed it and a bloke called Mike Bishop played Ginger Mick. Mike became one of my absolute best mates and I’m close to his family. I loved Mike’s father, Sid, and when my dad died, Sid became my surrogate father. We lost Sid in early 2015; he was ninety-four. There are absolutely no dads left in my life now. I’ve got a mum, and Rosa’s mother is my surrogate mum. I think she’ll outlive me.

Noni had work of her own to do in Sydney. She turned up now and again, and she was very helpful with my lines. One day I was going through it with her and she suggested we take a break and walk down to the beach. On the way back she said, ‘Go through scene six.’

‘I haven’t got the script.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘If she’s the tart he needs then she’s his queen –’

‘The tart he wants.’

‘How do you know?’

She then did the whole verse. She’s got a photographic memory. She can tell you the meal she ate at a restaurant on 2 April 1979.

We were about to face our first audience. We were only just ready by the skin of our teeth. For someone who’s tone-deaf, Blundell did a great job. We worked very hard on the drama. Blundell said incessantly, ‘If we don’t get the story right, all we’ve got is a bunch of songs.’ After all that, this was his comment to us just before we went on: ‘Forget everything I’ve said. Just face the front and go for the laughs.’ I’ve stolen that wonderful quotation from him. Any time some young kid asks me how to be an actor, that’s what I tell them. ‘Face the front and go for the laughs!’

‘Even if it’s a tragedy?’

‘Especially if it’s a tragedy.’

We went on and I was as nervous as a kitten. So was Mike Bishop. In the opening number Bish accidently thumped me a beauty above my right eye. He’s 6 foot 5. He nearly knocked me out, I was seeing stars, shaking my head and trying to sing the first song. Noni started scribbling on her program, Stop shaking your head. She didn’t know I’d been hit. We were in the wings and I said to the boys, ‘We’ll get them back in the Romeo and Juliet scene.’ We went on and I said a line that took us four pages ahead. We somehow got back to the speech before and I got to the same spot and did the same thing, putting us four pages ahead. I dropped the ball. The boys were trying to help, but I didn’t hear them. I looked at the stage floor in front of me and my arms were going up and down like a pleading Jewish merchant. I turned towards the back of the theatre and repeated the gestures. In my head I was saying, Why am I doing this, this is madness, If I was filming we’d do take 2. Please open up and swallow me, stage. Somehow we got back on track and we stumbled through the play. It was a disaster. I was sitting in the dressing room at the end of it, mortified. It went on to become a hit and I enjoyed every minute of it after the disastrous start.

Separated before birth

It was a fun summer, but I still didn’t feel right. As lovely as Noni was, she wasn’t Rosa about to give birth. That was where my head and heart stood. On 18 December Zadia called me. My daughter Ebony had arrived on planet Earth. Zadia said she was perfect. I held it together and cried after she hung up. I was doing the play at night so I didn’t see her until the Christmas break. I sent Rosa ten blood-red roses. There wasn’t a note, but she figured they were from me. When I turned up at Rosa’s house and knocked on the door, my eight-year-old angel opened the door with a heavenly smile. She was a bright girl, and she knew exactly what I was going through. She was being as kind and loving to me as she could possibly be. I entered the front door and took an immediate left turn into the bedroom. She took me over to the bassinet and there she was, my Ebony, another little dark beauty. She was sleeping. I lifted her gently into my arms and looked at her and looked and looked at her; her eyes slowly opened and she looked at me for the first time. I started to cry. I didn’t want to because my brave Zadia was using every essence of her eight-year-old body and soul to support me. I said I was sorry and I sat down and the tears kept coming. Nine months of bottled fatherly angst and guilt was pouring out of me as though from a broken dam.

Zadia put her arm on my shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Pappa.’

‘She’s beautiful, she is so beautiful.’

‘She’s very beautiful.’

I can’t tell you how long I stayed, but I don’t think it was long. I felt the whole thing was too tough for my little girl. Knowing Rosa was sitting somewhere in the house, probably not in a very good state under the circumstances, was agonising for me as well.

