It’s seven years now since Steve walked out of South Pacific. We’re good. I see him socially, and we talk on the phone often. He’s a different man to the person he used to be. He is still practising law but I sense that he’s looking for new experiences. He is seeking more from life. He loves my children Riley and Emily, and I’d like them to see more of him. I say, ‘Brother, you’re welcome in my home any time.’
The fact is that he still has an inferiority complex. Wouldn’t you, if your father told you that you were nothing? He has no reason to feel inferior about anything. He’s my hero for stopping his drinking. If he never achieves anything else in his life that’s enough for me. For that achievement alone, he is a special man. I’m very thankful he’s still with us.
I sometimes wonder if Steve will become a father. He’s never been interested and maybe he doesn’t need that pressure. It’s not the worst thing in the world for him not to have kids.
Life, in the end, has turned out okay for my brother.
The main reason I’m writing this book, apart from commemorating Mum’s memory, is to offer proof that no matter how rugged life is, it may just turn out all right in the end. If I’d had an easy, privileged life there’d be no book.
Life has turned out well for me, too. My wife Mary and I have created a life for our children that is safe, secure and filled with love. I talk to my wife three times a day on the phone, and sometimes when I know the kids are playing in Centennial Park, I’ll slip away from the office and drive there and watch them proudly from afar. Mine is now a fortunate life, one that as children, Stephen and Alison and I did not have, because of my father. My family will never know homelessness, poverty, and alcohol-fuelled violence. The kind of life I led in the past made me the man and father I am today. That does not make me grateful for what’s gone before.
If I could turn back time and change the past, there’s no way I’d opt for the life I had. Forget the book. If I had my way, my mother and father would have brought us up in a stable environment with a roof over our heads and no worries, he would not have been a drunken wife-beater and she would not have died at age fifty-two from cancer. Alison would not have been sexually abused. Steve would never have been an alcoholic. My old man would not have shredded Steve’s self-esteem by making him feel like he was nothing. It’s an old saying that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I disagree. If they’re very lucky, have determination and if fortune smiles on them, some people can survive. But I know many people who had the same experiences as I had and today they’re drug addicts, in jail or dead. It didn’t make them stronger. It did them in. I hate to see it.
That’s why I believe that it’s the responsibility of the ones who make it to reach out to their brothers and sisters who are struggling.
I’m devoted to the City of Sydney PCYC. It will always be my home away from home. I love going down to that club. At forty-eight, I still work out and skip and hit the bag just about every day. The kids down there have been known to give my Mercedes the finger when I pull up outside but when they see it’s me they’re cool.
That club and I go back a long way. As a cheeky kid I got my arse kicked there, I boxed and exercised there, I slept there when I didn’t have a home. I was its president for almost a decade and served on the committee. Today my official tag is Patron and Life Governor of the Woolloomooloo PCYC. I have an advisory role there, try to help where I can, talk to the regional co-ordinator of the PCYC movement, the CEO, the head of boxing at the ’Loo. I was proud to receive the Champions For Youth Award because of my work for the club and for helping to raise the money for their renovations, which include new workout areas and equipment, a flat-screen TV, a pool table, computers, places where kids can study. I hope the new PCYC provides a viable alternative to the less wholesome attractions of the street.
We had a boxing fundraiser. Macquarie Bank and my father-in-law Jack and I donated around a quarter of a million dollars. Steve fought a Macquarie executive. I could see in my father-in-law’s eyes that he was proud to be down there amid the blood and leather, seeing me respected in a hard, tough world so different from the worlds of the family and real estate. Jack was a gypsy in my palace that night.
The stroppy kid I used to be is still alive and well inside me. He always will be. I keep getting drawn back into the old life. I never want to lose touch. I have very few happy memories of Camperdown, but not long ago, I drove out to the old Housing Commission block in that suburb where I spent my early years. I hadn’t been near the place in thirty-five years. I told an old friend, Paul Kent, a journo from the Daily Telegraph. Later, Paul decided he would write an article on the visit. Here’s his story, which appeared in the Telegraph on 7 February 2009:
She saw the car and it is no great leap to figure that from the car to the broken down building behind it he was there from some slick government department, some place not of her world, to fix what can’t be fixed. ‘Are you going to start fixing the balconies?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘Aren’t you from the Council or the Department of Housing or something?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I used to live here.’
It interested her. They got to talking and he told her he used to live on the third floor.
‘I live on the third floor,’ she said. [It was the very flat where we used to live.] ‘You want to come up and take a look?’
James spent the afternoon in his former home sharing coffee and stories.
It was smaller than he remembered. There was the bedroom he and his brother and sister shared. There was the bedroom where his mother slept – on a good night on her own.
‘It was a place of so much joy and pain,’ he says. ‘More pain than joy.’
No matter where we are or no matter where we drive, we come from somewhere. We never leave it behind.
There is something of this two-bedroom Camperdown Housing Commission flat inside Dack, one of Sydney’s leading real estate agents.
For 19 years he has been McGrath’s No.1 salesman. He has the record price in four Sydney suburbs. He sells more than $100 million of real estate a year.
