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".