Wolf Creek

At around the same time as meeting Quentin, I got home from McLeod’s to find a script waiting for me: Wolf Creek by Greg McLean. I read it. Fucking full-on. I thought, if this Greg guy can pull this off, it could be a bit of a hit in the horror-genre world.

A couple of weeks later I met him over a coffee in Brunswick Street, Melbourne. He was living above a shop at the time with the arse out of his strides. Luckily for me, he was at NIDA in the early nineties when I played the hard-arsed cop in Dead Heart, so when he wrote Wolf Creek I was the actor he was thinking about.

I asked him all the pertinent questions to ascertain whether he had the goods or not. The film was to be shot on digital, which was still very new at the time, for $1.2 million, chickenshit for what we had to accomplish. He’d never directed a film before, the cinematographer had never shot a film before and the backpackers were going to be Australian actresses because they couldn’t afford English ones. This was a real worry: if the accents are off, you lose your audience. I walked away from the meeting in a quandary. I thought we were fucked, and that the film would be below par. On the other hand, I was impressed with Greg: he was bright and knew what he was talking about, he knew what he was up against and he seemed to be on top of it. I thought that if he could get the script on the screen it’d be okay. He exploded it onto the screen!

They raised the $1.2 million and I started getting into Mick Taylor’s rancid skin. I’m a father and grandfather, so for me the only thing sicker than a serial killer is a paedophile. It’s tough playing a serial killer, but the world is full of them and their ilk. It’s a sad part of the human condition and films should be a reflection of society. It was an amazing challenge to play a character who was anathema to me.

I still didn’t understand serial killers or mass murderers, so I decided to work on his justification. I don’t have any problem with culling feral animals like foxes, wild horses, pigs, donkeys, camels and cane toads, but I don’t like cruelty, which I have seen from so-called ‘normal people’ in the bush. So I put Mick in that zone. Mick can’t stand all these bloody low-life young pricks from foreign countries backpacking through his backyard. Also he’s got to drive a long way to the coast to hire a prostitute. He’s in the pub one night and he and his mates start bitching about backpackers, that they’re no better than any other feral animal. Mick decides he’ll start culling backpackers as well as pigs. You can have more fun with them, play games and save money on petrol and prostitutes. Perfect!

As Tarantino says, no art form does violence better than film. Violence is in our nature: football, boxing, ice hockey, we love it. Films are largely about superheroes, villains, wars, Westerns, gangsters, coppers – even the comedy is full of violence, people falling off things, running into things, cartoons especially. Why is this? Maybe it’s primitive. We love action and horror, but why? It’s the same as when we watch a tough game of football. You can see it and imagine how much a crunching tackle would hurt without actually copping it. It’s the same with the movies. It’s why we love roller-coasters: you can feel the sensation of falling off a cliff without hitting the bottom.

The need for violent adrenaline is in our nature, but so is love. We’ve all got to learn to enjoy the physical without hurting innocents. If you want to thump someone, do martial arts or boxing; if you want to slam someone into the dirt, join a football team; if you want to fire bullets, join a firing range or go pig hunting. If you want sex, pay a woman, don’t rape one. I’d rather die than allow myself to kill my family or sexually assault a child.

Mick was a rough, tough outback bloke with a sense of humour. I thought to myself, Whom do I know that fits this bill? Dad! So Mick Taylor is an impersonation of my father. I hasten to add that Dad was not psychopathic or evil, so I added ‘evil serial killer’ to the mix. Dad had a really deep voice; I haven’t, so I made Mick’s voice gravelly. I said to Greg that I wanted a scary laugh that started as a chuckle, so that by the end of the movie it would be like Jaws music. I practised for six months until I found the Laugh. When I first did it my Labrador dog, Buddy, turned his head to one side and looked very concerned, and so the Laugh was born.

We shot the first week of the film in Adelaide. I wasn’t involved in those scenes, so I hired a car and headed into the outback on my own. I drove from Adelaide to Lake Eyre, an eight-hour, 700 kilometre drive north. I enjoyed the solitude and tried to cloak myself in Mick’s demeanour. I’ve always loved the vastness of the outback. I passed abandoned homesteads and rusted cars, trucks and machinery, the rotting remnants of hardship and failure being gulped back into the relentless red earth. Tough country. Mick Taylor was among it all the time; he had to be one tough motherfucker. I also spent a lot of time doing weights and thumping a punching bag.

After a couple of days I rolled into Marree near Lake Eyre. It had been raining and you couldn’t drive to Lake Eyre, which was very disappointing. Marree had a beautiful old country pub, where I booked in for the night and wandered into the bar for a meal. It’s a small town and quite a few of them, including women and children, were in the bar. Within two minutes a woman yelled out for all to hear, ‘Hey, are you Terry from McLeod’s Daughters?’ They all twigged to it and the game was up. I excused myself and said I was going to take a walk before sundown. I walked out, got in the car and left. After a few k’s I managed to shake the Terry out of me and went back to being Mick.

The biz has taken me to every corner of this unique continent. Now I was off to the Flinders Ranges to start work. Another ancient, desolate outback mountain range with gnarly rocky ridges, the tops of the mountains like the spine of some monster that once roamed in the Dreamtime. The perfect home for a nasty outback serial killer.

The first line I uttered as Mick was, ‘What the bloody hell are you buggers doin’ out here?’ I’d figured out Mick’s gravelly voice and his crazy laugh, but I didn’t know if it was going to work. I thought it would be either bloody good or a bad Warner Bros cartoon character, so I was very nervous. I opened my mouth, gave it my best shot, and it worked.

I loved what we called the ‘Mad Max’ sequence. I’m a Holden man and loved that Statesman. I did 95 per cent of the driving, belting flat strap along that outback highway. A few months later I ran into the car wrangler. He said, ‘We drove that Statesman around a corner a coupla weeks ago, weren’t speedin’ or anything, and the bloody front end caved in. Lucky it didn’t happen to you at a hundred miles an hour on Wolf Creek, eh?’

Yeah, very fuckin’ funny, I don’t think! What can I say: the perils of low-budget filmmaking.

When the manic car chase ends, the victim’s car flips and it all goes quiet. Mick drives slowly up to the crash site and gets out of the car, then the shot goes wide. Me on one side of the screen and my victim on the other. It stays on the wide shot all the way. She stumbles out of the car with her back to me, she gets to her knees; I slowly raise the rifle and shoot her in the back, off my hip. It was so cold and terrifying because it was like news footage. It was like the famous footage of the officer in Vietnam who raised his revolver and shot the Viet Cong prisoner in the head. Most directors would have gone to a series of close-ups: boots hitting the ground, her eyes, my eyes, finger on trigger, mid-shot blood blowing out of her chest. After the frantic car chase, it was even more cold and chilling. This was when I knew I was working with a great director.