That is just detail. A quick check of the classifieds shows that, nowadays, his car is worth about the same as the average small house, nothing like the houses Dack specialises in. More details.
When John McGrath started the company in his father’s back room, Dack was right beside him. Side by side, hour for hour, but even that is not half of it.
McGrath is received as a wonder kid in the business world. A rational comparison makes it certain that Dack must be the most under-appreciated real estate brain in the city’s No.1 industry. ‘For the past five years the company has been going good,’ says McGrath’s general manager of sales, Matt Lahood, ‘and a lot of that is because of James’s ethos and the way he brings teams together. He’s the unofficial 2IC without having the brief. He’s just got a sixth sense for when things are on and when they’re off.’
If hard work is not considered a trick, then no tricks explain Dack’s success. ‘It’s just coming from a position of understanding,’ he says. ‘Understanding where you can almost get tossed out of your house at any time or moved into other housing.’
For the past eight years, Dack has been patron of the City of Sydney Police Citizens Youth Club at Woolloomooloo. The club was crumbling and Dack and a dedicated few rescued it. He received the PCYC’s Life Governor Award. He donates money and helps raise it for Randwick’s Royal Hospital for Women, breast cancer research, the Starlight Foundation, Vision Australia and juvenile diabetes. For Friends of the Family, the Children’s Medical Institute, Youth Off The Streets and even the RSPCA.
‘I know he often gives people at work five thousand here and there, because they’ve told me, just to help them out,’ Lahood says. ‘A lot of the time he doesn’t get it back.’
Dack’s mother, Florence, died in 1982. He was 21 and younger brother Stephen and sister Alison were at high school. His father long gone, Dack took over, working to keep his family in school.
It is in this context, his life assembled, pulled apart and put together again, that it begins to make sense. ‘You lament the fact that you’ve done so well and you can’t show your mother any of it,’ he says. ‘Can’t give her anything in terms of what she deserves. Having a couple of kids now, and realising how difficult it is with a great wife and good support … she did it all on her own. It must have been agonisingly difficult for her, and I can’t give anything back.’
He believes the stress of raising three children with limited resources, an alcoholic husband who was there little, and was abusive when he was, brought on the cancer that killed her.
It is as good an answer as any that he can find as to why he turned his car towards his old home last year.
The ’Loo is still a tough old place, for all its piecemeal gentrification and expensive restaurants. There is still crime and drunkenness and drugs. When we were children we’d step over the bodies of homeless people on the footpaths and in the parks. They still sit huddled with their blankets and shopping trolleys. One homeless man died on the street only the other day. I’ve grown up now and moved on and away, and the Italian women no longer sit in the sunshine repairing the nets of their fishermen husbands and sons and grandfathers, yet I can still walk along the Finger Wharf and around to the Domain and get a thrill. I’m still at home in the ’Loo. When I see a bloke with no teeth and tattoos and a mullet rolling drunk and looking mean, I don’t cross to the other side of the street. I give him a smile and say, ‘G’day.’ Sometimes we are too quick to judge. Truth is, if you went back twenty-five years, that guy was most likely a sweet kid suffering poverty, violence or some other kind of abuse. It would have been extraordinary if he’d turned out any other way. Parents can make or break us.
I look around me, remember when, and say, ‘I love this joint.’
Many people who live there are still the salt of the earth.
I still have plenty to do with the kids of Woolloomooloo, and just this week I’m taking a bunch of them out for a bite to eat. In many ways they’re like we used to be, but in other ways they’re different. Some are bordering on the uncontrollable and getting into serious trouble with the law. They’re hurting, crying out for help and need someone to give them a hug or put a strong hand on their shoulder as adults in our day did with us. I blame drugs as much as anything else for the trouble they find themselves in and their lack of respect for others and for themselves.
There was a teenager from down there, a hard case, skinny and with rotting teeth from heroin, whom I gave a job to at McGrath’s. I could see he was in danger of getting out of control and I wanted to show him a different side of life in which he could work and earn money and gain some self-respect. Soon after he started he came to work and his arm was a mess, all cut and scraped. I asked him what had happened and he blithely reported that the night before he and a mate had stolen a Porsche from a garage and were driving it when the police saw them and gave chase. This kid, who was in the passenger seat, jumped out of the car while his friend was hooning it around a corner, and suffered the injuries to his arm. He didn’t last in the job much longer.
This lad’s little brother was eleven, and one day I saw him outside the PCYC and he was all enthusiastic and wanting me to give him a job selling real estate like I had done for his brother. I said I’d be glad to and that we’d talk later in the week at the club. I didn’t see him again for three years, and when I did, like his sibling, he was thin, had blank, dead eyes, rotting teeth and his complexion was yellow. He, too, had discovered heroin. I went up to him and asked him how he was doing and whether he was still interested in the job but, like he was a zombie, he stared vacantly, mumbled something I couldn’t make out and shuffled away down the lane. It was a tragic scene. I’ll keep doing what I can for the youngsters of the ’Loo. If one out of ten goes on to turn their life around, like my friend and colleague Stephen Henderson at work, then that’ll do me.
