Published The Advocate, December 31, 2005


HERE we are at the cusp of another year but you have to remain optimistic. There is always something to live for. Check a desk calendar. Every day somewhere in the world, a public holiday is being celebrated. I saw a man with no arms standing by the side of the Bass Hwy at Somerset the other day. He was wearing a shoulder bag around his neck and had the half-expectant, half-pleading look of a hitchhiker. What makes a man with no arms think he can thumb a ride? Optimism. I take inspiration from his attitude. I wish to be the bald man who weekly pops his head into the barbershop and laughs to remind the barber of a lost sale. It’s a matter of seeing things differently. I love the cartoon of a fish telling the doubting wrasses: "I swear, I was seized by an alien who kissed me on the lips and threw me back." Sometimes I feel detached from life, like being in an aircraft where everyone else but me is wearing a headset and laughing at the in-flight movie and I have no idea why they are laughing. Here’s a thought: If something is funny enough to make you laugh, why can’t you keep on laughing at it? Why does the laughing stop? The joke is still funny and yet somehow its funniness runs out. Weird. Not laughing, more friends will die in 2006, as if 2005 was not bad enough. For years, my regular New Year’s resolution has been to make new friends. A good resolution, but not this time. I have reached the stage where I am reluctant to make new friends now because it will mean having to attend even more funerals later. I am also a contrarian. I like to do the unexpected. Everyone tells me death is inevitable, therefore I intend to hang around forever just to make a nuisance of myself. We shall see. Some days are too difficult to make considered, intelligent judgements, like stepping into a lift and being unable to decide whether to go up or down. There have also been days when I arrived at work covered in cobwebs, for which I have no explanation. But if your life is going around in bewildering circles, never mind, there are lots of people with chips on their shoulders who will tell you exactly where you are going wrong. They will pick faults in others but see none in themselves. Avoid them. So what does next year have in store? The weather will make the news again, of that I am certain. Tassie loves its weather stories. And for those parents who are worried their kids are too obsessed with winning in sport, there’s always Collingwood. My New Year resolution last year was to procrastinate more, to put off until tomorrow what I could not bothered doing yesterday. That’s ticked off the list when I get around to it. Next year I intend to continue the hunt for anatomically correct jelly babies.

Published The Advocate, December 24, 2005


IN THE United States, where the silly season grows sillier every year, some large evangelical churches have cancelled Christmas church services this year. They speak of "decentralising Christmas", of encouraging people to spend the day with their families around the Christmas tree, rather than coming together to worship as a congregation. Am I alone in finding this odd? Christmas is the one time of the year – not counting weddings and funerals – when even the lapsed are likely to be found in a church. It’s a sacred time. Most retailers, having commercialised Christmas to the last dollar, close their doors on Christmas Day itself. Churches, on the other hand, are expected to keep their doors open. To close the doors may be a consequence of running religion like a business, as many evangelical churches do, and it rather misses the point of being a church. It is hard to imagine the mainstream churches – Catholic, Protestant and so on – taking a breather on Christmas Day. Even if an alarmingly small number of people bother to turn up, the birth of Christ still seems a good reason to turn on the lights and arrange the flowers. Even non-believers respect the fact that Christmas is more than just another public holiday. I had a crusty old editor – a non-believer if ever there was one – who banned the word Xmas in copy even though it made a better fit than Christmas in a headline. He saw the X as offensive to many readers for taking the Christ out of Christmas. Only later did I learn X was the Greek character for Christ. Meantime, the secularisation of Christmas continues apace. Education minister Paula Wriedt said state schools, if they wished, could ban Christmas activities such as nativity plays, carols and decorations "given the diversity of the school population". Her critics took this as implicit approval for schools to ban Christmas altogether, and they labelled Ms Wriedt a grinch. However, the critics saw nothing wrong in their insisting that everyone must celebrate Christmas, or else. There is no getting away from the fact that Christmas is a Christian feast day, for Christ’s sake. The festive season can also be rough on a lot of people. It can be a sad reminder for those who have lost loved ones. It is also the suicide season and there is an upsurge in domestic violence and road fatalities. Sigh. Christmas, to me, is the time of the year when I sit in the lounge with the lights out listening to Handel’s version of Gloria rather than to Van Morrison’s G-L-O-R-I-AYY. My perfect day is to make the family calls early and then withdraw: the phone does not ring, no one comes knocking at my door and I can write another passage of my never ending book knowing I will not be interrupted. Bliss. My son’s partner is Jewish. Being Jewish, she says, means she is not required to give Christmas presents although nothing prevents her from receiving them. Ho-ho-ho. Anyway, from her perspective, all Christians are lapsed Jews.

Published The Advocate, December 17, 2005


STANDING in an airport queue provides plenty of time for self-assessment, to become more aware of who you are … except many things are not worth knowing and it’s best not to ask. My way of coping with an airport queue is to let my mind wander and see where it leads. Like, always buy your coffee in the same airport café where the hosties get theirs. Or will the pocketful of coins I put through the x-ray scanner hit the jackpot when they come out the other end? See, not everything is worth knowing. I was in Sydney airport waiting to board a plane for Melbourne, which had been named as a possible terrorist target. Alert and alarmed, people in airport queues do not talk about terrorism. Even a joke mention of the word "bomb" will get you detained. People talk about the weather instead. On the airport shuttle bus, the driver had offered reassurances about the dark clouds, guaranteeing it would not rain because Sydney was in a prolonged drought. A woman with a heavy accent told the driver the whole world’s weather was going creezy. She said it was zeero degrees and raining in La Paz at this very moment. At which point it began to rain in Sydney. "Yes," the driver said, "the weather’s very unpredictable everywhere now." So much for the Sydney drought. Inside the terminal I overheard a radio discussion on the difference between "Yeah but" and "Yeah and" people. The "Yeah buts" saw only problems and always raised objections to why a thing could not be done; the "Yeah ands" offered solutions to how a problem might be overcome. My general approach is: "Yeah but, and another thing..." This stuff plays on the minds of people once their identity has been reduced to a baggage barcode and left queuing for hours. They are also the sucker targets of airport newsagencies, which stack their shelves with self-improvement books like "Big ideas for small minded people" or "Word for the illiterate". The security screening means you spend more time waiting than you do flying. I know a woman who always carries an empty water bottle in her bag because, as she says, you never know when you might be stuck in a lift and need to relieve yourself. Or stuck with a full bladder in an airport queue but unwilling to lose your place. Occasionally things run smoothly in airports. On this occasion we boarded the plane without delay and no-one sat next to me. Even better, among the suits up in business class, a baby was screaing its lungs out. Bless it. Then, too good to be true, we went nowhere. Eventually the pilot came on the intercom and blamed the slack baggage handlers for delaying our departure. Have you noticed how the poor old baggage handlers have been copping the blame for whatever goes wrong in airports since the Schapelle Corby drug case? One smuggled bag of marijuana and they’re guilty of everything.

Published The Advocate, December 10, 2005


I KNEW a shonky plumber who owned a greyhound. He had a bushy black beard and a touch of the night about him. The plumber, not the dog. I went with him to a greyhound meeting one night on the promise of a scoop story about rigged races. He claimed to have "inside knowledge". None of his tips won, which only confirmed in his mind that the industry, from the stewards down, was corrupt. He should talk. He and his mate did dodgy bathroom renovations. Somehow a hammer always fell repeatedly against the old hand basin or bath, which then had to be replaced on insurance. The plumber just happened to have a handy supply of replacement baths and basins in a backyard shed. He also had a sideline selling homemade salami in hotel bars. Given his high turnover of greyhounds, I now worry what meat he used in the salami. When it came to success on the track, his secret weapon was to smear hot English mustard on his dog’s nether regions as he pushed it into the starting box. The dog performed well and was very hard to catch afterwards. The stewards eventually twigged. Within the space of a month the plumber was banned from the track; the police charged him with handling stolen bathware and insurance fraud; the ATO was onto him for undeclared income; and he was being pursued by the health authorities over a salmonella outbreak. Speaking of going to the dogs, I was having a drink with Donkey Dan, The Advocate’s hapless tipster and self-styled "pensioner’s friend", who had another less than splendid Spring Carnival. We were in a windowless bar where Meaty Bites could be served as nibbles and no one would notice. One beer led to another and we decided to buy a greyhound. Donkey was thinking in the vicinity of $300 and a training deal with no upfront fees and a percentage share of the winnings. I had seen an omen in The Advocate: Australian greyhounds were reportedly being sent to Asia to be served as gourmet meals, and efforts were being made to ban their export. This could only be good news. The reason why our crayfish are so expensive is because the market demand in Japan and Hong Kong drives up the price. An export ban on a la carte greyhounds should keep down the price here. We rang our mate Sam, who has contacts in the greyhound world, to see if he could find an entry-level dog that would be immediately successful. Sam was enthusiastic. He said his lifelong ambition was to own a dish licker. Some people’s ambitions are very low. He set off like a mechanical rabbit and was soon back on the line saying we could pick up a good pup for about $1500, plus $40 a week in training fees, although it could be up to $3000 for a top breed. Jeez Louise! Hmm, now that’s not a bad name for a dog.

