The Digger No.11 January-February 1973

W h at chance new dope legislation? Lab or’s plans page1.

WOMEN DRINK O U TTH E BACK Sydney women juicers, tired of being shoved into back bars and ripped off for the privilege of being out of earshot of “men’s talk”, organise to breach that trad­ itional male stronghold, the public bar. In Manly pubs they expect — and get — kicks, abuse and broken glass. In between salvos they recruit a local housewife, and argue their case with licensees, regulars and police. The confrontation, not without laughter, produces four busts and a fine vibe among the beerstained sisters.

By Ponch Hawkes Page 4.

Why hospitals should kill people too “The cabbage patch”, hospital staff call intensive care wards. A male nurse talks to Colin Talbot about heartstarters and mind-shocks, the machines and methods our institutions use to prolong the lives of what were once people. Death could be sweeter. Page 5.

Pituri: Australia’s oldest stone A botanist’s research into the aborigines’ use of a drug that alleviated J not only the hardships of walkabouts W / but the woes o f disillusioned white explorers and early settlers.

What it looks like, where it grows, how to prepare it. Page 8.

Nimbin townsfolk hand over to festival Local heads resent the intrusion of the urban counter­ culture’s hoi polloi into their rural peace: but Aquarius festival organisers, I Ching in hand and calm reason in mind, gently woo another country town to the cause: city kids want to come back to the land. By Billy GarnerI Page 3.

R ock m usos and unions Sydney rock musos join union local to fight rip-off promoters. Page 3.

Teachers are turning hum an Know your enemy: Victorian Education Department arms itself against radical teachers . . . but still they come. Page 2.

C om m unist p arty’s young turks CPA gets a shot in the arm: young recruits clear away old deoris in a tired organisation. By Jill Jolliffe. Page 2.

Second of two extracts from Emmett Grogan’s.

NGOLEVIO Playing with death on New York streets. Page 6.

G u lliver’s albu m “The band’s all right but the singer. . . ” Page 8.

Sabbath live Dark skies and paranoia at Kooyong. B y Jenny Brown. Page 9.

BLANK PAGE FOR ISSUU VERSION ONLY

Everingham’s decrim inalisa tion:

Oil corporations stay With left-wing unions, and . . .

Right-wing union fouls fuel lines

W h a t the government can’t do to dope laws When the Minister for Health announced recently (Sunday Telegraph 24.12.72) “We are in favor of decriminalising all forms of addiction whether it be alcohol or any other drug . . . ” some of us may have thought that things were going to change on the drug scene, and soon even.

Everingham actually specified a few o f the changes we could expect.

Penalties for possession would be reduced; penalties for pushing would be increased; legislation would be introduced to classify marijuana separately from hard drugs; the practice, which has been in effect in Queensland for some years, of doc­ tors prescribing drugs for addicts on the N.H.S., would be extended.

(Though if addicts are also pushers would they be more likely to cop increased penalties or N.H.S. drugs?)

If Everingham and his fellow min­ isters (and some of their wives) be­ lieve they have been given the people’s mandate to proceed in this cautious manner, what are they going to do about the major obstacles to any kind of liberalisation that accumulated during the last Government?

For example, how far is the pre­ sent Government’s power to legislate on drugs already eroded by the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, to which Australia is a signatory? Un­ der the Single Convention marijuana is classified as a narcotic. The Con­ vention is a codification of all pre­ vious international agreements on drug control. Parties to it are required to ferret out and supply multifarious details on their local drug scenes to the Narcotics Commission, and to supply an annual report on the oper­ ation of the Convention of the Sec­ retary General of the U.N. The obligations Australia has as­ sumed under this convention would appear to pre-empt any possibility of the government’s increasing the import o f drugs,v licit or illicit, or legalising growth, or re-classifying marijuana, without contravening the Convention. If Everingham’s govern­ ment is prepared to drop the Con­ vention, what is the possibility of U.N. sanctions being invoked against Australia?

The question can’t be answered by Everingham anyway; Australia’s res­ ponsibilities under the Convention are the concern,; not of his Depart­ ment, but o f Customs and Excise.

The powers of his department are not so great as those o f State De­ partments o f Health. Treatment (in­ cluding punishment) and Rehabilit­ ation of drug users is a state responsiblity. The only powers the C om ­ monwealth has in respect of sale and use of drugs is control over imports — again a matter, not for Health, but for Customs and Excise. While the Commonwealth Government could, providing it can get out of the Single Convention, legalise imports, the regulations governing sales, use,< and growth will be changed, if they are, at State level. So users in Queens­ land, N.S.W. and Victoria need not anticipate immediate liberation from hassles. Don Dunstan’s recentatfempt

Changing language Sigh. There it is again — Mr Nasty Abortionist is “an arrogant and in­ human cunt” (Letters & Telegrams The Digger, Jan. 1 3 -2 7 , 1973). If Ms Anon, wants to protect her future interest, along with those of her un­ fortunate cunt and its attendant paraphernalia, I would suggest that she tries to break the habit of refering to arrogant and inhuman men as cunts. Arrogant and inhuman men <should!; be called arrogant and in­ human men, for that is what they are. Not cunts, please.

It is unhealthy psychology to as­ sociate the female genitalia (and mention it in the same breàth) with that which is nasty, distasteful, odious, anger- and hate-provoking to oneself. kYou may say, “Well Fm sorry, but I can’t change the language.”

My answer is, “ Don’t try!” Cunt is an age-old word taken from the

to publicly disown liberal reforms in his state doesn’t provide much cause for optimism there either.

The Commonwealth does legis­ late for A.C.T. and the N.T. It could try the same sort of follow-the-leader action that worked with labelling cigarette packets with cancer warn­ ings. By introducing compulsory labelling for the A.C.T. and the N.T., it made it impractical for the States to do anything else than follow suit.

But relevant business interests were fairly sure, from overseas exper­ ience, that labelling doesn’t affect sales. No sweat.

The only othey way the Common­ wealth could influence state depart­ ments is through the Drug Educ­ ation Programs which are largely Commonwealth funded. These pro­ grams are hardly geared at the mo­ ment to direct State thinking along the lines suggested by Everingham.

Judging by the literature they put out, they are not geared to anything other than reinforcing the most con­ servative and ill-informed opinions in the community. The following ex­ tract explains how boredom as a fac­ tor causing addiction can be dealt with: “Housewives can very easily drift into this sort of situation. The obvious way out is to seek in­ terests outside the home or hob­ bies or crafts which can help fill their spare time;” Any suggestions?

The question of drugs and the law will be raised at the Health Mini­ sters’ Conference in March; it is there, if anywhere, that Everingham could start getting his ideas into practice.

His own Department will have a lot of educating to do. So far they have no new instructions. There’s not much time. * * * Meanwhile: Melbourne Drug Squad and CIB police have been taking an intense interest in houses in Carlton, Fitzroy and eastern suburbs over the last fortnight, and have made at least ten raids within ten days.

People who have been raided claim that it is only a regional purge and that a group of people in a western bayside suburb haven’t had any trouble although “they admit they are known ” It may be co-incidence that someone known to the people who’ve been raided, and alleged by the police to be a large scale dealer, was recently busted and released on a total of $4000 bail and surety.

With one or two exceptions — like the two guys who were busted in a phone box with two pounds — the police have found nothing more in­ criminating than some flashing road­ works lamps and chillums and hook­ ahs which have been taken away to be ‘analyzed’.

Latin ‘cunnus’. I assure you it is a perfectly respectable and legitimate term for a lady’s sexual organs, pref­ erable in fact to the medical ‘pudenda’ which has something to do with ‘being ashamed o f . Personally I also prefer it to the names ‘pussy’, ‘Mary’ and ‘Fanny’ which are euph­ emisms from the ‘let’s make it decent and acceptable’ school.

So let’s not corrupt the meaning of an innocent word by applying it to any odious, disgusting, frus­ trating and anger-provoking person who offends us. Otherwise we are guilty o f subtly perpetrating the all too long continued and all too prev­ alent anti-feminist attitudes which result';, in such unhappy situations as that described as ‘Clinic Dis-service’.

P.S. The Abortion Law Repeal Association has opened a centre called Problem Pregnancy, to help and advise women with unwanted pregnancies. The centre will operate each week night from 7.30 till 9.00.

It is situated in Fitzroy St., St. Kilda.

Telephone 94-1540 or 94-1630.

Ms, D. Walker, Fitzroy, Vic.

by Bruce Hanford

By mid-week, last week, the petrol strike was cutting traffic noticeably in Sydney’s snakehipped streets. Leader writers in the daily papers were chiding the unions for shutting down the city incidental to a squabble between union leaders over territorial, rights. The papers aren’t mentioning communists, although some cab drivers I’ve met are.

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Digger cartoonist Ron Cobb is still in Indonesia, where he’ll remain, making films, till next month. In the few months Cobb has been in Australia (he’s American) he has landed a series of direct punches on the life-and-times of his temporarily adopted home country.

The cartoon above is by an Australian, Peter Dickie.

Interpol's menu

...and 1*5 million tabs o f acid

by Ron Lichty Paris (UPS) — Last year, Inter­ pol’s work led to police seizure of over 100 tons of pot in 23 countries.

Interpol is ,an international police agency.

But busting marijuana importers is not Interpol’s only job. Despite being barred by its own statutes from becoming “involved in “political, racial, religious or military problems,” Interpol has been cracking down on air piracy, porno and the illegal labor market.

Interpol is a data bank, the only clearinghouse in the world which collects and disseminates information about “international crimes” and “international criminals’’. Its cops never have to soil their hands with an arrest warrant.

Interpol’s legwork is done by its 114 member nations — all but one of which are non-communist (Yugo­ slavia is the exception). And they also

provide the finances. Interpol, in cocaine labs in Lima. It was indirec­ return, coordinates data and resear­ tly responsible for thousands of ar­ ches cases. rests and the confiscation of over At Interpol’s sterile, starkly 23,000 kilograms of opium, 1000 modem headquarters in the Paris kilos of morphine, 850 kilos of suburb of Saint-Cloud, Chief Officer heroin and 260 kilos of cocaine. And Jean Nepote can often be found then there was the 100 tons of pot.

While no figures were given far toiling away at the piles of work on seizure of psychedelics, Interpol was his desk. To him, good police work is like piecing together a jigsaw instrumental in quashing the legen­ dary Brotherhood of Eternal Love puzzle.

A quiet little man, the 57-year- last August. Acting on a random bit old Nepote has been with Interpol of information from Pakistan that since 1946, when it re-established cars were being shipped there from itself in Paris after the war. At that California and then reshipped to the* time it was “scarcely more than U.S., Interpol discovered the cars one man, a secretary and a desk,” were being used to smuggle hash and says Nepote. Now, the chief officer hash oil. The agency put together has at his disposal an annual budget the framework of information under of $800,000 and a staff of 120, which 57 persons, among them Tim including cops on loan from Britain, Leary, were indicted and 1.5 million Canada, Austria, West Germany, tabs of acid, 2.5 tons of hash, 30 Ceylon, Chile and the United States. gallons of hash oil and two kilos of Counterfeiting took up much of cocaine were seized.

The term “international criminal” Interpol’s time in the past., but now the emphasis is on drug traffic and As Interpol’s — it does not appear hijackings. During the 12 months in the law books of any nation. But ending last June, Interpol dealt with once a person has been labelled an 8182 international drug smuggling international criminal, he or she cases, up 70 per cent from the year cannot step into any one of the 114 before. Its work moved French cops member countries without being in to close down five secret opium danger of arrest.

The U.S. dropped out of Interpol laboratories in southern France and led Peruvian police to shut down two in the 50’s, labelling it “too social-

ist”, but when Interpol’s forty-first general assembly convened in Frank­ furt, West Germany, in September, President Nixon sent the heads of the Secret Service and the Drug ! Abuse Law Enforcement Agency, as well as the seconds-in-command atf the Treasury and the Bureau of Nar­ cotics and Dangerous Drugs. High on the agenda were the narcotics, trade, air piracy and the ille g a l labor market. And the U.S. upped its contribution to Interpol’s budget to $53,000 this year.

Interpol’s work isn’t glamorous and would, in all probability, put James Bond fans to sleep. But that doesn’t matter to Jnterpol. They’re' just into wiping out intemationaf deviance.

them. The last 2 words were used frequently as we didn’t know the correct terms, however, when going to school, shit became number 2 and piss became a wee.

Gamer to tell me what it was all about, in language I could under­ stand at the time. The knowledge acquired in the factories and su b ­ sequent work places did not enlighten me. On reflection, the women were totally ignorant about their own sexuality, and only saw it in male terms, the length of the cock and how long the man could last.

Address letters/telegrams to: The Digger, P.O. Box 77, Carlton, Vic., 3053

Megs predictable Your reporters Hawkes and Brown should have read enough articles about Ms Whitlam to know som e­ thing about her areas of interest and knowledge. Not only had they under­ prepared the interview, but they seemed determined to cast her as the Great Woman Liberator, and were disappointed and petulant when she did not play along. It should have been obvious to them that she would not and could not.

R.A. Jacobs, Northcote, Vie,

The point is, that anti-commun­ ists are leading this strike.

There are two Transport Workers’ Unionsin Australia, the New South Wales one, and the Federal one. The NSW branch split from the Federal body in 1969, and since then a dis­ pute has developed which is both enormously complicated and stupidly simple.

I The NSW leadership is right-wing, | as they say in Trades Hall lingo, ! and the Federal leadership is leftwing. As it stands, the Federal TWU is the sole negotiating body for unionists in the Federal arbitration system, and therefore the oil com­ panies aren’t eager to deal directly with the NSW breakaway. Hie NSW version of the TWU wants federal accreditation, and it wants to negot­ iate directly with the oil companies.

The Federal version of the TWU won’t allow this — it opposes the NSW presence in the court system on ample legal grounds, and it op­ poses a separate deal between the companies and the NSW union with the threat of a national strike.

The NSW union has countered with a strike of their own. As one of their organizers put it, “anytime

Sex is not a fuck Being a woman and reared in Carlton of migrant parents. I take this opportunity to write of my ex­ perience which I feel applies to many thousands of people.

I was one of three children; never did we hear our parents swear, nor did they discuss anything which could be considered ‘blue’.

Playing and growing in the streets of Carlton, I soon became familiar with four letter words; fuck, root, arse, shit and piss were just a few of

My parents, unaware of the En­ glish terms a la dictionary, were un­ able to teach us otherwise. How many Australians know the correct terms?

Like the majority of children, I was never given any instruction on the nature of procreation or sex­ uality. People seek sexual expression without the desire to have babies, making education or sexuality a topic apart from procreation.

Sales Drive If you have experienced diffiI culty in getting a copy of Digger, ! try harder . . . and more positively ! send us a note mentioning the sub­ urb and state in which you had the hassle If we know the name and address of a news-outlet, we can liase between the shop and our distributor, so give us what infor­ mation you can and we’ll get on the phone,,

My parents, like the vast majority of parents, lacked the knowledge to explain the entire physical repro­ ductive system of males and females; they were' also extremely inhibited and unable to explain sexuality.

How strange, Mrs Wiegmann, that you object to four letter words.

Should women attending a doctor be asked about coitus, fornication, defecation or urination, 70% would fail to understand the words. If we were asked if we fuck, shit or piss, we would certainly understand, but oh — how disgusting; only men do these things — we have sex, use our bowel, and pass water — nice words.

Ladies don’t use swear words, but in the darkness of their bedroom they become a slut.

Being familiar with the four letter words, but at the same time knowing ‘nice’ girls didn’t use this language, I was all ears when commencing work in a factory at 14 years of age.

Oh! If only there was a Helen

It is because women call a fuck sex, that produces the evidence col­ lected in a recent survey conducted by the Caimmillar Institute in the suburbs of Melbourne, and published in the Herald recently: approxim­

the oil companies want to sit down' and negotiate with us, we’re quite happy to settle the dispute.”

The oil companies aren’t playing.

While the Federal TWU would roll them if they gave in, the Federal body regards the NSW strike as a scabby action, and feels perfectly righteous about helping the companies out. So planes that fly to Sydney are refuelled interstate, and there’s a rumble that interstate petrol tankers are pulling into Sydney.

The enormous complications come from the law and history o f Aus­ tralian industrial relations«, Informed union officials are talking about a 1919 High Court decision which ¡quashed a state award for a 40-hour week, and which seems to indicate that Federal awards take precedence . . . certainly the manoeuvers o f the state branch forFederal registration, and the simultaneous hearings in State arbitration courts, are all a bit obscure for the rank and file, newspaper readers, and, for the mat­ ter, reporters.

I rang the NSW branch’s head­ quarters, and asked to speak with Ted McBeatty, the secretary o f the state’s right-wing rebels. McBeatty, was too busy to handle the ’phone, so Stewart Parnell, an organizer, spoke to me. He said it would take too long to explain what was going on to me, so he didn’t propose to try. I asked him if he expected legal opposition from the Federal body in the courts.

He said, “Anything the left-wing, communist-controlled federal body might do, wouldn’t surprise us.”

The only communist I’ve heard of in the Federal TWU is a Brisbane research officer, who resigned two years ago.

What are the prospects? As this is written, a lawyer for an unin­ volved union tells me, “The compan­ ies will probably stand solid, and the Federal union has no reason to pull their members out. The NSW union has its blokes out, losing money, and the question is: how long before the rank and file gets tired of it? As far as I’m concerned, the Federal blokes have the NSW blokes by the balls.”

As the normal carbon monoxide blow fades from the fac?s o f an increasing number of pedestrians, it becomes more obvious that the NSW branch o f the TWU can put a hurt on motorists, the oil companies, but not on their antagonistic Federal colleagues.

ately 80% of all married women in­ terviewed stated they were dissatis­ fied sexually.

How then are these women, with their husbands, supposed to instruct their children on sexuality?

JR. Turner, Nth. Carlton, Vic.

R ip -o ff fever It was good to see you back on my local newsagents rack. Your the second best thing I read so far in January. Best is from (believe it or not) the latest in Australia, Sep­ tember Playboy, page 148, ‘Stone Cold Fever’. It’s incredible, so how’s about ripping it from them and publish it? Playboy won’t mind/will never know.

Peace, Kevin M. Crowe, Darlinghurst, NSW.

January 27 — February 13

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Page 2

The Digger

Post-six ties-revolutionary changes;

Recruits straighten the Party Line

Published by High times Ptv Ltd, 127 Queensberry St., Carlton 3053 Postal Address: PO Box 77, Carlton 3053 Telephone: 347-27»2 (temporarily).

Postal address: P.O. Box 77, Carlton, Victoria, 3053.

tion, They include, among others, Grant Evans, ex-editor of Latrobe Ihiversity’s Rabelais, and a number The Communist Party of Aus­ of women’s liberation activists. The tralia recently saved itself from ex­ CP’s newspaper Tribune has already tinction by recruiting a number of benefited from the spirit of the youth youth activists. Until now, the prob­ influx, mainly as the result o f Grant lem of breaking through to radical Evan’s full-time work on it. youth has been a major, headache to The Intervention group has creat­ the CP —any CP member under the ed a North Carlton branch of the CP. age of 35 was a rare gem. Indeed, On any Saturday morning (if one average age would have been mid­ can emerge from the blear before forties, with no heirs coming on.

12 o’clock) not one, but a number Most of the recruits have come of Trib. sellers can be observed in from a group around a Marxist Lygon St. Their presence was m ost theoretical journal called Interven- apparent during Communist Max

by Jill Jolliffe

Editing: Phillip < Frazer, Bruce Hanford, Helen Gamer Administration and circulation: Game Hutchinson Advertising: Terry Cleary Artwork and layout: Ian McCausland Reporting: Jenny Brown, Colin Talbot, Virginia Fraser Subscriptions and typesetting: Sue Cassio Sydney office: Editorial — Jon or Ponch Hawke's. Advertising— Michael Zerman.

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Of Zappa and the Crimes A ct

Tell yourself “I am not a teacher”

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Send material with a stamped SAE if you want it back, to The Digger, P.O. Box 77, Carlton, 3053.

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Send postal order or cheque to: Back Numbers, The Digger, P.O. Box 77, Carlton, 3053.

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Fitzroy High, Brunswick High, Lilydale Tech, Princes Hill High: recent upheavals in these and other schools indicate that something major is starting to happen in the Vic­ torian Education Department. But is it a matter of persecution of indiv­ iduals, as claimed by some suppor­ ters of Helen Gamer (sacked from Fitzroy High) and Ron Livingston (whose case sparked off an extended one-school strike at Brunswick High last year), or is it the beginning of a pitched battle between entrenched Department bureaucrats and an em­ erging group of radical teachers?

One tech teacher, whom we’ll call John because he’s still embroiled in his personal battle with the De­ partment, believes that the lines are being drawn now for an all-out knock-down fight. He dismisses with scorn what he calls “the cries of outraged liberals” — teachers who deviate from conservative standards of classroom behaviour, and then

cry persecution when their actions call down the Department’s wrath.

“What do you expect?” says John.

“Those bureaucrats in there, they know now. They’ll be just as ruthless as we should expect. Don’t whinge about it. Exploit the situation.”

John, who is 26 and a teacher of English and Social Studies in a western suburb tech school, makes no bones about his intentions: i4You can’t reform education. You can only break it down through an attack on the ideas people have about it — the whole business of discipline in schools, the very notion of education, the role of teachers.

“And if this is your aim, one of the first things to go is professional solidarity. Don’t get the idea that the techs are any different from the high schools: in the techs you have to fight the tradies [tradesmen turned teachers] on every issue.

Those guys are the most reactionary of the lot.”

The Light's Divine, but . . .

buy. (There’s a rumble in the art rack­ et that the Pope’s visit to Melbourne (now cancelled) for the Eucharistic Congress had more to do with the purchase than aesthetics; it’s likewise rumored that a cardboard replica of the Sistine Chapel vault will be set up in the Gallery for the Congress ...)

He found it difficult to see what young Australian painters were doing.

Very few local painters have a Jap­ anese reputation, and the public gal­ leries mainly hang the works of people who have been, or who might as well have been, dead for 20 years.

Some established Australian pain­ ters he disliked. Many places that put him up had Pro Harts on the walls. St. Giles said, “I would start a fire with a Pro Hart Painting, right in front of the person who gave it to me . . . I met the man in Adel­ aide, and he is absolutely distasteful.

He has no couth. ”

Wash your hands One of the seekers of knowledge who travelled from Melbourne this summer to Hardwar in Northern India, near the source of the Ganges, to sit at the feet of Gum Maharaj Ji, 15-year-old Perfect Master,; got more than he bargained for: on returning to Carlton he came down with typhoid and is now in the Fairfield Infec­ tious Diseases Hospital.

Melinda Stoller, Divine Light devotee and sometime yin/yang slinger at Carlton’s. Shakahari whole­ food restaurant, happened to travel on the same flight as the stricken pilgrim. However, macro freaks who are aware that typhoid is transmitted through contact with food and drink may rest assured that Melinda has been laid off until it is ascertained that her currently negative blood tests stay that way for the required two-week quarantine period.

Twelve months worth of The Digger, 26 issues, will set you back $7.80. Unless ypu come under one o f the following categories: OUT-OF-TOWN SPECIAL: If your postcode is 25 miles from a capital city, you can have one year’s subscription for $5 all up.

QUEENSLAND SALVATION SPECIAL: If you ,live in Queens­ land, the odds are you’re .not reading this unless you’ve already subscribed, given the effective ban o/i The Digger by distributors in the northern state. However and Whether or not, Queenslanders pay only $5 regardless o f their city/country status.

Sue Cassio, Subscriptions Manager, I The Digger, I P.O. Box 77, ■ Carlton, 3053.

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I A rt critic’s critique

| ■

An

art reviewer for Mainichi

■ Shimbum, Tokyo’s largest (cir. | 6,000,000) newspaper, toured Aus­

tralia, didn’t like it much, and left I last week for Port Moresby. Armury ■ St. Giles, an Argentinean who lives I in Japan, said, “I think Australians * try to control life too much.” The I same went for Japan, for that matter.

