I have been telling the story of my Psychotic incident in 2012, when I decompensated (I think that is the word the Psychs use) while making a spiritual journey across the Nullarbor plain. When did my psychosis end. I can't say for sure. By mid 2012 when I returned to work I was no longer Psychotic, just catastrophically depressed, although I would I have denied it you asked my. In fact I thought I was just weak.
Ten kilometres out of Merredin I had turned east and given up my quest. As soon i turned I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. But thoughts remained intrusive. I stopped at Coolgardie and stayed at a motel. I rang mum, she was relieved I had given up. I rang my sponsor. He was ok about it. That has been the great thing about twelve steps for me. The people in it accept failure. They just shrug their shoulders, and get on with the next thing. I remained in my room exhausted. I still did not trust anyone. I knew there was something seriously wrong with me ,but I wanted to keep that fact to myself. So I kept my conversations to a bare minimum. I had my camp stove and I used it regularly for coffees. But the Nullarbor was lurking just in front of me, and I knew I was going to have to cross it to get to safety. So early in the morning I packed up and left. I wanted to have the energy to go have look at Kalgoorlie, but I was storing my strength.
Years before, in 1989 to be precise I had stopped at Kmart in Kalgoorlie. I had had a nagging thought in the back of my mind that I may not have a jack. I had driven for four days from Canberra with this thought in my mind, but had resisted the temptation to check. For some reason in Kalgoorlie I checked. Sure enough, I did not have one, so I bought one. I used it the very same day 200 ks north near Wiluna.
I wanted to go to KMart just see that lucky place, but could not face the people, and was worried about the Nullarbor, so I headed due east. A lot more people drove across the Nullarbor in 1989 than in 2012. It had become more deserted. But there were still hardy grey nomads and trucks. I have a mate who travelled Australia as a single grey nomad for years. I do not know how he did it. Psychotic or sane, the interior of Australia frightens the shit out of me. I love the western slopes of NSW, but as soon as go past the last line of hills, say at Temora, or Dubbo, I start to feel uncomfortable. And past Port Augusta every white person becomes Bradley Murdoch and every black one a Kadaicha man.
I must have been stronger, or saner when I was younger. How i survived those two years in Port Hedland I will never know. You cross the railway line heading to South Hedland near the salt piles. The road is raised there to create a bridge to go over the railway. If you squint your eyes and look west you can see a faint bump in the the horizon. That bump is a hill next to water hole in the East Turner River. It is easy to find. You just follow the dirt road next to the railway line for an hour or so and turn left when you get the hill. The water hole is right there. It is a wonderful place. But it is 120 ks from Hedland. How did I survive in that flatness?
My sponsor was right. I did need to go to Hedland. But I ended up flying there. And I felt weird the entire time I was there. It was right at the end of the most recent mining boom. The town is not and never has been, in my experience, set up for tourists. It is there to rape the earth. God bless the salt miners by the way. Their industry is at least sustainable. All the other miners just dig holes and plunder. There were a lot mores holes in the ground than I remembered, and a lot more white and Asian people. And the black people still lived in camps around the back of the shops at South Hedland.
The corrugated iron houses in Port Hedland that the Mutta Mutta's (a Kriol word for half caste) lived in the early 1980s were all gone. Millions of dollars had been spent and Port Hedland looked like a suburb of Perth. Mind you, a suburb of Perth designed by town planners addicted to Methamphetamine. Teddy Allen, rumoured to be a son of Lang Hancock lived in one of the corrugated iron houses. I visited him on a few occasions, he was a charming host, and the house was airconditioned and cool inside.
Hedland's Aboriginal history was complex. Up until the 1960s there was a gate that was closed at night. Only Mutta Muttas were allowed inside that gate after dark. Full bloods had to leave. There was a club called the Aurelian club for Aboriginal people with European blood. When I lived there there was a group called the "Ten Man" who would go round and pick up drunk members of the "Strelley Mob" (who all now lived at Warralong) and take them out to a punishment camp in the Great Sandy Desert called "Punmu". The errant community members lived in water tanks cut in half, in temperatures that regularly approached 50 degrees Celsius.
