Chapter 11

Port Hedland 1989 — 1 day later

Richard got up early. He sat on the kitchen step and watched the last of the hermit crabs scuttling down onto the scrap of beach below the house. There was an empty ore carrier making its leisurely way down the shipping lane to the harbour. All was still. There was a chill to the air and Richard revelled in it.

He was going to Warralong today to see Blackie and the other elders about the agreement with Goldsworthy liquor store not to serve community members from Warralong with alcohol. He had spent most of yesterday drafting a legal sounding document. No matter how high sounding it was, Richard knew it would have no legal force because it offended the Anti Discrimination Act. It prevented Aboriginal people from having access to a service. But the lawmakers in Perth had no idea of the realities in remote areas of the state.

Dignified, deeply spiritual elders, like Blackie, were trying to hold communities together using traditional means. Many of the aspects of Tribal Law seemed harsh to white men’s eyes. But these laws were thousands of years old and had kept communities in harmony all that time.

Aboriginal people, in Richard’s experience, found White man’s law really harsh. People were locked up in jail and sent hundreds, even thousands of kilometres away from their land and their people for months and years. A spearing, for example, was over quickly and normal community relations started soon after.

Blackie, and nine of the other elders, had formed a committee called the “Ten Man.” They came into town at night and kidnapped community members who had joined the fringe dweller groups in Port Hedland and South Hedland. People only ever seemed to join the fringe dweller groups so they could get drunk at will. After the people were kidnapped they were taken to a community in the Great Sandy Desert called Punmu. There they would dry out and hopefully be rehabilitated back into sober life. Many stayed at Punmu and got on with their tribal lives. But many also found the lure of the grog too much and took the first opportunity to make their way back to Port Hedland.

The elders at Warralong were fighting a life and death battle with alcohol. This was the next stage in the battle. Richard wanted to help the elders. He could see the damage being caused to Aboriginal society by alcohol, although, ironically, he was blind to any damage it might be causing him.

So he got away early, in the cool of the morning, and drove the one hundred and fifty kilometres to Warralong. The first fifty kilometres were bitumen, along the North West Coastal Highway, and then the Marble Bar road. It was flat plain as far as Richard could see in every direction. Then in the distance to the South East, a range of desolate hills gradually became visible. Richard knew that range of hills marked the turn-off to Warralong.

He was barrelling along at one hundred and sixty kilometres an hour when he hit the end of the bitumen about seventy-five kilometres out of South Hedland. The ute went sideways but Richard was able to regain control. He slowed down to one hundred and forty. Most maps showed the Coongan River as marking the edge of the semi-arid area and the beginning of true desert conditions. Warralong was on the desert side of the Coongan. To Richard, the whole area just looked like desert. The Coongan was a river in name only; it was really just a sandy drain. Or it was until a cyclone hit and became a terrifying raging torrent. But as Richard drove the dusty track to Warralong, he knew that it had not rained for more than a year. The Coongan would be just sand.

The trip took just on two hours; it was late morning when Richard arrived. He went to the office first. They were expecting him. In the toilet he saw the sign reminding people to flush after using. The residents of the community were new to flush toilets and other accoutrements of western society.

The secretary gradually assembled the elders council, and they all went outside and sat in a circle in the red dust. Don Macleod did not participate in any of it. Richard was surprised but reasoned that Macleod probably wanted this to be all the elders’ work, not his.

Richard explained the document he had drafted. He explained that the document was probably unenforceable. Blackie then translated into Mardu for the elders who did not speak English. It was a slow process. But after lengthy deliberation the elders assented that they were satisfied with the document. It was taken inside the office and all ten signed it. Blackie was the only one who signed with his name. He laboriously traced out “Blackie” on the document. The other elders all signed with an “X.” Hands were shaken all around and Richard got in his ute to drive back to Hedland. The next stage would be to get the owner of the liquor store to sign it. That could wait for another day. The afternoon was wearing on. He was exhausted by the interactions with the elders and needed to rest.

The trip home was the same as the trip in: one hundred and forty on the dirt, then one hundred and sixty on the bitumen. Richard had joint in his shirt pocket which he remembered and lit half an hour into the trip. Driving a dirt road fast while stoned was a thrilling experience. The thrill was sensual, then sexual. Richard started to get an erection. It throbbed in his pants. He started to think about sexy women he knew. There had been a very pretty young woman in the office at Warralong. Soon his top button was undone, and he was playing with himself while driving on a dirt road at one hundred and forty  one-handed.

He came, and semen spurted out over his jeans and left hand. He didn’t want to dirty the steering wheel or gearstick, so he pulled into a rest area at the side of the road. The ute came to a shuddering halt because he could not touch the gear stick, and the car stalled. Richard managed to get out of the ute without touching anything and grabbed a towel from the backseat and cleaned himself up. He threw the towel into the rubbish bin at the rest stop, then took his marijuana stash from the glove box and rolled another joint.

As he smoked the joint he thought to himself,
“Well that was interesting, I will try not to do that again!” He knew, as he thought it, that he probably would do that again. He looked for water in the car and found none. He had driven two hours into the desert with no safety measures at all. He had not packed a jerry can of petrol either. He became paranoid that the ute would not start again. The second joint was taking effect. The keys were still in the ignition, hanging there after the ute had stalled.

“What if it doesn’t start?”
“I am stuck out here with no water waiting for the next car  going to Warralong.”
“That might not be till tomorrow.”

Richard got back in the driver’s seat and turned the motor over. The ute lurched forward. It was still in gear. He tried again. Nothing. Then on the third try the ute started and Richard started breathing again. It was not a hot day but he was sweating heavily. He drove off hurriedly, wanting to get back to civilisation as soon as possible. Richard remained paranoid on the trip back; he kept checking the oil light and the temperature gauge. But nothing went wrong.

Or nothing went wrong until he reached the nine-mile mission. It was then his paranoia made him check to see if his wallet was in his back pocket. Hand reached around to back pocket, no wallet was there. He checked again, no wallet. Panic set in. Real marijuana-enhanced panic. Richard did a one-eighty degree handbrake turn. He must have dropped it at the rest area when he stopped to clean himself up. He had just enough petrol to get back out and back. It would be dark in two hours’ time. But it would still be light in one hour when he got back to the rest area. So he started speeding back out along the highway. His mind raced, “what if the wallet is not there?” Lots of similar questions. He was travelling even faster than usual. On the bitumen he hit two hundred kilometres per hour, then he slowed slightly when he hit the dirt.

It was one hour of bitter recriminations and fear-based ruminations to the rest area. It was late afternoon when he arrived. The shadows were long and the sky was orange-gold as Richard looked back the way he had come. He pulled the ute up and got out and scanned the area. No wallet. His heart lurched. He went and looked in the bin where he had thrown the towel. Nothing.

Richard despairingly walked back to the car. It was Friday; he would not be able to see the bank till Monday. He would have to see Valerie and ask her for money to tide him over till Monday. He put his hand to his back pocket out of habit. He felt something. It was his wallet. It had been there all along. He had not checked properly in his panic.

Richard drove slowly back to Port Hedland, towards the setting sun, thinking, “Never again.”