Published The Advocate, November 19, 2005


TASMANIA was chosen as a convict settlement because of its isolation and the citizens are still defined daily by that isolation. Their separation from the rest of Australia affects the way they think; the way they see themselves. Tasmanians are people of their own creation. The separation also colours how the Mainland sees them, for good or ill. One of Tasmania’s many Elizas, a chatty young woman, recently told me she had a "problem" with Mainlanders. Now I try to get on with people, to see their points of view and to give them the benefit of the doubt. But what’s wrong with Mainlanders? Eliza said her attitude changed at a music festival at Byron Bay while she was standing in line at the toilets chatting with the other girls. She had mentioned she was from Tasmania. The others had rolled their eyes, Eliza said, and had made her feel as if she somehow counted for less. I told her she obviously was standing in the wrong toilet queue; the boys would never have cold-shouldered her like that. We all want to be liked for who we are, Eliza, and you cannot help where you were born. Mind, being born in one place and not in another, makes a big difference in Tasmania. Eliza comes from Lindisfarne, on the eastern shore of the Derwent, and no doubt there are those in Hobart who put down Lindisfarners for being overly sensitive little petals. In this way, stereotypes are created. Despite apparent state unity, regional differences and identities are strong in Tasmania. Each region contains small separatist movements, known as suburbs and towns, which give rise to deep-seated rivalries: Devonport versus Burnie; Smithton versus Stanley; Penguin versus Ulverstone; etcetera. In Devonport, a Lions Club comes up with a headline-grabbing Spirit of the Sea sculpture – complete with a male dangly bit - for no reason other than to counter the perceived progressiveness of Burnie’s foreshore development. Our Cradle Coast is a regional community spread in small parts. With no regional capital, it reminds me of suburbia. Each town thinks it is entitled to a local hospital, school, airport and Olympic-sized swimming pool. Never mind if the entire regional population is the same as one small Sydney council, and there is not enough money to go around for nine of everything. One day, maybe, the regional differences will be a cause of celebration instead of dispute. I should live so long. Meantime, I keep being asked what I think of Tasmania, which I find surprising after all this time here. It’s hard to know how to answer. I always have a nervy sense of being closely watched for a throwaway line that snags me unwittingly as un-Tasmanian. Heaven forbid. Or, even worse, of seeming to favour one town over another. So what do I think? Look around – what’s not to like? It’s all good, mate.

Published The Advocate, December 3, 2005

FRIDAY night I was in the ground floor bar of the Mercure Hotel, Hobart, watching the girls in their glad rags and their beaus dressed to the nines gathering for their school leaver’s dinner. How many of them would end the night in such good order remained to be seen. The girls, dressed mostly in black with pushup bras and alluring necklines, clung together in giggling clusters of shimmering silk. They had those over-large eyes of Japanese cartoon characters, an eyeliner beauty trick. Girls never looked so good when I was that age, let me tell you. The young men in their rental tuxes, black suits and yellow ties, had their hair frosted and moussed stiff. Hair care is not high on my priority list. The last time I went to the barber, I returned to work with an electric hedge trimmer that was on special in a shop window. People chortled. At the next table in the Mercure, an elderly man was accompanied by a blonde woman of a certain age and a pretty girl, possibly his granddaughter, who was dressed for her leavers’ dinner. The man was wheezing and talking non-stop as if frightened his time would run out before he finished: "As I said to the surgeon … arrrghhh … inhalation in my lungs … also had a respiratory … arrrghhh." The blonde kept saying "Aw, my goodness," and the girl looked uncomfortable. I was rather touched by the family gathering. I cannot invite any of my family out to dinner because they all have dietary or psychological problems. In the early hours next morning, kept awake by the sonar ping of the pedestrian lights outside, I was alone with my thoughts in the hotel room. I have many shortcomings as a human being and I wish now, looking back, I had led a blameless life. My mother prays for me in church. I am much misunderstood. The party animals began returning: The thud of hallway doors and security latches being clicked into place, of muffled voices and giggles, and the turbo-surge of toilets being flushed. As I write this, the leavers’ dinner season is over. So much work and effort went into the party package, the hair and the makeup; and now it’s over and the kids have to get on with the rest of their lives. Most of them will make worthwhile contributions to the community and be fine citizens; some will do remarkable things and achieve greatness; and some won’t. You cannot alter the way luck flows. A few, with nothing better to do, will come straggling into town in their thongs and Ugg boots, the girls chewing their hair ends and walking pigeon-toed, skewed by their child-bearing hips. I hope they find something fulfilling to do with their lives. Like find a cure for baldness. My barber was telling me about her sister’s leavers’ dinner and how she was hoping to get a job working with animals. Such as a vet, perhaps, or farming? "Apprentice butcher," she said.

Published The Advocate, November 26, 2005


BY THIS time next week, a young Australian man will be hanged by the neck until dead in Singapore. Pause. Let it sink in. Nguyen Tuong Van, a 25-year-old Melbourne man, is due to be executed on Friday, December 2, in Changi Prison. Knowing the precise date of your death at the hands of others is beyond my comprehension. Imagine, too, being his mum paying her son a visit in his final hours. No mother should have that inflicted on her. For the record, I oppose the death penalty. Always have. Capital punishment is judicial murder, made worse by the cold, detached manner of its execution. Only Abu Bakar Bashir gives me pause for second thoughts. The "spiritual" head of the Bali bombers received just 30 months in prison for giving the terrorists his blessing to do their evil. Bashir will be free soon enough. Van Nguyen will be dead. Bashir will burn in hell, Allah willing. On no account can the deliberate taking of a human life be justified as a punishment. To think otherwise is to become like Bashir, perverted by the sense that God is on your side and is divinely guiding the executioner's hand. Not my God. No one who truly believes in God can support capital punishment. The Vatican and I do not see eye to eye on much. But in opposing capital punishment, the Catholic Church is robust and right. The church has core issues about the sanctity of life: Mankind does not have a God-given right to take a man's life. Unlike Singapore and the US, Australia has no capital punishment and no death row. We are better than that as a people. The Australian Army has never executed one of its troops for "cowardice". The ones who lost their minds under fire needed support to help them out of their trauma, not another bullet from a firing squad. The last person to be executed in Australia was Ronald Ryan, who was hanged in Pentridge Prison in 1967. The citizenry was so revolted it is hard to see capital punishment ever returning although we must remain vigilant. I worked with BM, a journalist who was a public witness to Ryan's hanging. BM was one of the funniest people I met. After Ryan, he was frequently to be seen in tears. Van Nguyen made the fatal mistake of trying to smuggle heroin through Changi Airport. It's not as if the Singapore Government makes any secret of its execution policy. It also takes a dim view of spitting and chewing gum. His 400g heroin load contained within it the cause of misery for many heroin addicts, so he was no innocent abroad. Let him rot in jail for many years for all I care. But Van Nguyen's young life, hardly under way, will be over within the week. What purpose is served? What is achieved? Will the world be a better place for having him dangling at the end of a hangman's noose? No, we all will be diminished.

Published The Advocate, November 12, 2005


AT THIS time of the year I stand on the balcony and love it when the wind blows and the white caps fleck Bass Strait. This morning a howling westerly was flaying the sea and the broken water crashing over the harbour reef looked like threshing sharks. Then, after the last rain squall, the sea was spotlit by a glassy, yellow rod of sun. I was moved. Moving right along, some of Tasmania’s best seascapes are currently being used in the state government’s $250,000 feel-good advertising campaign, "The possibilities are endless". The campaign pushes the Tassie Pride button for all it’s worth. Far be it from me to say the ads are taxpayer-funded propaganda to benefit the government’s re-election chances but at the very least they are a case of preaching to the converted. My opinion matters no more than anyone else’s – less possibly because I am an immigrant – but it would be interesting to hear how the campaign can be justified on public interest grounds. Do we really need clap-happy advertisements to tell us how great we are, especially when we are footing the bill? The sexual assault helpline advertisements serve a useful public service; government boosterism does not. Something else makes me wince: People boasting that Tasmania "punches above its weight". Used whenever a Tasmanian person, place or product gains recognition beyond our shores, the term is favoured by politicians who hope some of the lustre will rub off on them. The underlying message is Tasmania is a small island with a small population – often the underdog – and yet we can achieve greatness against the odds. We then take shared pleasure in one of our own being successful and recognised. Fair enough. Of course we should celebrate the wins and awards – The Advocate reports many such stories – but I have a problem with this punching above our weight business. In boxing parlance it sounds as though we have entered a division where we have no right to be. That we cannot match it unless someone does something exceptionally beyond the norm expected of a Tasmanian. Does that sound like an inferiority complex? Just a question. Or a desire not to be taken for granted? It doesn’t take much to be noticed for our special achievements. But we should take pride in who we are and what we have achieved without the need for slick advertising and cheer leading. Boag’s brewery advertising uses the one word, Pride, to express pride in its product and the workforce. A good campaign for beer. But in the wrong hands, Pride is also one of the seven deadly sins, as in being full of oneself and, as the proverb says, pride goeth before a fall. While I was staring out to sea, the wind changed to a vicious nor’easter and the backyard leatherwood tree, heavily sprung under its weight of gumnuts, snapped a branch and crashed onto the bed of purple irises. Which only shows what can happen from punching above your weight.

Published The Advocate, November 5, 2005


IN MOVIES, cigarette smokers are the anti-establishment figures, the rebels – precisely defined by the tobacco industry and targeted at the youth market. The new anti-smoking ads now appearing on TV are aimed at the same market. In one, a young woman on a park bench gives the eye to a passing bloke. He spots her packet of fags, however, and keeps walking. Disgusted with herself, the woman crushes the pack and, abracadabra, she is last seen walking off with the guy to make babies. In another, a young man half-jokes about not being able to operate without a cigarette, and a surgeon looks at some x-rays and says: "I don’t think I can operate." The overlay reads: Quitting is hard. Not quitting is harder. The question is, do these ads make people give up smoking? Is a campaign to make smokers feel like idiots or feel guilty the best way to make them quit? Or does it just make them resentful and defiant? Teenagers will continue to smoke in defiance of medical wisdom. Teenagers think they are going to live forever no matter what. It’s not as if you light up your first cigarette and drop dead, just like that. There is no need to update your last will and testament beforehand, or to gather your loved ones around as you take that first puff. No, death from smoking is far more prolonged and painful than that. I watched my father die from smoking in his early 60s, as he had watched his father die in his early 60s, and I was keen to break the cycle. I had my last cigarette on August 24, 1998, after 20 something years of smoking. I stopped cold turkey. I drank lots of water and did deep breathing exercises. It worked. A mate tried using Nicorette chewing gum. It cost him a couple of thousand dollars in dental work to replace his fillings. I made no big song and dance about quitting in case I failed although I steered well clear of the pub until the automatic association of a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other had subsided. I was still struggling some weeks later when I told a drinking buddy I had given up. He said he hadn’t noticed. He said he had always noticed me smoking but had not noticed me not smoking. His theory was that some people looked as if they were born to smoke and I was not one of them. To him, I was a natural non-smoker. That cheered me up considerably. I am not in the least interested in smoking again. But you never know. The English journalist John Diamond – the late husband of celebrity TV cook Nigella Lawson – was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the tongue and throat. A life-long non-smoker, here he was with a smoker’s cancer. He immediately took up smoking, as I probably would in the same circumstances. My only regret in giving up is I never mastered the art of blowing smoke rings.

