Unlike the tacky and highly flammable, polystyrene filled, stuffed animals that ones sees as prizes in carnivals here in Australia and in North America, the French carnies offer household goods.

The whole look of the “joints” in France is so different to what I was used from my days in the carnival. Much more old fashioned and that seemed to give them way more character. The only thing that it had in common with what I was familiar with was the tastelessness of prizes. It might’ve been more useful and less flammable, but it was still tat.

I saw this guy at a produce market.

When I was in the States and I used to work in the carnival (1978 to 1981), after much tequila one night, I started shooting the breeze about a real character called Ron that I had met when I was in Bangkok, back in the early 70s.  A few minutes into my anecdotes one of my audience, piped up and said “he sounds like a guy I met in Greece six years ago in 72.”

” Did he have long frizzy strawberry-blonde hair and always carry around a greasy Moroccan leather satchel?” I asked.

“Yep he sure did. “He was always crapping on about rubbing mink oil into that shoulder bag of his and how good it was for the leather”.

Back in the late 70s, I used to carry about a box of photographs that I had taken when I was travelling around in South-east Asia. So when the guy started saying that he knew the same guy that I been talking about, I was able to pull out the blurry photograph that you see below and ask him if this was the guy.

“Yep it sure is and I’d know that face anywhere.”

So there you go, I was talking to a Canadian guy that I had met two months previously at the Calgary stampede and just by chance as we were exchanging traveller’s tales in Phoenix, I found out that he knew somebody that I had met in Bangkok who he had met two years before me, in Greece.  5 billion people on the planet, and I bump into somebody who met someone else and I knew when we were both on the other side of the world.  There are better chances of winning a large lottery or being struck by lightning.

I first met Ron when I was staying at the infamous Malaysia hotel in Bangkok. I say infamous because the Malaysia was where murderer Charles Sobhraj operated out of at the same time. Ron was staying at the Malaysia with his mother who had come over from the States to visit him during his travels and they were both in the process of buying gems for her to take back and re-sell in the States.  I think the thing that I liked about Ron was his enthusiasm for life and that he was just so full of joie de vivre.

When one travels, It’s not uncommon to bump into people, that one has a met on the road in nearby countries.  It’s almost as though there is a well worn rut that travellers follow like they are some kind of slot cars made out of meat. So it came as no surprise to me when I bumped into Ron again in Phnom Penh several months later.

The other person in the photograph above with Ron is a Japanese guy whose name I can’t remember but for the sake of convenience I shall call him “Idiot-san”. The reason why I use such an unflattering appellation as Idiot-san, is because the guy was a brainless, wasted attempt by nature at humanity.

A real oxygen bandit!

The very first time I saw Idiot-san, I was sitting at a sidewalk restaurant when he arrived directly from the airport by cyclo (a three wheeled trishaw). As soon as a cyclo stopped, he jumped out and paid the driver about 10 times more than the going rate, and then looked at the rest of the small denomination bills in his hand like they were nothing other than soiled toilet paper and threw them into the air. This almost caused a riot, as all the beggars (there are about five of them who used to hang around at the cyclo-rank) and other cyclo drivers dived on the falling money and started fighting with each other over it. Idiot-san just grabbed his bags and made his way straight for us and asked us in broken English where would be a good place to stay. I pointed him towards the brothel that doubled as a hotel across the road where I was staying.

I saw Idiot-san the next day, with a black eye and I asked him what had happened. He said that the police had robbed him within about four hours of his arrival in Phnom Penh. It would seem that his theatrics with the small change had marked him out as being too stupid to be in possession of anything valuable. I was told that he walking down the road when about four police just grabbed him and gave him the “bum’s rush” into an alley to administer him with a beating to ensure his cooperation. The cops took everything of value that he had. His money, passport, camera, watch and graduation ring.

In the couple of weeks that it took Idiot-san to get a new passport and funds sent to him, he made the acquaintance and friendship with Ron. With a new passport and money, Idiot-san and Ron flew to Vietnam (this was all during the during the war) for two weeks of whoreing and dope smoking in Saigon. When they came back from Saigon, Ron proudly showed me the scabs on his knees, caused by the non-stop shagging that he and Idiot-san had been wallowing in.

Both Ron and Idiot-san left Phnom Penh after a few more weeks and I didn’t see them again until I bumped into them in Manila when I was on my way to Japan. When Idiot-san, heard that I was going to Japan, he gave me his address in Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku and said that Ron would be staying with him when he got back and that I should look them both up when I was there.

When I got to Tokyo, I was so low on funds I had to look for work straight away and I got a few little jobs teaching English.  Because of the way how the Japanese were giving out visas at the time I had to go to Korea to get a new visa after six months. Since I was hitchhiking from Tokyo across the island of Honshu to Shimonoseki to catch the ferry, I thought I should take a detour to visit Ron in Takamatsu.