 Chapter 2

Pilbara 1989

Kenneth was sentenced to two and a half years for the wounding with an eighteen month non parole period when the court resumed on the Tuesday. Richard explained to Kenneth that he would have about one year to serve taking into account the six months or so he had served on remand. Kenneth was not upset by this nor was he joyful. Richard was far happier than Kenneth about the outcome. He had feared Kenneth would be sentenced to something like ten years, or even more. Kenneth’s non reaction to his sentence was not unexpected to Richard. Most of the Aboriginal people had represented were totally baffled by the white mans law and just accepted what happened to them with a shrug of the shoulders.

Richard also made sure to tell Kenneth that he needed to do something about his alcohol use. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t been drunk.” Kenneth said nothing. Richard suspected he just wanted this annoying white man to go away. Not a thought crossed Richard’s mind about his own alcohol use.

Richard drove back to Port Hedland that afternoon feeling exultant. The win in the case was a miracle, but also he had cleared his calendar for the week for it so he had three days to what he wanted. There were a number of things he could do, and as he drove across the empty plain he debated them in his head. He could not help thinking that he was special lawyer for getting the outcome that he got.”Nobody else could have done what I did” he grinned to himself.

It is a two and a half hour journey from Karratha to Port Hedland. Half an hour to Roebourne, then two hours of nothing except for the Whim Creek pub. There is a grandeur to the emptiness, though. The blistering heat, it was forty two degrees celsius, the endless plain, the red dirt., the grey spinifex And here and there, heartbreakingly fragile in this harsh environment, the sudden black and red flash of Sturt’s Desert Pea.

Richard had decided on his activity for Wednesday at least. He would drive to Warralong station and see a witness about an appeal case that a barrister in Perth had been hounding him about.

Immediately he saw five wedge tailed eagles circling in an updraft. He took that as a good omen for His decision. He continued driving east along the coast but inland. He drove at 160 kilometres per hour which was close to the fastest his Mitsubishi ute would travel. He drove with his left hand holding the steering wheel and his right arm out the window gripping the door arch. The combination of the air conditioner on full and the air rushing in the window seemed to keep him coolest.

He arrived home at his nor wester weatherboard home at about five pm. Too late to go to the office. Valerie, the field officer and Celeste the secretary would have gone home. His house, like his ute, was provided by his employer, the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia. The ute was fantastic, but the house was a mixed blessing. It was an old Port Hedland house, built before the mining boom hit in the 1970s. It was old and dusty. It was only a few hundred metres from the ore crushers that dominated the skyline in the centre of town. In 1989 there were no regulations to govern how much dust an industrial site gave out. BHP ignored the health of the residents of the town and the dust just permeated everything. It covered the inside and the outside of the house. Luckily there was an air conditioner in the main bedroom, so Richard spent a lot of time holed up in there avoiding the heat. The rest of the house was un-airconditioned. Sometimes Richard would smoke marijuana in the bedroom and in his confused state when he walked into the kitchen think he had left the oven on.

But there were massive positives to the house as well. It was built on the top of a sand hill on the waterfront. There was nothing between the house and the Indian Ocean. Richard could stand in the front room and see the ore carriers as they ploughed in and out of the ports at Port Hedland and Finucane Island. Sometimes as many as ten different ships in a day, some empty and heading into port and some fully laden and heading off to China or wherever.

He was also privileged to see the sunset every night (it was almost never cloudy or rainy). The sun sank into the ocean in fiery red blaze of glory every night. Richard was awestruck by it every time. It evoked a yearning inside him for something that he just could not put his finger on. He knew there was something out there that was powerful and good, just like he knew that that there was something powerful and bad.

The hermit crabs were also an important part of living in this house. Most nights of the year hundreds or even thousands of hermit crabs would invade the yard. They would creep from the mangroves lining the reef in front of the house as night fell. You could throw any old rotten meat out into the yard and by morning it would be gone. A half eaten barbecue chicken would be reduced to bones. This was helpful to Richard because he was not a guy who enjoyed cleaning up. He would leave the plates in the yard to be cleaned up.

Richard knew he was not an alcoholic because he never had alcohol on his own at home. He never had alcohol in the fridge unless there was a barbecue or something like that. So that evening after he pulled in from his big two days in Karratha he just made a peppermint tea and sat on the step to watch the sun go down. He probably needed a few nights off after his big one on Sunday night.

The hermit crabs had started their ascent to the yard and he watched them idly, as they inched their way across the sand. Loneliness hit after a while and he went inside to air-conditioning and watched TV. He ate dinner (Cold Pizza from Saturday) in bed and drifted off to sleep early.

A Tale told by an idiot

 Thirty five years ago the road to Crescent Head from Kempsey was narrow and winding. Part of it, just as you come down the last hill into Crescent Head, was dirt. The country you track through was wild and empty. They say Malcolm Naden, the murderer who evaded authorities in the bush for years, spent some of his time foraging there. This story is about something that happened on that road, but it’s about a lot of other things as well, some every them happy some sad and some scary.

I don’t need Malcolm Naden in my story to scare me. There is ancient Blackfella magic in that bush, and that is scary enough for me. 

Environmentalists are a sentimental lot. I think they like to imagine precolonial society as carefree and sylvan. Like the romantic poets liked to imagine the European Countryside. But my experience of Blackfella stories is of frightening hairy men and bunyips, and Blue Lights, and that is what this story is about. I have to say my experience of the bush itself includes lots of wonderful times, but also some frightening experiences I never saw a hairy man or a Bunyip, but I’ve seen a blue light and lived to tell the tale. Not everyone does.

You might think a story about the hairy man, a man-beast who comes out of the eucalyptus forest in the Upper Macleay River valley, and takes children from huts and shelters, is just nonsense. But try hearing the story camped next to the river with the forest lowering all around you, a mob of black kids all around you and Uncle George telling the story. The only light is the campfire and everybody feeling full from damper and mince (they call the mince gravy).

And George tells the story of when he saw one, just a few years earlier when he was cutting sleepers with a broad axe just three miles up the road next to the Bellbrook turnoff. The kids all want to hear about the sleeper cutting. How George would work for days with his broad axe, which he still kept sharp and shining at home, just to shape one sleeper, which would be used on the railways. The wood was so hard it would break the teeth of most saws. It was so dense it would not burn, except in a kiln with bellows. Then it burnt hot enough to melt steel. That was why Macleay River bushfires were so dangerous. Once the ironbarks caught alight, the fire could melt a fire engine.

Three weeks in the bush, five or six sleepers, $300 or $400, and back home for a week. But he didn’t last one night after he saw the Hairy Man. Straight down to the road and hitch-hiked back to Kempsey. Even the white sleeper cutters understood it. They stayed, but they had not seen the Hairy man. But they half believed him because they saw his fear was real.

And I half believed him too because I saw all the family, Anne, Little Greg (who was six foot three, but called little Greg to distinguish him from Old Greg), Janelle, Lynne Michael Matt, Kay, and Theresa believed him. And we all instinctively huddled more into the fire and into the warmth and safety of family. I am not going to tell George’s story of the Hairy Man. I have trampled enough through the lives and histories of Aboriginal people. I have learned, I hope, what is my story to tell, and what is not.