Published The Advocate, October 29, 2005


A DISTANT cousin and his wife recently had a new daughter, a sister for Jake. The choice of Jake as a name caused such a family kerfuffle the naming of the new baby is on hold while guidance is sought in the arrangement of the stars and the entrails of chickens. I don’t mind Jake as a name. Not as good as Jack, in my opinion, but better than, well, Des. I was named after a mate of my father’s. I never met the mate. He never visited home that I remembered. He never appeared at any birthdays. Good old Des. It makes me wonder what kind of friend Des really was. More like a pub mate, I suspect, a passing ship in the night. I count myself lucky not to be named after whatever tipple my father was drinking at the time. A Swedish couple recently won a court battle to name their daughter Edradour. The authorities first refused to register Edradour because it was the name of a Scotch whisky brand, and to be named after an alcoholic drink was thought inappropriate. Goodness knows what the Swedish authorities would make of someone named Benedict, as in Dom Benedictine, or James, as in Boag. The parents eventually won the court battle after pointing out that Edradour, as well as being a whisky, was also a charming little town in Scotland. I looked up Des in a book of names’ origins. I was hoping for something like "dragon slayer" or "brave and merciful". It said Desmond was Irish, "from the surname". Tremendous. Early on I would have preferred Dan although, having since met a few Dans, they are not necessarily the people you’d like to be named after either. I have three names, Desmond John Gerard, after my father and an uncle. My mother has just one, Patricia. She says her parents were so poor they couldn’t afford a second name. Names can make a big difference to your self-image. What would you rather be, Marmaduke Preen or Steele Champion? One way or another, your life would follow a different pattern. Our parents had names like Bert and Frank or Norma and Mary. Solid, reliable names that went naturally with Uncle or Aunty, unlike the current crop of Icelenes and Beyonces. But you cannot razz people about their names. They take it as a personal insult against themselves and their hippy parents’ drug taking. Never have I met as many Aarons and Seans as I have in Tasmania, or Libbies and Elizas. It’s as if Tasmanian parents choose names from a set government list. Not as bad, however, as Our Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark, who must call her first-born, Christian. The heir to the Danish Crown is always Frederik or Christian in alternate generations, and it’s Christian’s turn. As for my cousin’s new baby, after two weeks the girl remains nameless while the family continues to squabble over what to call her. Dad has called her Homebrand.

Published The Advocate, October 22, 2005


LOOK at those people passing on the street. See their furrowed brows? Put all the brows end to end and they’ll lead to the local hardware store. I have never been inclined to follow brows. I have reached the stage in life where every physical exertion requires a full risk assessment and nothing in DIY fulfils my safety requirements. You need to understand that my life is a chain reaction of slapstick disasters. Wash sheets. Peg on clothesline. Step back into possum poo. Spend rest of day shampooing carpets. That was last Sunday. I should have been painting instead. Yes, painting. Against my better judgement I have been painting my bedroom. Three months now and it’s nowhere near finished. It started by picking at a loose piece of wallpaper. I tore off as much paper as I could by hand, then went to the hardware store to hire a wallpaper stripper. The stripper, resembling a weapon out of Dr Who, daunted me. "Have you used one before?" I asked Mitchell, the hardware lad with whom I have since developed a trusting relationship. "Nah," he said, "but lots of people hire it so it can’t be that hard." Ominous last words, Mitchell, old pal. Amazingly, the stripper worked fine although it churned out so much steam the smoke alarm kept going off. Why do paint lids, like buttered toast, always fall paint side down on the carpet? When I had finished running around in circles yelling, "What’ll I do? What’ll I do?" the paint had dried in a neat ring. I feel like Sisyphus, the evildoer of Greek mythology, who for his sins was made the futile labourer of the underworld. He was doomed for eternity to push a boulder up a steep hill until near the top it rolled back down. Then the whole process started again, and again, forever. Bummer. The mystery is why Sisyphus persisted. Why didn’t he grab a beer and hire someone else to do the job? Someone with a forklift. At the end of each day’s painting, at beer o’clock, I have been resting on the bed with a Boag’s in hand watching the paint dry. I seem to have developed x-ray vision. The paint I am using is off-white but no matter how many coats are applied, I can still see through to the original grey plasterboard. I have drawn the line at three coats, no matter what. Or four. In market research, an "immersion study" is where the consumer is accompanied all day by a researcher who compiles a first-hand report of their shopping habits. Every weekend I return to see Mitchell. Crack filler, sponges, brushes, rollers, extension handles, ground sheets, turpentine, scrapers, sandpaper, not to mention paint. I would have thought my shopping habits were obvious. The man ahead of me in the hardware queue last weekend bought $650 of electrical tools, his brow very deeply furrowed. You don’t need immersion research: The first rule of DIY is you never have the right tool at home to do the job.

Published The Advocate, October 15, 2005


EACH year the English-speaking world showcases three football codes: the American Superbowl, the English FA Cup final and the AFL Grand Final. Only one dares to feature a 71-year-old man dressed in drag throwing gladioli to the crowd – Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage, at the Eagles v Swans grand final at the MCG. Back at the 1998 grand final I sat eight rows from the fence as Muhammad Ali was driven past in an open car, so near The Greatest that the hair stood up on the back of my neck, which is saying something. Nothing like that happened to me with Dame Edna. Melbourne was awash in "Go Bloods" banners in memory of the time when Sydney was South Melbourne and not The Swans. It’s as close as the Victorians get to having a local side in the grand final nowadays. I went for West Coast to be contrary because everyone else in my group was going for Sydney. In the stressful last quarter, with the Eagles holding a slender lead, the woman in the Sydney beanie on my left kept saying she was going to vomit and the one on my right said she had wet her pants. I thought, hell, this is going to turn ugly for me if Sydney loses, so I swapped sides with five minutes to go and was air punching with the best of them when Leo Barry took his match-saving screamer on the siren. Unfortunately both my companions had their eyes squeezed shut and missed the mark. Afterwards, with the mobile phone networks jammed by 92,000 people trying to ring at once to share the special moment … if I heard one more person say, "The real winner is football". In the MCG car park I bumped into George, who did his cadetship under me and is now press secretary for the Leader of the Opposition, Kym ``Bomber’’ Beazley. George, normally a mad Adelaide barracker, went for Sydney. Bomber, with his Perth origins, supported West Coast. In Tasmania, at least state cabinet members have the good sense to support whoever the Premier supports. Jim Bacon was Essendon; Paul Lennon is Geelong. Nice knowing you, George. We discussed the fallout from Mark Latham’s diaries. George said Bomber was keeping his head down waiting for the storm to pass. Fair enough, I said, but it was immense fun in the meantime. Here was a former Labor leader having the biggest dummy spit of all time and he was doing it without spin, just getting it off his liver in bucketloads. Also, what he had to say about Labor’s structural problems seemed about right to me. George shuffled off, head bowed. There must be easier jobs. I boarded a tram jam-packed with victorious Sydney fans and we sang "Cheers, cheers, the red and the white…" 23 times on the way into the city. Anyone in Eagles colours waiting at the tram stops was duly abused, and wisely decided to walk into town trailing their scarves behind them. Glad I swapped sides.

Published The Advocate, October 8, 2005


ONE of the side pleasures in going to a family wedding is to see how the nieces and nephews are coming along, now they are leaving their teens and making their way into adulthood. One generation after another, the kids their parents' masterworks, they all gathered in Sydney for my daughter Melissa's wedding. The nephews, gangly arms and legs, wore new shirts with necks four sizes too large and ties knotted skewiff under the collar flaps. The nieces wore next to nothing. You could almost see what they had for breakfast. One would have thought they might turn out better looking given their admirable bloodlines. I told them the Ryan good looks seemed to have skipped a generation. The kids are never quite sure how to take my razzing. They think their Uncle Des is strange. The bride looked convincingly virginal in white. Absolutely gorgeous, darling. Melissa had hired a professional makeup artist, who made her look like Nicole Kidman, only shorter. She should keep the artist close at hand at all times. There were no speeches allowed, which I took as a personal slight. Melissa said she had not forgiven me for the embarrassing speech I gave at her 21st, and I was not getting another crack on her wedding day. For years I had been under the impression that my 21st blunder was in saying I had hoped Melissa would grow up tall, willowy and blonde and one out of three - blonde - was not too bad. Wrong. Melissa said I had called her a fishwife in front of her friends. Oh. Since many of the friends from her 21st were there at the wedding, I offered to say a few words of public withdrawal and apology. Melissa told me to sit and behave. The band even had specific instructions not to permit me, in particular, anywhere near the microphone. The seating arrangements had been a headache, Melissa said. I was placed between her and her mother, and my mother sat opposite. There was no escape. My mum, on the sunny side of 80, has been worrying for years about getting Alzheimer's. She uses deodorant without aluminium after reading it may cause memory loss. Here are three good tips to help avoid the onset of Alzheimer's: Do something new every day; read frequently; and I cannot remember the third. Remembering names is occasionally a problem for my mum. She does not always admit to knowing her own son. She claims to be suffering a prolonged bout of post-natal depression brought on by my birth. Life's rituals start with a Christening and end at a funeral. Christenings are more fun than funerals, generally speaking, and less expensive than weddings. At Melissa's wedding, my son Paul's girlfriend revealed in a private aside that they, too, had wedding plans. I pretended not to recognise her. I denied having any son. I threatened to give a speech. I looked accusingly at Paul. He looked bewildered. Spare me, not another wedding.