I was friends with the leader of the Ten Man, I can't sat his name because he is dead now but will call him "Whitey". He was a very old man but was very welcoming to me. He wanted to take my sons out to Warralong (my sons are Aboriginal, albeit Koories, not Mardu), but my wife put her foot down. The Strelley Mob were so called because they had gone on strike in the 1930's from working on pastoral stations, and had bought Strelley station using money they accumulated from mineral prospecting. They still enforced tribal law.
Whitey was the last of the leaders of the Strelley mob. Him and a cranky old deaf Whitefella called Don Macleod. MacLeod was a communist and a former union leader. He had been friends with Lang Hancock back in the day, but their lives ended up completely different. Hancock a billionaire. MacLeod living a monastic life in a shack at Warralong. MacLeod was not well liked but the Old Backfellas trusted him. He seems to have got nothing out of his close relationship with the Strelley Mob, other than the dissatisfaction of watching the life he had tried to help the elders protect, be slowly eroded by the development of the mining industry.
There is so much to say about all this. But I need to stop here and regain my focus on my psychotic incident. It is apparent to me reading back just how important my years at Hedland were and why my journey back was loaded with meaning
Friday, 13 April 2018
Thursday, 12 April 2018
Bondie Part 2
Just so I don't miss too many of the great stories I am going try to work through the different places Bondie went in an effort to be systematic. Penrith has to be first. So many soul crushing days. Piles of files feet thick. not even getting one matter actually into court before lunchtime.Being "Bullinghammed".I am using a pseudonym here, that I stole from Rumpole. You were Bullinghammed when you waited till after lunch to deal with a difficult matter, and just before lunch were sent to a court where a decent magistrate was sitting. At 2pm you are sitting at the bar table bright eyed and Magistrate Bullingham walks onto the bench.
Before Mt Druitt court opened Penrith was a very busy court indeed. There were three district Courts and two local courts on the main floor. Upstairs was Court 6 and up the road in the annexe, or caravan park were courts 7, 8 and 9. Nine courts, nine judicial officers. Bondie's lateness caused chaos. On one occasion we were due in Redfern after lunch for a function. I was anxious to get to it, and was reliant on him for transport. I dealt with all his matters and all mine before he arrived. He rushed in stammering apologies, but I was white hot with fury, and would not hear. But by the time we were on the road it was all forgotten.
Bondie had a complicated relationship with Prosecutors. He thought Police Prosecutors ought to be done away with, but he got on well with them. DPP Lawyers were a different matter. One day we were all at Penrith. One of our lawyers was well known to be gay. We were sitting in the office we had in those days. Bondie storms into the office. "Those DPP lawyers are a bunch of cocksuckers."
Then he looks up and sees the gay lawyer. Bondie never wanted to hurt anyone's feelings. "Not that there is anything wrong with sucking cocks, Billy".
On another occasion, one of the lawyers sent out a distress call. This happened at Penrith sometimes. It was easily our busiest court. Lawyers would finish were they were and go to Penrith to help out. Bondie was the last to arrive. All the matters had been dealt with. "What do you want me to do?"
"see my bag over there, pick it up and bring it over here" replied the boss.
One of Bondies self deprecating comments about himself was that although he was a lawyer, he remained a successful taxi driver. He was a terrible driver, I have screamed in fear on at least one occasion in his car. But what he meant was that whatever his failings as a lawyer, he made sure his clients got home. On one occasion he took a 14 year old client home to her Grandma's in Emu Plains, he dropped her at the corner and she went to friends place. Mum was waiting for her at Hebersham and reported her missing. That could have been disastrous for Bondie, but the girl turned up, several anxious days later, unharmed. Eventually we were barred from taking our clients home in our cars. By the time of his death the wisdom of that rule had largely sunk in with Bondie, but he was still doing it for years after it was banned. Could not comply with rules. I actually suspect he still occasionally did it, up to the last.
There was one client in particular at Penrith who we all loved. I will keep this anonymous so I will call her Lizzie. She had a speech impediment and an intellectual disability. She would call out "Bod" "Bod", when she wanted Bondie's attention. It was hard to resist to trying to help her. She had a boyfriend who was a heroin addict and she got into trouble a lot because of him. We all gave her money for lunch and so on. But Bondie especially liked her. And she him. Bondie and I were at the Cedars Hotel at Emerton one night and we ran into her Mum. We had not seen Lizzie for some time. We found out she had met a decent man and no longer got into with the law. That is why you do this job. I still have not seen or heard from her in years.
