I give a certain amount from the royalties on my books to Greenpeace — and I am a noted tightwad.
People query why I do this. Is it to big-note myself or just to help sell books?
They also wonder why a person who puts so much blood and guts and violence in his books could support an organisation that’s into pansy things like saving baby dolphins, little animals and trees.
It’s not very good for the macho man image.
Well, frankly Scarlett, I don’t give a stuff.
I reckon Greenpeace is the most selfless, dedicated organisation in the world and probably the best thing this planet’s got going for it at the moment. And that’s not taking anything away from the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Wilderness Society and people like Phillip Toyne and Peter Garrett.
The feats Greenpeace pulls off and the glare of the spotlight it turns on the bastards that want to destroy what’s left of our planet is phenomenal.
I truly admire these brave people, yet you know what thanks and support they get from governments the world over?
Zilch.
The first people the cops arrest are the ones from Greenpeace.
You never see the arrest of a captain or crew of some ship dumping poison in the North Sea or off Tasmania.
You’ll never see the manager of a company like ICI put in gaol or fined for pumping millions of litres of industrial waste into the ocean.
No way. But as soon as Greenpeace arrives on the scene the cops are there in droves. And they reckon there’s a police shortage!
Look at some of the things Greenpeace does and figure it out for yourself why I give what support I can.
Its campaigners get out in rubber dinghies, in the middle of nowhere, in appalling weather conditions and dangerous seas to get between a Japanese harpoon gun and a whale swimming with her calf.
The Japs have stuffed our prawn and tuna industry; now they’re effectively turning the ocean into a stagnant pond with their driftnets.
Who gets out there and tries to free the thousands of birds, seals, dolphins and other animals from drowning and bring the world’s attention to this environmental atrocity?
It was Greenpeace which stopped those moronic Canadians from clubbing baby harp seals to death by again showing the world what was going on — they got out on the ice-floes to spray the pups with green dye and risked getting drowned and clubbed themselves.
They won the battle and, again, what thanks did they get?
Again they were arrested; this time by the Canadian cops.
What about the bloke who swam 10km underwater to free so many thousand dolphins the kindly Japanese fishermen had penned up ready to slaughter with harpoons and pikes for eating their fish?
THEIR bloody fish?
And what thanks did this hero get?
Again the cops arrested him, the Japs this time, and he got five years’ gaol.
They should have given him a knighthood.
Oddly enough, if he’d been a member of the Queensland National Party and bulldozed a rainforest then taken about half a million dollars in bribes he’d have got one — they might even have made him Premier.
And while on the subject of the Japanese … If ever there was a nation of bastards when it comes to the environment it would have to be these sub-humans.
They’re ruining the forests and the oceans and they have the bloody hide to come out here taking photos of the dolphins at Monkey Mia and the whales at Hervey Bay. And we’re all expected to kiss their arses because they buy our coal and wool.
A few old ex-POWs reckon they should get Enola Gay out of mothballs and go in and give them another serve.
But I especially like the macho men in the media and government who try to look tough by bagging Greenpeace: Alan Jones, John Laws, that troglodyte WA senator Peter Walsh, the politician Ian Causley and his pals in the National Party.
Though I can understand Lawsie talking tough on the environment; he does have his Valvoline-in-the-jeep, blue-denim, Jim Beam image to keep up.
Maybe Lawsie might like to get out in a rubber dinghy dodging harpoons and toxic waste.
It might not be as good for the image but it would have to be as macho as driving a jeep.
Then again, driving a jeep is a bit of a feat and you could fall out and ruin a perfectly good hair-transplant.
And I can dig members of the National Party hating Greenpeace and calling all environmentalists long-haired gits.
If it wasn’t for these long-haired freaks and their ilk a bit more of our coastline would be gone and the beaut pulp mill would be destroying the forests and polluting the ocean and rivers around Grafton.
Though I can’t quite see how they manage to call Peter Garrett a long-haired git.
The man has a degree — and he’s as bald as a badger.
So I support Greenpeace, I always will and I hope some day to be able to do more than the little I do now.
I love nature and I prefer these people and wildlife to some of the poor excuses there are for human beings running around the world today — especially some of those politicians and media identities.
I don’t know what the average punter gets to watch on late-night TV in other states, but around Sydney there’s nothing much to get enthused over. Especially in the 10.30–11.30 spot.
The various channels appear to have run completely out of imagination during this time.
For a while we used to have an hour of smut and innuendo with Graham Kennedy on Channel Nine, but the King did us a favour by abdicating.
We had Steve Vizard on Channel Seven; he thought he was David Letterman and looked like Don Lane with Phar Lap’s teeth.
Re-runs of Dallas on Channel 10. Seemingly endless politics and news on the ABC. And either the Iranian public stoning finals or the Saudi Arabian beheading tournament on SBS.
It’s a pretty skinny go, I can tell you.
Then, amidst a veritable avalanche of hype and publicity, we got the return of a thing called Clive Robertson, who filled the hole Kennedy left at Nine.
Has anybody out there in the real world of workers and battlers ever seen or heard Clive Robertson?
It’s something else, believe me.