When I was looking down at my baby daughter, I made an oath to myself: No matter what happens, I’m the only person in the world she’s ever going to call Daddy and I will be in her life every step of the way. Thirty years later, I’m the only one she calls Daddy. Dad mainly, Pappa sometimes and Daddy when she wants something. And she gets it! I call her Ebs most of the time, and Ebony when I want something. And I get it!

I returned to Melbourne with Zadia to continue The Bloke musical. Noni was there. We had a few days before I had to go back to work, so we went down the Great Ocean Road for four days. Noni didn’t know this but I felt really weird. I so wanted it to be Zadia, Rosa and Ebony. I almost said to Noni, ‘This is not happening for me.’ She really loved me at the time and she made that very evident. I loved her too, but not like I loved Rosa. It was complicated. Zadia was there, the play was happening and Noni was about to fly to Hawaii to be interviewed for an American kids’ show. I went to the beach on my own, I found a private spot where no one could hear me and sang Phil Collins’s ‘Against All Odds’ at the top of my lungs over losing Rosa. Madness. I had a new girlfriend and I was singing my heart out because I’d lost the love of my life.

The trip down the Great Ocean Road was wonderful. It’s a magnificent piece of Australia. If you haven’t done it, do it. It was summer and a great opportunity for Noni and Zadia to get to know each other. The three of us sitting in the cabin of my FJ ute driving past the Twelve Apostles, it doesn’t get more Australian than that.

Back to Melbourne and back to work. Noni flew off to Hawaii and then back to Sydney. Zadia came to the theatre every night and, thankfully, loved it. Backstage people would dress her up and cover her in outrageous make-up. She loved watching the show from the wings. She knew all the songs and dance steps and wasn’t afraid to perform them. I thought, Oh no, don’t tell me we’ve got an actress. She could have been a great actress. When she was in her twenties I told her she’d be great at it. Her answer was, ‘Are you kidding? I’d rather put needles in my eyes!’ The best thing was the one-on-one time I had with Zads for three weeks. We both had rollerblades and we went everywhere. Port Melbourne and surrounds are relatively flat. We’d blade to the tram and go catch a movie or blade along the waterfront down to St Kilda. It was sad when she had to go home.

Part of the deal with this play was a Victorian tour. It was a great play to tour. It’s a very ‘Australian’ piece. This was thirty years ago, so a lot of country folk were C J Dennis fans. I chose to stay in the pubs: such atmosphere and wonderful characters. They’re laid-back in the bush, ten o’clock closing unless something interesting’s going on. We’d sing and drink into the wee hours. A lot of these joints had an out-of-tune upright ‘goanna’ with a few stuck keys, but that didn’t stop our mob from tickling the ivories and belting out a tune.

Donny Bridges is the other lifelong pal I got out of doing The Bloke. Donny has a beautiful wife called Jude. They are a magic couple: you just know some couples are there for life, and they are of this ilk. Early on in the tour Donny spotted a girl who did look a lot like Jude: nice figure, petite, dark brown hair. ‘That girl looks a lot like Jude,’ he said.

Actors love a running gag. As the tour wore on, Donny would occasionally comment, ‘That girl looks a lot like Jude.’ They were looking less and less like Jude every day. We travelled up north, then back through the mallee and along the south coast to Melbourne, out towards Gippsland and back along the coast. Towards the end we were in a beer garden and in walked this 6-foot-2, glammed-up, platinum-blonde trannie. This was manna from heaven for Donny. ‘That woman looks a lot like Jude.’ The end of a great tour with the perfect gag – Donny couldn’t be happier.

Straight from that tour back to Sydney. I went to see Zadia and Ebony, who was still too little to take anywhere. Zadia and I sat and held her. It was lovely, not as full-on emotionally as the first visit. From there I had about a week with Noni before I headed off for a film in Cairns. It was a very enjoyable time with Noni, doing the inner-city thing, going to shows and great restaurants. It felt like a romantic holiday after the marathon of The Bloke. We were still courting and it still felt new. I think we were cautious, as we’d both come out of previous relationships, although the difference was that she’d chosen to leave her relationship and I’d been kicked out of mine.