St. Giles arrived in Sydney during the summer gallery break, when the sole show in town was Brett Whiteley’s big one at Bonython’s (Alchemy, a 54’-long painting of 20 panels, and Name other works). He told Whiteley that only rich artists could exhibit in Tokyo, and that he’d be lucky to Address find a place that could hold Alchem y.

He also said that if Whiteley did show in Tokyo, he’d probably be .P’code busted.

“You mean you can’t show screw drawings there?” asked the artist.

“That’s right,” said the touring reviewer.

St. Giles found the National Gal­ \ | leries of good standard, approved of _ Make cheques payable to Hightimes _ the renovations at the Art Gallery of I Pty. Ltd. crossed not negotiable. I NSW, and make jokes about the Vic­ torian Gallery’s $60,000 sculpture

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Grassing the city The eastern suburbs railway wrig­ gles out of the ground at the eastern edge of Domain Park, between the crystallite lattice of the underground car park and the arse-end of the Art Gallery of NSW, onto the Carry­ over. The Carryover bends this way and that, across Woolloomooloo, over the chimneys of old brick houses built on 19th Century fills of the Harbour, missing by a few yards the second floor windows of commer­ cial buildings left standing along the right-of-way. The Carryover is made of “boxes,” to wit sections of steelreirtforced, vibraset, prestressed con­ crete all strung together like a brace­ let, and attached to mere earth below by card-thin pylons spaced 45 strides apart.

So it goes across low flat Wool­ loomooloo, justly famed for drunk­ rolling and mosquitoes, off to the east where the Carryover ends, and the railway snakes back into the grolind, like one of the gods of earth it is, to wiggle under the ridge whereon Kings Cross is built. (It re-emerges on the other side of the ridge, persistence furthering towards Edgecliff; why are all these names onimous?)

The colors of the neighborhood are peaceful, being grey and blue.

Grey of bright new concrete, alkal­ ine, and blue of an almost emerald

January 27 — February 13

Ogden’s campaign for the seat of Melbourne, Prior to the Big Day, the electorate was regularly adorned with Communist posters and leaflets and on polling day the booths appeared to be well covered. Although Max’s poll of 520 votes was not worldshattering (Communists don’t usually poll very high) no-one was seriously dispirited. At one of the many elec­ tion eve lush scenes afterwards Max was heard to comment that he ex­ pected a call from Canberra anyday saying Gough is in trouble. (In pas­ sing, one of the notable features of Max’s candidature was his high Women’s Electoral Lobby score of 36 out of 40).

The CP youth recruitment heralds an interesting and knotty period in the recent history of the left. Young people radicalised post-1968 have invariably gravitated to the new revol­ utionary formations — the Maoist Worker Student Alliance and the Trotskyist Socialist Youth Alliance, for example, — not to the traditional party. Apart from the historical balland-chains the CP drags behind it (Stalinist Labor camps, Hungary 1956, and the various dishonesties of its own history in Australia) its

program has not been attractive to radical youth calling for armed struggle and the formation of a van­ guard revolutionary party.

But the CP ain’t what it used to be.

Since its stand over Czechoslovakia in 1968 it has decisively broken with the worst features of the Kremlin monsters. And engaged in a substan­ tial rethink. The women’s liberation movement has deeply influenced the party and its thorough-going support for civil liberties issues, rank and file movements, as well as the women’s movement, has given it a new look.

The pioneering militancy of Jack Mundey in the building trades unions has also raised CP stocks.

But for some revolutionary social­ ists the CP still has a long way to go.

Membership of the party involves, for one thing, co-existence with some of the worst unrepentant Stalinist dinosaurs, as well as with supporters of Zionism. It is a stan­ ding joke on the left that you don’t have to be a Marxist to join the Australian Communist Party —there are no apparent criteria. The presence of Zionists in the CPA means that, the party’s policy towards the Pales­ tine liberation movement is ambig­

uous. Above all, its continued links with overseas parties which are notor­ iously reactionary drags on its cred­ ibility.

This contradiction, as well as the contradiction involved in the posi­ tion of the Intervention people, is summed up in a debate raging in the Tribune letter page. That the Inter­ ven tio n istSi are hot going in on an uncritical, accepting basis is evidenced by a letter by Grant Evans (Tribune Nov. 24th). In it he castigates the National Committee of the CP for spending money on sending a party delegate to the 20th Congress of French CP. He argues that the French CP is insupportable in view of its reactionary role in the French move­ m ent,— in particular, it did not sup­ port the revolutionary student and worker uprising of 1968. The letter has predictably caused an uproar.

To be consistent, however, the writ­ er’s logic should lead him on to look at all the other politically cor­ rupt parties the CP retains links with, — the Indian CP and the Brit­ ish and American CPs, for example, as well as its unofficial but fraternal links with the Israeli party, Maki, whose politics are Zionist.

Angela Davis is the living example of this sort of contradiction. She is an outstanding Hack woman revolu­ tionary. But she is also a member of the Kremlin-fawning American Communist Party. On her recent release from gaol, Jiri Pelikan, ,a long-standing Czechoslovak Com­ munist and dissident who is now involved in a campaign to defend victims of recent purges, wrote to Davis asking her to substantiate her pledge to act to free all political prisoners. He was asking her, in effect, to speak out in defence of dissident Czech Communists against the Czech, Soviet, and her own American Communist parties. Since the letter of August 31st she has made no public statement (although to her credit she hasn’t publicly sup­ ported the American CP’s denunci­ ation o f the dissidents either).

While the Australian CP has pro­ gressed a long way since 1968, its present situation is riddled |w ith in­ consistencies and dogged by its own failure to understand the past. The recruitment of critically-minded people who are direct products of the youth radicalisation of the 60s may help to rectify that position. i

John considers the Victorian Education Department the most liberal in Australia, and he’s taught in several states.

“At least in Victoria there’s room for deviance in dress and length of hair, if that means anything. You can look as odd as you like, but try action and you’ll get clamped down on.”

Action in John’s case began as a policy of introducing “everyday humane things” like abolition of corporal punishment: he and a friend on the same staff, both of them anarchists since their student days, took the school straps and offered legal advice to kids who were belted. Their aim was “to give, the kids an alternative way of looking at reality.” John was active in his school branch of the Technical Teachers’ Association of Victoria, though he’s aware that the TTAV can’t or won’t do much for people like him: “The TTAV is more interested in salaries and conditions. George Lees [TTAV president and known as sl hard bargainer] is a nice guy but he’s a captive of the organisational structure.”

John sees a big difference be­ tween today’s radical teachers and the older communists in the service.

“The old-style communists in teaching, in the thirties, forties and fifties, considered themselves as tradesmen or professionals first and communists second. They were corns

at their weekend meetings. This is a really bourgeois set of priorities.

Try introducing your radicalism into the classroom and there’s a head-on clash.

“Kids these days don’t need the Little Red School Book in their Com Flakes. They’re far ahead in terms of consciousness. They smoke dope. They need someone to open up and not behave like a teacher.

“And they don’t want any bloody left-wing humanism either. Kids don’t react to this approach. They think you’re weak. And this kind of teach­ er, who means well, feels hurt by the kids’ rebuff and falls back into the old roles.”

John opened up in his classroom, all right, andbehaved in a way quite unlike most people’s idea of a teach­ er. His most heinous crime in the eyes of the principal was the playing of a Frank Zappa record in class.

One of the kids brought it along.

For this piece of opening-out John was reported to the principal, and actually threatened with the Grimes Act for exhibiting an obscene article in the classroom.

It’s a measure of the increased cool of school kids that his students (like Helen Gamer’s) tried to defend him as best they could, claiming that John didn’t know the word “fuck” was on the record.

More serious charges loom, how­ ever: on the day of a TTAV strike two third form girls came to visit John at his house, and one of them

told him she was planning to mn away from home. He advised her against this and sent them both away, but the girl did split in spite of his advice. The parents called the cops, her friend was interrogated, and a network of cover-up stories and faked alibis wrongly incriminated John who, though he may «scorn the professional teacher’s role, is at least cool enough to avoid compromising sexual situations with his kids — the oldest nightmare of the male chalkie, though, interestingly enough, not the female.

Since the end o f the school year the runaway girl has been found and word of a possible carnal knowledge i charge has filtered back to John.

Although these rumors of sexual mis­ behaviour on his part are not founded on fact, his unpopularity with school authorities, and the fact that police have already been involved in inquir­ ies into his teaching practice, will not go in his favor when £he chips are down.

Nor does he expect fair treatment from the principal if such charges should eventuate. When John’s kids were being questioned about the Zappa incident, in the presence of police the principal lied to the kids about John’s criminal record, claim­ ing that he had already been in­ volved in four carnal knowledge cases.

Currently John is resisting a De­ partment move to send him to a distant country school, a transfer

which came through (like Gfamer’s dismissal) in the last week of term.

The principal told him openly it’s his “ general attitude” that is con­ sidered objectionable.

“We have to get people like you out,” he said, “because you pose a threat to the normal functioning of the school.”

John has been given an unsatis­ factory teaching mark, although his work has never been inspected, either by the Board o f Inspectors or by the principal. He admits he is surprised at being transferred instead of sacked. Department reaction to dissident behaviour he sees as some­ what inconsistent, in that his actions, springing from conscious and thoughtout political attitudes, have not so far resulted in dismissal, whereas Gamer was sacked for what was es­ sentially an isolated and spontaneous incident.

“There’s going to be an increasing division in schools,” John predicts, “not only between teachers and the administration, but between radicals and the liberals who want only small­ time reforms. ‘‘Radicals must organise them­ selves and set out their aims. It’s not a question of counter-indoctrin­ ation of the kids, but o f de-indocr trination. The classroom is a con­ centration of the insanity of the whole system. Tell yourself I dm not a teacher Give the kids breathing space to see something of What they are and what life is.”

mobbed by Craig Powell’s friends and family”.

(Adamson has begun reviewing poetry and verse for The Australian; he recently put a case for burning Powell’s third book.)

An eyewitness says differently.

According to this account, Adamson and a woman went to George’s Take Away in Darling St. Balmain, to order milkshakes and a chicken. Two young men, well-dressed, with long hair, were standing in the shop, and one of them (“largish” ) persisted in staring at Adamson. Adamson is a small, wiry individual, of eccentric appearance.

“What are you doing?” asked Adamson. The youth, who was wear­ ing dark glasses, only laughed.

“I wouldn’t stare at me, if I were you,” cautioned Adamson. The youth laughed some more.

“What will happen?” he asked.

“Anything could happen,” said Adamson. The youth continued to stand over him, and when the poet’s milkshake (caramel, double malt, three scoops of ice cream) was put on the counter, Adamson picked up the cannister and poured it over the youth’s head.

The youth struck Adamson in the left eye, with his right hand.

Adamson apparently grabbed his takeaway chicken, in its foil bag, with his left hand, made as if to leave the shop, and then flattened the youth with his free right hand. The other youth backed off, and as the poet bent over to do some more .work on the fellow on the floor, two police arrived. As usual, they pinched the guy who lost the fight.

Other movements of the poets: Dr James Tulip is back from America.

Vicki Viidicus is about to leave for India, following her CLF grant.

She’s going with Dennis Ram sey, (who’s dropped out as singer of the Acme Rock band), and leaving her manuscripts with the Short Story Embassy.

Bill Beard, who is back in Sydney from Byron Bay, is trying to con his way onto a freighter to get to Peru. Beard lias a smallpox scab to prove he’s dinkum, continues to write poems on borrowed typewriters in a large number of houses scat­ tered throughout the city, and is a fair bet to actually pull it off, con­ sidering his perpetual, manic op­ timism.

Also back in Balmain: Richard Tipping, 23, who’s dropped out of his film and drama course at Flinders University (S.A.).

Upping split his hometown after receiving a CLF $500 early last December. “I could have left any­ way,” he comments. He spent some time in Queensland, sunbathing and eating mushrooms, before settling on Sydney; his first book, S o ft Riots, was published in University of Queensland Press’ one dollar for­ mat. He’s currently prolific at a friend’s place, playing the ukelele, writing a new book of poems, and trying to live up to a public “policy statement” , which involves —

sky: and the dust of the concrete and the lime of an intense sun havoverpainted every other color and for all I know eaten the back out of my brain.

Just across from Domain carpark, men are working overtime this Satur­ day afternoon, on “Skandai House”, an L.J. Hooker job, 17 stories up there, with 44,159 sq. ft. of office space, bright new concrete grey, and as the sun moves west, its shadow moves east, across Junction St., over another group of people.

This group of people includes an old man, quite a few women, some carrying babies, and quite a few kids, pre-pubescent. The mode of the group however is mid-20ish, long­ haired and male. The group is whack­ ing away at the white ground left vacant under the carryover with garden forks, rakes, mattocks, and spades, and carrying colored-plas­ tic pails of water and soil. They are dragging trailers full of grass — it looks like . . . kykui grass.

The ground is hard from the pas­ sage of heavy equipment, full of lumps of concrete and redbrick. The people aren’t working in an effic­ iently harrassed fashion. Unlike the men at “Skandia House” , no-one is being paid to yell at his comrades.

The people on the vacant lot come and go, lean on their tools, caucus . . . at times there are 20 or more of them, nearly as many as at “Skan­ dia House”. Of course, they haven’t got a crane, or a Euclid earthmover, or even a Chep propane forklift . . . just whacking tools, and after two hours, there is a turned-over strip of white earth, perhaps ten feet wide, perhaps 40 feet long, w ith rows of grass stuck in it, and damped downThe demo started at 3 o’clock, and the TV crews came promptly, but it wasn’t good TV. The signs, for instance, are of white chalk on box-cardboard, difficult to read in the limed light, certainly poor signs for TV, which needs a bit of con­ trast. The only sign that you can see that might come up is a sign on the pylon at the corner of Junction and Harmer Streets, which says Public Transport Commission of New South Wales TENDERS — Closing 2 pm Wenesaay (sic) 21-2-73 for MONTHLY TENANCY of this site for GROUND LEVEL CAR PARKING . . .

The group whacks away and car­ ries water and caucuses. Their chalked signs read “grass before cars,” and, “keep Woolloomooloo residential.”

David Overett, a Repat clerk, who’s on the local committee, lives down an alley in Kidman Terrace, some servant’s quarters he reckons were built in 1840. He says, “the population of the Loo has dropped from 2000 to about 500 in the past three years.” The Department of Main Roads, the railway, the Eye Hospital, the Housing Commission, and private developers are all landing on the small flat suburb . . .

In-people differ Ted Markstein, managing director of In For Men, rang The Digger's Sydney office last week. He had read our story last issue (“ Blackout for In accountant” , page 1, Digger number 10) on the “Europeans Only” employment ad run by In Shoppe, a women’s clothes chain in the Mel­ bourne Age. Markstein wanted us to point out that In For Men and the In Shoppes are quite separate companies. He ad­ ded In For Men’s only criterion for employment “is whether they can do the job.”

Lives o f the poets Bob Adamson, poet, has moved from Brooklyn on the Hawkesbury River, back to the Sydney inner suburb of Balmain, and has a black eye. Rumor has it that Adamson’s about to leave the country. He’s been corresponding with Robert Dun­ can, recognized by some states of mind as heavyweight poetry champ since Charles Olson croaked; one of the stories current at Sydney Push parties is that Adamson is about to crack the U.S. lecture circuit for $500 a match.

“I cannot confirm or deny these rumors,” Adamson said with typical straightforwardness in a friend’s room in Balmain. He admitted he’d applied for a passport and was get­ ting shots. What about the black left eye? “I’ve been telling people I was

challenging himself & the english language to a fight to the death

Typesetter wanted The Digger is losing a founding member — typesetting and subscrip­ tions organiser Sue Cassio is joining a team of printing-production talents, called Graphic Lab. A ll; typesetting for The Digger except the 8V2 em Flyer copy is set on an IBM Selectric stand-alone machine, in The Digger Melbourne office.

Anyone with training and exper­ ience in this setting method, who also feels strongly enough toward The Digger to join the collective, is asked to contact any of the editors at 366 Lygon Street, Carlton, or write C/- Typesetter, The Digger, PO Box 77, Carlton 3053.

The Digger is owned 50% by the people who have put up capital, 50% by full-time staff. Staff wages are set by collective decision and are currently a base $40 net per week, with $10 extra for each dependent.

The typesetter’s job would in fact consist of four or five days solid setting, with the remainder of the fortnight taken up with servicing and devising subscription business, and a number of other adminis­ trative tasks largely dependent on the worker’s initiative., This — like any other Digger job — requires commitment . . . Sue Cassio would like to add that it’s also lots o f fun; that’s the price she has to pay for letting it be known that she will be available for free­ lance typsetting work at the Graphic Lab on 51-9692 as soon as a new Digger setter is installed.

January 27 — February 13

By Billy Garner Nimbin, NSW, hangs in a valley about 40 miles south of the Queens­ land border, a valley which looks almost tropical to parched southern eyes. Mullimbimby, an established hippy centre, is on the coast 30 miles over the range. Nimbin’s been leached by the urban drift, a town ripe for plucking by agents o f the counter-culture. As you drive into the valley, you gasp with greed at the litter of seemingly empty houses in the foothills. Later, you learn that, like Nimbin itself (pop. 200 with 300 on the surrounding farms) the I juses are only half-abandoned.

Up on the slopes are bananas, and brilliant blue morning glory crowds the road. Everything is a little bit overgrown. The old butter factory is starting to fade back into the growth of trees down on Mulgum creek.

No more jobs. A lot o f trees have been killed around here, but now there’s only one saw-mill buzzing. In the window of Chapter’s hardware store, three dead blowflies lie up­ side-down on a tin of Tree-Killa. The benches under the verandahs in the town’s curving street are empty. The Australian flag (remember) goes up on Post Office No. 2484. It’s^a hot still day.

Graeme Dunstan crawls out of the car after an all-night, 500 mile drive from Sydney. It’s 8 am, Wed­ nesday, and Dunstan, an organizer for the Aquarius Festival, is setting up for a Saturday night meeting, at which the townspeople will decide whether they want to hand Nimbin over to 5000 freaks, students and city cousins for 10 days in May. He’s got four days to see the right people, get the publicity out, and lay a good vibe on the town. Dunstan, a medium-sized young man with brown eyes and long brown hair and beard, isn’t just an entrepreneur: h e’s a cultural politician organizing the move to the country.

It’s a classic country town scene.

A large grey cat stalks a small brown dog past Sims’ newsagency.

Ralph Sims, who is also the milkman, unloads crates from his beaten-up Holden station wagon. Daisy Stewart opens the door of D.M. Stewart’s Central Cafe. A faded emerald Blitzwagon, its grille festooned in chains, stands like a war memorial outside the Nimbin Hall, Est 1904. A cow wanders past half a dozen deserted shops and disappears down beyond the Freemasons Hotel.

Bare-chested, standing in his shorts, Bob Marsh shakes hands cheerfully with Dunstan and hairy friends. Marsh is one o f Dunstan’s best contacts in the town and is push­ ing the festival idea hard. He’s med­ ium size for a policeman, and he’s a smart man. A newcomer from the Greater World, he has no trouble relating to the city freaks. He is encouraging: “Everyone knows about the meeting. Word spread like bushfire. They’ve been talking about it for weeks.”

Everyone knows, but Dunstan thinks it won’t hurt to remind them.

Leaflets go out with the milk cans and the newspapers. And there’s a lot of talking to be done before Saturday night. Dunstan has the secret of organising: he goes around telling almost the same story to a lot of different people. He talks to everyone he sees, but very lightly, not forcing it. He’s had a lot of practice. He has to distinguish the different groups in the town and match his spiel to their interest. To the progressives he talks o f the swimming pool they’ve been saving for for fourteen years; to the busin­ essmen he talks of franchises; to the ministers, of morals; to the baker of loaves, and to the publican of beer. But, above all, he has to be nice. In fact, we all have to be nice.

Among the assorted freaks, friends and aides who are drifting into Nimbin for the meeting, there is an

The Digger

Country-town votes on an Aquarian Festival

to put on a bit of a show before* the meeting, but they’ve been getting heavily into the mushroom stew, and they’ve been letting hang out what Dunstan and friends have been keeping in all week. A really free, freaky show from the barrage of proval. By Friday evening most of electronic equipment that Harpo is the talking has been done. setting up could frighten the town Down at the Central Cafe, which off. has been receiving heavy patronage Politics wins. The show is cooled in the last few days, they say that to a couple of simple acoustic songs, seventy to eighty percent of the a poem about Union, a funny little people are in favor. Denise, fourteen, film. The equipment is kept on the sexy, desultorily making another leash. The people have come. Maybe hamburger, glances more and more 180 or more. It’s a big meeting. The boldly at the strangers. Bonnie wait­ President of the Showgrounds Com­ ing for Clyde. mittee is the Chairman. He’s been Contact is , made with the local the chairman of every important freaks, the Heads on the Hill. They’re meeting in this town for 30 years. against the festival. Andy Frame was He formally explains why the meet­ the first hippy in town, and he! ing has been called: “This is some­ doesn’t want his peace broken open.1 thing which) should be put to the But the Heads on the Hill agree toi public before allowing it to come meet the Aquarius people, who’ve| to Nimbin . . . I’ll introduce Mr. brought a few instruments with Don Dunstan . . .” (There is a them, for a jam on Saturday after­ rumor that Graeme is the draftnoon. resisting son of the South Australian Harpo, a zonked-out bunch of Premier, and someone has suggested performers who use lights, music, that a spell in the army would do acts, has come down from Brisbane him good.)

Nimbin lends itself to the counter-culture unspoken agreement not to freak J Persimmons and cedars straggle’ | around the house. In the sea of green the town out. It’s a bit of a strain.

Wednesday night in the public bar j grass there are islands of beautiful of the Freemason’s is something out | cow shit studded with gold tops of Li’l Abner. It can’t be real! and blue meanies. Three dollars a These must be the biggest men in i week. We move in.

Thursday night. The others have the world. Seven feet high; four feet across. We fight down the grotesque split north and east. Temporary loss anthropological generalisations which of support. Slight apprehension. keep rising to the front of the mind. Dunstan formulates the question: They are drinking in schools of How will the meeting go? Quite thirteen. We sit, slender and effete, quietly he throws the Ching: on stools, and cross our legs; a dif­ Chien/Development (Gradual Pro­ ferent species. gress) Then we find out. It’s the local Tug o’ War team on a binge. They THE JUDGEMENT were Australian champions the year Development. The Maiden before last but they’re starting to Is given in marriage, fade. A couple of the muscled j Good fortune. heroes tell us they’re only in it for I Perseverance furthers. the money now. They pull all around THE IMAGE the district for up to $300 a match. On the mountain, a tree. The image If you put the whole counter cul­ . of DEVELOPMENT, ture against them they could pull it i (A Jmoving line in the third place over in one heave. Mutual wariness.

Many of the men seem to have a sort of pugilistic relation to the world. One of them asks his mate what he reckons about this festival.

Mate, a huge red man with a blond 50’s cowlick curling down to his small unfriendly eyes, replies: “I’ve got me shotgun!” Graeme approaches Big Red lightly, laughing: “About1 this shotgun . . .”

“Piss off, mate, or I’ll drop yer!”

Graeme pisses off.

With four guests, the pub is over­ crowded. We need a house. Bob Marsh suggests Dino Schivron’s place up Kirlands’ Road, on the road to; The Channon. We drive up. It’s the second last house on the ridge, looking down ihto the valley and across to the town about a mile away. Cream and pink frangipanis) droop over the verandah. Mangoes Nimbin Hall (est. 1904)—where ripen on a tree down the back.

gives eight) Pi/Holding together (Union) THE JUDGEMENT HOLDING TOGETHER brings good fortune.