I hadn’t been given a telephone number to ring first and warn Ron and Idiot-san that I was coming, so I just lobbed up to the address that I had been given. I found the address easily enough and Ron and Idiot-san’s occupancy of the apartment was confirmed by their names on the mailbox. Rang the buzzer, but no one was home, so I asked some of the neighbours in my frightfully crippled Japanese if they knew where they were, and as best as I could understand, I was told they had gone away.

In Japan everybody’s whereabouts is registered with the police so I knew that if I went to the police station they would be probably able to give me a forwarding address. The consternation I caused in the police station when I asked about Ron and Idiot-san gave me quite a surprise. The policeman at the desk called over two shabbily dressed and rough looking detectives and excitedly jabbered away to them as he was gesturing at me. The two detectives took an immediate interest in me and marched me to their desk in the middle of the station. They then bombarded me with questions about Ron and Idiot-san.

Why was I looking for them?

What was my relationship with them? 

Why was I in Japan?

The grilling just went on and on. The detectives were so serious and steamed up. It just wasn’t making sense to me as all I wanted was the new address of my friend and his idiot friend.

When I tried to put a halt to the proceedings with a few questions like “why are you asking me so many questions?” “Are you ever going to give me the addresses of my friends?” I was subjected to a further barrage of rapid-fire questions.

“So, they are your friends!”

“How long have you known them?”

” Why have you come all the way to Takamatsu to see them?”

“What is your real reason for being in Japan?”

On and on it went. Without explanation, I was asked question after question and I answered them as quickly and truthfully as I could, but the detectives still wouldn’t tell me anything or answer any of my questions.  This went on for about two hours (I’m not kidding) and I was starting to get a bit worried, as it was obvious that they weren’t going to let me go.

I guess after so long, the detectives realised they weren’t really getting anywhere with me.  Which didn’t surprise me because I told them everything that I knew, which was nothing.

So they tried a new tactic.  One of the detectives barked something at a uniformed policeman.  The policeman quickly walked down the stairs in the middle of the office with another officer. I sat there for a few minutes wondering what the heck was going on. I was absolutely stunned and horrified at what I saw next.

Back up the stairs returned the two uniformed policeman, each holding on to the upper arms of a semiconscious, blood splattered and badly beaten Japanese man that they had just dragged (he could hardly stand on his own) up the stairs. Things were starting to turn into a nightmare.  It was all just so intensely shocking. The two policemen dragged the poor unfortunate bastard closer to me and snapped his limp sagging head upwards by the hair, so I could see a face that had been beaten to a pulp. His eyes were so swollen that he could hardly open them. His lips were split and his nose looked broken.

The two detectives then said to me, “do you know this man?” To which I answered, “no”. Then they barked the same question to the punching bag, to which he just whimpered a negative. The two policemen then let go of his hair and his head flopped forward. The poor guy was spent and I’m sure he would have told them anything they wanted to hear if he thought it could get him out of his predicament. From the look of things, he was in very deep shit indeed.

I was starting to get a bit frightened by this point, and I was beginning to wonder if I was going to be subjected to such “aggressive interrogation” as well.

I needn’t have worried because as soon as they took the punching bag downstairs, the older of the detectives he took me by the arm to his car. He said, without any further explanation ”get in”. I did as I was told, and he drove me towards the ferry terminal.  During the drive, I tried to ask a few questions about what was going on, only to be ignored.  The detective didn’t say one thing to me until we got to the ferry terminal and that was, ” get out and don’t come back”. I left the island of Shimonoseki with no idea of why, what had just happened, happened.

Fast forward several more years to my conversation at the beginning of this post, with the Canadian carney. As I exchanged anecdotes about Ron with the carney, I said that I would love to know what had happened in Japan with Ron, to which the carney replied that he had Ron’s parent’s address in Pensacola, Florida and that we should visit him.

This was starting to get really freaky.

We had just finished the Arizona State Fair in Phoenix, and we were on our way to San Juan in Puerto Rico to do the first really big fair than they’ve ever had down there and we would be passing through Pensacola.

When we got to Pensacola, we found that Ron was living with his parents. Ron still had a long frizzy strawberry blonde hair, but he put on quite a bit of weight, and it was obvious that his mother was feeding him well. After smoking a few joints from Ron’s pillowcase sized stash, he suggested that we go to a local air force watering hole, known as Trader Vic’s.

Trader Vic’s was the perfect context for Ron because it was so crazy in a Vietnam war sort of way. There was camouflage netting hanging from the ceiling, and various military souvenirs all over the corrugated iron walls. All the waitresses seemed to be Vietnamese ex-prostitutes who would take their orders, while kneeling on the knees between the seated men who openly groped them. It was as though I was in a movie about Americans in Vietnam that was being directed by Fellini. It was surreal.