But all the same, I tremble at my audacity in telling this story. There are deep secrets in it. Deep hurt, deep sadness. But the story claws at my guts to get out. 

 

I think it was  that overwhelming warmth I felt in that family that was behind me getting into a relationship with, then marrying, Lynne. I was introduced to her family very early on  in our relationship. I was immediately made to feel welcome. “I’m Lynne’s boyfriend” was a path to immediate acceptance no matter what. Uncle Peter says “What you doing here. My son got no white friends” This is at a 21st birthday party. “I am Lynne”s boyfriend”. “Oh you should have said. That’s different.”

I rarely had to play that card. Uncle Peter was well known for not liking white people. The joke in the family was that every one of his daughters married a white feller. But mostly the racism I saw was against the black people, not from them. 

Sometimes the story is in what is not said, rather than in what is said. Some artists paint what is not there, and leave the viewer to fill in the truth. I will try do that about  the powerful, painful often ignorant racism I regularly witnessed. My own, and other’s. There are many things in this story I just need to trace around the outlines but casual everyday, privileged racism is one of the main ones. I tremble at my audacity.

If you want to know about racism in Australia you can’t find out just by asking a Black person. You need to listen to a Black person. It has taken me many years to learn this; and knowing is much easier than doing. It is much easier to listen to a story about another’s racism than your own. But even that is difficult because you want to jump in and tell the Black person how they have got it wrong. 

Lynne’s father Andrew died some years before I met her. His father, Lynne’s grandfather was only talked about as “old man Sutton”. He was a wealthy white man from Coff’s Harbour. Anne told me about him one day sitting at the Kitchen table at the old weatherboard in South Kempsey. He is mostly undrawn in this story. His importance is in his absence. Andrew met his father once. A taxi arrived at the Mission where Andrew lived with his Mum, stepfather and step siblings.

A whispered conversation occurred between the driver and Andrew’s mother. Money changed hands. Then Andrew was ushered into the cab and driven into town. He was taken to the best hotel in town. The taxi waited while a stranger said “Hello Andrew, I’m your father.” He took him from the kerb, into the bar where Andrew was introduced to a blur of faces. And then he was taken back out to the Taxi and driven home. He now had two bob in his pocket.

After that his father got on with the business of being white. And Andrew got on with the business of being black.

Anne told me a lot of stories of what it was like growing up on the mission. The houses were made of beaten down kerosene tins and hessian. There was a tap in the middle of all the houses where you wash and get water. Cooking was on campfires and the toilet was the bush. 

When I first visited in 1980 the family had moved into town. Various brothers and sisters lived in Aboriginal Housing dotted across Sth Kempsey. The house I always stayed at was a clapped out weatherboard. The hot water system was connected to the wood fired stove. The floors were unvarnished boards. A lot of cooking was still done on the campfire out the back. I remember offering to start the fire once, but was told “White people can’t make fires”. It was just a joke, but I was offended. Of course, just to prove them wrong I tried to make the fire, but of course I couldn’t get it to start and everyone laughed at me more. I had thought I was a bushman, my family had spent a lot of time camping and spending time fishing in the bush. I could not accept that these people knew more about the bush. Lucky for me I had gentle teachers. They gently educated me about my ignorance about this and many other subjects. Sometimes it was not so gentle, but eventually my skin thickened and I could take correction about subjects I obviously knew nothing about. Subjects where I thought I knew something; that took longer.

I heard many stories sitting around the Kitchen table in that old house. About mission life about the old days. Lynne’s mum, Jessica but known as Mumboy, had lived through hard times. She had a problem with the grog by the time I knew her, but she had not touched Alcohol for the first 30 years of her life. Before social security, mission rations were pitifully inadequate and she and Andrew would go vegetable picking. When there was no work around the kids would sometimes be woken in the middle of the night for a roast chicken dinner. Someone had stolen a few chooks in the middle of the night and Mumboy and Anne (who was the oldest, and Boss) Sister would cook them in the camp oven , furtively in case the mission manager found out.

You didn’t have to go far back to get to tribal times. I am not sure which one out of Nanna Jane and Nanna Flo was Lynne’s actual Grandmother. They were both treated with equal respect. Nanna Jane was well over 90 when I met her. She had Great Grand Children and Great Great Grand Children. She told me how, as a young child she witnessed the last corroboree on the north coast. Shivering in fear while the elders played out an ancient custom for its final time. And it was clear to me from what Nanna Jane said that everyone knew this was to be the last one.

When Nanna Jane’s daughter (or Nanna Flo’s) Bonnie was buried a few years later at Bowraville a snakeskin bag containing magical implements was thrown into the grave with the coffin. Jane’s other daughter Dulcie told me “The time for those things is over.” I tremble at my audacity.

Bonnie’s funeral was memorable for another thing. The catholic priest who performed the ceremony was staggering drunk. Shame on him.  The forest seemed to come closer in. I sensed some power was unhappy with the way Bonnie was being treated by the priest. Thunder rumbled and clouds moved in and the forest looked unfriendly and dank. I was glad to get out of Bowraville safely that afternoon. 

Michael, who was Lynne and Anne’s sister was the youngest of the family. He was still at school. He was a tearaway, but was at the centre of the family. He lived with Anne and George, Mumboy’s drinking meant she was no longer capable of looking after him. I was going to say he was treated as a member of Anne and Georges family. But that is just meaningless words. The reality is nobody at all saw anything unusual or wrong about about Michael being a part of the family. He was Anne’s brother and Uncle to kids older than himself. Little Greg, and Theresa were older and Matt and Kay were younger. Janelle, another sister of Lynne and Anne also lived in the house. She was still at school too, but was Older than Theresa. 

I have happy memories of sitting around the Kitchen with the caterers teapot being continually refilled, as the kids came from School.  Michael was already getting into minor trouble with the police, but he was well liked at the Catholic School he attended. A series of wonderful Priests and nuns had been appointed to Kempsey. There were others, but I can remember Steve Norton, Michael Casey and Anne Maguire. Lynne and I like Anne so much we named our dog Maguire after her. Aunty Dulce was sometimes known as Sister Dulce because she spent so much time riding around in Maguire’s car. And Steve Norton and Michael Casey included the family in all parish activities. Michael came home one day laughingly complaining that Father Casey had called him “Stonehead” because he failed to listen  to instructions. When Father Casey baptised Lynne and my son he brought a carton of cans around afterwards to the party. With all the allegations of abuse by Catholic clergy I have googled up their names to make sure there are no allegations against these people, and there are none. I know Maguire and Steve Norton left their orders and married (not each other). Father Casey, I don’t know what happened to him.

The relationship with the priests and nuns illustrates something I read about years ago, about how Aboriginal families take in as family government and religious officials. The Child welfare officer was in this category also. Her name was Sister Griffen. She had been instrumental in separating several children of Leah from her. She was now slightingly referred as Griffo, because she was seen as having betrayed the family. The family had thought she was there to help. Like the Priests and nun. It was astonishing that she turned on them.

A few years later, in 1982, I  read a headline in the Daily Mirror, “Sydney Nun Arrested in Commonwealth Games Protest”. It was Maguire, arrested in Brisbane protesting about aboriginal land rights.