If you are earnest, there is no blame.

Those who are uncertain gradually join.

Whoever comes too late Meets with misfortunei Dunstan is greatly relieved. Fate is onside. But a little more legwork won’t go astray. Co-organiser Johnny Allan and a few more of the crew arrive on Friday morning and there is an expedition into Lismore to do the rounds of the Shire Clerk, Health Officer, Engineer, and to' kick along The Northern Star. Lismore is the big town to Nimbin. It’s where the businessmen rub their hands together.

And it’s where the local government officials make their marks of ap­

the townsfolk met the freaks.

Mam Street, at peak hour.

Dunstan and Allan, Aquarius organisers: a light touch brings good fortune

¡§¡¡¡¡§1

Stewarts’ Cafe: they can fix the broken display case

In the face o f fly-by-nights and rip-offs

Sydney rockers flirt w ith union men About 60 o f Sydney’s rock music­ ians have joined unions in the past month. The two unions enjoying a membership boom — Actor’s Equity, and the Musician’s Union — “used to be really straight before, and never did anything to help the rock scene,” according to Roger Davies, o f Sunrise Management However, last week Ken Keisey, NSW branch, secretary o f the MU, lodged writs against the promoter of the sweetly disastrous Bungool Festival, on be­ half of Sunrise clients, La De Das, Sherbet, 69ers, and Bakery, Kersey also helped Davies get together a $5000 claim against the promoter, Armand Beaudoin.

The fiasco at Bungool was repor­ ted in Digger number 10. The Shire council dropped an injunction on Beaudoin at the last minute,, which forced him to substantially alter the

Page 3

planned festival. Newspaper publicity about the court action crippled the gate, and at this writing, 28 local acts are still owed for their performances at the “picnic” , as the event was renamed to avoid legal hassles.

Peter Nagle, assistant to Kersey, said: “In the past, agents have per­ suaded their bands that becoming unionized would inhibit their work potential.” However, work without pay isn’t an incentive, and as Graham Thompson, the drummer for Pirana, puts it: “Once the majority of young ^musicians join, the agents will be into it. It gives them a free legal service, and people will pay up on defaulted money out of fear.”

Ron Moreland, an MU organizer, said his union had been successful in collecting $9000 in bad debts over the past five months. “ Only

when we have all the bands in, can we really get going,” said Moreland, “and get rid of these fly-by-night promoters and rip-off establishments!’

Which, folks, is a semantic symp­ tom of the changing times; an MU organizer these days has two differ­ ent vocabularies, and they sometimes get mixed.

He’s into “hey man” as well as “listen, mate”, “Cool” is now inter­ changeable with “okay”; “gig” is re­ placing the old English “set”. The phrasing gets bent, sometimes, as in “I’ve had tp come a little bit heavy” .

But, as Moreland explains, “We are the employees of the bands” , and if you’re working for the rock people, you’ve got to try to speak their language, don’t you?

The unions’ recruiting drive in the rock industry isn’t an ad hoc effort, arising out of the Bungool problems.

Col Voigt, variety organizer for Actor’s Equity j, says that his union has daily liaison now with the Music­ ian’s Union. The current solidarity blossomed when Voigt rang the Musician’s Union to suggest a com ­ mon front to ensure professional fees were met by the Daily Mirror for their Sydney Town Hall concerts this month.

Voigt says the two unions are making a comprehensive effort to recruit all artists on the Mirror bills into their memberships. The demar­ cation between the two unions is settled. t Solo artists, and “show

The house on the ridge: local heads d on ’t want tourists

grdups” who have a routine on stage, but who don’t play music for dan­ cing, are in Equity’s bag; groups who do dance work are MU’s prospects.

The journalists who cover rock! for the Mirror don’t know much: about the behind-scenes for the Town Hall concerts. One told me, “It’s all being done by promotions, they just put the stuff in our pages and we don’t worry much about it.”

After eight ’phone calls to Mirror promotions, Digger was no wiser; the chief, Mai Hagan, was in Adel­ aide, and the indians were all at panic stations. The concert series was in ! jeopardy, because the Sydney City Council was thinking about denying the paper the hall, following com­ plaints from city employees about the loud noise of electric music.

The Mirror hired Dal Myles Enter­ prises to handle arrangements for talent for its January concerts.

When Digger contacted Myles, he was a bit sensitive: “I’m purely and simply doing a job for the Mirror,* and want to be completely divorced from the politics of it.”

Myles made it clear, however, that he’d cooperated with the union re­ cruitment drive. “I’m a unionist, and a member of Equity myself . . . our attitude is basically pro-union ! . . we’ve advised the bands it could be helpful for them to join up.”

Myles said he put no pressure on artists to join, but oh one occasion he had advanced someone’s dues

to the union, so they could proceed of all small unions. “No-prte’s going to collect a bad debt. “An industrial to be able to work on licensed prem­ body has more muscle in collecting ises without a union ticket,” he prophesies. baddies than a private body.”

Be that as it may, suspicions still Myles thinks that the unions have rankle.

Terry Darmody of the changed for the better, “They’ve been a little slow to recognize the special Original Battersea Heroes who conditions that groups work under.” joined the M.U. during the Mirror The standard industrial award for gigs, is concerned about “pressure” being put on musos and is doubtful musicians is based on the pick-up about the union’s professed effec­ system. In the trad, view, a musician is an individual professional, with an tiveness. “It would be good to chal­ instrument, and a competence at lenge them in public about the better playing it, and basically he’s inter­ deal they are offering,” said Darchangeable with any other individual I mody. with the same instrument. So you i The M.U. has three full time need a xylophonist, he’s a xylophon­ officers in NSW, and Charlie, a partist, with a union ticket . . . this con­ time organizer, to handle the prob­ cept of . the music industry has little lems of its 4000 members. “And relevance to the rock scene, where we’re all flat out,” says Moreland. the idea of four musos meeting the They spend their time negotiating night of the gig, picking up their wages and working conditions. The charts, and sitting down to blow to­ union offers to handle contracts and gether is . . . unthinkable. the getting of bonds for its members.

Of course there’s the suing to be Thompson of Pirana, when asked done afterwards, in some cases, and why he had chosen Actors Equity the wringing of blood from stones. rather than the M.U., replied, “I came to grips with a heavy little The union seems to do its home­ union bum in Newcastle who tried work. Nagle mentioned a company to force me to join the Musician^’ search. “We found one company Union. I told him that he could making $8000 a week profit”, says force me to join a Union but it Nagle. “There’s too much exploit­ needn’t be his.” ation . . . no, I can’t tell you who it is.”

He has since become a gung-ho The way the M.U. calculates unionist, and can put down a long rave about the future o f the music award payments is quite complicated. industry, which involves Hawke There’s a minimum three hour call, standing for Senate after a double­ I then it’s time and a half after that midnight, whereafter it’s dissolution in March, and the merger j iuntil

Out of respect, Dunstan has moved into a pair of long trousers and a clean shirt. He begins to speak with a deep serious public; voice that is hardly recognisable as belon­ ging to the laughing man he is: “Mr Chairman, I would like to put a motion: That the people o f Nimbin agree to host the Aquarius festival of Arts as a joint venture with AUS.” He gives a public recitation of The Dream in language he hopes the locals will respond to» He says that he wants the country culture and the city culture to meet. It’s not to be a rock festival, not just a col­ lection of performances, but “an enlarging of the community for ten days” , a sort of bazaar of alternative life styles. Then he offers a simpler bait: a burst erf spending; the begin­ ning of craft industries; tourists; a bit; of fame for everyone as Nimbin gets onto the map. Above all, he claims it will bring young people back to the country.

Johnny Allan follows with an anti­ city rave. In a burst o f enthusiasm he, suggests that Mardi Gras are the real thing. He says there’s a lot of faith invested in the festival. He talks of young minds looking for a new way to live, of wanting to relearn the skills of living in the country.

Bob Marsh cannot be at the meet­ ing because of a family wedding, but he’s sent a letter to the chairman.

The secretary reads it out. On the one hand he urges total support for the festival by the townspeople, and, on the other, he allays their fears about “the bad element” by prom­ ising extra police, radio patrols, plainclothesmen, and the drug squad.

Applause. It’s a winner. The question of control had been worrying the townspeople and the principle of anarchic self-control, upon which the organisers are relying, would hardly satisfy them. A sympathetic cop fills the gap nicely.

The Shire Clerk, who has been specially invited, speaks in favor.

He knows of the riots in Canberra, and reassures us that “anyone who demonstrates in Nimbin would be demonstrating on their own.” He could well be right. There is a question about finance. Then there is the question about drugs.

But it comes in a form easy to handle: “Were there ary arrests foi drug-taking at the Canberra festival?”

“As far as I know,” replied Dunstan, “no.” (Dope and busts being two quite different things.)

A few more big men, like Jack, Smith, speak in favor and the meet­ ing is clearly won. It has all been very smooth. When the motion is put there are only four or five dissenters. Tile people o f Nimbin have handed over their town. And there was no fight.

The Heads on the Hill didn’t speak out against it. They’d come armed with a sheaf of disaster shots of other festivals and a list of objec­ tions a mile long. Andy explained: “I’ve got evidence of bad festivals, but we thought the townspeople should decide.” He’s going with it and has offered to run some shows himself: “I’ve got a few valleys.”

So a few organising hippies have moved in on a whole town. This isn’t just a ten-day holiday, but the beginning of a social experiment in moving people from the cities' to the country. Some are already moving in.

It won’t mean much more busi­ ness for Suzanne’s Hair Salon (open Fri and Sat morning), nor the unnamed barber who made his last visit on January 17, 1973, and who has administered short back and sides on four occasions in the last month; but it will mean that Stewarts will be able to fix up the broken display cabinet in the Cen­ tral Cafe. And it will mean another town. double time. Then there are all sorts of additional demands — vocalling allowance, meal allowance, leaderon and on. Moreland computed the total for a four group band playing 8 pm to 2 am to be $170.97.

Obviously a lot of bands don’t get that sort of money for that sort of work. It remains to be seen wheth­ er the unions can change that.

The MU costs $10.50 to join, and $28 a year; Equity’s dues are $15 to join, $21 a year, although there’s a motion listed for debate to put the joining fee up to $300, to keep out the weekend performers. Union rates at the moment are not high in Aus­ tralia; in San Francisco, a few years ago, it would cost a folk performer about $400 to get his union ticket for performances on the Peninsula,< and if he came in on an out-of-town ticket, he had to get 20% more than scale to work in the locality. (Aus­ tralian unionism generally is cheaper, and gets better results. Almost 2/3rds o f Australians are in unions, as op­ posed to l/3rd of all American workers.)

Although there are fantasies about the rock musos taking over the Unions, Thompson for one sees this as unlikely. “ I doubt there’s a chance of a takeover. The younger members dream a little, but as long as they make a quid, they’re not interested. At the last Equity elec­ tions only 85 people voted. Most people are very apathetic.”

Page 4

January 27 — February 13

The Digger

The Manly Action:

Photography: Kaye Martyn

~We don’t have facilities for women -I don’t wan’t a piss I want a beer

the cop’s words, which has to do witn mum at home, and dad at the pub. The pig logic is based on an idea of women in their proper places and on the notion that a set of inhib­ itions is necessary for a relationship between two people of different sex. * * * The junction of Manly Wharf and the Corso was busy. People going to the Fun Pier, to the pub and going home. A group of 17 women accom­ panying each other soon attracted attention.

in here and make a show — you’re all posers.”

Some of the blokes wanted to talk about the issue. Others said; “Get the fuck out of here.”

The jeerers began to hitch up their shorts and move in on the wo­ men, trapping us against the bar.

The door wasn’t very far away but the sound of glasses breaking against the tiled floor was very ugly.

The women were threatening male turf: they couldn’t be real women could they?

dance for their mates, whooping, “We’re over here with the sisters.

We’re all together aren’t we, team.”

William James (“Fm only the bar manager,”) appeared. “I’ve been sent around to see what’s happening.

Just go quietly — you’re creating a public nuisance. Go now, or there will be trouble.”

Gill told him “ Serve us or there’ll be more trouble. There is already trouble. There are a number of your locals here we could lay charges against for assault.”

Shirley and sisters line up at the Steyne's public bar and ask fo ra drink. The barman's n ot su re. . .

Gill Leahy stands next to one o f the finest in the Manly Hotel.

by Ponch Hawkes Shirley Herman, a visiting Ameri­ can sister, told us down at the Sydney Women’s Centre what a hard time she had trying to buy a beer in Manly. Shirley’s a New Yorker with the quick wit that comes of many a street confrontation.

A week before the meeting, she had taken a ferry to Manly with a young man, an Australian cousin.

They had a dip, and walking down the Corso, she felt like a beer. But she couldn’t score one.

“A beer, please.”

“No, we don’t serve women here.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t have any facilities.”

“That’s all right, I don’t want a piss, I just want a beer.”

“No luv.”

At two other pubs, she was dir­ ected to another bar, where she could sit down and pay more. Her cousin said, “Why don’t we settle for a milk shake, Shirley?”

Not good enough, she thought.

We agreed, and set the date for a pub crawl: six o’clock, Saturday 20 January. * * * It’s all up to the discretion o f the publican. Some Sydney pubs will let women drink where they please, but lots o f others keep on with apar­ theid o f the sexes, perhaps allowing women to drink in some bars if they’ie escorted, but usually forcing

women to sit in parlours, pay more, and be protected from the unlady­ like atmosphere of the public bar.

The pig logic goes: If you don’t swear, you should drink elsewhere; if you do swear, you aren’t a proper woman, you’re a lesbian weirdo and ought to be beaten up and kept a safe distance from the all-Australian male.

On Saturday night, men offered me various reasons why this should be so, none of which made much sense. Qie challenged me: “You reckon you could stand between two blokes who were swearing?”

Well, maybe, maybe not — the point is: women have no choice about whether they want to be in the'public bar. Pubs are public places, according to law and custom; women who ob­ ject to straight talk can drink else­ where.

There’s a slightly different objec­ tion to women’s presence in public bars. A cop put it this way: “ You want to sometimes be with women, well, it’s like that with men.” True, men and Women sometimes want to group with their own sex . . . but groups of women, who want to re­ late to each other without a man homing in, have to tell men to piss off, and presumably men who object will have to learn to do the same. At the moment there are very few places where an unaccompanied woman, can stay that way if she chooses.

But there’s a deeper wisdom to

bars where women are allowed, “You have to be dressed up like a sore toe.”

We laughed, sang and hugged our way back along the Corso. The fairy lights were on and the palm trees were bathed in purple and greeh lights. As we passed through a phal­ anx of tract-giving-Jesus-freaks we shouted “God is a woman”. * * *

the sergeant’s arm, trying to point me out, “She hit me. She kept writ­ ing down everything I said, she can’t do that.”

Too many things were happening for the sergeant to bother with him.

The old man tried to walk through the seated women. He contented himself with moving around the peri­ meter getting in sharp little kicks.

The cops ignored these kicks, and punches and shoves. They asked for The two women who asked for it, didn’t they, coming into a public a beer were refused at the Hotel bar? The licensee arrived and made Manly. The other 15 women went in. a formal request for the group to Wally, a Maori surfie, was standing leave. I asked politely for his name. at the door. “Well, I suppose they He snarled back “You can read if could drink in the saloon bar,” he above the door outside,” * allowed, “but not in this pub. It’s The women stood up to leave. a bit heavy.”

All at once, women were being We were in the Manly only ten pushed towards the door, falling on minutes. The man who seemed to top o f one another. Ann was being be the manager couldn’t get to the held in a headlock by a 15 stone ser­ ’phone quick enough to call the cops. geant. He pulled her chin back and 4L He had a ruddy face, sandy-whitish shoved his knee in her back. Her hair, and was wearing bermuda ! face was bright red as she tried to shorts, like most of the drinkers in call out. the place. He saw me taking notes Everyone spilled out onto the of his ’phone conversation, and street. No charges had been men­ yelled, “Get away, you silly looking tioned, but the cops kept trying to bitch!” He made a grab for the note­ push the women into the waiting book, didn’t get it, and yelled “And police car. The women kept trying you can get stuffed, as well!” to reason. “Just let us go mate, and He strode back to the women at there won’t be any more trouble.” the bar. “Piss off! Get out of the Three or 400 people hadjathered fuckin’ place.” The barmaid had ven­ around. There were yells o f “Let them ted her anger with the most popular go, let them go” . Onejcop looked up weapon of the evening, the hurled from his wrestler’s hold to say dis­ glass of beer. She copped some back. gustedly, “You blokes are a great The women were trying to explain lot of help.”

The cops were getting jumpy; to the men around them what they were doing there. The hotel flunkeys they weren’t looking very good. Kaye were making it hard, wading in, cur­ was pushed out o f the way and her camera kept being shoved in her face. sing and shoving.

Peter, a regular, said, “Look, I The young cops tried to stay out of can’t tell you my name, I work for it. I overheard one cop say to the the public service. I’m not against sergeant, “ Let her go, we’re only women’s lib. I’d like to bring my making this worse, Terry.” A bloke wife in here to drink too. But what from the crowd started a move tow­ if a bloke walked up to you and ards blocking the car’s path. But a cop jumped in the driver’s seat tur­ said how about a fuck?”

“I’d tell him no,” came the reply. ned on the siren drove a few yards.

“But what can I do?” he asked. He ran over Pam’s foot.

Manly police station was only about a hundred yards away on Belgrave St and the cops pulled, pushed and booted the women up to the desk.

Ann Taylor was charged with us­ ing unseemly words, and resisting arrest. Penny Short was charged with offensive behaviour and resisting ar­ rest. Theresa Jack and I were both charged with inciting a prisoner to resist. We were made to sit on a bench in Manly Police Station, with a rail and gate, from 9.40 to about 11 o’clock, while bail was arranged.

Towards the end o f that time, the Sergeant in charge, Thorgood, was threatening to put us in the van for Central.

Sergeant Thorgood was a Witty man. Asked for more time for .bill to arrive, he said, “ I make thé rules around here, and nobody breaks them.” When Gill asked “ Can I use the toilet?” , he said: “ You’ll have to use it under supervision. We’re not liberated, you see.”

Shirley Herman came back to Manly, and had a talk to the cops: To everybody that came to the counter, he said, “I was just reading James said, “The boys can carry “Tell your mates and publican that the cause o f women’s liber­ ation was dead.”

Dialogue between a person who can get a drink, and one who can't drinks to you outside.” the way you feel,” Pam told him.

“Who wrote that?”

Gill: “We don’t want anyone to The women sat down on the floor.

“It appeared in an. American mag­ take us drinks. We just want to have The sandy white-headed manager was’ Two local surfies Greg and “Ah, you’re all lesbians". azine, Time or Newsweek, " a drink here, now.” going purple with rage screaming at Chooka: “What are you all tip to?

Jo shouted back: “Well, we don’t A black cop down the counter The women explained once more Shirley who was arguing the law, “You Why don’t you come to a party? fuck pigs, anyway*” the discriminatory nature of the bitches. Look at the bloody Jewish smiled, and suggested, “That’d be an Almost despite itself, the crowd drinking policy. James wanted to You’re going in there then, going bitch over there, look at her nose. unbiased source.” to the public bar? Oh, we’ll invite cheered that put-down.

Thorgood didn’t know the writer’s cool it.

Bloody Philadelphia lawyer,” A man yelled back: “Well, if you you in.” name, but “she is a prominent “OK, I’ll shout you. Bring some The Manly cops arrvied once Pam said “We don’t want an in­ act and dress like sluts, you can be beers,” he ordered the barman. The women’s libber.” more. They wanted to state the law. vitation, we want to go in anytime expected to be treated like them.”

Bail was $101 a head, and the women insisted on paying when the The women wanted to tell them what Mimi was wearing a gay-lib singlet beers arrived. we like.” cases were listed for 10 am Monday it was based on and how it discrim­ The Hotel Steyne on the comer and a bloke said, “You’re not a^ Earlier in the evening Pam had inated against them. The cops said morning. The informant in each in­ of the Corso and the South Steyne poofter are you? You know, we said, “we’re dedicated women’s liberstance was a Sgt. Charlesworth. surf beach was to be the first target. beat shit out of men poofters if they ationists — tonight we’re Medicated they were shutting the bar.

The old man with the RSL badge *The name o f the licensee is Philip The group headed down the street. come in here.” to getting a middy.” We’d done it: Edwin Deaton on the plaque.

The chant grew stronger “2,4,6,8, we’d been served a beer where we from the first pub kept pulling on Two young blokes sidled up and said: this pub discriminates.” The crowd, had chosen to drink.

“Want to buy some acid?” noise rose, beer was being thrown in Diseases we share: Suddenly one guy hissed to his They got the award for the least people’s faces, the lairs pushed and friend, “Get out of here mate, its chauvinist remark o f the evening. shoved — and were pushed right the cops.” The aggro-men quickly back.

The more sympathetic developed a low profile, splitting * * * moved up to o .

Shirley and Anne strolled in and patrons outside. The sergeant appeared, or­ Honest John, the GP, visited through the kidneys, and gives a high asked for a beer. The barmaid re­ A tall blond guy with the only dered some of the women outside. Digger's Sydney office last weekend. concentration of antibiotic in the beard in the place, said, “ Look, Five helper-cops filed in. William plied, I think what you’re doing is tremen­ James was wringing his hands trying He’s interested in epidemeology and bladder, which may stop the infec­ tion before it gets started.

“Women don’t drink in here. dous, there ought to be more of it. to explain what all these women so are we. I put it to him that we A woman who’d had a couple of Out the back you can get one.”

If I had enough money Fd buy were doing drinking beer in the were running out of ailments for the Diseases series, but he put my mind occurrences of cystitis said, “Most There was a shout from across the you all a beer,” public bar of bis pub. at ease: “There are,” he said, “about of the people I know who’ve had it bar: “Hey, get out; you can’t get Gill graciously replied “ O.K. buy “It’s getting right out of hand. 20 or 30 sexually transmitted com­ associate it with screwing. I certainly served in here, this is the public us one then.”

It was the only way to get rid of plaints — many of them cause very did.” Both her episodes occurred bar.”

On the sidelines stood a shaky after she got on with “new guys” , The Barmaid said, “Fm not al­ old man. His hat had gone soft and them.” The sergeant seemed per­ similar symptoms, but they’re caused plexed, the younger cops seemed al­ She said, “When you first start i lowed to serve you.” thin with age. He hadn’t shaved for most sympathetic. More talk, .and by different organisms — and many of them are endemic here in Pad­ to get it, you don’t, know if it’s Shirley asked “Why?” a few days. He was wearing two your imagination or what. It’s a dington. It’s quite interesting.”

She shrugged and moved off. The badges in his lapel. One was an R.S.L. they left.

The women gathered together out­ Disease of the fortnight is sexual really obsessive bloody thing — you other 14 women piled in, spread badge. I asked: “What do you think side, and decided to go down to th e cystitis. It’s a gladder infection, want to piss all the time, and it’s themselves around the top end of about women drinking in public beach. Judy, the new sister, said “I’m seldom experienced by males, fre­ painful. When you have it, you can’t the key-shaped bar, and demanded bars?” going with you girls” . As they think about anything else.” service.

“Look, I reckon you ought to walked away the men outside the quently experienced by women. “ The A few days later, we were talking usual cause is a big night,” said Nothing doing. be bloody shot! Do you have a Soon a rat, tat, tat o f frustrated mother? I think you’re about the low­ pub, hunched over like gorillas and Honest John. “Since the incubation with Marsha Rowe, the editor of hands beat on the bar top, beating est . . . ” and stuck for words to ex­ chanted, “ ROOT, ROOT, ROOT.” period of most of the bacteria that Spare Rib, an English women’s mag. cause it is 48 hours, most women She told us that the increase o f cys­ into a crash, crash, crash. press his disgust, he started to say, * * * don’t connect it with their sexual titis in London lately has been so “What do we want? Beer. When “You can’t respect.....” when a hand activities.” remarkable that a Cystitis Club has do we want it? Now.” The beach was deserted. We sat tried to punch my notebook away, Cystitis is an ascending infection been formed.