Back to Mick’s hide-out and the torcher scenes. The three actors I worked with – Cassandra Magrath, Kestie Morassi and Nathan Phillips – were brilliant. I asked Kestie and Cassandra if there was anything that was too worrying for them. They both said the same thing, independently of each other, which was basically, ‘I’m fine, I have complete trust in you.’ They are brave women and they gave as good as they got. Cassie also said, ‘I’ve signed up for this, I’m not backing away from any of it.’ Kestie was like a bloody wildcat; I thought if she got off that pole during a take, she’d tear me to pieces. I loved working with them and Nathan. The little motherfucker, you never knew from take to take what would come out of him. I did a couple of ad-lib scenes in the film with him; he’s dynamite to work with.

It was interesting inhabiting the Mick character. I’m not a method actor; if I’m asked, my reply is, ‘No, I’m a professional actor.’ But with Mick, I had to go there because we’re not the same human being. Many of the characters I’ve played are not that far from me. I became a loner during the shoot and I didn’t mingle much with the other actors. If I did, I’d have a bit of Mick running through me. For instance, I said to them, ‘I’ve had a look at the pool scene, you looked so young and vibrant and fresh, I just thought, Veal!’ On set, I definitely stayed in character. You couldn’t be having a coffee during a break as John and when they said, ‘We’re ready for the stabbing scene,’ immediately turn into Mick.

Greg always kept the camera going after the scene finished in case we ad-libbed some ‘gold’. At the end of a scene I got shot in the neck, he didn’t say cut and there was nowhere to go. I told him off as Mick and it scared the shit out of him. ‘Ya gotta say cut, ya stupid cunt. I’ve been shot – that’s it, the fuckin’ end, say cut! Fuck me!’

We had a ball. There were so many good people on this film. Matt Hearn, the producer, mortgaged his house to make the film. He put in so much energy, he was relentless. He also sold the film really well; he came from an advertising background.

Will Gibson, the cinematographer, was brilliant. His handheld stuff was out of this world. He was part of every scene. Here’s a great example: the kids were ad-libbing in the car, Nathan and Cassie in the front, Kestie in the back, making up dialogue. While the two in the front were talking, Will panned to Kestie in the back as she started talking. He instinctively knew she would.

Des Kenneally did sound. It rained twenty-one days out of twenty-six. When we were doing the torcher scenes in a tin shack out in the open, it was pissing down with rain drumming on the tin roof. I didn’t want to have to record my voice to the image at the post-studio (called ADR).

I said to Des in character, ‘Hey Des, I don’t wanna havta do fuckin’ ADR on these torcher scenes, get my drift.’

‘Yeah sure, mate.’

I didn’t have to record one word. He’s the best. I got sick of seeing him jump up to collect awards at the 2014 AACTAs.

We wrapped in the middle of 2004. I got make-up to cut my hair really short, I had a shower and a shave and I shrugged Mick off for the next eight years, sort of. Funnily enough, I did Wolf Creek during a midyear break from filming on McLeod’s Daughters. I didn’t finish with them until 2005.

Meanwhile, back in the real world

Mum went downhill fast after Dad died. At first she was okay living alone. Barry and his family moved to Nowra, where my parents had moved in 2002. Baz kept a close eye on Mum and Mum’s neighbours took her into their hearts. They became like family to her. Dementia slowly took hold and unfortunately, in late 2004, things fell apart for her. She got lost down the street a couple of times and she ended up in hospital with dehydration and a urinary tract infection.

It was so unfair. My mother didn’t drink or smoke. She ate well, and she had an amazing figure for her age. She exercised regularly, she did calisthenics. She could sit on the floor, put her head on her knees and her hands around her feet. She consumed books because she left school at thirteen and wanted to educate herself. She taught herself enough piano to sing along with her magnificent voice. If anyone got sick she’d go and look after them no matter how many trains and buses it took to get there. If someone needed a roof over their head, she offered her home. At one stage in our two-bedroom house with a sleepout and a caravan in Epping we had Mum, Dad and us three boys, Auntie Joan, cousin Denise and Herbie. She ended up looking after Dad for nearly ten years, then when he died she lost her mind. I’d pictured her going on the India Pacific railway with her sister, but instead she ended up in a nursing home.

Before that, Barry and his wonderful partner, Julie, took Mum to their home. It wasn’t a problem: they’d wanted to take her straight after Dad died, but Mum hung on to her independence for a while longer. Barry and Julie are saints: they looked after Mum 24/7 for two years, and they didn’t want it any other way. When I said to Barry how indebted Brian and I were to him for him putting his life on hold, he replied, ‘I’m not putting my life on hold, I’m looking after my mother. This is my life and you know what? I don’t mind it at all.’

Sundance

In late 2004 Wolf Creek was selected for the Sundance and Cannes film festival, the big double. Suddenly we were on everyone’s lips. The buzz in Australia was humming; Matt Hearn and company were selling the film beautifully. Word was out that it was a groundbreaking horror film about to take on the world. Tarantino was quoted as saying it was the scariest film he’d ever seen (and later, in his 2007 film Death Proof, a car smashes through a Wolf Creek billboard). Quentin’s distributors Bob and Harvey Weinstein came on board after that, and offered an $8 million pre-sale. That’s the first and last time that’ll happen for an Aussie indie film.

Everyone was raving about my performance. I was finally going to crack the big time – well, that’s what we all thought. Wolf Creek was the highest-grossing film in ten years in Australia. Overseas it did reasonably well but was not the big hit we were expecting, so Hollywood didn’t call, unfortunately.

Sundance was a blast, for two reasons: Wolf Creek was playing, and Park City, Utah, is in the middle of some of the best ski conditions in America. My brother Brian flew in from California. It was heaven for him: ski all day, party all night, see his brother and watch his film at Sundance.

Park City becomes packed and nobody sleeps for a fortnight. Brian brought his ski gear, the Weinsteins paid for my ski gear and our lift tickets – gold. There was about fifteen of us from the Wolf Creek cast and crew. We’d ski all day and party or catch a film most nights. And memorable nights they were.

One night we were all in a bar. It was about midnight; Brian was drunk, I wasn’t. It was a long narrow bar, about 2 metres wide. There were so many people we could hardly move. We were standing beside three good-sized Texan rednecks, who were talking to a good-looking Aussie girl about twenty years their junior. Their language was getting very sleazy. She was a feisty girl and she was holding it together.

I finally said to them, ‘Hey, ease up, boys, she’s just a kid.’

‘Who the fuck are you?’

The Aussie girl seemed relieved that I’d stepped in. She grabbed hold of one of my arms. ‘He’s my dad.’

‘Yeah, I’m her dad.’

‘You ain’t her dad, motherfucker. Go fuck yourself.’

‘Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.’

My drunken brother stepped in. ‘Yeah, have a go, ya cunts!’

The Texans went to water and started backing off, even though it was three to two. ‘Hey, come on, man, take it easy, there ain’t no room to fight anyways.’

My brother jumped the bar and stood with the barman. ‘There’s plenty of fuckin’ room over here, come on!’

Brian and I got kicked out and big Matty Hearn looked after the Aussie girl.

Brian and I left the bar and headed across to a cafe. I needed coffee. There were about twenty people lined up in the crowded cafe. Brian and I were standing next to a display of cakes and tarts. I asked him if he wanted something to eat, and he said in a very loud drunken voice for all to hear, ‘I’ll have a spotted dick and a randy tart!’

