The Digger No.17 June 1973

N im b in -w h ite h ip p ie s , w h ite co p s, b la c k s p irits

OF THE “After I*d read the script, for weeks I wandered around the house wondering, ‘What do you do if you get an erection’?” — Graeme Blundell, star of Tim Burstall’s follow-up to Stork, Alvin Purple.

“Alternate cinema is very much the same . . . the male ego, one person on top, very individualistic.” — Martha Kay, member of the Women’s Film Group.

“If you make a film for $200, screen it twice and get back $250, then it’s a commercial film.” - Peter Weir, of the Commonwealth Film Unit, and director of Homesdale.

There's an epidemic of new Australian films: ' More words, and pictures, on the centre pages.

SHRINKS’ MENTAL BLOCK OVER HOSPITAL MURDER Virginia Fraser pursues the R oyal Park killing announced in Digger number 16. Page 1.

Z a p p a in te rv ie w e d in London, ón 2 0 0 M otels, m ostly. Page 9.

W E L ’s tv s p e c ta c u la r in Melbourne, w ith hairspray and five poMtical pros. Page 2.

FETUS FREAKS PROTEST NUCLEAR TESTS Infiltrating Right to Life, by Alistair Jones. Page 3.

BLANK PAGE FOR ISSUU VERSION ONLY

Page 1 Peanut Farmer in Disneyland

Joh’s trip

Shrinks close ranks on asylum m urder

Q ueepsland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen threatened to hofd a referendum on the State’s secession from the Commonwealth if C om m onw ealth-S tate relations continued to deteriorate. Later the State’s minister for development and industrial affairs said his premier’s remarks had only been facetious and Press misrepresentation had been very embarrassing . . . Meanwhile Bjelke-Petersen, a Kingaroy peanut farmer, was on his way around the world on a one-State crusade to “counteract the false image of Australia caused by the federal government.” His first stop was Disneyland, USA.

by Virginia Fraser Mental health authorities are far from pleased about the publicity the strangled Royal Park patient has received and there is a witchhunt for the people who talked about it.

Last month’s Digger (number 16) carried a story about the strangling of a patient called Nancy Lindsay by another apparently violent, middleaged woman patient who had been left under sedation in an unlocked room down the hall.

The police report of the incident which had originally (and correctly) stated that the woman had been found dead in A94 ward was later doctored. It then read that the woman’s body was found in the grounds of the hospital.

The following Friday and Monday, staff at Royal Park were told by their superiors not to discuss the case with anyone, even each other, and the State Psychiatrists’ Association held a committee meet­ ing at which it was decided the case should not be allowed to come to public notice.

Victorian Minister for Health, punchy Rossiter, would not come to the phone and left his secretary, a Mr Tanner, to say he would not be available to comment to Digger.

The Superintendent of Royal Park, Dr J. Cade, said that someone had sent him the Digger article on the strangling. Last week he said, “ I’m not going to comment one little bit.”

Asked when the inquest would be held, Dr Cade replied, “I can’t tell you that, I’m sorry to be so obstructive.”

The chairman of the Mental Health Authority, Dr Stoller, was reached through his secretary, Mrs Joy, who wanted to know besides who was calling for what publication, what the caller’s relationship with that publication was, who published it, which issue the Royal Park story had appeared, whether the Mental Health Authority'got this publication and where Dr Stoller could get it if he had not already seen it.

Do It Yourself T V

Free tv, ok The minister for media, Senator McClelland, is looking at the possibility of special frequency radio and television stations for pressure groups to present their points of view. “ The airwaves are public property, and I want to see the public, who own the airways, given greater access to them.”

The BBC has started already a program with that intent. Its first show was presented by tramps.

Stoller, when contacted some hours later, said: “Look, as far as we’re concerned, we have the data relating to it and we don’t comment while the matter is ini some judicial framework not wishing to influence matters.

Law and Order Runs Amok

“We will await the coronial findings which will be carried out in due process of law. Whatever comes out we will act upon as well as our own findings.”

According to the Coroner’s Court the date for the inquest will be set sometime next month, probably for the end of June.

You first

Scientists whitewash tests

by Alan Roberts With Lionel Murphy taking out a writ against France in the International Court at the Hague, and the most unlikely people standing up militantly to be counted against the French bomb tests, it’s probably a bit tactless to recall that the French have been polluting the Pacific with their bombs ever since July, 1966.

Even more tactless, perhaps, to ask questions like: Who said, in March, 1967: “ Fallout over Australia from the first series of French nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific does not constitute a significant hazard to the h e a lth of th e Australian population” ?

And who added reassuringly, in December 1967 (after another burst of Gallic radioactivity for Pacific-dwellers): “ Fallout over Australia from both series of French nuclear tests in the Pacific is of no significance as a hazard to the health of the Australian people”??

The answer to both questions is the same list of imposing figures of the scientific establishment. File them for future reference, along with their then positions: Professor F.C. Courtice (experimental pathology, ANU); Professor Sir Philip Baxter, KBE, CMG, FAA (vice-chancellor, Uni. of NSW, and chairman, A u stra lian A tom ic Energy Commission); Prof. A.M. Clark (biology, Flinders Uni); Prof. Sir Edward Ford, 0 BE (director, school of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Sydney Uni.); Dr W.P. Holman (former medical director, Cancer Institute Board of Victoria); Prof. Sir Leslie Martin, CBE, FRS, FAA (physics, Uni. of NSW; dean of Military Science at Duntroon, Member AAEC); D.J. Stevens, OBE (director, Commonwealth X-ray and Radium Lab.); Prof. E.W. Titterton, CMG, FAA (nuclear physics and dean of the School of Physical Science, ANU); Prof. R.J. Walsh (human genetics, Uni. of NSW); K.W. Pearson (Prime Minister’s Dept.).

These men constituted the N ational Radiation Advisory Committee (NRAC) appointed by the Commonwealth Government “ to provide guidance in any matter pertaining to the effects of ionising radiation in the Australian >mmunity” .

The findings quoted above were of co u rse su b m itte d to Liberal-Country Party Governments.

These governments not only wanted to keep open the option for Australia to enter the nuclear rat-race at some future date (and then do its own bit of Pacific-polluting), but were also interested in getting French help to do so (since France would not support non-proliferation agreements). Obligingly, the NRAC made profound and detailed investigations of the extra strontium-90, caesium-137 and so on that Australians enjoyed in their milk as a result of the tests — and then the NRAC said exactly what those governments wanted them to say.

The French Government was only too delighted with the NRAC’s performance, and was not slow to quite the findings as proof that Australians were in no danger from the bomb tests —on the authority of Australian scientists themselves . . .

Let’s get the facts straight first: All the evidence is that any increase in the radiation you’re subject to probably increases your chances of incurring various fatal illnesses, leukemia in particular. How then did the NRAC manage to argue for the sedative conclusions they reached?

The simplest explanation would be that they were a bunch of unscrupulous cynics prepared to sign their names to any lies the government of the day wanted, said government being the source of various perks, positions and awards.

This explanation is far from the truth, which is more complicated — and more educational.

In obtaining the figures for the amount of radioactivity at various centres in Australia before and after the explosions, the committee acted like the men of scientific respectability they were. There’s no reason to doubt that these figures, which their reports gave in detail, were as accurate as conscientious work could make them.

But the crunch comes with the conclusions to be drawn from the figures. In its very first report, in November 1965, the committee frankly described the poor state of the art: “ . . . Any adverse effect from low doses of radiation is most difficult to • detect. Relationships between radiation dose and biological effect in man at very low

veli \ZeRAhJce look at the extra number killed, and not just the extra percentage. And a good thing too; but it’s also a good thing to learn from this revealing bit of scientific history. One moral can be suggested that’s not immediately obvious, perhaps: The myth is widespread that scientific activity, as such, is not affected by morals (is “ non-evaluative” ); devoted solely to the pursuit of truth, Science (with a capital S) leaves questions of values, moral or otherwise, to others. The people who apply it, for example, perhaps use it to create harmful technological gimmicks (like the nuclear bomb, or the modem automobile). Or politicians make bad decisions about its social role . . .

This is — to be scientifically precise, though not “ non-evaluative” — pure crap. Scientific activity is crammed full of values and choices in a dozen ways: what goals will be pursued (a moon shot, or the Now, if it’s true that any amount of famine?), what of radiation, no matter how small, is conquest procedures will be used in pursuing harmful, then people already die them (testing drugs on jailbird, (especially from leukemia) as a result “volunteers” ?), what words will best of that natural background. So the describe the findings (e.g. in argument is something like the psychology: “ normal” , “ deviant” , following: “ adjustment” — are these Suppose I’m a mass murderer who value-free?), and so on and so on. happens to enjoy knocking people The scientists who differed so off by using a fast, heavy car as the sharply on bomb-testing were not murder weapon. Should my activities arguing about “ pure Science” , that be stopped? Some radicals might say fabulous creature, but about the yes, but let’s think about it a bit more deeply. So many thousands of values to be assumed in scientific work. And it boiled down roughly to people are already killed in car this: should they be humanist values, accidents each year; I am only adding or ones that served the interests of a a fraction of a per cent to that total. rotten social system?

So I am not (in the words of the All this is worth pointing out NRAC report) “ a significant hazard because the myth of “ value-free science” has had unexpected success This very argument was used in some quarters. Swallowing the constantly against the story that Pure Science is responsible percentage-of-background boys by for technological achievement, and scientists deemed “ radical” . It didn’t noting that this achievement includes have much effect on them — until nuclear and cluster bombs, the the experimental evidence piled up, and removed most of the doubts choking of cities with industrial and they were taking advantage of. For automotive pollution and the rapid indeed it seems now to be true that exhaustion of raw-material stocks, any radiation is harmful. people like Roszak (“ The Making of Now, since the Labor Government a Counter-Culture” ) conclude that took office, it has become j not just science, but the “ reason” it “respectable” in scientific circles to j represents, must be rejected. doses are uncertain; the question of whether thresholds exist . . . is unresolved . . . Calculations . . . may be subject to gross errors . . .”

A reasonable conclusion would be: don’t add to radiation exposure (by bomb explosions for example) till we know for sure whether or how many people will be killed by it.

But, because this kind of thinking went against the interests of most of the powers that be, it was associated with radicalism and being far-out.

The “respectable” attitude (called “ realistic” in the NRAC’s first report) was much less alarmist. It pointed out that we all undergo doses of radiation an way, from natural sources; and maintained that the right way to view the increase in radiation due to bomb tests was to calculate by what percentage they increased that constant “background” dose . . .

They are being conned. The Pure Science they are rejecting has never existed. Scientific activity is shot through with values, most of them absorbed from the society it takes place in. These values today are increasingly harmful, like the existing societies themselves. But to work out the way to a better society will take all the reasoning powers we’ve got, not some mystical revelation. And in such a society we’ll need to understand much better than now the world we live in, how it ticks and what effect our activities have on it.

That means: we’ll need a better science, with better values — different from the ones that govern it today.

Different, for example, from ones that allow a swarm of KBEs, OBEs and CMGs to explain “ scientifically” why killing people with a bomb is really quite OK —' as long as the bomb is big enough, and on the right side.

that the apparent edge of the universe has been sighted Intelligent life on other planets was not only possible but probable according to Professor Brown of the chemistry faculty at Melbourne University, who agrees that earth may have been visited a couple of times, but does not think intelligent beings would be very interested in making a habit of it .

A German drug company has requested permission from the federal government to test a drug for sex offenders called cyproterone acetate, in Australia. The drug effectively castrates men who take it by reducing their libido to nothing and producing side effects like enlarged breasts. The superintendent of the Melbourne Children’s Court, Dr Lionel Chatz, the man who pioneered the Melbourne program of injecting juvenile male sex offenders with the female hormone oestrogen thereby reducing their sex drive, has welcomed the health minister’s approval in principle of the drug.

A Sicilian immigrant who killed a rival for his fiance’s attentions in New Zealand in 1957 and spent 10 years in gaol for the crime was recently deported back to Sicily where he has been given a new 21 year sentence for the same crime.

Under Italian law any national who commits a crime punishable by three or more years gaol must be tried again and risk a second gaol term on returning to Italy. . . . Also Crime

T h rills

Almost 2000 people have been bashed, apparently without motive, in the streets of Melbourne’s city and suburbs in the first three months of this year. “Many of these assaults have been on policemen and most appear to have been motiveless apart There’s a growing folk boom in from the sadistic thrill of inflicting Australia, according to the secretary pain on fellow human beings,” the of the Port Phillip Folk Foundation secretary of the Civil Liberties Festival, John O’Lear, who thinks it Council, John Bennett, said. “ Those stems from “ the growing nationalism who are bored, who feel that thrill in Australia” . However, some attacks are a way to obtain traditional folk figures are packing it recognition from friends, who are in. Shearers who earn about $27 per educationally deficient and who have hundred sheep shorn are moving to little contact with youth clubs and Universe Ends in Hole the city for better money according. social workers are most likely to to the Victorian Farmers’ Union. commit the attacks.” Bennett said And American beef raising expert, Dr the bashers were protected by public Bart Cardón, wants Australian apathy and an under-manned police cattlemen to change from open range force which spent too much of its A scientist who specialises in the •grazing to battery production where time charging people for crimes cattle would be tethered in feedlots study of gravity has predicted that without victims like vagrancy, the universe will end as a black hole and fed on grain like chickens to prostitution and homosexuality in space. Dr John Wheeler of ensure predictable grades of m e a t . . . between consenting adults . . . In Princeton University said that in the Former Australian Prime Minister, Miami an icecream truck driver was past few years three space objects Sir Arthur Fadden, died in a shot in the stomach by armed had been identified as possible or Queensland hospital, aged 79 . . . robbers. When he staggered bleeding probable “ black holes” —believed to Prime Minister Whitlam has opened into a service station saying he was be the end products of large stars the first union owned hotel in dying and needed an ambulance the Australia at Brunswick.

Run by the when they no longer produced attendent said he didn’t want to get enough outward flowing heat to Storemen and Packers Union it is involved and directed the wounded named the R.J. Hawke Hotel after counter the enormous weight of their man to a public telephone where he own material. The pressure inward the ACTU president. died . . . A Sydney man pulled the But just to keep the yahoo would be so great that the star would trigger of a rifle to prove to a friend be squeezed out of existence, and folklore image up here’s some news that it was harmless and shot his four generate gravity so strong that no about a New Zealand ringer year old son dead. The man told the light could escape from it thus j (stockman) who lit an empty beer Coroner’s Court that he had already producing a black hole. Dr Wheeler j carton in a basin in an hotel lavatory pointed the gun at himself and his after he’d been thrown out for wife several times and pulled the brawling. He said he made the little trigger but had intended to sell it the fire because he couldn’t see in the infinite expansion and when it next day as his wife told him to get it dark and the magistrate in out of the house. reached its maximum spread in about 40,000 million years would also Marlborough, Queensland, fined him contract to a black hole . . . A $50 and $30 restitution for the basin June 1973 that cracked to pieces.

California astronomer has reported

Cosmic loss

Where Are You Henry Lawson?

Home changes

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The Digger

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June 1973

The Women’s Electoral Lobby, famous for the Form Guide they produced before the last federal elections, in which candidates were quizzed and rated according to their attitudes on issues affecting women, organised a forum on May 7, in Melbourne’s Dallas Brooks Hall. Five male politicians accepted WEL’s invitation to answer questions on their parties’ policies in four areas of crucial concern to women: family planning, employment, education and child care.

On the mat were Clyde Holding (ALP, leader of the State Opposition), Rupert/Dick Hamer (Liberal, State Premier), Peter Ross-Edwards (Country Party), Frank Dowling (DLP) and David Smith (Australia Party).

T h e night m ild -m an n ered W EL en tertain ed politicians

by Helen Garner I arrived three-quarters of an hour late for the WEL forum (Dallas Brooks Hall, May 7) because my daughter wouldn’t go to sleep. I can’t afford babysitters’ fees and so, because of the irregular hours of my job, I have to rely on the goodwill and convenience of my friends. Some­ times they don’t feel like taking over until she’s asleep. And I’m late.

I steamed into the foyer and found the auditorium door ajar but blocked by two young cops and a lackey of the Dallas Brooks Hall administration. “ Can I go in?” I ventured, producing the reserved ticket the organisers had sent to Digger. “ It’s full up on the ground floor,” replied the lackey . “ But it’s a Press ticket.” “ You’re late. We let people into the reserved seats after a certain time.” “ Some of us have children, you know,” I muttered, turning to run upstairs. Two steps up I heard one of the cops call after me, “ Yeah, and some of us hate them.”

I kept going. But the first shot of adrenalin began to course. *** From up in the first gallery I could see half a dozen excellent seats, several in the front row, still vacant. This is when I should have realised what it was going to be like: when I saw the way it was set up. There sat the five powerful or would-be powerful fellows: Hamer, Holding, RossEdwards, Dowling and Smith, each at his mike,, and gracefully arranged at her own table, at an angle from the politicians’, was a well-groomed, smiling, made-up, coiffured lady, Eve Mahlab, chairperson and peacemaker.

The first thing I noticed about the predominantly female crowd was make-up. There was something very mild-mannered about the atmosphere . . . a few strings of pearls, fur coats even, and hairdos that had known rollers and (dare I suggest) hairspray.

When I came in, the first section of the evening’s program was drawing to a close: “ family planning” , it was called on the roneo’d sheet they handed out. Wasn’t there going to be a fight? Even the Right to Lifers were subdued. One woman called out in a plaintive voice, “The foetas looks like a child.” Mild-mannered, like I said.