A sunburnt bloke called Simmons and covered us both in beer. The down and joined hands. It felt so One of the women has worked took it upon himself to straighten beer and the hand both landed oh good. Sue laughingly hoped hei of the bladder. Che common source out a folk cure for it. She takes a out the ladies, “Look, this is a the little old man. maroon and white sweater had given of infection is a dirty finger, which, whenrubbing the clitoris and prepuce,. long, hot bath, then goes to bed with public bar,” he said.

Judy Hankin lives in Manly. She is the Manly Footy Club a bad name. passes on to also rub the opening two hot water bottles and a jug of “Well, we’re the public”.

In the pub she had been given a a housewife with bright blond hair, “That’s a matter of opinion,” he about 45» She came in from Ahe glass o f beer by a sympathizer. She of the bladder on the slant, back water and glucose. The first glass she drinks she puts a half teaspoon said. “ Look, if you want a drink, street to say, “Fm right with you. I .gave it to Shirley who was looking inside towards the vagina.

Honest John has been treating of bicarb in, and then she drinks you can get it outside.” want to shake your hand”. She bedraggled from the beer that had the complaint with sulphonimides — as much vpter as she can, and rations just been tipped over her.

Shirley The Hotel Steyne has a handker­ stayed to rap. There were discussions Bactrim, or Septrin.

He’s going to herself to one piss every 20 minutes. chief-sized beer garden rather like a, taking place as to what the next looked at the glass and then heaved make a pilot study with a new anti­ The bacteria that cause the con­ the contents over her attacker, who concrete backyard, where women tactic could be when the shout biotic, to see if susceptible women dition may be normally present in can drink at bar prices. A slight came, “We’re staying, sisters, the turned out to be the sympathizer’s can prevent the infection from oc­ the vulva, and susceptibility may be best mate. young man called “Trog” from Mel­ manager’s coming down.”

Judy reckoned we ought to hit culting by dropping a capsule “the caused by normal, individual dif­ bourne said, The men who’d been big-noting the Hotel Manly next because it was morning after” . The new drug is ferences in anatomy. Cleaner hands “You’re idiots! All you have to themselves by shoving, poking and mostly filtered out o f the body and more careful fondling may help. hooting at the women put on a war a terrible pub. Just to get into the do is go into the bistro, but you come

Big Night Bad Karm a

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1

January 27 — February 13

The Digger

Page 5 Photographs were taken by another male nurse.

Plugging in on the surrealistic telephone a male nurse talks with Colin Talbot There’s a machine in this sterile room and the machine is something' like a mad portable public telephone..The walls of* this sterile room are, white and Jjare. There’s a bed here too. On it lies a w>m$n; she is aged about 50, she wears a dressing gown and she is not conscious. She’s been doped. A male nurse holds two elec­ trodes connected by a pair o f leads to this surrealistic telephone, and he places the electrodes on the skull of the grey-haired lady. Someone in white, a doctor, dials the telephone.

Press Button B. Zzzzzzzzt. No com­ munication. The woman suddenly jerks, convulses out in a long quivering burst of energy like a high speed orgasm. A psycho explosion. The male nurse is shocked too. He draws away from the convulsing body be­ cause what he is taking part in is like some medieval torture rite. Suburban Clockwork Orange. On the wrong end o f the telephone the party now can’t get through. The woman has been electro-convulsed. A burst of Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT) to make her happy again like a hit of electronic alcohol. Jokingly the nurses and doctors call the treatment “shocko”. Or “plugging someone in” .

Before ECT the woman was diag­ nosed as suffering from “chronic mor­ bid depression” . She would sit red­ eyed, her face sadly lined, twisting her bed clothes or dressing gown, perhaps weeping, perhaps staring off vacantly at her world which she saw as offering nothing but doom, dis­ aster and sadness.

Now it is after the ECT and the male nurse, whose name can be Alex, watches the patient. He sees that nothing much upsets her now. She is in a wonderful state o f induced thought disorder so she can never concentrate long on one thought.

Somehow it always manages to drift off somewhere, and if she comes across some distressing thought, something upsetting, then it goes again. But her eyes look strangely empty. And inside her head, maybe there are tiny carbonised sections o f her brain where some neurons have burnt out. The nurse is both repulsed and fascinated. He asks the doctor in the white coat how the machine works. “ Dunno,” says the doctor. “It just does.” * * * I used to sit rapping to one crazy old guy dying o f kidney failure. He'd see green dogs, alligators and all sorts o f things climbing up the walls. He sat ou t o f his bed on a commode chair once and sprayed the walls, curtains, bed arid me with black tarry sh it This shit is called “melaena" in the trade. * * * Alex sometimes passes the time in restaurants describing the proceed­ ings of particularly grotesque oper­ ations to his fellow diners. It’s a bit o f a joke but sometimes the joke is hard to swallow. But it’s OK for him because it’s just routine life: day by day descriptions o f death and destruction and his perhaps humor­ ous anecdotes of times when the fragile thread that holds life some­ times twists and then snaps.

Alex has been working as a male nurse for a few years now and his details of dying and incredible ugly sicknesses are routine and mundane.

He talks about them like you’d talk about a game of billiards. Of how you win some, you lose some, you go home, you sleep, you get up, you go to work again, you win some more, you lose some more. Lives that is.

Alex is aged about 25, and he wears his hair long. When he goes on shift he ties his hair back with a rubber band, tries to ward off the effects o f whatever drugs he’s shoved into his system in the few hours be­ fore, leaves the world o f zap comics, alcohol, marijuana and rock and roll behind and takes the floor o f one o f Melbourne’s hospitals, where the air is crisp, the attitudes are hard and sharp, the business is life and death, the walls are white, the atmosphere is antiseptic, and every­ thing is altogether quite unlike his .real life. Being a male nurse is just a job. Something you don’t let your thoughts dwell on too much. * * * To me, human life ju st isn't that im portant You see the long term survival rate amongst old patients is quite low. I remember talking to a medical registrar once who told me he thought the hospital we worked in was bloody insane right from the cleaners and car park attendants up to the medical directors. He was quite disillusioned. Me, well I was still madly trying to save the world a t that stage but I know what he meant now, Generally caring for you r fellow man is OK but the prop­ ortions for caring have blown to such ridiculous levels, it's become plain stupid. A nd what's more, it isn't even caring because I've been watch­ ing these cats for years. A nd they don't care a t all * * * Strange cases o f fear and loathing in the outer suburbs come into the hospital where Alex works. Recently

a 44-year-old father of three who There is a crazy, wild-eyed cat, about overdosed on tryptanol and suffered 55, standing only in pyjama top, a cardiac arrest. He was given 13 DC with soft shit running down his legs shocks to reverse the cardiac arrest and a huge trail o f the stu ff stretched from the “trusty little defibrillation out behind, 30 feet to his bed, He machine” in Alex’s words. Alex says has senile dementia. He disappeared they gave this father some hearty one frosty night wearing his top — cardiac massage and helped to smash it was a waste o f time putting pants a few ribs, so the man ended up on on hint, as he only used to shit him ­ a respirator in the intensive care unit self all night — and we found him for 10 days with an endo-tracheal hours later, early in the morning tube down his nose. There were bum walking down the highway towards -marks all pver his chest from the his home town. He was covered in 300 volts he was dealt. Alex says shit, but he knew which way his j ie watched the man straining against home was. I t was about five degrees Celsius that morning. his shackles in the bed afterwards and he wondered. Would the man use * * * pills again? Or perhaps a razor or a rifle next time.

Alex Knight carries a card which Alex says that he has spoken to bears the words, written in big red intensive care directors about this sort letters, “NOT TO BE RESUSCIT­ o f treatment. One told him that ATED!’. This means that if he suffers there had been some controversy massive road trauma when he is ham­ about their inception back in the mering all hell out of his car, and he fifties, and that general concensus is taken to an intensive care unit need­ was directed against them. “But ing all the treatment he himself is here they are,” says Alex. He says usually asked to perform on other they are sometimes useful for post victims, then he will just die. No re­ operative;purposes and what he calls suscitation means he is asking for “massive road trauma” — which is death, and not prolonged life. He being smashed to Jesus on a highway says he’s seen enough people w ith by a GT — but he cannot see justif­ frontal lobotomies from accidents ication in their general use. He says leading the lives of vegetables, and the intensive care wards are crazy he won’t join the ranks. So he has, places. virtually red dotted himself. Red “I just cannot see the sense of dotting is a procedure which accor­ putting an old patient who will prob- ding to Alex is used in one hospital

* * * all day, and how the piss runs into A head comes to visit his mother their shoes. And seeing as they have in the psychiatric unit and m eets only one pair of shoes, the shoes go a sharp-nosed methadone addict, in rancid and finally mildewed from for his daily dose. They stand to­ the effects of months of piss. About gether outside the office where we how he wasn’t allowed to use the are having our daily hand over, and electric razor to shave the patients they are smoking. The'smell o f mari­ because of the cost, so he was given juana drifts up my nostrils. N obody one blue blade to shave 30 patients. knows ‘cept me and I grab a toke By the time he got down to the o f that funny little brown weed on last row, he was gouging hunks out my way out the door. of their old faces. They screamed. * * * At a Melbourne hospital in an Stories of bad care for patients intensive care unit, there was a com ­ are as prolific from nurses as war petition with the defribrillator to see stories are from winos. A male nurse who could resuscitate a patient the from Adelaide Psychiatric clinic dec­ most times. One nurse, we hear, won ided he’d had enough one day and the contest with a big 62. The pat-

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how to adjust the monitors. “The doctor didn’t know either and as I figured something ought to be done, I buggered around for an hour with the manual until I finally figured it out and reset everything.”

According to-A lex, things which might make you feel less secure about being hospitalised occur with alarming frequency. For instance the 18-year-old student nurse in charge of a main surgical ward at night, who ran a 1000 ml eight-hour flask of intravenous fluid into a patient’s vein in 15 minutes by mistake. Then discovering her mistake she ran out crying because she couldn’t cope. * * *

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The defibrillator. . . life's super-charger Alex doesn’t see all nurses this way. But he does see many this way: as fresh-faced innocent young teenyboppers with their leaving cer­ tificates who wander into nursing school. A nurse, says Alex, does not really have much idea on sickness and death. She sees nursing through her social conditioning as a way to help people and gain respect. He asks some why they started nursing and he is told . . . “I dunno.” /“Mum was a nurse”/“Want to travel and see the world”/“Like to help people”/“Jesus told me to”. Alex says the average nurse he encounters is absorbed into the bureacracy, into the healing med­ ical machine and becomes institut­ ionalised.

“She lives, eats, sleeps and some­ times screws with others of her ilk, subject to a martial-cum holy dis­ cipline enclosed in a fortress seething with puerile and idle gossip, backbiting/stabbing and all in the name of the relief of suffering.”

“She learns about the human body machine and what happens to it, and she sees what happens to it. She becomes intimate with shit, piss, pus, and other bodily excretions and sees naked and withering pricks, tits and cunts.”

This is what death looks like in the white ward,

This is a respirator. I t helps people live. ably die soon anyway into one of these units and subjecting him to treatment which could be straight out of Clockwork Orange. And then wonder why in the hell he dies after a few days from exhaustion.”

If they don’t shuffle off that way, says Alex, chances are they will leave the unit somewhere along the road to recovery and be dumped in a general ward and forgotten because there is never enough staff to give them optimum care and they usually develop a raging respiratory infec­ tion from one of the highly potent “Hospitai, Bugs”. These bugs, the male nurse says, don’t seem to res­ pond very well to antibiotics and patients either wind up back in in­ tensive care for re-intubation (which is insertion of the tube into the trachea via nose or mouth) and more time on a respirator with subsequent tracheal suction and physiotherapy until they die or recover. The doctors keep trying and experimenting, as most in their first year of residency think that life should be preserved, irrespective of age and mental state, whatever the costs.

* * * I am sitting quietly in my office at a Geriatric Hospital. It's about 2 am. I hear a noise and look up.

to indicate which patients will even­ tually die. The red dot is stuck on the patients’ bed cards and means “not for resuscitation”. Another hospital uses “NFR” which is stamped on the bed card. Another he worked for uses gold stars stuck to the his­ tory card.

Alex cites an example o f a 24-yearold patient who had an astrocytomar (quick growing cancer) growing in his brain. Survival rate, says Alex, is nil.

“I come back into the ward from midnight supper. Somebody has bent the pipes on his respirator, so no air gets to his lungs. He has been dead for 20 minutes with the respir­ ator still ticking away. Nobody asks any questions. What can you do?”

Only that, says Alex.

He personally feels the extension of human life which requires in­ tensive care isn’t really worth it. “I watch,” he says, “a; 75-year-old man in intensive care. His monitors are ticking away and he has the best of care. While my taxes were being used' to kill in Vietnam, the cost o f his care, with drugs, bed, nurses, doctors and the other facilities 24-hours per day comes to about $700. And then I think about the average weekly wage in South East Asia, and it doesn’t fit.”

* * * Shooting up an orange. Surrogate human skin in the Clockwork world. ient who of course was virtually dead before the contest was certainly dead afterwards, complete with a charred torso from the shots of DC voltage.

He came to life for maybe, ten seconds to two minutes each time.

But that’s not really life.

* * *

O2

~ the breath o f life

One hospital I worked in, we used to wash old crazy guys in showers. A mad orderly and I used to hang by our feet from a steel bar near the ceiling making like monkeys at them. They'd sit there grinning away and shivering.

We used to wash 10 o f them be­ tween 8 am and 9.30 am.

* * * wrote an article for one of the newspapers. This was a fair while back. He resigned the day the article came out, the hospital held an in ­ quiry and found out who did the deed. For months this nurse had both staff and patients after him, threatening to thump hell out o f his body. He just told what he saw.

About old men who piss themselves

Alex says it is not uncommon to find trained sisters in charge of equip­ ment, such as electro-cardio trace equipment and respirators which they can’t work and don’t understand.

There are hospital nursing supervisors who don’t know either. He says he walked into a coronary care clinic and found the sister had all the alarms turned off and didn’t know

I once trained a 25-year-old hemi­ plegic to piss on the floor instead o f in his bed. I t saves time.

* * * Alex says from his observations that the first time such a nurse is exposed to dying and death, her cro-magnon fears fly up. But grad­ ually, he says, she accepts and swit­ ches off and stays off “and it’s all OK because she’s in a hospital and it’s not real and she’ll joke about it a lot and become hardened and dis­ passionate^ It’s predictable psychol­ ogy.” It happens to most, for in­ stance Alex.

A cold, hard, detached automat­ on with no cares or conscious thought about patients. Not all nurses are like this, says Alex. But there are they who . , .

“They rap about who’s balling the doctors lately and nurses even have their little terms for the absurd emotional care they give patients like TLC for Tender Loving Care, which they switch on and off like tap water. Especially off when an old degenerate shits the bed.” %* %

Joe had three craniotomies. N ow he lies blowing steam from his track eostom y hole, staring through the ceiling. I touch the side o f his head.

It's soft. They couldn't p u t the bone back in his head after they operated. * * * Alex walks through the ICU where streams o f patients pass through for craniotomies. He sometimes wishes they could hire someone who wax good with a small calibre revolver.

Able to blow out the brains o f the patients and save everyone. In this ward where they lie in wet dung with shit dribbling down and saliva too . . . this ward they affectionately term “the cabbage patch”. Because, says Alex, what’s left of these patients, is vegetables, man. * * * Sydney perform ed a frontal lobotomy upon himself with a .22, was resuscitated and now lies with one eye qpen, one closed, mumbling away time, with one side o f his body completely paralysed, * * * Alex has got to a point from day to day dealings with death and such where you might say he feels the universe should be “NFR”. He gets a bit sick of people indulging in self pity, and he fixed one of his friends up proper one evening. This friend and Alex were at a party, and the friend’s lady had just split forever, geographically that is. Alex found him sitting out in the gutter and crying. So he pushed his friend into the car and they headed to Alex’s intensive care unit. There Alex showed him through. A man with a broken neck lying in bed, head shaved, neck in traction, huge tongs into his head bone just above the ears. A 10 pound sand bag pulling his neck bones back into place. A tube up into his bladder through the eye of his penis, a tube up his nose, down into his stomach, which would not function until spinal shock wore off. AboUt^lO days. There is a tube down his throat breathed by a respirator and a temperature de­ vice up his ass. Paralysed from the neck down for the rest o f his fife, and Alex’s friend is outside the ward, having seen this. His friend, in a way, is feeling better. * * * This 40-year-old manic depressive schizophrenic with blunting o f af­ fect and thought disorder who is also suicidal and aggressive, didn't like walking. So he lay on the Epping line. The 8-42 from Flinders s tr e e t cut both legs o ff above the knee. He threw himself under a bus the week before but it didn't work. He told me he'd be all right when he cut his arms o ff because then he wouldn't be able to hit anybody. A nd then there's Tom who screams long and lonely down the aseptic corridors at 4 am . . . bloodcurdling. He was given 3400 mg o f largactil which tip­ p ed him over the edge. He was crazy for a few days after that, lying in bed, biting scabs o ff his arm from previous half-healed bites. N o t even spitting ou t the scabs. Som etim e later they p u t the traindriver who was at the wheel of the 8.42 in bed next to him. The traindriver found out and freaked out. * * * Alex says games like “shocko” and dosing patients up with superhits of largactil aren’t very nice. But sometimes the nurses need the assur­ ance that they aren’t going to be mobbed by uncontrollable patients.

That, says Alex, is when a docile patient is better than otherwise. * * * Ex-junkie, aged 20, with rheuma­ toid arthritis sitting in bed at 4 am telling old dope stories and eating oysters. He used to take so much asprin for his jo in t pains (head joke) that his ears would ring. His expec­ ted life span: 30 years. He was to have stayed in hospital five months.

He walked out in three weeks. * * * And now for something different. * * * Martin the epileptic who has 30 fits a day lasting 20 seconds to three minutes. To settle a t night he Jjtas Sodium Amytal, 250 mgs, plus four sleeping pills, 60 mgs o f valium, and 100 mgs o f an anticonvulsant drug — just to settle him for sleep. He has had approximately 2000 investigations of blood, bone and brain since being hospitalised five years ago. He is a psychotic which doesn't help. Some­ times he goes home on leave to his religiously fanatical family. * * * A ten-year-old girl went to the shop for mum. She was hit by a car in semi-darkness. Here she lies in ICU, unconscious temperature rising and falling, hyperventilating as the cerebral compression fluctuates, with her family quietly staring at her. There are three other children in the family and this is Christmas day. A fter three weeks she has a hole cut in her trachea, a tube p u t in and is transferred to paediatric ward, where she lies, fed through a tube, sputum sucked out o f her throat every hour, every day unt i l . .

The Digger

Page 6

When he heard the first footstep places that had steam for heat and on the staircase, Willie Pondexteur big plate-glass windows that were con­ jammed himself into the shadows of stantly being attended to by small the hallway, and stopped breathing, kids with rags in their hands, wiping until the feet carried whosever step away the beaded fog so that every­ it was down from the second-story one could see that was, or wasn’t, landing and out through the front happening on the outside.

Every space with a view of the door onto the stoop and into the street. He didn’t care who it was, as action ground was packed with people, cramming together in long as it was gone. He peeked out of the shadow, and looked toward a smoke-filled haze, each one trying the glass borders of the entrance, to find a spot all his own, which Australia’s first ambassador to and all he saw was rain-gray-cold naturally caused a bit of commotion.

China, Dr Stephen Fitzgerald, said weather. Only then did he let go Especially in Anthony’s Bar & Grill, he would like more Australians to of the gulp of air which he’d been when Naked Arthur, who was called visit China: “There is a very limited^ holding in his lungs.

Naked Arthur because he had no view of the Chinese way of life. For He bit on his lower lip, trying to hair anywhere on his body, got Ringolevio, a New York kids’ street game, was for Emmett Grogan an image for life itself, “a more than a century Australians have decide. Decide whether to go up or slightly upset with some Irisher whose game to be fought rather than played’, which taught him the meaning of self-preservation, speed, had awesome fears of the Chinese down, above or below — -the out­ elbow kept trying to finagle him courage and endurance. Digger serialises in two parts (this is the second) the section o f Grogan’s as people who allegedly threatened side was out. It was too cold to out of a position which he wanted book Ringolevio which tells the story of Good Friday 1956 when the black Chaplains met the white Australia. We have to get away from begin with. He knew that he was in to maintain. After Naked Arthur Aces Wild on Hester Street and played out the greatest Ringolevio match of all time. the old images not simply in relation a building on the east comer of thought that he had reasonably put to China but in relation to Asia as The gamblers have gathered in cafes to escape the cold, the rival teams have drawn up their jail Mott Street, facing Hester. One up with enough elbowing, he put his a whole . . . the idea that Asians block from Mulberry and the A ces cigar out on the guy’s cheek. When areas, the players scatter in all directions. The match begins . . . are people in funny hats who stand Wild Jail. He had to find a position the Irishman screamed, everyone in all day in paddy fields. Australians where he could see what was going the place held their ears with their should realise that Chinese are people on; who was going into whose jails, hands, Anthony gave him an ice else was the same, even their noses.

“Kukla, Fran and Ollie” was blar­ and silently scoffed at the sound of like you and me!” cube to put on the foxhole that’d They were both broken. and how many the Chaplains were ing up from some television set someone prowling around like an just been burned into his face, and up, or down. ^ A small newspaper advertisement Suddenly there was an explosion beneath him, but Willie Pondexteur elephant. But no one else heard Pondexteur knew that the people told him to shut the fuck up. gave notice that the Consulateof noise coming from the third floor didn’t hear it. All he could do was Willie scamper downstairs and out in this neighborhood kept pigeons.

It was like that in every place, apartment in a building directly a- smell the heavy, thick odors of what­ the side door on Mott Street, or ■ General of the Republic of China He glanced at the ceiling and won­ except for the Calamari Bar where cross the street. It was really loud. ever all the people were cooking in saw him run full-tilt up Hester to (Taiwan) would cease to function dered if there was a coop on this no outsiders were allowed in — just The shades were up and the lights on, all the kitchens of the building, and Elizabeth where the Chaplains were from January 19 and that all visa applications thereafter would be pro­ roof, or if he’d have to backtrack regulars, who knew better than to and Kenny tried to see if the turmoil it panged his stomach. He loved holding the comer. down the block and find one. No quibble with the status quo of Hester had anything to do with the game. It tomato sauce, especially with cheese cessed by its embassy in — guess He skidded into the Mule, who matter, it was better than going into Street. where — Roxas Boulevard, Manila, asked him what was wrong. did. Jimmy Taylor, known around all over it* on top of anything. the basement. It cramped his style.

Kenny Wisdom had been in the Brooklyn as a stiff puncher, had the Philippines.

“My stomach,” said Willie. “ It’s ■ He raised himself up, zippered his Coop or not, roof it was. And he 1 cellar for over an hour, when he decided to change his place of con­ jacket, went out onto the roof, empty.”

A Sydney barrister, Mary Gaudclimbed the stairs straight up, using pulled one of the roaches from his cealment, simply out of boredom. shoved an empty cigarette packet So they pooled some money and , ron, who was chosen by the Federal the first three toes of his feet — not pocket, stuffed it into a Chesterfield He was just opening the door of the between the door and the door­ a delegation went with Cool Breeze „ government to present its equal pay making a sound — but the guy in regular, and smoked it. across to the restaurant and came fourth floor’s communal bathroom as jamb, and cautiously made his way case, urged Australian women to He wanted to relax a little because Basile was coming up the. stairs to to have a look.