Published The Advocate, September 1, 2005


TWO women close to me are being married this month: One is my dear friend Margaret; the other is my daughter Melissa. Melissa’s wedding is being held in an aircraft hangar at Bankstown airport, in Sydney, which gives you an idea of the size of the guest list. There are also DC3 joyrides over Sydney Harbour. The aviation theme comes with the groom David – known to all as Foxx, after his surname – who is building a kit plane in his garage and carries with him the faint whiff of fibreglass. He also has a technical video library on every plane imaginable. I watched one about the Sunderland flying boat and fell asleep halfway through counting the rivets. I like Foxx. He even rang me to ask permission to marry my daughter. I became emotional. 'Elope, man, elope!' I yelled down the phone. Only 30 people attended the civil wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles to keep the event low-key. Not even the Queen and Prince Phillip were invited. If it was good enough for the Royals… Melissa has asked me not to give a speech. She says the memory of the speech I gave at her 21st still haunts her.
All I said on that occasion was I had hoped any daughter of mine would be tall, willowy and blonde … and one out of three was not bad (she’s blonde). Melissa’s will be the first wedding in the family in, oh, 20 years or more although plenty of her cousins are shacked up and at least one has a kid. The female side of the family has been in a state of high excitement for months planning what to wear. Melissa went to a Vietnamese dressmaker in Sydney for the wedding dress. The woman said her body was the same shape as a Vietnamese girl’s. I am sure that could be worked into a speech. The male side sees the wedding as a good excuse for a party. Which brings me to Margaret, an independently minded career woman, journalist, noted author and single mother of two, who is being married in a garden knees-up in Melbourne at the end of the month. Margaret never struck me as the marrying kind. Then she met John, an IT 'systems architect', who also has two kids. Not quite the Brady Bunch in numerical terms but not far from it. Whatever possessed her? Public perception, she said. A statement of 'This man is family'. Also, her kids were now at an age – the youngest is seven – when not having a 'real' dad was beginning to make a difference to them at school and socially. Anything, everything, for the kids. Trapped in this bewildering maze called Life, I guess having a fully-fledged, committed twosome, someone to share the bewilderment, remains important. What is surprising is how the need to conform, to have your union formalised in the eyes of the law, still counts for something. I will be back in a month. With all these weddings, I need a break.

Published The Advocate, August 27, 2005


ORDINARILY I do not go around telling people I had bowel cancer in 1989 because if you tell one person the next thing everyone will want one. The local GP’s first guess was I had alcoholic enteritis – not a bad diagnosis at the time – and he made me not have a drink for a week to see what happened. Nothing changed. A waste of a week’s drinking. Next came a barium enema, after which I really needed a drink. The scan showed a tumour the size of an apple. One thing led rapidly to another and soon I was in hospital being given a pre-op pubic shave. Let’s leave it there, shall we? The point is, when it comes to bowel cancer if nothing else, I can speak with some authority. So I was astonished to read recently in The Advocate of the Coastal family who was lining up to have their bowels removed on the basis of a DNA tag showing they carried the bowel cancer gene. It begs the question: If the tag is found, at what age do you have your bowel removed? In olden days, people used to have all their teeth extracted and replaced with dentures as a 21st birthday present. I somehow doubt a coming-of-age colorectomy is going to catch on in the same way. When I had cancer, not everyone thought I’d pull through. People sent me get-well cards containing messages of sympathy. A female visitor, startled by the tubes coming out of every orifice, actually blurted: "Are you going to live?" Yes, I am pleased to report, and thanks for the nudging reminder of my own mortality. Because I survived, a friend asked me to offer reassuring words to his mother who also had bowel cancer and was scared. She was dead within a month. I am still here. The luck of a very dodgy draw. Having cancer has made no difference to my life apart from the rather fetching zipper mark now on my torso and having to undergo a colonoscopy every two years. My kids, too, are being screened thanks to me. My daughter had her first colonoscopy a few months ago and my son will be lining up for his first next year. They are not grateful. Which brings me back to the DNA test. I have no idea if I carry the bowel cancer gene, or whether my kids have it. It makes no difference to me now but had the tag been found 20 years ago, I would not have rushed in for an early disembowelling in anticipation of getting cancer later. Instead, I would have demanded frequent colonoscopies, every month if needs be, to detect the rogue polyp that eventually mutated into cancer inside me. A polyp can be nipped in the bud. I am having my next colonoscopy next month. Can hardly wait.

Published The Advocate, August 20, 2005


NOT that anyone particularly noticed me missing but I’ve spent a few days ``conferencing’’ in tropical Queensland and can recommend the bar in the Cairns Yacht Club. Clad in corrugated iron and latticework, the CYC is a relic of old Cairns, a watering hole with no airs or graces beyond the ``no hats’’ rule in the bar. Unlike other local spots, the CYC menu is not translated into six languages for the tourists. The closest it comes to multiculturalism are the barramundi spring rolls and the beef rendang special. Cairns has an uneasy relationship with tourists, if not with their dollars. The underlying social stratum is rural conservative and resistant to outsiders, especially to ``Southerners’’ which means everyone from below the Townsville Line. That day’s newspaper carried a special feature on the 60th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour: ``The audacious Japanese attack that sowed the seeds of their defeat and changed Australia’s region forever.’’ All around Cairns there are plenty of war memorials as reminders of the futility of war. There are also plenty of Japanese. Moving around town at a half-trot with their Ken Done carry bags, the Japanese have so taken over the main shopping precinct that it makes me wonder why Japan bothered to start a war. Cairns long ago succumbed. The newspaper said Australia had introduced war rationing of flour, sugar, tea ``and other essential foods’’. Is tea still considered a daily essential? Or even sugar? Flour, almost certainly. But what else? Diet Coke? I struggle to think. Up here, though, 30+ sunblock would be essential. Ah, I love the smell of sunblock in the morning. At an Esplanade café, a middle-aged Japanese couple sat burning in the hot sun and studying their guide books. The Japanese have an irresistible liking for musk pink. She was in matching pink slacks and knitted top and he was wearing a New York baseball cap and grey T-shirt covered in pink cartoon writing: ``Impossible is nothing.’’ I seem to remember Master Yoda expressing something similar in Star Wars. The couple said nothing to each other, looking impossibly bored and pink, until they asked the waitress to take a photograph of them grinning as a memento of what an hilariously good time they had in Cairns. At another table, a Japanese family was ordering breakfast using an electronic translator. A teenage daughter was wearing a shoulder bag stating, ``Babe With Brains’’, just in case you were wondering. The morning TV weather said it was snowing down to sea level in Tasmania. Gazing across the sparkling Coral Sea, I almost felt guilty about the 28 degrees. That evening, as a light breeze wafted across the harbour and the temperature slumped to 22 degrees, I rolled down my shirt sleeves and had a beer on the deck of the CYC. Wedged as it is between the Hilton and the Sofitel hotels, the CYC, built in the 1920s, is under constant threat of demolition to make way for apartments. It should be heritage listed. But what would I know, a Southerner?

Published The Advocate, august 13, 2005


BEING raised as a Catholic – though rather heavily lapsed nowadays, it has to be said –security cameras hold no fears for me. Catholics, already burdened by guilt, see no special threat in CCTV cameras when their every thought, word and deed is already being monitored by the Almighty. God sees and hears everything. He is the ultimate surveillance system. The Prime Minister suggests we need to install many more CCTV cameras as an anti-terrorism measure. Makes no difference to me. And all muttering about the loss of civil liberties is drowned out by the bomb blasts. The early CCTV systems had their teething problems. Cameras were pointed aimlessly at the sky; images were too blurry to be used as evidence; and some systems had to be switched off when the monitoring staff was found to be using the cameras to perve on pretty girls. Now we are so familiar with the unblinking cameras that we barely notice them. One camera is much like another. We have become blasé about their underlying purpose. All the same, North-West Tasmania is an unlikely terrorist target unless you count hoons as terrorists. Burnie and Devonport airports are not considered high-risk gateways. Of the nearly 600,000 air arrivals in Tasmania last year, there was not a terrorist among them so far as I am aware … although I had suspicions about the chap on my flight who was wearing high pants, a fake snakeskin belt and soft suede shoes. Security cameras are the least of it, especially in pubs. Go into a hotel for a quiet drink by yourself and within 24 hours the whole town knows you were there. Reports are passed from mouth to mouth behind cupped hands. You learn to live scrupulously, or never go out. Sit in a front bar for 10 minutes and you will also overhear blokes talking about their latest failed attempt to give up smoking; what happened when they went to see the radiologist; how they took a sickie on Tuesday and went fishing; and why they have to be home by three or the missus’ll go berserk. Give me half an hour in a bar and I could give you the potted histories of half a dozen men without having exchanged a word with them. Hotels, with an endless supply of truth serum served in 10 ounce glasses, are the real Confessionals. The security cameras watching from the pub walls make absolutely no difference to the urge to brag, tell tales, joke, slander and lie. To be indiscreet is to be human. We all know our own stories, our place in the world, what we have done and why. And hereabouts, so does everyone else. It’s simply not possible to maintain a low public profile when everyone knows everyone and they all know what you’re up to. CCTV can reveal nothing more. Frankly, I am more worried by the kid with the hand-held video camera or mobile videophone waiting to capture my next idiotic, slapstick moment to be sent to Funniest Home Videos.

Published The Advocate, August 6, 2005


I HAVE been passing my days here on the Coast for 12 months now. When friends first heard I was moving from Adelaide to NW Tasmania, they blinked disbelievingly. Now they just accept I am here for the duration and leave me alone. Quite alone. I must have settled into the neighbourhood because I had my first Jehovah’s Witnesses come calling the other day, a middle-aged couple who puffed breathlessly up the balcony steps. ``Do you want to do something about world poverty?’’ the man asked from the other side of the screen door, his shoes as shiny as a funeral director’s. Sure do, I said, but Christianity has had 2000 years to do something about poverty so I think it’s a bit unfair to expect me to fix it. He hesitated, which gave me the chance to say thanks but no thanks and gently close the door. Then it struck me, what if the Jehovah’s Witnesses really do have the answer to poverty? I should have heard them out. They’ll be back, I’m sure. While here, I have met only generous, hospitable, good-hearted and supportive people, especially the politicians, so give yourselves all a pat on the back for making me feel so welcome and loved. Except the ones wearing army camouflage. I have never seen so much camouflage, favoured as a fashion statement by survivalist bombers, anti-government malcontents and a surprisingly high number of people who claim to be anti-war yet see no irony in marching around town in army dress. Australian comedian Hung Lee jokes of walking along city streets and bumping into people wearing camouflage: ``Oow, sorry, didn’t see you there!’’ Funny. Island living can also be expensive and inconvenient: The high price of petrol and air fares; the cancelled flights; and, worst of all, the damaged supermarket goods. Savoy crackers are always totalling crackered and the sheets of rice paper come as bags of confetti. I blame the double and triple handling in bringing grocery items across from the Mainland. Another good reason to buy local. While in the supermarket, one of my secret pleasures is to sit quietly on a bench near the checkout and watch who buys The Advocate - keeping a wary eye out for anyone in ``camo’’ – and try to guess who are the poachers. If it swims, flies, runs or crawls, chances are you can get it on the Coastal black market in season. Poaching is a lifestyle, not an illegal act here. When a fish farm net broke on the West Coast, soon every fridge had a slab of Atlantic salmon inside it. Mine did anyway. The sight of Bass Strait in all its moods always makes me smile with pleasure. The other morning, the fingernail clipping of a moon hung overhead while the sun burned a laser red hole clean through the sky just above the sea. Gold. Find a better paradise, if you can, but this will do me until a better Afterlife comes along, as Jehovah is my witness.

