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.