After a few drinks, Ron told us what happened in Japan. Apparently Idiot-san was the younger brother of a minor Yakuza and he suggested that he and Ron could make a lot of money if they took guns and marijuana into Japan. Back in the early 70s Cambodia was awash with firearms and Japan has very strict laws about firearm possession so Ron and Idiot-san bought a number of Chinese pistols when they were in Phnom Penh. Then they bought a bunch of marijuana when they were in the Philippines. Surprisingly, they were able to successfully smuggle the contraband into Japan, but they both got busted in Takamatsu when they were trying to offload it.

Ron and Idiot-san both received three years jail, and the punching bag that I met in the police station at Takamatsu was Idiot-san’s Yakuza brother.

The Ekka is the nickname for the Queensland Exhibition which is an annual agricultural fair with a midway of games and rides held in Brisbane. The Ekka is a big event for a lot country people (known locally as “cow cockies”) who don’t get to come to the big city very often.

The two guys were deep in conversation and I took the shot without asking for permission (which I used to do lot back then) and the smaller guy, who heard the click and noticed what I was doing, got quite angry with me. Fortunately I was with my cousin Andrew who’s bigger than I am (I’m 6ft) and who’s love of fighting (he worked as a bouncer) is obvious to anyone who rubs him the wrong way. When the guy who was getting stroppy saw that Andrew was up for some action, he backed off. Which was a good thing because after I bought them some drinks as a way to apologise for my rudeness, we got to know them and they were good guys.

When I was younger I used to love the sort of photography that used to be seen in Life magazine as practiced by the likes of Cartier Bresson and Alfred Eistenstadt. I loved the way they captured on film, people unaware they were being observed and I used to try and do the same. Now that I’m older, I don’t think it’s right to just take people’s photos without asking them. Sure, it doesn’t lead to the same sort of photography but I think that it can lead to equally interesting images of people engaging with the viewer rather than just being observed.

I took the shot with an 18mm lens which I absolutely loved using. I particually like the way how such a wide angle lens puts the subject into a context rather that isolating them like a telephoto lens does.

One of the reasons why I wanted to take the photo was because of the the fellow on the right with the bushy beard. He has a look that would be familiar to any Australian who’s ever seen a picture of Ned Kelly.

I found that as I was looking at him I was reminded of the famous old Banjo Paterson poem, “The man from Ironbark”.

It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down.
He loitered here, he loitered there, till he was like to drop,
Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber’s shop.
“‘Ere! shave my beard and whiskers off, I’ll be a man of mark,
I’ll go and do the Sydney toff up home in Ironbark.”

The barber man was small and flash, as barbers mostly are,
He wore a strike-your-fancy sash, he smoked a huge cigar;
He was a humorist of note and keen at repartee,
He laid the odds and kept a “tote”, whatever that may be,
And when he saw our friend arrive, he whispered, “Here’s a lark!
Just watch me catch him all alive, this man from Ironbark.”

There were some gilded youths that sat along the barber’s wall.
Their eyes were dull, their heads were flat, they had no brains at all;
To them the barber passed the wink, his dexter eyelid shut,
“I’ll make this bloomin’ yokel think his bloomin’ throat is cut.”
And as he soaped and rubbed it in he made a rude remark:
“I s’pose the flats is pretty green up there in Ironbark.”

A grunt was all reply he got; he shaved the bushman’s chin,
Then made the water boiling hot and dipped the razor in.
He raised his hand, his brow grew black, he paused awhile to gloat,
Then slashed the red-hot razor-back across his victim’s throat:
Upon the newly-shaven skin it made a livid mark -
No doubt it fairly took him in - the man from Ironbark.

He fetched a wild up-country yell might wake the dead to hear,
And though his throat, he knew full well, was cut from ear to ear,
He struggled gamely to his feet, and faced the murd’rous foe:
“You’ve done for me! you dog, I’m beat! one hit before I go!
I only wish I had a knife, you blessed murdering shark!
But you’ll remember all your life the man from Ironbark.”

He lifted up his hairy paw, with one tremendous clout
He landed on the barber’s jaw, and knocked the barber out.
He set to work with nail and tooth, he made the place a wreck;
He grabbed the nearest gilded youth, and tried to break his neck.
And all the while his throat he held to save his vital spark,
And “Murder! Bloody murder!” yelled the man from Ironbark.

A peeler man who heard the din came in to see the show;
He tried to run the bushman in, but he refused to go.
And when at last the barber spoke, and said “‘Twas all in fun—
‘Twas just a little harmless joke, a trifle overdone.”
“A joke!” he cried, “By George, that’s fine; a lively sort of lark;
I’d like to catch that murdering swine some night in Ironbark.”

And now while round the shearing floor the list’ning shearers gape,
He tells the story o’er and o’er, and brags of his escape.
“Them barber chaps what keeps a tote, By George, I’ve had enough,
One tried to cut my bloomin’ throat, but thank the Lord it’s tough.”
And whether he’s believed or no, there’s one thing to remark,
That flowing beards are all the go way up in Ironbark.

