I don’t know how much a slave would cost these days, but after checking prices back in 1700 and allowing for inflation and the cost-price index, I reckon a good big buck with decent teeth would be worth around $500.
The Australian government could buy 200,000. And what are slaves good for? Working in cotton fields. And where are all the cotton fields? Right in the middle of Australia, like I said. Millions of hectares of them.
We ship all those slaves out here, save them from life in the ghettos being eaten by rats, and put them to work in the sun picking cotton for ‘massa’.
And if they don’t like it — stiff shit! There’s all that lantana growing around the place so they can’t get out. It’s perfect.
There’s another spin-off too. Think of all the sensational new blues and Motown music we’d get. The music industry would make more millions, CD prices would come down and everybody would be happy.
Especially the blacks … plenty to eat, out in the sun and dancing around on the weekends like toady-frogs. It’s perfect. Instead of niggaz with attitude, they’d be niggaz with plentitude.
So there you have it. Two problems fixed for the price of one. And you wonder why that bloke wanted me in Parliament.
Mark Geyer is a big, bad rugby league forward. He’s as big as a house, fit, strong and wild, the complete football cyborg pumped out by the sports machine the crowd loves. A real meat-head league player.
Personally, I like the big cheeseburger. He’s played for his State, his country and helped win a grand final. He plays the game hard and fast with plenty of controlled aggression, which the punters love.
Best of all he sticks it up those rotten Queensland cane toads — especially King Wally. One State of Origin game he had Wally that furious I thought he was going to take to big Mark with his handbag.
I wish Geyer played for Easts. But the best thing with him is what you see is what you get.
Like me, he’s no rocket scientist, but he does his best.
When he made that speech and thanked all the Penrith fans for their support, saying they couldn’t have won the grand final without them, he wasn’t just playing to the crowd. He meant every word. You could see the emotion welling up inside him.
Same when he talks to the kids. He gets a bit tongue-tied but he does his best. He is what he is and I don’t think that’s a bad sign in a bloke.
At the moment though, Geyer is involved in the most unbelievable hoo-ha imaginable.
According to the papers, Geyer is alleged to have tested positive to marijuana — even though it’s not 100 per cent certain if he did.
Big bloody deal.
But he’s been suspended, fined and pilloried in the press by certain pisshead journalists and even had to get Chris Murphy as his lawyer. They’ve done everything but draw and quarter him and stick his head on a pike.
You’d think he’d robbed a bank and then got caught with his hand up Orphan Annie’s dress. All these pious old bores in the league hierarchy are jumping up and down. The image of the game must be upheld, they thunder.
Image? Rugby league is sponsored by booze and cigarettes, the two biggest killer drugs in the country.
And a couple of old players told me that if you opened up a few closets around the league hierarchy a lot of skeletons would come rattling out holding SP bookmaking sheets.
Geyer sure doesn’t look like a mullhead to me. A meat-head, maybe. But what if he did prove positive to pot? It’s not as if he filled himself full of speed, coke or steroids before a game.
It’s stupid. Even Mai Meninga, an ex-cop, and Wayne Bennett, the Queensland coach, said it’s not worth all the trouble the league is going to.
The thing is, Geyer doesn’t need Chris Murphy to get him off this bum rap. All he’s got to do is say he was at a party and there was a bunch of mullheads there getting into a few joints and he’s a victim of passive smoking.
It’s a fact. I don’t smoke. I hate cigarettes. But after a night in a bar or disco, I’d have enough nicotine in me to say I’d had 20 puffers — due to passive smoking.
It’s been proved. And they say the THC from pot stays in your body fats for months. If Murphy can’t beat this one he should give the game away.
But the whole drama around pot, the killer drug that’s going to destroy us all, is ridiculous. I’ve already written a column on it and I’ve had people write to me about it. I even suggested they let the Kooris grow it and keep the profits. Anything.
And it’s not as if I haven’t had experience with the ’erb. In the ’70s, when we used to get it through those kindly Italians in Griffith for $30 an ounce, we’d smoke enough dacca on the weekend to stuff a mattress. But we still went to work on Monday and I’m still here.