But when voices were raised, Ms Mahlab soothed them: “We do have TV commitments, and abortion is such a small part of our family planning program.” Small part! Good night — the woman was beginning to sound almost oily.

Women and Work, the second round of the evening’s four, gave me my first chance to hear the policy statements of each party. They were dreary enough, predictable enough.

Hamer and Holding mouthed the OK phrases: bill of rights, incentives to employers, proposed legislation.

David Smith of the Australia Party was cool enough to stress the words people and person. He was obviously going to prove the classiest performer of the meeting; but alas, his trousers were a good four inches too short.

Ross-Edwards (Country Party) and Dowling (DLP) began to show that curiously defiant attitude which more strongly characterised their later pronouncements. Ross-Edwards in particular has'a silly-looking, ingratiat­ ing smile that probably made him the' most hated man in the hall, though Dowling’s world-picture, deriving as it did from Catholic dogma (he left the ALP in 1954) was the most enraging and loathsome. By the end of the night, fear and loathing weren’t in it. I don’t know what stopped the women from tearing Dowling limb from limb —unless it was the tears of rage in their eyes, or the fact that they were shaking too much to trust their own limbs. *** Questioner: When will a woman get pre-selection for a safe seat?

Mahlab: We’ll ask Mr Hamer and Mr Holding to answer that one, since the DLP and the Australia Party don’t have any safe seats.

Dowling: (seizing the mike in righteous anger, the only person in the place not laughing). The DLP is fielding more women candidates than any other party! And fur­ thermore . . .

Mahlab: Dowling: Mahlab: ,

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Excuse me, Mr Dowling. . . . the DLP— I have the chair. (Like a hot knife through butter).

A questioner asked if the Liberals would undertake a program of positive discrimination in favor of women in employment.

Hamer: (earnestly) I don’t believe you’re asking What you really in your heart want. *** Would there be adequate provision made for work for women in the Albury-Wodonga complex? Mahlab mentioned the recent appointment of WEL member Jenny Leeman to an advisory planning position in this area.

“That is what WEL is all about,” added Mahlab, saying it just like that, no contractions. Very poised. Is that what WEL is all about? There must be more.

By this time I’d wormed my way downstairs and past the cops on the door, into the front section. There was a good deal more action (verbal anyway) in this part of the crowd —a buzz of comment went on all the time, punctuated every now and then by an exasperated shout. Women aren’t yet much good at heckling: the barrier of upbringing that stands between woman and public-speaking applies equally to heckling. It’s hard to be witty when you’re too scared or too angry to get your voice out of your throat.

Mahlab called on Peter Riach, WEL ’ spokesman, to outline WEL’s policy on women and work. Why aren’t their spokespeople women?

Riach was an incisive chap: beard, hom-rimmed spectacles* white poloneck sweater. He got in a few good points: “Man must assume 50% of responsibility for work in the home.”

“Traitor,” quipped a middle-aged man beside me. His wife gave him a look. He smirked.

Riach continued, “ If Mr Dowling is so interested in producing children, he might show more interest in looking after them.”

Wild applause. Dowling remained impassive.

WEL policy on employment included, said Riach, the demand that to specify sex in job advertisements be made an offence. “This,” he claimed, “would make 99% of job ads in the Herald, Sun and Age illegal.”

It would also mean a hell of a lot of wasted footslogging and phone calls.

What’s in the paper and what’s in the boss’s head aren’t required by law to tally. Discrimination in fact is bloody

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Hairspray and polite applause: WEL peacekeeper at work.

hard to prove, even after you’ve got someone in power to listen to you.

Ask a black.

Community Controlled Child Care (CCCC) is one of the hardest-working, best-organised and most experienced lobbies in the country. CCCC hasn’t the shock value of the abortion issue, but there is nonetheless a strong, deep stream of antiquated morality — nomespun chauvinism — against which CCCC workers have to battle: the idea that the only person fit to rear a child is its own mother.

It’s in the child-care area that every mortal mother in this country is discriminated against. “ All this women’s stuff inDigger, ” said one of the male Digger staff to me

recently, “it just doesn’t; make it happen for me. Everyone I know accepts women’s liberation.”

Man, how many people do you know?

This is where the crunch comes.

Work or no work —who sits at home at night with the kids? Who gets up at night, time after time, when the kids are wakeful or sick? Who stays straight when everyone else is stoned or tripping, in case the kids need attention? Who stays home on Saturday afternoon in the footy season? And when both parents work, who does two jobs, one of them unpaid? Who suffers the indignity of being bought off every year with a pair of slippers and a bunch of tatty white chrysanthemums?

I don’t care what you accept, you

men who believe in liberation. What do you do?

Dowling believed “women should not be forced to go out to work. The DLP has fought alone against the growing acceptance of women having to work. A man’s wage should be sufficient to support a family.”

And yes, he was, in spite of the rising roar in a couple of thousand throats, he was goipg to say it. “ NO-ONE CAN LOOK AFTER A CHILD AS WELL AS A MOTHER!” Smith of the Australia Party quelled the storm with the calm voice of reason. No wage slave, this one.

“A woman going to work is not a disaster. People find fulfilment in work.” You could have fooled Frank Dowling.

Hamer wanted “latch-key chil­ dren” to be able to stay at school “ to undertake supplementary programs.”

Let’s hope he’s got some card up his sleeye to solve the schools disaster, later in the evening.

Holding considered it economical­ ly impossible for the State Government to pay a wage to housewives.

Ross-Edwards hadn’t learned a thing from the snarling roar that had greeted Dowling’s dictum.

“The greatest role in life for a woman is to bring up her children.”

Does this man want votes, or does he want to be hung, drawn and quartered? But he was safe. .. disgust had set in. The audience growled, the shouting soothed away; even when he repeated, “ Women’s first obligation is to their children,” he wasn’t running much risk. Beneath contempt. “Her children? What’s this her children?” muttered a woman near me.

Then out of that sea of educated, well-spoken ladies rose up Barbara Wawn.

“I’m from the Miscellaneous Workers’ Union.”

They could tell she was a stranger because her voice was loud and strong, a real Aussie accent, flat statements, rude challenges. No shit, a real underdog. There was a proper, respectful hush.

“Many women must work to live.

They work an eight-hour day, then come home and start looking after the homeandkids.I challenge men todo as well as women do. Mr Ross-Edwards said we shouldn’t go too far, or we might land ourselves with some dirty jobs. Never mind about the rotten cowsheds and the dirty nappies!”

Everyone was still. She turned to Dowling.

“What if all the women in the work force should withdraw their labor?”

“The DLP has always been on your side!” answers Dowling, but this time he’s gone too far, they’re slowclapping him.

Mahlab calls for order. “ Let him have his say!”

What’s this? He’s actually going to say it again. “The mother is the best person to look after her children! I deplore the high percentage of women in the work force!”

My notes at this point look very trembly. There are women around me almost weeping with fury. You’d think an instinct for self-preservation would have stopped him.

“On my side?” Barbara Wawn’s voice cuts through the babble. “ You can’t possibly be oh my side, because I’m a woman, and you’re a man.

Listen — I’ve had seven abortions —” It was pandemonium, women on their feet all over the hall, some shouting for her, some against.

“— and I had them because I wouldn’t have been able to feed kids, after the war.”

Three rows behind me a

@0-year-old oaf shouts, “Why didn’t you drown ’em?” His three male friends all but shake his hand. They think he’s a hell of a good fellow.

Dowling bends forward to his mike. The others at least have the grace to keep silent. “ I feel very sad,” he intones, “to think the real test of womanhood these days is the number of abortions she’s had.”

A young woman, a sister with long hair and no make-up, leaps to the floor mike. I can’t hear her voice over the roaring and shouting of the crowd. “ Fucking . . . bastard . . t fucking . . . ” What she’s saying is drowned out, and anyway the WEL women are on the run toward her, one of them claps her hand over the mike and the sister is pushed back.

On the far side of the hall a woman rages, on her feet, straining forward, incoherent and inaudible. Her face red with anger, she is pointing as she shouts. I glance at the men around her.

Their faces show smiles of embarrassment and contempt.

Bon Hull, veteran of the Union of Australian Women and one of the earliest members of the Women’s Liberation Movement, takes the mike. “ I want all women who’ve had abortions to stand up —” Is she going to say NOW? I’m half on my feet, there are women ready to jump, you can feel it, but she says— “ . . . in the City Square on Thursday at 5 o’clock . . . ” and the moment’s passed, you can hear the sigh of the moment passing.

Winsome McCaughey is speaking now, her voice is trembling, finally here is someone to draw all the explosive feelings together and set them going again in a fresh direction. “ Don’t let’s forget that there is joy in having children. But in our day-care centres we don’t need super-trained nurses. What’s all this about highly-qualified staff? We need parents. We need to extend our families, and this is where we get no government support. We want neighborhood centres near every woman or man who needs child care.

Why should it be only women’s responsibility?” * * Hs By the time education came up, the crowd was exhausted and flat. About private and one-sex schools, RossEdwards and Dowling parroted the old clap-trap: diversity is good, let parents have a choice. Ross-Edwards said he didn’t believe girls were discouraged from taking part in public life. *** Mahlab summed up. Oil on troubled waters. Hamer, with his oriental eyes, was impassive; Smith was debonair, and could afford to be, being a representative of what’s essentially an enlightened ginger group — nothing to lose; Holding looked almost classy, the only one in colored clothes and comfortably messy about the ears; Ross-Edwards and Dowling looked, and were, classic dum-dums, like their parties hope­ lessly out of touch, unable to sense a vibe, Ross-Edwards a redneck and Dowling a tailor’s dummy.

On my way out of the hall I met one of the founding members of WEL. She’s bringing up a child on her own now, a circumstance liable to show a woman the desperate need for radical action.

“They don’t go very far, WEL, do they,” I remarked politely, not wishing to offend. “ Aaagh, it’s band-aid stuff, that’s all.” Hardly even a beginning, and perhaps heading in the wrong direction.

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The Digger

at 30 cents each. They make almost And in Canberra where the media was 25 cents on each sticker so that’s becoming a foetus-infested swamp, about $13,000. Wages and essential the costs would be quite impressive. services just might not take more Successive calls to the Northcote than $3,000 of that, since their of­ office produce a more subdued Rob fices were donated by a local estate as he ponders just who is paying the agent in Northcote, their Gestetner bills, and the advertising ones haven’t duplicator and two IBM manual type­ arrived yet. Who can guess the hidden setting machines were a free loan, all costs of a dream machine?

Is Cardinal Knox’s mitre really the slave tasks around the office» chiefly licking and scrubbing, were just in for a service, or has it been executed voluntarily by parish ladies 'hocked? Well you might ask. The

by Alistair, Jones medical argument against abortion rounded up by the Northcote priest, Catholic Church did set aside a Sun­ ' All those friendly fetuses who was based on selective statistics and their books are kept by a retired day collection of its assorted tithes, expressed concern at the prospect of meant to illustrate just how accountant who thinks it’s a worth­ bribes and bequests to be directed being ripped from mummy’s tummy dangerous abortion is, and while cause. Also they have diligent into the fight against abortion. The money flowed into the brimming (and forever denied a place in the explanations of abortion methods communications outposts in every lacrosse squad) can drift unsullied in which conjured foetuses convulsing, parish who spread any word they’re coffers of internal revenue, all guard­ given with that combination of con­ ed by the Chancellor at St Patrick’s placental bliss for the moment. In in a brine-filled womb. descending love and ardor that trem­ Cathedral. Rob and Joan claim that the face of numerous public opinion The next speaker, Miss Mary polls which suggested that between Hickman, a midwife of long bling souls out of their depth find their office has seen none of this money. Joan was just stopped short 60 and 70 per cent of Australians experience, must have surprised comely to muster.

While the Right to Life mob en­ of quoting that old platitude about favor some liberalisation of the abor­ onlookers by choosing not to abort tion laws, all but 23 Labor members herself with a crocheting hook just to couraged a prosaic form ©f the art of not making promises you don’t inin the Federal parliament chose to show how unpleasant the whole run with the hysterical but vocal mi­ business is. She tried instead to whip nority of crackpots herded under the up sympathy for nurses who must banner of Right to Life. The MacKen- clean up the mess. She could have zie/Lamb Medical Clarification Bill, done well had she attempted only which offered abortion on demand that, but her meanderings into social for pregnancies up to 16 weeks, theory based on Hitler’s genocidal was lost. efforts to produce a master race, “ The annoying part of it is that made her look a little silly. Hitler when a bill is presented again, it will outlawed abortion. Nurse Goodbag have to be in much the same form as wouldn’t have her eyes eastemized to last time,” lamented Tony Lamb,, get such a commanding squint, she co-sponsor of what was once a must have been born with it. private member’s bill. “ Public The final speaker, Mr Charles opinion polls indicate that this is Francis QC, personal friend of John what most Australians want.” Gorton and member of the liberal Though abortion law repeal would party, went on at length to provide a seem to be only a matter of time, no pompous and benumbing dissection re-presentation of the bill is planned of the various legal loopholes in the at present. bill.

Lamb’s office received over 4000 The first enquiry during question letters during the six weeks the Right time was a lengthy one about the to Life posse chose to launch its detrimental effect legalising abortion From “Life or Death ”, a Right to Life pamphlet (full color). frenzy. “ At one point — about 12 to would have on the strength of the 14 days before the bill was in the armed forces. The questioner had House — letters in favor of the bill evidently been a lad in a time before letter writing in quantities more pro­ tend to keep when Rob more kindly were actually ahead of the pollution and the population lific than even the most accident- suggested that the money might be anti-abortion ones,” continued explosion. He suggested that the prone old court wit, most of the mis­ channelled into the forthcoming Lamb. A compliment for the combined yellow peril of Japan and sives were dispatched and paid for by social welfare work his office is plan­ counter-attack led by the Abortion China might be so much more their supporters. The office in North­ ning. Yes, that seems presumptuous; Law Repeal Association. Letters, threatening if mothers were allowed cote may have only spent a couple of but then Rob is very into social mostly in favor of repeal, are still to abort potential soldiers. The hundred dollars on stamps. The plen­ welfare.

It’s a popular bet that monies coming in. Not like the old days, question didn’t seem all that absurd tiful variety of glossy brochures — when you might get 60 letters from in the light of the discussions which some of them maudlin, some of them have already flowed from the Catho­ macabre but all having a quivering lic Church into Right to Life at a one area at once, all of them very had preceded it. similar but none quite the same. and moralistic spiel to reinforce any more executive level. This proposition * + * .

The organisational strength of the emotional hysteria they might pro­ goes hand in pocket with the claim The scene is High St., North- voke —were mostly organised by the that a firm of consultants called Right to Life movement is the community care groups already cote, one of the more comfortable individual Community Care groups International Public Relations did the existing in parishes, chiefly Catholic, soot and smoke suburbs forming a and financed by anonymous donors overall PR themes for the campaign. throughout the land. With this belt to the west of Melbourne. North- in that community. A slush fund to Living visions of this theory occasion­ voluntary labor and the facilities of cote is more residential than the fac­ cover a couple of hundred bucks ally manifest themselves. Like the the church, whole congregations tory-ridden districts which surround printing costs is not all that hard to time a certain Greg Kerr suggested already so superstitious that they see it, but it’s still a wage-earner’s settling arrange, if you’re insistent. The liter­ that the Canberra Press Club might fit to attend church each Sunday ground, and the style is rarely flashy,. ature of the Northcote office is, by solve its problem of finding relevant were easily coerced, cajoled and In High Street, Northcote is the Vic­ comparison, drab and functional; speakers on the abortion question by persuaded to give voice to their faith. torian Office of National Right to mostly black and white sheets of how­ accepting his offer of Cardinals Knox to-vote rhetoric which again wouldn’t and Freeman. Mr Kerr, who is with And get themselves bussed to rallies, ■Life,; , ! Joan Doyle and carrot-haired total more than a few hundred bucks. International Public Relations, just anti buy a sticker for the family car.

And respond to distorted, inflamed Rob Pardy, both of them around Maybe a thousand because there were happened to have their eminences twenty years of age, are the Electoral huge quantities of them. at his disposal. arguments.

But even with this optimistic The structure of the Right to The “information Night” rallies of Action Committee for Victorian the Right to Life moral intruders Right to Life. It was their boundless speculation on running costs, the Life propaganda machine forms some were bewildering. At the de la Salle energy which prompted the forma­ remainder of the car sticker money sort of Holy Trinity. The son gets College Hall in middle class Malvern, tion of a galvanizing network of com­ still won’t pay for all those plump the ground floor and is sung by all a tree-lined residential suburb of munication which links the various ads in prime mass media times. Half the children’s voices as their com­ Melbourne, Dr. Joe Santamaria social action groups in every parish a dozen full page newspaper ads munity care groups play their moral unfolded his very own “ domino” and electorate. They came from the would dispose of most of it, and the acts of mercy. The father rests upon theory of moral decay in the Northcote Community Care group. Right to Life advertising campaign in a strata of sub-committees, like the community. It may start with This voluntary labor force, which cur­ Victoria alone amounted to consider­ doctors’ sub-committee headed by abortion, but the next stage is rently boasts around 10,000 mem­ ably grander proportions than that. Doc Joe Santamaria from St Vin­ infanticide and then euthunasia, he bers, is the base from which the Right intoned. It had something to do with to Life propaganda machine draws flood gates and flow-ons. When one its strength.