THE MAN FROM IRONBARK by A.B. “Banjo” Paterson

Published in the The Bulletin, 17 December 1892.

In 1978, Conklin Amusements, which used to be the largest carnival company in North America, decided that for their 50th anniversary of being in business they would have an antique carnival section on their midway at the Calgary stampede that year.
 
At the time I was living in Toronto when I heard from a friend of my sister’s who used to work in the costume is department of CBC (Canadian Broadcast Company) that Conklin’s were looking for people to work at the Calgary Stampede that year.  I wasn’t enjoying my time in Toronto, so I just hitch hiked out there and got a job.
 
The antique carnival was set up about three weeks before the stampede to iron out any bugs there might be with some of the old games and rides. All the workers were dressed up in period costume from 1928, and all the games and rides were also from that period.  All of us guys even had our hair cut in 1920s style, and treated with hot oil conditioner so it would stay greasy for about two months. 

When I first got to Calgary, I made friends with one of the maintenance guys from the rides called Barry and I shared a company paid hotel with him for the first couple of weeks I was there for free.  Barry was a hard drinking party animal, who told me once that he chugged a whole bottle of tequila in one go, for a $10 bet and went into a coma for two weeks. 

My memories of the time that I spent with Barry in his hotel room are a bit of a blur as it was just one long dope, LSD and alcohol fueled party, night after night.  We were young, indestructible and indefatigable. “Ten feet tall and bulletproof” as they say here in Australia. It was all very rock ‘n’ roll, complete with Barry throwing a carton of beer out through the closed window.  The management was pretty cool about that as long as the damage was paid for, they didn’t even hint that they were going to throw us out. The Calgary stampede, at that time, was a fun place for a young single guy like myself.  The other carnies and myself found the people of Calgary to be very hospitable and friendly and it was not uncommon to just gatecrash parties and to be actually welcomed in as a guest.  Everybody was young and looking for a good time, and we had a blast.
 
After a couple of weeks in Calgary, Barry had found himself a girlfriend, so I couldn’t share his hotel room with him any more.  In the meantime I had met a local called Rick. 

Rick was an ex-con, who stood about 190cm (6 foot three) and weighed about 115kg (250 pounds) and he used to be a professional boxer.  I had seen Rick punch out a few people at parties for no real reason and I was in no doubt about his skills or his willingness to use them.  Rick seemed to like me and we got along, so when he invited me to come and stay at his house for a small fee, I jumped at the chance because it was so easy.
 
Unfortunately, Rick shared his house with a shrew of a girlfriend, whose name I can’t remember, but for convenience, I will call her Kate (as in Shakespeare’s “Taming the Shrew”).

Kate was slovenly, lazy and irritable, and for the life of me I can’t understand what Rick saw in her.  Maybe she could suck a golf ball through fifty feet of garden hose. I guess there are people reading this who probably can’t understand what she saw in Rick.  Rick said that the money I paid him for rent included food, but I soon gave up on eating there as Kate only ever heated up pre-made perogies for dinner. I guess that was the secret to her beautiful skin and svelte figure.
 
After I’d been staying with Rick and Kate for about a week and a half Rick told me they were going to get married and asked me if I would be his best man.  I couldn’t believe that somebody who knew me for such a short time would ask me to be his best man.  To be honest, as I got to know Rick I realised he was a bit of a unpredictable, violent lunatic and I didn’t really want to have anything to do with his wedding.  So at the risk of a beating, I begged off with the excuse that I didn’t want to wear a suit and be responsible and sober on the day.  Fortunately for my health and face, Rick wasn’t insulted and he got Barry to be his best man.
 
The workers at the carnival fall into two groups, the real carnies and the blow-ins like myself.  The real carnies were either born into the business or had been working in it for a very long time and they had their traditions.  One of their traditions is the carney wedding, in which the marriage ceremony is performed on a ferris wheel.  Since Rick had been in the carnival for about two weeks, he saw himself as a Carney so he approached Conklin’s management and asked them for a carney wedding on their ferris wheel.  Surprisingly, they said yes. I guess the PR department felt they’d get some good press and free advertising from the event.  The wedding was held a few days later.

By the time Rick’s wedding came around, I’d been in Calgary for over a month and had made quite a few acquaintances which I used to hang out with.  One of these guys is the fellow in the picture below, whose name I also don’t remember but for convenience, I will call him Tim.

Tim worked in the hammer joint where people used to pay money to see if they could hit a whole nail into a piece of wood with one blow, and if they did so they got a coupon that they could exchange for a prize.  Tim was not very tall and he was a quiet guy. I enjoyed his company because he always had something interesting and thoughtful to say.  Tim seemed a bit damaged and I spoke to him about this and he had said that he had only recently got out of jail in Texas. When I asked him why he been in jail in Texas he told me a horror story about hitch hiking with his girlfriend there.
 