Published The Advocate, July 30, 2005


MANY leadership courses emphasise the need for teamwork, and team leadership models are sometimes drawn from nature. Look up ``leadership’’ on the Internet and you will find supposed insights based on the behaviour of buffalos, geese, ducks, turtles, snakes, penguins, peacocks, starfish and seagulls. From this menagerie, it appears many zoo creatures have leadership styles far superior to humans. There is a lot to be said for teamwork. A team often provides workable solutions. But teams are not so good at coming up with brilliant ideas. Great literature has never been written by a team, nor great music. Beethoven’s 5th Symphony was not created by a committee. Hollywood’s classic action heroes are not teams. Superman, Spiderman, Arnie Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood – they are The Loner versus The Many. And The Many always lose. Or take those reality TV programs such as Big Brother, My Restaurant Rules or Survivor. Some people show natural leadership skills; some do not. That is just the way it is. The eventual winners are not the humblest or the kindest; nor are they the bossiest or the cutest. The winners, more often than not, are those who exude a solid, dependable, self-aware confidence. These are the people we want as leaders. Sporting analogies are often used as leadership examples. In football, the "out and out superstars" of the game are players like Essendon’s James Hird and Nathan Buckley of Collingwood. Such is their on-field brilliance, they have been made captains of their teams in recognition of the large gap between them and the playing abilities of their team mates. However, the odds are against them becoming great coaches when their playing days are over. Very few successful football coaches were stellar players. Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse and Essendon’s Kevin Sheedy were not superstars. They were hard, tough, football journeymen who never reached the elite level where the TV commentators gave them the dubious accolade of "freak". The lesson is those feted stars who lead by example are unlikely to translate their special gifts into team performance as a coach. Indeed the superiority of a Hird or a Buckley may act as a barrier. The talents that made them so good – particularly their athletic flair and uncanny anticipation – may make them bad coaches of people with lesser talents. Watching others fail at a task is not easy when your expectations are higher than the players can deliver. The team leadership model I prefer is the Tour de France bike race. Multi-Tour winner Lance Armstrong never led all the way every day for the three weeks of the race. He didn’t have to. He let his team do all the grunt work. His team set the pace, provided support and even fed him along the way. The team members exhausted themselves for Lance. They protected him and made him look good. Lance could not win it by himself but by the end, he took all the glory. No-one remembers the names of the other team members. Now that’s leadership.

Published The Advocate, July 23, 2005


IN AN unfortunate case of bad timing, I know of one Coastal farmer who saw no future in the dairy industry and got rid of his cows a year ago to concentrate on growing spuds. Then Bonlac announced price rises for milk and the potato industry fell in a hole. You can't help bad luck. It reminds me of a package of media junk mail once sent in by a certain Josephine Poon from Hong Kong. I have never met Josephine Poon but it is a lovely sounding name. Josephine starts: "Here is an exciting press release for your highly respected paper which is going to make your readers jump up for joy." Oh, joy. "Getting rich is always great news. GREAT NEWS!" Oh, great. The exciting press release was about to be filed in the exciting wastepaper bin when my eye caught Josephine's next line: "Most people are unaware that cattle gallstones are of great value." I had been pondering this very point for years. Josephine enclosed some overseas press clippings including one with the headline, "Farmer rakes in moo-cho bucks," which told the story of Raoul, a poor Spanish farmer, who was deep in debt and about to lose his cattle farm if he missed one more payment. Then Raoul found a gallstone the size of a hen's egg in one of his slaughtered cows and the following day he picked the winning numbers in a $160,000 lottery jackpot. So he slaughtered another cow and, behold, a second gallstone turned up. The day afterwards Raoul learned he had inherited $650,000 from a long-lost uncle. Good for Raoul. The problem, of course, is you cannot go killing all your cows on the off-chance of finding a gallstone. One alive cow is still worth more than one gallstone, putting aside the lottery windfall for a moment. But wait, there's more: Josephine said cow gallstones had a legitimate role in Chinese medicine for the treatment of fever and blood pressure, and she was happy to pay cash for as many as she could get, no strings attached. I looked for the catch but couldn't see one. No-one is required to send her money; there is no other use for gallstones that I am aware of; and cows are not an endangered species, unlike many other creatures put into Chinese medicine. Even so, I hesitate now to provide her contact details in case it's a rip-off ... but what the hell, if you want to give Josphine a run for her moo-cho bucks, try writing to her at PO Box 70947, Kowloon Central Post Office, Hong Kong. She will tell you how to dry, package and send the stones to Hong Kong, stressing rather firmly that she definitely does not want the gall bladder sent to her. The address is an old one that has been sitting in my files for ages and Josephine has probably long since retired in luxury to Majorca to live with lucky Raoul. Or she has bought a dairy farm on the Coast.

Published The Advocate, July 16, 2005


LIVING alone is risky if there are jobs to be done around the house. Not that I am accident prone but I wear safety goggles to do the vacuuming. My father was a great handyman. He would be lost for days in the hardware store, admiring the fine serrations of bandsaw blades or holding wingnuts up to the light as if they were pieces of religious art. A clever man, he never read an instruction manual. I inherited none of his smarts. Mind you, I am not alone. A colleague has been living in fear of his wife for weeks since he burnt out the element of the new stovetop while cooking sausages, and then covered up the evidence with a stockpot. As to whether he used a frypan or cooked the snags direct on the stovetop, I will give him the benefit of the doubt, which is asking a lot. He recently pruned his rose bushes to such an extent that no flowers will appear for 10 years. Also, having bought chooks for the first time and being asked by a mate if he was watering them, he was later seen spraying them with a hose and they all died. I cannot mention his name but hopefully by now the penny has dropped enough for his wife to identify him and she should be checking the ruined stovetop right about … now. I decided to clean the roof gutters. Beforehand I rang a friend in Adelaide to put her on standby in case I fell off the roof. Not that she could do much from that distance but she could call 000 for an ambulance if I did not rung her back within the hour. She understood. She had seen me turn the simple replacement of a tap washer into a DIY disaster that cost $3000 after the plumber and a tiler had to be called. She said to be careful because falling from a roof was one of the most common causes of household death, next to falling from a ladder. No worries, I said, I had no ladder. The roof is close to the cliff behind my place and the gap is narrow enough to step across rather than go to the expense of buying a ladder. Did I mention I suffer from vertigo? By the time I summoned up enough courage to take that one small step, the hour was almost up and I had to ring my friend again. Except there was no answer. She was swimming laps, she said afterwards, and forgot about me. Thanks. Anyway, the gutters were cleaned without mishap apart from the usual cuts from the corrugated iron and, feeling pleased, I decided to tackle another DIY project: stripping the wallpaper from my bedroom. Off I trotted to the hardware store to hire a wallpaper steamer. I also bought a ladder and got it home before noticing the sticker: "Danger. Failure to read and follow instructions may result in injury or death." Can you book ahead with 000?

Published The Advocate, July 9, 2005


HARD to believe, I know, but I can remember a time when Shane Warne was not in the Australian cricket side – even before text messaging was possible on mobile phones, that’s how long ago. The first time I saw him in action he was playing for Victoria in a game against South Australia at Adelaide Oval. I was in the members’ stand watching from the side as this chubby, blond kid spun rings around the batsmen. Warne was the fat boy who ate all the pies, the one who would later take his own supply of baked beans on a tour of India, and who no doubt will have big weight problems when his career ends. Umpire Tony Crafter was standing at Warne’s end that day. Crafter said afterwards that in all his years of umpiring he had never heard the ball fizz from a spin bowler’s fingers like that. Those nimble fingers, a gift from the cricketing gods, would later lead him into SMS temptation. Warne made it into the Australian side and was soon in strife. He did a sponsorship deal that hinged on him not smoking and he was caught smoking in the change shed. And on it went. Fast-forward the years and now Warne’s marriage is on the rocks, and not before time. The dissolving of a romance generally occurs over decades, through a piling up of small dissatisfactions. In Warne’s case, his dissatisfaction seems to have been with marriage itself. In the humdrum struggle of life, sporting heroes perform no better than the rest of us, and often much worse given the pressure of their fishbowl existence. We love to turn them into demi-gods and put them on rickety pedestals. And there is nothing wrong with that. The ancient world had a full pantheon of gods on pedestals and the best of them had at least one flaw that led to their downfall. Achilles had his heel. Shane Warne has his mobile phone, oh, and women. What is it about women? Why are they are so congenitally indiscreet? Why do they keep running to the papers and dobbing him in? Men, on the other hand, keep their thoughts to themselves except when they are text messaging. SHANE, PLS STP SNDNG SXY TXT MSGS. Whatever the morality or otherwise of his private life, I don’t think I care. I am only interested in his bowling action. He fulfils my need for a one-dimensional sporting hero, uncomplicated by difficult moral questions. Donald Bradman was another one. I know a lot of people in Adelaide who would not spit on him, such was his ill repute in certain quarters although, I hasten to add, it had nothing to do with sex. Whatever their flaws, Bradman and Warne are rated as genuine Boy’s Own heroes, as are explorers Matthew Flinders and Douglas Mawson, neither of whom was purer than the driven snow when it came to extra-maritals. People in glass houses, it seems, should not be spin bowlers.