Filming in the big north

I arrived in Cairns to do Dark Age, a film about a rogue 25-foot crocodile. I played the lead character, a wildlife officer. This was before CGI. The crocodile was animatronic and it didn’t work. It cost $250,000 to build, which was a lot of money in 1986. The first fortnight we had to shoot around the croc because it wasn’t ready. The big day came: they brought out the croc (nicknamed Chris) and lowered it into the billabong. It started swimming snakelike straight away. We all cheered! Then the midsection started to sink, and you could hear the animatronics fusing. Finally it was just floating around. All you could see were its head and tail; the rest was underwater. Back to the drawing board.

The art department came to the rescue. They built a very realistic crocodile head, and put two long wooden shovel handles inside it to open and shut the mouth. The diver who operated it had to hold their breath so you couldn’t see bubbles when the croc was snapping away. We called the croc head Christ (our saviour). Croc Christ never came good. Its mouth opened so slowly you could have a cut lunch while you waited. I kept saying to Arch Nicolson, the director, ‘It’s not too late, turn it into a comedy.’ This is Tarantino’s favourite Aussie film, and he has the only master print of it.

There was a scene in which we were being towed through the water (it was supposed to be the croc towing our boat). Andrew Lesnie was in a 16-foot aluminium punt behind us and joined to us by a rope. He had a Panavision camera at the front, two lights, four batteries, himself and two assistants. The power of the two boats being pulled made Andrew’s punt nosedive and sink. David Gulpilil was sitting at the outboard. He jumped up and wrapped his arms around the film magazine on top of the camera. He held the camera and everything else above the waterline while an assistant released the safety cable. David then pulled the heavy camera on board our boat. The camera got wet but the film stock was saved. We joked he went to such lengths to save his close-ups.

Nial was living in Cairns at the time and I got him a job with the grips for the duration of the film. It was great to work with my big mate for eight weeks. When Andrew’s boat sank to the bottom, Nial, being part fish, started diving down to retrieve the equipment. He seemed to be under for a long time and we were getting worried. Next thing it was like watching Godzilla emerge from Tokyo Bay. First his head broke the surface, followed by the rest of him. He came out carrying four car batteries, two in each hand.

The last two weeks of the film took me to Alice Springs for the first time. This extraordinary ancient land blew me away. I couldn’t take my eyes off the surroundings. I climbed to the top of the ranges and watched the full moon rise. Watching the shimmering orange full moon light up the rich red ranges would have to be my closest experience to dreaming in reality.

I was obsessed by it. Up the road from where we were staying was another crew on a show called The Last Frontier. They put on a barbecue for us. I was having a drink watching the sun go down over the MacDonnells when the wonderful Jack Thompson joined me.

I said to Jack, ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it, mate? So red, it’s like Mars.’

‘It might be Mars to you, J J, but it’s home to me.’

Ah, Jack, ever the poet. One of my hopes before I die is to do at least a scene with Jack. I haven’t had the opportunity yet.

I arrived back in Sydney in time to help Noni move to Melbourne. She’d been offered her first directing job on a telemovie for the ABC, so she’d need to be there for pre-production, production and post-production, about four months. I didn’t have any work for a while so it was an opportunity for us to get to know each other, really. So far things had been a bit haphazard with our different work schedules. It was a good time. She had her share of hassles with the film and I was a good sounding board for her and a shoulder to lean on when she needed it. I found the love and I felt comfortable with her. The closeness developed during that time. I found her a lovely house in Brighton near the beach. It became a little haven and the place for us to consolidate our relationship. I went to Sydney a fair bit to see my daughters and towards the end of Noni’s time with the movie, I picked up the role of a hunter in a kids’ miniseries, Dusty.

Apart from Blue Fin, all the kids’ stuff I’ve done has been mediocre at best. I’ve found it bland and banal, so I don’t have strong memories of it. Dusty was one of those. The director was hard work, which didn’t help. I got to ride a lot and work with Jane Menelaus, who played the female lead, and our characters had a thing goin’ on. She was great to work with, very funny, and she made the work bearable.