Like my mates, I’ve been busted. Had the cops charging in with a warrant, guns at the ready. Up goes your mattress, all your clothes get reefed out of your wardrobe, they go through all your personal things. It’s great.
Then you waste the time of another six cops, a prosecutor, your lawyer, a magistrate — all that paperwork for a $250 fine. It that’s not a waste of time, what is? And I still can’t figure out why it is.
If you’re a rotten, thieving heroin addict you can go to a needle exchange and get a free prick, a cup of coffee and no questions asked. Why can’t mullheads go to a bong exchange when their bong clogs up and get another one? Isn’t this discriminatory?
I’m certain there’s a conspiracy around pot. Take what’s been happening in Coffs Harbour. A huge number of ordinary, rate-paying citizens have been trying to stop a stinking sewerage outfall going into the ocean where they live.
They weren’t so-called hippies, but old ladies, blokes and women with kids, worrying about their future. And the cops just bashed and brutalised them. Real heroes.
Some were even strip-searched by cops hoping they’d find a bit of pot. If they found any, the cops and council aldermen who want the outfall could say they’re all druggies. That’s how it works.
Same with the citizens trying to save what trees we’ve got left. They’re out there in front of the bulldozers and, next thing, up lumbers some 12-beers-a-day moron, with a stomach as large as his brain is small, holding a sign saying: ‘We Want Jobs — Not Drugs’. And more than likely it’s written in crayon.
So the law, oppressive as it is, definitely suits the cops and the politicians at the moment. But there are others who couldn’t really give a stuff about dope and would rather be out after the heroin and coke dealers. I know I’d rather be.
So, if I was a politician, what would I do to make a serious dent in the true drug problem? Putting heroin, coke and speed into the too-hard basket for the time being, let’s start with pot.
The first thing I’d do is burn every copy of that poster of Allen Ginsberg, the US poet, holding a sign saying ‘Pot Is Fun’. At $400 an ounce, pot definitely ain’t fun.
Then I’d take the scientific and moral high-ground. I’d start by saying that seeing the Jamaican Government is making medicine out of marijuana — because it reduces ocular pressure and can ultimately cure glaucoma and asthma, and ease the pain for cancer sufferers — cabinet will be forced to have another think.
Seeing as pot’s easy on your eyes it’s going to be classed as a soft drug.
But if there are dills out there who still want to smoke the shit, it’s going to cost you. We’re sick of tying up men and resources.
So, if you’re working and over 21, you pay $100 for a licence and you can grow enough in your backyard to keep you going. If anybody asks, just say it’s for your eyes or for your grandma’s asthma. And that’s it. Piss off.
Veg out, listen to your silly bloody music and just leave the rest of us alone. At least you’re working and not breaking into houses.
If not completely decriminalising it, I’d take the stigma out of pot. Even if it’s only for people like footballers and Paul McCartney. Look at poor Paul. He got busted in Japan with half an elbow and now everybody hates him and nobody bu
ys his records any more. See what I mean?
The 500,000 mullheads who buy a licence will provide $50 million in government money every year. I’d run the thing through the police revenue service where you pay your traffic fines.
Then I’d have an extradition treaty drawn up with Iran and send any heroin or coke dealers that get caught over there to be tried by an Islamic court. Being a politician, you have to foster ethnic and religious goodwill. And that’s about it.
Even the ex-Premier of NSW, Neville Wran, was quoted in the paper as saying, ‘Some form of legalising might be sensible. Certainly marijuana.’ But would something like this ever happen? There’s a good chance.
Firstly, they’ve legalised brothels in NSW. This means you can go into a whorehouse dressed as Batman, pork some moll wearing a school uniform while she whips you with a dead octopus and it’s all sweet.
Could this be any worse than sitting back stoned in your own home listening to old Moody Blues CDs? Along with the devos, the cops might get sick of chasing the mullheads, too.
Secondly, if you’re talking about politicians, you have to think like a politician. And remember, to a politician a person is not a human being. You’re a vote with skin wrapped around it.