The school, the church all tried with Michael. His crimes were minor, joy riding, shoplifting, that kind of thing. It was noticeable though because the other kids of Anne and George did not get into trouble. Through all this he remained cheerful, a source of good fun and cheek. He was always turned out neatly for school, like all the kids. The fact that he sometimes had damper and jam for lunch didn’t matter because the white kids would swap with him. The damper made by Anne in the camp oven on the fire out the back was highly prized.

Anne and George did not drink alcohol. Or I never saw them drink anyway. I drank and Lynne drank. We would walk into town over the railway bridge and go to Greens hotel or the RSL club. Greens hotel was an experience. Loud music, loud conversations and loud drunkenness. And Mumboy there with her crew of Aunty Sister and  Maureen and others. We called her Mumboy, they called her JK for Jessica Katherine.

Turns out that I have got as big a problem with alcohol as anyone in this story. And one of the symptoms of that was the sense of connection I got while drinking with other people. One of my many racist comments as a drinker was “I only like drinking with Black people, White people don’t know how to drink properly”. And the connexion I felt in Green’s Hotel, and later in the PO at South Grafton, The Empress and the Clifton was mind blowing. I would talk condescendingly about how the grog had got Andrew (Lynne’s Father)or was getting Leah or Mum-boy or whoever. I never saw my own problem. I would make jokes about race, safe with my “I’m Lynne’s boyfriend” card.

 Most of my heroes are Aboriginal women, and foremost among them is Anne Douglas. She was and is like a battleship of love. Nothing got in the way of her family’s needs. Anne and George’s house was a refuge. More than once I saw little kids make their way from relation’s houses  in the neighbourhood. Sometimes they were bleeding and bruised. They’d get a hot bath some bandaids, clean pyjamas and bed. The most important part was they got a kiss and a cuddle.

I last saw Anne a few years ago. I called in after I had visited Lynne to acknowledge the truth of some the things I had done in the past. As always she and George were happy to see me. They were minding some Grandkids. But there was a severely disabled niece there too, Sammi Jo.  Janelle’s daughter. Sammi Jo is dead now but she reached 21, after being given only a few months after her birth. Anne had to tell her she could not go outside in her high tech wheel chair. “ I know its unfair, that the other kids can go outside and you can’t. But I have to watch you and I need to sit inside.” Sammi Jo,  seriously mentally and physically disabled, accepted Anne’s word. And the thought occurred to me that if I was to ever be reborn severely disabled I would want to be in a family like that one. Sammi Jo had a life. She was surrounded by love, family and connection.

Early on in the relationship with Lynne we went to Central see some nieces and nephews off on the train back to Kempsey. Everyone was hugging and kissing each other and I couldn’t. I felt terrible but was unable to kiss or hug anyone. I was filled with shame at my inability to do this simple thing. I thought that if I stayed around these people I would learn. I didn’t really learn until I stopped drinking and gambling, but that is another story.

The other factor was that these people were tough. I had suffered bullying as a kid growing up in country towns . These people were so tough I knew no-one in their right mind would take them. Probably not a good basis for a relationship and there were many times over the years that I wished Lynne was not so bloody tough. I saw my mates bullying their obedient wives. I tried, god help us both, but Lynne was not easy to bully. There is a lot more to this than I am saying. I was a drunk, fill in the dots. 

Andrew had died five or six years before. I had always thought it was the grog that got him. The only photo I ever saw of him, he was holding a flagon of cream sherry leaning against an old Holden.  But when I visited Anne and George last she told me he had seen a blue light the night before he died. They had all seen it out the back of their camp on the mission. He had made fun of it and had danced on it. Next day he was dead. Yes, just a story told by someone else, but once you see a blue light yourself it is different.

So that’s the background to the night at the Crescent Head Sports Club. I drove my mini make out there. Lynne was in the passenger’s seat. We met a group of cousins and nephews and nieces out there. There was a band and we all played poker machines and got drunk. It’s hard to remember who was there. So many drunken nights, so many relatives. But eventually Lynne and I decided to go back to Kempsey. I was way too drunk to drive, but there was nothing unusual in that. I drank and drove thousands of times before I got sober about 15 years ago.

It’s 18 kilometres from Crescent Head to Kempsey. It takes about 30 minutes, because it is so windy and narrow. You go up from the coast then down into the Macleay River valley. It was near the top of the range that I fist noticed the light. It was following us like a car. But there was only one light, and it was always directly behind us. Slightly elevated and on the driver’s side. I could see it clearly in my side mirror.  It was bright white to my eyes. My thought was that it could be a weatherr balloon with a light attached. I was not concerned at first.

It was when I mentioned it to Lynne that the situation changed. 

“I have been trying to ignore that for the last five miles” she said.

“I was hoping you could not see it”

“What is it” I said.

“I think it’s a Blue Light”

I wish I had never asked the question.

“What is a blue light?”

“It’s a sign”

I could tell by her tone the answer to the next question.

“Bad.”

Lynne’s silence, and one word answers, drove  me crackers at times.

“What kind of bad?”

“Somebody is going to die, kind of bad”

I was drunk, and not properly in control of the mini more. I drove faster and furtively put my head out of the car, to see the side mirror more clearly. The light continued to remain behind us and in the air. The road gets really windy again as you descend into the Macleay valley. But the light behaved as though it was attached to us by string. Behind us, driver’s side, in the air.

Lynne’s curt answers had me worried one of us was going to die. And going to die now. Looking back it is hard to explain why I bought into Lynne’s fear so easily. My memory is that light gave off an aura of fear and awe so strong that I could not ignore it. I have experienced this on at least one other occasion in the Australian bush. Again, I compare this to the sylvan fantasies we are taught.

So getting away from the light was my main concern. I realised though that I risked killing us both if I kept going faster. So I concentrated my efforts on driving as well as I could. I tried to resist the temptation to look, but I had to know. It was still there. 

Lynne was silent next to me. How I kept driving I do not know. It was like a dream that where you are trying to walk through mud. It seemed like hours. We reached South Kempsey and I looked in the mirror for the hundredth time. 

The light was gone. I do not know when it disappeared.

“Its gone” I said to Lynne.

She said nothing, and I grimly drove up Middleton St to Ann and George”s.

We slept separately. Me in the boys room, Lynne in the girls room. In my Room that night there was me, Little Greg, Michael, Ron and Matt. In the Girls room was Lynne Janelle Theresa And Lovey. Plus Anne and George made  eleven people in a three bedroom house. There were three beds in my room. As an honoured guest I had one to myself and the four boys went two out. Uncle Hoonker turned up after us and slept on the back verandah. So that made 12.

I was hungover in the morning and did not feel like talking. Lynne did not mention the Blue light and neither did it I. In fact it was never mentioned again. 

Until I started talking about it 30 or so years later. 

That is almost the end of my tale. A Tale told by an Idiot. Full of sounds and fury. Signifying nothing.

Except for this.

It all happened so long ago. Did the Blue Light presage doom? Was it real or just a drunken misunderstanding of some natural phenomenon?

Lynne's brother Michael stole a car with some mates a few weeks after this. He was driving and he crashed the car. His mates got out of the car and ran off. The car caught on fire. Michael died in the burning wreck.