Clive kicked off in radio’s sheltered workshop, 2BL in Sydney.
Here he is supposed to have built-up a cult following amongst butterfly collectors, tea-leaf readers and various pixies and goblins found in the gardens on Sydney’s lower north shore, with his alleged droll sense of humour.
Financial genius and entrepreneurial hero Christopher Skase took over Channel Seven and gave Clive the 10.30–11.30 spot reading the news and trying to be titillatingly amusing at the same time.
Clive sat there wearing the same Gowings suit and the same boring regimental-striped tie, peering through his specs, shuffling papers around and grunting out these droll comments like bowel movements.
I used to watch this with a sense of déjà vu.
Then it dawned on me.
Clive always reminded me of a government doctor in a VD clinic.
I got the jack years ago and had to go to the VD clinic near Circular Quay in Sydney. The old blue light. The House That Jack Built.
Clive Robertson looks exactly like a pox doctor.
Same boring tie, same chatty suit, same supercilious smile and the same smug look when they say: ‘You’ve got gonorrhoea’.
Then shove a needle the size of a bike-pump in your arse and smirk as you try to negotiate the stairs, barely able to walk.
It’s always amazed me how Clive Robertson achieved this star status.
There are not enough Bs in boring to describe the big mummy’s boy.
He’s fat and bald, got more chins than a Hong Kong phone book and blinks through those glasses like an owl with a strangulated hernia.
He doesn’t run, doesn’t swim, doesn’t go to the beach and thinks that anyone who tries to keep fit is an idiot.
He hates sport and barbecues, and he goes on like a misogynist
.
He detests rock’n’roll music and refuses to have football or boxing on the news.
He’s never been drunk, never copped a whack on the chin, never had his dabs taken and it’s extremely doubtful if he’d have even half a good root in him.
Clive’s idea of an exciting evening is crocheting tea-cosies while listening to Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in D major, op 35.
And this is a typical Australian male allowed to influence public opinion TV.
Somebody should kick him right up his fat arse and drag him back into the real world.
I hear there are a few camera crews around who would gladly do it too.
Clive spat the dummy at Seven around the same time as Skase hit the skids, and spent about six months picking his toes and sucking his thumb till 2GB in Sydney offered him a gig.
He and another equally-opinionated bore, Mike Jeffreys, were primed up in yet another blaze of hype and publicity to take on the arch-villain of Sydney radio: John Laws.
The mongrel. They were going to whip John Laws’ arse so bad.
‘Hello, Jeffreys and Robertson,’ they’d smirk over the phone to any mug silly enough to ring them up.
It sounded like the name of a hardware store in Coonabarabran.
And away they’d go, each trying to out do the other’s droll comment, dry sense of humour or acerbic witticism.
And what a pair of cutie-pies.
Unfortunately, Jeffreys and Robertson were just a bit too clever for this world.
They should have greased their arses and slipped into the next.
They went over like a pregnant woman pole-vaulting. In less than 12 months they were rating alongside the Marcel Marceau hour on 2MBS-FM.
Eventually their drollness and dryness caught up with them and they drolled right down the steps of 2GB and blew away in the breeze.
And you wonder why. On three separate occasions I did a bit of dial switching between the mongrel and Snugglepot and Cuddlepie just to see what was going on.
On the first occasion, Mike and Clive were talking about sandwich fillings; John Laws was interviewing the treasurer, Paul Keating.
The second time they were discussing recipes for scones (I’m fair dinkum); the mongrel was interviewing the boss of Ansett at the height of the pilots’ dispute.
The third time Mike Jeffreys and Clive Robertson were comparing the designs on their underpants. John Laws was interviewing the PM.
Which I think just about sums up Clive Robertson.
Come back Don Lane. All is forgiven.
I haven’t been having a great deal of luck in the acting and TV commercial rort lately.
The castings have been there and so have about a thousand other blokes a lot less fat, bald and ugly than me.
And when I do crack one I either wreck my car, get beaten to a pulp or end up in bed with pneumonia.
However, the people with the big cigars — my agents — tipped me into one the other week that they said would be a snack.
No lines to learn, no fight scenes, all I had to do was stand in a bar and act the laconic Australian shearer in an ABC telemovie Gunshearer.
The call sheet arrived shortly after and sure enough there was no dialogue. All I had to do was lob up to the Native Rose Hotel in inner-Sydney’s Chippendale at 10 p.m., one quick scene.
Beauty. I had a few things to take care of in town, I could see a movie, stay the night at a mate’s place, I’d be finished by midnight tops — even allowing for the ABC — get everything finished in the morning and be home before I knew it. Suits me to the ground.
Naturally it was pissing rain when I left Terrigal and crawled all the way to Sydney in the traffic, but managed to get a couple of things done and I did get to see a movie.
When I walk out of the movie it’s pissing rain worse than ever.
I got to the pub all right and the only sign of activity was the lighting man coughing and spluttering into the gutter. He told me the humidity played up with his asthma.
I went inside and met the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed director, the other shearers and the two blokes playing the detectives. I then found out I had some waffle and dialogue after all.
And as they were a bit tight on scripts they asked if we could ad-lib as much as possible. My little scene had me and another shearer playing pool and acting evasive as the two cops question us about the murder of another shearer.