A year, after Duncan’s death; The question is: just who is pay­ women with three wiglets questioned the logic of this theme, she was ing the bills of this glossy organiza­ curtly assured that it was in fact true, tion so concerned for the rights of apparently on the grounds that she the unborn? Rob and Joan estimate the budget for the six-week campaign had just been told it.

Dr. Joe brought some slides along. centred in their office to be around Snaps of foetuses at various stages of four or five thousand dollars. Just their development, and shots of flesh feasible if you exclude advertising, and blood floating in buckets. Sister and Rob says that the bills for that Mary Therese from the Sacred Heart haven’t come in yet. If they ever do, DUNCAN, Dr G.I.O. — killed by they did recommend prosecution of looked very grim at this stage. Dr. their bank manager will be cross. three men.

Their chief source of revenue, drowning Friday, May 10,1972.

Joe was very taken with phrases like The State Government decided not “ If that’s not a human being, perhaps according to Joan and Rob, comes DUNCAN, George — with bitter to go ahead because of insufficient memories for the death of South someone can tell mewhat it is.” His from the sale of 54,000 car stickers Australian justice which died on May evidence.

Evidence on the Duncan murder 10,1972-P a u l. was given to Scotland Yard detectives DUNCAN, Dr Ian George — We who are left behind will gladly suffer the by a man who had told one thing to humiliations for which your life was State police and something quite oo sacrificed in the hope that your death different to the coroner’s inquiry. He lied to State police out of fear. will help lead to a public awakening — On May 10, this year, in the C.A.M.P., Perth. oo DUNCAN, George — Duncan and Adelaide local court, two former oo justice are dead, but the responsible police officers faced a civil law suit arising out of an alleged assault. persons live on. —Lyn and John. oo The anniversary of the death of Dr Wayne Hartley Lawson is claiming oo o o George Ian Ogilvie Duncan was $5000 . damages from Michael oo oo o o0 0 marked by slogan painting and the Kenneth Clayton and Edward Ray insertion of “ In Memoriam” notices Mildenhall.

Mildenhall is licensee of the oo in several Australian newspapers. The selection above came from the Carrington Hotel, in Carrington o o Adelaide Advertiser, for it was in that Street, Adelaide. Clayton is a barman oo oo city that the crime was committed, there. This time last year he was a and where the man’s death still is an member of the Adelaide vice squad. emotional matter. The slogans painted The Carrington is the hotel where in and around Adelaide on walls, Aborigines are often arrested. It is OLMTHJARIKTSfHXHX, bridges and fences in the early hours something of a gathering place for mostly said “ How many more Adelaide Aborigines. There is often Duncans?” , “ Duncan —Remember?” , trouble there, not always started by etc. black people. The hotel was the The gutsiest slogan said “ One year subject of an intra-departmental ago today SA police killed Duncan — inquiry by the police force soon after remember.” the new commissioner, Harold OO Dr George Duncan died, according Salisbury, took over last year.

OO to the coroner’s finding, by drowning The story in the Adelaide court was due to violence on the part of persons that Lawson was beaten by two o o O O unknown. He drowned in the River policemen after a car chase on Torrens, the pretty, winding stream October 29, 1971. An article in The GROUNDHOGS “HOGWASH” that runs between Adelaide and North Digger late last year retold the bashing Adelaide.

A police investigation failed of one Bob Allen by two policemen in I LOVE YOU MISS OGYNY - YOU HAD A LESSON - THE to solve the murder.

February, 1972. One of Allen’s RINGMASTER _ 3744 JAMES ROAD - SAD IS THE HUNTER ¿ S’ ONE SONG - EARTH SHANTY - MR. HOOKER, SIR JOHN However, three officers called on assailants was M.K. Clayton. to give evidence at the coroner’s In his claim Lawson told Judge UAL 34765 inquiry refused to do so and were White that Clayton and Mildenhall o o oo suspended from the force. They stopped his car, assaulted him, °o ° ~ ° o ° °o ° ” °o c oo oo 0 O 00 o 00 o 00 o subsequently resigned. Further in­ wrongfully imprisoned him and >O- o °öo o o °no ° uo °OO° o °OO° o °OO c vestigation by two Scotland Yard detained him against his will. He detectives produced nothing that alleged he suffered cuts, abrasions and could be released to the public. But bruising due to punching and kicking.

The domino theory o f morality

Right to Life fetes fetus

A delaide’s punchy ex-cop strikes again

FACTS OF LIFE! A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH. CHOOSE LIFE I BUT WILL OUR PARLIAMENTARIANS CHOOSE LIFE? SOON THEY WILL DECIDE FOR OR AGAINST ABORTION ON DEMAND

FACT: What is Abortion?

The Deliberate Killing of a Living Foetus We alt agree on th is d e fin itio n — b u t some people respond: " I t d oesn't m a tte r. It's o n ly a blob o f je lly !"

W a it a m o m e nt. By the tim e a woman misses her first period, m edical science te lls us that the most im p o rta n t organs are present in the u nb orn baby.

As e a rly as seven weeks fro m conce ptio n , his face is c o m p le te ly fo rm e d . He even has 20 m ilk teeth buds, eyelashes and eyebrows.

view to publicizing and even finan­ cing these services, in co-operation with the Caroline Chisholm SocietyThe Chisholms’ are a gentlewoman’s society who go in for moral guidance lectures. They are family orientated and try to do little helpful things for the lady in waiting. Predominant­ ly Catholic.

Right to Life expect to con­ tinue making recommendations to the government. “We’ve got a namefor being an expert pressure group, and not without some justification,” smiled Rob, “ and we’re going to do just that in the areas of social wel­ fare. There has got to be more adequate support for welfare cases.

We can see that we’ve got to work conscientiously and very hard.” *

By the tenth w e e k .the u n b o rn baby can move h im se lf.

*

*

He can even suck his th u m b by the eleventh week.

Beatrice Faust, the Melbourne His h ea rt began to beat as e a rly as the fourth week. spearhead of the Abortion Law Re­ These m e d ical facts show us th a t it is a d o w n rig h t lie to ca ll the liv in g foetus a " b lo b o f je lly " . peal Association’s campaign, sits in their office, her house, opening the FACT: How Does the Doctor Perform an Abortion? mail. Since the MacKenzie/Lamb This is the part they do not w ant us to know. Medical terms are used to make it all sound antiseptic, Medical Clarification Bill was defeat­ clinical and efficient. Let's forget the fancy language and describe the five m ajor methods in, plain English. ed, ALRA has organised a “ rolling ad­ 1. BUTCHERY — The baby is scraped out of the womb, often in pieces. vertisement” in the national dailies; 2. SUCTION — The baby is sucked out by a vacuum cleaner device. He is often pulped in the process. for a dollar you get your name in the 3. POISON (P IC K L IN G ) — A chemical solution is injected into the wom b. The baby dies in an hour paper as a supporter of the principles and is later 'born' dead. behind the bill. All the little dollars 4. PHONEY BIRTH — A chemical solution is injected to bring about what looks like a natural mis­ carriage. add together to pay for the next ad­ 5. MINI-CAESAREAN — The wom b is cut open. The baby is removed. If he is not already dead from vertisement and so it goes on, a bit the .poison method, he is left to die o f exposure. Some of these babies cry before they die. like a chain letter. “ We tend to place a lot of FACT: The Baby in the Womb is NOT "Part of stock in the various Gallup Polls, but a Mother's Body" for the average Australian it’s not hard to get an abortion. This ad is de­ One of the biggest medical lies of the baby-killing pressure groups is the claim that the baby is "p a rt of the mother's body" and that, therefore, she "has a right to decide what to do w ith her own body". signed to activate the apathy of the The Women's Liberation lobby constantly repeats this lie. majority.” Since the defeat of the bill Medical science tells us that the baby in the w om b is an individual life, w ith his ow n bloodstream. He close to a thousand signatories have certainly depends on the care of his m other, being fed through the um bilical cord — but he is not "p a rt o f her body". He has his own heart-beat and blood group. sent in a dollar’s worth of outrage.

Do the baby-killers really expect us to believe that a living foetus is the same as an appendix?

One lady from Queensland had pinned her money on with a darning needle, another gentleman had cut out ALRA’s address from the ad, One side o f a defeat-the-bill leaflet from Right to Life. pasted it on a battered envelope in ransom note fashion and patched up cent’s Hospital (a man of fascinating Foundation which has existed more the ad with his donation. Each letter bloodlines), the Clergy sub-committee as a lobby which might arrest trends is personally attended to by Beatrice headed by Father Mayer from the it regards as permissive than anything — frail, asthmatic but tireless, filing chair at the Senate of Priests, and the else. The HLRF pooled its resources the rope and smiling with hope at Social Action sub-committee led by with Right to Life for the campaign, what appears to be an encouraging Mrs Maureen Tresize from the So in Northcote Rob and Joan display of support for the bill; peo­ Caroline Chisholm Centre of cod- and their network of voluntary work­ ple “horrified at what’s happened.” dlers. Last, and certainly not least, ers are starting to look like the naive A bright note. “ You know, I is the Holy Ghost. This part was tools of the Catholic right’s last heard that after the bill was defeated, awarded to the national executive of stand. While most of them would be is the Holy Ghost. This part was on the reactive side of the scoreboard John Gorton went up to one of the awarded to the national executive of anyway, it might be interesting to see initiators and said, ‘This is terrible, Right to Life, chiefly for the perfor­ if the organization can maintain its it will have to be presented again.’ mance of the chairman, played quite rapturous sense of common purpose So maybe we’ll get another one in justly by that crafty old Catholic with the specific interest of its mem­ the Spring.”

A wonderful season for babies, miracle, Dr John Billings. bers temporarily out of the way. Rob Spring.

Crafty because Dr Billings for­ and Joan are leading the Right to mulated a sophisticated versiori of the Life contingent in the meeting and rhythm method with a definitive march to protest against the French system for determining the “ safe” (or nuclear blasts, at the invitation of infertile) days in the menstrual cycle leftist/activist Jean McClean. Joan based on examination of vaginal se­ says that it is silly that Right to Life cretions: To harness’ this discovery should have a barrier bfetween itself you need a microscope, charts and a and other “social acti ongroups just nice long finger. And it helps if you because they disagree on the one do it every day. For this, Dr Billings point of abortion; she sees a lot of received a papal knighthood. Dr Bil­ other points in common. Who knows lings’ position amongst the old guard if the cardinals share her point of Catholic right is so established that view and feeling of responsibility? tales might soon be told of how he Rob and Joan are hoping to has forsaken all verbal utterances and move Right to Life into social action trails instead a thin stream of ecto­ next. They plan a survey of family planning, unwanted children and plasm.

Dr Billings is the founder and pregnancy support services available head of the Human Life Research in every parish and electorate with a

Lawson said he was driving in King William Street, city, with two men named Briggs and Myers.

“I saw a green and white Holden with three people in it.” He pointed out Clayton as a man he saw in the front of the Holden. “They came alongside me and there were words said to me, then I caught up with the car and there were words again. I cannot remember the exact words. I can remember a word cunt. Clayton said this.”

Lawson said he drove around the city for a while and later in Gilbert Street saw the same Holden again, outside a restaurant. “ I did a U-turn and parked opposite the car. Clayton came over.

He said: “ If you don’t go while the going’s good you won’t be able to’, or similar words. I started to take off but the car stalled. I swore at Clayton.

Someone yelled out: ‘Get them’!”

Lawson said he drove away and the Holden started, turned, followed. In Glen Osmond Road, just out of town, he tried to run the Holden off the road and the other driver returned the compliment. “ I did not think they might be police — I thought they were hoods,” Lawson explained.

Suddenly there was a blue light flashing and Lawson stopped his car.

Three men appeared around his car and someone said: “Get out.” “ I said I didn’t know they were police then I was dragged out of the car. I can’t remember who pulled me out but after I got out I was knocked to the ground. I was punched. I tried to get up several times but I just kept getting kicked and punched to the ground. I couldn’t see who did it. It was too quick, I think maybe two of them. “ I remember seeing Clayton’s face several times. I was kicked and punched and I flew through a fence. I was punched at that time in the back, head, all over, and when I went through the fence I hit a tree. When I hit the tree Clayton said something like ‘You long-haired bastard, I’ll teach you to try and run me off the road and try to kill me’.”

Lawson said Clayton then picked him up by the hair and pulled him

back through the fence. He was pushed inside the Holden and had the door closed on his trailing leg. In the car he found a constable Gully, who he said at no time struck him.

The Holden was then driven back; into the city, with Clayton punching Lawson several times more. “ He told me his hand was cut from hitting me” .

So Lawson tried to feign unconscious­ ness, but Clayton hit him again and said: “That didn’t work, did it?”

Along the way the car stopped at the same restaurant again and a Victorian policeman got in, a detective Friar. The newcomer said: “You are in a lot of trouble, aren’t you?” He advised Lawson to plead guilty in court and say nothing.

Lawson, however, pleaded not guilty to indecent language, dangerous driving, exceeding the speed limit and driving without due care, but was convicted and fined on all counts.

Next witness was Lawson’s father, C.H. Lawson. He told judge White he was an insurance loss assessor and investigator. He also said he left the police force six years ago after giving it 18 years, 10 of them as a CIB detective. He said he attended Queen Elizabeth early on the morning of October 30, 1972, where he found his son in a distressed state. “ He had abrasions to the face, arms, shoulders and had a swollen face. After we left the hospital together at 8 a.m. we went to Wayne’s residence, I made a telephone call to the duty inspector at police headquarters and then we went to town. After seeking legal representa­ tion for my son we had an interview with the duty inspector. I had told him that my son was assaulted by three plain-clothed policemen. After the interview my son and I went to Hutts Road and I looked at an area near a pine tree where I saw some scuff marks. I then went to a wire fence and found some ignition keys.”

C.H. Lawson said he took photographs of the area, plus some of his battered son, showing marks on the young man’s body. At the end of the second day of the case, judge White adjourned the case due to the pressure of other court work.

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i

The Digger

Page 4

June 1 9 7 3

May the pure light within you guide your way home.

T aking a trip on the N im bin lin e “J t ’s impossible to assess the Festival — it depended on who talked about it and what he said. There were so many different trips, r

by Judith Rich It was at the burnt out tree hollow on the hill that many of us got the charge. Those of us who could squeezed inside and sat watching the column of firesmoke draw up the trunk and out into the night sky.

Others came across the field and sat cross-legged around the tree, not talking much. A tribal gathering at a sacred place. We felt a spiral of energy rising from the earth, channelled through us and out to where the stars sang and the full moon spread. What is the moon full of? The country always makes me lose my head. 1 am an Earth Mother. . . * * * Communal campfires in the fields.

Flamelit figures in the shadows dancing, swaying, humming, cradling babies, huddling in blankets, torsos flowing to the night temple. Nomadic minstrels and mimes, angers and prodigal sons, binding group conscousness with tribal chants. We are Red Indians with flaming eyes, spin­ ning together through another space.

Doing a timeless number. Out there in the dark a man sits blowing his didgeridoo like a pulse through the night. * * * Light breaks softly to a dulcimer played in a shed. The waking camp throws off the mists of night, birds chatter loudly, and in the long grass meditators stare into the bare face of the lifting sun. Some media freaks come through the trees, scanning the scene through a video eye. A naked

IT IS COMING THE VOICE OF THE GENTLER SIDE OF THE

man cooks breakfast outside his tent.

In the bamboo lace tipi people ex­ tend quivering legs to the new day in yogic pose, drink enriching air through their bodies’ passages. A bare breasted girl collects bark for her shelter’s walls. * * * Daisy’s Cafe is the kind of tea shop with laminex tables, plastic flowers and Chico Rolls that you find in any country town. Daisy and her ladies were run off their feet when the Aquarius people came to town.

They picked guitar, breast fed their babies, burnt incense in the sugar bowls and sat . on the pavement out­ side to drink their tea when the place was packed. It didn’t bug Daisy. She took on a couple of the Aquarius men to help her serve, with Indian gear, bare feet and painted nails. Some­ times they had suns and mushrooms on their faces, done by a guy at one of the tables whose trip was painting people’s bodies with totemic de­ signs. Now Daisy’s Cafe walls are dec­ orated with enchanted scenes of mushroom marvels. It beats CocaCola signs. * * * Gordon thé astrologer was also into nudity. Everyone went naked at the water hole and it was there that he did his readings. But at night when we all threw on an extra jumper against the cold, Gordon would dance naked by his campfire. “The planets like Pluto control our body thermo­ stat,” he said, “ and people with certain aspects like to get their gear off.” The next day Gordon was walk­ ing naked near the road in plain view of the tourists’ cars, wearing nothing but a shoulder bag. “Walk across with me,” he said. “ It might look better.”

Later Gordon had chest trouble but he said that that was in the stars too.

He * * Nimbin, garden of hope where a new vision came to seed. May the long time sun shine upon you. All love surround you. And the pure light within you guide your way home. -

Above: a solar sauna.

Below: the main drag in town.

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Treading on sacred ground

by Helen Gamer If Nimbin festival-goers and Aquarius organisers are having a hard time — sickness, dope busts, people refusing to part with their camping fee — they have only themselves to blame, says Gerry Bostock, a black Australian from northern NSW. Their presence defiles the initiation ground

of the tribe of Gerry’s ancestors, the Bandjalang.

This defilement is nothing new, he says. The town of Nimbin is built right on the initiation ground: be­ fore the white settlers came, around 1880, the initiation would pass from Mt Warning, through the bush past the Three Sisters and on to the land

A t the h e art of a co u n try fa ir

by Stephen Shelmerdine

Second Thursday in June.