Bondie's driving was atrocious..Just before he was due to leave on a long trip to Malang he had an accident. He ran up the back of another vehicle while he was going down a short cut. He tried to blame the driver in front. "He jammed his brakes on" The car's bonnet was broken and he tied it down with wire. His car could only be repaired by a smash repair place in Penrith (according to Bondie), so he limped along the side of the M4 at 80 ks. Unfortunately a semi roared past him at 120 ks and the wind blew the bonnet up and smashed his windscreen and seriously damaged the car. Two $750 excesses. These were the kind of disasters that happened to him. They did not stop him going on holiday either. He just coped.
He constantly rushed around with only one or two points left on his licence. He was booked for speeding during double demerits on a rushed trip to Canberra to get an urgent passport renewal for one of his trips. That one required an application to the Court and a Good Behaviour Licence. It must have been a nightmare for him driving around with no spare points.
Anxiety was a constant feature of his life and was the reason for many of his more aggravating habits. He carried a serenity prayer around in his wallet, given to him by a psychologist but I doubt he ever actually prayed it. He was not a serene person, except on those rare occasions he would lose himself in child-like joy. You might be driving along Parramatta road with him and he would notice ducks waddling along the side of the road. Everything would be forgotten as he enjoyed this spectacle (meanwhile becoming later for his next appointment). His boring tours may have been an attempt by him to recapture the innocent joy of childhood.
But his tales of childhood were not always joyful. The family was not happy, and Bondie as eldest child seemed to feel responsible for making everyone ok. But he did not always feel ok himself. He told a story of him as a teenager, standing on Toongabbie station on a Friday night, dressed up ready to go out. A group a girls pointed at him and laughed at him. Apparently he did not look cool. It was something about the way he was dressed, but I can't remember what. He turned around and went home.
Daniel Taylor said something to me the other day about Bondie being an Outsider and I think that fits. He revelled in his outsider status, yet also railled against it. He simultaneously wanted, and didn't want, to be part of the gang. He found in the ALS a perfect fit for himself. He could participate in a job and a community, without his significant personality traits disqualifying him. In fact, as these posts try to show, they made him a much valued member. It took time for that to happen though, and part of the reason I am interested in the thoughts of Dan Taylor is that he saw Bondie when he was most vulnerable. When criticism still wounded him deeply, before the letter from Michael Kirby, before he managed to turn his continual lateness into something funny, rather than a failing that may result in his dismissal.
I told Bondie on many occasions that if I was boss of the ALS I would sack him. There were many others who felt the same. But there was this child like vulnerability about him, that I am talking about, that usually disarmed your criticism before you had really got started.
One night as I was leaving the Blacktown Office Bondie followed me out. Those who know me are aware that I sometimes get sick of conversations and get up and leave with out warning. Bondie had not finished talking. He followed me into the toilet, i went into a cubicle and lacked the door. Stood outside and kept talking. I told him several times to stop talking, but he ignored me. I came out of the cubicle and washed my hands, he was still talking. He followed me down the back stairs to my car. Still talking. I gave him a minute, Then said "I really have to go Bondie" I got in my car and started reversing out. Next thing I heard a loud thump and my car vibrated. For a terrible moment I thought I had run him over. But No. He was banging on my window. He had one more thing to say! That is that last time I officially lost my temper.
Anyone who ever went out to eat with Bondie would know the agony of indecision he suffered at the prospect of a choice. He could not make up his mind what to eat, and would dither to and fro while everyone else looked bemusedly on. He seemed to have this idea that good things and good times were fragile. You had to make the most of them while they were there because they would soon be gone.
And I have a diverted a long way from my stated aim of telling stories about Bondie that relate to Penrith, so I will pause here and regather my thoughts. There is so much more to say about this complex, simple man.
Before Mt Druitt court opened Penrith was a very busy court indeed. There were three district Courts and two local courts on the main floor. Upstairs was Court 6 and up the road in the annexe, or caravan park were courts 7, 8 and 9. Nine courts, nine judicial officers. Bondie's lateness caused chaos. On one occasion we were due in Redfern after lunch for a function. I was anxious to get to it, and was reliant on him for transport. I dealt with all his matters and all mine before he arrived. He rushed in stammering apologies, but I was white hot with fury, and would not hear. But by the time we were on the road it was all forgotten.