Apparently Tim and his girlfriend were hitchhiking down near Brownsville at night when some police in a police car pulled up to question them.  Tim said that they separated him from his girlfriend and when one of them was questioning him he heard his girlfriend cry out as the other policeman slapped her in the face, so he ran to her aid.  And as Tom Waites would say, “push turned into shove and then biff turned into bam”. 
 
Tim was beaten up on the spot and dragged off into the police car and his girlfriend was left by herself on the highway. Tim never saw her again.  When Tim and the police got to the police station, they beat him up again and threw him into a cell with other prisoners.  Tim said he was kept in a cell for 10 days without charge and he never was before a judge in the whole time he was there. Tim also told me that at nighttime, the police used to come into the cells and force the prisoners to fight each other (in pairs like boxing matches) until one of them couldn’t stand.  I asked him what happened if he if they refused, and he said that the police used to get out their batons and beat them until they did.  After the 10 days, the police drove Tim the edge of town and told him not to come back.
 
I’ve had a few unjustified run-ins with the Texas police as well, and I know how they can be, so I didn’t doubt what Tim had to say for a moment.
 
On the day of Rick and Kate’s wedding, Tim, Rick’s future brother-in-law and I had been out shopping for their wedding present at a shopping mall while we were tripping on LSD. 

We bought Rick, a pair of Donald Duck scissors as a joke and a very nice German chef’s knife as the real present. After we bought our presents we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting outside of the department store beauty parlour laughing our asses off at what we saw as a chemically induced grotesque freak show.  We thought it was hilarious to see the blue-rinse set come out of the salon after their make-overs. They just looked ridiculous. We laughed so much that there were tears running down and our faces and our sides hurt.
 
Needless to say we were running late and we missed the wedding, but we did make it to the reception.  We were told that the press had been at the wedding and lots of photographs had been taken and the story would be in the newspaper the next day. The reception of about 250 guests was held in a public hall with a small stage at one end. Tim and I sat at a table off to one side with a few of the women that we knew. The girls knew instantly that we were both off our faces but they didn’t seem to mind though, because we were both in such good moods that our laughter was infectious and before long we were all laughing our heads off, telling jokes and having a generally great time. One of the women at the table was a biker chick and she had a very wicked sense of humour. I remember her telling Kate who was yelling and carrying on about something she had just said, that “if you can’t take a joke, don’t get married”. The wedding was turning out better than I thought it would be.
 
After a few drinks, Rick got up on the stage and then opened the wedding presents in public. He would open up the card, read out who it was from, open the present and then show it to everybody while thanking the person who had given it to them.  Rick looked very happy until he got to the Donald Duck scissors.  He didn’t think it was very funny at all and his smile turned to a scowl as he threw the scissors over his shoulder, shaking his head as he glared at me.  Rick’s mood quickly changed when he saw his real present and his glare turned into a radiant loving smile. I knew he’d like the knife. It’s a guy thing.
 
After the present unwrapping, Rick went back to his table, the music was turned up and every body started dancing.  Everything was going really well until a guy called Spade snuck up, unseen, behind Rick as he was relaxing at the table and dropped a blob of ice cream into the back of one of Rick’s loafers that was hanging off his heel.  As a Rick stood up later to have a dance his heel went back into the loafer and he stood on the ice cream. 
 
That was it, Rick went ballistic, and as quick as a flash there was a riot. Everybody just seemed to go nuts and started to try and kill each other with what ever they could lay their hands on. It was just like in one of those old westerns where everyone in the saloon was smashing each other over the head with chairs. That is everybody except us, in that I mean, Tim and I and the girls. Tim and I were just too happy and full of love.  It was all so surreal and all so full on with violence everywhere we looked. The amazing thing was, that most of these people knew each other and until the wedding I would’ve said that we were all friends. One of the women I was with said I should go over to Rick and try calming him down. 

Tim came with me as we ducked and weaved our way through the brawlers towards the centre of the the storm called Rick. As we approached Rick, he looked like a bear trying to shake off a pack of small dogs.  Barry, with tears streaming down his face came rushing past us with a chair in the air to smash somebody, to our right.  

I pulled a bunch a guys off Rick, who was also in tears and screaming out what a bunch of bastards everybody was and how they had ruined his wedding. I tried to get him to calm down, but he was in a hysterical (and I don’t mean funny) state. In between his hyperventilating blubbering he kept raving on about “that fucking Spade, he put ice cream in my shoe, I’ll kill him!” Rick then turned on Tim and tried to hit him, but Tim was too fast and jumped backwards out of his reach.
 
