The Bastard from the Bush: An Australian Life

by Jarratt, John

  I loved NIDA. I was good at it and therefore I worked hard because, for the first time in my life, I was doing something I wanted to do.

  I didn’t fit in. Most of the students were middle- to upper-middle-class, they spoke well, and most had some kind of theatrical family background. Something told me to be true to myself and proud of my background. In second and third year I was the only one who had been brought up in the bush. In my day there were about seventy first-year students. That was culled alarmingly to about fifteen in Year 2 and 3. The straight guys tended to form a group: we became known as the Butch Brigade by our gay acting teacher Alex Hay, a very theatrical RADA graduate in his fifties.

  We started playing cricket at lunchtimes. It didn’t last long: our buildings were made of fibro and we holed a few walls. I had to repair them because I was the only one who could. I also played League for the uni. I was made to stop as I was turning up to Movement classes with grazed knees and corked thighs. In my last game I was sent off. The opposing front rower and I got into a punch-up and we got sent off. I thought that was a fitting time to walk away.

  Speaking of football. The gay guys used to tease me a lot because they always got a bite out of me ( not literally, darling).

  Alan with the red curls was the worst. I’d be lined up at the shop for lunch and he’d creep up and kiss me on the neck. The more I protested, the more he did it. He went too far one night. The students would get roped in to being waiters at the Old Tote (now the Sydney Theatre Company). We were carrying trays of white-wine glasses. I was walking down the hall with a full tray and Alan was walking back with an empty one. When he got beside me, he kissed me full on the mouth and I couldn’t do anything about it. I was fucking furious and I’d had enough.

  The following Monday, I went to NIDA with a football under my arm. I walked up to the fig trees where the toffy types would sit eating their yoghurts while reading Stanislavski’s techniques.

  I walked up to Alan. ‘Hi, Alan. Today at lunchtime, I would like to have male physical bonding with you. My idea of male physical bonding is playing football. We’ll have half an hour of football and half an hour of kissing and cuddling under the goal posts. Now, as you’ve given me your idea of male physical bonding, I think it’s only fair that I show you my idea of it.’

  I picked him up, thrust the ball into his chest and spear-tackled him into the ground. He started crying and everyone else started yelling at me.

  ‘There’ll be half an hour of that. See you at lunchtime.’ That was the end of it.

  The only other time the bushy came out in me was during a NIDA trip across the Harbour Bridge. There were seven of us squashed into this six-seater Vauxhall: three guys in the front, two girls and two guys in the back. I was passenger-side back. We were going to see a play at the Independent in North Sydney. The driver couldn’t see too well and he cut off these two blokes in a Mini. The Mini driver went troppo and started swearing and swerving at us. I unwound my window and told him to fuck off, which made things worse, of course. He swerved and nearly crashed into the front door. Then he got in front of us and jammed on his brakes. I was steaming. We came off the bridge onto the Pacific Highway and both cars stopped at the lights. I jumped out, raced over to the Mini, ripped the door open and started to punch the driver in the ear. He was so freaked, he drove his car through the red light to get away from me and almost got collected by cross traffic. I went back to the car expecting a hero’s welcome. They said things like ‘brute’ and ‘animal’ and ‘how dare you’ and ‘disgusting’. No sense of humour.

  At this time there were no Australian films and there was very little TV work. We were being trained for a career in theatre. I was encouraged to neutralise my accent and to try to be more sophisticated. I resisted it, because I couldn’t imagine not being me. Admittedly, my accent was much broader then than it is now, but that’s happened naturally due to living in Sydney for so long.

  In the end they sent John Clark to have a word with me. He said that I wasn’t doing what was asked of me, that my accent was way too broad and that I should bring it back a little.

  I looked him in the eye and said, ‘Laurence Olivier has an English accent, Paul Newman has an American accent and I’ve got an Australian accent. I can do any accent you want, including posh Australian, if the part calls for it.’

  He stared blankly at me for a minute, then he said in his broad Tasmanian accent, ‘Fair enough.’ He then proceeded to tell me a dirty joke about a midget. That meant John liked me, and we’ve been mates ever since. Phew! I was sure he was going to tell me to leave.