Bondie had a complicated relationship with Prosecutors. He thought Police Prosecutors ought to be done away with, but he got on well with them. DPP Lawyers were a different matter. One day we were all at Penrith. One of our lawyers was well known to be gay. We were sitting in the office we had in those days. Bondie storms into the office. "Those DPP lawyers are a bunch of cocksuckers."
Then he looks up and sees the gay lawyer. Bondie never wanted to hurt anyone's feelings. "Not that there is anything wrong with sucking cocks, Billy".
On another occasion, one of the lawyers sent out a distress call. This happened at Penrith sometimes. It was easily our busiest court. Lawyers would finish were they were and go to Penrith to help out. Bondie was the last to arrive. All the matters had been dealt with. "What do you want me to do?"
"see my bag over there, pick it up and bring it over here" replied the boss.
One of Bondies self deprecating comments about himself was that although he was a lawyer, he remained a successful taxi driver. He was a terrible driver, I have screamed in fear on at least one occasion in his car. But what he meant was that whatever his failings as a lawyer, he made sure his clients got home. On one occasion he took a 14 year old client home to her Grandma's in Emu Plains, he dropped her at the corner and she went to friends place. Mum was waiting for her at Hebersham and reported her missing. That could have been disastrous for Bondie, but the girl turned up, several anxious days later, unharmed. Eventually we were barred from taking our clients home in our cars. By the time of his death the wisdom of that rule had largely sunk in with Bondie, but he was still doing it for years after it was banned. Could not comply with rules. I actually suspect he still occasionally did it, up to the last.
There was one client in particular at Penrith who we all loved. I will keep this anonymous so I will call her Lizzie. She had a speech impediment and an intellectual disability. She would call out "Bod" "Bod", when she wanted Bondie's attention. It was hard to resist to trying to help her. She had a boyfriend who was a heroin addict and she got into trouble a lot because of him. We all gave her money for lunch and so on. But Bondie especially liked her. And she him. Bondie and I were at the Cedars Hotel at Emerton one night and we ran into her Mum. We had not seen Lizzie for some time. We found out she had met a decent man and no longer got into with the law. That is why you do this job. I still have not seen or heard from her in years.
Bondie's driving was atrocious..Just before he was due to leave on a long trip to Malang he had an accident. He ran up the back of another vehicle while he was going down a short cut. He tried to blame the driver in front. "He jammed his brakes on" The car's bonnet was broken and he tied it down with wire. His car could only be repaired by a smash repair place in Penrith (according to Bondie), so he limped along the side of the M4 at 80 ks. Unfortunately a semi roared past him at 120 ks and the wind blew the bonnet up and smashed his windscreen and seriously damaged the car. Two $750 excesses. These were the kind of disasters that happened to him. They did not stop him going on holiday either. He just coped.
He constantly rushed around with only one or two points left on his licence. He was booked for speeding during double demerits on a rushed trip to Canberra to get an urgent passport renewal for one of his trips. That one required an application to the Court and a Good Behaviour Licence. It must have been a nightmare for him driving around with no spare points.
Anxiety was a constant feature of his life and was the reason for many of his more aggravating habits. He carried a serenity prayer around in his wallet, given to him by a psychologist but I doubt he ever actually prayed it. He was not a serene person, except on those rare occasions he would lose himself in child-like joy. You might be driving along Parramatta road with him and he would notice ducks waddling along the side of the road. Everything would be forgotten as he enjoyed this spectacle (meanwhile becoming later for his next appointment). His boring tours may have been an attempt by him to recapture the innocent joy of childhood.
But his tales of childhood were not always joyful. The family was not happy, and Bondie as eldest child seemed to feel responsible for making everyone ok. But he did not always feel ok himself. He told a story of him as a teenager, standing on Toongabbie station on a Friday night, dressed up ready to go out. A group a girls pointed at him and laughed at him. Apparently he did not look cool. It was something about the way he was dressed, but I can't remember what. He turned around and went home.
Daniel Taylor said something to me the other day about Bondie being an Outsider and I think that fits. He revelled in his outsider status, yet also railled against it. He simultaneously wanted, and didn't want, to be part of the gang. He found in the ALS a perfect fit for himself. He could participate in a job and a community, without his significant personality traits disqualifying him. In fact, as these posts try to show, they made him a much valued member. It took time for that to happen though, and part of the reason I am interested in the thoughts of Dan Taylor is that he saw Bondie when he was most vulnerable. When criticism still wounded him deeply, before the letter from Michael Kirby, before he managed to turn his continual lateness into something funny, rather than a failing that may result in his dismissal.