One day, some politician is going to think that with the $50 million coming in every year and the money the government’s saving by not running around chasing mullheads, there are 500,000 votes out there. And you won’t lose any other votes because nobody gives a shit about mullheads anyway.
Some politician’s only got to say he’s dropping the tax on Tally Hos — let alone decriminalise the shit — and half a million votes fall into the bag.
And thirdly, I have actually drunk with members of the NSW and Commonwealth police. A lot of them read my books.
I was having a drink with some the other day and overheard one cop remark that, in line with all this drug testing, there’s talk of introducing it into the police force. And it’s not going down all that well.
At first I couldn’t understand this — until I thought on it. With all that white powder floating around as evidence it would be a bit hard to explain if you registered positive to the okey or hammer.
But does this also mean the career of some proudly serving member of the police force is over if they test positive to the old dacca, even though it’s possible they’re passive smoking victims?
What a terrible thought. That’s another reason they might have to take the stigma out of it.
Regular readers of this column might be wondering what’s going on. I kick off in the black-and-white section then I go to full glossy colour, next thing I’m back in the black and white.
The column is certainly colourful enough without adding any extras. Actually, it was my idea. I felt lonely in the colour section and wanted to get back next to my old mate, Paul B. Kidd. I get back and Kidd couldn’t jump into my colour spot quick enough. He’s good.
So, instead of Australia’s fishiest bloke, I’m stuck next to Jacko. Not Jacko the good-humoured Pom in Brush Strokes, but Mark Jackson, the mouth from the south. It’s enough to make you want to throw in the towel.
What can you say about Jacko’s column? He doesn’t take any prisoners. Troy Waters can’t fight, Greg Williams and Gerard Healy are traitors and should be put in front of a firing squad, Healy wearing his favourite dress. The Balinese are horrible little toads and he’s suing Kevin Bloody Wilson for saying those Energizer TV commercials reminded him of Billy Idol with prostate gland trouble.
I’ll say one thing for Jacko. He’s done something I haven’t. Played first-grade football for a leading Melbourne club. Even if it is only kick-basketball. Actually, the phenomenon of Aussie Rules and the way those Victorians revere the kick-basketballers has always had me stuffed. They treat them like gods.
I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, but when that bloke went under a car and killed himself he had a blood alcohol reading that would have launched the Challenger. Yet you’d have thought they were burying Gandhi. Thousands jammed the street carting a coffin around with some Collingwood polka blaring in the background.
When a poker machine mysteriously landed on George Piper’s head during a brawl in the Balmain Kodocs Club and they had to bury him, there was a fair sort of a crowd. But nothing like that thing in Melbourne.
But good luck to Jacko. There was even talk at one time of Jacko playing the lead if they ever made a movie out of my books. But after watching the Highwayman, I feel it would be demeaning to the man.
Jacko is destined for better things than playing some yobbo Queensland hillbilly in an Australian, meat-pie western.
But I’ve got a book coming out this month — Davo’s Little Something. It’s not a Les Norton. It’s about a butcher-turned-serial killer who murders 30 skinheads. If they make a movie out of it, there might be a part for Jacko. As a hindquarter of beef. A meat-role.
But talking about throwing in the towel — that’s what’s happening. This is my last column for People. I’m racking my cue, rolling my swag, pulling in my line. Grasshopper can finally snatch the literary pebble from Master’s hand and is leaving the temple. It is time to go. It had to happen sooner or later. I was initially only supposed to be here six months, and it’s over two years.
I’m off now to concentrate on the next book.
Before I go. May I just say, if there’s a young lady out there, a non-smoker, who would like to help me with a bit of research and learn how to write a book in the meantime, give me a whistle care of Terrigal Post Office. You know how to whistle don’t you?
So how do you say goodbye? The funny thing about this column, it wasn’t so much just my opinion — I was a conduit for the average punter. I’d be somewhere and someone would say something about someone, or something they saw on TV or read in the papers, and I’d more or less echo their sentiments.