No matter how drunk he got, Brian would be shaking me awake to go skiing at 8 a.m. He runs a ski school so you’d think he’d be over it – just the opposite. The ski fields are measured in square miles, they’re enormous, with every conceivable run. Brian and I skied the black runs, and it was all I could do to keep up with him. Matty Hearn loved skiing but he wasn’t too good at it. He tried to ski with us one day. We came to the top of a god-awful steep slope. I told Matt we’d ski to the bottom and wait for him and for him to get down doing long traverses across the slope. He got out of control very quickly, falling and losing a ski. He didn’t have the safety on and the ski went halfway down the hill. We were way, way down at the bottom, watching. Matt got a ski on, squatted on it, tucked his poles under his arm and headed off straight down the hill, aimed at his other ski. He miraculously scooped it up and continued straight down. Matt is 6 foot 4 and solid, over 100 kg of blood and muscle. At first Brian and I were smiling, but the smiles turned into grimaces. Matt increased his pace to a frightening speed, with ice and snow pluming out behind him like the wake of an ocean-racing boat. If he fell, he would become a bag of broken bones. He somehow remained upright and went about 3 miles along the bottom flat before he slowed down.

I can’t describe how good the skiing was. You could ski down a chair and it took you to the main street. When I had to go for interviews about Wolf Creek I’d go down, jump out of my skis, pull off my boots and walk through snow and ice to the interview in my socks. I’d pull the boots back on over icy-cold wet socks; an hour of skiing later, the socks were wet and warm.

The big night, the premiere of Wolf Creek at the same festival that set Tarantino up for life. Was it my turn? When I met Bob Weinstein, he shook my hand and said, ‘You’re a scary guy.’ The film went down really well. A couple of women walked out, which we regarded as a good thing because it meant the horror aspect was working. The Weinsteins threw a big party for us afterwards. The Americans stood up one end drinking politely, watching a mob of Aussies at the other end going berko, making complete arses of themselves and proud of it.

The flight from Salt Lake to LA was interesting. I was next to a very short blonde woman who was having trouble putting her bag overhead.

‘I’ll give you a hand with that.’

‘You’re Australian.’

‘Yup.’

‘I’ve just come from Sundance and I saw a very scary Aussie film, Wolf Creek.’

‘I was there, I saw it too.’

‘Were you? My God, it was scary. It was too much, I had to leave. In fact, I was the first to leave.’

‘Were you sitting over on the left towards the front?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You were the first.’

I thought, How long can I let this go on? I said to her, ‘Do you know who I am?’

She looked at me quizzically and then it quickly dawned on her who I was. ‘Oh my God!’ The whole plane heard it, it was so loud.

I calmed her down, she got used to me and asked me how the film ended.

I had to go back to work at McLeod’s, which was like going from a roller-coaster ride to a merry-go-round. There was so much buzz about Wolf Creek, I couldn’t wait to finish up at McLeod’s. Don’t get me wrong, the first couple of years were quite pleasurable, the scripts were good, the story was fresh, but after a while the work became as mundane as my easygoing, unambitious character, Terry. He wasn’t the most exciting character in the world. He virtually did as he was told and what was expected of him. I was bored in the end, but it got me back on my feet and for that I’ll be forever grateful to Posie Evans and company.

Here comes Wolf Creek

Shortly after I left McLeod’s, I went to London to promote Wolf Creek, which was about to be released in September 2006. I hadn’t been to London since I was there in 1975 with Rosa. I had a ball, swanning around the city in a hire car for a few days, going from TV stations to FM radio to internet and print media. I was very well looked after. They put me in a beautiful hotel and took me to dinner. It was unnerving having London buses whiz past with my face on them advertising Wolf Creek.

I stayed on for a few days so that I could visit Linley and James. We took a boat down the Thames and drove to Brighton on the coast. What a beautiful town.

Wolf Creek went to Cannes, then to the Melbourne Film Festival. It was released nationally in October/November 2005. The buzz was amazing, the premiere was huge and most of the critics loved it. The rest hated it; there was no in between. A Brisbane paper gave it minus 1 star, which I think is a first and something to be proud of. What a pansy.

The film grossed about $32 million worldwide and it was the most successful Aussie film in ten years. My performance as Mick Taylor was considered by many to be my best and a tour de force.

I went to the announcements of that year’s AFI awards. All the names for best actor were read out: ‘Hugo Weaving, Little Fish; William McInnes, Look Both Ways; Guy Pierce, The Proposition.’

Everyone was looking at me. I had to be next.

‘Ray Winston, The Proposition.’

There was an audible gasp and everyone turned and looked at me. I was terribly embarrassed and walked out. It’s a horror film, I get that. I get that I’d probably not win, but to not even be nominated? The real punch in the guts was two actors from the same movie getting the nod. Isn’t one enough? We left The Proposition for dead. It made $5 million worldwide, we made $32 million. Not happy, Muriel.

Rogue

I immediately went from Wolf Creek premieres to Greg McLean’s new film, Rogue, about a monster crocodile knocking over a boat full of tourists, forcing them onto an island and chewing up half of them. Greg wanted me to play a taxi driver from Melbourne on holiday grieving the recent loss of his wife. He was in two minds as he was worried the audience would think ‘Mick Taylor’ when I came on screen.

This problem has haunted me ever since. Mick Taylor is a double-edged sword: it put me at a whole new level as an actor in Australia and, to an extent, internationally. A lot of producers think of putting me in their films or TV series but don’t, because they think the audience can’t see beyond Mick Taylor. As a result, employment hasn’t been that good. At least it got me off my arse to make my own films.

To get into Rogue, I grew a mo, put on a pair of glasses and a goofy cloth fishing hat. I’ve never worn a moustache because it looks hideous on me; my big nose makes me look like Groucho. I took a photo and sent it to Greg. When David Lightfoot, the producer of Wolf Creek, came into Greg’s office and saw my photo pinned up, he said, ‘Who’s that?’ That was the clincher for Greg, so I suppose I can thank David for casting me.

We had a fabulous time making that film, especially our time in Kakadu and the Katherine Gorge. There were a lot of lads on that film: Greg McLean, Matt Hearn, Will Gibson, Daniel ‘Guido’ Guerra and Des Kenneally in the crew, and Robert Taylor, Geoff Morrell, Sam Worthington, Stephen Curry and Michael Vartan in the cast. These guys were so much fun to be with and we had a lot of laughs. The pranks were great. We spent a fortnight convincing Morrell that a local chopper pilot had it in for him. I’ve got to hand it to him, he was a little scared by it, but when he thought he was talking to the dude on a mobile, Geoff got stuck into him. It was a great moment when the crew member walked up to Geoff while still in character on the phone. Curry set that up, of course. Cuz is extraordinary and he’s only just begun. He’s very bright, very witty, very funny and a fucking good actor. He’s a bit baby-faced; I’m looking forward to him getting into his forties and fifties. When the character on his face starts matching the character inside his head, look out, world. He’s only a year older than Zadia, so I’m old enough to be his dad. That shit freaks me out sometimes.