Published The Advocate, July 2, 2005


EVER since Moses stumbled down the mountain under the weight of the tablets of stone, all political parties have embraced the tempting charms of Laura Norder. Not enough police; sentences too lenient; the citizenry is scared. Political operators know how to push Laura’s buttons. Simple in theory except in Tasmania where the law and order wheels have fallen off rather badly. Our crime rates are much, much lower than the national average, according to the latest figures released by the Australia Bureau of Statistics. We have the lowest rates in the nation for murder, abduction, robbery, blackmail, unlawful entry, motor vehicle theft and all other theft. Pathetic, really, if one is thinking of campaigning on law and order at the next election. Oppositions always accuse governments of not being tough enough on crime. An easy target, a vote winner. Bring back the lash and hanging’s too good for ‘em. Governments, if they have any sense, lay early claim to Laura to ensure no room is left for their opponents to move into bed with her. Also, sounding tough on crime does not necessarily require a lot of extra government spending: a few more cops; the building of an extra prison wing from time to time; but many stern words. It can get out of hand, however. Some years ago California found it was spending more on new prisons than on new schools. People being people, they are easily frightened by crime especially as they grow older. They are inclined to believe the justice system is too soft and the criminals get off too lightly - contrary to the facts in most cases. The public always thinks crime trends are worse than they are. In one British crime survey, the public believed that average jail sentences were a third shorter than they really were. So what are we to make of the latest ABS crime stats? Tasmania Police attribute the low rates to new technology and better partnerships between the community and police. Possibly so. More likely, if you ask me, the worst of the crims happened to be behind bars when the ABS collected the data. Because of Tasmania’s relatively small population, locking up the right people at the right time could make a significant difference to a crime survey. For example, the rate of house break-ins at Devonport fell markedly earlier this year after one particular gang of youths was arrested. Just wait until they get out again. Crime has a political currency, that is true. The concepts of deterrence and retribution quickly take on political, not judicial, requirements in the hands of vote-hungry politicians. But whipping up a crime fenzy when there is comparatively little crime is not going to be easy. People do not like to be frightened in their beds but they do not like being frightened for cynical political motives either. Now there’s something to send a chill down the spine of any political party: an unexpected outbreak of lawfulness.

(Two columns June 18 & 25)

Published The Advocate, June 25, 2005


GONE are the days when a footy umpire could stand back like a boxing referee while two ruckmen took swings at each other, until finally intervening: "Okay, by my count you're even, now can we get on with the game?" Also gone is the time when a player could front the tribunal with a busted nose and say the opponent charged with striking him had in fact missed by a country mile. The video replay from five different angle changed everything - whatever happened to trust anyway? - and the TV viewing audience demands its pound of flesh. Forced to take matters seriously, the AFL tribunal has raised the stakes to the point where a player can now plea bargain, admitting his guilt and copping a one match suspension, or risk defending himself and being outed for three weeks. Lawyers, heaven forbid, are even allowed to appear before the tribunal to offer a clean playing record, good character, contrition, an apology ... and how much Biff's mum loves him. Off-field, the clubs have a player code of behaviour that is supposed to control embarrassments such as drunken carousing, drink driving, assaults, vandalism, indecent exposure and very possibly rape. Public apologies are even offered, which by now should be included in each team's media training. Forced to 'fess up under the glare of the TV lights, the player knows he has to sound and look guilty even if, deep inside, he reckons the whole thing is a farce. The level of regret has become almost as formulaic as a well-rehearsed TV soapie. "I feel really bad," the player says, unclear if it is the drunken idiocy or having to apologise hungover that makes him feel bad. "I didn't feel bad about it at the time but I sure feel bad now.'' It has the same air of false contrition as often seen in the law courts in the hope of receiving sympathy and a lighter sentence. "I was a fool. I acted stupidly. I got caught. Can I go now?" The only thing missing is the lighting of devotional candles. In all likelihood, the club president or captain has already given the player a TV lashing about letting himself down, letting his team mates down and letting down the club, which somehow always manages to cope. And even more painfully, of embarrassing the club sponsors. Earlier this season the Richmond Football Club lost a $500,000 sponsorship from the Victorian Transport Accident Commission after one of its players, Jay Schulz, was found to be driving with a blood alcohol reading of .065. Never mind, in Richmond's case the Australian Finance Group quickly stepped into the breach with a $800,000 sponsorship. Such is the buying power of an AFL franchise, and well done, young Jay. The AFL season boasts the Mark of the Year, the Goal of the Year, even the Best Smother, and more media awards than you can shake a Brownlow Medal at. Time for a Best Apology of the Year.

Published The Advocate, June 18, 2005


SITTING in The Republic bar, North Hobart, killing time waiting for a dinner guest, my eyes were fixed on the drinks fridge stacked with bottles of an apple cider labelled Mercury. Now there’s a thought: Must get the brewery to bottle a beer called Advocate. Speaking of branding, a young woman in Ugg boots was wearing a T-shirt with the printed message across her chest: "Make Time – Sulk Every Day." My life had lowly beginnings and has been tapering off ever since. Even so, the world is not bad enough to turn me into a sulky billboard. My guest was B, a divorce lawyer. What a dispiriting job she must have, dealing with the same problems every single working day of her life; sharing other people’s nightmarish existence; the squabbling over the kids; and the vicious pettiness right down to the last piece of cracked china. How does B cope dealing with the same battles, time and again? How does she turn off? She drinks triple vodkas and tonic. B’s own life is far removed from the concerns of most of her clients and she is no whinger: "Never complain about your misfortunes because half the people couldn’t care less and the other half think you are getting exactly what you deserve." Exactly. Nor does she have much time for psycho-prattle. To thine own self be true? Live according to your values? "Blah. The Nazis were true to their values and six million died in the gas chambers. Blah-blah." I passed on telling her about my own hairshirt existence and went back to my hotel room under the snowy brow of Mt Wellington, to be awoken by the sound of loud voices on the street. "I rooly-rooly loves you!" a girl was sobbing-yelling. A boy mumbled something drunkenly in reply. The heavy rain glowed orange in the street lights. It was too wet even for battling young lovers to be standing in the open. "No, I rooly-rooly loves you!" she insisted. Mumble-mumble. The odd thing about sound is the higher up you are in a building, the louder are the voices on the street below. Lying in bed on the fifth floor was like having them sit on the window sill. Mumble-mumble. "No, I rooly-rooly…" And on it went, interrupted finally by the strangled heave of the boy vomiting. Or it might have been the girl. At 4.30a.m. I was woken by the squealing and shrieking of girls carousing along the street. Buh-luddy hell, is there no end? "We’ve got the whole world, in our hands; we’ve got the whole world, in our hands…" they were singing over and over. Then, unable to remember the next verse, they shrieked again. Teenage girls, nominally under the care of their parents, running wild and drunk with exposed midriffs. It is not wise to categorise people by their postcode but the whole of 7000, which looks nice and neat when written down like that, is an unruly place that should not be visited alone in winter.

Published The Advocate, June 18, 2005


SITTING in The Republic bar, North Hobart, killing time waiting for a dinner guest, my eyes were fixed on the drinks fridge stacked with bottles of an apple cider labelled Mercury. Now there’s a thought: Must get the brewery to bottle a beer called Advocate. Speaking of branding, a young woman in Ugg boots was wearing a T-shirt with the printed message across her chest: "Make Time – Sulk Every Day." My life had lowly beginnings and has been tapering off ever since. Even so, the world is not bad enough to turn me into a sulky billboard. My guest was B, a divorce lawyer. What a dispiriting job she must have, dealing with the same problems every single working day of her life; sharing other people’s nightmarish existence; the squabbling over the kids; and the vicious pettiness right down to the last piece of cracked china. How does B cope dealing with the same battles, time and again? How does she turn off? She drinks triple vodkas and tonic. B’s own life is far removed from the concerns of most of her clients and she is no whinger: "Never complain about your misfortunes because half the people couldn’t care less and the other half think you are getting exactly what you deserve." Exactly. Nor does she have much time for psycho-prattle. To thine own self be true? Live according to your values? "Blah. The Nazis were true to their values and six million died in the gas chambers. Blah-blah." I passed on telling her about my own hairshirt existence and went back to my hotel room under the snowy brow of Mt Wellington, to be awoken by the sound of loud voices on the street. "I rooly-rooly loves you!" a girl was sobbing-yelling. A boy mumbled something drunkenly in reply. The heavy rain glowed orange in the street lights. It was too wet even for battling young lovers to be standing in the open. "No, I rooly-rooly loves you!" she insisted. Mumble-mumble. The odd thing about sound is the higher up you are in a building, the louder are the voices on the street below. Lying in bed on the fifth floor was like having them sit on the window sill. Mumble-mumble. "No, I rooly-rooly…" And on it went, interrupted finally by the strangled heave of the boy vomiting. Or it might have been the girl. At 4.30a.m. I was woken by the squealing and shrieking of girls carousing along the street. Buh-luddy hell, is there no end? "We’ve got the whole world, in our hands; we’ve got the whole world, in our hands…" they were singing over and over. Then, unable to remember the next verse, they shrieked again.
Teenage girls, nominally under the care of their parents, running wild and drunk with exposed midriffs. It is not wise to categorise people by their postcode but the whole of 7000, which looks nice and neat when written down like that, is an unruly place that should not be visited alone in winter.