And didn’t we echo some? Trish Goddard, Robbo, Alan Jones, Hinch, The TRG, 2JJJ, public servants, Kooris, the gay and ethnic lobbies, Pickering, Skase, Bond, politicians …
I can’t see myself ever getting another gig on the ABC and there’s no way I’ll get my hair cut in Oxford Street. I don’t think I would have run out of subjects. Not while I kept bumping into punters from all walks of life wanting to give me GBH of the earhole. But I remember saying I was going to write about my great-great-grandfather Richard Bigmore Barrett, the remittance man who tamed the Central Coast in the 1800s. What a bloke. So I think it’s only appropriate that my last column should be dedicated to him and the story of how he lost his first fortune.
Bigmore had money when he arrived from England, but he made most of it gathering cedar at Ourimbah and running punts on the Hawkesbury River. He had six kids to two wives but the apple of his eye was his manservant and faithful companion, Tjalkaleiri, an Aboriginal from the Wurrunnunah tribe. ‘Chalky’ as Bigmore called him.
Chalky was drinking methylated spirits and playing a gumleaf in Mann Street, Gosford when Bigmore took him under his wing. He cleaned him up, looked after him and they became inseparable. Bigmore treated Chalky like a son and to Chalky, Bigmore was the father the earlier white settlers gave a bag of poisoned flour to in Woy Woy. They went everywhere and did everything together, and Bigmore owed much of his good fortune to Tjalkaleiri’s prowess as an expert bushman and tracker. The only thing Bigmore didn’t know about Chalky was that all his tribe were coprophiliacs.
One summer they were five days’ horse ride north of Newcastle, going through the sandhills towards Taree, looking for a gold reef supposed to be in the area. They passed Broughton Island and were camped one night when they were attacked by a pack of wild dingoes. Bigmore and Chalky fought them off but the horses bolted, leaving them with one water-bottle, six dry biscuits and a 10-day walk back to Newcastle. If they made it.
They set off the next morning and, before they left, Bigmore handed Chalky three biscuits. Chalky told him to keep them, just give him a bit of water now and again. He’d be all right.
Big
more couldn’t believe it. His faithful manservant Tjalkaleiri would starve to death so his master could live. Tearful stuff.
They’d been walking for three days when they stopped for the night. Bigmore went for a crap. He came back to the campfire, sat there for a while and couldn’t find his watch. Thinking he might have dropped it when he had a dump, he walked back to find the turd was gone. Bigmore thought this a bit odd.
Back at the campfire, Chalky was sitting crosslegged, picking his teeth with a twig, so Bigmore asked him: ‘Hey Chalky. Did you see what happened to my turd?’
And Chalky replied, ‘I ate it boss.’
‘You ate it?’
‘Yeah. I eat shit. All the Wurrus do, if we’re hungry and there’s nothing around.’
Bigmore sat down dumbfounded. Then he said, ‘Chalky, if we get out of this, we’re going to make a fortune.’ Chalky continued picking his teeth, shrugged, and thought no more about it.
The next morning, they were walking along the beach and as fate would have it, Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson flew overhead in a hot-air balloon, with a couple of developers, catching the nor’-easter from Taree to Newcastle. They saw Bigmore and Chalky waving on the beach, picked them up and flew them to Newcastle. The boys were saved.
Bigmore couldn’t get back to the Central Coast quick enough and get the ball rolling.
He got 1000 pounds out of the bank and made his first strike at the Union Hotel in Gosford, setting up bets that he had this Koori who could eat faecal matter.
Of course, the locals didn’t believe him. No-one would eat shit. Not even an Abo. They packed the Union. Bigmore handed a plate to the crowd for anyone to drop a turd on. They got one and Chalky tore into it.
Richard Bigmore was on a roll. They did pubs on the Central Coast. Workers clubs in Newcastle and Cessnock. Chalky didn’t even have to finish the whole thing if he didn’t want to. The smell alone from some of them was enough to make everyone want to settle and get out of the place.
Then Bigmore got them both tuxedos and they started doing gentlemen’s clubs in Sydney. They knocked over City Tattersalls and Bigmore had 150,000 pounds. When who should arrive in Sydney but William Randolph Hearst, the American publishing tycoon. He heard what was going on and proposed a bet — 150,000 pounds. Bigmore accepted.
So What Do You Reckon? Page 20