Rick was about twice Tim’s size.  Tim was amazingly fearless, he stepped back and he lifted his hands into a boxing stance standing his ground as Rick advanced.  Rick took another swing at Tim, but Tim just ducked, stepped back and then kicked him in the balls.  As Rick hit the ground like a sack of potatoes I grabbed Tim by the arm, dragging him out of the hall and we made a run for it.
 
I spoke to Rick the next day and he was full of admiration for how gutsy Tim had been. We also heard about a carney-wedding riot at a public hall on the radio. 

I bet that’s not the sort of publicity that Conklin’s was expecting.

On my recent trip to Melbourne I passed Luna Park (an old amusement park opened in 1912) in St. Kilda on the way to Acland Street and I thought it might be good to get a photo of the entrance.

As I walked through the car park along the side of Luna Park I noticed the wooden roller coaster and how unsafe it looked (to my untrained eyes at least). Quite a few of the upright timbers of the supporting structure looked as though they were beginning to split. The ends of the many of the cross members were rotting and the bolts fastening them to the uprights appeared to be fairly rusty. I took a few pictures and I can assure you that most of the timber work where I stood looked like what  you see in the three photos below.

I didn’t have to hunt around to get these shots, they were in plain view as there were so many choices of ratty looking timberwork to choose from.

When I was a kid I thought that those old style roller coasters were dangerous and I didn’t like going on them because I feared that they’d fall apart when I was on them. After looking at the roller coaster at Luna Park, I wouldn’t get on one even if a gun was held at my head.

Last night, my wife and I went to the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of “Blackbird”.  As my wife and mother in law had made the selections for this season’s theatre, I had no idea what the show was about until I was filled in with a short synopsis as we were driving into town.  My heart sank when I heard that it was about an affair a 40-year-old man had with a 12 year old girl.  Firstly, I don’t think that paedophilia is suitable subject matter as entertainment.  Secondly as a male I thought it would be another beat up about men and what perverted beasts we are.
 
Before I go on with my review of the production, I’d like to tell you about a few experiences I’ve had with young girls that have left me with mixed feelings whenever I hear about paedophilia cases.
 
When I used to work at the carnival in a laser show, we used to get a lot of young teenage girls hanging around.  Quite a few of these young girls made it very clear that they were interested in experimenting with sex with somebody older from outside of their home town, who would leave without telling any of the locals.  As for my fellow workers and I at the laser show, we just saw these girls for what they were, just kids, and in no way were we going to take part in their sexual education.  We just let them hang around, giggle and carry on.  Our logic was that if they hung around us they would be at least staying out of harm’s way as carnivals are places that young girls can get themselves into trouble very quickly.  That’s not saying that the carnies are naturally depraved people, but carnivals are like the rest of the world, which is populated by not only saints, but also sinners.
 
Another disturbing experience I had with a young adolescent girl (who I was teaching how to make websites) was that as I was sitting at the computer showing her how to lay things out, she stood behind my back, put her arms over my shoulders and started rubbing her breasts in my back.  I immediately got up and told my wife about what had happened and never had contact with that girl ever again.
 
Those two experiences have shown me that sometimes there is more than what is immediately apparent in some of these paedophilia cases that one hears about.  Having just said that, adults should have better judgment than becoming sexually involved with precocious children.
 
Blackbird opens in a shabby and untidy lunchroom in what seems to be a factory as the two main protagonists meet for the first time in 15 years.  We quickly find out that the man, Ray is now approaching 60 and the woman, Una is now in her late 20s. The play begins with the all-too-familiar indignantly righteous victim confronting a cowering and shamed perpetrator.  During the first 15 minutes of the play, I sat there thinking to myself, “here we go over that same old, politically correct, ground”, as Una lambasts the re-educated Ray.
 
Ray was put in jail for six years for what he had done to Una, and in that time, has had to unflinchingly face the reality of his crime through state-administered therapy.  Ray is now a broken man trying to get on with and rebuild his life and as such, is not very pleased to see the seemingly vengeful Una once again.
 
Ray is right to be worried about Una’s motivation in visiting him. After all, Ray was 40 years old and Una was only 12 when he had sex with her.  Ray had to go to jail and publicly face the shame of his crime and as such, he is only too aware of what he did wrong.  Seeing Una again brings Ray face to face with the reality he has been trying to leave behind and forget.
 
Fortunately for the audience, David Harrower, (the playwright) only goes over all the obvious ground in the beginning of the play to establish a departure point from which he explores the various aspects of the unequal relationship that exists between an adult and child who are sexually involved.  To his credit, Harrower is almost Shakespearean in the breadth of his insight, as he examines the various facets of what is an immensely complex and emotional issue.
 
With agonising honesty, Peter Kowitz plays Ray as an open wound with acid being poured over it.  At times it was excruciating to see Ray writhe under the harsh spotlight of Una’s focused anger.
 
Paula Arundell masterfully plays Una as part incandescent avenging angel and part vulnerable bewildered child looking for answers.
 