Published The Advocate, June 11, 2005


TIM, the Port Arthur guide, said three lashes were enough to lift the skin and convicts at the penal settlement received between five and a hundred lashes. Some convicts deliberately flaunted the regulations so they would be whipped again and again. Some even sang little ditties while being flogged, Tim said, and they became cult heroes among the other convicts. Yep, it’s called sadomasochism. The freshly lashed convicts were put to work at the boat slipway, up to their chests in the icy harbour because the saltwater was considered good for their wounds. Those gaolers were all heart. Lesser punishments included short rations of bread and water, solitary confinement and having a blanket removed. Character building, Tim said, with the relish of a man who spent 35 years as a teacher. His patter included ho-ho asides such as the man who received a life sentence but the bridesmaids looked lovely; and describing thongs as Taiwanese safety boots. He was full of praise for the beautiful convict stonework often done by adolescent boys, the youngest a nine year old transported for stealing a box of tools. A penal settlement is one way of fixing the current shortage of skilled tradesmen. Among Tim’s group was a Goth couple - pale, gaunt aliens with long black hair and black Dracula cloaks like matching batwings. After the tour, they headed straight for the Isle of the Dead. There are 1,100 graves on the Isle of the Dead, out of a convict population of about 12,500 over half a century. Yet, Tim said, the death rate at Port Arthur was lower than for industrial England, proving the outdoor life and an occasional flogging was better for your health than working in the dark, satanic mills. If we thought Port Arthur’s punishments were overly brutal and degrading, the Silent Prison was worse. New prisoners were kept separate from other convicts. With no-one to talk to, communication with the guards was by hand signal only. The guards’ boots were muffled in cloth. Outdoors, the newcomers were made to wear calico masks to make their anonymity complete. They were kept in isolation for three months. Some came out sane; some didn’t. Soon the settlement found it needed a lunatic asylum, which later became the seat of local government. And so it goes. Port Arthur is a theme park now. Tourists climb its ruins imagining themselves locked in the cramped cells and marvelling at the inhumanity of it all. Such fun. At the memorial to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, the mood changes. Here, at the shell of the Broad Arrow Café, the reflecting pool and the memorial cross, people stand in disbelieving silence as if the events of that terrible day are unimaginable, still too raw and painful to bear. The gunman’s name is not mentioned anywhere at Port Arthur. The price he paid for shooting dead 35 people was to have his identity erased. Now he sits in his own Silent Prison, as if he never existed. If only.

Published The Advocate, June 4, 2005


IN THE UK, a young man dressed in a dripping suit and a tie is found wandering on a beach, washed up with life. There is no clue to his identity. All the labels have been removed from his clothes. He is shy and frightened. He does not talk. Admitted to care, he is heard playing the piano beautifully and a link is made inevitably with the movie Shine based on the Australian pianist David Helfgott, who had a mental breakdown. Dubbed the mystery piano man, his case reinforces the abiding popular belief in a wafer-thin line between madness and genius. In some Aboriginal communities, kids with mental retardation are considered to be touched in a magical way, not disabled but specially gifted. In another movie, Rain Man, the character Ray lives inside his own autistic world yet he has an astonishing mind for complex strings of numbers, and wins money at the casino. We cannot help thinking Ray and his kind may have an unfair advantage over the rest of us. Sadly, none of the people I know with mental illness feels blessed. Lucy, a good friend, is in a constant state of anxiety. Whenever she feels herself toppling over into a panic attack, she takes medication or, on a couple of occasions, has admitted herself to a psychiatric clinic. She is quite sane but she cannot find an understanding partner who will put up with her fears. So she is both anxious and lonely. I know someone else who is so lonely he enjoys receiving a wrong number phone call and welcomes the Red Cross collector at the door with open arms, just to have someone to talk to. Tom never leaves his home for fear of having a panic attack. I have an old mate, Mick, who walks through life angrily waving a clenched fist. He cannot comprehend that anyone could hold an opinion not the same as his. The last I heard of him he was working as a security guard in Iraq. Is that the action of a sane man? Hardly a day passes there without another terrorist suicide bombing. What person in his or her right mind would commit such atrocities? Murderously twisted and, yes, all too frighteningly sane. Almost as scary was the teenager I saw pushing her baby in a pram through town and wearing a T-shirt with "boys lie" printed on it. She saw her situation all too clearly and sanely although she possibly has ongoing issues with anger management. One dictionary defines sane as "not mad". Which is of no help whatever. The mentally unwell are not crazy, and like every other ill person, they need care, medication and support. Witness Cornelia Rau. They do not need to be imprisoned or deported by a government that does not know how to deal with its citizens who behave abnormally. No doubt the world would be much worse off without sanity. I just wish I knew what sanity meant.

Published The Advocate, May 28, 2005


DO YOU see any irony in Schapelle Corby, found guilty of drug trafficking in Indonesia, needing to be sedated with anti-depressive drugs for some of her court appearances? I do. Corby allegedly carried a bag of marijuana into Indonesia and will spend the next 20 years in jail. When she seemed to be an anxious wreck at her various court appearances, she was given anti-depressant drugs. Also, the chief judge, Linton Sirait, was reported during the week to be stressed in court and had to go home unwell. Was he also given a sedative drug to help him cope? We are so hypocritical when it comes to drugs. Alcohol, caffeine and tobacco are widely used and abused, all legally; pharmacies are stacked with drugs to treat everything from headaches to high blood pressure; and Tasmania runs a highly profitable opium poppy industry. We allow pethidine, an opium poppy extract, to be used to relieve the pain of childbirth but will not permit marijuana to be prescribed as a painkiller for terminal cancer patients. Somehow we manage to make a distinction between acceptable and unacceptable drugs. Tobacco legal; marijuana illegal. Alcohol legal; ecstasy illegal. My job has brought me into contact with the narcotics industry and I use the word "industry" deliberately because a lot of jobs are at stake. Dealers and addicts, police and jailers, lawyers and judges, health and welfare workers, and politicians - all engaged in the "war on drugs" at a national cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. A ship of fools. To get on top of the drug problem is as impossible as a one-armed man climbing a rope. Even the head of the National Crime Authority once admitted the drug war was lost, which rather begs the question: Why we are persisting with a policy that is such an expensive failure? Anyone who suggests that cracking down harder on drugs is the answer must be suffering delusions of denial. The minute a drug is made illegal, the black market booms and the drug-crime cycle begins. The illegal drug producers love prohibition because it increases their profit margins without much increasing their risk of capture. I have never tried heroin or cocaine or any of the so-called designer drugs such as amphetamines or ecstasy. Too much of a coward. No promise of chemically-induced pleasure could ever overcome my fear of taking something that had been blended in someone's back shed or adulterated with whatever else happened to be handy. But I have known people who were to die of drug overdoses including a cousin whose death broke everyone's heart and crushed the fun out of her parents. Some people will try drugs, some won't, but very few will become addicts. Making the use of hard drugs a criminal offence makes no difference to the addiction rate. The addicts themselves need to be treated as if they have a medical condition not a criminal one. Schapelle Corby is paying the price of drug-induced justice.

Published The Advocate, May 21, 2005


MY Polish friend Krystyna B dropped in after doing The Overland walk, looking fit and surprisingly chirpy given she was still grieving over the death of the Pope. Not that Krystyna’s Catholic – if so, she is rather heavily lapsed these days – but she had always felt a special bond with Pope John Paul II, a fellow Pole. Also, she said her father was the spitting image of JPII, so much so that they were mistaken for twins. I noted the same Polish complexion, high forehead and piercing blue eyes in Krystyna, and I couldn’t help wondering. She arrived loaded up with cheese as gifts. Which was fine for her. Not everyone had just spent the week walking the Overland. Me, I’d been sitting on my backside getting fat and a wheelbarrow of blue cheese, cheddar and brie was not what I needed just then. For as long as I have known Krystyna, her weight has fluctuated wildly. We used to schedule a long lunch twice a year. At the first, she would be wearing a well-cut jacket and short skirt to show off her knees; the next time she would be wearing a striped circus tent to hide her bulges. She was highly amused by a photograph I once took of a Jenny Craig shopfront with a sign in the window reading: "Moving to larger premises." To look at her, your first thought would not be of wilderness trekking. She was more at home sipping champagne at the ballet than squatting in the bush chipping the ice off a toilet roll. I was surprised she had managed to complete The Overland. So was Krystyna. The first day was the worst, she said, the longest, most arduous, like a survival test. Some failed. She told of an American woman who cracked a first-day fruity and refused to take another step until a helicopter came to fetch her. Krystyna is made of sterner stuff. She owns an ad agency with billings in the many millions and has a reputation as a hard-headed negotiator. Some media men I know would watch her sink into an Overland quagmire and not lend a hand. We first bonded because, without knowing who the girl was, she gave my daughter work experience, which led to her gaining a job elsewhere in the advertising industry. Upon random acts of kindness are built lasting relationships. Back to the Overland, Krystyna laughed in retelling how at the end of each day she would try to sit on a fireside log, only to have the weight of the backpack topple her over like a tortoise on its shell, legs stuck in the air, helplessly stranded and needing assistance. I know at least 20 blokes who would pay plenty for a copy of that photo. When I advised Krystyna that walkers soon would have to pay a $100 fee for the privilege of walking The Overland, she said ptshaw, it should be $500. Ptshaw must be a Polish term of abuse.

Published The Advocate, May 14, 2005


WHEN cooks became TV celebrities – Jamie, Nigella, Stefano and all the rest – food was turned into one of the visual arts. Because of TV, how the meals tasted was not half as important as making them visually desirable on the screen. I have seen a half fig presented in a manner that could not be printed in a family newspaper. Along the way, if you ask me, the food producers have never received enough credit. The celebrity chefs hog all the glory but see how far they’d get without fresh, first-grade ingredients. More power to the humble dirt farmer. So for a change, it was nice to be the guest at a formal dinner where praise was being heaped on the North-West dairy farmers and the blessed cheesemakers. The occasion was the Lactos 50th Anniversary Gala Dinner, held at the Burnie Regional Art Gallery, to honour the Lactos founder Milan Vyhnalek and his loyal band of employees and suppliers. I also ran into a PR man there who I had not seen for 30 years. Burnie is a place where lost souls turn up. Lactos is now owned by Bongrain, a French multi-national that produces several hundred different cheese brands at many places around the world including Burnie, which is a long, long way from France. Yet the Bongrain executives were here in numbers, a phalanx of great Gallic noses, whose very names sounded like gourmet meals: Alex Bongrain himself , Michelle Duleu-Burre, Claude Bertrand and the MC Gabriel Gate, with his charming Franglaise. "I am sure you all agree wizz me that we ear are fortunate to be sharing zuch amazzing food. No-sing is left to chance with these fine cheezers." Gabriel, never lose your accent. Each course featured a different Lactos cheese. "Dinner without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze," Milan Vyhnalek told the guests. Ah, there it is again, the link made between food and sex, as if one leads inevitably to the other. Were it only that simple. At lawn bowls the other day, there was a discussion about the sensual quality of bread baking. Which prompted Hugh, the left handed player who claims his game is badly affected by having to play with right-handed bowls, to ask: "Have you been bed breaking lately?" One of the better spoonerisms. Personally, I find the claimed aphrodisiacal qualities of certain foods to be over-rated. Oysters and stout, for example, are said to arouse the libido. I like oysters and I like stout but have yet to experience a coital urge, no matter how many I consume. Perhaps Tassie oysters are lacking. At the Lactos dinner’s end, full up to dolly's wax, as my mother would say, I let out a relaxed burp and on leaving thanked the two security guards at the door for keeping me safe. I imagine they were there in case the libido got out of hand. I tottered off home to face the prospect of another bleak week of grilled cheese on toast. Sigh.