Greg Bond

 You don't seem to make as many new friends as you get older. People you ring up because you see something that reminds you of them. Or you ring them because you are bored. Or you see them, and you can't stop your face breaking out into a smile. Those kinds of friendships are rare. And the problem is, as you get older, your friends die. And then there is one less person to ring up when you're bored. Or you read something and start to dial the number, then you have to stop. 0439 700.... oh wait, he's dead. And for a moment you feel deeply lonely, until you distract yourself with something else. 

I have had a few of those friendships over the years. One of them was with Greg Bond. He's dead now. He died about six years ago, of skin cancer that got into his bones. I still feel the urge occasionally to ring him up and share a silly story. But then I remember, and all over again I feel the sense of loss. 

He died too young. He was sixty-something, I am not sure. But it came suddenly. He had a course of chemo the year before his death, and then he had seemed to be ok. I hadn't treated the course of chemo with the seriousness it deserved. In my heart, I "knew" that he was exaggerating, that it would all go back to normal. He was working at the Parramatta office and I was at Redfern when he had the chemo. He came and saw us a Redfern once with his wife Yayuk, while the chemo was going on. We talked for hours, and the illness seemed far away. He had lost weight, but he needed to lose weight. He looked fit and strong. 

But a couple of months after that I saw him for the last time, out of hospital. I had a hearing at Mt Druitt courthouse. Greg had been rostered to look after the list there. His managing lawyer had orgaised it so we could hang out for the day. There was only a few minutes work for Greg that day. So he sat in Courtroom number two and watched my case for most of the time. My client was a young woman who had allegedly stabbed her partner, with a pair of scissors. He was unwilling to come to court and the case was mainly about legal technicalities of whether he could be forced to come to court to give evidence. It took a few hours, but after that Bondy and I were free to hang out. 

We went over to Mt Druitt plaza. What a place that is. Westfield in the Bronx. Paradise in the middle of a swamp.  They moved Mt Druitt railway station so that it was closer to the shops. But that just attracted drug addicts to hang out at the entrance. We negotiated that game of snakes and ladders and found our way to the food court. Bondy, as usual, could not decide what he wanted to have. He always hesitated over his food choices. He was worried he would choose something and it would turn out to be not the best thing on the menu. As also usual, I got frustrated with waiting for him and had half-finished my lunch before he even ordered.

But my frustration soon melted away. It was always fun hanging out with Bondy. We talked about plans for a tourist business called Bondy's Boring Tours. That was a longstanding joke between us. Bondy had a habit, when he got you in his car, of taking you for long boring drives, often around Toongabbie, which was where he grew up. The scenery was boring, and the commentary was boring, but the conversation was always fun. We talked about office gossip. We talked about everything and nothing. 

Mt Druitt was a good place to have a final day with Greg, outside of hospital. We had spent a lot of time hanging out in Mounty County, as it known to locals. The Clock hotel at Bidwill, the Cedars at Emerton. But the courthouse was the main place we went. Greg used to love taking me for drives around the tougher parts of Mt Druitt. We would point out the places where particularly notorious incidents occurred. It was another, oft repeated, boring tour.  We ambled back to court and sat in ALS office while Bondy made sure he had no more bail applications. Then it was time to say goodbye. Bondy had told me over the course of that day his fears for the future. The prognosis for the future was guarded. The cancer may come back. The chemo had seemed to work, but only time would tell.

I went to shake his hand as I left to go my car. We were standing outside the office. Bondy kept his hands in his pockets. "I can't shake hands Jim. I lost my belt. If I take my hand out of my pocket my pants will fall down".

That was the last time I saw him out of hospital.

I had met Greg on about the 7th of January 2002. I had started work that day at the Blacktown office of the Aboriginal Legal Service. My life was in a bit of disarray at that time. I had recently got into recovery from compulsive gambling and was soon to go into recovery from alcoholism. I had very little money, virtually no possessions, and no car. I was living in a shack up in Springwood. I had been extraordinarily lucky to land a job with the Aboriginal Legal Service at their Blacktown office. Bondy had been an institution there already for some years.

 Because I didn't have a car, Bondy used to drive me places whenever he could. Sometimes that would mean I would be at Windsor court and he would be at Penrith. I might finish my case at midday and I would ring Bondy and when he finished at Penrith he would drive to Windsor and pick me up. But that would not be the end of the story. One glorious day we went out to Wiseman's Ferry and on over the river to St Alban's. We drove around Governor Macquarie's five towns for hours, then headed back to the office at Blacktown. Most people would pack up and go home at 5pm after a day like that. Not Bondy. He sat down and started work. I caught the train home to Springwood. 

I think Bondy loved company so much that he would put his other needs on hold for the chance to spend some time being with other people. He was not much of a drinker, but he loved those lazy Friday evenings after conferences in the city when he would sit in the corner of the Chamberlain Hotel, known as "The Dingo", and chat with other lawyers about trials and tribulations. He loved sitting on the sofas in the office "preparing" for court next day by chatting with his workmates.

I think Bondy had a difficult childhood. Certainly, his family life as an adult was difficult. His Mum and Dad were separated when I knew him. So things like Birthday parties and anniversaries were always rigidly segregated. Mum could come to this one, Dad to the next. In that way, I met all of Greg's family.

It was impossible to be friends with Greg, and not meet all the members of his family. There was his mum (Adelaide) his dad (can't remember his name), and his brothers Warren (the Wok) and Mitch. I also met his grandfather, with whom Bondy's dad and the Wok lived.  That house stank, all three were heavy drinkers and I don't think very much cleaning ever happened. I talked to Bondy about it, but he couldn't smell anything. He never could smell anything. His sense of smell had been permanently destroyed by some undisclosed incident many years ago.

But his family were a challenging group. Bondy occasionally let slip a snippet of information about his past that threw light on the person he became. The family had been dysfunctional from very early, and Bondy's dad seemed to have been an alcoholic. Like a lot of oldest children in a dysfunctional family Bondy became the caretaker for his younger brothers. That continued until his death. After his dad died, Bondy husbanded his brothers' inheritances to make sure they were properly housed. Mitch, in particular, had issues and Bondy made sure his money was invested in a unit in Lithgow.

Bondy retained friendships from his schooldays until the end of his life. I can't remember their names but there was at three of them who would turn up to Bondy's milestone birthdays and anniversaries. And friends from his early days in the Education Department would show up too. There was also a stint in the Land Titles office, Big Greg, a much larger doppelganger of Bondy was his friend from those days.

Greg was lucky he found the Aboriginal Legal Service. His career had not been good until then. On his personnel file at the Education Department were these words "Mr Bond is a mediocre clerk at best". He had an insurmountable problem with tardiness. In those days at the education department, he caught a train that should have got him in the front door at the education department at precisely 9am. It invariably ran late, and Bondy had to sign the "late book" at work. We were discussing his hatred of trains when this subject came up.

"Did it ever cross your mind to catch an earlier train?" I asked him.

"No, never."

And tardiness remained a problem for him till he died. In the weeks leading up to his painful death, he joked that at his funeral, he wanted his coffin brought in ten minutes after the service had started. So he could be late for that too. We tried to do it, but the chapel at Rookwood wouldn't let us. 