3-B heard him anyway. He was a back with arms full of hamburgers lobby politicians for legislation ban­ professional burglar. it was obvious that this contest be­ check out the roofs. They saw each He saw Glen Feet suddenly burst and Cokes. Ignoring their prisoners, ning discrimination against them. The tween the Chaplains and the Aces out of hiding with BoBo chasing they munched the meat-filled buns, Kenny Wisdom found what he was Wild might last a long time before other immediately.

Commonwealth did not have the Jimmy’s right hand smashed him. Feet was the fastest, longest- guzzled the sodas, and stacked what looking for right away.

A cellar constitutional power, without a ref­ either side won the decision. winded runner of whatever length was left in a doorway for any of that had a window with a clear “It may even go a fuckin’ week,” against Basile’s left cheekbone, as he anyone had recently seen in Harlem. erendum, to legislate against all forms their brothers who might show up. ran down the flight of steps. Before he thought, “or until each guy starves view of the corner jail-dens, where of sex discrimination all over Aus­ Solly Girsch didn’t seem to care. hungry. he was halfway to the next floor, he the Chaplains and the Aces Wild would to death in his hideout, ]or some-* tralia she said. For example, while They talked about losing Basile, heard Basile coming after him, and He waited for the right moment thing.” try to keep each other prisoner.

It the Federal government dealt with and jumped from behind a parked but decided that it was too early to he couldn’t believe it.

He had hit was a crooked, close, bowling lane He looked up at the three o’clock bank and insurance legislation, the car into the path of Glen’s feet, make any desperate moves to free, of a place, with garbage cans lined sun and at the daylight it made. him with his best punch — adnittedly, states dealt with clubs and licencing dropping him hard. him and the others. After all, the it was thrown a little high, but it up along the flaking, white-painted Some girls started skipping long-rope laws and all three groups were res­ When BoBo caught up to where Aces Wild were only one up on them, should have stepped him for a mo­ right wajl. A coal bin was nearly above and right in front of the cellar ponsible for much discrimination the collision had taken place, Solly and Mule and Lanier could cover ment, at least until he shook it off. empty, but the boiler was hot and it window. The grass made Kenny feel against women.

“The guy’s head must be made of hoisted the deflated Glen onto his the jail while Cool Breeze and Tommy kept the area warm. There was a good, and he started to get a rise out What was needed was a constit­ concrete!” he thought, as he felt back, saying, “He sure is fast, ain’t Lee, Jr., scouted around for somestoreroom with no door that was of watching the girls in their short utional amendment, like that ap­ one to nab. Willie, it was agreed, Basile almost on top of him. His he.” BoBo couldn’t answer— he was full of all kinds of stuff, and there woolen coats and their little, pleated proved by referendum in 1967, out of breath — and he just stood should sink back into the block until mind didn’t even glance at his re­ were two real good places where he skirts. The girl turning the nearest which enabled Aborigines to vote there while Solly Girsch carried Glen it was time for him to pull his spec­ could stash himself. end of the rope was standing next putation in the Redhook section of and outlawed all racial discrimination.

Feet back along Hester Street to iality on the opposition.

Brooklyn.

Fuck history, he would The hot and cold water pipes to the basement window, with her Meanwhile authoritarianism and When they finished eating and Mulberry. have shouted if he had had the time, that ran ten inches below the ceiling legs spread apart and her body mov­ discrimination against Aborigines Basile was about one sewer away there was no more to say, Cool as he pulled himself around the rail­ had mgs hanging over them.

He could ing with the rhythm of the rope. and Torres Strait Islanders also goes swing up there and lie on top, if Kenny took his eyes and followed ing and ran for the door at the end and he started speeding along in a Breeze and Tommy Lee, Jr., moved on apace. crouch on the street side of the par­ out on the prowl and Willie faded one guy came. Or when he saw that those legs of hers right up to where of the hallway.

The Federal Aboriginal Affairs ked cars, and Willie hoped he got behind the tenements, making his He kicked it open by raising his a couple of Chaplains were on their they ran into her panties, and then Minister, Gordon Bryant, said that there before BoBo could catch back way through the alley, looking for stride, his left heel slamming against way for a search and seizure, he’d he looked between them. He began the Queensland Department of his breath, because it had been ob­ position. the frame right below the knob. get into the garbage can that he had to want what was there, very much.

Island and Native Affairs exercised vious on first sight that BoBo out­ As soon as they left, the Aces in just emptied out into all the rest.

He could feel his hands running When the door flung open all he a control over aboriginals that would classed Basile in size and strength. the Chaplain jail began making cash could see were people sitting at a And if they picked up the lid, he’d smoothly up those legs. He dreamed not be tolerated by other Austral­ Bpt now, with BoBo out of wind, offers for some food. Mule was simply come out swinging and make about sliding his fingers under the table and jerking their heads up with ians. He considered the Common­ it might just be possible for Basile totally unsympathetic, even at two their mouths open and their eyes for the door.

Kenny put the garbage edge of her loose cotton panties and wealth had a direct relationship with to handle him. dollars a burger. But Lanier sug­ wide.

Before his foot hit the lino­ can back where it’d been — sixth in into the lips of her hairless milky every Aboriginal and Islander and Basile crept ore car length past gested that eight dollars might get leum, he pegged the fire escape, ran a row of nine.

Then he went up the pussy. It was a wonderful idea. The that there should be no body or short wooden staircase, and released first time he got into a girl’s pants right over the full supper table, BoBo, came up behind him, slammed them two buns which they could institution between them. the lock on the outside of the door something went wrong. Her name flung open the window, and bounded his right forearm against his throat, split. The Aces responded unexpec­ “The Commonwealth is most con­ and started to choke him. He was tedly by trying to pull Lanier into which led to the hallway, locking was Shirley. They had smoked grass up to the roof. cerned about the situation of Abor­ succeeding, but BoBo wasn’t moving. the perimeter of chalk to free themBasile’s attempt to follow Jimmy himself in, and came back down. together. Both had their eyes closed iginals in various parts of Australia He was gasping. They both fell to Taylor was halted by every one of The basement window was the size when Kenny put his tongue in her including Palm Island and about the sidewalk, and Willie started down the seven members of this Italian of a cinder block, but it would do mouth as his right hand squirmed their lack of control over their own the fire escape to give a hand, but it laborer’s family, including! the grand­ just fine.

So he took an old bat­ gracefully up and between her legs affairs and lack of a real land tenure tered straw ottoman from the store­ and his finger slowly pushed its way mother. Basile didn’t try to break was too late. Clearhead O’Keefe on reserves. I would hope to resolve came out from hiding and broke room, and set up shop. into the slippery flesh of the open­ away. These people weren’t attempt­ Basile’s hold on BoBo by poking his the problem in discussions with the ing to hurt him, they were just grip­ ing and gradually worked its way Queensland authorities. However if finger into his eye, among other When Pondexteur cracked open inside the dark, tight, dreamy, wet ping him firmly —stunned and awe­ this is not possible I would go to the door, the wind cut into him world of her eleven-year-old body. struck by the interruption. Their things. They all rolled around until Cabinet seeking authority to resolve BoBo fell on top of this bastard who like a knife. He decided to stay on He moved his finger deliberately questions, shouted all at once, dealt the differences.” the landing, and just use the roof for and her hand grasped his right wrist with sanity: “Whadda you, crazy?” had tried to strangle him, and ex­ The papers feted Roslyn Watson, plained to Basile that he had a def­ quick observations of the scene in and helped his stroke fall into the they all asked. first professional Aboriginal ballet the street. It wasn’t a bad place to excitement of the in-and-out rhythm.

When they had quieted down a inite choice: he could go along with dancer, who will perform with the sit it out for a while. The stairwell Their hearts were thumping. She star­ bit, Basile told them to go and ask them to jail, or to the hospital.

Dance Company of NSW, and didgave a clear view of all the floors ted to moan with desire and his dick Mister Peerless about his mental Basile chose the former. geridoo player George Winunguj will The Chaplain chicks started yel­ and the stairs that ran between them. got so big he thought it was going to stability, and collect for whatever tour South East Asia with the Adel­ ling their version of Boo! out the There was an inside latch on the was broken.

Then, as the hands re explode. aide Wind Quintet on a Common­ windows of the ground-floor flat door to the roof and a tiny, wired He took his left hand and started laxed from his body, he walked where they were, and Dupree told wealth grant; it was announced that window that looked out over the tops peeling off her panties without tak­ around the table, slid out the window the Federal government will pay them to shut their mouths and cook of all the tenements and let Willie ing his mouth away from her face. He onto the fire escape, and climbed something to eat. He was depressed award rates to all Aborigines on premeditate his escape if the Aces quickly to the top of the building. jerked her pants free from her ankles Northern Territory settlements “as Wild happened to come in to . the All of this tickled the shit out of by Basile’s vain attempt, o f course, with his foot and lifted her dress soon as possible” , and that the Gurbut he knew that the game wasn’t building looking for him.

Kenny Wisdom. with his left hand and moved his indjis are getting the title papers to He could see the pigeon coops Jimmy Taylor slowed down only going to be lost because of it. At head away from hers to have a look their tribal lands. Most of the 15,000 least, he hoped Basile’s capture didn’t that he’d figured on, and he could at how he was going to stick himself when he couldn’t feel Basile behind mean that much. He discussed it with square-mile pastoral property will also see that the pigeons were all into her. him. He was about six or seven come from Vestey’s Wave Hill huddled together on their perches the guys sitting around the room and Kenny got very scared by what he roofs away, when he approached Station and Victoria River Downs.

— very still, very quiet, gritting their saw. Blood. It was all over every­ the edge and looked back to see if they unanimously concluded that the Bryant said the government would beaks, waiting out the cold. The thing and he knew that his finger Basile or someone else was coming turning point of the contest would negotiate with Vestey’s for the land, ladders of the fire escapes hooked that was jammed up and between up the fire escape. It was dark, but depend on how successfully each; and he thought Lord Vestey would over the edges of each building, and her legs had done it. He froze. he still noticed a small, thin figure team carried out or defended the concede the area. “But it doesn’t there were enough of them, making Shirley opened her eyes, and when huddled against the chimney in the inevitable jailbreaks which would matter whether he agrees or not. it unnecessary to choose which one she saw the look on Kenny Wis­ shadows. He made out like he hadn’t occur.

We’ve got the power and we’re gang Willie Pondexteur decided it was until the time came to split. He dom’s face, she propped herself up seen anything, casually faking his to see you get your dues.” watched the smoke disappearing from to see what was wrong. She scream­ attention somewhere else. Then he time he went down on the street Rhodesia closed its border with the chimneys, and the empty clothes­ ed. And he didn’t blame her at all pounced on top of the form cramped where he could group together with Zambia in an attempt to force Zam­ his brothers and get some food into lines beating against each other. He because he thought he had broken in the comer. Homeboy tried to bian President Kaunda to refuse dismissed all the fire doors on the her cunt, and he understood that it make a go of it, but his whole body the hollow of his stomach. His in­ shelter to African nationalist guer­ was stiff with cold. Taylor gave him stincts told him it was either now or other roofs as possible exits because was a good reason for yelling. rillas who have allegedly been raiding stay hungry.

It was nearly two months after two short ones in the ribs to intimid they were all shut and probably He moved fast, and tiptoed down Rhodesia. latched from the inside to keep them Shirley before he found out that ate any further struggle. He wrapped It is believed that Rhodesian Homeboy in a headlock and carted the stairs. The guy in 3-B flicked from flapping and banging around in blood don’t mean much when you Prime Minister, Ian Smith, has come right down to it. Just some­ him over the fire door of the next back his ears, raised his eyebrows, the wind. asked Britain to mediate in the bor He opened his door again and thing everybody called a cherry and roof, which had no latch, just a fol­ der dispute. Zambia warned that ded newspaper for a jamb. poked his head out to see if it had was made to be broken, so they said. black Africa would be behind it if an outside catch he could use to hold After that, Kenny went around crack­ He kept his right arm tightly war broke out with Rhodesia. “If it closed and stall anyone who was ing cherries like some kids go after wrapped around the prisoner’s head the Smith regime misbehaves we’ll pursuing him, while he jumped down baseball cards. make Vietnam look like child’s Now, he was simply sitting on an 'and face, until he’d reshut the door a fire escape. It didn’t. “Shit,” he on the paper. Then he shifted pos­ play,” Zambian cabinet minister muttered, and sat down against the ottoman in this basement as the ition and slammed Homeboy’s left Peter Matoka said. Defence minister, dusk began to fall.

The girls had banister, opening the zipper of his arm up his back to the base of hiSi Mr Zulu, said he believed that Rhod­ jacket to the warm air that was all gone away. He grasped his knees neck and walked him downstairs, esia may use the allegation that a with the fingers of his hands and steadily spiraling up the well. He’d and out the front, and halfway up South African patrol boat was fired wait some time before sneaking a pushed himself up to the window the block to the Aces Wild jail, as upon as an excuse to invade his to have a look-see. peek down into the street. country.

He saw Bull pacing the chalked Basile looked down from above.

Things were settling down out­ A few minutes later, Cool Breeze South Africa told Rhodesia to square, determined to keep Chap­ side. Guido Spinnelli had been driven got together with Lanier and Tommy stay calm. lains Jake and Octavius in jail.

Bull back inside his house by an old Lee, Jr., to take the two Aces he Self-government would have to woman in a black dress who was was one hundred and eighty pounds spotted climbing inio the rear of an come before independence for Papuaof heavy thick bone, and the clouds determined to beat him to death with old bread truck. He stood at the New Guinea, according to the coun of mist steaming out of his nose a mop handle. She was very upset back while Lanier and Tommy Lee, try’s chief minister, Michael Somare, could be boiled down to Ju-Jube. about the way Guido had tried to Jr., covered both of the sliding who left Australia on Friday 19 Mule was guarding Buckeye and give her a heart attack by exploding doors in the front. They were very Joey Stretch at the other end of the after a VIP visit and talks with the noise of a pistol in her ear. She street with similar disdain, while his quiet about it. But when Cool Breeze Australian ministers. took it very personal. eyes rolled up toward heaven and his yanked open the rear doors and ex­ The Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, said Australia would The people, who had come from lips prayed for Georgie Goodbye to claimed, “Well, it if ain’t Jesus!” the silence was broken and Jesus press Papua-New Guinea to accept everywhere to see this game of Ringo- be delivered. independence in 1974. Australia The only difference between Bull and Ralphie were caught and taken levio, returned and picked up what­ could not be compelled to remain an ever they’d dropped, and bought and Mule was their color: one was to the Chaplains’ chalk-drawn square imperial power against its will. V.F. their way out of the cold — into white, the other black. Everything of detention.

RINGOLEVIO

“ An agreement on ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam” was initialed at 12.30 pm Paris time, Tuesday January 23. Initialing on be­ half of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was “special adviser” Le Due Tho — for the USA, Dr Henry Kissinger.

The agreement was due to be formally signed on Saturday Jan­ uary 27.

The deal is: — an internationally supervised ceasefire starting immediately, — all American forces to with­ draw from South Vietnam within 60 days from the Saturday, and — all American prisoners-ofwar to be released within the 60 days. Whatever this means it does not mean the war is over, nor does it mean peace. It means a deal has been struck and that all parties are pre­ pared to admit to it publicly. It says nothing of deals that were un­ doubtedly made between Nixon and Chou En Lai, between Kissinger and Hanoi, between Chou and Hanoi, between Nixon and Thieu, and so on Whatever Nixon says is, on past record, wrong. He lies most of the time, or deceives, because he is a power-broker by trade. His ration­ ale: we’re right, therefore our voice should prevail everywhere if there is to be right everywhere. Some time ago the rationale overtook the con­ cern for what might be right.

These men are boxed in so tight they themselves could not hope to see the boxes: generals and economists who argue America needs a war to keep the jobs coming, give the blacks something to do, secure over­ seas markets and supplies, arid, most­ ly, to keep them their jobs.

There are people whose attitude to this war is that no peace is honorable without victory. US mili­ tary, professional war-watchers in think-tanks like the RAND Corpor­ ation, profiteers and their represen­ tatives in Congress, and the mourners of Joe McCarthy (a man Nixon ad­ mired and never renounced). Some of these people will stake their lives on sabotaging any peace — least of all one so fragile as this.

And there’s Kissinger, who whilst an academic recommended the use of nuclear weapons against recalcit­ rant enemies. And there’s still Nixon.

And the Thieu government, men who achieved power through war and have held as much of it <as is left after cashing so much in to keep the Americans paying.

No meaningful elections have been held under any of the succession of factional, incompetant, quisling gov­ ernments in Saigon.

There are also millions of Viet­ namese who have fought French, Japanese, Americans, Philippines, South Koreans, and Cambodians in the attempt to control their own destiny. Most of these people (those left alive) have not known their country free of foreign armies. They have seen deals before, seen them­ selves betrayed in 1945, 1954, 1956 . . . They always keep on fighting. * * * Nixon turned 60 and gave some birthday advice: “Never slow down, stay mentally alert and keep inter­ ested in life. The worst thing is when a man or woman gives up. Then he’s old before his time . . . You never get bored in the Presidency.”

At the Inauguration of his second four-year term Nixon said: “ Amer­ ica’s longest and most difficult war is ending.” American steadfastness was bringing ‘peace with honor.’

Australia’s Prime Minister wasn’t at the inauguration but he sent a telegram of contragulation. Imelda Marcos, wife of the newly elected dictator of the Philippines, was there.

Marcos, who now describes him­ self as President, Prime Minister, and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed forces, has dismissed the vicepresident and members o f parlia­ ment. According to the constitution he signed, he has power to rule by decree and he can rule indefinitely.

He claims that his authority comes from the past week’s voting in 32,000 loosely organised people’s assemblies where more than 15 million people including 15 year olds voted by a public show o f hands.

Back in America former President Lyndon Johnson died of a heart attack; and five men, including the security chief for Nixon’s re-election campaign, who broke into Democrat­ ic party headquarters with burglary and bugging tools, have gone on trial. Defence lawyer for one of the men said* “If you have reason­ able apprehension that harm may come to others as well as yourself you can break the law to avoid the greater harm.” The men charged are claiming they thought they were thwarting a communist conspiracy and preventing ‘would-be violence groups.’

AGAMEOFUFE&DEATH

January 27 — February 13 selves. They didn’t succeed, except in making Lanier very upset.

“Jes’ far that, you can try and dance away the cold while you starve, thinkin’ ’bout what you could be eatin’, if you didn’t try trickin’ me!” he told them Food was on everybody’s mind by now and one by one all the guys who weren’t in jail started making their moves for a bite to eat.

Solly Girsch left BoBo and Bull to guard the Aces Wild jail, while he went to buy a bunch of hero sand­ wiches and sodas. When he got back to the com er, Georgie Goodbye and Benny Levine showed up to share in the groceries. Jimmy Taylor saw Solly com° out of the store with the carton, but before he could take two steps toward the food. Tommy Lee Jr., and Cool Breeze made him their prisoner.

Gildersleeve, Ju-Jube and B.O. met each other as they walked to the Chaplain home base and the ham­ burgers. They also met Clearhead O’Keefe, whom they forced to ac­ company them but didn’t feed. All he got was the companionship of his hungry fellow prisoners.

Antonucci was sitting on the third floor of an abandoned building when he started to get hungry. This caused him little concern, because, as usual, he had the situation covered. Wrap­ ped in waxed paper and stuffed in­ side his jacket were tvro bologna sandwiches and a half pint of milk.

He leisurely satisfied his appetite, pleased with his foresight, while watching the goings-on in the street through a stone-sized hole in one of the soot-covered windows in the empty apartment.

Kenny Wisdom was trying to come up with an idea for a meal when he heard someone at the hallway door.

He didn’t have time to do anything, but ducked behind the boiler and listened to the footsteps come down the stairs. They were skipping, so he figured it was a girl. He took a peek and saw that she was about to empty some garbage into one of the cans.

Suddenly she froze, seeing his shad­

Page 7 ow cast on the wall in front of her.

In the locker room of the precinct side. So Kenny simply thanked her Before she could get hysterical, station house, Patrolman Michael again and told her that she better Kenny made himself visible and ex­ Lowndes was changing into his blue get back upstairs before her mother plained who he was and why he was uniform and getting himself ready got worried. for inspection. there and assured her that she had She left and he sat and ate the Michael Lowndes lived in Staten sandwich and drank the orangeade nothing to be frightened about. He helped her dump the garbage and Island with his mother and father. and turned his attention to a loose they chatted a bit. She told him that He was twenty-two years old and pile of old newspapers. He picked her name was Stephanie and she said he’d been on the force a little over out a February 1955 edition of the that it was a beautiful name. Then j a year. He was very proud that he New York Herald Tribune which had he hit on her to get him something j was the first person in his family a banner headline about a two-hour to become a cop. None of his relatives gun battle, and he read the article to eat and drink.

She said that she would bring him had ever been able to pass the civil about August Robles and looked a sandwich and some milk, but she’d service exam to get into the Police at the pictures. have to wait until her father went Academy. And tonight he was es­ The news story told about a guy pecially excited, because after one named Joe Aronowitz who had come to work. “ He’ll leave in about twenty min­ year as a probationary patrolman, •to New York from Philadelphia to utes,” Stephanie said, “and I’ll be Officer Lowndes was getting a new testify against two or more of his back down in half an hour.” tour of duty and his own beat to former associates who had been in­ “Good,” said Kenny, “ and pound. Patrolling Hester Street was dicted for the poor usage of guns, thanks.” part of that beat. among other things. If they were Then she left, locking the cellar An old rusty-gun cop named convicted, it was going to take an door from the outside.

Malloy had shown him around the adding machine to count up the num­ On the television in the Calamari area during the preceding week. ber of years- they would spend in Bar, Jerry Lewis was hosting the Malloy had retired to his pension prison; and it was Joe Aronowitz’s Academy Awards and everyone in the day before, and now the main­ testimony that would give the district the place was laying bets on their tenance of the law and order in that attorney a case, and a guaranteed picks for best actress and actor. section was the sole responsibility of verdict of guilty.

Since very few of the patrons in Patrolman Michael Lowndes. He was So these former associates of his the shellfish bar had any knowledge eager to make good as one of what allegedly hired someone to do away of the qualities required to win an New York City calls its finest. with him and his blabbermouth. That Oscar, it wasn’t odd that they all someone was a five-foot-four, oneStephanie brought Kenny Wisdom agreed on two of the nominees hundred-ten-pound, forty-year-old a salami sandwich and a bottle of as a sure thing — simply, because Puerto Rican who wore eyeglasses as orangeade. She told him that she after all, they were Italians. It was thick as ashtrays and who killed couldn’t bring any milk, because even less odd that the bookmakers people for a two- or three-hundredthere was only enough left for her stopped taking wagers as soon as father’s coffee, which he always had dollar fee, and whose name was they realized that the money wasn’t for breakfast when he returned from August Robles. being evenly spread, because if these According to the paper, Robles work in the morning. Kenny immed­ two Italian movie stars won, it would drove from midtown Manhattan to iately assured her that it didn’t bankrupt every bookie in the place.

Ashland Place in Brooklyn, where he m atter one bit, and that he was ex­ They were lucky that they closed shot him twice in the back of the tremely grateful to her for coming shop when they did, because a while head and left him slumped behind through for him. later Anna Magnani won for The the wheel of the car, which was par­ “I don’t know what I woulda done Rose Tattoo and Ernest Borgnine ked in front of the National Casket if you didn’t help me out like you Company. August Robles had a sense for Marty, and everyone did a little did.” celebrating for their two paisanos of humor.

Then he told her that she had who beat out all those Jewish actors Two days later, three detectives nice hair and began to pump her crashed into an East Harlem apart­ for Hollywood’s best prize. for some information about H ester ment only to be disarmed by th is Street, hoping to uncover some tiny little Spanish man. An alarm secret passage that she might know was put out and the area closed off. about.