Knock, knock, knockin’ on Hollywood’s door

Everyone, and I mean everyone, thought my career was going to take off and go sky high. You’ve got to go to LA and follow up. I went to stay with Kevin Dobson, who directed The Last Outlaw. This was the second time Dobbo had housed me in LA and it was a treat to spend time with him. He looked after me like a brother.

My Australian agent, Sue Barnett, did a fabulous job lining me up with management and agents and I spoke to heaps of them. They all said they’d take me on if I moved to LA. Apparently, that’s what they all do: Toni Collette, Anthony LaPaglia and so on. Sure, but they don’t have six kids. I couldn’t do it, and apart from that, I don’t want to do it. I’m an Australian, this is my culture. I want to tell my stories from my country, and I had also made up my mind to produce my own films. As long as my arse pointed to the ground, I wouldn’t be able to make films in LA. I’m not a young man, I don’t have time.

The big positive on that trip was Tarantino. He wanted me to play an Aussie bar owner in his new film, Death Proof. I met up with Quentin, had a bit of a chat, looked at the script and signed a couple of Wolf Creek posters.

‘Would you mind signing these, and none of that “Best wishes” bullshit.’

He told me I had the part, so I left LA thinking I’d stick with my Aussie agent, who could handle the LA stuff for me. Unfortunately, Quentin later decided he wanted the barman to be American. Another actor, Quentin Tarantino, replaced me.

Not to worry, I got to play a much bigger part in fabulous film called The Final Winter. It was about family, the difficulty and importance of this guy being a husband and father and trying to juggle that with being a fading Rugby League star. Matt Nable wrote it and got it off the ground, but he had to be convinced to play the lead. You can either act or you can’t. Matt can act, he’s a great actor; I’m sure most of you readers know who I’m talking about, the bastard gets more work than me now! Matty Johns played the coach superbly. I played Colgate, the smarmy, smiling, arsehole club president.

The funniest moment I had in the film was the boardroom scene. We had some footy greats sitting around the table including the toughest little bastard of them all, Tommy Raudonikis. We gave them each a line to say. Tommy got nervous and couldn’t deliver his line very convincingly.

I said to him, ‘Don’t think about the lines, just get these thoughts in your head and talk about it: Daisy isn’t playing well, you could do better and you’re thirty years older than him. Just say it in your own words, how you’d say it.’

‘Righto, I’ll give it a go.’

So we did another take and action.

‘That fuckin’ Daisy can’t fuckin’ play to fuckin’ save him-fuckin-self. I can fuckin’ play better than fuckin’ him and I’m fuckin’ thirty fuckin’ years older than the cunt.’

Cut, silence.

Finally I said, ‘Do you think you could throw a coupla more “fucks” into that sentence, Tommy?’

‘Ya reckon?’

From an indie film to an epic: Australia. I had a cough and a spit in it. I would normally knock back such a small role, but it was a foot in the door with Baz Luhrmann, and a week in Bowen on the Whitsunday Coast wasn’t all bad.

Australia was the biggest film I’d ever been on. Just the fleet of runners’ cars was mind-boggling, a sea of Taragos.

My scenes were with Nicole Kidman. In one sequence she thinks her friend is dead and in the other, she thinks the Drover (Hugh Jackman) is dead, so both times she had to stay in the zone and we didn’t get a chance for light chatter. She was just as lovely a person as the sixteen-year-old who wrapped a python around my neck on Chase Through the Night, twenty-two years earlier.

Meanwhile, back in Murwillumbah

On 6 December 2006 I became the proud grandfather of Jasmine, my beautiful blue-eyed granddaughter. My baby girl was a mother – wow, how did that happen so fast? Admittedly Ebony was only twenty-one but it felt like a blink from when I could hold her in one hand to now holding her child the same way.

This little one is brimming with energy: not a screaming energy, but a beautiful sunshine kind of energy. I was amazed at the kind of love I have for her, which is the exact same love I have for my children. I knew I’d love her but I thought it would be slightly different. It’s not.

In late 2004, from the Scotland Island sale and the money earned from McLeod’s, I was able to buy the houses behind us and beside us…well, the bank bought them for me. The back property was a little white fifties timber cottage on 2 acres, and the one beside us was a little A-frame kit home on 4 acres, so the overall property was now 6 acres with three houses. At the time, the economy was growing and we all thought I’d be dripping with jobs. That didn’t happen; I got much less work and the economy was starting to go backwards.

I’d decided in 2005 to set up a film company and try my luck as a producer. I was looking for an entrepreneurial type and I was led to a guy in Brisbane who seemed to have the skills. He convinced me to move to Brisbane, saying that if I was serious about setting up a business, I couldn’t do it two hours away in the bush. At first I moved to a rental in Brookfield in Brisbane’s western suburbs where I was paying $500 a week, but I didn’t want to pay dead money so I bought a brick house on 3 acres in Mount Crosby, in the outer west.

Getting involved with this guy was a huge mistake. Number one, he didn’t have a clue about films. Number two, he was power-hungry and the kind who likes to take over. It got out of hand and I walked away. The only good thing about it was that I met Simon Mathias, who produced and directed commercials and was very keen to get into the movies. We became partners and went about getting a film up. I’d written the first draft of a script called Flood, about a bunch of people who get stuck in an outback roadhouse during a flood. Simon put together a very classy information memorandum and off we went looking for investment. It’s hard, it’s bloody hard – getting a film up in Australia is harder than getting Middle East peace. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Simon was good with the paperwork and government forms, the sort of stuff that I’ll never be good at. We had all the facts and figures and we’d been to many investor meetings and received plenty of numbers. We needed $3 million.

I met a guy at Riley’s preschool who was a property developer and sold heavy equipment like backhoes and bobcats. I went to check out his kitchen, as it seemed along the lines of what I wanted to do with mine. We got talking about my film and he was very interested. A fortnight later, he got a crew together and we had our investors for the film. We told these guys not to worry if the film didn’t make it in the cinema, as the real money was in DVDs. We were able to show them 2004–05 figures that pointed to a billion-dollar industry. Blockbuster and Video Ezy were full every Friday, with patrons walking out with ten DVDs for the weekend. Internet downloads were just starting to happen but they were nowhere near mainstream.

We made Savages Crossing, as it was now called, in and around Ipswich. It took place mainly in a roadhouse. We used the Zannows’ farm. Darren and Brad Zannow had been raised by their dad, Viv. He was as deaf and when he couldn’t hear you, he’d say ‘Very good,’ which covered most things. They were salt of the earth; they bent over backwards and threw themselves into our filmmaking. The film wouldn’t have got there without them. They were a godsend.

I got Kevin Dobson to direct it and we had a great cast: me, Craig McLachlan, Angela Punch McGregor, Sacha Horler, Chris Haywood, Jessica Napier, Rebecca Smart and Charlie Jarratt.

Savages Crossing is a very good film. The performances are terrific, especially Craig McLachlan’s, and my character is one of my favourite portrayals. We were let down by two things: our distributor and illegal downloads. Our distributor promised us a cinema release, which took them six months to organise it. Finally they rang me with the cinemas.

‘We’ve got four: Orange, Wagga, Ballina and Noosa.’

‘Very funny. So how many have we got?’