Noni and I moved back to Sydney. We’d made up our mind to get some property in the Blue Mountains. We found a tiny, run-down timber house in Blackheath with sweeping views to the 300-metre cliffs that supported the township of Shipley, sitting on the plateau. The property was on an acre, completely private, sweeping down a thick green lawn to the creek below. It only cost $30,000 but it needed major renovations and extensions. Over the next twelve months, I doubled the size of it. I added a living room, a massive main bedroom with a big ensuite bathroom and a dressing room. I doubled the size of the kitchen and the second bedroom and wrapped the front and one side with an expansive deck. Throw in a garage and a brick courtyard off the kitchen courtesy of brother Baz, and you’ve got a great home.

At this time I also found a 60-acre property not far away at Dargan. I owned a chunk of typical Blue Mountains, including the top of a mountain, 300-metre cliffs that stretched for nearly a kilometre and plunged down into the Hartley Valley, a creek that ran to the cliff and became a waterfall, caves in the cliffs with Aboriginal hand paintings, and endless views so far west you could see the outskirts of Perth on a clear day. And the price! Thirty thousand dollars, bargain. Noni and I had both gone through break-ups and we thought it’d be prudent to cover ourselves for worst-case scenarios.

We moved to our home in Blackheath. Within a few months the honeymoon was over. Reality had set in and the things that niggled each other started leading to the odd argument. Noni and I are both strong characters. We’re in many ways alike, I think: we’re both Leos, we’re both headstrong. I thought my ideas were clearly the most sensible and logical, and she felt exactly the same about hers. I was still at the stage in life where I’d think, She’s wrong, why can’t she see I’m right?

I now believe that my interpretation of what’s right can be different to another’s interpretation of what’s right, and you sort it through discussion and compromise. It didn’t happen like that back then: we’d argue. Noni and I would have words, but I wouldn’t get to use mine. Noni has the ability to talk in very rapid paragraphs and I just couldn’t keep up, so I generally lost the argument. It was like a boxing match: she’d be punching my lights out with words for twelve rounds, and by the last round all I had left was a knockout punch, so I’d lose my temper and start yelling at her. But her knockout punch was just as savage as mine. She had a big voice and she’s a trained actor, so yelling was not a problem for her. She always gave as good as she got. I think we were our own worst enemies. I was thirty-four, she was thirty-three. We’re from the same generation of parents who felt from the neck up and suffered emotional immaturity. You’re only as good as your teachers, and sometimes you have to parent yourself. It’s what brought me undone with Rosa and it was bringing me undone again. In the long run, thanks to Noni, I sought counselling for our relationship and my addictions. It changed me for the better.

Fields of Fire for three years, yahoo!

In September 1986, I went to Yamba in northern New South Wales to play one of the leads, Jacko, in Fields of Fire, a miniseries about cane cutters in North Queensland in the thirties and forties. It rated its socks off in Australia and the UK, and we went on to do Fields of Fire II and III, so we went to Yamba every September for three years. We rechristened it ‘the annual holidays’. We were all given apartments overlooking the beach at Yamba. It’s a fantastic part of the world, at the mouth of the mighty Clarence River.

We had a ball making that show. Ollie Hall played Tiny, the leader of our gang. The bloke’s huge, he’d played front row for the Australian Wallabies. My nickname for him was Pantech. We’d go for a run on the beach and he was fit, kept up with the mob no trouble with the wind at his back. When we turned around and ran back into the wind, his massive frame was as hard to push through the wind as a pantech truck.

Harold Hopkins played Whacker, who ran the local pub. He was a country boy from Queensland, eight years my senior, a very fit outdoorsy kind of bloke who built his own home, loved the surf, loved his Rugby League and didn’t mind a joint. We got on like a house on fire and he soon became one of my best mates.