His continual catastrophic lateness caused enormous problems for those who worked with him. He used to try to joke about it, but it was such a problem that I, and some other lawyers, refused to work with him. Court starts every morning at 10am, sometimes 9.30 am. The hour from 9am till 10am is the busiest and most important of the day. Most of what is going to happen in a day is decided in that hour. Greg usually would not get to court until after 11am. When you were rostered on with Greg that meant you would do most of the running around work before he had even arrived. And you would be distracted from your urgent tasks by a phone call from Bondy 

"Could you let court three know I will be late. I am stuck behind this truck going twenty kilometres an hour on Mamre Road".

I got to the stage where I would just say

"No. Do it yourself".

He started ringing other people then.

I talked to Bondy about his chronic lateness. We all did, thinking that we could help him solve his problem. But none of us could. From our discussions, it seemed to me that Bondy was chronically anxious. He found it almost impossible to leave one place and go to the next because he kept finding things to finish. It meant he stayed in the office also, till all hours of the night driving his long-suffering wife, Yayuk, crazy. 

Yayuk was the main person who suffered from Greg's quirks. They had been married well over twenty years by the time he died. They had an intense bickering relationship. I remember once Yayuk rang me looking for Greg.

"Where is he? He won't answer the phone." It was 8pm.

"He's at the office, with me".

Greg was gesturing furiously at me, pointing at the phone and shaking his head.

"What's he doing there?" in a sneering voice, "Mucking Around?"

I had to lie, "No, he's working".  But, yes, he was actually mucking around.

Greg and Yayuk had met in Bali, during a time when Greg was traipsing aimlessly around Southeast Asia. He told the story like this. 

"She was a village girl, from Java, precariously earning a living in Bali, and sending money home as well."

"We hung out for a few days, then I decided to move on to the next town"

"But as I left I realized I liked the company so I came back".

They stayed together till Greg died.

But, gee, did they fight.  I never really got to know  Yayuk. I met her many times, but her heavily accented English made conversation difficult. Greg used to speak to her in Bahasa, or if they were in company with English speakers, in a form of Pidgin. I don't really understand why Yayuk's English didn't become better, she was intelligent and strong-willed. Her strong will often manifested itself in loud aggressive arguments with Greg. Usually about his lateness, or about his "wasting money" on books.

 I remember her at the funeral. She was waiting outside the chapel. She looked old and broken and lonely. I did not even recognise her, at first. Grief really affected the way she looked.

How I got diagnosed with Bipolar

The Bravest Man I Ever Knew

       The bravest man I ever knew would have been useless in a fight. He couldn’t play football, or cricket. He could barely catch a ball. I first met him at Uni in the 1970s. We all wore ripped jeans and tshirts to class. He wore a houndstooth patterned suit and a porkpie hat. 

He’s dead now. He died of the crippling effects of a congenital illness he carried. Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH). It is a birth defect that causes all sorts of hormonal problems. It meant he matured physically very early, was short and his sex hormone production (estrogen and testosterone) varied wildly. He had to take steroids all his life. In women the condition causes intersexuality. Apparently not so in men, although Mark once pointed out that, in the absence of chromosomal testing, it was hard to know if he was a woman who looked like a man or vice versa or some variation of that. 

He always identified as a man and maintained a mostly platonic love life with women all the time I knew him. Mostly platonic, but extremely passionate. But he was not a “man’s man”, instead he was a complex mix of characteristics that defy any superficial analysis. You won’t doubt his courage, though, when I tell you the story. 

I first met him at the University of NSW in 1980. I had taken a few years off Uni to work in the Public Service in 1978 and 1979, and when I returned for the fourth year of my course he had established himself as a significant, albeit eccentric, figure at the Law School. He found University a liberating change from the bullying he had suffered at school. His short, hairy body was just not suited to football, athletics, swimming; all the things you needed to do at school to be accepted as one of the boys. He told me once that he expected that I would have been one of his tormentors at school. His tormentors were the sporty larrikins like me. But in the free-spirited days of the late 1970s at Uni, all that was unimportant.
Mark threw himself into the cerebral and social life on offer wholeheartedly.

 He had created a persona for himself by being the guy who dressed in a suit with a pork pie hat to come to uni. He was the only person who did anything like this. It marked a completely different situation from the one he was bullied into enduring at school. By dressing in the conservative fashion he chose, he gave off a signal of complete indifference to the standards others might try to impose on him. It was a nod to the nerdy pursuits he enjoyed, opera, classical music, and radio national. 

The other, completely counter-intuitive way he fitted himself into the social life at uni was by embracing the drinking culture of the University with unbridled enthusiasm. This is how we met and how we bonded. If it hadn’t been for the drinking, I probably would have dismissed him as “Zanker the Wanker”,(one of his nicknames; that he gloried in), because of his way of dressing, and all-around oddness. But I loved alcohol too and an enthusiastic and reliable drinking partner was valuable. So we became drinking buddies on Friday nights at the Royal Hotel in Randwick. 

There was one other nickname for Mark, besides “Zanker the Wanker” and that was “Old Man Zanker”. It was because of the way he dressed, but it had a strong kernel of truth about it. His CAH had meant he matured physically much earlier than his peers. He always seemed older than us in his attitudes and habits. When we were given an assignment he would make sure he wrote fifty or a hundred words written on it the next day. Most of the rest of us filed the assignment away, to be done desperately at the last minute. Needless to say, his marks reflected his more mature approach to study.

 Unlike me, he also adopted a very disciplined approach to his drinking. Night times were for drinking, daytimes (usually) for work and study. It was at uni that Mark commenced his, usually unrequited, passions for beautiful women. He did not find any need to keep his attraction secret and would broadcast it to all and sundry. I say, usually unrequited, because he had at least one romantic liaison that became slightly more than a one night stand. It was not Mark who terminated this relationship. He remained enamoured of her for the rest of his life. He remained enamoured of more than a few women over most of his life. 

I don’t know if I was Mark’s closest friend over the course of his life. He maintained deep personal relationships with many people until the end. But I was up there, and he confided in me the deepest aspects of his romantic life. There was not a lot of sex, but he treasured every episode fiercely. One of his great sadnesses was his apparent inability to attract sexual partners. By the time he was in his forties he had achieved an acceptance of this, but until then he worked tirelessly but fruitlessly at it. Even after then, he pursued hopeless romantic follies. He was a man of unbridled passion. He fell hopelessly, blindly in love. He was often badly hurt, but that did not stop him from trying again. The great gift he had, was to be able to form life long friendships out of these unrequited, or slightly requited, love affairs. 

The Zanker family consisted of Mark, his sisters, Carolyn and Robyn and his mum, Kay, and his dad Hector. They lived in a semi-detached early twentieth-century house in North Bondi. Next door in the other part of the semi lived Mark’s paternal grandparents. The house was small and crowded with five occupants. I remember Mark had a tiny room at the back of the house. Also nearby in a pensioner unit was Mark’s much-beloved maternal grandmother. 