40c

AT THE PAPER SHOP $4.80 FOR 12 MONTHS Cosmos, Box 249, P.O., Cremorne, NSW, 2090.

After the Easter influx of workers, activists and hangers-on, it was ex­ pected that the Festival would bring 10,000 Earthlings into Nimbin. As it happened, approximately 4000 wanderers, tribespeople and anti-aca­ demic students have made it to the Cumtogether, since it ‘opened’ on Saturday May 12th. This has some­ what upset Aquarius finances, but otherwise has reaped positive bene­ fits by restricting the potential chaos, crowding and over-taxing of re­ sources. As the Aquarius Manifesto stressed: “The Festival will not be about numbers but about energy created and exchanged, creativity har­ nessed and joy manifest.”

Under the benevolent mad auspices of the Australian Union of Students (AUSj, with the assistance of the Interim Film Council, the Interna­ tional Tours Fund of the Australian Council for the Arts, and the Peter Stuyvesant Trust, plus freely donated labour, love and finance, the Softlick Survival Cumtogether has floated and The Nimbin District will never be quite the same. * * * Since the 1920’s the whole North­

ern Rivers District has suffered an unremitting depression. Its families decimated by foreign wars, its dairy, sheep and timber industries dimin­ ished beyond recovery, and its young people forced to emigrate to the larger city centres.

But almost two years ago the trend reversed. Communities sprang up across a broad rambling stretch of territory from Byron Bay through Mullimbimby to The Channon, re­ invigorating the lush countryside with a fresh lease of life and purpose whilst working to develop mutual respect with the locals.

The Aquarius Festival people have also sought out the story of Nimbin since the Nimbinians’ overwhelming decision to host the Cumtogether last January.

A deep perspective of the Festival in the scheme of things has been cul­ tivated. The guiding principles for all planning and projections have evolved from the living memory of the older •times and the unwritten canons of Aboriginal folk mythology, the judi­ cious use of existing local shops and structures in Nimbin itself, and a

actually destroys our culture. It where the town now stands. “ A Couple of the Aquarius or- would have been all right if they’d ganisersdid speak to Richard Donnelly investigated the area and found out — he’s not a tribal elder, there what tribal significance was in the aren’t many tribal fullbloods left in place. They could have moved on that area —but he’s an old man from down the road.

Woodenbong that everyone listens to.

“The organisers got Richard They got his OK for the festival to Donnelly and another Aboriginal guy go on. But Donnelly’s a Gidibal, not to open the festival in the Aborig­ a Bandjalang. inal language — but they were speak­ “ The Aquarius festival is sup­ ing Gidibal, in Bandjalang territory. posed to bring out Aboriginal cul­ It’s crazy! ture, but their presence on our land “ Of course the reviving of Ab-

friendly working relationship with the locals.

The Aquarius Manifesto states the purpose: “To rediscover the meaning that agricultural fairs once had for country people and for the new groups who have moved . . . to the country.” $uch knowledge would fa­ cilitate the constructive harnessing of the new skills and objectives of counter-culture lifestyle with extra­ ordinary courage, initiative and com­ mitment of the settlers.

This unique blend invoked a cer­ tain spritzig in the Festival atmos­ phere, conjuring up memories of all sorts of old time country comforts — jigs ’n reels, barnyard parties and ballroom dances, sports carnivals, Mardi Gras and gymkhanas, yarn­ spinning pub bullockies, raebuck shearers and drovers. These mem­ ories were partially realized by the informal spontaneous opening cere­ mony hosted by the Back to Nimbin Committee and performed by a 67 year old resident, and by boistferous communal singing around the sqUeezebox, outside the Freemasons’ Hotel.

A mammoth sports carnival and ag­ ricultural fair was held on Saturday afternoon, when the Nimbin Tug O’ War team — the top team in Aus­ tralia — put on several hefty displays.

The Aquarius Foundation strove to prepare the dynamic framework for a viable experimental culture — its alternative lifestyle, social organi­ zation and self-actualizing collective .labour. “ A living affirmation that we

do not need to be sold our culture . . . an experimental community . . . or­ ganized on a tribal basis of selfsufficient groups of 10 to 20 . . . an experience in living in harmony with the natural environment.” The vision of Superfest Graeme Dunstan, Kaptain Kulture Johnny Allen and the Aquarius collective.

In practice, the event encompassed the streets, fields and stores of Nim­ bin. Rising up from the old Norco Buttery on Mulgum Creek through the freshly painted storefronts, and away beyond the Showgrounds and the Soft Music Open-Air Amphi­ theatre. AUS leased several vacant shops and revamped and refitted them to integrate with local enter­ prises: John and Faye Duncan’s Pub­ lic Spirituous Dispensary, Bill Car­ ter’s Hardware and Plumbing, Grace Ellen’s Drapery and Mercery, Basil ,Hayter’s Bakery, Lyle Tainsh and Kev Soward’s Motor Garages, Ralph Sims’ Newsagent and Lismore Cor­ dials, Dick Everingham’s Butcher Shop and Daisy’s Cafe. The Mel­ bourne Feedwell Foundry baked over 600 loaves per day; from Brisbane Harpo’s Food Co-op set up in the Tomato Sauce Factory; from Nimbin there arose a Wholemeal Banana Frittery.

With such inviting star attractions the Main Street became almost impos­ sible to move in at certain times; many travellers were content just to spend hours wandering amongst peo­ ple from all corners of the continent,

The Learning Exchange oper­ ated out of the plumber’s shop hand­ ling contact requests, like finding a blacksmith for someone to learn to shoe horses. They’d intended getting lots of printing out but the truck bringing in their equipment broke down. The other change that just grew on them out of the Festival was their role as a “what’s on” and general information service. They found themselves being asked to fix tools, and blackboards out the front listed happenings and times. But nobody seemed to feel personally put upon, despite some anxiety about encouraging consumerism through providing a service.

And how did the locals like the Festival they voted to host? For some it was just endless faces waiting to be served, with all the kids helping Mum and Dad in the shop till late at night, by which time, as they said in the baker’s shop, they felt “hassled, as the kids would say.”

For others^ different pressures and accommodations: the local cop, Bob Marsh and Waliy the Health; Dept, guy, were under pressure from" superiors out of Nimbin to heavy the Festival. Following a Courier Mail story about Nimbin coming down with disease, Wally was cool to reporters and said it’d take a week’s torrential rain before anything could go wrong. That was one thing that consolidated ties of friendship estab­ lished earlier — a common dislike of constant media pressure and misreporting. (The only paper regarded as generally fair was the local North­ ern Star). It’s said a reporter from the Melbourne Sun went to file Bowling Club, sanctuary of cops, journos and anti-locals, asked aggres­ sive questions and got hit in the head.

Of course there was some hos­ tility — the campsite was said to be a dirty unhygienic place for the hundreds of young children who lived there and there was worry about the effect of dope, sex and potential

health hazards on local children. But! the overall spirit was probably best» captured by the words of the bus driver who took coaches everywhere and said he’d never met a town as happy.

Paranoia regarding dope was reduced to a tolerable level as Aquar­ ius enlarged its contacts with the local police. Mutual suspicions were erased.

A tacit agreement was reached where­ by dope could be smoked openly in the fields and leased buildings, but not on the main drag of the town.

This worked successfully until Tuesday night, when the only dope bust of the festival occurred.

Information had been supplied to the local police that morphine was being dealt. This was seen as a breach of the previous agreement, so a tent was raided and three people arrested. The bust itself was a stan­ dard frame-up, but the community responded to this intrusion by sur­ rounding the police in the fields, forcing the release of those arrested.

Anti-cop feelings were high, but people soon realized that the local police had also been set up.

Among the Special Branch po­ lice and Federal Narks present were some determined to disrupt the fes­ tival, considering it to be the first frontier of a new experiment in permissiveness. A local sergeant said, “ They were trying to create a prob­ lem where there was none.”

The bust legitimized the fur­ ther intrusion of police forces. On Thursday the para-military 21 Squad were openly parading around town and that night arrested three people for using obscene language. One ad­ ditional attempt was made to pro­ voke a confrontation — with some local blacks on Friday night.

However, the presence of large numbers of police didn’t intimidate most people, but brought a reminder of some external realities that many thought had been completely passed by.

“If they’d asked white people at Nimbin if there were any Aborig­ inal significance in the area, they probably would have said, ‘Oh, there used to be some blacks round here somewhere.’ There hasn’t been an initiation there for fifty years. The physical culture might be dead, but “ I originally agreed to the idea the spiritual culture’s very much alive. of reviving the culture — it was my “ I feel pity for the people who mother who raised the question of its defile sacred ground. They have no being a sacred tribal area. I haven’t culture themselves . . . they’re trying been there — it’s taboo for an unini­ to borrow a culture that has no signif­ tiated Bandjalang to go there. My icance for them. They want to escape mother wasn’t angry — in fact she from their own society into another thought it was quite funny. She’s —one that was until recently thought a great believer in Aboriginal religion. of as the most primitive society in She believes the Aquarius people are the world. I don’t believe you can all going to die, or get sick. adopt another culture.

original culture is a good thing. But this way they’re getting to a lot of hippies, not to the black kids. And if they want to revive Aboriginal culture, they shouldn’t degrade it by going on to the sacred sites. It’s like having a ball in St Mary’s Cathedral.

digging bands, orators and street theatre, perusing jewellery, leathergoods and candle structure. Every evening Phillipe le Petit, impresario extraordinaire a magician, con­ jurer and high-wire expert —juggled, tightrope-walked, tossed firesticks and trick-cycled* the Mornington Is­ landers performed corroborees and dances around fires at the Aborig­ inal Cultural Centre. The manifold religious communities (Krishna Conscousness Movement, Divine Light Players, Children of God, Siva Kalpa, and even weirder religions) performed services, satsangs and musical of­ ferings. African Jazz pianist Dollar Brand, the Magik Karavan, the White Company, Mulga Bill’s Bicycle Band, Captain Matchbox, Lindsay Bourke’s organ and assorted electric rockers added to the ethereal soft music that floated up from the creeks from early in the morning.

By day discussions, lessons and demonstrations were held in the Craft Centre, the Human Relations Tent and the Alternative Health Centre.

By night multi-media extravaganzas rocked the Buttery. The Sheiks’ Re­ vue and the Nimbin Softlick Players performed at the Town Hall, and New Zealand’s radical education group BLERTA staged children’s theatri­ cal workshops.

The scope of the Festival’s spirit was extended further through the exchange of knowledge — puppet theatre, cottage crafts, anti-psy­ chiatry, hatha yoga, astrology, solar

saunas, acupuncture, Adelaide gra­ phies, Aboriginal arts, Chinese ink painting, women’s liberation . . . and $15,000 worth of video equipment for a closed-circuit cable network and a film of the Festival for local circuit release and European-American exchange distribution.

But cataloging swapped skills belies the deeper significance of the Fes­ tival. It brought tribes from all cor­ ners of Australia and every day new arrivals from Perth, Darwin, Cairns, Melbourne and Adelaide consciously prepared to live out the Festival’s guiding principles, whilst retaining their own specific identity. * * *

By Tuesday the Nomadic gypsy population had settled fully into the spirit of the occasion. “After Nimbin, what?” was constantly discussed.

It’s a process of working out the fu­ ture whilst creating the shell of the present . . . with the framework of individual autonomous identity through the collective interaction of the community.

Ideas for purchasing prime quality land and settling permanent struc­ tures and arranging tribalized com­ munities occupied and still grasp the Aquarius visionaries. All in all, the Softcumvival Nimbin Surtogetherlick fulfilled those who, like Christian in Pilgrims Progress, set out to seek their “ inheritance incorruptible . . . that fadeth not away . . . ”

Page 5 The Digger June 1973

you’re looking good in Keyman fitted jean s

Page 6

The Digger

Graeme Blundell

by Phillip Frazer Graeme Blundell is 28, he’s an actor, and he and fellow-actor Kerry Dwyer have just bought a small ter­ race house in North Fitzroy. They are married and have worked to­ gether since Graeme co-founded the Australian Performing Group at Carl­ ton’s tiny La Mama theatre. In fact, they are major figures in what partici­ pants and the press call Carlton Theatre. Kerry is currently playing Shirl in the APG’s Dimboola, a play

by Jack Hibberd that both Graeme and Kerry played in four years ago at La Mama.

Blundell is about to become one of Australia’s new movie stars. * * * In 1970 Blundell played a wideeyed interviewer doing a documentary on Australian sexual attitudes, for a film produced by Phil Adams called The Naked Bunyip. That film was made to learn the problems of getting a local product distributed, and to ex­ ploit the Australian market for softporn. Before that Blundell featured in a film by Carlton filmmaker Brian Davies called Brakefluid. That film won a Peter Stuyvesant Award.

And then there was 2000 Weeks, a full-length feature in black and white and a full-scale flop with audiences. Blundell and the film’s director, Tim Burstall, knew each other because Burstall’s wife Betty started the La Mama theatre, and Blundell was there from the start.

Blundell had a bit part as a journalist in 2000 Weeks.

The last three years have been flourishing ones for Carlton theatre, and years of learning for filmmakers.

Blundell was a large part of the hub of the La Mama company, the Aus­ tralian Performing Group, which is now a larger wheel at the nearby Pram Factory. Burstall made Stork and thereby a reputation for himself as a successful director. Whatever money Blundell made came from act­ ing in Crawford Productions like Homicide and Division 4, and doing tv commercials. He earned $40 a week for four years but he’s not bitter: “Without Crawfords’ I’d’ve been able to do nothing at La Mama.”

Now he is bitter about the APG, but that’s another story. * * * “ Burstall talked to me and Bruce [Spence/Stork ] at the Pram Factory orte day, about his next film ideas. I didn’t see him for a while after that, then I chatted to him at St John Reed’s party for Germaine Greer about a script he had, called Alvin Purple. The production com­ pany wanted Paul Hogan to play the lead, but Burstall thought he was too larrikin . , . I was on the short list.

I went to see him about a month later about David Williamson’s film — ten­ tatively titled Campus — and he asked me to do Alvin Purple. I agreed without even reading the script . . . anything to get away from the APG’s heavy political shit. “ I took the script home and read it. I had a few arguments with Kerry about the sexism in the thing, which I rationalised by saying we could change it when it came to filming . . . it’s still sexist I suppose, all sex films are.

“Then Burstall did a second draft. Originally it was scripted by Alan Hopgood for a tv series subti­ tled “The Story of a Reluctant Stud” .

Burstall changed Alvin’s character, and he turned McBurney, the mad psychiatrist who wasn’t mad in Hopgood’s script, into a Svengali figure. “ As it turns out Alvin Purple rips off just about every successful film in the last ten years, from The Decameron to The Graduate and Stork . . . it’s a commercial film to pay for the serious ones like William­ son’s.” * * * As Blundell told it, Alvin Pur­ ple is a straight sex comedy. Straight as in male-dominant-hetero.

Alvin is a guy who attracts women — in fact, the classic myth — every woman wants to fuck with him.

Alvin can get lots of partners but he can’t get a job, until his mate Spike gets into the water-bed business, and hires Alvin to instal them. This pro­ vides a series of farcical romps with a series of archetypical women in the course of which Alvin punctures a bed with his spurs. (“Christ it was cold,” says Blundell.)

Last of his water-bed lovers is a female impersonator, and the predict­ able trauma of discovery in the bed­ room leads Alvin to seek psychiatric aid.

Enter McBurney, the mad psy­ chiatrist who wasn’t mad in Hopgood’s original script. McBurney re­ fers Alvin to a woman shrink, who prescribes running around the block a lot, and cold showers.

Alvin obliges, but the cure fails. The girl in the next door flat (Jackie Weaver) comes in to borrow some sugar, and seduces the irresistible hero.

Re-enter the woman shrink who affects a cure of some sort on ac­ count of he can’t oblige her, so he’s sent back to McBurney.

McBurney sees a solution to another problem — the women with esoteric sexual fantasies who seek his advice — in setting Alvin up as a oneman sex clinic. Once again we see Alvin perform, in a series of Balconystyle scenes, as a male whore. * * * “ After I’d read the script, for weeks I wandered round wondering, ‘What do you do if you get an erection? Do you dip it in a bucket of cold water; do you go away and wank off?’ I thought, ‘Well, if you get it on and there’s a buzz between you, you just . . . put it in’ . . . but then I thought,‘That’s not profession­ al.’ “ I thought I’d practise, by going round the house naked, and I did that fop a week or two. But as it turned out, I didn’t ever really get an erection. The crew told me after they were really disappointed. They’d been looking for it all through, asking ‘will it be this one?’ and ‘how about this time?’, but nothing much hap­ pened. It was pretty dull . .. (pause) . . . no it wasn’t.” “ You sometimes say the same lines, playing the same action, 40 or 50 times a day. That’s certainly one of the mitigating factors. “ And there’s the woman in­ volved. You don’t know if she might think you’re, you know, SHIT. Who are you to assume someone else finds you attractive? “ Not to say there weren’t any times of real sexual involvement, there were for me . . . I don’t know about the women.

“Tim would nearly always let the camera linger on after a scene was supposed to end before yelling “Take” , and that was when it was hardest. You’d be lying there in the middle of a simulated fuck, then suddenly you’re standing up shaking hands with each other and saying what all professional actors say after working together, ‘Thanks very much, nice working with you.’

