No Sheep No Shenanigans No Service
Like a good omen the flowering gum next to my barn was miraculously ablaze with red flowers when I woke up on the day of The Grand Hotel’s reopening. I went straight outside and hoisted Dad’s telescopic aluminium ladder up against the tree to pick top-branch flowers for the vases. They were iridescent, fibrous, supreme. Then I took my time over breakfast – a boiled pullet egg, abalone splashed with lemon juice and champagne – and pottered around the old place with Pippy on my last day of relative privacy.
From the outside on that first morning nothing much looked different. We hadn’t painted the house, nor cleaned up the yard. Joe the old palomino still hovered near the disused aviary where I kept his chaff, the wire clothes line and bean trellis still ran along the apple and blackwood trees on the eastern boundary, and around the front near the hedge all we’d done was put in a few striped gymkhana wheels as beer-garden tables, and sturdy old couta boxes as seats. The only noticeable changes from the outside were the new coolroom on the Dray Road side of the house, and the blue and yellow floral curtains Nan insisted on putting in the windows of the upstairs bedrooms; oh, yes, and also the little wooden sign Darren had carved in beechwood and tacked above the door:
The first interesting thing that happened on the opening night was when Kooka unwittingly changed Gene Sutherland’s name to Joan. We’d been open since three and, what with the word around town and the instant success of Duchamp the Talking Urinal, the place was nearly full only half an hour after the tradesman’s knock-off of 4.30. I soon realised that the sunroom was gonna become a favourite hangout, running between the bar and Duchamp as it did. Men and women kept emerging from the dunny doing up their overalls or rearranging their hair with either astounded or amused looks on their faces at what they’d just experienced. The stock country phrase was ‘Well, it’s different’.
Of course they couldn’t quite get their heads around us boarding up the ocean-facing windows in the bar either and when Happy Hour began at 5.30 with Pope Benedict’s angelus live-streaming on Vatican Radio from St Peter’s Square in Rome, the heads were shaking thick and fast. But the drinks were going down fast too. Rennie Vigata’s Dancing Brolga Ale was much approved of, and everyone seemed genuinely happy to have somewhere local to drink again.
As the early hours of that first afternoon passed and people stopped to look at some of the stuff we’d put up around the walls, and as they talked to Darren or Nan or me about what was going on, the goodwill was beginning to turn into good cheer. By 6.30, when the Vatican Radio was exchanged for Jacques Delors videos on YouTube and the first plates of our opening-night entrée, whiting rollmops, were being handed around, the good cheer was really taking off. At 7.30, as new locals kept turning up to check it all out, we paused the proceedings to read out The Grand Hotel Charter. It was brief and to the point.
Kooka stood in front of the bar, his bronzed shoulders shining under the bleached hoops of his white singlet, and as he flicked the ‘record’ switch on the old Grundig we called for a bit of shoosh.
‘The Grand Hotel Charter has four main components, each of which commence from tomorrow,’ Kooka began. ‘NUMBER ONE: in keeping with the original Grand Hotel that stood right here on this site, and that caught fire over one hundred years ago, no light beer will be served. The Dancing Brolga it is, ladies and gents. And stubbies of your choice, within reason of course. NUMBER TWO: as there is no car park provided on the grounds, drinks will be twenty per cent cheaper to those customers who have walked or ridden their bikes. This has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with lack of space. NUMBER THREE: The Grand Hotel, at the discretion of the owner and his committee, will close during long weekends and holiday periods. Make of this what you will but consider that the architecture of Noel’s old house is hardly equipped to cope with the summertime hordes of the Showcase Coast. And lastly NUMBER FOUR: in The Grand Hotel mirth is the object and liquor the licence. Gentlemanly conduct is considered preferable and the more good natured the conversation the more nuts will appear in your bowl. The licensee, Noely here, has asked me to pass on that any objections, enquiries or even commendations on the way the hotel is run should be directed to Frankie the Canary or his spaniel, Pippy. Each evening after stumps Noel has promised he will sit down with Frankie and Pippy, share a few cuttle and chop bones, and discuss the issues. Thanks, ladies and gents. Enjoy yourselves and please let’s raise a toast to the reopening of The Grand Hotel, Mangowak!’
As the throng crowding the bar and spilling out into the sunroom raised their glasses and began to discuss the charter, seriously debating its points and laughing at what seemed a preposterous situation, Kooka turned with a beaming face to Gene behind the bar and called, ‘A claret please, Joan.’
It was a numinous moment, also an unwitting augury of events to come. The natural historian had forgotten where he was, or rather, in the excitement of his unlikely but bright idea being realised, of history being made and him being part of it, he’d forgotten what year we were in. For a split second time had vanished in his midst and Kooka had been back in the original Grand. Perhaps it was 1893, perhaps it was 1897; either way he was ordering his drink not from big Gene Sutherland but from Joan Sweeney.
Veronica pounced. ‘Of course!’ she cried, turning her back from the stove full of sizzling pappadums. ‘Joan Sutherland. What could be a more fitting name for the barman of The Grand?’
In the hubbub and noise only a few thirsty drinkers near the bar heard this exchange but it was enough to make the nickname stick. Much to his own amusement, and to the embarrassment of his two young boys, Dylan and Doug, from that day on Gene Sutherland became Joan Sutherland and The Grand Hotel had a dairy-farmer diva as its head barman. And as for Kooka, well, he couldn’t believe his luck.