Kris McQuade played Elsie, the owner of the pub and the mother of two good-looking young daughters. Kris was a year ahead of me at NIDA, easily one of my favourite Australian actors. She’s a very earthy, gutsy woman and a good friend. It was an absolute pleasure to work with her.

I lived across from Ken Radley, who played one of our gang. We’re both coffee-holics. Every morning he’d perk up the brew and scream out from his balcony ‘Coffee’s up,’ and if we had the day off we’d top off the cuppa with a bit of weed.

I think I enjoyed this show so much because the blokes involved were ‘blokes’. Ken certainly was. They seemed to find all the top blokes in the acting arena and cast them in this miniseries, including Todd Boyce, who was a Yank playing a Pommie. He had great sense of humour and could handle the Yank jokes. When his character got killed in a plane crash, it helped that I liked him a lot, because it made it easy to play the grief.

Finally, the legend that is big, bad Roger Ward, the star of Ozploitation, Stone, Turkey Shoot and Mad Max, to name a few. Roger played the head of our rival gang, the bad guys. He’s larger than life and very funny. He was only fifty in those days and extremely fit. He was about fifteen years our senior and we’d tease him. If he crossed the road we’d race across, grab him by the elbows and help him up the curb.

There were many great moments in the three years we did this series. These are my favourites. It was just on dark and Harold and I were in Ken Radley’s EH ute, driving back from a day’s shoot. We’d rolled up a big joint out of a large bag and we were passing it around. On the outskirts of town, the headlights of the car behind started flashing wildly. It was a white Commodore pursuit vehicle. We pulled over and Ken started to panic.

‘What’ll we do with the dope?’

‘Just give it here, Kenny, and we’ll shove it way under the seat. Calm down or we’re fucked.’

We looked back at the cop car. One big bloke was out heading our way and the other big bloke was leaning in talking on a handheld radio speaker. He put the speaker down and headed towards us.

‘Stay in the car, Kenny, and keep calm. Wind down your window.’

The big cop leaned in. It was Ollie Hall and the other cop was Roger Ward. The car was Ollie’s hotted-up Commodore. Bastards! We got them back.

For the pub scenes we drank a low-alcohol brew called Northern Light, which looked very much like full-strength. Ollie, being a big man, could hold his grog. We subtly put it out there that Kenny was one hell of a drinker. Ollie thought that was a joke, and he reckoned he could drink Ken under the table. We set up a drinking competition and we thought, why not do it on the pub set and have Harold serve the combatants with beer jugs. So Harold filled Ken’s with Northern Light and Ollie drank full-strength. Ollie became legless and Kenny pissed a lot and remained sober.

Ollie could hardly stand up but he was competitive. ‘Just one more, give us just one more, that’ll knock Ken over. Come on! One more.’

Laugh! I nearly wet myself.

It was very common for Italian migrants to head for sugar-cane country. There were three gangs involved: our gang, the bad gang and the Italian gang. The last consisted of two actors and ten extras from the district who were the real deal. These guys had came to Australia as young men in their twenties, as Rosa’s father had. They were now locals in their late forties and early fifties. The ten extras were fit blokes for their age. We were shooting all the cane- cutting sequences and it was a big day. Families turned up with picnic baskets and homemade wine to see their men cutting cane like the old days.

They lined up, spat on their hands and gripped their cane knives, ready to show their families their amazing cane-cutting abilities.

‘Camera’s rolling?’

‘Set.’

‘Sound?’

‘Speed.’

‘And action!’ Suddenly there’s sugar cane flying back at a rate of knots, each bloke trying to outdo the other. Mums and wives are smiling widely and clapping, kids are jumping up and down, the rest of us are watching in awe of these middle-aged cane-cutting machines.

The AD called ‘Cut!’ but they kept going. ‘Cut!’ – they keep going harder. ‘Cut, cut, cut!’ – they cut even harder! The AD worked it out. ‘Stop!’

They all stopped, exhausted. ‘Jesus Christ, we cutting, cutting, we too fuckin’ old for this shit, what you try to do, kill us?’