We visited her once. She was so important in Mark’s life that any new friend had to be introduced to her. Mark’s childhood, with his illness and the consequent bullying, had been difficult. Nan provided a safe haven for him. She was not a textbook grandma. She had acted for many years as an SP bookmakers clerk. Some of Mark’s happiest memories were listening to starting prices on 2KY and watching Clarence the Clocker on Television on Saturday mornings, helping Nan prepare for the days racing. He was not a huge gambler, himself, but he loved telling the tales of the visits to the Bookie’s operation headquarters with its bank of phones and the cockatoos outside. 

An interest in the bawdier side of life was another shared passion we had. In those days Mark had a part time job as a barman at a club in Kings Cross, and I spent some endless afternoons at the bar chatting to him, or playing the pokies. I was a gambler, and he was very comfortable around my gambling. 

The great love of Mark’s life was his mother Kay. She was his great supporter, but also his great critic. They brawled like an Irish Catholic family (Which I think Kay’s side was) until the day Mark died. The brawling, like the great love, started early. Before school age, Mark would pack his belongings and walk to the corner, intending to run away, but unable to cross the road. His sister Carolyn would solemnly report to Kay, “Boy gone”. By the time I knew him, Kay was criticizing his drinking. It became a familiar refrain. But never once did it deter Mark from sinking a VB or two when the fancy struck him. Which it often did. When he died, thirty cans of VB and a carton of smokes were left behind. 

But Kay and Mark loved each other deeply. They liked each other’s company, and over the years Kay spent many weeks staying with Mark in the various places he lived. 

It was from his father though, that Mark found his great love of trains. His dad was an engineer with NSW Government Railways, as it then was. Hec was heavily involved in the introduction and testing of the XPT trains that are now dated and unreliable. But at the time they were new and fast. Mark had been obsessed by trains from a young age.

 In those early years at Uni we took train trips to Broken Hill, Bathurst, and Cootamundra. The Bathurst trip was a typical Mark adventure. Up early, catch the morning train. Note the times that the train stopped at every station. Get out at Bathurst, go to the nearest club. Drink beer and play poker machines, eat an unhealthy lunch. Then catch the afternoon train back to Sydney playing euchre and drinking overpriced beers on the train. Those were the days. 

The Cootamundra trip was important to me.  It was my first time seeing my old home town through the eyes of someone who loved it as much as me. We caught the South West mail, I slept on the luggage racks over the dog boxes, but Mark was unable to climb and did the best he could on the seats. We arrived in Cootamundra in the early hours of the morning. We walked to his Aunty Eil’s house, which was on the border of the Golf Course. Walking all the way across town in the awakening dawn was a treat Cootamundra is a very beautiful town. 

We both had a strong connection to Cootamundra. Mark’s dad was born there and I had spent four years there as a child. That trip is clear in my mind. Playing golf, and drinking beer at the country club. Meeting old Nick Deeps who had been Auntie Eil’s employer at his menswear shop, and been her unrequited lover. Trips to the gap and other important landmarks of my youth. On one of our games, Mark picked up a ball he found and idly put it in the hole. The young champion, Jason Deep, playing behind us was so far back we hadn't seen him. He was excited to discover he had scored an eagle. Or so he thought.

The love of golf was an important part of those early years of Marks, although his ability to play became less and less as his disabilities worsened. His Uncle Fred Belle had been a golfing champion around Cootamundra.  His parents were also keen golfers at Moore Park golf course in  Sydney. Some of his other cousins and uncles in Coota had also been great cyclists. Ray Crowe’s bike shop was still an institution in town when we went there in 1981 or so. Ray was Mark’s uncle. The shop is gone now, replaced by a toilet block, next to the Globe Hotel.

 One of the happy memories Mark described was coming to Coota for holidays and staying at Aunty Eil's. Every time he came, and he would usually catch the train down by himself, he would devote one day to an expedition to Tumut. He would get up early, ride the bike kept for him by Aunty Eil, and bought from Ray Crowe, down to the railway station and catch the mail train to Tumut. He would watch the train being unloaded and reloaded then catch it back. He would be back home in time for lunch. I never caught the train to Tumut. But it sounds like heaven to me. On one of our many trips later on, we went to Gundagai railway station. Trains had stopped running by then, but the station master was still employed there, until he retired. We had a lovely trainspotting conversation with him. 

When we finished Uni Mark got a scholarship from the Commonwealth Attorney General’s Department to do his practical legal training in Canberra and stay on and take a job in the department. His mother gave him her four-cylinder diesel-powered Holden Gemini and he grew wings. He had a ten-speed bike which he rode ferociously around Lake Burley Griffen on Sundays. He played golf every Saturday morning. Even in winter, he would head out to the golf course at Narrabundah, at 6 in the morning and tee off with his mates in the frost and fog. I did it a few times, but not regularly. This would be followed by some beers at the clubhouse until Mark realized the antisocial nature of driving home under the influence. Then he stopped the beers after the game.

 At first, Mark lived in a unit in Kingston which he shared with friends. Then he moved into a unit in Lyneham, which he bought. The Lyneham place was on the top floor of a three-story block. There was one fabulous interlude where Mark had a torrid affair with the Egyptian woman living downstairs. Nobly, he ended that relationship when he realized he had no intention of spending the rest of his life with her. That unit in Lyneham was my safe haven as my life fell apart over the years. There was a spare room I occupied for weeks at a time. 

And they were good times. Beers at the Lithuanian club next door, beers at home, drunken Thai meals at the Thai restaurant in Lyneham shops, Karaoke at the Old Lyneham Inn. When I was not there in the spare room, others would visit, his uni friends, new friends, older friends, family members. He was a very social man. I can’t remember how long Mark stayed in the Unit in Lyneham. But his career advanced rapidly during those years. He went from being a very junior lawyer to fairly Senior, in Family Law, then Bankruptcy Law.

 His camping trips to country areas had been a highlight for him, and remained so. At first, he used tents then he graduated to camper trailers, then finally in the last years of his life a luxury motor home. I went on many trips with him. He would take the Diesel Gemini all over New South Wales and Victoria with tents and camping equipment stowed away. I can recall camping trips to Pebbly Beach, Gundagai, Bright, Orbost, and Broken Hill. He loved the conviviality of shared camping experiences so he did not mind camping at caravan parks. It was more opportunity to meet new people. 

As soon as Mark left University he had completely altered his dress code. He became a blue singlet wearing casual dresser. He was chipped once or twice in the Attorney Generals' office for wearing flannelette shirts. Largely he dressed barely appropriately for the office.  It was another one of his trademark re-inventions of himself. At home, it was a blue singlet or flanno and shorts.  My fond memory of him is him with a beer in hand wearing a blue singlet and shorts next to a campfire.

 He went camping with anyone he could rope into a trip. I went several times, but he also went with workmates, Uni mates, schoolmates. He just loved it out the bush, relaxing under the stars. I suspect it harked back to happy times camping as a child. One anecdote I remember involved his Dad catching a giant Murray River Crayfish at Tom Groggin on the Upper Murray. 

Mark moved out to Kaleen to a four bedroom house in the 1990s. It had a chook yard, which he filled with chooks. He built a makeshift outdoor shower arrangement to recycle his water into the garden. I am not sure when the fascination with green issues began but it was a strong force by the time he moved into the house in Kaleen. I suspect it was tied in with his love of the bush. His green efforts included recycling all water used in the house. Now that he had garage space he took up the hobby of woodworking. He set up a well-provisioned workshop with up to date tools and turned out bookcases and the like. 