Which sort of suited me. I’ve been acting evasive with the wallopers all my life. The first lesson they taught us at Bondi Beach Public School was, never make a statement.
So I slipped into my R.M. Williams and after a bit of stuffing around ABC-style it was roll film, and away we went.
After a bit I started to get the hang of it. I grunted my lines out the side of my mouth and, like I predicted, it was all done by midnight.
I was about to leg it when the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed director said to stick around.
He wanted me for the fight scene.
Fight scene? It didn’t say anything in my call sheet about a bloody fight scene. But I was stuck there and they still had to shoot another scene with a uniformed cop questioning the barmaid. It was 2.30 a.m. and my eyes were hanging out of my head when they finished it. The action is supposed to take place in a dry and deserted bush town — the ABC, in its wisdom, chose an inner-city hotel while it was pissing rain, with cars and trucks roaring past the door every five seconds.
Finally, between breaks in the traffic, they got it shot. Then it was on to the fight scene where the drunken shearer starts arguing over a game of pool and the publican throws him out.
It was getting late and by now I was in no mood for any ad-libbing. I thought the best thing for me to do was play the full-on laconic Outback Aussie. So I propped my arse on a stool, held my pool cue and watched as the director and the other actors floundered around the pool table.
By 3 a.m. I was laconic-ed to the point of numbness and the fight scene wasn’t getting anywhere.
I had to put my head in or we’d be here till dawn. So I told the director about some of the fights I’d seen in pubs over pool tables where the antagonists did swear and say nasty things to each other, grapple and rend each other’s clothing and throw pool cues and other items around in a manner most violent.
It soon livened up. There was about 45 minutes of ‘Piss off arsehole!’, ‘Get stuffed’ and ‘Why don’t ya stick your pub up your arse?’, push, shove, grapple, fling the pool cue. After the publican speared the shearer out the door amidst plenty of noise it was finally over — and I was released.
I bolted straight for my car. I was just about to open the door when … ‘wow-wow-wow-wow-wow’. Blue lights flashing, sirens wailing as they screeched to a stop outside the pub. Cops. Real ones. Mean and lots of them.
It seems the neighbours rang the police and said there was a monstrous fight going on at the Native Rose and they were wrecking the joint.
Out they jumped. Hats off, batons at the ready, blood in their eyes. And the first bloke they decided to smash up was the poor bloody lighting bloke having another asthma attack.
They were just about to give him the NSW Police Force’s idea of a fair-go when I yelled to cool it. It was only a movie. And a dud one at that.
I took a couple of photos, which didn’t go down too well with the cops so I took off. So much for Gunshearer on the ABC. It was more like the Keystone Kops meet Police Academy 6. Though at 4 a.m., you’ll forgive me if I didn’t quite see the funny side of it.
My dear old dad, God rest his soul, was a great one for home-spun sayings.
One of his favourites was: ‘I used to complain that I had no shoes, till I met a man who had no feet.’
A few weeks ago we copped a heap of rain in Sydney and up here on the Central Coast.
There was some minor flooding; a number of homes were damaged.
My garage got half-full of water, the guttering around the house choked up with leaves and rotted through in parts, and there was
mould all over the walls and in my wardrobe.
I whinged, I whined, moaned and groaned and carried on like a good sort because I had to scrub out the garage and get up on the roof and clean out the gutters.
Fair dinkum, the hardships and suffering the rain caused me was almost too much to bear. I think back on it now — and the way I carried on — and I wish a great big boot, about a size 20, would come out of the sky and kick me fair up the arse — and hard.
For the past week or so I’ve been watching TV and reading the papers and I’ve seen what the people of Nyngan and Charleville have just gone through. In fact, in that whole stretch from Dubbo to Longreach.
These people haven’t just had a few inches of water in their garage or a clogged-up gutter.
These poor bastards have lost practically everything. Their homes, possessions, farms, livestock. Their towns. Some have even lost their lives.
You know, we in the cities and towns and roundabouts take things pretty much for granted.
You want a dozen eggs or a bit of bacon? Just stroll or drive down to the shop and get it. Milk, loaf of bread, some tomatoes? The same.
Coles and Woolies don’t make food in their parking lots. It comes from a lot of sweat out in the bush.
That litre of milk. Some dairy farmer’s got up at dawn and slogged through mud and manure to get you that.
Those tomatoes. Some farmer’s probably busted his arse to grow those. He’s had to take a punt on the weather, crop failure, locusts and God knows what else to try to make ends meet. Then at the end, hope to Christ the bank doesn’t foreclose on the loan they’ve given him at exorbitant rates and kick him off his land.
And now these people and others that depend on them are devastated. They’ve done the lot.
Imagine the position they’re in. Their homes, their incomes, their properties — gone. What’s left is ruined. Insurance won’t cover it. When does it ever?
The most they expect is about $5000 from the government.
Not much to restart your life with, is it? It’s not just the homes that are gone. Farmers, along with losing all their stock, have had to watch all their topsoil being washed away. What do they grow those tomatoes in now? Bedrock?
So What Do You Reckon? Page 6