Published The Advocate, May 7, 2005


SO NOW we wait: Schapelle Corby sits in a Balinese jail, accused of importing 4kg of marijuana into Indonesia and looking at spending her life in prison. It might have been a firing squad for her had not the Indonesian prosecutors instead recommended life behind bars - the expected outcome when the verdict is handed down within the month. My life is over, Ms Corby said. Quite. We watched her make an emotional courtroom plea to be set free, declaring her innocence and asking to be allowed to go home. If she is innocent, life imprisonment is a terrible fate. If she is guilty, it is still a terrible fate. Many people believe she is the hapless victim of a drug smuggling operation in this country, and the bag of marijuana was mistakenly placed in her bag at the airport before she left Australia. It certainly defies logic to imagine Ms Corby would place a plastic bag of marijuana, the size of a pillow, inside a boogie board cover and expect it to pass through Customs. Also, most people I know cannot believe anyone would take marijuana to Bali where the drug is so widely available and cheap. People take drugs from Bali to Australia, not the other way around. The Bali 9, accused of attempting to smuggle heroin from Indonesia to Australia, were following in the footsteps of hundreds of other drug ``mules’’ over many years. If it was Ms Corby’s marijuana, she was headed in the wrong direction. Even so, life in prison is too high a price to pay for stupidity. I have no particular issue with the Indonesian justice system, which is based on the presumption of innocence despite pub talk to the contrary. Similar systems apply in some European countries, notably Holland. Of more concern is the outrageous penalty Ms Corby faces. One of the bedrocks of any justice system is the punishment must fit the crime. Not all crimes are of the same seriousness and all penalties should not be the same. The sentence for manslaughter is less than for murder. There has to be a sliding scale. Speaking of sliding scales, Abu Bakar Bashir, the spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah, a terrorist arm of al-Qaeda, is in jail in Indonesia for his involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people including 88 Australians. While not doing the bombings himself, Bashir was found guilty of conspiring with the bombers. He gave them his blessing to do their evil. In Australian eyes, Bashir was as guilty as sin, no room for doubt. The prosecutors sought eight years. He received 30 months. Go figure. On my scale of justice, trafficking marijuana is less serious than terrorist mass murder, yet Bashir will be a free man by the end of next year and Ms Corby will be sitting in her cell. We all need to travel otherwise we begin think everyone else is like us. Just don’t travel in bad company, don’t carry drugs and lock your bags.

Published The Advocate, April 30, 2005


NOW that the white smoke has settled over the Vatican and the Cardinals have elected Pope Benedict XVI, I can let you in on a little secret: The fix was in ages ago. Yes, the Pope was chosen by a group of influential Catholic power brokers. But, no, it was not the cardinals. Indeed, the cardinals cower in fear and awe of these individuals. Even the hard men of the Vatican Curia are babes in the woods compared with this mysterious group of flint-eyed dealmakers, the real power behind the papal throne. They are the people who, while operating quietly at the parish level, in combination run a worldwide network of enormous clout within the Catholic church. The Vatican gave the impression that the choice of Pope was shrouded in secrecy and ritual. The cardinals who met in the Sistine Chapel were sworn to keep the procedure secret under pain of excommunication, and they remained locked up until they reached a decision. Electronic sweeps were even made to ensure there were no listening devices. No laptop computers were allowed. Mobile phones were banned. Successive secret ballots were held until one candidate, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, received the necessary two-thirds plus one of the votes. The whole theatrical process was aimed at persuading the public that outsiders could not influence the cardinals’ vote. Do not be fooled. It was all a cover. I can now reveal the identity of the real powerbrokers, the Pope-makers: They are those deceptively mild-mannered women who do the flower arrangements on the church altars in preparation for daily Mass. From the smallest parish church to the grandest cathedral, each group of flower arrangers plots how to get its own man up as Pope. They caucus, conspire, jump to conclusions and pass judgement. With their shared intimacy of the inner-workings of the church, they are quick to recognise a rising star and even quicker to undermine those with feet of clay. Clerical reputations are made and lost on their say-so. In the end, almost by divine guidance, they somehow reach a consensus on the Papacy. Their decision is then passed onto the cardinals who, in turn, do their bidding. For the cardinals to do otherwise would be unthinkable. Females may not be allowed into the priesthood, and certainly not under this Pope, but it is in the nature of Catholicism that the clergy come under the influence of elderly women. My mother is an altar flower arranger. She has never been a big fan of the Australian long-shot Cardinal George Pell. He has a lot of fence-mending to do with the flower ladies before they take him seriously as a suitable candidate. For weeks while the world watched and waited for Pope John Paul II to die, my mother had the smug look of someone who already knew the identity of the next Pope. She just did. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then the road to the Papacy is lined with women of a certain age.

Published The Advocate, April 23, 2005


THE war remembrance business is booming. Each year, more of us make the effort and go to an Anzac Day dawn service. In the early light, families, with parents pushing prams, are the fourth and fifth generations of those who fought at Gallipoli 90 years ago. The young in growing numbers are also making the pilgrimage to Gallipoli itself, trying to understand what happened there and what it all means now. When you visit the place, where 8000 Australians lost their lives, there is something desolate about their absence from the world. A vivid sense of eternity. In walking the battlefield, we are searching for what it means to be Australian because something really significant occurred in the life of the country with the landing at Anzac Cove on April 25, 1915. What our troops achieved was a statement of national character. Their deeds created the Anzac spirit and legend: self-sacrifice, loyalty, bravery, honour, humour and mateship. In the pre-dawn at The Nek, they were ordered ``silently and without rifle fire’’, bayonets fixed, to rush the Turkish machine gunners. Four lines of troops, one after another, ran defenceless towards the Turkish trenches and within the hour their dead bodies lay in piles row upon row. Who now would sprint headlong and unarmed into a hail of machinegun fire? They must have attacked with an air of resignation, waving their unloaded guns and clenched fists at the old men who sent them there to fight. The original Anzacs were not political zealots driven by a sense of destiny. I doubt they weighed the imperial implications against their predicament in the trenches. Afterwards, embittered, many of them would never give tuppence for governments of any persuasion. Yet, at the time, they were eager to go to war with their mates, to be well thought of as good citizens, the grand gesture, even to the extent of accepting the lies that governments told them. For a country that considers itself peaceful and laid-back, Australia's armed forces often seem to be heading off to conflicts in one place or another around the world. What gets into us? Every time I hear our politicians mouth the sombre words of wartime statesmanship - responsibility, duty and leadership – my heart sinks. The Romans had the right idea. If the Roman Senate decided to invade a country, one of the Senators had to go with the centurions into battle. There is nothing romantic about war. Standing at the grave of the unknown soldier might have romantic connotations but how he got to be there was not in the least romantic. The Anzacs would prefer to live than be dead heroes. Yet they gave their last breath for a future they would not see. Why did they make such a blood sacrifice? Because they believed they were fighting for freedom, that’s why. Never, ever take your freedom for granted, especially not on Anzac Day. Give thanks and be grateful. Lest we forget.

Published The Advocate, April 16, 2005


FLYING to the mainland I was filled with nostalgia for the days when air travel was a rare treat and airports were welcoming places that did not immediately suspect you of being a terrorist. In Hobart airport, having passed okay through the metal detector, I was ordered by a uniform to stand aside to be checked for "ions". Sweeping me twice-over with a hand wand called an ``ion analyser’’ – once for explosives and once for narcotics – he gave me the all-clear on both counts. Just as well. Then, waiting to board the plane, my hand luggage started buzzing. It was the electric shaver, which evidently did not like being ionised. Knowing how security conscious airports had become, I thought about handing the shaver to the airport security service for safe-keeping. Except, that would be the last I saw of it and it had cost $350. Instead, I pulled off the top and jammed my thumb on the vibrating blades, hoping the extra pressure would run down the shaver battery quicker, and lacerated both thumbs. The shaver, still going strongly at the scheduled boarding time, was headed for the rubbish bin when the public address system announced the flight had been delayed because the pilot had called an engineer to the cockpit. The extra 10 minutes provided enough time for the shaver to die, and for me to worry why an engineer was needed? Finally called on board, I checked for oil leaks under the plane or to see if the engineer was returning to the terminal with tears streaming down his cheeks. I’ve had better flights. The pilot double-declutched on takeoff and then botched the landing. I say botched because the wheels had almost touched down in Melbourne when he gunned the engines and went around again. I could feel a stress headache developing behind my eyes. When are they going to invent squeezable Panadeine that can be sucked from a tube? Eventually we landed to a mixture of relief and bad language. Oddly, I detected the fetid smell of forest mulch being pumped through the plane’s air conditioning. Or it might have been me. The pilot blamed air traffic control for the go-around order, saying another plane had not properly cleared the runway the first time. He could say almost anything he liked to us in the back and we wouldn’t know any better. But I had my doubts. I had a window seat and the second approach passed over none of the landmarks we had flown over the first time. I believe the pilot tried to land on the wrong runway and then lied about it. On arrival in the terminal, the drug detection beagle sniffed me up and down longer than was strictly necessary. The dog handler, who had the startled look of someone who had been woken by a bomb blast, asked me to open my briefcase. Inside was my ionized shaver. In pieces. The handler looked even more startled. Forget the cheap fares, whoever can make travel less bothersome is going to make millions.