But with his increasing disability, the house was probably a bad idea. There were falls. The steroids he took made his bones chalky, and fractures were common. The cycling gradually had to cease as his bones failed to mend. The golfing was long gone. He started using a walking stick. He would still shower outside even in the depths of winter, propping himself up as best he could. 

Even though Mark became a committed green supporter, he never went into the depths of the looney left. He didn’t mind the idea of shooting feral animals. He was not an animal rights activist, he supported sustainable agriculture. What he was concerned about was the destruction of the native environment so dear to him. So feral cats and pigs could be shot because they destroyed native wildlife. 

As the years went on at Kaleen, Mark became more and more disabled. He started using a zimmer frame to move around. He continued to work full time, though. The trips overseas to represent Australia at international conventions must have been a nightmare. His zimmer frame would have to be disassembled and reassembled. He lived in fear that one of his mobility aids would be lost during transit. He progressed to a mobility scooter soon enough. The house at Kaleen became too much for him and he moved into a Unit in Inner Canberra. 

He continued to work, moving around the offices on a scooter. It was about this time that a Norwegian documentary maker made a film about his work protecting the Patagonian Toothfish in Australian waters near Christmas Island. It was also the time he participated in the "Children Overboard" affair, as a senior advisor to John Howard. Like much of the politically motivated work he had too, Mark was disillusioned by his role when he retired and reflected on his career.

  I can’t remember how old Mark was when he retired from work. It was in his early fifties. He had exceeded the expectations of the actuaries who placed him on the commonwealth government superannuation. I think they had calculated that, with his disability, he would live to 47. He celebrated that milestone with a big birthday bash at Cootamundra Country Club. But work became too much for him and he retired without warning. He said to the admin staff at work one day, “Well you won’t see me around here anymore”. And that was it. 

And thus began Mark's life as a grey nomad. He rented his unit out and bought a camper van and commenced a transient life traveling around the places he had loved in his life. His disabilities were afflicting him badly by now. He had a Zimmer frame for small steps and a scooter for longer trips. But I think he gained an enormous sense of freedom driving long distances to his favoured remote places. He recalled being stopped by a police officer north-west of Longreach. When the officer found Mark had no ability to walk more than a few steps, he was gobsmacked. 

The places he loved to visit and stay for months on end were Katherine, Kununurra, and Cootamundra. But there were other places too. He would tend to migrate north as winter approached. Then head back south as the wet season approached. I camped with him only a few times over the years of his roaming. Once at Boorowa in the height of summer, then another time at Port Augusta, in late spring. There were also a few trips to Mark’s beloved Cootamundra.  Remote places fill me with fear and despair, but not so Mark. He had his camper perfectly set up for himself. Setting up camp was easy. But his lack of mobility made even that easy process, difficult. Washing his sheets in the camp laundry and drying them out would tire him for a few days. So he severely rationed his tasks. That was why he would stay in one place for weeks and months. He loved the freedom of the open road, but it tired him out too much. 

 Mark had been predicting his own death from the time I first knew him. His life expectancy with his condition was about 50 years. That is what the government medical officer had said when he first joined the commonwealth public service. I never knew how seriously to take these dire prognostications. I have done my research now and I can see that he was right. He lived far beyond his expected life span through the “wonders” of modern science. But the last few years were very difficult indeed. 

It all started to go rapidly downhill after a fall at Nelson Bay, where his parents had moved after Hec retired. That was about six years before his death. But it caused a big gash in his leg, a stay in hospital at Shortland to allow the wound to begin to heal and a longer stay at his sister’s place in Moss Vale, as he recuperated.  The wound, like all the wounds and sores he suffered from as he got older, never really healed. Life for mark usually included a twice daily regime of unbandaging his sores, cleaning them with saline solution, then rebandaging.

 While in hospital, he was encouraged to reconsider his drinking behaviours. We discussed this when I visited, and we had a minor rift when I said that I wouldn't smuggle grog in for him if he wanted it.  I later relented and said I would. For Mark, the problems caused by drinking were never enough to make him stop. I think life would have become intolerable much earlier if it wasn't for the daily reprieve of a few cans of VB.

Falls were a constant issue. The one at Nelson bay was particularly bad but there were many others He didn’t have the balance I had, due to his congenital condition, and of course, the steroids made his bones chalky and made it difficult for sores to heal. His bones broke easily. He broke his back numerous times over the last few torturous years of his life. He broke his legs and his arm too. Mark told me that he was part of a new cohort of CAH sufferers who had lived long past their life expectancy, and whose bodies wore out. In the past, those with CAH would die before they entered the nightmarish world of broken bones, unhealing sores, and total immobility that Mark courageously faced for those last few years. 

He stopped traveling after his stay in the hospital at Shortland. He had formed a reattachment to Cootamundra over the last few years. He spent months camped at the Caravan Park. On one of his stays there he did a deal with the owner of a small townhouse opposite the hospital. They swapped Mark’s Campervan plus $100000 for the townhouse. This was another case of Mark perceiving a need to change his lifestyle and doing it immediately and without fanfare. 

The house in Coota only lasted a couple of years. More broken bones and more unhealing sores saw him surrender to the demands of his mother and sister and move into a small bedsitter behind the house Robyn and Kay now shared in Moss Vale. He knew this was the beginning of the end. But he remained sanguine. He had no other choice but to accept it. He accepted the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, finally. Although for years he had refused the blandishments of his mother, and others, to live more sensibly, in the end, he had to stop his courageous attempts at independence. For nearly ten glorious years Mark took arms against a sea of trouble, and by opposing did his best to end them. In the final analysis, he lost the fight. But what a courageous struggle. 

 And did he lose the fight? I had a phone call from him on Thursday 29 October 2020. I was on a train, on my way to work. I cut him short, “I can’t talk Mark, I am on a train, we are about to go into a tunnel”. We were about to go into the underground part of the city circle. “It’s ok Jim. I just wanted to say goodbye. The nurse is coming, I think I will be going into palliative care” “I don’t expect I will live through the weekend” I had heard Mark predict his own death many times, this one did sound certain though. And it was immediate."I can't get out of this chair. I can't clean myself, I can't toilet myself" "It's terrible, I am ready to go". “I love you Mark” “I love you, Jim” Then we hung up. His mind was still sharp, but his body was broken.

I saw my brother on Saturday the 31st of October. He showed me the heartbreaking post Mark had put on Facebook on 30 October saying goodbye to everyone. I was in Bowral. I could have gone to the hospital to see him. But I didn’t. Then on Sunday 1st November, I saw he had died. I spoke to his Sister Robyn later that day. She told me, among many things, that Mark had stopped taking his medication for his CAH on Wednesday. I knew, from many conversations I had with Mark over the years about euthanasia, that stopping his medication would kill Mark in a few days. It would be a very painful death, but a fairly quick one. I knew then that that had been his last courageous act. He went out at a time of his choosing when life had become intolerable to him. 

The bravest man I ever knew.