30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account

He laughed. He was the fixer. He had fixed it. We all laughed. And this is the thing that I perhaps should not confess - we liked this reckless behaviour. We liked the lawlessness and if we sometimes suspected our leaders were a little criminal then they were our criminals at least.

  That's Sydney, mate, said Fix, that's Sydney to a fucking tee. It's a hard place.

  Sir, said the waiter at last.

  It's a very hard place, continued Fix. And he was a hard bastard, he had to be to be premier. He said to me once, after someone had stabbed him in the back. He said, I don't know why he shafted me, I never did him a favour. You see, Peter? You understand? The fellow who accepts the favour is weakened by it.

  Sir? said the waiter.

  Get the fuck out of here, said the aggressively heterosexual Fix, flirting and threatening simultaneously.

  The waiter was tall and slender and very, very handsome. He looked Fix up and down, rumpled shirt, bulging belly. Telephone, he said evenly.

  God knows what was said while I spoke to Clara, but five minutes later I had paid the bill and we were out in the drizzling rain. Fix had left the table reluctantly and now he was trying to persuade us not to visit the squat.

  You don't know what it is, he said. You don't know what sort of vermin are there. Is this the junkie son or the Captain Planet son?

  It's Captain Planet, said Kelvin, but I'll tell you honestly, Fix, I don't see that we have a choice.

  And that was how it came about, as the rain began on the night before Anzac Day, that three middle-aged men found themselves climbing through the ground-floor window of a building that has since been demolished. The stairs smelled bad. They were very dark and made almost impassable by stacked window sashes, filing cabinets, office partitions and God knows what else. On the fifth-floor landing the floorboards had been removed and we could only continue to the roof, where Sheridan was said to be inhabiting the caretaker's apartment, by walking across a single plank.

  This is a very stupid thing to be doing, said Fix.

  It occurred to me then that my companions, being both large men in rumpled suits, looked very like cops and the thought did not comfort me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  WE FOUND THE SQUAT up on the roof of the eightstorey building, a former caretaker's residence like a suburban fibro shed. Sherry's six-foot son was standing in the open doorway.

  Dad, come in out of the rain. Light shone across the wet black roof and revealed the hairy shirtless Sheridan kneeling on the slippery parapet looking down into the night.

  Dad? Like a barefoot surfer crossing a painful car park, the boy hobbled out into the rain. He had his Dutch mother's long narrow feet and sand-white hair.

  What is it that you see, Dad?

  Sheridan's hair and beard were wet and matted. He pointed along the lines of rain. Chook, he said.

  His son put his arm around his father's naked shoulder and the two of them peered down together.

  Do you know why we call a chicken a chook? asked Sheridan. It's from the Gaelic, did you know that?

  As we watched, a woman appeared in the doorway. She had a scarf around her head and a sarong tucked in between her breasts. I did not know her until she spoke but when I heard that throaty voice I recognised Vicki the tow-truck driver. What are you buggers up to? she demanded.

  As she came towards the parapet Sheridan quickly rose to intercept, but she feinted, ducked beneath his widespread arms, and discovered what so interested the blond boy.

  Oh, she cried in distress. Oh no. My chook.

  She's alive, said Sherry as he joined her. She's not hurt.

  Oh you're such a fucking expert, Sherry, cried Vicki as she turned to face him. I don't know why I trusted you.

  Sheridan began to pat the air.

  Sweetheart, I'll rescue her, no worries. You've got to trust me, please.

  You're such an old con, Vicki cried. You stay away from her.

  Oh Jesus, don't say that, pleaded Sheridan, you don't know what it does to me.

  It was at this delicate moment that Fix led us forward.

  Hello Fix, said Sheridan. He nodded to me and Kelvin before turning to stare down off the edge. There, by the light of the red flashing sign on the Cho-How Dumpling House, I could see what appeared to be a crumpled ball of rag on the grimy window ledge a floor below. It was a chook.

  Dad, you're pissed, said Jason. You can't go down the rope while you're pissed.

  I never said anything about a rope.

  And a bottle of wine, said Jason. Please, mate, don't do this to me.

  Everyone went very quiet.

  All right, said Fix. Can a bloke make a suggestion?