Am I religious? I have a strong leaning towards religion, because there have been so many strange and inexplicable things happen in my life that there has to be something out there, not that I understand what it is. All I know is that if your religion helps you get through life, it has to be a good thing. Personally I feel that if you help others, are a good citizen, do the best you can and don’t expect anything in return, eventually things will go well for you. My religion is being optimistic and trying to do right by others and myself.
People say to me, ‘Surely you’ve made enough money to retire.’ I could retire, but I have no intention of calling it quits. I like the challenge of selling property. It’s like a job interview every time you front up to a client.
I’ll remain in real estate as long as I love it and can’t wait to get out of bed each morning to face the new day’s challenges. Currently the market is weak as a result of the world financial crisis and other factors, yet, as it always has, it will come roaring back. Think about it. Sydney is one of the most beautiful, and liveable, cities on Earth. I think, too, that even in the age of the internet, there will always be a need for good real estate sales people. Just as the owner of a champion racehorse spares no expense to make sure the best jockey is riding that horse to maximise his investment, so someone who has a beautiful house to sell wants to get the best possible price, and that’s where a top-flight agent comes in.
I’m glad I had the balls to leave a secure job with the Department of Health and get into real estate in the first place. For a kid like me from an insecure background, that took some doing. And I’m proud of what I’ve put into McGrath’s. I’ve been running this place with John for many years now, and have helped grow the company from nothing to the multi-million-dollar enterprise working out of fifteen offices that it is today. I stamped myself all over this place and I hope I have helped to give real estate selling a good name. We’ve put roofs over people’s heads and sold property for a good price. I’ve helped young people build businesses and it’s nice to think that my own success has inspired them.
I have also been fortunate enough to have the chance to help friends in need. Friends are very important to me, and if I can help them out of a jam I will. Just recently I have used the negotiating skills I’ve honed over thousands of real estate deals to offer solutions to mates.
When Luke Ricketson, the fine Sydney Roosters forward who also starred for New South Wales and Australia, was at the end of his long career trying to sort out his final-year contract at the Roosters, I felt he wasn’t getting either the money or respect he deserved for being a loyal and influential Rooster for more than a decade. I’d advised Luke and his father Doug, who also played for the Roosters, on real estate in the past. I met with Ricko’s coach and manager and we were able to work out a fairer payment. I did that because Ricko is a good mate and he deserved the better deal, but I also love the Roosters, they’re my club, and I didn’t want to see their name tarnished because of the way they were treating Luke. Men like Ricko are vital in a sporting organisation, or any organisation. He’s a man who because of his talent, strong character, dedication and his contribution to team harmony was a vital cog. When such players leave, they are hard to replace. In quick succession over the past few seasons, the Roosters have lost Ricko and others like him due to salary cap restrictions and poor judgement ... and look at what happened to the Roosters in 2009; it was a disastrous year when a number of players disgraced themselves off the field, and the team finished dead last. I worry what will happen when Craig Fitzgibbon, who has just retired, is not around. Hopefully things will be rectified as a new coach and players join the club.
Anthony Bell, another friend, wanted to buy his father Donald’s accountancy business. It was the right time. Donald was nearing semi-retirement age and it was clear that the business needed younger blood, someone with an appreciation of the new technology to capitalise on Donald’s lifetime of hard work. Anthony fit the bill. But they couldn’t agree on a price, because Donald kept making a commitment to his son and then getting cold feet about letting go. I got them together, turned on a tape recorder so Donald couldn’t change his mind again, and they were able to reach consensus. Today Anthony has taken the business to a new level of success and Donald is an integral member of the management team.
Johnny Lewis is a very important person in my life. When he and former world champion boxer Kostya Tszyu were involved in a financial dispute, I got them together and we talked it through, put the issue in perspective, and resolved the problem. It took three months of talks, but in the end both men were happy, which was a great result because each holds the other in the highest regard.
I’m trying to make up for lost time. I’m here, I’m healthy, I have all my faculties. I’m not afraid to love and I’m not afraid of hard work. I’m never happier than when I’m with my family or good friends, at home, in a café or at the rugby league. Mary and I travel, and although we don’t often dine in restaurants I have realised my old dream of being able to go to a fine restaurant and afford anything on the menu.
I have hopes and dreams for myself and my family. I feel great, but it’s always lurking around in my mind that I’m not going to live forever. So let’s get it on.
I think every day of my mother. I try to live my life as she lived hers.
Just as she read bedtime stories to me, I read to Emily and Riley at night before they slip away to dreamland. They prefer The Gruffalo to Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Our reading session was interrupted the other night when Riley’s scream rang out. ‘Daddy, a cockroach! You’re big and strong. KILL HIM!’ Now, being a boy from Woolloomooloo, killing cockroaches is something I know a lot about.
I regret that I was never able to spoil my mother like she deserved to be spoiled. If she could see me today, I’m not sure what she’d think. I hope she’d be proud. I’ll always have this sadness: that Mum never had a life, that she was never validated as a human being. So here, in these pages, I say, ‘I love you Mum, and thank you for all you did for me.’