Whether it was The Grand Hotel Recommended Looseners, the talking urinal, or simply the fact that the hotel still felt and looked as relaxed as a house, things went from strength to strength on that first night. The weather was calm, and by 9pm we’d opened the boarded-up double doors and spilt out into the garden behind the tea tree hedge. We had no PA so Jim and Oscar’s ragtag band of local mates, The Barrels, who were well used to improvising at weddings and surf-club events, just played through amplifiers out on the grass and the dancing began.
We cooked cayenne rabbit as the main course, in three huge pots on the stove behind the bar, and you wouldn’t believe how many people kept saying they hadn’t tasted rabbit for years. They thoroughly approved of the recipe and thought it went down well with the Dancing Brolgas. Speaking of which, Rennie Vigata turned up in his monstrous black Chevy van on that opening night. It looked like a cross between a vehicular version of an Anselm Kiefer painting and something straight out of Mad Max. Rennie was equally as scary and as a joke he pinned me up against the wall in the bar and dared me to charge him full price for a Laphroaig whisky on account of the fact that he’d driven to the pub and was thus ineligible for the walker’s discount.
In the raspy baritone of a man who at some point in his past had experienced a deft karate chop to the vocal cords, he said, ‘You’re prejudicing the hills, Noel. Do you know how long it would take for me to walk here?’
Angling his powerful bodyguard’s forearm, he held me tight in under the cuckoo clock and the catfish skeleton on the wall. One thing was for sure: he didn’t know his own strength. Surely, I thought, he would realise from past experience that I was about to choke.
Eventually Rennie let me go with a sneering smile. I gulped in the air. There’s nothing like the fear of a premature death to inspire you and I had an inspiration right on the spot. Feigning great forethought, I explained to him (and to myself I might add) The Grand Hotel’s very own Bonafide Traveller scheme. In the old days, of course, when hotels shut with the six o’clock swill due to the wowserish early licensing laws, a bonafide traveller was allowed to drink to his heart’s content in any hotel beyond closing time. Now, as I explained to Rennie, The Grand Hotel had revived the concept but with a twist. Anyone drinking at The Grand who’d come from over fifteen kilometres away was exempt from the price penalties of driving their car.
‘There you go,’ I said to Rennie, feeling some normality coming back into the area of my larynx. ‘As if we’d ever not think of you hillbillies up there. You get the discount. And an extra feed as well, being our main beer supplier.’
I stood with Rennie and his tall dark girlfriend, Lee, at the bar then, as Joan Sutherland poured the Laphroaig for him and a Bundy and Coke for her. Joan and I bashed their ears about how well The Dancing Brolga Ale was going and Rennie seemed quite chuffed. He skulled his dram, stood back, and looked around the room from his great height. ‘Pretty weird bar you got here, Noel,’ he rasped.
‘Yeah?’ I replied. ‘What’s so weird?’
‘Well for a start it just looks like a living room with extra tables and chairs. There’s no TAB, there’s weird shit all over the walls, you’ve boarded up the fuckin’ windows and, for once, everyone looks like they’re having a great time.’
‘It’s the beer, Rennie,’ said Joan, as he poured him another Laphroaig. ‘The Dancing Brolgas.’
Rennie snorted and gave Lee a smiling wink. ‘Thought as much,’ he said, proudly. ‘Well, there’s plenty more where that came from.’
Big Rennie’d come to regret those words.
Despite the announcement that any feedback should be addressed to Frankie and Pippy, as the night progressed into the late hours people started to come up to me to talk about what was going on. I was uncompromising in my answers, stressing the fact that without The Grand Hotel there would be no hotel anymore in Mangowak and because it was my hotel I’d run it how I liked. The only concession I made was when Joan Sutherland’s wife, Jen, quietly suggested that the ‘no light beer’ rule was a bit hard on the oldies. She said they drank light not only because of drink-driving concerns but also for health reasons. She said some of them were diabetics, some had dodgy tickers. I said that was fair enough and that not everyone could put it away like Kooka. We agreed right there and then to amend the charter to include light beer for people born before the Black Friday bushfires of 1939. It was as good a cut-off point as any.
Most of the discussions I had, though, were positive, and inebriated. Givva Way for one was inspired. The town earbasher had been a bit quiet of late, bewildered as he was by the Plinths, the indoor creek and Wathaurong Heights, but now he was off, full of praise for The Grand and swooning reminiscences of the old Mangowak pub in the 1970s. He raved on about all the bands that used to come through on their tours to Adelaide. He brought up the time that he and my brothers Walker and Jim had smoked bongs all night with Colin Hay from Men At Work. Their famous song ‘Down Under’ had twenty-seven verses back then, Givva told me, not for the first time. Eventually, after slapping me on the back with his thick house-painter’s hand, he said, ‘Better go off and have another chat to Duchamp.’
It is proof of my simple pleasures in the days of The Grand Hotel that you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face after hearing Givva Way say those words.
By midnight I was dancing with Nan Burns to The Barrels’ version of the theme from the cartoon Top Catand couldn’t care less about anything. We were already an hour over the licence, Dylan and Dougie Sutherland had taken to pouring beers behind the bar under their father’s guidance, and the general mess was incredible. I could see Veronica and Darren and Jen Sutherland busily trying to tidy up. Plates and glasses were strewn everywhere, beer and wine were spilt and ashtrays were overflowing in the sunroom and beyond. It was obvious we had a bit to learn but for now I was content to dance with Nan, to watch the new grey strands in her red hair fall across her face, to smoke her rollies, and to think about it all tomorrow.