I told Bondie on many occasions that if I was boss of the ALS I would sack him. There were many others who felt the same. But there was this child like vulnerability about him, that I am talking about, that usually disarmed your criticism before you had really got started.
One night as I was leaving the Blacktown Office Bondie followed me out. Those who know me are aware that I sometimes get sick of conversations and get up and leave with out warning. Bondie had not finished talking. He followed me into the toilet, i went into a cubicle and lacked the door. Stood outside and kept talking. I told him several times to stop talking, but he ignored me. I came out of the cubicle and washed my hands, he was still talking. He followed me down the back stairs to my car. Still talking. I gave him a minute, Then said "I really have to go Bondie" I got in my car and started reversing out. Next thing I heard a loud thump and my car vibrated. For a terrible moment I thought I had run him over. But No. He was banging on my window. He had one more thing to say! That is that last time I officially lost my temper.
Anyone who ever went out to eat with Bondie would know the agony of indecision he suffered at the prospect of a choice. He could not make up his mind what to eat, and would dither to and fro while everyone else looked bemusedly on. He seemed to have this idea that good things and good times were fragile. You had to make the most of them while they were there because they would soon be gone.
And I have a diverted a long way from my stated aim of telling stories about Bondie that relate to Penrith, so I will pause here and regather my thoughts. There is so much more to say about this complex, simple man.
Tuesday, 10 April 2018
Bondie part !
He was unique. I suppose everyone is. But there are more go-getting young lawyers on a pathway to being a Judge than you can poke a stick at.
Bondie was not on that path.Before he found the Aboriginal Legal Service, he was on track to be, in the words of his boss in the NSW Public Service, "A mediocre clerk, at best". He achieved that goal in the Clerk of the Peace/ DPP. Despite gaining his legal qualification, he remained a legal assistant, banished to a back office where files went to die.
Bondie could not comply with rules. He paid lip service to them, indeed his acts of compliance were more in the nature of parody than anything else. In the early days at the Blacktown office of The ALS, he would sign in at the office at 10:36 or whatever, then head off to Cobham, making the unspoken points that a) if he didn't have to sign in at the office he would have been at court close to on time. and b) he would come to work on his own schedule, and not any one elses.
He absolutely drove me crackers. In the end I refused to work at the same courthouse as him because of the extra work his lateness caused for me. For his part Bondie worked around me, if I did happen to be somewhere near where he was going to be late. He would ring legal aid, or a friendly member of the court staff.
How we remained friends I will never know. The only person who shouted at him more than I did was his long suffering wife Yayuk. And boy did they shout at each other. Yayuk rings me up at 8 30 pm. "Are with Greg?" Yes, I am he's just finishing up now", I lie. "Finishing up what? Mucking around?" Unfortunately that usually hit the nail on the head.
And I think it answers my question of how we stayed friends, we just mucked around together. In the very early days of our time together at the Blacktown office I did not have a car. So I would catch trains to say, Windsor. Bondie might finish early and come and hangout. We would end up doing a tour of the Macquarie towns, and the bread basket of the early penal colony. Bondie would tell me the Aboriginal history of the region. We might do 300 kilometres to St Albans and Pitt Town, then stop for a drink at the Wiseman's ferry Pub. Mucking around.
I called them "Bondie's Boring Tours". The classic was the Boring Tour of Toongabbie, where Bondie grew up. The paddock where Terry James (Police Prosecutor at Blacktown) beat his brother up in 1968. The lolly shop where Bondie's youngest brother dropped his lollies. The house his Grandfather built. Over the years I met every member of Bondies immediate family. His mum, at Narrabeen, (another boring tour) His Dad and Grandad at Punchbowl , Mitch and Wok his two brothers.
He was impervious to my protestations that I did not want to go on these tours. He just made you go. Ask Slade Howell or Alex Terracini! He just wore you down. His spare time was taken up a lot with his family. He was the glue that held them together. His Mum and Dad could never be in the same room together, but he loved them equally. That meant quid pro quo visits. At various times Mitch and Wok were not talking so that would have to be managed as well.