“There’s one really heavy sex scene, with Debbie (Nankervis), shot from our shoulders up, with her lying over me. They’re supposed to be really fucked, but she convinces him— ‘C’mon, we’re having another one’ — so while this is going on I could hear the crew going — [makes suppressedlaughter noises] — and I didn’t know whether it was because the scene wasn’t working for some reasons, or whether I was getting an erection.

Then they just broke-up — it really corpsed them. So they explained then — as the scene had progressed, the sheets had sort of slid down my thigh, bringing my dick round right into the lens so it took up about half the frame, right up out of focus head-on, like a great big eye staring at the camera . . .

“It’s pretty weird really, getting into a simulated fuck with someone having only met them half an hour ago. “ You’re very sexually aware of the other people, it’s silly to pretend you’re not. That’s what professional acting’s all about. It’s very frustra­ ting really, when you think about it.

I think what helped me [suppress sex­ ual reactions] was the absurdity of it happening, given the surroundings.

the open palm in the velvet glove Weaned in the hurly burly of the Carlton market place, rough riding two-fisted Mark Rubbo of Professor Longhairs has joined with Gregory Young — Record Collector and silky-fingered doyen of the South Yarra drawingroom set with a view to monopolizing the entire eastern suburban record market.

A Noel Cowardesque opening with a giant sausage roll is planned for last week at the new premises: The Record Collector 710 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn.

“The rehearsal week was just learning the script with all the actors in Burstall’s front room, but the first week we did all the clinic scenes, which comes about two-thirds of the way through the film. This was shot in the Warehouse Gallery in Fitzroy, which was fantastically done up for the sequence. It was a good one to start with because it’s very comic, easy acting. It gave us time to weld the crew, getting used to being naked with a bunch of sniggering adoles­ cents around the cameras and lights.

“The crew called the film 2000 Wanks. " * * * One of Alvin’s clients, when McBurney the shrink has set him up in the sex clinic, is the woman shrink. She twigs to what’s happening and threatens to blackmail Alvin and McB unless she gets the services Alvin offers. She does, and proceeds to monopolise them till Alvin’s re­ fusal moves her to dob the pair of them in to the Vice Squad. There follows a farce-in-the-court scene, with Noel Ferrieras the judge. McBur­ ney, played by George Whaley, is re­ vealed as a maker of blue movies which he did by filming Alvin’s ses­ sions with the women patients. Three attendants (played by representatives of Alvin Purple's production compa­ ny) bring a projector into the court and the film becomes a porno movie within a porno movie by featuring 16mm versions of scenes already seen.

All this moves Alvin’s only virginal woman-friend (the girl next door) to flee the court and join a monastery, where Alvin eventually ends up playing a Decameron finale.

But not before a bit of Bullitt.

As he runs from the court house to chase his traumatised girl­ friend Alvin is mobbed by new ad­ mirers who’ve read the court reports, and by husbands and lovers who’ve discovered how offended they are.

A major chase sequence ensues during which Blundell was faced with action he gladly passed on to stuntmen * * * What were the most memorable o f the sex clinic scenes you shot in the warhouse? “ Debbie Nankervis’s punch.

“There are some things good actors can do, like falling off bikes and ladders which I had to do takeafter-take, but there are a fair few physical stunts that must be for real. “ She plays a client, and she comes along to Alvin. His job is to get her to the stage where she wants to be raped, a common sequence in blue movies and it is in fact one of the porno movies in the court scene.

So he seduces her just halfway, then walks away, and she starts pleading — [falls on his knees and yells ‘Fuck me! Fuck me!' like Debbie Nanker­ vis did in the film ] — and she’s a big fucking girl!”

Blundell is just short of average height, many of the women in the film are taller. Sometimes he stood on a stool for whole scenes. “ It’s so good, each day you’d come up with actors who are so great there’d be sparks flying be­ tween you.” * * * Earlier in our conversations, in the context o f his frustration with the live theatre at the APG/Pram Factory: “ I’m fucked if I’m going to re­ hearse a show for four weeks with a director who’s never directed and actors half-pissed or half-stoned . . .

Actors more concerned with personal politics, who’s up who . . . And scripts still being written as the show goes on.” * * * The chase sequence: “ Alvin’s being chased in cars, planes and on foot. They had two stuntmen from Crawfords to do the car scenes. “ So he gets way down the road and drives behind a shed in the country which turns out to be a shed full of paratroops . . . you know, somehow we find ourselves at Pakenham. It cuts to me walking at the end of a line of these guys, in full jumping gear. “ We went up three or four times, in a four-seater Cessna I think it was. They’d taken the back seats out and there were three guys crouched behind the front seats and there’s this great big hole in the wall you know? They’d made a space as wide as from you to me — [gestures at the four feet space] — and we’re sit­ ting there and they all jump and then I’m kneeling on the floor right across this hole arguing, pleading with this guy not to make me, and the plane’s lurching all over .. . “ A stunt jumper who once fell free-fall to 160 feet when his ‘chute wouldn’t open did the actual jump.

They had a camera in a second plane and there was a cameraman shooting from inside the plane, rolling round the floor with a rope tied around his chest. They didn’t give me a rope!

Alvin couldn’t have a rope, so they said if I fell they could jump with me and pull my cord for me. “ I knew how to do it and by the end of the day I could just about take it seriously, the idea of jumping.” * * * Blundell’s inclined to be hyster­ ical about things like jumping from aeroplanes.

Long-time friend and associate Jon Hawkes recalls a Blundell story;

TO JO IN THE NEW FILMMAKERS?

All you need is Or, faith.

EIGHT INTERVIEWS mi “ We all went down to Breamlea for what was meant to be a period of intense rehearsal. As that it was dis­ astrous; most of us wanted to go surfing every day. Blundell, the city boy, couldn’t handle being so far away from a hospital.. . complained that he couldn’t sleep easy without the sweet lullaby of sirens in his ears.

He hated the sun and the sand, so he spent the time sitting at a card table in his tent with a knotted handker­ chief on his head, typing. “ He takes cliches, even ones about himself, and exaggerates them.

So he glories in being a hypochon-

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driac. On his world tour he couldn’t handle relating to people who couldn’t speak English so he didn’t go to Europe . . . he played the hick to the hilt.”

Street bridge. Next take was Blundell once again in full gear, emerging out­ raged from the murky shallows.

Graeme Blundell is a dedicated actor.

The finale of the chase calls for Alvin’s forced jump to land him in the Yarra River, drifting none-tooserenely downward against a back­ drop of Melbourne’s city skyline.

To make this scene, a second stuntman ran along the Yarra bank near Princes Bridge, heading upstream, with a parachute behind him, being pulled by a speedboat. The para­ chute filled with air and the forward thrust of the boat lifted him and chute skywards. They did six takes.

One attempt produced lift-off, but the stuntman couldn’t unhook the rope, so he came down again with bleeding hands from grappling with the hook and from trying to pull him­ self along the rope. Last take he got lift-off and unhooked, but only after being dragged many yards through water over his head. Once unhooked, he drifted 150 feet down, right on target, into the Yarra near the Swan

He uses theword“professional” a lot, and enjoyed making Alvin Purple because he thought most of the crew, actors included, were very professional, and very good.

The film’s schedule was for Blundell, a week’s rehearsal and seven weeks filming, six days a week with make-up call at 6 - 6.30 am and days of 12 - 14 hours, and once a 16 hour day in heavy rain. But, as Blundell says, “ Everyone’s being paid a lot of money to exercise self-control.”

Everyone including the crew.

Of the demands on himself, Blundell says: “ You’ve got to fight your own constant battle with the technology really. You might have four or five marks on the floor for focus, and lights, and — [points to four spots on the floor and flashes inquisitive looks at imaginary technicians to confirm he's got the scene's movements right]

— ‘sound level up’ . . . and you do it and make sure it works for you too.

And maybe it’ll all go through and you think, ‘Great. Great. It’s right,’ and then the camera says the boom came into the frame and we’ll have to do it again, or the soundman got a car going past. “ You can’t change it once it’s been worked out that way, you can’t improvise here.. . I’m interested to see if the performance has that sort of life.”

Blundell would describe himself as a professional comic actor, and so do his friends. Jon Hawkes’s testi­ mony reads like this: “ For the two years that I worked with him he was always fal­ ling over . . . at least once an hour.

He’s one of the great trippers —literalBlundell himself says, after re­ counting his major roles on stage and screen: All these were the funny, cheeky, smart-arse colorful ex-jockey character . . . loud-mouth, tough,

but rather charming. Along with the innocent roles that I usually play.

“People like these characters . .. they like to watch the hapless meandering of these urban figures .. .”

Alvin Purple is being made by Hexagon Films, a production com­ pany consisting half of Burstall, half Village-Roadshow, a distribution-ex­ hibition combine. It is due for release in October. It had a budget of $180,000, which is more than twice what Stork cost Burstall ($80,000, and it’s made it back after just over a year), but says Blundell, expenses and minimum wages for everybody involved have gone up to the point where “professional directors argue you can only make a film that’ll work with $200,000.”

Blundell himself made big wages as the star of the film (all the crew and most of the actors were on a fixed fee), although he adds that on an hourly basis, he probably eamt less than $10 an hour.

He will get a share of profits on his next film if Alvin is the box-office success it is tailored to be.

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June 1973

Page 7

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Alan Finney, A1 to his mates, is 28. He started in film as a wheel in the Melbourne University Film Soci­ ety (MUFS), editing journals like Annotations 1967 which ran trans­ lations of Cahiers du Cinema features.

Cahiers was the launch for the great French critics-turned-directors. At Melbourne University in the early 60’s it was understood to be one half of a great debate, the other half being the English school represented by Sight and Sound. MUFS buffs fol­ lowed the debate from thousands of miles away, and some even wrote to the great directors or visited them in France. A1 wrote to Jerry Lewis and got a job as an usher.

I talked with Al, firstly over lunch at a restaurant called The Latin which has waiters in bow ties and cummerbunds, and later in an office at his workplace — VillageRoadshow, in Richmond. “ I left home just before my twenty-first birthday. I was doing third year law and I needed a job. In my first two years at uni I also needed a job but I fell foul of a pas­ sion for film which manifested itself in writing for Farrago and in MUFS, so I asked Maurie Byrne who was operating the Century theatre for a job. He gave me a job as an usher, for six dollars a week, two nights. I paid four dollars twenty rent which left one dollar eighty for living. I wore my father’s dinner suit to work. “ Then I spent eight months at Altona High School while I was doing my articles subjects, and there I met Alan Simpson who was a teacher. He left, after I left, but he was using film in his teaching. He’d sfrow films to students “ He left the department and joined this company and asked me to do study guides, on films for schools. “ I was still an usher at a dollar fifty, so I was brought in here on the pretext of starting a iibrary — [pulls out a copy of The New York Times] — we get this, Sight and Sound, Films and Filming, the LA Times, Box Office . . . I was to catalogue and file reviews, ads, gen­ eral film information.

I asked him how he came to be in this office — “it belongs to Kevin Taylor, general manager of Village-Roadshow, and he’s inter­ state” — and how come he was called Director of Production in the Australian Area of Roadshow Inter­ ests. “ I was given a title instead of a salary increase.” *

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At this point, about one third through a 26 oz bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label pn top of the lunch wine, Finney plugged him­ self in to one of three phones and pushed several stapled, duplicated sales reports across the table. They were for cinemas distributed to by Roadshow, all over the country . Some of the cinemas are owned by Village, some by one or other of the big two distributors, Greater Union and Hoyts. Finney deplores the fact that distributors in this country are also the exhibitors, that is, they own the cinemas and the supply, but that’s what Village-Roadshow does too — to compete.

The figures on the sales reports showed What's Up Doc? to be the company’s major hit currently, re­ turning them as distributors 68 cents from each dollar paid at the box office. That was Doc's percentage for this week, its cumulative figure was 62 cents per dollar, out of a gross of $180,000 a week. Another big hit is Deliverance which is doing better per head of population business here than it did in America.

Al tells the caller he would have no hope trying the AFDC (Australian Film Development Cor­ poration), or Gill. It seems the caller is a local director with a script he wants a couple of hundred grand for.

The conversation has taken off on a wide sidetrack. Now Al’s on the phone to check with someone higher up whether it’s politic for him to talk to the man in Sydney about David’s film. “ I have,” he’s saying, “ the ut­ most trust in the sincerity and vigor o f our ideals. I don’t want to get the sack.”

- P.F.

/W 5

Martha Kay and Chris Tillam live together in a large ramshackle house in Glebe. Opposite the over­ grown front garden is a factory wall, across a narrow street. On summer nights they used to screen movies on that wail. 30 to 40 freaks would lie on the grass, oblivious of the occasional passing traffic to watch films like Godard’s Breathless.

Martha is of US origin (east coast), vitally involved in the women’s movement, and mother of two chil­ dren. Chris was involved in setting up the Lawson Film School this summer, he is now paid by the Sydney Film­ makers Co-op, along with John Phillips, to handle the rentals, distri­ bution and promotion of co-op films.

When we arrived at their house, Martha was alone with her new baby. “ The so-called alternative is very much the same — it’s romantic; the male ego, one person on top — very individualistic.” She has that east coast directness. “ Films don’t have to be expen­ sive — Paul Winkler wastes no film and two he has made —Neurosis and Scars — are brilliant films. “ I suppose the fundamental dif­ ference between established filmmaking and radical film is between individualism and working as a collec­ tive, and that’s not happening much here [at the Co-op]. “ On the whole the values ex­ pressed in the films they [the Co-op members] make are just amextension of bourgeois art. They are not made to communicate to people without specialized knowledge. A lot of ex­ perimental techniques are just tech­ niques, they don’t communicate any­ thing. “ But Cuban films for example are full of experimental techniques — but they communicate. There is very little of this here, though it’s getting together. “ In Melbourne there’s a group and in Adelaide some people got to­ gether to make a film about BHP — with BHP money.Sft. was meant to be about how good BHP were for recy­ cling tin cans, but they turned it into an anti-BHP film. “ All over the world really imag­ inative political films are being made but it doesn’t touch us here. “ All the co-op men played football together at those boys’ schools.”

Chris Tillam came home at this point and the interview moved to the front room, a room with bare floor­ boards, a small desk piled high with books and papers, a big double bed under the window, and a small fire to ward off the nippy night air.

Chris: Of course we’re all a lot of individualists, some even consider themselves auteurs, but there are some people working towards group stuff. For example, the Nimbin film.

There are people from all over the country working on that. There are lots of problems with people’s egos, they’re not accustomed to working in groups. It is a group dedicated to no proposition other than that group film-making is possible. *

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How do you feel about govern­ ment money?

Chris: A lot of people, includ­ ing me, think money should just be for experimental films. Some argue that if you’ve got a grant and you’re an experimental filmmaker you don’t have to put yourself as much on the line.

Experimental?

Chris: It’s hard. I suppose it’s changing the image that you would •normally get through photography.

But that’s not a good definition. Take Dalmas for example — that’s not technically experimental . . . but you never- know what’s happening. It could mean the places where it’s most appropriate to show your films.

Martha: Experimental film­ makers are into self-expression rather than communication.

Chris: Bullshit.

Are there many women in the Co-op?

Martha: No; women don’t call themselves filmmakers. “ I am a film­ maker,” is like saying, “ I am an artist.”

If you make something your­ self you should be aware of what yourself really is — a product of all the things and people around you.

Chris: People are sometimes ex­ perimental by necessity.

So much of the money from grants goes to the processing labora­ tories — Kodak, Polaroid — and so little to the filmmaker. Your real raw material may not be “perceived reality” but instead, pieces of film to be manipulated, played with, painted on, scratched, slowed down, speeded up, frozen, repeated. This is where a lot of people’s heads are at. You can’t use the labs for this. *

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Can filmmakers live o ff their work? .

Chris: The only quote experi­ mental unquote filmmakers who live off it are the Cantrills. A lot exist from hand to mouth. Some earn lots of money when they need to by being experts at one aspect of film. We get travel grants but they won’t let you live off a grant. There are a number of avenues available —more tertiary film courses, so you can teach part-time and in schools.

And people must get used to paying to see films. Our rates are low compared to the US — 50c as against $1 a minute —yet our costs are much higher, for film labs, stock . .. Rent­ als have to go up, that’s one thing.

As it is, no one can eat off their films.

What sort o f business is the Co-op doing?

Chris: Last financial year about four thousand dollars worth of busi­ ness. This year we’ll probably double that. Our stock increases by at least a couple of films a week.

How has film affec ted your life ?

Martha: I don’t notice the cam­ era much any more . . . it’s always there. We filmed each other fucking, freaking out, and having the baby.

Chris: It’s strange. We were really hassled, and then the baby was coming; neither of us were really pre­ pared for the baby, but we were both really interested in filming the birth . . .

“ It’s not really a school — no blackboard-type things — you make films in your own time. There’s a small degree of interference, natural­ ly, because its’ government money and they want a product to show around. “ It’s the most expensive course We talked with David Elfick at other than pilot training in the the Metro Manly Cinema, now named the Manly Silverscreen by decision of country. “ Sure it’s elitist—completely — the group of . . . What are they? and I’m not complaining. Fuck, as a ‘They’ are renting the cinema and result, there are some really high they call it “ the only commercial cin­ ema run by filmmakers.” quality films being made.