Robles, apparently realizing he didn’t But he drew a blank. Stephanie have a chance to get out of the neigh­ didn’t know a thing about Hester borhood, entered a tenement on East Street. Her mother was an invalid, 112th Street, indiscriminately chose and didn’t allow her to play out­ an apartment, pointed one of the sev­ eral guns he was carrying at the occu­ pants, and told them to leave.

They did, and of course notified the police, who rushed to the scene with a swarm of two hundred men.

They blocked off the street and a deputy inspector got on a megaphone to ask Robles to surrender because he was completely surrounded and couldn’t possibly escape.

August replied that they would have to “ wait until I finish a letter.”

That’s when the gun battle began — it lasted two hours and drew a crowd of nearly ten thousand spec­ tators.

All the neighboring buildings were evacuated and the cops fired thous­ ands of rounds and lobbed teargas canisters through the windows of the apartment, from which Robles, apparently not bothered by the gas, was returning the fire.

During the second hour, the cops in charge of the attack discontinued the tear gas which was obviously having little or no effect, and ordered their men to fire live grenades into the top floor flat. They even had an officer from the bomb squad get on top of the roof directly above Robles and blow a hole in the ceiling with a dynamite charge.

Needless to say, these explosions blew out every window in the neigh­ borhood and set half the block on fire. While three engine companies sprayed water on the flames, one of the detectives who had lost his gun to Robles earlier in the day made his way, along with an army of men and a Catholic priest, up to the top floor landing and the apartment where their man had barricaded himself.

For fifteen minutes they pleaded with Robles to come out with his hands up. After getting no response at all during that quarter hour, the detective who led the way upstairs kicked open the shattered door and pumped twenty rounds of forty-five calibre bullets from a Thompson machine gun into the already pulver­ ized body of the fragile little man who caused him a great deal of em­ barrassment by disarming him not five hours before.

The newspaper account quoted the detective, “That guy Robles was ! too dangerous to take any chances | with.” The story ended with a des­ cription of the priest giving August Robles Extreme Unction posthum­ ously. Two full pages of photos in the Tribune testified to that day in February 1955 when two hun­ dred members of the police force declared war on 112th Street and left it looking like a battlefield, simply because a spic named August Robles made a few of their own lose face by taking their guns away.

They were going to get him for that, and while they were at it teach the rest of the spies in the neighborhood a lesson they wouldn’t soon forget.

Kenny threw the newspaper back on top of the pile and thought about how chicken-shit cops were, as he finished his sandwich.

Everyone that wasn’t in jail had had something to eat by now and some of the fellows on each team thought that it was time for a little action. Gildersleeve, Ju-Jube and B.O. could see that there were only three guys guarding the Aces Wild jail, so Ju-Jube figured that if he and the other two rushed the jail at the same time, one of them was

bound to get through and free their imprisoned brothers. They decided to try it. B.O. led the way. They snuck down the street behind the parked cars, but as soon as they crossed Mott, they decided that it would be better to travel the length of the next block across the roof­ tops. They moved slowly and quietly, until they finally arrived at the build­ ing which bordered Mulberry Street, and sat directly across from the Aces Wild jail.

They went downstairs to the foyer and cracked open the front door a tiny bit, so they could get a better idea of how they were going to go about freeing their teammates.

Solly Girsch, Bull, and BoBo were covering the comer, but they were bunched together, rather than spread out in a zone defense. So Gildersleeve said it’d be a cinch, all they had to do was make sure they hit the target from three different angles. This way,, he assured Ju-Jube and B.O., the Aces Wild guards wouldn’t have time to block all of them. They would only be able to stop two.

They got themselves together for the attem pt. B.O. was going to come in from the left flank, Gildersleeve would go down the middle, and Ju-Jube would hit from the right. “ Ready,” said B.O. “ Go!” They all sprang out the door at once. Ju-Jube ran into a bear-hug

by Bull. Gildersleeve faked to the right causing BoBo to slip and fall, but Solly Girsch jammed his hand down on Gildersleeve’s collar and stopped him cold. B.O. would have made it if Mister Pulmeri, who was seventy-two years old, hadn’t pulled his ’49 Buick out of his parking space and if B.O. hadn’t run into it and been knocked ten feet into the air.

He wasn’t hurt — no bones broken — only stunned, and he stayed that way until twenty minutes after they put him in jail.

Mister Pulmeri didn’t know any­ thing about B.O. He thought that he’d just hit a bump in the road and he bitched to himself in Italian about this stiff they had for a mayor, Wagner, who couldn’t keep the god­ damn streets in shape.

Georgie Goodbye and Antonucci got together and cooked up a jailbreak scheme of thier own. They were in an abandoned building only half a block away from the Eliza­ beth Street corner where the Chap­ lains were keeping six Aces prisoner.

The plan was for Antonucci to crawl down Hester Street on his belly underneath the nine parked cars that lined the curb until he reached the Pontiac on the corner.

Then he’d just roll out from under it and into the chalked square and free everybody. Georgie Goodbye mean­ while would create a diversion with his broken fieljLrunning, which would draw at le^st two of the Chaplains after h ip ran d occupy the attention of the other two.

It almost worked.

Antonucci slipped unnoticed un­ der a car and began crawling on his stomach like a soldier. When he had gone four car lengths, Georgie burst out of the tenement and started making mad dashes to and from and all around the corner with Cool Breeze, Tommy Lee, Jr., and Lanier chasing him all over the place.

He made one mistake. He started running between parked cars. The cars under which Antonucci was making his way to the comer. The inevitable occurred. Between the bumpers of the fourth and fifth cars in the line, Georgie Goodbye stub­ bed his foot on Antonucci’s rib cage and went sprawling to the ground. The three Chaplains jumped on them and they were caught. An­ tonucci called Georgie a “ fucking moron” several times as they were escorted to the den.

Officer Michael Lowndes was standing in formation with his fellow patrolmen in front of the desk ser­ geant who was taking roll call while the captain walked through the ranks, inspecting each man’s equip­ ment and uniform. There followed a brief meeting in which the captain told his men to keep on their toes because a few burglars liked to work .this Italian neighborhood on Good Friday night and Easter weekends. “ I know it’s cold out there to ­ night, men,” said the captain, “ but don’t hang out indoors too much.

Just keep moving around with your eyes open and you’ll stay warm.

Only duck inside to shake the chill off once in a while. OK, now go out there and make some arrests.”

He didn’t mention anything about the Ringolevio game. He forgot.

Dupree and the rooting section were all getting pretty stoned, as were the various spectators who were hanging out in the bars and grills and heated storefronts, but they could still count. They figured that with eight members of each team being held prisoner in jails which were guarded by three guys each — that left only two Chaplains and two Aces Wild who were still moving around. The turning point had ar­ rived and whichever side broke jail first would gain a substantial margin toward victory.

No one knew this better than Kenny Wisdom and Willie Pondexteur, and both understood that it was now time for them to make their moves.

This was the part of the game that Kenny liked best. His part. He looked

over the street and immediately no­ ticed that Cool Breeze was not with Lanier, Mule, and Tommy Lee, Jr., defending the Chaplain jail. This meant that Cool Breeze was combing the area, trying to hunt him out. It also meant that Kenny had to wait until he spotted Cool Breeze in order to choose a route that would avoid a confrontation, because Wisdom was physically no match for Breeze.

This was the aspect of Ringolevio which attracted players and made the game a permanent part of the cultural tradition of the streets of New York. Sooner or later during the course of a contest, each participant had to look into himself and face his physical and mental limits. After a kid played the game a few times, he would begin to understand the reality of his makeup by contrasting his abilities with those of the other players. If he was aware of himself, he would soon discover that he had a quality that was unique and pecul­ iar to him, and he would develop it until eventually he became known and respected for it, and would never jeopardize it with whims or fantasy.

You just inevitably learned who you really were whether you liked it or not.

Willie Pondexteur also noted that one of the Acps’ defensive players was not standing on the comer of Mulberry, protecting the jail w ith Solly Girsch, Bull and BoBo. And he made the reasonable assumption that Benny Levine was searching for him. This, however, didn’t require Willie to keep an eye peeled for Benny because he was already in his position to make his move on the Aces Wild jail.

He was lying on the floor under the steering wheel of a 1954 Chev­ rolet which he intended to start in a few minutes by wrapping the silver paper from a pack of cigarettes around the ignition wires that were behind the dashboard. Then he was going to slowly drive down the street, pull alongside the jail, leap out of the car and free his brothers.

Now he was simply biding his time with all the doors locked, and en­ joying the last of his cigarettes.

Kenny saw Cool Breeze step out of the shadow of a doorway and enter a tenement across the street.

He watched him fade into the hall­ way of the building, and then Wis­ dom jumped the flight of cellar steps, opened the latch of the door to the hall by slipping a playing card between the tongue and the m outh of the lock, and flew up the stairwell to the roof.

He ran low and fast along the rooftops until he reached the building that sat on the corner of Elizabeth and Hester streets, hovering directly over the Chaplains’ jail.

The fire escape which hung down the front of the tenement was twen­ ty-five feet wide of the target, but there was a ledge on the second story that ran the width of the build­ ing and Kenny would use it as a path to take him to the spot right above the jail where he would jump straight down into the midst of his teammates and break them out.

He started down the fire escape, stealing his way with the poise and movements of a cat. When he reach­ ed the second landing he crouched behind some flowerless boxes which were filled with dirt, and examined the ledge to see if it was strong en­ ough to carry him the necessary twenty-five feet.

There were no breaks in it, which was good, but it sure was narrow and it looked mighty old. But Kenny had no choice, because now it was either win or lose. And the strength of the ledge was a chance he had to take He took off his leather Air Force issue jacket which he knew would give him away by scraping against the wall. Also, without it, he would have more room to move between him and the side of the building.

Then he eased himself over the castiron railing of the fire escape and onto the ledge.

He spread-eagled his arms and pressed them against the bricks, moving slowly sideways, testing every step before putting his weight on each section. He seldom took his eyes off the three Chaplains who were milling about below him.

Then, with only ten feet to go, he met the only obstacle between him and his team’s freedom — an empty flower box which was stick­ ing out of a window and blocking his way. He knew that if he stepped in it, it would definitely give way.

And he couldn’t step over it, because it was too long for his leg span. But he had to get past it. He was still too far away to release the prisoners.

So Kenny raised his right arm an d grabbed the top of the brownstone window frame which stuck out from the wall above the wooden box. His hand, burned by the ice-cold cement, gribbed the abutm ent like a vise.

Kenny pulled himself up with his right arm, swung completely around, and caught hold of the overhanging frame with his left hand. He was now facing the building with only his hands keeping him from falling back­ wards — twenty-seven feet to the sidewalk. The wind was cutting into his sweat-soaked body and he began to shiver. But before he inched his way forward, he glanced under his left armpit to the scene below. No one had spotted him.

Suddenly a silhouette passed be­

hind the drawn shade of the window and Kenny flashed on what would happen if the person inside lifted the shade and saw him hanging there.

An image popped into his mind of an old lady grabbing her left tit and dropping dead of a heart attack.

Kenny had to restrain himself from laughing out loud.

He started to move. He was nearly numb from the cold when he finally lowered himself down to the ledge on the other side of that dumb em­ pty wooden box. His hands were black-and-blue frozen. He was still facing the wall. To turn around, he crossed his right foot over his left and moved ever so slowly on the heel of his left foot and the ball of his crotch and rested a moment.

Patrolman Michael Lowndes was walking down M ott Street toward Hester, swinging his billy club with his gray-gloved hand.

Willie Pondexteur started up the Chevie, waited for the engine to warm a bit, and then put it into gear and rolled away from the curb.

Benny Levine saw him and began to chase after, but Cool Breeze came out of nowhere and hit Benny with a body block that sent him bouncing off the window of a liquor store.

The window didn’t break, but the jolt set off the burglar alarm. Officer Michael Lowndes heard it. So did everybody else.

The noise distracted the guards of each den. They were all looking the wrong way when Kenny Wisdom dropped twenty-seven feet from the ledge into the chalked perimeter, ex­ ecuting the Aces Wild escape, while Willie Pondexteur pulled up to the Mulberry Street corner, leaped out of the car, and freed the Chaplains by lunging into the Aces Wild jail and shouting, “ FREE ALL!” Benny Levine broke away from Cool Breeze and ran into an alley with Breeze chasing him. Patrolman Michael Lowndes saw them both running from the sound of the bur­ glar alarm. He drew his pistol, gripped his right wrist with his left hand, rested his gun arm on the roof of the car to steady his aim, shouted “ Halt!” once, then fired three shots at the two figures who were sprinting down the alley.

The first bullet shattered the base of Benny Levine’s spine as he was leaping over the fence. The second one pierced the upper left side of Cool Breeze’s back and exploded his heart. The third was a warning shot.

The pandemonium which resulted from the jailbreaks at both ends of Hester Street froze at the sound of the gunfire and at the sight of the cop leaning over the car at the corner of Mott Street with smoke coming out of the barrel of his .38.

As Officer Lowndes began to cross over to the alleyway, the Chaplains and the Aces Wild moved toward the corner of Mott and Hester streets where this cop had fired off his rounds. The people in the bars and storefronts poured out onto the side­ walk as did Dupree with his brothers and sisters. Everyone was speculating on what had'gone down.

The burglar alarm was still ringing when the crowd reached the mouth over the lifeless body of Cool Breeze and the near-dead Benny Levineu Everyone got very quiet.

Patrolman Michael Lowndes holstered his gun and told everyone to stay back and asked someone to call an ambulance. Then he began to notice the several black faces staring out at him from the crowd and he looked back down at Cool Breeze crumpled on the ground, then back at the crowd. Something was wrong..

“They were trying to break into the liquor store!” Lowndes told the crowd. “ You full of shit!” came a reply from someone. “They were playing a game!”

Police Officer Lowndes went fo r his gun as the Chaplains and the Aces Wild came toward him. He never reached it. Jimmy Taylor coldcocked him and Mule, Basile, BoBo and Solly Girsch pummeled him to the ground.

Kenny Wisdom took the cop’s pistol, wrote Benny Levine’s name and address on a slip of paper, and gave both to one of Jimmy Peerless’s men and told him to call an ambul­ ance for Benny. Willie Pondexteur wrote down Cool Breeze’s home address and name and told the same man that they’d pick up his body at the morgue with his mother. Willie asked Dupree to pull the cars around and get ready to split while they dealt with this fuzz.

Then, as the neighborhood people went back indoors, the Chaplains and the Aces Wild carried this cop across the street to a vacant lot where they stripped him of his uniform and leather belts, shoes and handcuffs, and stuffed them down a sewer.

And kicked him half to death. They only stopped when they heard the siren of the ambulance.

The cop’s body was left sprawled naked on a mound of garbage as they all crammed into Dupree’s caravan of cars which dropped the Aces Wild at Union Square to catch a train back to Brooklyn while the Chaplains high-tailed it back to Harlem.

The game which is called Ringo­ levio was over.

Published by William Heinemann Ltd., 1972. Copyright c Eugene Leo Michael Emmett Grogan.

Page 8

January 27 — February 13

The Digger ,

An old outback recipe or tw o:

Pituri, anAboriginal stone

by Alice

Not much is known of the drugplant lore of the Australian aborig­ ines, although references to it date back to Captain Cook who observed that the Endeavour River natives Were chewing some leaves that they did not swallow. The best documen­ ted usage appears to be that of the drug commonly called “pituri” .

“Pituri is generally accepted to refer to the preparation of the leaves of Duboisia Hopwoodii, a small shrub-like tree of about six to ten feet in height. This tree grows in sand-hill country, scattered through­ out Central Australia.

Different terms varying from tribe to tribe have been recorded, but pituri has been most extensively employed. Like other words (e.g. corroborree) aboriginals learned the word pituri from white men who had previously learned it from other tribespeople.

Pituri was extensively used by peoples living in north-west-central Queensland, north western New South Wales, and north eastern South Australia. The drug was a major article of trade among tribes in these areas, often being distributed hun­ dreds of miles, and as far south as Mt. Hope near the South Australian coast.

Further west, tribespeople used the leaves of native tobaccos in a similar fashion. This is sometimes called pituri too, but is also called by its Arunta name, “inkulba” , and I will refer to it as such to avoid confusion.

The first reference to pituri in white literature is made by the ex­ plorer Wills, in his diary, dated May 7, 1861: i “Various members of the tribe gave us some stuff they called bedgery or pedgery; it has a highly intoxicating effect when chewed, even in small quantities. It appears to be the dried stems and leaves of some shrub.”

After the death of Burk and Wills, King, the sole survivor of the exped­ ition to reach the Gulf of Carpen­ taria, lived with aborigines on Coop­ ers’ Creek for three months. He was fed by these people, and sometimes he obtained from them a chew of pituri “which soon caused him to forget his hunger and the miseries of, his position.”

King described pituri thus: “After chewing it for a few mim utes I felt quite happy and perfectly indifferent about my position, in fact much the same effect as might be produced by two pretty stiff nobblers of brandy. After chewing it the natives do not throw it away but place it behind the ear, much in the same style as a sailor places his quid in his hair, until it has lost all good­ ness. Offering this pitchery- pill to a stranger is the greatest expression o f amity which, however, we did not at first understand and felt rather disgusted than otherwise when they used to press on our acceptance their nasty dirty-looking balls of chewed grass, as it appeared to be.”

Howitt, the leader of the search party which found King, also recor­ ded that pituri was offered to mem-

Duboisia Hopwoodi Pituri is usually a shrub varying in height from about 6 to 10 feet^ rarely it assumes the aspect of a small tree, with a dark colored, some­ what corky bark. The bark of the typical shrubby form is at first smooth but in age becomes somewhat corky and yellowish. There is a rich devel­ opment of branching, the branches being sometimes willow-like, some­ times erect, more frequently drooping towards their tips, and typically a dark purplish color.

The leaves are tapering, usually about five inches long^It is in flower from August to October, and produces small black berries in December arid January. v It is found growing on sandy ridges along with spinifex.

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bers of his party. Howitt also ob­ served that the track he followed across Sturt’s; Stony Desert was one used by the aborigines on their jour­ ney to the north to “procure the pitcheri, so much used by them as a narcotic.”

The drug was prepared by differ­ ent methods. Sometimes the blacks, would break off the twigs and tie them up in netting until thoroughly dry. The leaves would then be broken up and enclosed in crescent­ shaped netted bags, specially made to carry pituri. Another method was to place the twigs in a hole raked out in the middle of a dying fire.

They were then covered with hot ( sand and left to cook, for about two hours. Too much steaming made the resulting “cook” brittle and taste­ less, too little made it musty.

Often, the pituri was mixed withi the ash of an Acacia plant, partic­ ularly Acacia salicina. The wood ash was mixed with the pituri for the purpose of slowly liberating the al­ kaloids' in pituri, as it contains a large proportion of an alkali, caustic lime.

This corresponds with the practice of mixing lime with a slice of betel nut (Areca catechu) by the peoples of southern Asia and the islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

After being mixed with these ashes, the pituri was worked with the fingers into small rolls for chewing.

Sometimes the quid was teased up with some shreds of native flax (Psoriea) or animal fur, to give it compactness and intercoherence.

This plug was chewed, being pas­ sed around from person to person; When not in use, it was usually stowed behind the ear. The skin of some of the old people was bleached bluegrey with the saturated juices. The effect of the drug has been variously described by whites . . .

“In small quantities it has a powerful stimulating effect, assuag­ ing hunger, and enabling long jour­ neys to be made without fatique, and with but little food. It is also used by the aboriginals to excite them before fighting . . . The pituri caused a severe headache in Euro­ peans who used it.” (Maiden 1893) “Amongst the aboriginals there appears to be as great a craving for pituri as amongst Europeans for alcohol, a fact which is put into practical and econopiic use by dro­ vers, station managers, and others: local blacks will usually give anything they possess for it — from their women downwards — ‘not for the

“Keep on Rockin' "

The stars make it

by Jenny Brown Frank Koke wanted a motorcycle escort for some “celebrity” he’d invited to the premiere of Prinnebaker’s Keep On Rockin'. The film superstarred 1969 footage of Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, (who were, after all, the four Kings of Rock ‘n’ Roll), so Frank Koke figured- it would be a fine idea to advertise free entrance to ten bikies for the job. He placed the ad in the Melbourne Sun. Come premiere night, the Palais theatre jaianed and howled like an air-raid on a hive of supersonic bees.

Two hundred of Melbourne’s mean­ est bike-riders had zeroed in on the smell of sweaty fifties rock and free tickets, and two hundred of them expected to get in free.

It looked bad. Invited press stood giggling, hearts racing, nervously smo­ king; the bikies just hung out and looked mean behind their shades; the Angels, the Iron Horsemen. Dave “Sneaky” Dawson from Truth was there, posing as a reporter from New Idea, the knit-crochet magazine. But he got in free, and so did the tw o hundred bikies.

Pennebaker’s latest release since “Don’t Look Back” and “Monterey Pop” is a treat to the eyes. The sound quality varies from God-awful to sweet and clean, but even with no soundtrack at all it would still be extraordinary, (which shows how weird this rock business is, because it was originally supposed to be about sounds). Yes the stars, rather than the filming/editing, make it.

Searing footage of California’s Hooligans escorting a black limousine to the Peace Festival in Toronto opened the show, and got deluxe whistle-scream-stomp treatment from sympathetic audience bikies (the rest just said wow).

The limousine was John and Yoko’s. The Plastic Ono Band topped the bill at the festival and originally topped the cast of Keep On Rockin, which was before the Lennon-Ono footage was shorn, and released as Sweet Toronto.

Pennebaker explained the cut: “As a theatrical film with John and Yoko at the end it’s hard to say if it’d make money or not . . . You’d have a hard time showing it down in Nash­ ville. They’d laugh it off the screen “No-one ever saw a concert like that . . . I don’t know, I felt a little peculiar about it. After they’d left the stage there was an incredible

, purpose of exciting their courage of D. Hopwoodii is also found growing, of working them up to a fighting but was not chewed by the tribes pitch, but to produce a voluptuous, living there, and was held in dread dreamy sensation’.” (Roth 1897) because of its powerful properties.

“The effects of the piturie seem It was used as an emu poison by from all accounts to be much the placing a few twigs in a waterhole. same as those set up by tobacco­ The stunned birds were then easier to smoking; it does not appear to have catch. One source says that the tribes­ the exciting effect on the blacks people also used the smoke o f the with which it was at one time cred­ burning leaves as an anaesthetic for ited.” (Liversidge 1881) the operations they performed.

Instead of D. Hopwoodii, several “Pitcheri had very little apparent species of native tobacco were used effect on the old people who had been in the habit of using it for by these western peoples in a similar years, but it gave the young people a manner to pituri, especially Nicotiana swollen, bestial look; one woman I excelsior and Nicotiana Gossei. An­ remember at Mungeranie had the ap­ other common species (N. Suaveolens) pearance of being heavily drugged seems to have been purposely’avoided. with opium; her eyes were swollen, The Arunta name for these drugs is her mouth loose and sloppy and she “inkulba”.

Inkulba was similarly prepared spoke as in a drunken daze. The effect wore off and the next mor­ to pituri. The leaves and sometimes ning she was apparently-jjormal.” the stalks, were gathered, preferably when the first blossoms appeared.

(Aiston 1932) In some tribes far from the source^ •They were dried in the sun, or by the drug was a luxury, and only used “cooking” , ground up, and thén by the old men. Some mention is mixed^mth the ashes of the mulga, also made of its use by the old men or other Acacia, as well as, occasion­ ally, twigs of the,, red gum. Some­ for purposes of divination, but little times a little yellow ochre, the is known of its cultural significance.