He and Yayuk were married 27 years (please correct me if I am wrong about this). It was a very successful relationship, notwithstanding the shouting. They met in Bali when Bondie was shiftlessly travelling around as a young man. He was leaving Bali to continue his adventures when (cue your own impression of Bondie's voice) "I realised I liked the company". So he went back and got her. His great sadness was that they could not have children. But he looked after Yayuk's son from a previous marriage financially until he died young, and he built a house for her extended family in Malang in Java.
Bondie's voice needs a paragraph of its own. The funniest thing I saw and heard in a lot of years was Sailesh Rajan impersonating Charles Macnamara impersonating Bondie. If you had sat Bondie down with a careers counsellor his voice alone would rule out court room lawyer as a vocation. To say nothing of the chronic lateness, and the lack of sartorial adequacy. He was a terrible joke teller, he telegraphed the punchline and you would be sitting there rolling your eyes while his voice grated on and on to a conclusion you had reached in a previous lifetime.
Daniel Taylor and I had a code. When we saw a pretty girl (the truth compels me reveal how unreconstructed we all were) one of us would say "The winner of the 1963 Melbourne Cup was Gatum Gatum" and we would indicate subtly with our eyes. Bondie could never get this He would grab you by the shoulder and say "Hey Jim, Hey Dan ......*pointing with both hands and grinning lasciviously* I think that horse might have won the Melbourne Cup!!!!" then as an afterthought, more soberly "In 1963".
And sartorial adequacy. He owned one full suit, a couple of pairs of unmatching suit pants and an old suit jacket. When one of those needed repair he went to an Indian Tailor at the back of the the old arcade in Blacktown. Everyone was on tenterhooks because once one pair was in the garage there was not much by way of spares.
The last day I saw Bondie out of hospital was at Mt Druitt court in late 2013 (I think). He went into RPAH over Christmas. The cancer had eaten into his bones and he had broken his neck. But my last memory of him at court is a very happy one. I had been there doing a hearing. He was doing the list. We had hung out for lunch and talked about his prospects. He was upbeat. I am so grateful to Serge for rostering us together that day. I know he knew how much we liked hanging out together. Deone used to do it too. My hearing went over part heard. Bondie had hung around all day. He had very little work that day. As I went to leave I tried to shake his hand. He apologetically coughed and said "I can't shake hands Jim. I have lost my belt, if I take my hands out of my pockets my pants will fall down".
Bondie was not on that path.Before he found the Aboriginal Legal Service, he was on track to be, in the words of his boss in the NSW Public Service, "A mediocre clerk, at best". He achieved that goal in the Clerk of the Peace/ DPP. Despite gaining his legal qualification, he remained a legal assistant, banished to a back office where files went to die.
Bondie could not comply with rules. He paid lip service to them, indeed his acts of compliance were more in the nature of parody than anything else. In the early days at the Blacktown office of The ALS, he would sign in at the office at 10:36 or whatever, then head off to Cobham, making the unspoken points that a) if he didn't have to sign in at the office he would have been at court close to on time. and b) he would come to work on his own schedule, and not any one elses.
He absolutely drove me crackers. In the end I refused to work at the same courthouse as him because of the extra work his lateness caused for me. For his part Bondie worked around me, if I did happen to be somewhere near where he was going to be late. He would ring legal aid, or a friendly member of the court staff.
How we remained friends I will never know. The only person who shouted at him more than I did was his long suffering wife Yayuk. And boy did they shout at each other. Yayuk rings me up at 8 30 pm. "Are with Greg?" Yes, I am he's just finishing up now", I lie. "Finishing up what? Mucking around?" Unfortunately that usually hit the nail on the head.
And I think it answers my question of how we stayed friends, we just mucked around together. In the very early days of our time together at the Blacktown office I did not have a car. So I would catch trains to say, Windsor. Bondie might finish early and come and hangout. We would end up doing a tour of the Macquarie towns, and the bread basket of the early penal colony. Bondie would tell me the Aboriginal history of the region. We might do 300 kilometres to St Albans and Pitt Town, then stop for a drink at the Wiseman's ferry Pub. Mucking around.
I called them "Bondie's Boring Tours". The classic was the Boring Tour of Toongabbie, where Bondie grew up. The paddock where Terry James (Police Prosecutor at Blacktown) beat his brother up in 1968. The lolly shop where Bondie's youngest brother dropped his lollies. The house his Grandfather built. Over the years I met every member of Bondies immediate family. His mum, at Narrabeen, (another boring tour) His Dad and Grandad at Punchbowl , Mitch and Wok his two brothers.