David is an ex-editor of Go-Set, “ There is an executive director, Storrey Walton, but he’s come down founder of Tracks, producer of Morn­ with ulcers. There have been various ing Of The Earth, and moving spirit people employed at various times and behind the Silverscreen. lots of people come in and talk. It’s “ It’s time for Australian film­ not really a teaching situation, more makers to have a cinema to work learning by association. out of. And for Australian filmmakers Are people satisfied here? “ One has already left —he felt where better than Manly Beach?

What about the Co-op's new there was an onus on him to produce theatre? something. He felt very pressured. “ The Film Co-op will never get The deadline approached and he had their trip together. We can make it no ideas that he wanted to work with. work because we work. We started He couldn’t keep turning out films. “ This is the first year it’s been this place with three hundred dollars, on and it will probably be the last. they’re starting with sixteen thou­ The difference will be that the next sand. I’m not against the Co-op, time it will be a three year course I think it’s great, but I’ve been to and the people will be younger. This meetings where they’ve spent three is a one-year course, it’s called the hours debating the coffee price. Even Interim Training Scheme. The people if they did decide I can’t see anyone are between 21 and 24 and as I said getting together to make i t . ..

“Peter Troy holds it together they’ve all made films.

“The scheme is designed to per­ here [at the Silverscreen] . . . he’s a fect the techniques of the people qualified accountant. If we had six­ here . . . I just think it’s really good teen thousand we could have two having the opportunity to work ideas nights a week Film Co-op screenings out at leisure. I think it’s great . . . I and whatever else they wanted. With that kind of money we could have don’t mind making films. “ At the moment the three year a projectionist on call all the time. course is scheduled to start in 1975 at The cinema is available now to any­ Macquarie University. But it may one wanting to look at rushes.

Smart St. Film s.. .

Have you been getting any gov­ start next year.

Hayden Keenan (b. 1951) and Want to talk about the Co-op? ernment money?

Esben Storm (b. 1950) live and work “ Yes, the people here now have “ We want the new Co-op space out of a small decrepit house in to be a filmmakers centre — where three films in production. The South Darlinghurst. They have been work­ something will be happening all the Australian film is a commissioned ing together since their final year at time — workshops, screenings, lots one. We’re doing it with sixteen University High School in Melbourne. of things. thousand from the South Austra­ After stints at Swinburne Tech and “ Issues are decided by the lian Film Corporation. at the Commonwealth Film Unit group and there’s no short way * * * they set up Smart St. Films — a no­ around that. We have had some mam­ “ One reason I find it hard to money production company. They moth meetings but what other way come to terms with the Co-op is that have a feature entitled 27A due out is there. the only thing needed to make films in six weeks. “ Our new cinema may bring is to find talented reliable guys who some of the independent filmmakers can do things to a budget. Guys who How did you get the money in. With a ritzy cinema they can have can get stoned and use the creative together to make 27A? the sort of screenings they want and flash that they get from stoned per­ Hayden: With great difficulty. there’s still the free environment for ceptual changes without finding that It has a fifty thousand dollar budget. those who want that.

-they have left the eighty-five filter On our tenth application for a grant “The 16 thousand grant is to off five rolls of film and blown five ; we finally got some money — a help us get the theatre going, to im­ thousand dollars. quarter of the budget from the Inter­ prove our distribution facilities, for “ If you see films like Perfor­ im Council. We applied to the AFDC workshops for schools, all sorts of mance or Walkabout you can see that but they knocked us back for not things. We’ll be starting workshops they’re made by young head guys but being commercial enough. at weekends, and ones for schools they’re right-on as films.

We decided it would be better during the weekend too.” “ You can’t deny that a large to get private investment, so we’ve large part of filmmaking is a tech­ * * * got together a large syndicate, no nology: I admire the ability to get “ I was Co-op manager from your ideas filtered through the tech­ individual has more than a thousand dollars invested. If this one does well, June 1970 until last December when nique. we have their assurance that they’ll I came here . . . to get a new manager “Then there’s the George invest in the next, which we hope to we adopted a typical co-op system Greenow film that we’ve just finished that failed completely.

We adver­ start shooting in November. shooting. It’s called The More The 27A is about a guy in Queens­ tised for a manager and then had a Power Grinds Over Your Head The huge meeting to which all members land who was held under Act 27 A — Less That Lands On Top O f You it was an act that allowed the gov­ and applicants came. The idea was — we got twenty five thousand for that ¿1 the applicants could tell us ernment to commit people without that from the AFDC. And we got trial to mental asylums for an indef­ what they were about and then we’d thirty thousand from them for Paul elect one of them.

We ended up inite period. Since the guy kicked up a fuss the law has been revoked in electing Tony Horler, but he didn’t Witzig’s latest film. “ Peter’s [Weir’s] film, The Cars Queensland. But every state, every 'fit in. I don’t think he realized about country has similar laws, so it should the letter addressing and the account- That Ate Paris will probably be the first film shown at the Opera House and stuff like that. do well overseas.

“Then there was a very ugly Cinema. Peter has got the cinema Esben: The political implica­ tions of the film are really secondary scene, a purge. Tony had to face a booked, and we may open there with Greenow’s film, too. to the psychological ones. The film meeting and account for everything.

What do you think o f the films It was awful. is about people being caught inside “ Anyway now there are three— being made in Australia now? themselves. “ It’s a real bummer when some­ Hayden: Given the problems of Chris Tillam and John Phillips han­ one spends two hundred thousand having to shoot a film this size in dle distribution and promotion. Ron dollars making a ‘socially relevant’ three weeks — compared to, say, Owen looks after the theatre, and film and no one goes to see it. Aus­ R yan's Daugh ter which had a shooting they each get $50 a week. tralia produces some of the best Six months ago the Co-op was schedule of fifty-three weeks — there surfing movies in the world. We are always compromises. Ideas be­ up in arms about the administration come words and then become images. o f grants. Apart from a change in should find our own trips, not be obsessed by European forms. We’ll Directing is a process of slowing the government, what's happened to have to hang around hundreds of cool it? compromises down. years before we have the traditions to “ Well, they used an old trick. * * * do them properly.

The original idea is always trans­ Out of our own ranks they employed “ The spectrum of underground cended. The director should always one of us. They appointed Richard filmmakers is just like the spectrum Brennan director of the Film Insti­ be open to new ideas —he takes them of any group of filmmakers — five and organizes them into a visual thing. tute. Richard’s a real stirrer — they I find our position a really good think he’s working for them but he’s per cent are good and ninety-five per one. We can’t be tagged. We have a really working for us. So at the cent are bad . . . yet they all justify film in the Benson and Hedges moment we have direct access. Be­ what they’re doing by saying, ‘You’re too commercial, you just haven’t award finals this year. It’s just some­ fore Richard there was a complete reached our cosmic consciousness.’ communication breakdown — it was one shitting into a camera and talk­ them and us.

—J. H. - J . H. ing about art.

Esben: It will be talked about in terms of Russian cinematic phi­ losophy . . . the whole thing of judging one film better than another is farcical anyway.

We used a complete feature­ sized crew — for just an arse — it’s a ‘play on film’ I suppose. The credits take longer than the action.

J. H.

David Elfick

Sm art Street

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Phil Noyce We talked with Phil Noyce on the Film School campus (6th floor of an office block in Chatswood, Syd­ ney). Phil is one of twelve students at the school. In accepting the place, he had to resign his job as the mana­ ger of the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op.

All twelve students had made films before, some in the industry, some outside it. Phil’s been outside. .. “ While we’re here we get $58 a week tax free, plus all cinema tickets refunded, plus twelve thou­ sand per person a year to make three films with.

We m ail orders anywhere!

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The Digger

June 1973

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The Digger

June 1973

For those who don't read newspapers;

Showbiz Brigitte Bardot thinks Last Tango in Paris is a disgrace to the film industry and says nothing would indhce her to see it. “ I find this wave of eroticism in movies quite grotesque” . . . The girl whose face appears on America’s Ivory soap wrappers — “ 99.9 per cent pure” — has upset its manufacturers by appearing in a film which shows her getting it on with four athletes while swinging from a trapeze 1 .. The film Tarzan, Lex Barker, died in New York aged 53 and Merian C. Cooper, creator of King Kong died in San Diego aged 78 . . . Electronics millionaire and president of the Bible Voice Inc. publishing company, George Otis, who lives in Clark Gable’s Hollywood mansion, is in Australia at the invitation of the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship.

“Churchianity may be a bore — but Jesus is excitement,” he says. “ Jesus has added another dimension to my life — it has also made me more successful in business” . . . A Sydney catholic church held a football mass in which altar boys wore football shorts and jumpers.

Aborigines Australia’s first Aboriginal Land Rights Conference is planned to take place in Darwin in June this year, ac­ cording to Gerry Bostock, a 30 year old descendant of the Bandjalang tribe. “ It’s taken nearly two years for news of the conference to reach all the black people by word of mouth,” says Gerry. “It will be the first time tribal, detribalized and urban blacks have sat down to formulate their own policy without interference from the government or the churches.”

In fact, the World Council o f Churches has provided $11,449 to bring people to the conference from the remote sections of Australia (the Kimberleys, the Centre, Arnhem Land, Northern Queensland and the Torres Strait Islands).

Conference organisers are Syd­ ney-based: Chicka Dixon, Faith Bandler, Billie Craigie, Bobbi Sykes, Frank Engle (of the World Council of Churches) and Martin Tuck (of the Quakers). The 26 unions have prom­ ised to sponsor ten Aboriginal dele' gates from Victoria.

The Appeal handout says, “It will be of great value for these people to sit down and talk to their broth­ ers.” If Bobbi Sykes has anything to ' do with it, that should read “broth­ ers and sisters”.

Contributions and enquiries should be directed to Mr Chicka Dixon, 9/188 Campbell Street, Darlinghurst NSW 2010. Telephone: 334588.

The Right to be Neurotic

Sounds a lot like the line the US army handed out when it tried to explain away the deaths of hundreds of sheep near an army base in Utah, before admitting they had been killed by nerve gas.

China's Dope Problem In an article called How the People’s Republic o f China solved Their Drug Abuse Problem by Dr. Paul Lowinger of the Department of Psychiatry at the Wayne State University Detroit, Michegan, says that “a severe narcotics addiction problem in China, similar to the present problem in the United States, was overcome a few years after the revolution in 1949.”

Apparently the new ideology diverted potential new addicts, and old addicts were cured at meetings denouncing opium addiction as anti-social, unhealthy and a capita­ listic activity, and were helped along with medial care either at home or in hospital. “ Addicts were seen not as criminals but as having a medical problem for which society as a whole was responsible. The average cure was 12 days.”

Page 9

ZAPPA TALKS MOVIES 200 Motels and die current one This interview took place in a room at The Royal Garden ’Hotel, London, late last year, in between a few phone calls and knocks on the door. Sometimes Frank’s answers come out like the computerised language of his Press kit and sometimes, folks, he seems almost human. Either way, all those figures are in his head.

Zappa talks to Ian Pollack -- mostly about Zappa’s film 200 Motels, a film Pollack describes as “a zany sound/visual barrage which comes at you with the speed of light shows and the fragments of dreams.”

Zappa and the Mothers arrive in Australia on June 21st — so far there are no plans to show 200 Motels in this country, but it’ll come folks, it’ll come.

I saw the movie about two weeks link-up with what we’re seeing and ago. I need to see it a few more hearing now from you?

I like to join all the projects times.

Well,- that’s a good attitude to together by some sort of thread of take because some people make their continuity, because that’s the way judgments on one screening which I life is you know one thing turns into think is unfortunate because I think something else. There is a continuity there’s a lot in there. through all the albums and there are I heard that it’s already done elements in the ‘Uncle Meat’ footage pretty well in the States. sitting in the basement that are direct It’s done fantastic in the States references to what’s already in ‘200 and is continuing to do so. They did Motels’, so if ‘Uncle Meat’ comes out a 14,000 dollar gross in three days in three or four years from now, when I a 500 seat theatre in New York, finally get the money to finish that 10,600 for three days in a 3000 seat one off, you’ll flash on things in theatre in Toronto, and the places there. lik e drinking the potion and it’s been running for the longest turning into a monster. time, in Boston and Los Angeles, the Does that mean we needed to see Rips off business has improved each week. It’s ‘Uncle Meat’ before seeing ‘200 Sections of a social studies one of the top three selling films over Motels’? textbook used by West Australian there.

It would have been better, but it How long was it originally? primary schoolchildren will be might not be so bad to see it deleted at the complaint of an elder 120 minutes. It’s been cut down afterwards.

So have we lost a link in the of the Mowanjum Mission near to 98.

That’s things you wanted to cut chain?

Derby, because they show sacred I don’t think most people would Aboriginal symbols | . I A building in or had to cut? the Sydney suburb of Redfern which Oh I cut them, I cut them out to know the difference, or even care the Foundation for Aboriginal make it play faster, keep the tempo. about that link, because at the point Is this only the second movie where they see ‘200 Motels’, the Affairs was negotiating to buy from the Royal Antediluvian Order of you’ve made including ‘Uncle Meat’? visual impact of it is the weirdest It might as well be the first, thing that happens first of all, Buffaloes has been privately sold to John Fairfax and Sons. A Fairfax because it’s an entirely different because it’s a different looking subsidiary, Sungravure, owns -the technique. It was made on video and movie. I remember the first time I buildings on either side of the ‘Uncle Meat’ is just straight saw the finished film in color because we’d been working ,on a black and building the Foundation hoped to photography.

What happened to ‘Uncle Meat?’ white work print all along. I sat turn into Australia’s first licensed It’S still in my basement — fifty there, I didn’t even listen to it. I just Aboriginal Club.

Negotiations between the Foundation and the minutes rough cut of it — it’s not looked at it — I just couldn’t believe Buffaloes began some months ago completely shot yet. It has some what it looked like on the screen, and it is believed that a deposit has music in it already and sortie and I saw it about four or five times already been paid. The federal animation has been done for it — I after that.

Well, I think you really need to government which had agreed to did it — it’s like miniatures.

Gal Shenkel did the animation in see it lots of times. subsidise the purchase may now But I mean 4 knew what was in compulsorily acquire it over ‘200 Motels’ — how do you work with him on it? the movie, and t^hen I saw it I was Fairfax’s head.

Well, they had the musical track just seeing it fori the first time, I Al Northern Territory magistrate has j renewed an Arnhem Land with! all the dialbgue built in to work couldn’t believe ft. And so far as a store-keeper’s liquor licence despite from, so step one was to have the conceptual link with the rest of protests from the Aboriginal track read, which means a guy sits what’s happening, I don’t think that residents of the nearby Oenpellie down with a sound reader which if you go to see it once, you’re even Mission. The magistrate Donald works out how many frames it takes gonna know or care what came Miles, rejected as inadequate, a person to say something, and then before it. Most of the kids that go to evidence that the store’s licence had we had a meeting to discuss how I ,see it will just take it as something to caused dislocation and disturbance of wanted it visualised, and I suggested look at, and if they go back and see the Oenpellie community. Alex certain things to stick j in it which I it a couple more times, maybe then Nayiliuil, an Oenpellie teaching thought would be humorous, like the they’ll look at it more. assistant, said that up to 100 people ghost coming through. I trust Presumably you’ve got the next would walk to the store on Saturdays Calvin’s imagination ;to convert movie in your head already. from the mission to buy beer and anything I would do in terms of I’ve got it better than in my head, some men prostituted their wives t o 1 music, he will convert it into a I’ve got it on paper. (At this point he get more drinking money. The picture which I will identify with. showed me the script of ‘Billy The magistrate thought however, that to Does ‘Uncle Meat’ have any Mountain’, a fairy tale about a saddle the licensing applicant with “ a social role is asking too much” and • renewed the licence anyway.

Under a proposed mental health bill in British Columbia, Canada, police would be legally entitled to go into people’s homes, on the evidence Gone Mad of a neighbour or anyone else, and drag residents out to the local mental Two British businessmen are hospital for a mental examination. planning to sell bits of the white The Mental Patients’ Rights cliffs of Dover to Americans , . . . Committee, a radical group of Ansett have launched a touring bus ex-mental patients, promptly went with a television set and cocktail out demonstrating against the clause lounge . . . Warner Brothers are in the bill. They say a person’s right planning to make a film about a to be weird or neurotic is basic to much-publicised New York Bank civil liberties, and that the admission robbery last year by a young man of hearsay i evidence in the trying to get some money to finance incarceration of a person in a mental a sex change for his boyfriend. The hospital is iniquitous and a long step studio also plans to make a film backwards. called Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack which it describes as “a Killed by Lightning? contemporary story set in Brooklyn The Canadian Department of and involves three teenagers and their National Defense has admitted it has p r o b l e m s with p a r en t al been running open-air tests of misunderstanding” . . . An English chemical-biological materials, but village is considering putting up refuses to say exactly where, and cardboard copies of policemen in the adds that “no biological materials main street to deter speeding harmful to man have been released motorists . . . Four American golfers anywhere in Canada since the early made a pact that when they died 1950s.” their ashes would be sprinkled on the This statement is one that would par three Devil’s Own fifteenth hole have to be taken on faith rather than of the Cincinnati Country Club as gospel in view of the allegations course. The ashes of the first are made in the New York Times by already out there but the widow of Seymour Hersh (whp revealed the the second is refusing to allow her My Lai massacre), and in a new book husband to be tossed among the called The Dragon Goes North; putters . . . The Savoy Continental Chemical and Biological Weapons Dance Studio signed up a 58-year-old Testing in Alaska by Dr. Richard A. widow for a $90,000 course of Fineberg, that there are secret lessons that would have kept her laboratories and sites for these dancing three times a week until bio-chemical experiments in Alaska. 1990.