As the director, Cate Blanchett uses the theatre-in-the-round staging as a small scale Coliseum where the audience looks down on the actors as they warily circle each other while engaged in emotional combat. Blanchett’s sure hand made sure the play did not degenerate into histrionics.
 
As the play progresses, we find out more and more about Ray and Una’s tragic story.  A tragic story it is, because of all the misunderstanding and hurt that was caused by a young girl’s flirtation with an older man and his weakness coupled with stupidity.  I won’t tell much more of the story because I feel that it would subtract from the reader’s enjoyment of the play, other than to say that the use of a child actor at the very end was a masterstroke as it makes the audience aware of how young a 12 year old girl actually is.
 
Child sexual abuse is not a lightweight subject of an easy night’s entertainment, but it is an issue that has many facets that I suspect that most people are totally unaware of.  Perhaps seeing even unpleasant things in new ways is one of the functions of art, and I highly recommend this play.
 
On another note, it was interesting to hear people’s comments in the audience before the show as they were talking about how disappointed they were with some of the Sydney Theatre Company’s productions over the last year.  In particular, “Riflemind” and “The Season At Sarsaparilla”.  As I’ve said before, in a previous post, I didn’t like Riflemind, but it constantly surprises me how many people have seen the show and really hated it.  What concerns me is that the Sydney Theatre Company’s reputation has been so badly damaged by a mediocre season.
 
If Blackbird is anything to judge the Sydney Theatre Company by, I am hopefully optimistic that this year’s productions will be an improvement on last year’s.

I took this photo while at the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition) in 1983.  The PNE was holding a photo competition titled “Fun at the fair” so I went in the hope of taking a winning shot.

Back in the middle of summer in 1979, at the age of 23, I had some time off from my job as a laser light show operator in the carnival, so I visited the Grand Canyon by myself.

I literally had my breath taken away, when I first saw the Grand Canyon.  As I stood at Bright Angel point and looked over the edge, I was so awestruck that I could hardly breathe.  I was also overcome by a feeling that I would be sucked into the chasm, and I had to push myself from the barrier and turn my head away from the vista, just so I could breathe and stop myself from fainting. I always thought such things were the stuff of purple prose, and never in my wildest dreams did I think, that one could have their breath taken away by natural beauty.  I was gobsmacked.

When I got my breath back I turned around and drank in the view for at least an hour.  It was my intention to hike to the bottom of the canyon the next day, so I went to the National Parks office to put myself on the permit list, only to be told that I would have to wait three days, because only 75 people are allowed to stay in the canyon overnight to preserve the fragile desert environment.  I had a week off from work, so I didn’t mind that much.  I just was a bit concerned about how I was going to spend my time, in the interim.

Back in those days I used to think that sleeping on camping mats was for softies, and I also thought that staying at hotels was a total waste of money.  So I used to just camp out in the bush in my sleeping bag without a tent or mat and that’s just what I did at the Grand Canyon.  In the morning I would just pack up all my stuff, put it into my backpack and leave it with the concierge at the Bright Angel Lodge for a small fee.

As I waited the three days for my hiking permit, I sat at the cliff edge and boggled on what I saw. 

 While I was staring into the chasm for hours on end, I couldn’t help but think about how much time had passed as the multitude of geological strata had built up.  The bottom layers of the Grand Canyon were so much older than the beginning of life on Earth.  I found myself thinking about entropy, while contemplating the erosion.  It seemed to me that solidity was a manifestation of time and given enough time, everything was basically liquid as entropy caused matter to succumb to gravity and flow to the lowest point.

As I had this revelation I reached out my hand to get the attention of whoever was next to me and tell them about what I’d thought.  But I was alone, and as my arm swung through the vacant air, I realised that there was no one there.  I felt bereft.  It occurred to me that all my life, up until that moment, I had never really felt lonely, in the sense of needing to have the company of other people for company’s sake.  The reason why I felt bereft was because I had wanted to share the moment and my thoughts with someone who mattered to me.  It came to me in a flash that this was the first time in my life I realised why people formed relationships for other reasons besides money or amusement.  Up until that point I thought that couples were in relationships just because they found each other attractive and wanted to have sex with each other rather than share their lives.  No wonder I wasn’t in any long-term relationship at that time. I was too young anyway.

The three days eventually passed and I got my permit to hike to the bottom of the canyon, and stay overnight at Phantom Ranch.  At the beginning of the hike I met two other travellers, and we hiked down to the bottom and stayed at Phantom Ranch overnight.

The next morning we left fairly early and started on the long hike back up out of the canyon.  We left early, because in the morning, it was still a bit cool and at the bottom of the canyon temperatures can get up to about 50°C (about 120°F) as the day wears on.  At the same time that we left, a little old lady from Austria, who was about 70 years old, also set off. 