We did a sequence in which we burnt the cane. The drama was that our mate is caught in the fire and we know it. So we were to stand in front of the oncoming fire until it petered out at the edge of the crop, then we’d rush in looking for our mate. Now, a cane fire is spectacular and full-on. It’s only lit when there’s a wind to push it, so it’s over fairly fast.

We had cane experts with us on the fields. I went up and enquired, ‘Once the fire goes down, it’d happen that fast that the cane wouldn’t be hot, right?’

‘Correct.’

‘So the second the fire drops, we could run in, we’d know that, right?’

‘You would.’

‘Thanks.’

So the fire was raging towards us, and six of us were running up and down yelling out to our mate. The fire dropped and we were off, racing into the burnt cane. We went about 50 metres and we couldn’t breathe. There was no oxygen because it had all been burnt. We turned and ran back out. We cleared the cane and sucked in, desperate to breathe. The two cane experts were rolling around laughing their guts out.

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘You didn’t ask!’

Very funny. Bastards.

Back to Blackheath for Christmas 1986. Dad retired at sixty and came to help me build the house. Noni and I were doing all right, so we could afford to pay him. He protested, so I told him that if he wouldn’t accept pay I didn’t want him to work. It panned out well, in that it gave him some extra cash and also gave me an opportunity to work with a much older and more mellow father. Jesus, he was a funny man. I had a few laughs with him that summer.

We were walking down the street to the Blackheath shops and there was a young woman in short shorts in front of us.

‘Look at that,’ he commented on her bouncing bum, ‘like two possums fighting in a paper bag!’

‘Jesus, Dad, you’re a dirty old man.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are, you’re old enough to be her father – grandfather, even.’

‘I’ll tell ya why I’m not a dirty old man. If you can still raise the sword, you’re still in the fight.’

I bought a two-door 1964 XP Falcon fitted with a V8. I’d always loved these cars and this was just what I was looking for.

I had it railed up from Melbourne and Dad went with me to pick it up. I’d forgotten my cheque book (no cards in those days), so Dad went to his bank on the way and drew out cash for me. It was in Sydney’s west. I stood outside waiting for the old man. He was sixty-five, but still hard-working and fit; he looked old because he was bald. Next minute he was yelling from inside the bank. I raced in and he was staring down three punks sitting in the bank.

He said to me, ‘You take those two and I’ll take the big bastard.’

I immediately played the game. ‘What the fuck’s going on with you dickheads?’

‘Nothin’.’

And they took off. It turns out that Dad had been lined up behind an old couple being served by a good-looking female teller. The punks were saying rude shit to her like, ‘I’d like to jump on her’ and ‘I’ll go sloppy second’. Dad had snarled, ‘Shut your filthy mouths or I’ll shut them for ya!’

‘Yeah, and I’ll punch ya fuckin’ head in, you baldy-headed old cunt.’

‘John!’

You’ve gotta hand it to the old bastard.

Around this time my one-year-old daughter Ebony had surgery on her eyes. She had turned eyes and they had to operate to straighten them, one of four operations she had. I met Rosa at the hospital. We had enough maturity to put our misgivings aside for the day to support each other and especially our daughter.

I knew exactly what they were going to do to her and it wasn’t pretty. We were walking in to surgery with her on a stretcher and I fell to bits. Every part of me didn’t want this fragile little baby to experience this. I felt powerless and I couldn’t bring myself to watch them anaesthetise her. Rosa was much stronger and went in without me. I don’t think this did anything to help our rocky relationship.

Whenever I picked Zadia up, we’d spend three or four hours down at the park or out and about with Ebony. I’d fitted a car seat for her. Rosa had as little to do with me as she could. It was tough, but we all kept on keeping on.

Things were still up and down with Noni. When things were good, they were very good: we had fun and laughs, we enjoyed a battle of the wits, one-upping each other. We had great meals together – she’s a great cook.