  Who the fuck is he? Vicki demanded.

  I'm Fix, darling, and I am very fucking well named.

  He took the little plastic bucket of grain from Sheridan's hands. Get me some string.

  While the son went inside, Fix produced a Swiss army knife with which he made some holes in the tub. The son then returned with a ball of twine which Fix cut and then threaded through the holes.

  Vicki watched, her arms folded across her breasts.

  You expect the chook to jump in that? she asked.

  Fix revealed the same smile I had seen him bestow on the waiter at the Rockpool. Observe, he said.

  This won't work, Kelvin whispered. He's pissed.

  You shut the fuck up, said Fix.

  I was the one who knelt beside him as he lowered the container down the northern edge of the light-well. On the southern side, the others huddled in the light rain, their pale faces washed red by the flashing sign.

  Stop, called Sheridan. You're just above her.

  Drop it maybe six inches.

  Four inches.

  Her head is in it, said Jason. She's pecking.

  Pull it now, you won't get another chance.

  Don't pull.

  Jesus, said Fix, tugging on the line. Stand by, Pete.

  She's going to fall, cried Vicki.

  I was kneeling on the parapet, not a good place for the vertiginous.

  She's going to fucking fall.

  I was wearing the trousers of the suit I had bought at Barney's in New York but there did not seem any choice but to lie down on the filthy roof. And here came the chook, like a wound-up spring, head down, arse in the air. It was only momentum that kept her pinned in place and as she ascended, swaying, bouncing against the wall, she was struggling to straighten herself. I clenched my teeth, reached towards her and as I did so she launched herself. I grabbed, missed, then caught her foot.

  I crawled backwards, dragging her to safety, and as I rolled she struck, driving her beak into my wrist.

  Shit!

  The chook rose free, flapped towards the edge of death, then went running across the roof towards the compost heap, leaving me alone with blood pouring down across my open palm.

  To my great irritation I found Fix was laughing at me. See, he said, see. Comrade Chook.

  Shut up, Fix.

  You did the comrade a favour, she had to peck you. She's a Sydney chook, no worries.

  Very funny, I said.

  Come on, he said, pulling me to my feet. Do you think old Captain Planet might have a toke of Mary Jane?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SOME OF THE MOST extraordinary places in which I have lived have been sited on land occupied by people popularly known as dole bludgers. I am thinking particularly of my years in Browns Creek Road, Yandina which was not exactly a commune but was certainly a hippie community. Here I dwelled on the edge of rainforest in a beautiful little hut and all around my neighbours tended their gardens in the cool of the morning and, in the hot afternoons, swam in a rock pool above a waterfall. I am not saying it was perfect, but even when we were burdened with the harassment of the Nambour building inspector or frightened by the threats of the notorious Queensland drug squad, we only had to drive half an hour to find the long peaceful beaches of the Sunshine Coast.

  Up and down the east coast of Austr
alia various friends of mine have lived similar (not exactly untroubled) lives but always in the midst of a beauty you could not have improved on, not even with paid employment.

  However it was not until I walked across the roof of that squat and discovered all of Darling Harbour spread beneath me, that the penny finally dropped - hippies and their successors have a great nose for real estate. This was a million-dollar location.

  There was a kind of verandah or balcony on the western side of the caretaker's flat. Jason and a temporarily absent character named Moosh had paved its floor with an abstract mosaic of broken plates and tiles. Their work was now pushing up the walls where it was morphing into a bright blue and yellow depiction of a sandy cove. On the balcony was a big white plastic table (which looked like something by Saarinen) and eight slightly shop-soiled red vinyl chairs discarded by the Cho-How Dumpling House. The squatters had made something you might be delighted to find on a beach in Queensland or Bali, although this illusion was challenged by the high ugly yellow-brick building just across the way. The owners of these expensive apartments may or may not have been amazed by the chook and1 or the organic farmers on the rooftop below the certain that they were continually amazed. He hugged himself and scratched his tanned biceps in delight.

  You should see them, mate, he said. You come here at seven o'clock at night. They're all talking on their mobile phones, looking down at us. Just imagine what is going on inside their brains!

  Captain Planet! He never doubted that his compost caused immense unease amongst his yuppie neighbours.