Being a couple of young guys, we tore off up the track, until the going got steep, and we had to stop and rest at frequent intervals.  As we were standing around in the shade getting back our breath, the little old lady from Austria would catch up to us and we would take off again.  This tortoise and hare race happened about 4 or 5 times, until the little old lady said to us “boys, boys, boys, you’re doing it all wrong!” Then she said to us, “ walk with me and I’ll show you how to walk up steep hills”.  So off we started again, and before we knew it, we almost left her in the dust again, but as we noticed we were leaving her behind we slowed down, until she caught up with us again.  Our Austrian hiking coach explained to us that if we walked in very slowly we wouldn’t get tired.  So for the rest of the day we walked with her at her slow pace.  Sure enough, we didn’t take a break for the rest of the day and made it up to the top without a stop. 

Thanks to what that little old lady from Austria taught me on that day, I have been able to enjoy walking up long steep hills without being constantly out of breath.

Back in the early eighties, when I lived in the US, I used to work in a travelling Laser Light show that used do the carnival circuit in the summer and the car show circuit in the winter. The Laser show was called “Laser One” and it was transported in a three-wheeled trailer towed by a high cube truck with a tow ball. The trailer had a fold out façade with two revolving-door entrances at either end and it housed the control room with the actual laser in the middle.

The positioning of the entrances meant that the triple axel with the very small wheels were in the middle of the trailer, instead of the end. The mid mounting of the axels and the tow ball hitching system led to a very unpredictable and dangerous ride. The trailer was quite heavy and it used to seesaw up and down over any undulations in the road plus wheels would regularly tear off while we were driving down the highways. The wheels used to tear off because of metal fatigue caused by the forces exerted on the outside wheels as they were dragged around the middle wheels when very tight turns were made during parking. It wasn’t unusual to be travelling down the road and to see one of our wheels passing us and a shower of sparks coming off the dragging hub. I didn’t get my drivers licence until I was 35 so my job in lieu of sharing the driving was to change wheels and tyres when needed. It was needed often and, often it was in the middle of the night in freezing conditions.

Most of the driving was done by our manager, Brian “Buzz” Carlos, and sometimes my other co-worker, Jordan would help out.

Buzz was a very levelheaded and intelligent guy who was a pleasure to work with. None of us smoked and it came as a surprise to Jordan and I that Buzz started smoking when we were in Milwaukee. At first it was only one cigarette every couple of days but then of course it turned into one a day and when he starting a couple a day. I thought it would be hilarious to play a practical joke on him. I went to a magic and novelty store and bought some “spikes”.

Spikes are about 1cm (1/3 of an inch) long and about half the thickness of a matchstick. They are pushed into the end of cigarettes to make them explode. So when Buzz put his smokes down one day, I inserted a few spikes into them, while he wasn’t looking, and waited. Lo and behold, Buzz didn’t pick a “spiked” cigarette for over a week. In the meantime, winter was coming and as it was getting colder Buzz went out and bought a very nice parka with wolf fur trim because the heating in the truck wasn’t adequate.

At the end of a “spot” (the place where the show was held) we’d do the “strike” (take down the show) at the end of the last day, which would take about five hours and then we’d jump into the truck and drive through the night, straight to the next spot.

With the show in Milwaukee finished we headed south through Tennessee as it was starting to snow and by the time we reached the Smoky Mountains there was a blizzard. We’d been up all night, and Buzz had been at the wheel without a break, when we started to hear frantic messages over the CB. Things like “if you heading down the mountain at such and such, get out of my way, cause my brakes ain’t working!” or “watch out for such and such a place as there is black ice and two trucks have left the road”, etc. There were smashed cars and trucks all over the place. Buzz took it all in his stride and just drove on through the carnage. After all, we had to get to the next spot on time. The snow just kept on falling and the blizzard winds made the visibility very poor.

During one particularly long steep descent down a mountain road thickly covered with snow; almost no visibility and a bucking and weaving truck, Buzz in his nervousness decides that it would be a good time to light a cigarette. BANG!! The cigarette blew up and hot embers went into Buzz’s eyes, blinding him and also setting his brand new parker on fire! The truck was starting to fishtail because of Buzz’s flinch at the wheel when the spike went off. Jordan grabbed the wheel and helped Buzz regain control. When we got to the bottom of the hill Buzz pulled the truck over and jumped out of the cab to put out this smouldering parka.

Needless to say, I wasn’t a very popular boy that day. I won’t be putting spikes in people’s cigarettes again.

The PNE (Pacific National Exhibition) is a yearly carnival held in Vancouver.  In 1983 there was a photographic contest with a prize of a trip for two to Mexico City, complete with a week’s accomodation in a five star hotel. The theme of the contest was “Fun at the fair”.

At the time I was experimenting with slow shutter speeds with flash.  The slow shutterspeed gives a sense of movement whilst the flash freezes motion.