The good thing about the mountains is that it’s rarely too hot to have a fire in the evenings. One of the remnants of the original house was the open fireplace. We’d sit there over a nice bottle of wine, nattering away or listening to music, followed by a video movie. Just the two of us, living was easy. Then we’d have a blue and I’d run away. That was my defence mechanism: run away, hide, come back and wait for it to go away, keep the peace at all costs, resolve nothing. We had one hell of a blue one day and I thought, I don’t need this, I had this with my father, I had it with Rosa, now I’m having it with Noni. It’s me. I do this to people, obviously – I rub them up the wrong way. Do Noni a favour, she doesn’t need this, I don’t, it’s time to move on.

I did all this dialogue in my head over a long bushwalk. Noni had to go into town on the train at 1 p.m. I thought I’d get home after that, pack my bags and take flight. Noni must have sensed this. Georgie and I returned from the walk and she was on the couch red-eyed from crying. Two hours later I was willing to keep the peace and try again. That could be on my headstone: ‘He tried again and again and again.’

Noni told me she was unble to have children, which was fine with me. I definitely didn’t want any more. I was satisfied with my two daughters.

But in April 1987 Noni was pregnant. She travelled with me to do a telemovie in Darwin, followed by Fields of Fire II. She managed her pregnancy really well, and wasn’t all that sick from it. She got terrible eczema on her lower legs in Darwin but a specialist soon cured it, so apart from being a small woman with a big baby, she was okay.

We had a home birth and Charlie came into the world on 2 January 1988. It was a fairly straightforward labour – well, as straightforward as labour can be, it’s always wonderfully surreal. We had two midwives, and there was a funny exchange between them as Charlie was beginning to emerge.

‘Do you think he’s coming bum-first?’

Noni pushed and Charlie crowned. You could see his hair before he went back in.

‘Well, if he’s coming bum-first, he’s sure got a hairy arse!’

Our bedroom had large windows taking in the mountain views. Just before Charlie was born, the house was enshrouded in mist. All you could see out the windows was thick fog. As Charlie started to crown, there was thunder. He arrived on the bed, the midwife lifted him onto Noni, and I cut the cord. The cloud lifted and a flock of colourful butterflies flew up from the ground past our window, and in a matter of minutes the mist came in again. This kid had to be special. He’s twenty-seven now and believe me, he’s special and I’m blessed.

Zadia was with us at the time and she was very taken by the fact that she was there when her brother arrived. She feels there’s a special bond with him because of it. Ebony and Charlie are only two years apart, and they spent just about every second weekend and holiday until their teens together, so they’re close too.

Having a baby in the house from the get-go doesn’t give you much chance to catch your breath. Charlie wasn’t the easiest baby in the world: he was terrible sleeper and he didn’t sleep through until he was two. On that day, Noni and I woke in the morning light. We looked at each and said in unison, ‘He slept through!’ A couple of beats and then in unison, ‘He’s dead!’ We ran down to his bedroom to look at him, and he was breathing. ‘He’s not dead, he slept through,’ we said – and that woke him up.

When Charlie was a month old, I found he slept better on my chest. It didn’t worry me; I can sleep upside down on a bed of nails in a cyclone. It was February and it was hot, so I was sleeping in a singlet.

Noni woke me. ‘There’s someone in the house, they’ve turned on the kitchen light!’

Next thing, this bloke walked in with a torch. I placed Charlie next to Noni, rolled out of bed and started punching the bejesus out of this bloke. We went into the lounge room. The strangest things go through your mind at these times. I was halfway across the lounge room and I was thinking, I’m punching the shit out of this bloke with no pants on, this must look ridiculous.

Then he pulled a six-inch flick-knife and tried to stab me. Luckily Noni hadn’t put the ironing board away, so I picked it up and used it like a shield. I thought, If he gets me, he’ll stab Noni and Charlie. I had to get rid of this bastard somehow.

‘Noni, ring the cops, triple zero, ring the cops!’

The bastard ran out of the house. I later found out he was deaf. Luckily he could read lips.

I pulled on my shorts and grabbed my Fields of Fire cane knife (this is a knife).

Noni looked worried. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m gonna find him and chop his legs. Don’t worry, I won’t kill him.’ And I went looking for him. Luckily for everyone I didn’t find him. You can fuck with an Irish Australian but don’t fuck with his family.