  And if he wished to challenge his enemies he could not have found a better place to do it, for in all of Sydney it would have been hard to find a stronger reminder of the dazzling strength of his opposition. Their power was here laid out before him in a sight that was not merely awful, but awful elevated to a giddy height and sickening width, a panorama of awful, a chaotic, anarchic awful of such exuberance and density that it was (not quite, but almost) beautiful.

  It was this shoreline growth that the ugly monorail was built to feed, so we might suffer this encrustation on a stretch of harbour which another city might have thought to treat as lungs, a way to bring the air and water deep into the city heart.

  Here the polluticians and the developers carved up the cake with gusto. It is not hard to imagine that every one of them was determined to do something unique. They built structures with soaring roofs like tents, glowing blue cones that would have been science fiction twenty years before. It was on the shores of Chinatown. So they made Chinese gardens, funfairs, aquariums. It was Coney Island with fine dining. It was the bastard child of Corbusier and Ronald McDonald. It was the twenty-first century with the Jetsons zooming past in the monorail on their way to eat John Dory and drink a glass - make that a bottle - of cold white wine. The curse of Botany Bay was gone. Here was the proof - this was the arsehole of the world no more.

  And it had, once, been the cloaca, the dump, the port, filthy water, tanneries, warehouses and factories, and the developers no doubt feel they have improved it out of sight. Have they not kept those Georgian warehouses on the western shore? And anyway, no matter what Jason and his friends might say, there was no conspiracy. Yes Laurie Brereton, a minister in the state Labor government, pushed through that monorail with such determination that it would not have mattered how many Nobel Prize winners had marched beside us through the streets, no citizen could stop this thing. It was a conspiracy, said Jason, but a conspiracy requires a plan, and this was more of a Rum Corps goldrush. That high-cabled bridge over there was not designed by anyone connected with, say, the Panasonic IMAX just by the waterfront. Yes, it has a similar funfair aspect to it, a similar liveliness, a vibrancy, an energy - are they bad things? That the Police Witness Protection Programme should be neighbour to the IMAX, that it should have opaque-glass windows like a drug-dealer's limo, that it snuggles comfortably against the monorail, perhaps means no more than this is a city as organic as a coral reef, all its denizens bunching in intimate complexity. Perhaps we should pray that the Central Business District should finally attain this same mass of exhibitionistic awfulness, this density of domes, cones, freeways, bridges, fantasy, and when it finally does it will give off a luminous exotic energy, like the streets of Blade Runner without, God willing, the rain to wreck our summer.

  Jason, it was obvious, was very proud of his home. He made a very tasty guacamole dip and brought cold beer to the table.

  I asked him if he thought the view was beautiful.

  It's pretty fucked, eh? But the way he grinned and rested his feet up on the parapet seemed celebratory as much as critical. It's a ringside seat, he said.

  It's terrifying, Vicki said. If she had been angry with Sheridan about the chook, all that had vanished.

  What are you terrified of, Vicki? Fix's voice had an edge to it. She was friendly towards him but he (Who the fuck is he?) had taken a set against her.

  We should all be terrified, said Jason quickly. You look at this development and you can imagine what they'll do to Cockatoo Island now it's up for grabs.

  They? asked Fix, raising his eyebrows. Who the fuck is they?

  Sheridan leaned forward and laid his hand on Vicki's shoulder, all the while addressing Fix. We know you worked for Laurie Brereton, mate. But we don't blame you personally.

  Fix narrowed his eyes. Maybe THEY will build an opera house, he said. You people are such fucking knee-jerks. You've got no idea what it takes to get things done.

  Jack Ledoux is working on plans for developing Cockatoo Island, said Kelvin. That has to be a plus.

  Oh come on, Kelvinator, groaned Fix. Jack's an artist, mate.

  Vicki cocked her head and stared at this wide heavy man with the white shirt and loosened tie. You make that sound so dirty, she said. You make me shiver when you say it.

  Sweetheart, I've known Jack for twenty years. He's a sweet fellow but he's a wanker. No government's going to let him decide how to develop a billion dollars' worth of real estate.

  If it was Utzon you'd be calling him a wanker.