The uncouthness of the white man “ulba terka” of the Arunta, was probably made the black man wary mixed in, and sometimes the mass of giving information about pituri. was wrapped up, cigar fashion, in The tribes living in the areas where one of the broad tobacco leaves. the plant grew and was used as a This drug was also said to aid the drug would prepare it after it flow­ aborigines during long, dry marches, ered, and then take it to bartering and mention was made of its use as camps to exchange it for red ochre, an overtures in lovemaking, the m an weapons, grinding stones, ornaments giving the woman some of his and other goods. Such camps some­ inkulba to chew. times contained as many as five or Use of the tobacco introduced six hundred people. These gatherings by the whites displaced pituri and were social and cultural occasions inkulba in many areas. Tobacco was also in which ideas were interchanged, called “white-man pituri” . Some new dances and songs learnt. people began to smoke their pituri, Research by Joseph Bancroft, the with or without an admixture of pioneer of Australian pharmacology, tobacco. Conversely, some whites led him to believe that the active adopted the use of pituri, especially alkaloid in D. Hopwoodii was nico­ when tobacco was unobtainable.

The writer does not know whether tine. He commented “it is a mar­ vellous circumstance that the black any aboriginals still use thèse' native man of Central Australia should have stimulants. Writing in 1932 George Aiston said: dropped upon the same narcotic “It has been increasingly diffi­ principle as the red man of America in a plant differing so remarkably in cult of late years to get properly external aspect (from tobacco).” He prepared pitcheri and now only a renamed the plant D. pituri, but few of the old people think of it, unfortunately no-one followed his but those who know it will willingly forego tobacco for it; one old woman example.

More recent research has indicated who lived all her life on a m ission that the active principle is nor- begged some of me when she came nicotine, which is similar to nico­ across a small bag one day while tine in its actions. Small amounts of cleaning up. I gave her some and scopolamine, which in large quantit­ she begged the whole lot from me; ies is a hallucinogenic, may also be it is the only thing, so far as I can remember, that she ever asked present.

Further west, in Central Australia, for.”

silence as people sat there and tried to figure out what they’d heard.”

Cutting that concert performance gave the limousine escort opening a touch of lost meaning, but it was a ripping intro to the peculiar silkstovepipe-pants jiggling of Bo Diddley; right into “Love is Strange”, a duet with his combed-up, high; heeled lady partner, and washed down with a drawn-out version o f “Hey Bo Diddley” , complete with shebanging knees and guitar shuffle.

It’s enlightning to witness such a giant as Bo, old enough to be perhapsyour dad, dressed in this flashed-up nine-to-five suit, yet still so good.

Bo was followed by Jerry Lee Lewis and his crazy fiddle-player, who could outsolo the best around.

Lewis manages to keep an air o f alienation and secrecy around him, even when his roller-derby hips are doing their jerking worst . . . he doesn’t smile much, he just balls and plays.

Moving from guitar to piano after a cowboy number, “The Train Ride”* he finger stomps into “ Great Balls of Fire”, and belts right on through “Whole Lotta Shakin” ’, finally bring­ ing the house down with a slide of the comb through his ducktail.

But what was even harder to be­ lieve than the dreauman Jerry Lee come to life was the reincarnation of the legend Chuck Berry. In gen­ uine 2-D at least, and looking so sassed-up and wild . . .

He had recruited a young bunch of rock musicians that afternoon to back him; overwhelmed, hairy, starstruck guys who went through a lot of confusion to finally get their rocks off with Berry, much to his delight.

“Rock and Roll Music”, “Sw eet Sixteen”, “Maybelline”, “Too Much Monkey Business” , and Johnny B. Goode” — the most alive and fresh version I’ve ever heard.

Berry, above the dirty lyrics, the jabberwockyand the splits, was star­ tling inr Jris cpmplete innocence, his lack of obvious scarring after all he’s done and had done to him. His smile is childlike, his face has no masks.

The night fell and the stars came out, and with them Little Richard, a proud, black, blinding glitter in silver. Hair, laquered into bangs, rose over his lovely face as he took the piano and commandeered “ Lucille” , “Good Golly Miss Molly”^ “ Rip it Up” , “Tutti Frutti” and more, clos­ ing on a frothing “Long Tall Sally”.

By then he had thrown boots and mirrored coat into the crowd, pulled three dancers up onto the stage to jive with the band, stripped the en­ tertainment business bare. His big brass-electric band are really some­ thing, white suits and sax solos in­ cluded.

A bonus offer: Unannounced, un­ credited footage of Joplin and Hen­ drix have been clipped to the front

of the film. I much doubt Penne­ baker’s artistic integrity for doing this — would they sell, where the Plastic Ono Band wouldn’t? — but both per­ formers, as always, shine. Especially Hendrix — at the height o f his beauti­ ful decadence.

M ore rock Room To Move, the ABC radio’s Monday night ‘progressive’ music program, went to two hours on Jan­ uary 15. As part of Radio l ’s new move into concept broadcasting each week-night will concentrate exclusive­ ly on one theme. Monday night will be rock night — or as the ABC calls it, pop.

From 7.15 to 8.00 Iven Walker will bop along with Choice Cu ts, ‘designed as an introductory pro­ gram to the more progressive sounds of Room To Move'. At 8.02 Chris Winter moves in with the sort o f music he likes.

Winter’s likes range from the Mothers to Lou Reed and J. Geils, and currently he’s mainly into al­ bum cuts, but, he says, “ the two hour format allows for more variety.

I’d like to broadcast a lot more local material. The new ABC recor­ ding studios can hold an audience of three or four hundred, so we hope to be getting some studio concerts going soon.”

Room To Move will be broadcast in all capitals at 8.00 pm, soon for regionals as well. Papua-Niugini will be getting an hour and a half o f it on Tuesday nights.

Jack may come back There’s a rumor that ABC-TV’s Aunty Jack Show will be back in' July or August. The ABC gvill say no more than ‘it’s just a rumor’ but the creators o f the original Aunty Jack Show, Graham. Bond and Rory O’Donohue, are writing13 new 30 minute segments.

They are also working on a script for the ABC’s new Comedy Game series, projected as a series of six half hour programs by various authors.

Already completed is a John O’Grady ¿iece called “ Fat Max” starring Bar­ ry Lovett.

Bond and O’Donohue are working -on a script titled “ Flash Nick from Jindivik” based on the real life story of an incompetent bushranger. Bond will play Flash Nick.

The Comedy Game is expected to be scheduled ‘before the middle of the year’.

January 27 — February 13

The Digger

Page 9

Black Sabbath in Sydney

Settling old scores

We hired a special jet for the gold records

Ian McKenzie

by Jenny Brown

Beware of Imitations, Barry Oakley’s new play at the Pram Factory, presents two characters poles apart:; Max Gillies as Sir Wilfred McLuckie (retired statesman Menzies on the dole, pompous, out of touch) and Bruce Spence as his working-class servant (product of the Depression, ribald sardonic realist). It’s an ill-matched couple, both bankrupt, alienated and looking back to days of dubious glory. Digger reviewer Kreisler found it a promising performance, but felt that more precise and imaginative use of movement and space might have made clearer the definition of the characters against each other. The show is worth seeing: although it’s two months too late to hammer another nail into the Libs’ coffin, there are old scores still to be settled, and it’s a genuinely funny perfor­ mance.

SA Cabinet silences noise

tainment — a man called Turner — heard of the plan, and intervened.

Turner pointed out Silver Lake had recently been barred from staging public entertainments because of complaints from nearby residents about the noise from motor bike scrambles held there.

Rattray called the office of Premier Donald Dunstaa A man in that area, who shall remain uniden­ tified, said go ahead anyway and if enlisted James Rattray, record com­ attorney-general Len King interjects, pany promotions man and electric tell him to go screwhimself. It may bassist, to assist with the organisation­ be said King is not a popular man al work and publicity. Between them within state cabinet, and besides they decided to hold their little affair there’s a state election coming up at Silver Lake, a very pretty piece of in which 18-year-olds have their first ground around a lake, indeed. vote.

Rattray told the Juffermans they They went to the man who runs the resort, to be told they could could go ahead at Silver Lake, and stage “Silver Lake County” at that plans duly went forward. A stage site. The police came and said toilets was ordered, lighting was arranged, and parking facilities would be ade­ stalls were ordered. Then a letter quate for the size show planned, from Turner arrived; its contents Rattray haying estimated the roll-up threw the whole thing into question at 1,000 people. once more.

Rattray, tiring of the runaround, Then the state government’s in­ spector o f places o f public enter- went back to the premier’s depart-

ment, where he was told to go easy: cabinet would consider the festival at its next meeting.

Result — not on.

When asked by Michael Safe of the Sunday Mail why not, Dunstan said because of the pollution and par­ king problems. These, claim the or­ ganisers, were exactly the things police had cleared. There was no mention of residents’ complaints,; they report.

Undaunted, they decided to im­ plement plan B; but first find a place to implement it. A quick round of councils turns up a couple of subur­ ban possibilities, but Siggy and Maria want to go out of town to maintain that picnic atmosphere they originally envisaged.

Local authorities at McLaren Vale said all right, and at this stage that’s where it is.

13 bands, beginning around noon, food and drinks at the oval. Don’t worry if you’re not in the first thous­ and, they won’t turn you away.

They even took down the goalposts at one end of the oval to fit more in.

to write a book. I’ve got no idea what it’s gonna be about.” He fantasises about an advance from the record coup any, but given his track record — Broken Reality on Astor sold less than a thousand copies — doesn’t hold out much hope.

“I don’t really know where I’m going to get the bread but I’m going to do it. I’m gonna take my type­ writer and go into the bush some­ where.”

When asked about the music, Gulliver blinked vaguely behind his large glasses and mumbled “It’s hard to describe . . . I dunno.”_______

ted to be heavy into Scientology — they don’t smoke (anything) or drink and smile a lot.

Fairport Convention played in New- Zealand last month at the Great Ngaruawahia Festival and David Ginges, a partner in Gineld, repor­ ted that “they got 18,000 people jigging.”

Tour dates are as follows: Wednesday 16th May — Concert Hall, Perth Thursday 17th May — Apollo Adelaide Friday 18th May — Dallas Brookes Hall, Melbourne Tuesday 22nd May — Hordern Pavillion, Sydney Friday 25th May — Concert Hall, Christchurch Saturday 26th May — Town Hall, Wellington Sunday 27th May — Town Hall, Auckland

Music picnic at Vale oval

by Terry Plane After the fashion of all Australian festivals, the Valley Forge affair in South Australia has had its problems getting away.

The one-day event, planned as a picnic for patrons of an Adelaide musical equipment store, is set down for February 4 at McLaren Vale oval, a picturesque little park about 25 miles south o f the city.

It was about Christmas that Siggy and Maria Juffermans, proprietors of Musical Hire Service, decided to give their customers a party. They

Rapping with a shithouse singer:

Gulliver’s album Gulliver Smith has been in Syd­ ney this month laying down eleven tracks fo r • his first solo L.P. and single. Recording at A.T.A. Studios in Glebe with Gus McNeil as pro­ ducer, Gulliver has used 37 hours of studio time to get down most everything except the violin parts and some choral work.

This is Gully’s first venture into a studio since his last workout with McNiel in late 1971. The result was Product Of A Broken Reality, the only remains of Company Caine, which snuffed out last October.

Since then Gulliver has been trying to work out with Ross Wilson as a part of a new Daddy Cool.

But, Gulliver wryly announces, “we rehearsed for two months and after that we realized that I couldn’t, do it.” What? “I couldn’t sing theharmonies.”

Why did it take so long to find out? “ I dunno man . . . maybe they were patient.”

Perhaps as a result o f the DC experience Gulliver planned to call his album The Band's Alright B ut The Singer’s Shithouse. Warner Bro­ thers, who expect to have the record released within a month, were a bit

freaked, so the title will probably run off the edge of the cover between the f j and the ‘t’.

Digger asked Gulliver who thought o f the title. “I did, but people used to say that about us all along.”

The alright band that Gulliver has to back him is close to a resurrection o f Co. Caine. Russell Smith on guitar, Arthur Eizenburg on bass and John ‘Ernie’ Mclnery on drums.

(They have a group called Swiftly that does Friday and Saturday night gigs at the Coogee Bay Hotel.)

Others in on the sessions were Mick Tulk and Dave Connor from Lizard. Tulk plays guitar on five tracks and Connor sax on three.

Jeremy Kellog, longtime associate of Gulliver, plays piano on one track.

(During the draft dodging dark-ages Kellog went under the name of Noone.) Zane Hudson plays clarinet for the one track and Bob Gerbert from Air plays piano on four tracks.

All the songs except Greg Quill’s “Almost Freedom” are Gully com­ positions, “Paradise Woman” and “Hey George” being from Co. Caine days. Russell Smith wrote the music on these and seven other tracks.

Gulliver is already getting restless. “ I want to piss off after this album

Gineld Productions has announ­ ced dates and venues for the forth­ coming Australasian tour of The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention.

The promoters expect little trouble from customs when the groups arrive as the I.S.B. are repor-

Black Sabbath really did look paranoid in the Tulla jetport’s pressreception room. It was three in the afternoon, a windy, morbid, slut of a day; they’d just flown in from Sydney.

A handful of media reps, mostly radio men, pushed sweaty micro­ phones under the Sab’s noses and asked questions. Head guitarist Tony Iommi was obviously put out.

Answering quietly, he pulled at his crisply cut black locks.

Bill Ward, Sabbath’s drummer, claimed he didn’t mind the ritzier side of touring — the motels, the press receptions . . . ' “It’s just all conversation. We don’t mind talking to the press”, he said, eyeing the microphone.

All of the Sabs wore their gold and silver crosses. Singer Ossie Os­ borne was the only blonde and the only non-moustachioed Sab. Inten­ tionally or not, they put over an image . . . the press hand-out des­ cribed them as “a dark, satanic band” , although that may be taking it a bit too far. “A dark, paranoic band” is perhaps closer.

Before leaving, the Sabs posed politely with the gold records they’d received in Sydney for Aus­ tralian sales of their four albums.

“We hired a special jet for the gold records”, said Iommi, answer­ ing some clod who’d asked how the trophies had arrived in Melbourne. * * * The single Melbourne concert for Black Sabbath was on Saturday the thirteenth at Kooyong stadium.

Clouds were rolling in but rain held off through Friends’ set. As musicians, Friends are class, and I sometimes wonder what holds Leo De Castro back: his range, his phras­ ing, his feel for singing are unique.

E u ro p e ’ 72 3 W X -2 6 6 8

They’re capable o f veering in the space of an hour between apathy and euphoria: that day they never reached their utter highs or lows, but they sounded damn good.

After Friends, a strangling halfhour — teasing rain, wind sliding over the grounds — elapsed before Black Sabbath’s roadies emerged to decanvass and set up equipment.

Meanwhile the Sabs changed from ordinary men into high-gloss stars, decked in gear of black and yellow, red and green; mean zips and glimpses of bare chest. Crosses, wreaths of hair, volume whacked right up.

They slammed into something filthy loud and fast, loud with the undeniable Sabbath underwater-leadballs strychnine. Tony Iommi stared up into the churning sky as he growled through the rhythm lines; 'Geezer Butler was stamping and speeding round his bass, fingers like wasps all over the frets, teeth bared.

Osborne’s electrified, yowling vocal, like a constantly high-soloing guitar, raved over the sonic crashing of the drumkit under Ward’s sticks.

The noise was the soldering of four separate loudnesses, at times shocking in its solidarity, at times crude and scattered with errors of timing and tune. The moody weather had put Iommi’s guitar well out of tune by the second or third number; a drawn-out wait as he worked on it.

Sabbath rolled in again with “Cor­ nucopia” (“Whatever that means”, smiled Ossie Osborne) and “ Snowblind” from their Black Sabbath 4, album. Ossie encouraged people to come up to the stage, dance. About two hundred of the six thousand strong audience clustered below the Sabs as they played; a score of cops kept watchful eye. Halfway through the concert, the hundreds of kids listening, moneyless, outside were

The Grateful Dead (3 Record Set)

American Beauty WS - 1893

2WS — 1935 (2 Record Set)

Workingman's Dead WS - 1869

Learn to write, Readers are encouraged to write — reviews of records earn the reader/writer a selection from recent LP releases, and copy on any other topic will likewise be rewarded.

Address envelopes to the appropriate section, at The Digger, P.O. Box 77, Carlton, 3053.

given, or took, free entry.

Osborne tried to whip up the physical excitement, leaping, swoop­ ing his hands into the classic double peace sign, replicaed on the latest album.

Towards the end o f Black Sabbath’s truncated hour or so, Iommi took a solo. It was long, boring, directionless; and full of timing faults. He stood rooted to the stage, staring anxiously at the stormy sky, playing on and on. Midsolo, the band joined him for a short, jazzy piece before he went on glop# but that too was soggy and uninspir­ ed. Iommi did better when sticking to the snarling, back-fed rhythm riffs that characterise Black Sabbath’s music.

Eventually the band jumped bast in with him. Peculiarly or perhaps not, it often seemed that Geesr?

Bulter was playing lead licks and solos on his bass, while Iommi played bass on guitar. Geezer was more adroit, his senses o f mood, timing and versatility were much more obvious than the more musically and physically stolid Iommi’s. His jittery style was a bizarre contrast to the subtlety o f McGuire, Friend’s bassist.

Sabbath played cuts from each of their four albums, but the program­ ming of numbers seemed a little haphazard; their show had no totality. The threat of the storm clouds might have screwed it; Ward had mentioned at the conference that a mellotron and a grand piano had been brought into the a ct The »piano stood unused. A Mellotron wasn’t obvious either.

A three-minute encore of the in­ famous single “ Paranoid”, and the Sabs were gone„ The kids yelled for a while and went home,. The res­ ponse had not been overpowering.

And it still looked like rain.

Anthem of The Sun WS - 1749

WS - 1689 Distributed by WEA Records Pty. Limited

Page 10

The Digger

January 27 — February 13

SYDNEY FLYER Folk Festival The second Port Jackson Folk Festival finishes on January 29. It will have been ‘four days o f concerts, workshops, demonstrations, talks, outdoors bush dancing and in fo r m a l singing sessions’.

The Festival is run by the NSW Folk Federation, on a non-profit basis. There will be two public concerts - on Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th at 8 p.m. at the Elizabethan Theatre in New­ town.

The organisers see the festival as being largely participatory and place heavy emphasis pn the workshop sessions. These start on Saturday morning at Sydney University and range over things like the influence o f blues on rock music, Australian industrial folk' the relationship bevcen contemporary and j k music, Australian b;;wdy songs and more.

Finals o f the annual NSW Folk Federation song-writing competition are set for Monday morning and the whole deal will end with a ‘farewell gathering’ at the Musicians Club.

Sydney 533-3146 will get you any further information you want.

Paddo uptight Paddington Town Hall, main venue for Sydney concerts, has announced yet a n o th e r tig h ten in g -u p .

Digger spoke to one o f the staff at the Town Hall Letting Department.

“We are drawing the line at pop concerts a little bit.

They are causing too much damage to the hall. Balls will be all right, though. It all depends. Some people com­ ing in here are pretty way out — w e’ll be screening

them more closely.”

Paddo Town Hall was the venue for a recent Gay Lib dance whereat Dennis Alt­ man was badly fleabitten.

This new vetting policy doesn’t seem to be causing much concern amongst potential concert promoters.

Sylvia and the Synthetics’ ball planned for January 28 is still on and the Paul Omelette Productions con­ cert scheduled for February 4 has been approved. Paul Omelette Productions is run

by Paul Christie, whose trademark - two lizards screwing in a broken- egg, may soon hit Sydney hoard­ ings.

acupuncture.

They are starting courses in Nutrition and health, massage, the I Ching, dream a w a r en ess, numerology, integral yoga, organic farm­ ing and gardening, basic anatomy and physiology, and herbal lore. Charges are reasonable, usually one or two bucks a session. Some­ thing for everyone.

BYO action The Drop-in Centre, on the 1st floor at 79 Forbes Street, W oolloomooloo, is open again.

The new co­ ordinators, John Jeffrey and Bob Tait. are contactable

through the C o m m u n ity 698-2652.

Alternative Telephone,

Things are still in the planning stages but Jeffrey and Tait see two things as very important - that the place be run collectively and that it be used as an ‘alternative resource centre’ Resources available at the

moment include a large space, lighting equipment, two phone lines, two pottery wheels, the basis o f a theatre, a kitchen and a sound system.

The co-ordinators are open to any suggestions for use of the place and are actively soliciting involvement from anyone who gets a buzz out o f communal activity.

Edna’s revenge Feb 1 is release date for The Barry Humphries Record of Innocent Austral Verse’ an aural complement to The Barry Humphries Book o f Innocent Austral Verse.

Digger was unable to hear a pressing, but a viewing o f the1 cover gives promise o f what’s to come: set before an Australian salmon pink sun­ set can be seen a galloping Murray grey, an emu, a baobob tree, a roo, a kookaburra, two rosellas, a stockman, an artesian bore, six waratahs, a dam, a gin, a gum tree, a wedgetailed eagle and some unidentifiable flowers.

In the Austral heavens a Gypsy Moth sky-writes the title.

Currently Showing Ascot, 246 Pitt. Tales Of Beatrix Potter.

Astra, 291 Pennant Hills Road, Thornleigh. Klute; Priest’s Wife ($1.20, $1.40).

Avalon, 39 Old Barrenjoey R oad, Avalon.

Ryan’s Daughter (until Feb 1); Scrooge at 1 p.m. matinees until school starts. Kids under 12, 60 cents.

Barclay, 681 George. A Clockwork Orange.

Century, 586 George St, Young Winston.

Classic Cinema, 9 Spit Rd, Mosman. The Decameron, evenings; children’s matinees at the weekends; 11.15 supper shows - Jan 27, The Killing Of Sister George; Feb 3, Zachariah.

Dendy, 360 Pacific Highway, Crows Nest., Jan 27-Feb 6, Harold And Maude, Feb

The Institute o f Natural Health at 23 Collins St, Surry H ills , S y d n ey (212-2152) presents an alter­ native for those who seek to prevent and treat disease not by drugs but by natural means. It offers to help you using massage, oesteopathy, hypnosis, deep relaxation techniques, herbal and homeopathic medicines and

E n c o u n te r group

BEGINNING JANUARY 30 Phone Sydney: 90-5548

M U S IC

mo r/ e c ll '/ healthy meal/

Complete 4-course dinner — $1.75 16 CHALLIS AVE., POTTS POINT Open 5 nights till 8.30, shut Tues and Wed.

Anthony Browell M ona H essin g e x h ib its at th e B o n y th o n G allery, S y d n e y fro m F eb ru ary 1-20. S h e is a w eaver and her m aterials are In d ian fib res, ju te , w ild silk , h e m p and sisal. H er w ork is n o t th e tr a d itio n a l tablem ats b u t organic w o v e n scu lp tu res, w all h an gin gs, th r e e-d im e n sio n a l o b je c ts th a t g r o w an d sp ro u t in u n e x p e c te d d ir ec tio n s. Sharing th e e x h ib itio n e n title d “ C lay and F ib re” , is p o tte r M area G azzard.

T h e N a tio n a l G allery, V ic to ria w ill sh o w th is j o in t e x h ib itio r iin m id-M arch.

R ic Harris, w h o se fe a tu re p h o to g ra p h s so m e tim e s appear in “ T h e D igger” , ex h ib its a t th e sam e tim e in th e B o n y th o n . L argely u n re c o g n ise d in A u stralia, h is w o rk is b ein g c o lle c te d b y th e M useum o f M o d e m A rt in N e w Y ork . n

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THEATRE Memories, Potpourri Surpise Killara Coffee Theatre, 680 Pacific Highway, Killara 498-7552. Opens Feb 1.

Thurs-Sat at 8.30. Prices: $3.40, Sat $3.80. Concess­ ions: children and students.

President Wilson in Paris by Ron Blair, dir John Bell.