Another pointer to bio-chemical * * * experiments in the far north of the American continent was the myster­ Sources: ious death last year of 57 caribou Aust rali a: T he Adelaide found locked in a tight circle: Fish Advertiser, The Age, (Melbourne), and Game agents were at a loss to The Australian, The Canberra Times, explain the cause of death.

The Herald, (Melbourne), Nation Prompted by a letter to the Review, The Northern Territory Commanding Officer at Fort Greely News, The Rockhampton Morning three miles from the dead Caribou, Bulletin, The Sun (Melbourne), The . the Fish and Game Department Sunday Mirror (Sydney) The wrote back “the initial mystery Sun-Herald (Sydney) The Sydney surrounding the death of the caribou Morning Herald.

Overseas: Logos Montreal near Fort Greely has disappeared as more facts become available. We are Community Press, New Times now satisfied that the animals were (Arizona), Terminal City Express (Vancouver). killed by a bolt of lightning.”

mountain that walks across America, going on a vacation with his wife Ethel the Tree).

The success in the States will be pretty handy, won’t it? , It’s a pretty expensive movie — even with the success in the States they might still have to think about this. It’ll be between IVi and 5 million dollars to do this. ‘200 Motels’ was only 679,000 dollars — we came in 40,000 dollars under budget. We’re going to do that one in video too here.

The sound/visual barrage effect of the film was a bit lost a t the show I saw because of low volume.

It’s important that the film be shown with the sound at special volume, because when we made the soundtrack for it, it was transferred 2DB under the normal volume that it’s supposed to be, and so when the print goes into a theatre it’s accompanied with a notification that it’s supposed to be played 6DB above normal operating level.

Was the only stuff you did before ‘Uncle Meat’ homemovies?

I started in 1958 with home movies.

Did you use to take a camera round everywhere and just shoot everybody and the group? . . .

Yeah, I’d take one roll of film and shoot it six times and have it come out with the weirdest montages you ever saw! I love to edit. I like to edit tape and I like to edit film, and when I’m at home, if I’ve got no immediate project that I’m working on I’ll just put 16mm film on a rack and cut it up just because I like to see things turn into other things, and the same way with sound. Just stick things together and then you hear the relationship when it goes by — it’s like Christmas every time you hear another one of those edits going by.

What kind of set-up have you got at home for both music and films? ! Well I have a basement which contains a number of desks. I have one desk with an electric typewriter, and I have one desk with music writing equipment, and I got another desk with 16mm editing equipment, and I have four taperecorders, one professional two-track, one pro­ fessional four-track, a V4-track machine and a portable ...)

I just wander round the basement from desk to desk doing whatever I have to do on various projects.

You said on the sleeve notes that £0% of the music was composed on the road. How do you compose — guitar, piano?

No, sometimes I just sit down and write it, some of it was written on airplanes. I would say 5% was written on an airplane. I could look at the scores and tell you approximately which hotel each different section was written in.

In the film, Ringo (Larry The Dwarf, Zappa), sits round in the background with a tape recorder. Do

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you do that often?

I have carried a recorder before now, and they also carry recorders.

There’s also a scene where Ringo returns to his desk and starts writing it all down and making notes. Do you make notes all the time, or do you keep it all in your head until you’ve got time to do it all in one go?

No, I just keep it in my head.

That’s pretty much the way it is you store it up in your head, and when you have time to write it, you write it.

Certain paranoias form the basis of some of your material, like Penis Dimension. To what extent are these your own, those of the group, everybody’s? Are you worried about the size of your prick?

Well, I wouldn’t say so, no. I would say that there are . Certain aspects of the film that arfe-extracted from just the general atmosphere of this age, the whole rock ‘ri roll age, the whole scene of pop music. It’s not just the experience of the Mothers, a lot of the stuff about touring could apply to any group that’s had related experiences.

Did you get what you wanted from the film?

I would say that I like it, and I think it turned out good. But I would also say it’s just the beginning.

It’s just a sort of a demo for what can be done, because there’s a lot of pioneering work in that film.

I don’t think ‘200 Motels’ will be accepted on a wide scale at the moment, but I think a lot of people will be interested in a few years.

Well, I’ll tell you what happened at the press screens I went to in the U.S. The response — if you saw a film always in the presence of the press — it’s a bummer, it really is, and the comparison between the several press screenings I went to, even when it was well received, that’s nothing compared to when a normal, straight off-the-street audience goes in and sees it. I saw one of them, they fäll down, they crack up, they just don’t believe they’re seeing it.

The people that go and see it don’t have any critical judgements to make or any of that, \ they’re just an audience, they want to be entertained, and they want some­ thing to happen to them, and I mean they don’t believe that thing is happening on the screen. When Ringo says he wants me to fuck the girl with the harp, they go Whaaaaa! and it’s mindblowing from there on, they just don’t know what’s going to

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Page 10

The Digger

Junei 1973 dissertation on the absurd­ ities of the music industry melodrama.

The whole legend is unfolded on the inside of the album sleeves.

As far as the treatment goes, you're sort of on your own. # # *

Dimboola

By Helen Garner

REVIEWS Films

by Colin Talbot.

Thè latest heart-throb in the race for the best screen face is (this vyeek) Joe Dallesandro, Andy Warhol's latest — dare we say it — superstar. Joe is set up to be a sort of hippy Alain Delon ór a midnight Gary Coopér longhair cowboy, whose trick is to say little on screen and laze around looking well-built and fuckable. Joe is the star of Warhol's first release here. Heat, and is also the lead in another Warhol film which the censors are now looking at. Trash; And he's in Flesh too, which w ill

maybe make it here one day.

Every time he opens his mouth, he loses points, unless it's to place it over a nipple. That's basically the story of Heat. Joe Dalle­ sandro lounging around being cool, keeping his mouth closed as much as p o s s ib le , and fucking whoever will help him upon the silver screen. A t other times he gets sucked off by w hoever or whatever happens to be moving past.

Paul Morrissey, who directed H eat, Trash and Flesh for Warhol, insiststhat Warhol's films are devoted to not-so-well-behaved-kids and people. Basically the people in H eat are boring neurotics, which could be Warhol's way

of looking at himself. You get the feeling that Warhol has tried so hard to be avant-garde, painting soup cans and making blue movies

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and creating celluloid freaks that along with a couple of bullet wounds in the guts, courtesy Valery Solanas (author of Scum M anifesto, the rantings of a particularly b o rin g and dangerous neurotic) he has slipped into being just old bourgeois.

H eat was very Hollywood, mostly enjoyable, worth a giggle, and probaly worth going to see. Anyone could have done it.

Probably a better film , although more depressing in an immediate way was Ted Browning's Freaks. This was screened recently in Mel­ bourne, although it was made in 1932, and we were told, banned since then. It's hard to see why. It was only a love story. Browning apparently made the first .Dracula movie (talkie that is) in 1931 with Bela Lugosi.

Then he made Freaks, and then he made some other film which was a bummer.

He faded away.

The amazing thing about the film was his rapport w ith the freaks. That by the way, isn't a catchword for strange people, but for deformed people. The Freaks in Freaks were from a circus . . . probably the on ly place they could ^surviVé, They1, were laughed at but maybe they were laughing too ( " If you think the joke's on us, the joke's on you" — My Crudd).

They consisted of Siamese twin girls, joined at the hip, "pinhead" sisters, legless men, dwarfs, cripples and a black man w ith only a torso — no legs or arms. The story: Pretty circus girl (bitch) rips off dwarf (poor lonely sucker) for his fortunes so she can run off with the circus strongman (musclehead). The end is a dark one for the lady. The freaks carve her up, and she becomes the star attraction of the circus. Justice is done poetically. The plot showed

only how the freaks were the real people and vice versa.

The freaks acted themselves.

After shooting they were still freaks.

That's the injustice. Unfortunately a poor remake was shown on television a few weeks ago, I knew how it was going to end.

As far as freaks versus b eau tiful people goes, whereas Warhol's superstars are, in a contemporary way, both: they don't match up to the real thing in either way. Both those films may have something in common with Luis Bunuel's latest offering. The Discreet Charm o f the Bourgeoisie (now showing in Melbourne). Jt'-6 a sort of reverse Exterm inating Angel plot. In that film , the eaters couldn't get out of places, and in Discreet Charm, they can't seem to get in. If you've seen one Buñuel film , you haven't necessarily seen them all, but you've certainly seen his imagery.

People always eating, the church up for ridicule, the boogies with fuck-all to do.

In this film the bour­ geoisie eat a lot and dream a lot about their apocalypses, showing that they really lead dull lives and life isn't all roses, whatever that means.

It could be easily seen as a laugh on the old boogies.

Hoo hoo boys, look at them toffs having a boring time.

However what a good way to keep the proles in their place. Show the ruling class to be a bunch of fuckwits drolling away their boring hours over cognac and caviar, so let them bore themselves to death. Film­ makers might have social consciences, but they also live in big houses. Who are the freaks anyway . . .?

Apart from any of that, it's an enjoyable film , and you can pick up a bit of French, as long as the usherette doesn't object.

а. m. onwards — Birds in Peru, The Cow, Doublé Suicide and Leo the Last..

June 17 from 10 a.m. onwards — I am Curious — /Yellow, I am Curious — Blue, Tales of Mystery and imagination. The M ilky Way, and Performance.

Ormond Hall — Moubray Street St. KiIda 2.00 pm to 10.00 pm Featuring Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Coloured Balls, Red House Roll Band, Up, Mighty Kong

SUNDAY JUNES

EVENTS Theatre

CLUB KEW CIVIC CENTRE

Saturday May 26

Altamira Atlas Band of Light Saturday June 2

Gulliver Smith and the Deadend Kids Buffaloe Drive Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs

La Mama, Faraday St, Carlton. The Weight by Phillip Motherwell. A new play about the funeral mime of the life of a pusher whose dead body is found thrown on the barricades in an insurrectionary situation.

Opens 14 June, bookings 41-2735.

Pram Factory, Drummond St, Carlton. Dimboola by Jack Hibberd, closes 13 June. The Dragon Lady's Revenge, the San Francisco Mime Troupe's thriller about s m a c k /im p e r ia lis m /C IA / puppet generals, opens 20 June. And in the Back Theatre at the Pram Factory, The Ride Across Lake Constance by Peter Handke (German playwright of, the moment) opens 27 June, a T r ib e production; it's directed by Alan Robertson, and involves elaborate sets and costumes. Bookings for all Pram Factory shows 347-7493.

Saturdays at 2.30 and from 24 May on at 5.30 also.

Green Season of Sydney Film Festival: Tickets still available. May 27 from 11

Film-makers' Cinema St Peters Lane, Darlinghurst 31-3237. Daimas (dir Bert Deling) May 25, 26, 27. June 22, 23, 24.

Shirley Thompson versus thè Aliens (dir Jim Sharman) June 1 ,2 , 3, June 29, 30. July 1.

Sunshine City (dir Albie Thoms) June 8, 9, 10. July б, 7, 8. Come Out Fighting (dir Nigel Buesst) June 15, 16, 17. July 13, 14, 15.

C inem a

Bakery The Mighty Kong Saturday June 16

admission $1-50

Office Picnic (dir Tom Cowan) screening at Union Theatre, University of Sydney, every night at 8 p.m. until 4 June. Also

Houses of the Holy — Led Zeppelin — (Atlantic — SD 7255) Oh woe. It really is surprising that something so loud and boring could be so simpering at the same time.

This is the worst record Led Zepp have had the gall to release. A t least the pack­ aging is nice.

Good God — Good God Atlantic — SD7243

Revolution versus a “prepared platform”: gay and women’s liberationists demand speaking rights at Sydney’s May Day — Socialist Party organisers, disgruntled, had to give in.

Photo Lynn Smith and Aggie the cupboard drinker, left under the table waiting for a fuck from the sniggering but ultimately im potent Bayonet, creeping out into the empty hall, her hair aw ry, while the violin plays her humiliation. Therg, but for the grace of god, a university education, dope and a few changes of fashion, goes half the audience.

So the APG has got hard-nosed. But things still happen at the Pram Factory that are pure theatre.

If you get an urgent thrill; out of nose picking, squeezing pimples and ex­ amining shit you'll probably get a charge out of this record too.

Ooh La La — Faces — (Warn.

Bros. BS2665).

Just another album from the Faces. Even Rod Stewart says that it's probably for shit. Stewart's solo albums have always been the special treat, anyway. The band play tight, but without much enthusiasm.

Stewart's loutish rasp of a voice is still crackling away, but the songs on this seem set in a turgid turnip custard.

Billion Dollar Babies — All the tracks (with the possible exception of a limp Alice Cooper Warner Bros/WEA — . instrumental. Fly in the Ointment) :v have their B52685 Salvador Dali reckons moment — Borstal Boys is a neat bash, Cindy ain't bad.

Alice Cooper is a master o f Glad and Sorry seems OK by confusion and he certainly the fire on a wintry does push you around. His afternoon — but every voice abounding with spite, ending tells the story (don't Cooper hisses and spits it?). They just dissolve away, about heads that come off in presumably because no-one your hands, razor blades, could be bothered playing alcohol, needles, necrophilia on.

— "I love the dead before Still it's high quality, it they're cold, they're blueing disinterested stuff. The title flesh for me to hold" — to track, sung by Ronnie Wood, an accompaniment of is quite rallying in a laid moans, screams, and visions back sort of way. Sorta like of flesh flayed by electric it all more and more, but it guitar strings and bathroom never scintillates. suicides.

A couple of the songs — No More M r. Nice Guy and Mary-Ann, which is a fox­ The Grand’ Wazoo — The trot -7 sound a lo t>like the . Mothers — (Reprise — MS Beatles with « rising har­ 2093).

Guess it's an instrumental monies, tight t thudding drums like fists on tent album. The orchestration is canvas, and a lonely 50-50 clever and w itty , apart from sophisticated and dance hall piano heavy on being the loud pedal and the left probably superb. If you hand. But most of it is don't get your knots off on peculiarly sinister in . a Zappa, you could find it glittering supremely pro­ boring. If you do, it's fessional way. Rather like a something like a speed rush.

It concerns the legend of Hollywood amalgam of The Boston Strangler, Whatever Cleetus Awreetus-Awrightus, Happened to Baby Jane and the legendary emperor of an kingdom where Last Tango in Paris pre­ illusory power is vested in music sented as mucal comedy.

D o n o v an apparently (shades of Yellow Sub­ appears somewhere in the marine). Enemy of Cleetus is record — maybe he's re­ the villainous Mediocrates of sponsible for the jew's harp Pedsetrium and the two — but the cover notes don't battle out each Monday — say where anybody appears the results are posted on or what they play, do, sing. billboards, posters and on Probably you're supposed to stone tablets called the charts. It's something of a know.

A lbum s

D iscos & Pubs Q Club . Saturday May 26 — Big Nite: with Alta Mira, Atlas, Band of Light.

Saturday June 2: Gulliver Smith . and the , Deadend Kids, Buffalo Drive, Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs.

Saturday June 9: Bakery, Mighty Kong.

'Saturday June 16: Atlas, Red House Roll Band, Sherbet.

Easy Rider — Nunawading S a tu rd a y

May

26:

Ho Hum is more like it. A multitude of instruments mainly brass and percussion play John McLaughlin's Dragon Song and Frank Zappa's King Kong in the imitable style of Blood Sweat .and Tears

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Stripes, Elizabeth St (opposite GPO)

Fantasy, Liv Maesson.

Wednesday 30: Coloured Balls.

Thursday 31: Red House Roll Band.

Friday May 1: Big Push.

Saturday 2: Big Push, Billy Andre.

Wednesday 6: Coloured Balls.

Thursday 7: Billy Thorpe.

Friday 8: Big Push.

Saturday 9: Big Push, Maria Venuti.

Wednesday 13: Coloured Balls.

Thursday 14: Red House Roll Band.

Friday 15: Big Push Saturday 16: Fantasy, Terry King.

Croxton Park Hotel — Thornbury.

Wednesday May 30: Mighty Kong.

Thursday 31: Jigsaw.

Friday June 1: Grantly Dee and the Henchmen.

Saturday 2: Guests.

Sunday 3: Fantasy.

Wednesday 6: Red House Roll Band.

Thursday 7: Jigsaw.

Friday 8: Henchmen.

Saturday 9: Guests.

Sunday 10: Fantasy.

Thursday 14: Jigsaw.

Friday 15: Henchmen.

Saturday 16: Big Push.

George Hotel — St Kilda.

Every Thursday, Friday, Saturday: Cloud Nine.

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Saturday June 9

Atlas Red House Roll Ban Sherbet

D im b o o la , Hibberd's country wedding, play at Melbourne's Pram Factory, is a feast of chauvinism, a celebration of booze. It might as well be called Reservoir, or Geelong West — except for something in the way Tim Robertson holds his jaw, a sort of country crick, and is Wilfred Last's squint and furrowed brow the result of gazing across Western District wheatfields?

On Tuesday night the show was being film ed, which added an unmanage­ able dimension to the proceedings.

The class distinction between the guests who paid to partake of the wedding feast and those who glumly coveted trifle from the cheaper seats was further complicated by the intrusion of camera and sound equipment across some people's line of vision.

Pace and timing were of course seriously disrupted by film ing demands.

Gags originally light and sharp, like Jan Friedel's return from the dunny with her dress and coat caught up in her panty girdle, lost their snap when the crew asked for a repeat. Film crew comments ("This can't be happening!") split the attention of the audience in the bleachers . . . but the crew's antics serviced to amuse during the long pauses in their work while the cast, glassy-eyed, ad-libbed the background texture of the occasion.