‘I’m not joking.’

‘You took six months to come up with this?’

I wanted the film back but they wouldn’t give it to me. I pleaded with them to give me control of the cinema release at least. They gave that to me and then hit me with another clanger.

‘We’re releasing the DVD in six weeks.’

‘Bullshit, you’ll have to change that.’

‘We can’t, it’s already organised and they’re manufacturing the DVDs.’

I’d just finished work on a film called Bad Behaviour, a slasher film in which a brother-and-sister team goes on a killing spree that ends with the massacre of a bunch of teenagers at a house party. It was a straight-to-DVD film directed by whiz kid Joseph Sims and produced by my now production partner Kris Maric. It’s a terrific film made on a shoestring budget. After watching Kris pull this film together and save my arse on Savages, I hooked myself to her wagon.

Kris worked in production on Savages Crossing, and after everyone else had jumped ship she stayed on to help Simon and me get the film sold and to clean up loose ends. We borrowed money from Brian and the wonderful Zannow brothers for the cinema release, but we weren’t successful and they didn’t get a return.

Kris, Craig Kocinski and I got in six weeks what the distributor couldn’t get in six months: cinemas in Noosa, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Sydney, Wagga, Melbourne, Sorrento, Adelaide and Perth.

We didn’t stand a chance. I went onto every radio station, TV show, newspaper and internet site in Australia, but we just didn’t have the dough to advertise it properly. The DVD went down the illegal download gurgler; video stores were going broke and none of us knew how to stop the bleeding. When I say none of us, I mean no one in the entire international industry. There were no returns. I’m not a soothsayer, I didn’t know it was going to happen. The timing for Savages coupled with the shortcomings of the distributor were devastating. Simon and I didn’t give up.

Helen’s road to heaven

Barry had Mum for three years. She was still as fit as a fiddle; physically she’d make it to 100 easily. The dementia was gaining on her rapidly and Barry wanted to add a granny flat to his house. He thought she might not deteriorate too fast in her own space. To do that would mean turning his house into builder’s chaos, so Mum came to live with me for six months. I saw it as a blessing: I wanted some time with her and my boys would benefit by getting to know Grandma.

Mum was great. I put her in the A-frame with my dear friend Gary, who was also my PA. She’d walk over and have all her meals with us. She was free to wander around and do whatever she liked. I was clearing scrub on the property, so Mum turned all the branches and bushes into short lengths and stacked them in huge piles, which kept her amused for hours. I’d talk to her about the old days. People with dementia remember everything up until they start losing it. Their short-term memory gets worse and worse. We could chat for hours about the old days. During those moments she had absolutely no sign of dementia, she was good old Mum again. She’d have her nanna nap and read her book, the same one. ‘That’s the upside of dementia,’ she used to say.

Overall it was a cheery six months. We learnt to handle her struggle with forgetfulness. It didn’t worry Jackson and Riley; they loved playing with her and she with them. Riley was four and Jackson was six. However, she did deteriorate much faster than anticipated, so Barry flew up to get her.

It was getting to the stage where she could never be left alone. She couldn’t remember she’d had a shower so half an hour later she’d be back in, which could go on for half the night. She lasted about four months with Barry, when Mum’s doctor said it would be cruel for her to stay in the house, and that she’d be far better off in a nursing home. Barry and Julie felt very bad about this because they loved Mum to bits.

Brian came over from the US later in the year to see Mum. He took her out in the car every day and dragged her around like a teddy. He took her to the beach, Barry’s worksite, cafes and restaurants. He spoiled her rotten. The sad thing was that by the time he dropped her back, she’d forgotten everything. That didn’t deter Brian one iota.

In March 2009 I went to visit Mum. By this stage she just sat around with her mouth open and glazed eyes staring at the wall.

I took her for a drive to a very familiar place we went to as kids, St Georges Basin. We stepped out of the car and I took her by the arm to the beach.

I said, ‘Do you know where we are, Mum?’

‘No.’

‘Have a guess.’

‘Pallarenda.’

‘No, Mum, it’s St Georges Basin.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I go home now?’

‘Where’s home?’

‘Wonga?’

‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’

When we were driving back, I said, ‘Remember when Nanna came with us to St Georges Basin?’

‘I’m tired, can we go home now?’

‘Yep, we’re going home.’

‘Can we go home now?’

I took her to the rooms she’d spent the last year in. There were only two rooms: her bedroom and a bathroom.

She asked, ‘Where’s the toilet?’ She didn’t even know where the toilet was.

I came out, shut the door and started howling. The nurse put her arm around me. ‘I don’t know who that woman is, but it’s not my mother. She looks a bit like her. I don’t know where my mother went, she’s not in there.’

I flew back to Brisbane and went to my house. Gary and I were painting the inside, so it was just us in the house. I went to bed and saw a star through the window. Whenever I want to contact Dad I pick the first star that takes my attention and talk to it. I found myself yelling at this particular one, ‘Listen, Dad, if there’s anything in this afterlife, you’ll go down and take your wife out of that fucking hellhole in Nowra and put her in a better place. If you don’t, then fuck you! I’ll never talk to a star again.’

At four-thirty the following afternoon I received a phone call.

‘Hi, John, your mother’s given up, she won’t eat and she’s wasting away. This is not unusual, something in them says they’ve had enough. What do you want us to do?’

‘Let her go, let her go. Let her go.’

I’m still talking to stars.

A week later, my mother died. Julie and her daughter Harriet had ducked back home for a moment and Brian and Barb were on the phone to Mum. Mum wasn’t able to speak but they could hear her breathing heavily, so they both sang her a song over the phone. By the time they’d finished they couldn’t hear the heavy breathing any more and they assumed she’d gone to sleep and hung up. She had gone to sleep, for the last time.

Mum’s funeral was brilliant. She wanted everyone to do the thing she loved most: sing. Uncle Charlie, eighty-nine, kicked it off singing a song that his father loved, and accompanied himself on banjo. He was followed by uncles, aunties, cousins, nieces, nephews, sons and grandchildren. Grandson Ben, ten, finished proceedings. Then we played a recording of Mum singing ‘Ave Maria’ to her mum in a church in her mum’s hometown thirty years earlier. It is the best rendition I’ve ever heard anywhere. I can’t describe how beautiful it was. If I could I’d put a DVD of it on the back cover so you too could be blown away by it. Mum sang ‘Over the Rainbow’ as a lullaby to us as kids, so I sang that. It’s more my kind of song and I felt her in the room and it poured out of me. Bye, Mum.

‘Why can’t people just be nice to each other? It’s easier.’

Buggered if I know, Mum.

The wake at my cousin Kerry’s house was a humdinger. The Sellers family sang up a storm, I couldn’t believe how much music was in the air. Mum’s brothers Charlie and Arthur were sitting with Dad’s brother-in-law Ben Sellers. He was ninety-odd. He was very ill and dying. Tony got him out of the home for the occasion. Whenever I met Ben he’d squeeze my hand to breaking point with his iron grip and talk heartily to me and want to know what I was up to. He was interested in you and made you feel important. His thick wavy hair had become thin and grey, his strong face was hollow. He looked at me glassy-eyed, then he recognised me. ‘John…John.’ That’s all he said. He was saying goodbye to Mum; a month later we were saying goodbye to the great man himself.