He was impervious to my protestations that I did not want to go on these tours. He just made you go. Ask Slade Howell or Alex Terracini! He just wore you down. His spare time was taken up a lot with his family. He was the glue that held them together. His Mum and Dad could never be in the same room together, but he loved them equally. That meant quid pro quo visits. At various times Mitch and Wok were not talking so that would have to be managed as well.
He and Yayuk were married 27 years (please correct me if I am wrong about this). It was a very successful relationship, notwithstanding the shouting. They met in Bali when Bondie was shiftlessly travelling around as a young man. He was leaving Bali to continue his adventures when (cue your own impression of Bondie's voice) "I realised I liked the company". So he went back and got her. His great sadness was that they could not have children. But he looked after Yayuk's son from a previous marriage financially until he died young, and he built a house for her extended family in Malang in Java.
Bondie's voice needs a paragraph of its own. The funniest thing I saw and heard in a lot of years was Sailesh Rajan impersonating Charles Macnamara impersonating Bondie. If you had sat Bondie down with a careers counsellor his voice alone would rule out court room lawyer as a vocation. To say nothing of the chronic lateness, and the lack of sartorial adequacy. He was a terrible joke teller, he telegraphed the punchline and you would be sitting there rolling your eyes while his voice grated on and on to a conclusion you had reached in a previous lifetime.
Daniel Taylor and I had a code. When we saw a pretty girl (the truth compels me reveal how unreconstructed we all were) one of us would say "The winner of the 1963 Melbourne Cup was Gatum Gatum" and we would indicate subtly with our eyes. Bondie could never get this He would grab you by the shoulder and say "Hey Jim, Hey Dan ......*pointing with both hands and grinning lasciviously* I think that horse might have won the Melbourne Cup!!!!" then as an afterthought, more soberly "In 1963".
And sartorial adequacy. He owned one full suit, a couple of pairs of unmatching suit pants and an old suit jacket. When one of those needed repair he went to an Indian Tailor at the back of the the old arcade in Blacktown. Everyone was on tenterhooks because once one pair was in the garage there was not much by way of spares.
The last day I saw Bondie out of hospital was at Mt Druitt court in late 2013 (I think). He went into RPAH over Christmas. The cancer had eaten into his bones and he had broken his neck. But my last memory of him at court is a very happy one. I had been there doing a hearing. He was doing the list. We had hung out for lunch and talked about his prospects. He was upbeat. I am so grateful to Serge for rostering us together that day. I know he knew how much we liked hanging out together. Deone used to do it too. My hearing went over part heard. Bondie had hung around all day. He had very little work that day. As I went to leave I tried to shake his hand. He apologetically coughed and said "I can't shake hands Jim. I have lost my belt, if I take my hands out of my pockets my pants will fall down".
Sunday, 1 April 2018
Psychosis part 3
I have been telling the story of my psychotic episode six years ago. I spent three days holed up in a cabin in Esperance in Western Australia trying to muster the courage for a next move. The caravan park was packed and each day I would approach the owner/receptionist and beg permission to stay one more night. Eventually she said no. It had been a reprieve, but everywhere I looked I saw tragedy.
In the park, living in a large tent, was an Aboriginal family of Grandma, mum and a boy and a girl. I wanted to befriend those people to find out what had happened, but my fear kept me quiet. I knew they were living there because every morning the kids were turned out spic and span in their school uniforms. That would be a hard way to be a student at primary school.
But I had to move on. I had decided to have another go at reaching my destination. But I knew as soon as i headed west again instead of east that it was a mistake. There is no coastal plain as you head out from Esperance, it just becomes scratchy farmland straight away. The roads are narrow and poorly maintained. My heart kept getting heavier and heavier as I headed west.
At a town called Ravensthorpe (I think), i turned right. I had decided to head for Merredin, which is on the main Highway, I could make a final decision about where to head when I got there. By the 24th of March you would think it would be getting cool, but every day on this excursion through hell was hotter than the one before.