Peter Cummins' vigorous work kept the sagging monolith in some kind of shape. One cast' member remarked admiringly after­ wards "Cummins is a driven man." In front of the cam eras he positively blossomed — he was every­ where, flinging his boots and bicycle clips about him like fire crackers, his timing as near perfect as the filming would allow. He's one of the few actors in the APG with that quality of going straight for the heart. He rarely misses. People love him.

Bayonet and M utton, like the blurry hopeless puddin' thieves they are, worked like dogs to keep the vibe up.

There didn't seem to be a steady centre to it all — everything Was diffuse, ¡shattered. *'if'you're fo rk in g for as pnuch audience in­ volvement as you qan get," said Max Gillies as he washed up the dishes after the show, "you can't afford to develop re la tio n s h ip s b etw e e n characters as fully as you might want to. The audience wouldn't be able to get into^ it. It's really a framework to hang an event on."

But there were a couple of moments when it happened, what you go to the ¡theatre for, goose pimples and hot eyes: Kerry Dwyer's face when Dangles mocks her as the local bike; Reen the terrified bride, listening to the harsh sexual banter, wailing, "What are they talking about, Shirl?";

5 U N BURY

Iceland — Rjngwood. . Sunday May 27: Hank.

Sunday June 3: Red House Roll Band.

Sunday 10: Bakery.

Colosseum Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday: Phase 2.

Sundowner.

Wednesday May 23: Tank.

Wednesday 30: Aztecs, Tank.

Thursday 31: Colored Balls.

Friday June 1: Red House Roll Band.

Saturday 2: Rondells.

GRAND \A4\ZOO

OUT NOW ON

FROM

uuea

June 1973

The Digger

THEM AIL

Address letters/telegrams to: ________ The Digger, P.O. Box 77, Carlton, Vic., 3053_____ psychiatrist. I told her I was depressed, and she asked me if I had any idea what the cause might be. I told her about my weird upbringing, and her reaction was: “ ‘Oh, that’s nothing. Lots of people have a religious upbringing, and it doesn’t affect them.” She then asked me such pertinent questions as “ Have you had any homosexual ex­ I keep trying to work out what periences?” and “Do you mastur­ your writers collectively think bate?” She gave me 100 librium madness is all about. capsules, and told me to come back The picture that comes through is in a week. somehow romantic. That beautiful When I turned up they shunted Cobb cartoon says a lot more about me into group therapy (this all took mental illness in the Freudian sense place at a Sydney psychiatric than your sensitive writers. Society is hospital’s outpatient department). a neurotic organism, and some of This would have helped me if it reflect symptoms of this neurosis hadn’t been for the psychiatrist — more than others. not the same one as I’d seen at first People, as lone members of — who kept on saying: “Now what society, try to avoid suffering from do you really mean by that?” All the these symptoms as much as possible. patients seemed perfectly normal — A basic way of doing this is to accept the only one there who seemed to be your own behaviour as normal. crazy was the psychiatrist. To him Insane people are those who are nothing was what it seemed. Even “least like me.”

But not all people who have when someone laughed, he said psychiatric treatment are just “what was your motive for innocent victims, whose symptoms laughing.” To him everything that are reversible if only they can join in anyone said or did_ was for some a revolution. There are people with sinister reason. I found that what the organic mental defects who need other patient’s there had to say was physical care. I know a man whose really helpful, but we weren’t only actions in life are to eat, shit, allowed to pursue any meaningful sleep, sit — and put his head through line as the psychiatrist would stop us, windows whenever he can. When I and say ‘Lets be serious’ or ‘What do give him his largactil (a major you mean by that’?

Eventually I sorted out by tranquilliser) I remove his urge to do problems myself. My encounter with this. I don’t really feel I am denying the psychiatrists only hindered me himmuch — I can see how in theory I from doing this, as at that time there may be taking away his only hadn’t been much criticism of “pleasure,” but I don’t care. psychiatry, and I took far more I know another man who is only notice of them than I should have.1 safe from his mental devils in a When I was told that my problems locked hospital Ward. I don’t want to Were nothing to do with my religious tear down his refuge. He begs for the upbringing, I believed them. I got lock to be closed. into a very confused state. If my I’m not trying to say that the part problems were nothing to do with of the scene your literate, aware my religious background, what were writers have observed is not there. they? She’d not enlightened me on But there is more. Madness is more this point, but had only asserted than a hairy Heathcliffe or Cathy dogmatically that it couldn’t possibly trying to attain tragic stature in a be anything to do with religion. I nasty world. At the risk of being eventually solved this when I called a stooge for society’s ideals, I discussed it with a friend and he said am happy to continue working with “ She’s probably a religious nut the people I have mentioned. Just to herself.” He helped me far more than ease their pain. any psychiatrist, though he has had absolutely no training in this field.

Bob Hudson, Yet who has ever heard of a Newcastle, NSW. psychiatrist uttering a word against the activities of the Christian Churches?

I’ve met .many other people who have had their lives fucked up by religion, especially the Roman Catholic Church. In an article in The I was brought up in a weird Lancet in Jan 1966 it was reported calvinistic .Christian cult which filled that in research done on alcoholics in me with guilt about practically every London’s Skid Row it was found that activity except breathing. Even such 74% of them were RCs even though innocuous things as looking in shop they only form 10 per cent of the windows were regarded as wicked. population of London.

This particular crime was called I’d also like to add something to ‘covetousness.’ TV watching, going your travel notes, about Singapore. to see films or listening to the radio When I went to Asia in the middle of were said to be ‘of the devil’. Anyone last year, I landed in Singapore on a who was to engage in them on ‘the boat that had quite a few people with Lord’s Day’ was practically certain to long hair on board. When we arrived I go to hell and be tortured for ever. hung back to see what would happen Not that there was much hope of to them. They wore hats, such as escaping perdition anyway, as the berets, and tucked their hair impression one got was that the underneath. Some had brought special chances of getting into heaven was as wigs of short hair, and did the same good as that of a negro communist thing with these as they went through emigrating to Australia on an assisted the customs. None of them were asked passage when Ming was king. to remove their hats or wigs, and all I don’t know if it was anything to got through without any trouble. do with this but by the time I was 15 John Nero, I was on the verge of suicide.

Eventually I went to see a Woolloomooloo, NSW.

A n ti-p sy c h ia try

Just to ease their pain

Getting over God

Travelers

Finding the black market To the article of Chris Moss about a trip through Asia.

The informations given are right, although I have spend 350 US and stayed 6 month in India and 3 month all together in other countries from Europe to Australia. If one takes the route via Bangkok, he should buy Indian currency at black market near thei Atlanta Hotel in Bangkok. Most people stay at that same hotel but it is not a safe place to smoke (police comes now and then). A cheaper and nicer place is the Chinese area near Main Rail Station (example: Thai Song, Greet Hotel). In Thailand the rooms cost 20 to 30 bant ($1 — $1.50) for two persons (one person pays the same rate). In India the rates are per person: the cheapest hotel in Calcutta is Modern Lodge ($1). In the countryside it is much cheaper.

It is quite an experience to stay with Tibetan refugees in the Himalayas, they provide good accomodation and non-spicy food: the best place is in Bodh Gaya (three hours by train from Calcutta). Other places are in Kathmandu (Nepal), Dharamsala and Dalhousie (Nordwest India) and Darjeeling (NordEast). In Calcutta, the black market is very bad, also in Benares. The best markets are in New Delhi (Con­ naught Place) and Bombay. Benares is from my point of view (he nicest city in India. One can stay in a house boat on the Gange but it i s . . . not very healthy.

The worst places to drink unboiled water are Bangkok and Kathmandu. In India it is not that bad as people use to say. It is usual to get the shits in these countries mainly because of the spicy food. It is very important to not to worry about health. It is much better to use the same way of life as the local people like eating very spicy and drinking hot tea (not coke etc) all the time than taking pills and similar stuff.

The coolest period in the Indian plain is in December-January. After it is better to go in the mountains.

In Afghanistan-Iran-Turkey and Nepal the roads are partly closed between November and February' because of snow. Hitch-hiking is possible but only if you have nothing to loose and not for girls (some girls have done it but. they fuck with anybody). In eastern Turkey it is even dangerous (I have escaped robbery when a truck stopped at the same moment).

The quickest way to travel in Iran and Turkey is by bus. If one goes by own car, drive slowly and not by night, there is always carriages without light and dead roads which end sometimes in a precipice. In Afghanistan the road is very good and no chance to be lost (there is only one). The bus takes you from Kabul to Herat (east to west Afghanistan) in two days. Afghani­ stan is a very interesting country and much more peace full than India.

One should be prepared that everything goes wrong there. It can take half a day talking and running around to buy a train ticket or to found out where and when the train or the bus starts. In south-east Asia it is all right, but in the middle east there is just no more logic and it can be a very hard time for people who are used to a smooth life. Generally speaking the Indian mentality is, “If I like you, you get everything from me; if I don’t like you, I take all I

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can from you.” Europe is, like Australia, just good enough to earn money and get back to Asia.

To the staff: I hope my english is comprehensible; if not, do the necessary correction.

Michel Kroder from Switzerland.

We felt it would be churlish to make any correction. H.G.

... and why you should avoid it Some unfashionable ideas on travelling from someone who, by his own admission, used to be a “freak in good standing. ” While you’re saving your pennies to go, try and learn something of the language. You’ll realise then just how much you miss when you only talk with the miniscule proportion of the population that speaks English. You may even manage not to pick up “the wogs are always cheating me” syndrome, so common among tourists, long-haired or otherwise.

Don’t work the black market. I’m sure that this is wasted advice as most freaks become totally ruthless capitalists when the price is right and the consequences not immediately apparent. Still. . . currency regula­ tions exist because the western world usually insists on much needed machinery, food etc. being paid for in western “hard” currency. Con­ sequently most countries desperately need what hard currency they can get and can’t spare any for luxuries such as tape recorders, overseas travel etc. The government machinery isn’t always entirely honest b u t you should know that by using the black market you’re certainly keeping the rich in foreign perfume while the people go without food. By yourself you’re only a small cog but you should know what side you’re on.

Respect local customs as far as you can. This is sometimes hard as middle class people often have the same hang-ups that you thought you were escaping from. Still, if you wouldn’t swim nude at your local beach don’t do it in India . . . and try and understand. If an Indian dressed like you or wore thongs, people would think it was because he couldn’t afford shoes.

Remember that being there doesn’t make you an expert. Freak tourists like all tourists seem to concentrate on one aspect of the culture Jo the exclusion of others.

The sitar, players, holy men and the Taj Mahal are rio more the “real India” than the western-dressed man selling fountain pens on the streets of Calcutta. The Taj Mahal is a beautiful building and an act of love but at the time it was also an extremely callous allocation of scarce resources by an isolated ruling class.

Remember who you are. No matter what happens you are relatively rich, white and can get out somehow. There is something macabre about a westerner with perhaps $1000 and the ability to earn more, haggling over cents with someone who earns $50 a year.

Things are cheap because most people have to get by on bugger-all.

Remember also that if you have trouble getting something for VD, most people have trouble getting anything for anything and 40 is old age. The time to figure out how you’re going to relate to all this is not when you’re there — either by religion: “ It’s their karma, man,” apathy: “There’s nothing I can do,” sentimentality: “They’re such friend­ ly people, always smiling,” middle class morality: “ I worked for my bread; they have too many children,” charity: “ I make it a rule to give away a dollar a week,” or pseudo-radicalism: “They need a revolution; they should be like China” — but when you come back and start hogging the world’s resources again.

Keith Ogbom, North Adelaide, SA.

So smoke with rich people The recently released report of the NSW Bureau o f Crime Statistics on drug offences over 1972 discloses an anomaly in the application of anti-drug laws which the marijuana lobby has so far failed to highlight.

The assault on the existing laws against the use of grass has been built around the hypocrisy o f maintaining laws which at least 600,000 Australians are estimated to have broken. The moral justification of any law rests on two premises: the compliance of those subjected to it and its indiscriminate application to all.

The report referred to above covered 1058 people convicted last year and found that “94 per cent of the offenders came from jobs with lower occupational prestige such as unskilled clerical, trades, sales and

Page 11 small business operators.” (The Australian 8-5-73).

Not even by performing incredible contortion exercises upon one’s imagination (i.e. “working-class plot” variety) could it be held that of all drug users in NSW, or in Australia for that matter, 94 per cent come from, the categories listed above. Surveys on the backgrounds of drug users in Australia have found that a broad cross-section of the population is represented, and if we are to believe the protagonists of the anti-marijuana lobby, the majority of marijuana users in particular, are “ middle-class” .

It is no startling revelation that people from lower status occupations should form the bulk of those charged with drug offences. Under any law people without access to “influence” are most likely not only to be charged but also to be the victims of successful prosecution. The point to be made is that not only are marijuana laws ineffective in their deterrent function.

Their validity is further undermined by their malfunctioning.

An analogy can be drawn with the abortion repeal movement. The case for abortion repeal rests not just on the fact that there is a demand for abortions and that they are being performed anyway, but just as importantly, that the anti-abortion laws are applied discriminately. Those most in need of abortions for straight socio-economic reasons don’t have access to discreet and safe abortions.

The law turns its back on those who can afford to pay, while those who5 can’t are most likely to be subject to prosecution in their desperate search for the next best.

The political change of both the marijuana and abortion laws will only come about through public recog­ nition and rejection of the double standards with which these outmoded laws are applied and which has rendered them devoid of any moral justification.

WEASELWATCH Alexander Macdonald is Nation Review’ TV critic. May 4-10 issue had him complaining at length of “long TV specials about the tribulations of our Aboriginals.”

Point the bone at me if you wish, or fashion me in clay and stick spears in the effigy. But for God’s sake spare me any further long TV specials about the tribulations of our aboriginals.

hard on the eye afQi ear. The dowdiness of most do-gooders in this, field is all tpo recognisable . . . . . . One of the most cruelly meaningful of the old black jokes concerned the wretched Indian untouchable, in rags and on his knees beside the sacred river, Ganges, one wet weekend, bewailing his fate to the gods for about the thousandth time. “ Oh Lord!” he cried, “ Here am I For, let’s admit it, these stone age in my misery, outcast, starving and ceremonials are pitifully lacking in an diseased. My wife and my children esthetic appeal. . . have deserted me, and here am I They are in the main »primitive living, year in, year out, in pain and jigs, graceless and even uncouth, and anguish of spirit. Why, oh Lord, accompanied by the mournful, why?” monotonous honk of that totally Whereat the clouds parted and the tuneless instrument, the didgeridoo compassionate Brahma pushed his divine face through the aperture and No noble savages here. To put it. roared out: “Because you’re a cunt, mildly, the aboriginals are not a very that’s why!” comely folk, and their charm, as I All of which reveals Macdonald to suggested, is perceptible mainly to anthropologists and historians who be a tone-deaf philistine, a white regard them with an academic chauvinist, a male chauvinist, and a sloppy-thinking, interest. Furthermore, their white c o m p l a c e n t l y supporters are in the main equally illiberal badmouth.

Andra Jackson

What they give nurses With reference to an article titled “They Think of us as Expert Bum-Washers” which appeared on page 4 of the April edition of your publication the Digger . ; the nurses interviewed for this article are under a grave misconception regarding the state of professional nursing organisa­ tions in Victoria.

Victorian student nurses do have an independent organisation that caters specifically for their needs.

Currently, in Victoria there are two professional nursing organisa­ tions — the Royal Australian Nursing Federation (Vic. Branch) and the Royal Victorian College of Nursiqg.

T h e' RANF (Vic. Branch) is concerned mainly with the industrial sphere of nursing, whilst the RVCN concentrates on the professional, ethical and educational aspects of the nursing profession.

The RANF has a Federal Office (the RANF Federal Branch) and branches in all States and Territories of Australia. The Victorian Branch is registered with the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission and is the official voice of nursing in this State in all matters relating to salaries, contracts of employment, workers’ compensation, hours of work, conditions of employment and other related matters.

The Student Nurses’ Association is an organisation comprised solely of student nurses and is managed by the students themselves. The Royal Victorian College of Nursing provides secretarial assistance and an advisor to assist them in the conduct of their affairs; however, it is the students themselves who make the decisions.

The SNA unit has no 'affiliation whatsoever with the “body which sets exams, hands out qualifications and runs nursing education.” Such responsibilities are handled by the Victorian Nursing Council — a statutory body which is completely separate from the Royal Australian Nursing Federation and the Royal Victorian College of Nursing.

Both the Royal Australian Nursing Federation and the Royal Victorian College of Nursing are constantly negotiating on behalf of members of the nursing profession (student nurses and the trained staff) who have a grievance with regard to salary, contract of employment or other industrial matters. Let me assure you that both organisations are continually endeavouring to improve all aspects of the nursing professions in this State —industrial­ ly, professionally and ethically.

However, finance being provided solely by membership subscriptions, facilities and services provided are, of necessity, limited.

I would be most pleased to hear from any student nurses who require inform ation. regarding the pro­ fessional nursing organisations in this State. Alternatively, they could contact the President of the Student Nurses’ Association — Miss Margaret M. Maloney, 30 Regent Street, Preston, 3072. Vic. who will be only too willing to discuss the Student Nurses’ Association.

Patricia J. Armstrong-Grant, Executive Secretary, Royal Victorian College o f Nursing.

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