I’ve lost many uncles, aunties, cousins, parents, grandparents and friends. I’ve loved them all and I apologise for not mentioning and paying respects to them all here. As Dad would say, ‘We’ve got relatives like ducks on the swamp.’ To all my beloved ducks, God bless you.

The American film market

Simon and I flew into LAX for the American Film Market on 4 November 2008, the day Obama was elected. How cool is that? We went to Santa Monica and the place was going nuts. I walked along the pier and the coolest of black dudes was on guitar. He was about fifty, I reckon, and he sang the blues extraordinarily well. I gave him $5 and asked him to pick a song from his list he wanted to sing to celebrate Black President’s Day. He chose ‘Stand by Me’, perfect. I did my best whitefella dance moves, I was out there in an Elaine from Seinfeld kind of dance way. I was getting attention but I didn’t give a flying fuck. Others started to join us and it got magnificently out of hand. Man, could that guy sing!

Simon and I worked our butts off. We kicked down the door of every sales agent and distributor we could. After a week, we came home empty-handed. The GFC had kicked in and illegal downloads had arrived like a plague of locusts tearing the guts out of the home entertainment sector. It was by far the worst AFM on record, and our timing to make our first feature couldn’t have been worse.

Simon and I were now doing it tough financially. We had given our all to Savages and we’d worked flat-out with no pay. Simon had walked away from a high-paying job in the advertising world, he had living expenses and two kids from a previous marriage to support and put through a private school. Simon had given it his best shot; he went broke over it and had to go back to advertising land to get his family back on track. I wish him well; I have plenty of fond memories above and beyond our struggle.

Noosa

I had to sell the three houses in Murwillumbah at a loss, thanks to the GFC. I was very happy with my home in Mount Crosby, where I’d built the most magnificent pool and outside entertainment building above it, but forces beyond my control compelled me to sell it and move to 3 acres at Doonan on the Sunshine Coast. I bought a small two-bedroom Queenslander and I trucked another matching three-bedroom Queenslander onto the property and joined them together to create a large five-bedroom Queenslander with three bathrooms and two living areas. It took me two years, from mid-2009 to mid-2011, to connect and renovate them both, matching the colonial heritage of the transported house.

There was a lot to like about Doonan. Our acreage was a lush green rolling hill with a dam at the bottom. We had a beautiful outlook off a massive deck perched like a treehouse at the top of the block. There were birds and native animals all around, a huge mango tree dipping its fruit-laden branches towards the house and our two happy Labradors living a dog’s life. Riley and Jackson loved it. We had a pool. I put in a big swing on a large Moreton Bay fig, and the street was quiet for bike riding. Close by were Hastings Beach and the Noosa River park, also good for riding, skating and skateboarding. The boys loved their school. It was a very healthy place to be. The downside: it was a long way from the city.

I went through my worst employment phase in 2009 and 2010. My home situation wasn’t much better, and I’d rather forget it. In October 2010 I was about to go to Portland, Oregon. I was to play the lead, Rood, in a horror film called Shiver, my first US film, which I had to do with an accent. I was really looking forward to it: I love doing accents and I hadn’t done one since Ned Kelly’s Irish accent.

My home situation was not good, and it hadn’t been good for a long time. This was the third time I’d brought two kids into the world and then walked away from them. It wasn’t the first time. I’d try, but then I’d look into my children’s eyes and I couldn’t leave. This time I’d reached a point where I had to go.

I flew into Portland in November. There was snow on the ground; it was freezing. I was driven to my hotel and I had a chance to look around at the beautiful city. The Willamette River runs through it and stunning bridges arch over the river into the city centre.

Rood is a middle-American nerd who can’t make it with women, and when he does he has erectile dysfunction. He’s a psychopathic serial killer. He’ll become obsessed with a woman and when he gets rejected, he loses it. One night he goes nuts and kills a girl; when she’s dead there’s nothing to be shy about and he gets off on it. So he ends up stalking women, killing them for his pleasure and taking their heads to his lair as a trophy. Of course, one day it goes wrong and that’s when our story begins. Danielle Harris played opposite me: she was terrific, a great performer and also lots of fun as a person. She’s tiny and easy to throw around, which makes the monster look more monstrous and therefore she’s perfect in horror films. Why am I perfect? Because I’m big and I’m getting older and uglier, I s’pose.

To play Rood I used a West Coast accent with a whiny, nasal vocal tone. I pushed my upper teeth out to look a bit bucktoothed and wore a beanie and glasses. Before we started shooting I went to the shops in character. I wanted fingerless gloves and I found three joined together for $9.

I went up to the saleslady with my whiny American accent. ‘Hi, I need some gloves, you have three here and I only want one pair. I’ll give you $3 for one pair and you can sell the other two for $6.’

‘We can’t do that, sir.’

It went on. I argued with her and ended up with the three for $9. I’m pretty sure she was sold on the accent, so I started work with lots of confidence. The filmmaking process was exactly the same on Shiver as it was on Aussie films, except that the accents were different. I learnt American English. It’s easy, there’s only one phrase and the derivations of that phrase, ‘I’m good, we’re good, all good, we’re all good…Duuude.’ Put ‘dude’ at the end of everything. They don’t go to the toilet, they go to the bathroom. I’d say to them, ‘You going to shit in the bath? Why don’t you go to the toilet!’ Dude! They don’t say ‘Hi,’ they say, ‘What’s up?’ I’d say, ‘Nothing’s up. Why? Do I look sick?’

Rood is well-read and verbose. He uses intelligent language and enjoys making little speeches to his victims. He is creepy; Mick Taylor would have eaten him for breakfast. It was a great challenge for me to play a character way out of my comfort zone and with an accent. I enjoyed my time there very much and I was sad to be going back to my difficulties at home, but I was really missing Jackson and Riley.

I went home via LA and I took time out to visit Mel Gibson, who was having a tough time after his argument was posted on the net. Mel has been sabotaged twice, once when a cop released his drunken ramblings. I used to drink, I’ve said nasty shit to cops, but the cops didn’t put it out there. Why not? Because I’m not Mel Gibson. We’ve all had arguments with spouses and partners, we’ve called each other all sorts of appalling things, maybe even thrown things at each other. Does that get released on the internet? No, because we’re not Mel Gibson.

Mel is a great bloke and he knows he’s a great bloke and because of that, he’s fine. Has he made mistakes? Yeah. Has he done something about it? Yeah, that’s what decent blokes do. When I saw him he was sad – mainly sad for his kids and what they had to put up with. But he’s tough and resilient. Like most of us, he’s done it tough and worked through it. That’s all you can do.

Facing the music

I returned home and did a strange thing. I looked at my boys’ innocent eyes again and melted. Just once in your life, John, see your kids to eighteen at least, I thought. You’re nearly sixty, you’re on the downhill slope, you don’t matter any more, your boys matter. Just try to make your life as bearable as you can under the circumstances and hang in until they’re eighteen.