They arrested the idiot a week later. He still had his flick-knife, the dickhead. When he went to court in Katoomba, we had to turn up because he pleaded not guilty. I looked around and figured they’d bring him into court down the other end of a long hallway. I told Noni I was going to the toilet and went and sat at the door at the end of the hall. If they brought him in I was going to king-hit him, and I didn’t care that I might be jailed for it. It didn’t happen: he ended up pleading guilty and we didn’t have to go in. I told the cops I didn’t want to know the sentence because we didn’t want to know when he’d be released.

We’d spent a fair bit of money on the house, so we were short of a quid. I had a couple of gigs but not until later in the year. Noni was offered a play, Frankie and Johnny at the Clair de Lune, in April, only three months after giving birth. I felt terribly guilty but Noni impressed upon me that she was perfectly healthy and she could do the job. And she did: she brought the house down, as usual. If you want to see how well Noni can act, watch a film called Fran. In the script, the character of Fran has no redeeming features; she’s a terrible mother and a selfish bitch. Noni played her with so much heart that you can’t help feeling for her. You forgive her. Her performance is brilliant; she is one of the world’s great actors and she won another Best Actor AFI for Fran. She’s won two Logies, two FCCA awards, four AFI awards plus four other nominations.

Noni was breastfeeding Charlie during the play. I sat through the first half in the dressing room and Noni would feed him during interval, then Charlie and I would head to our flat. We got a system happening and it worked quite well.

Noni and I both got leading roles alongside Nigel Havers and David Gulpilil in a miniseries called Naked Under Capricorn, set in the late 1800s, which we christened Naked Under Nigel. Noni played Nigel’s wife and I played the bad drover next door. It was four hours of television and Noni and I were only in one scene together, so when she was working I’d look after Charlie and vice versa.

Having a baby on set, we needed a caravan, and Bill, our agent, had that in our contract. We turned up on set and there was a big Hollywood trailer. Charlie had pooed, so we ducked into the trailer and changed him on the table. During this, the first AD came in with Nigel Havers. We said our hellos and apologised for our son’s bad timing. Nigel seemed cool, but the AD wasn’t. He asked me to step outside, where he explained that the trailer wasn’t ours, it was Nigel’s. He then pointed out ours: an old unregistered Viscount which we had to share with wardrobe. These bastards put an actor from England into a six-berth megatrailer and put the lowly colonial actors with a six-month-old baby into the stinking-hot front end of a rundown Viscount caravan. I said, ‘Where have you got Gulpilil, under a piece of bark?’ After much swearing from Agent Bill, we ended up with a little two-berth Swagman campervan. Yahoo.

Funnily enough, I enjoyed making this show. The actors were great. Nigel was a tonne of fun, Gulpilil was always a pleasure to be with, the crew were terrific, the director was a pain and the producer was wanting. The location was Alice Springs, so no complaints there.

The direction was so bad that Nigel and I would leave for location early and rehearse the scenes in the scrub before we got to set, then we’d stick with it no matter what, as the director was quite often way off beam. Noni wanted to kill him; he called her ‘Princess’, brave man.

There was a sequence where I had to push 300 head of cattle into a holding yard single-handed. Not easy to do. We created a funnel, a fence leading up to the gate on one side and the crew trucks in a line on the other side of the gate. The trucks were framed out. There were three cameras shooting it. My instructions from the director were to get the cattle in, close the gate, move in among the cattle and then they’d cut. I did it first take! I rode in as instructed, cracking the whip and waited for cut, but it didn’t happen. The director was a long, bony urban cowboy. He was beside the camera, yelling at me. I couldn’t hear a thing except a lot of loud mooing. Now, I’m old school, I keep going until we cut. So I was looking at this dude trying to work out what he’s saying, while still in character cracking the whip. This mongrel got the shits and jumped down among the cows, which parted, allowing him to walk up to me. I could now hear him and he was very angry, swearing at me profusely, so I cracked the whip at him. That shut him up! I was very popular after that, with everyone except him.