  Fix snorted into his beer. Look, you're all so critical of everything. You look down at Darling Harbour and say, oh, how awful. How UNAESTHETIC. But you tell me, Jason, why are you living here? I'll tell you why? This is a fabulous view. It's a sensational place. And yes, I know, it's fucked, Jason, but it's a city, mate, and it's exciting. It's a world-class city and the only cities you like are really country fucking towns.

  Look, said Jason, that is Cockle Bay down there. Doesn't that tell you something is lost? It doesn't have much to do with cockles any more.

  Oh Jesus, save me from the eco-left! exclaimed Fix and held his head in his hands.

  Go easy, mate, said Kelvin.

  You know something, Jason? I am sick and fucking tried of hearing about the Abos' midden heaps, mate, no offence.

  Sheridan shifted uncomfortably and put his hand on Vicki's arm. That's her mob, he said quickly.

  I turned, suddenly, to look at Vicki and she caught me and held my gaze. Didn't figure me for a blackfellow? she said.

  No, I didn't.

  But we are everywhere amongst you, she sipped her beer. Reading books, driving tow trucks.

  Come on, said Sheridan, Peter's cool.

  Oh I'm cool too, said Vicki bitterly. I'm a real truck-driving, post-modernist Koori.

  So where's your country, Vicki? Fix asked, his blue eyes sparkling.

  Shut up, said Sheridan. She doesn't have a bloody country. It was stolen from her.

  I can speak for myself, thanks, Sherry, and I do have a country, Fix. It's up near Moree.

  She was taken from her parents, explained Sherry.

  Vicki cast a fast hard look on Sheridan which made it very clear that this information was not his to give away. She seemed about to speak, then changed her mind.

  In the embarrassed hiatus that followed Kelvin fetched more beers and Vicki rolled a cigarette. Then we all watched an ambulance make its way into the city
over the Western Distributor.

  Listen, Vicki said at last, I don't want to talk about this shit.

  I did not bring this up, said Fix.

  Vicki cocked her head and studied him with her intense dark eyes. You can't bring up something that is always there. But the minute you discover I'm a Koori you're not going to say, oh, what do you think of David Malouf's new novel? You're going to go, oh, where's your country, as if you knew what that meant.

  I apologise, said Fix.

  Vicki nodded and stroked her forehead. She had a small single frown line just above her nose. See, I've got a white mum just like you have. I've got a white dad, a real old digger, I marched with him each Anzac Day until he died. But I grew up not knowing I had a black mum and a black dad. I did not even know I was a Koori, and now it seems that has to be the only interesting thing about me.

  I didn't mean that, said Fix.

  That's all right, don't worry. She stood and picked up her pouch of tobacco and her matches. Tomorrow is Anzac Day. Sherry and I have to get up for the Dawn Service.

  Can I come with you? asked Fix suddenly.

  Suit yourself, said Vicki. And disappeared in-side.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  COULD MY EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OseLlDf have seen me at the Dawn Service on Anzac Day he would, if he had not wept with disappointment, have jeered and shouted slogans at the man he would become.

  In the eyes of that eighteen year old, Anzac Day was celebrated by men who hated Asians and loved the Queen of England, racists, royalists, homophobes, soldiers in uniform who saw his long hair as an enemy badge. Anzac Day meant the Returned Services League and RSL clubs, and that single minute of every alcoholic day when a dreary male voice intoned LEST WE FORGET and the beer ceased flowing and the poker machines fell silent in tribute to the dead.

  I might have mocked and feared the reactionary RSL but even as an opinionated teenager I knew the issue was more complicated. My heart was easily stirred by the story of Gallipoli. My own father had fought in neither world war but we had family friends who had suffered the Burmese Railway, Changi Prison and the horrors of the Kokoda Trail. The road into our little town was lined with a massive avenue of plane trees, each bearing the name of a local boy or man who had lost his life in war. It was the most beautiful place in the entire town and one could not drive through it and not think why it was there. 'The Japanese,' my mother said, 'were coming to take my little baby.' Why would I not believe her? Had I not, in the grounds of State School No. 28, played with the currency the Japanese had printed in readiness for the time when our country would be theirs? Did we not dance home along the footpaths chanting Step on a crack and break a Jap's back?