Almost immediately I regretted that decision. I knew it was a mistake, but at that stage I thought my whole life had been one big mistake. I didn’t have a very high opinion of myself.

In March I had to go back to LA for some Shiver pick-ups in a diner. I was so happy to be getting away again. It was only a fortnight but I relished it. I returned home to that familiar survival mode, ‘grit your teeth and bear it’. Three days later I got a phone call. An actor had pulled out of a play sick and the theatre company wanted me to take over, starting in three days. It was an eight-month tour around Australia doing The Sum of Us (the film version starred Jack Thompson and Russell Crowe). I’d knocked back the role a year earlier when we thought Wolf Creek 2 would get up and I didn’t want to jeopardise it.

Three days later I was rehearsing, happy as Larry to be away but feeling guilty about the boys. This was wrong, it’s no way to live.

The play is about a working-class, inner-city father who was widowed when his only son was a young boy. His son grows up to be a good footballer, a plumber and a butch queen. The dad learns to accept it. The play is about love lost, love gained and family. There were a lot of words and a short time for me to memorise them. It had been eleven years since I was on stage and nineteen years since I’d played a theatrical lead. I was scared shitless. Somehow I got through the first four performances and on the fifth I had a doozy. It was a Melbourne audience, many of whom were mates from the biz. I had quite a lot of long speeches to the audience. It was reminiscent of my meltdown on The Sentimental Bloke, and the bloke who punched me in that disaster, Mike Bishop, was in the audience. I jumped ahead in a speech, got halfway through and knew it wasn’t working but I couldn’t figure out why. I started again and got to the same point with nowhere to go, so I started talking about my quandary with the audience. Then Paddy, who played my son, came on and said, ‘Weren’t you talking about Grandma, Dad?’

‘Aw yeah, thanks, son.’

That was the last time I stuffed it to that degree. The play is full of poetic prose, the exquisite language flows like wine and the piece really works. I never got sick of doing it. I might have whinged a few times, but once we started it was magic. The actors became like family: Paddy, Glen and Nell. Paddy and Glen will always be my surrogate sons. Paddy directed a rock clip I did recently for William, and Glen played my son. Three extremely talented young blokes.

In May 2011, just before we headed off on the Australian tour, one of our legendary actors, Bill Hunter, died from cancer. He was seventy-two. I went to his funeral and it changed my life. Rod Mullinar, who’d just nursed his wife and lost her to cancer, turned around and did the same for Billy, the saint. Rod, who was a bit of an old hippie, was doing the eulogy. ‘I asked Bill what he thought of reincarnation. He said, “What’s the use of coming back if you can’t remember the last time? This is the only life you’ve got, live it to the full.”’ That hit me like a tonne of bricks.

The way I’d been living my life for years and years was far from full. I made up my mind there and then that I’d have to move on. It mightn’t be too good for the boys in the short term, but in the long term, surely it’s better to have a contented, easygoing, low-stress father. Time will tell, because that’s how I feel right now.

I didn’t think it was fair to announce my intentions so early in the tour. I wasn’t going to be home very much in the next six months anyway, so I decided to break the news towards the end of the tour.

The tour took me up through Victoria first. I’d been to most of the towns with the Sentimental Bloke tour and on location through the years. Funnily enough, I’d never been to Bendigo, with its grand historic buildings, such an important part of Australian history. The theatre was immense; we were almost shouting our lines. We travelled across to the Hume and headed north. I got a phone call from Rosa. She couldn’t remember certain things about a friend of ours from yesteryear and she was wondering if I could shed some light on it. My heart just glowed whenever she rang me. I was so happy to talk to her, it was so easy. We talked for about an hour. I didn’t want her to hang up.

We were in Sydney by August and did three weeks there: a week at NIDA, then Forestville and finally Parramatta. I stayed in Coogee for NIDA and Chatswood for Forestville. Zadia and Cobi stayed with me at Coogee and Chatswood, which was a great chance to catch up. Yes, Cobi’s a girl. Zadia started out with boys and moved to girls about fifteen years ago, she’s bi, Cobi’s gay. She’s a proud woman and a naughty boy and I love her. I hope they stay together for life, they’re meant for each other. Plus Cobi likes the football and she enjoys sparring. She can hit…for a girl.

They all came to watch the show at NIDA. I came out to greet them and Rosa was standing there looking like a princess. She took my breath away. We went down to the Coogee Bay for a drink. Rosa didn’t stay long because she had a long drive home.

Zadia organised a birthday dinner for me on Sunday at Rosa’s house, where Zadia lived as well. It was a lovely meal. I couldn’t take my eyes off Rosa, but that wasn’t unusual – it had been the same for twenty-six years.

The tour continued up the coast. When we got to Bundaberg in early September, Zadia phoned me. She explained that Rosa needed medical assistance for a health problem, but Zadia was maxed out financially and Ebony and Daniel had just bought a house, so they weren’t in a position to get a loan. Zadia asked me if I could get a loan and she and Ebony would be responsible for the payments. Rosa was too proud to ask me. I agreed to help them.

The tour north finished in Home Hill, just south of Townsville. We then had a short break before going to Western Australia. Nial, Sally and Max drove down from Cairns to see the show and they picked Herbie up from Townsville on the way. They were to stay at the same motel as us. When they arrived everyone except Nial got out and went to reception. Nial just sat in the car and stared at me.

Paddy said, ‘What’s he doing?’

‘He’s going to come over here, push me into the concrete and squeeze my knee, causing excruciating pain, and there isn’t a fucking thing I can do about it.’

He got out of the car, strode across and did exactly what I said he would. Paddy just looked on bug-eyed, shaking his head and laughed nervously.

They were watching the show that night and it got to the part where Paddy kisses Glen on stage. Max reacted, ‘Oh shit no, they’re gonna kiss, oh fuck, they’re gonna kiss, oh Christ, they’re kissing, they’re kissing, I can’t look.’ Now Max isn’t homophobic, he’s just never been confronted with that sight and he couldn’t handle it. Mistake.

Next day we were packed into Nial’s car. I was off to spend a couple of days with Herb on Magnetic Island, so we were saying goodbye to Paddy and Glen. Herbie whispered to Paddy, ‘Dive in through the window and give Max a kiss.’ I was in the middle and Max was beside me. Paddy dived in and laid one on Max. You’ve never seen a guy get out of a car so quickly. Ever since, we’ve chased Max around trying to kiss him. There’ll only ever be one Maxy Beikoff, God love him.

Just before I flew to Perth to continue the tour, Jackson and Riley got the news that I’d be moving on. They were devastated: it tore my guts out.

I was in a relationship that had more downs for me than ups and that is why I have chosen not to write about it. I don’t want to hurt anybody, especially my children. I have made the mistake a couple of times in my life to stay in a dysfunctional relationship because I just want to be with my kids when they are growing up. Too often I’ve been accused of abandoning my children and moving on to freedom, bright lights and a good time. It’s generally the opposite. Many men I know have suffered the way I have and it’s very frustrating and more common than you think. I have endured hellish situations with the only thing keeping me there being my kids. I’ve hung in for years for my kids. I don’t abandon them, I am ripped apart from them. Do men go off and have the time of their lives? I don’t think so, I’m more likely to find a quiet room and cry like a baby into a pillow. Do men go and socialise and have coffee, cakes and laughs at a seaside cafe? I don’t think so. I tend to walk for miles along beaches, forget the sunblock, realise I’ve walked for an hour and a half, walk back again and don’t sleep at night because of heartache, sunburn and regrets.