Nimrod Street Theatre, 10 Nimrod St, Darlinghurst 31-3754. Tues-Sat 8.30, Sun 7.30. Prices: Tues-Thurs $2, Fri-Sun $2.50. Concessions: to a c to r s , s tu d e n ts , m e m b er s, T u es-T h urs: $1.50, Sun $1.75.

Ron Fraser Says Some o f My Best Friends Aren’t dir James Fishburn. MacLeay Theatre, 81 MacLeay St, Potts Point 35-0433. MonSat 8.30 (dinner at 6). Price: $7 with dinner.

A Stretch o f the Imagination written and dir by Jack Hibberd. Australian Theatre, cnr., Lennox and Probert Sts, Newtown 51-3841.

Opens Feb 2. Mon-Sat 8 p.m. Prices: $3.50, $2.50.

Concessions: for students, members, nurses.

Another Manly Fairy dir William Orr. Music Loft, 7 The Corso, Manly 977-6585.

Mon to Sat. Open till 6, dinner at 7, show 8.40.

Prices: $7.

Banjo by and dir Norman McVicker. Pocket Playhouse Theatre, 94 Terry St, Syden­ ham. Re-opens Jan 13, Fri and Sat at 8 p.m. Prices: $2, concessions: students and pensioners $1.50.

Barefoot In The Park by Neil

Simon dir Kevin Jackson.?

Genesian Theatre, 420 Kent 29-6454. Opens Jan 20, Fri and Sat at 8.15 p.m. Price: $ 2.

Beauty and the Beast by Charles Perraut, dir Norman Mclver. Pocket Theatre, 94 Terry St, Sydenham. Sat at 1.30 p.m. Prices: children 80c, adults $1.40.

D ir ty D ic k ’s Theatre Restaurant 313 Pacific High­ way, Crows Nest. A musical entertainment based on “Elizabethan Days”. Tues to Fri $7, Sat $8, Sun $5.50, 8.10 p.m. to midnight.

Booking s: 929-8888.

Don’s Party by David Williamson, dir John Clark.

Old Tote Theatre Company, Parade Theatre, UNSW, Anzac Parade, Kensington, 663-6122. Mon to Sat at 8.

Sat Mat at 2. Prices: Mon to Thurs $3.50, Fri and Sat $4, Sat Mat $3. Concessions: to students Mon to Thurs and Sat Mat. Godspell by John Michael Tebelack, dir Sammy Bayes, Richbrooke Theatre, 150 E lizabeth St, Sydney, 61-9880. Mon to Thurs 8.30.

Fri, Sat 5.40 and 8.40, Prices: Mon to Sat even. $3.50 and $4.50, Fri and Sat mats $2.80 and $3.80.

Concessions: price to children and pensioners to mats.

Union Theatre, University o f Sydney: Mon 29, Jan.W.C. Fields You’re Telling Me; Marx Bros Animal Crackers.

4 p.m. 60 cents.

C o m m o n w e a lth Centre Theatrette, cnr., Phillip and Hunter Sts: Tues 30 Jan: You and Me, and Ministry o f Fear. 7.30 p.m. $1.20. Thurs

A ggy’s

Country Radio has changed line-up. Kerryn Tolhurst, lead guitarist has split for.Melbourne.

Greg Quill commented; “It started two weeks ago when Kerryn told us he was leaving to form a band in Melbourne with Broderick Smith and Chris Stockley. It’s an old friendship thing.”

Quill, Tony Bolton and John Dubos, three of the remaining members, wanted a much tighter, funkier band — a sound that “ didn’t include piano or mouth harp as solo instruments.” So John A. Bird and Chris Blanchflower stepped down.

“I started out with Chris,” said Quill, “ we’ve been through the whole scene together — he’s one of the few virtuoso harp players in the world: “Now our idea is to get a lead guitar and a pedal steel so that we were a five piece guitar band.”

They found a guitarist in Russell Johnston who Quill describes as “extremely inventive and melodic . . . a good singer and an excellent writer as well.” But finding a pedal steel guitarist has not been so easy. One idea was to audition in Tamworth; Quill said, “ it’s the Nashville of Australia . . . in fact the pedal steel was invented there, 30 years ago.”

He was still unsure what Country Radio’s line-up would be for the Sunbury Festival, but Quill believes the changes have been so amicable all around that it might even be the old band that played.

Meanwhile Country Radio’s latest album, Country Radio Live (on Infinity) is doing moder­ ately well; and their single, “Wintersong” (off the album) is moving into the charts.

M O VIES

Stay w ell

Have you been to Marscell's Healthy Meals — Its a mind blowing experience for those who groove on natural vegetarian foods.

Country funk

Sat 27 Jan: 2SM Bondi Beach Concert — Katmandu, Hush, Whistler’s Mother, Jeff St John.

Sat 27, Sun 28 Jan: Port Jackson Folk Festival Concerts at Elizabethan Theatre, Newtown.

Sun 28 Jan: Sylvia and the Synthetics at Paddo Town Hah. Monavale Memorial Hall Concert" — La De Das, Home and Heaven.

Mon 29 Jan: 2SM Bondi Beach Concert — Hush, Sebastian Hardy, Whistler’s Mother, Jeff St John.

1 Feb: Up the Down Staircase and Fear Strikes Out (Mulligan). 7.15 p.m.

Tues 6 Feb: Scarlet, and Daisy Kenyon. 7.30 p.m.

Thurs 8 Feb: The Great Imposter, and Baby the Rain Must Fall, at 7.15 p.m.

By Candlelight by S. Geyer, dir Alastair Duncan. Com­ munity Theatre, 2 Marian St, Killara 498-3166. Opens Jan 31, Tues-Sat 8.15, Sun 7.30.

Prices: $3, $2.25. Concess­ ions: students and pen­ sioners $1.50.

The Fantasticks by Jones and Schmidt. The Intimate Theatre, 768 Military Rd, Mosman 977-1857. Mon-Sat 8.15. Price: $2. Concessions: members, students, kids.

The House o f Blue Leaves by John Guare, dir David G od d ard , In d ep en d en t Theatre, 271 Miller St, North Sydney, 929-7377.

Wed to Sat at 8.15. Prices: $3, $2, $1. Sat $3 and $2.

C o n c e ss io n s: S tu d en ts $1.50, $1.

Jesus Christ Superstar by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, dir Jim Sharman, Capital Theatre, 13 Cambell St, Haymarket, 212-3677.

Mon-Sat at 8.30, Fri and Sat mats 6 p.m. Prices: $5.20, $4.20 and $3.20. Concess­ ions: Party bookings.

Les Girls, All male revue.

Cnr Roslyn St and Darlinghurst Rd, Kings Cross, 35-6630. Two shows nightly, Mon-Thurs. Three shows Fri and Sat. Prices: Mon-Thurs, $3; Fri and Sat $3.50.

A Pretty Kettle o f Fish musical revue at the Fish­ mongers Hall, 336 Pitt St, 26-5313. Mon-Sat 8.30, Sun 7.30. Prices: Sun to Fri $7.50, Sat $8.50.

return Aggy Read, long a leading activist in cultural experi­ mentation in Sydney, re­ turned from the United States in early January.

Famous for such ground­ breaking activities as the film Boobs A L ot, one o f the

PHONE GUIDE

7-Feb 10, Lizard In A Woman’s Skin.

Embassy, 79 Castlereagh, The Mechanic.

Gala, 236 Pitt St, Portnoy’s Complaint.

Liberty, 232 Pitt St, Kansas City Bomber.

Lyceum, 210 Pitt St, What’s Up Doc? Mayfair, 73 Castlereagh St, Cabaret.

Metro Bondi, 530 Oxford St, They Call Me Trinity.

Metro Kings Cross, 288 Orwell St, Adventures Of Barry McKenzie.

Metro Manly, 42 North Steyne, Manly. Five Summer STories.

New Arts Cinema, 166 Glebe Pt Rd, Glebe. Sat, Jan 27, and Sun 28, Yellow Sub­ marine and Help; Mon 29 and Tues 30, Yellow Sub­ marine and Let It Be; Wed J 31, Help and Hard Day’s Night. Thurs, Feb 1, double bill o f Nightcbmers and Carnal Knowledge com­ mences.

Sun 4 Feb: Concert at Paddo Town Hall - Carson, Band o f Light, Mother Earth, 69ers.

Polaris Room - Apricot Brandy.

Manlyvale: Sat 27 Jan: Dave Miller Set, Sherbet.

Fri 2, Sat 3 Feb: Pirana.

Whisky Au Go-Go: Sat 27 Jan: La De Das. Chequers: Sun 28 Jan: La De Das Sat 3 Feb: Sherbet Savoy Club (Newcastle): Wed7, Sat 10 Feb: La De Das Busstop (Newcastle): Sat 27, Sun 28 Jan: Cinnamon.

The Spring Heeled Terror of Stepney Green by and dir Stanley Walsh, Music Hall Restaurant, 156 Military Rd, Neutral Bay, 909-8222.

Mon-Sat 8.30 — dinner from 6 Mon-Fri, $2.70; Sat $3.20 (not including food and drink.

Summer Tree by Ron Cowan, dir Hayes Gordon.

Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall St, Milsons Point, 929-8877. Mon-Sat 8, Sat mat 5. Prices: Mon-Thurs and Sat mat $2.75 and $2.25. Fri and Sat evens $3 and $2.50. Concessions: to students. Mon and Tues $1, remainder reduced by 50c.

The Three Cuckolds Cornmedia dell’Arte dir Victor Emeljanow. New Theatre, St Peters Lane, East Sydney, 31-3237. Fri, Sat and Sun at 8.15. Price: $2. Concessions: Students $1, children and pensioners 70c. Closes Feb

Alternative Community Telephone (698-2652). Box 23, PO Surrey Hills, 2010.

Women’s Liberation. 25 Alberta St, Sydney.

Men’s Liberation* 67 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe (Mondays nights).

Gay Liberation. 67 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe.

Camp Inc. (82-4023) Box 5074, GPO, Sydney.

Abortion Action Cam­ paign. C/- 25 Alberta St, Sydney.

Abortion Law Reform Association. (36-6016). Box C35, Clarence St PO, Sydney.

W o m e n ’s E le c to r a l Lobby (36-2245) PO Box 24 Neutral Bay Junction 2089.

Revolutionary Marxist Group PO PO Box 13, Balmain 2041.

Socialist Youth Alliance (26-2121) 139 St Johns St, Glebe.

Australian Labor Party (26-2732) 377, Sussex St, Glebe.

Communist Party of Australia (26-2161) 4 Dixon St, Sydney.

Glebe Anti-Expressway Group (660-5835) PO Box 82, Glebe.

Sydney Day Nursery & Nursery Schools Assoc.

(26-5421) 39 Park St, Sydney.

Lifeline (33-4141).

P o is o n s Information Centre (51-0466).

Drug Referral Centre (31-2579) 43 Craigend St, Darlinghurst & 91 Pittwater Road, Manly (977-2197).

most controversial o f the early underground films, Read was a co-founder of Ubu Films, helped establish the Mandala Theatre, and half-finished a film on the now defunct Yellow House.

He has come back to complete another film, Seven Yellow Months. Read, once well known on the. show circuit for his gasballoon performances, hopes to break a few world records in between getting his film together.

Wayside Chapel Crisis Program.

(35-1010 & 35-6577) 29 Hughes St, Potts Point.

Alcoholics Anonymous (26-6968) 550 George St, Sydney.

Al-anon Family Groups (31-9668) Cnr Bourke and Burton Sts, Darlinghurst.

Divorce Law Reform Association (95-3211) PO Box R325 Royal Exchange.

Nexus Group PO Box 325 St Marys.

Callan Park Psychiatric Centre (82-6601) Balmain Rd, Rozelle, 2039.

Public Solicitor (61-6581) 55 Market St, Sydney.

Law Society o f NSW (25-5395) 170 Phillip St, Sydney.

Legal Service Bureau 32-34 York St, Sydney.

Council for Civil Liber'ties (660-7582) 149 St Johns St, Glebe.

Aboriginal Legal Service (669-1109) 142 Regent St, Redfern.

Family Planning Associ­ ation o f Australia (62-5211) 92 City Rd, Chippendale.

Venereal Disease, NSW Health Dept. 93 Macquarie St, Sydney.

United Dental Hospital (211-4322) 2 Chalmers St, Surrey Hills.

Alternative Health Centre 23 Collins St, Surrey Hills.

Ecology Action (29-6717) 189 Clarence St, Sydney.

Public interest Research Group (PRIG) C/- SRC Level 1, Wentworth Building, Uni o f Sydney.

“the audience went crazy in transported ecstasy . . . we were silenced in disbelief .dazzled. ..stunned by the awesome beauty . . . the beautiful music.”

— ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE

_ Five Rummer A Film by G reg M a c g ilu v r a y a n d J i m Fr eem a n A beautiful, comical and controversial story about surfing. Aesthetically photo­ graphed in Hawaii and California.

A FILM FOR ANYONE WHO ENJOYS THE OCEAN’

Now at METRO MANLY THEATRE

10.

From January 29/, we will be at 127 QUEENSBURY ST . CARLTON Postal Address: PO Box 77, Carlton 3053 Phone 347-2782 - temporarily In Sydney we are off to 15 AVENUE ROAD, GLEBE. Phone: 660-6957 These moves are as permanent as things are.

You can he in our dream, if we can be in yours, -approximately Bob Dylan.

/

Page 11

The Digger

January 27 — February 13

MELBOURNE FLYER D IS C O S THEATRE Q Club Sat 27 Jan: Band o f Light, Mississippi, Middle Earth, Lemonade Lites.

Sat 3 Feb: Spirit, Country Radio, Warren Morgan, Brown Eye-Lites.

The last two months have presented a bleak picture for Melbourne theatregoers. At one stage there were a measly two live shbws offering. Don’t despair. Feb­ ruary promises a resurgence: predictables downtown, new Australian shows, mindbenders from an unexpected source, and fresh dada outbursts from Carlton.

Russell Street: The Tavern

by G.M. Cohen, dir Simon, Chilvers. 8.30, Fri also 5.30.

Melodrama played as farce.

Fred Parslow doesn’t dis­ appoint his admirers but if you ’re not one don’t bother.

Tom by Alex Buzo, dir Malcolm Robertson. Return season o f 12 nights only, opens Mon 29 Jan. A must for those interested in the home-grown product. Vig­ orous directing, some good acting, well designed sets.

Pram Factory: Beware o f Imitations by Barry Oakley, dir Bill Hannan, with Max Gillies and Bruce Spence.

Berties

Sat 27 Jan: Atlas, Pirana.

S” .i 28 Jan: Mantis, Healing Force Sat 3 Feb: Atlas, Country Radio.

Sun 4 Feb: Syd Rumpo, Country Radio.

Easy Rider Sat 27 Jan: Fuzzy Duck.

Tues 30 Jan: Upp. Wed 31 Jan: Coloured Balls.

Thurs 1 Feb: Headband.

Fri 2 Feb: Big Push.

Sat 3 Feb: Fantasy.

Tues 6 Feb: Upp. Wed 7 Feb: Coloured Balls.

Thurs 8 Feb: Pirana Carlton Country Club Sat 3 Feb: Fred Cass and the Cassettes, Lipp Arthur, Benny and “another big bizarre band”.

Tues-Sun 8.30. 347-7493.

See review this issue, p.9.

Interesting development at the Pram is the opening of the Back Theatre, a new experimental workshop area in the same building. Start­ ing in March with double bill: Romeril’s Mrs Thally F.' and Hibberd’s One of Nature’s Gentlemen.

La Mama:: Melbourne ec­ centrics Cosmo Topper and Peter Lillie of After Dinner Moose fame conferred last week in Sydney with Billy Garner, director o f their new extravanganza, booked to open 15 Feb for lim ited season. Don’t miss these in­ sane fly-by-nights: how can innocence like theirs not lose its bloom? Later in Feb/ March, Gay Lib women directed by Judy Kuring will present Max Richard’s Night Flowers.

Claremont: You’ll Come to Love Your Sperm Test by J, Antrobus. Thurs-Sun 8.30. I didn’t.

St Martin’s: House is handed over for six months to S y d n e y ’s P erfo rm a n ce

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For postal orders please add 30 cents per order.

Syndicate, a close-knit group o f strolling players famous for its highly original en­ semble work, notably last year’s production of The Tempest. Season opens Feb 2 with The Collector dir Nick Lathouris, and con­ tinues with unimagined reve­ lations: fairy tales, a musical, and a Japanese directed Rashomon. Watch the Flyer for dates and times Union Theatre, Melbourne University: Festival o f Soviet Films Mon Jan 29 8 Sat Feb 3. Guests o f festival are actor Natalya Bondarchuk and director Vladimir Naumov.

All shows commence 8 p.m. except The Flight, 7.30 p.m.

Bookings 347-4186.

Mon 29 Jan: The Flight, dir Naumov.

Tues 30 Jan: Solaris. Cannes Festival 1972 prize. Stars Bondarchuk.

Wed 31 Jan: Uncle Vanya.

Dir Mikhalov-Konchalovsky.

Finest screen interpretation o f Chekhov’s play.

Thurs 1 Feb: Belorussia Station and Road to Selfless Love.

Cosmo D. Topper and P. Kansas Lillie: innocent eccentrics.

Fri 2 Feb: The Beginning.

Perhaps one o f the most important recent Soviet films.

Sat 3 Feb: King Lear. Dir Kosintsev who also made the Russian Hamlet. Music by Shostakovich.

Grub Hare Krishna people serve free vegetarian lunch MonSat 1 pm at 299 Lt Lonsdale St, City; every Sunday at the Temple, 14 Burnett St, St Kilda, everyone is welcome to a free vego love feast, 1 pm. No shit, you can really gross out.

B loodo’s Pigmeat Res­ taurant: opening soon op­ posite Shakahari, Carlton.

For disillusioned macro freaks in need of mainline protein. Watch for it.

U ni’s teach crafts Feb 5-16 Melbourne Uni­ versity. Some o f the classes offering: painting, pottery, silk screen printing, weaving, spinning and dyeing, whole­ food cookery, folk and blues guitar, classical Indian dance.

For details call Activities Office 34-0484.

One-day crash, courses are offered in Union House, Melbourne University, 10 Feb 10-4. Tapestry, leatherwork, copper enamelling, fabric printing, basketry, embroidery. Registration fee $4.50. Ring Activities Office 34-0484.

Link~up H arik iri Link-up information service is being re-formed. If you ’re interested in helping, call Rob or Tony on 81-8584.

Living in harmony with the Supreme (Krishna) and His creation is non-different from being situated in the kingdom o f God (Krishna’s

abode). One can tune in to this eternal harmonious vibration by simply chanting “Hare Krishna”.

M o s t p e o p l e misunderstand spiritual life as being something far-off, vague, mystical, occult, psychedelic or downright pretentious.

But actual spiritual life means to become absorbed with the activities at hand (eating, sleeping, singing, dancing, working, thinking) but at the same time one should perform them for the pleasure o f God according to His desires which are given to us very specifically in the Bhagavad-Gita (song of God).

We invite you to learn this art o f living and loving God from one who has reached the Supreme Per­ fection. His Divine Grace 'willbe lecturing at the Hare Krishna Centre at 299 Lt. Lonsdale St., on Friday Feb 2nd, and again on the following Friday, February 9th at die Palais in St Kilda at 7 p.m. Lectures will be proceeded by Hare Krishna chanting and followed by sumptuous vegetarian food­ stuffs. All are welcome and it’s free.

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THIS WEEKS RIP-OFF SPECIAL:

PRE SCRUFFED‘ PROLE STYLE JEANS - PATCHED TO THE HlLT-ARSES HANGING OUT, REMNANTS FROM OUR EARLY EXPERIMENTS WITH THE SALT WATER METHOD. PRICED TO SUIT EVERY “HEADS” POCKET AT ONLY $83.50. ^

His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU CAN SAY “TRIPRIPITOFFCOOLACIDSTONEFREAKBUMMERSLASHSPEEDHASSLE INTOGROOVEMANTURNEDONIMPERIALISMRAVEALTERNATIVEMACRO” in 3.8 SECS, YOU GET 10%

will deliver His Sublime discourses on ‘Bhagavad Gita As It Is'-the Eternal Philosophy o f India.

Friday 9"' Feb.-7-00pm.

The Palais, St. Kilda m For fu rth e r inform ation on o th er lectures con tact th e Hare Krishna Centre, 299 L ittle Lonsdale St. Melt).

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare

RY COODER

DISCOUNT!!

PROPRIETOR TED COONAN SAYS . . . “I CAN HAVE ANY COUNTER CULTIRE ALF LOOKING LIKE AREAL PROLE IN JUST 5 MINUTES, FOR UNDER $200.00.

new album BOOM ER S STO RY

-

RY CO O D ER

AMERICA’S FOREMOST ROCKERS FEATURING THE

STAEHELY BROS

m mm

MELBOURNE LET IT BE SUITE 15.100 DRUMMOND ST CARLTON 3478633

Melbourne Bands:

PLUS AUSTRALIA’S NO.l GROUP

B oom er’s

SPECTRUM

Story

ARE COMING AT YOU

MS 2117

MELBOURNE

OTHER ALBUMS BY RY COODER INTO THE PURPLE VALLEY - MS2052 RY COODER - RS6402 RY COODER ON REPRISE

X AUSTRALIAN PERFORMING GROUP Pram Factory Theatre, 325 Drummond Street, Carlton, Bookings — 347:7133 347.7493

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A NIGHTLY JOINTLY

SYDNEY SUNRISE MANAGEMENT 32 UNDERWOOD STREET PADDINGTON 312111.

SPECTRUM, INDELIBLE MURTCEPS, COUNTRY RADIO, GARY YOUNG’S HOT DOG, CAPTAIN MATCHBOX WHOOPEE BAND, MACKENZIE THEORY, BLACKSPUR, TALABENE., BRIAN CADD

Saturday 27th: Ratt Ransett, Blackspur, Friends

Sunday 28th: Sayla, Friends

Thursday 1st: Tank, Healingforce

Friday 2nd: Mighty Mouse, Country Radio

Saturday 3rd: Buffalo Drive, Hotne, Blackfeather

Sunday 4th: Sayla, Friends

166 H IG H ST. PRAHRAN

FOOD FLICKS and F/

Interstate Bands:

LA DE DAS, SHERBET, 69ERS, HOME, MISSISSIPPI, BUFFALO DRIVE Despite other adverts, these bands are Exclusive!

SO LETS GET IT ON BECAUSE WE’RE ALL ROCKIN THE BUSH

THE FOUR KINGS OF ROCK fffl ROLL!

CLUB

in order of appearance

BO

OIDOLEY JERRY LEE

LEWIS CHUCK

BERRY

SPIRIT

LITTLE

RICHARD

Wr % ...

in D. A. PENNEBAKER'S

Sillies and Bruce Spence in

BEWARE OF IMITATIONS A NEW AUSTRALIAN PLAY

by Barry Oakley

Sir Wilfred M cLuckie, one tim e Prim e M inister of A ustralia and R oy, his valet..

From January 24, Tuesday-Sunday t-3 0 p.m.

Tickets $2.00. Concessions. _______________ ____

KEEP ON ROCKIN’ color and 4 track stereo

BAND OF LIGHT MISSISSIPPI MIDDLE EARTH LEMONADE LIGHTS

Filmed at Toronto Rock 'n' Roll Revival N ightly a t 8 p.m . inc. Sunday M atinaes W ed. a nd Saturday a t 2 p.m .

PALAIS, ST. KILDA 94 0651 — Tickets from Theatre

admission $1-50

COUNTRY RADIO WARREN MORGAN BROWN-EYE LITES

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FR£Di (&9

CASSETTES

ttPP ARTHUR - BtHNY 'A moth£r bic B utm s a m '

3 M EXHIBITION ST. S a t

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Published by Hightimes Pty Ltd, 58 Canterbury Road, Middle Park, 3206. Printed by Peejprint, Queensberry and Peel Streets, Melbourne.

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