My travels took me to Hyden, which is home to a natural phenomenon called Wave Rock. I forced myself to detour to look at it. But the waves of nausea just got stronger and stronger. Parking in 40 degree heat, already so tired I could not move, I ought to have given up. But I pressed grimly on. There is an aspect to how I feel that I have not really touched on. I feel as though I am privy to secret knowledge about how shit everything is. So I am better than everyone else, but it is meaningless because God hates us.The Psychiatrists talk about this, its called Grandiosity. I am full of it at the best of times, in my madness it tries to kill me.
Secret knowledge, therein lies the heart of the issue. Selfishness, however described is the source of all my dilemmas. Even in the very depths of despair I feel, and know, I am better than everyone else. And I am therefore worse. If only I could change my ideas around this simply, but they are hard wired.
I hope I never see Wave Rock again. I think that was the lowest I got. And I knew, I would have to turn around. But I still had a few more hours of Psychosis. There is a Town starting with K, in between Hyden and Merredin where there is fully signed Golden Fleece service station. I knew I should love this place and take pictures on my phone, but all I could do was buy petrol. It was staffed by two young Aboriginal women. I wanted to chat, but could not. I read on the wall that the service station was operated by the local Aboriginal corporation.
Then I walked outside. Two young Aboriginal men tried to engage me in conversation. I was terrified and jumped in car and drove off. I never actually got to Merredin. You come to a T junction just to the east of the town. I turned east, away from my demons, away from my journey, back to the comfortable discomfort of my everyday life.
The episode was not over, not be a long chalk. I had about twelve months of undiagnosed depression to go. But that was the worst of it. The trip back across Australia was terrible. All the white people were still serial killers and all the black people could still read my mind. But I was heading towards safety. I had given up my quest to throw the magic ring into the fire of Mt Doom. And it was a major relief.
My sponsor was right though. I did have to make that journey again later.
In the park, living in a large tent, was an Aboriginal family of Grandma, mum and a boy and a girl. I wanted to befriend those people to find out what had happened, but my fear kept me quiet. I knew they were living there because every morning the kids were turned out spic and span in their school uniforms. That would be a hard way to be a student at primary school.
But I had to move on. I had decided to have another go at reaching my destination. But I knew as soon as i headed west again instead of east that it was a mistake. There is no coastal plain as you head out from Esperance, it just becomes scratchy farmland straight away. The roads are narrow and poorly maintained. My heart kept getting heavier and heavier as I headed west.
At a town called Ravensthorpe (I think), i turned right. I had decided to head for Merredin, which is on the main Highway, I could make a final decision about where to head when I got there. By the 24th of March you would think it would be getting cool, but every day on this excursion through hell was hotter than the one before.
My travels took me to Hyden, which is home to a natural phenomenon called Wave Rock. I forced myself to detour to look at it. But the waves of nausea just got stronger and stronger. Parking in 40 degree heat, already so tired I could not move, I ought to have given up. But I pressed grimly on. There is an aspect to how I feel that I have not really touched on. I feel as though I am privy to secret knowledge about how shit everything is. So I am better than everyone else, but it is meaningless because God hates us.The Psychiatrists talk about this, its called Grandiosity. I am full of it at the best of times, in my madness it tries to kill me.
Secret knowledge, therein lies the heart of the issue. Selfishness, however described is the source of all my dilemmas. Even in the very depths of despair I feel, and know, I am better than everyone else. And I am therefore worse. If only I could change my ideas around this simply, but they are hard wired.
I hope I never see Wave Rock again. I think that was the lowest I got. And I knew, I would have to turn around. But I still had a few more hours of Psychosis. There is a Town starting with K, in between Hyden and Merredin where there is fully signed Golden Fleece service station. I knew I should love this place and take pictures on my phone, but all I could do was buy petrol. It was staffed by two young Aboriginal women. I wanted to chat, but could not. I read on the wall that the service station was operated by the local Aboriginal corporation.
Then I walked outside. Two young Aboriginal men tried to engage me in conversation. I was terrified and jumped in car and drove off. I never actually got to Merredin. You come to a T junction just to the east of the town. I turned east, away from my demons, away from my journey, back to the comfortable discomfort of my everyday life.
The episode was not over, not be a long chalk. I had about twelve months of undiagnosed depression to go. But that was the worst of it. The trip back across Australia was terrible. All the white people were still serial killers and all the black people could still read my mind. But I was heading towards safety. I had given up my quest to throw the magic ring into the fire of Mt Doom. And it was a major relief.
My sponsor was right though. I did have to make that journey again later.
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