‘I’m stuck here trying to raise the kids on my own with no help from you!’

‘Easily solved, give me the kids.’

‘Never!’

You’re stuck with the kids, poor you. It’s extremely rare that the man gets custody of his children and rightly so. I think in nature, if children are to have the choice, they should be with their mother. When men move on, they lose their kids for at least twelve days out of fourteen. Men don’t walk away from their kids, men walk away from bad situations and suffer distance from their children who mean so much to them; they’d cheerfully die for them in a nanosecond. Women tend to think they’re worse off; you’re feeling pain but they’re feeling worse pain. The truth is, the pain is gut-wrenching for both parties. At least women can put their arms around their children when they’re feeling gutted.

Rosa was touched that I’d helped her. It wasn’t the first time I’d helped her and the kids; that’s what fathers do. I’d ring her to see how her health was recovering, and she would ring me too at times. I think she was pleased to have someone to talk to while she was going through a tough time. I started to call her more and more. Finally she said she had the feeling I was courting her, and I had to admit I was. I’d thought to myself, I’m single, she’s single, I’m going to have a go. Her immediate reaction was that she couldn’t believe it; never in her wildest dreams had she seen this coming. She thought the universe was playing a joke on her. Right now she was busy recovering her health, thank you very much. This wasn’t going to be easy. I kept calling. I think she was amused by it all, but she wasn’t taking it too seriously.

The play slowly ground to a halt. Western Australia was amazing: I fell in love with Margaret River, the beaches, the surf, which is so enticing it’s worth playing Russian roulette with the great whites. In the north, Monkey Mia and the dolphins. The tour hugged the coast mainly, travelling from Townsville to Port Lincoln and from Margaret River to Carnarvon.

We did one show in Tasmania. It was great to catch up with Will and Sharon. I told them I was courting Rosa but she was being very cautious. Will remarked, ‘How sensible of Rosa, she knows a dickhead when she sees one.’ It’s okay, it’s how Will and I relate, I can take that crap from the hairy-nosed little hobbit, he’s all scrotum and no balls.

The last show was in Warrnambool, a country town two hours west of Melbourne. Charlie and Will turned up and stayed with me, happy Dad. I also caught up with Jeff Jenkins; his wife and good friend of mine, Michele Fawdon, died from cancer in early 2011, leaving behind Jeff and their teenage daughter, Lulu. Michele was a great actress and singer. She was the original Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar. Jeff is a great singer, muso and dancer. He’s a professional cook. Why? He needs to make a quid. The show went out with a bang: I made the boys kiss each other for five minutes before I came on to break it up. They knew it was coming. Max would have loved it. We said our au revoirs and headed back into our lives.

I headed back to Doonan to finish the house. There was a strong chance it would be sold and the kids would move to the Blue Mountains. I stopped off at Rosa’s on the way. She was recovering nicely. I took her for a drive to the northern beaches. We stopped at the Bahai Temple at Terrey Hills and sat in there for about half an hour of meditation. I like meditating; it’s very calming and good for your soul. I didn’t meditate much, I kept opening an eye to look at the beauty of Rosa.

For twenty-seven years I dreamt constantly about Rosa. If ever I had a dream fantasy, it was about Rosa. If I have a dream fantasy now, it’s about Rosa. She is the love of my life, my one and only. I thought I’d lost her forever.

We drove back and Rosa said stuff I didn’t want to hear: ‘Look, this is just too much. It took a long time to get over you, I was crushed for years, but I got over you and now you want to try again? Do I set myself up for that pain again? I don’t think so. Your whole life you’ve run from one relationship to another, you’re doing it again, but with me, of all people. Don’t you ever learn? Go away, take your time, smell the roses, make a wise decision for yourself for a change.’

She made a lot of sense, but I didn’t see it that way. I saw it as, I’ve been in the wilderness for twenty-seven years, I’ve figured out where I should be. I’ve been a fool, I know where I should be, I’m knocking on the door, I’m going home. This was my mantra: that somehow the universe had sent me back to where I should be. This wasn’t a rash decision, this was something I’d spent twenty-seven years trying to unravel. Maybe I was wrong but I didn’t want to take time out, I needed to pursue this. If she knocked me back, I’d spend the rest of my life single because now I knew. I’m not meant to be with anyone else.

In November 2011 I went to Doonan to finish the house in order to sell it. The GFC hit lifestyle-choice locations like Noosa very hard. The sale price on the Doonan house dropped approximately $200,000. My house was worth about the same as when I’d bought it, at only half the size it was now.

I had to bite the bullet and spend a few grand on it to get it up to scratch. I spent the next seven weeks putting in arches and windows, completing rooms, restoring the exterior, putting in pathways and landscaping. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the help of my Townsville mate Billy Gregson. I just couldn’t have got through it without throwing a shitload of sarcasm his way for seven weeks.

During that time I continued to woo Rosa via texts and phone calls. I slowly began to make headway but she took a lot of persuading. I texted a little poem, she texted one back. That progressed to more thoughtful, lyrical, romantic poems via email. Eventually she texted me, ‘I’ve got to say, you’re very persuasive, your poems are so heartfelt, I can’t help but feel a little bit of love for you.’

I had my caravan at Noosa North Shore during this period. After building all day, I’d retire to this good old-fashioned caravan park. It was cheaper than renting a flat and a hell of a lot more congenial. There was surf, paperbark forest, parkland, little bush tracks to bike or walk along. I’d sit in my annexe drinking coffee, watching grey kangaroos graze on the forest edge; it doesn’t get better than that. My boys loved it. Long walks on the beach talking to Rosa. More coffee under the stars, writing love poems. The only thing missing was the recipient of my poems.

Ebony came to Rosa’s from Alice Springs with her husband-to-be, Daniel, and of course Jasmine. Daniel’s a great bloke, a good old-fashioned family man who more than looks after Ebony and Jazzy. He was raised in Alice Springs and he’d just taken over from his dad to run their computer business. He’s a very bright young man, and what he doesn’t know about computers is not worth knowing. He is that rare person who is both technical and creative: he’s a brilliant classically trained pianist. His family means everything to him. As I said recently at their wedding, ‘Daniel’s problem is that he loves Ebony and Jazzy too much.’ Not a bad problem, huh? So I had to spend Christmas at Rosa’s, didn’t I? I had to see my Ebony and Jazzy. I slept on the couch in the lounge room. Jazzy was five and she sang made-up songs, danced, performed scenes from Dora. This kid can perform – if she doesn’t get into the biz I’ll be very surprised.

I turned up in Epping for Christmas with my first family. I didn’t have much money but I wasn’t worried because Wolf Creek 2 was about to happen; Matt Hearn had set himself up in Adelaide and they were about to go into pre-production. Straight after that I was off to the States to do Django Unchained with Tarantino: 2012 was looking good.