  Meanwhile, on the home front, Dad had scored a job as the overseer at Parramatta Council. We moved to a little weatherboard council house in Epping. Beautiful little place in a beautiful leafy street. On his way to work, Dad would swing by and pick up Charlie Miano, a Sicilian who was a foreman on the council. Charlie and Dad became mates and our family was invited to his eldest daughter’s wedding in April 1971. We three boys didn’t want to go, but Dad talked us around because it was an insult to Italians if the family didn’t all turn up. It was a lavish affair, with lots of great Italian food overflowing on the tables. Music filled the air, and everyone except us three boys was dancing.

  Then it happened.

  The most beautiful woman I had ever seen walked over and said, ‘Why aren’t you boys dancing?’

  She was sixteen, 5 foot tall and every inch a woman. Olive skin, dark wavy hair, big brown almond-shaped eyes, a cute nose, the fullest lips, a sensual neck, beautiful breasts, wonderful hips and a perfect smile that made her eyes shine. Love at first sight, the love of my life, the one and only, now and forever…Rosa Miano. ‘I’ll dance with you.’

  Then the shock. Her parents were from the farm hills of Sicily.

  If I wanted to go out with Rosa, I’d need a chaperone. That’s if her father approved. Which was unlikely until she was eighteen, which was a little over a year away. We could only meet on the train in the morning, and every other Thursday night. She was an apprentice hairdresser and she only had to work every second Thursday night, but she told her parents she worked every Thursday night so that she could see me. We’d spend that night having takeaway at a food hall, that was all I could afford, or we’d talk Chris Cummings into letting us use his bedroom in Redfern for a bit of petting. Rosa was very innocent and I had to respect that.

  I was besotted with her. I know she was just as besotted with me. Every morning on the train we’d stand with our arms around each other, looking into each other’s eyes. Those beautiful eyes. I’d do most of the talking and she’d just look deeply at me, smiling. I’d never loved anybody like this, and I now realise, just by writing this book, that she was my first serious girlfriend, so she’s also my first love.

  My love for her and hardly being able to see her was driving me crazy. I couldn’t concentrate on NIDA and I knew I had to do my best to be one of the fifteen from the Year 1 group of seventy. I think it was late August. I went to Rosa and told her I had to break up with her because I loved her so much it was getting in the way of NIDA. Once I got past that, I would come back to her. She didn’t believe me and, to be honest, I wasn’t too sure if I’d come back or not.

  Man, did I fall into a hole, and I’ve since learnt that Rosa fell into a deeper one. I gathered myself together and attacked NIDA, to try to put her out of my mind. I started drinking a lot on weekends and I discovered marijuana. I loved it. Brian had found a few mates around Epping, so I started hanging out with him. One Saturday night, we went to a dance in Concord with a bunch from Epping. Brian, cousin Larry, fourteen-year-old Barry and I got there ahead of the others. A quite attractive girl came over and asked me to dance. Unusual, but I thought, Why not? We were dancing away and this guy came up and said, ‘Why are you dancing with my girlfriend?’

  I said to her, ‘Are you his girlfriend?’

  ‘Nah…’

  ‘She’s not your girlfriend.’

  ‘Yes she is, cunt…’
<
br />   Bang.

  He thumped me in the ear. It was on: his mates joined in, my brothers and cousin joined in. A couple of older blokes broke it up. We went to one wall, they went to the other and we stared at each other. There were about fifteen of them and four of us. Our mates were late. I turned to Brian, who was now 5 foot 9 and about 85 kilos of blood and muscle.

  ‘What are we gonna do?’

  ‘Follow me…’

  Brian got up and walked slowly towards the exit. The fifteen louts moved too. He allowed them to get in front of him. There was a flight of about six sandstone steps leading off the entrance. Suddenly Brian rushed forward with his arms spread. He sent about six of them sprawling down the stairs. He ran to the middle of the road, turned around and yelled, ‘Come on!’

  We rushed out onto the road and started an all-in brawl. Brian and I stood back to back and hit everything. My little brother was getting the shit beaten out of him and Larry was racing around not really knowing what to do. He just used his agility and concentrated on not getting killed. The first punch in the dance hall hit me in the left jaw, another punch hit me in the right jaw. I turned around to see how Brian was doing. All he could see was another head and he punched me in the chin. The next day I couldn’t even eat Corn Flakes. And then the Epping cavalry arrived, thank Christ.

  We beat the shit out of those arseholes. We were walking away and this bloke raced after us and tried to belt me with a fence paling. I ripped it out of his hand and smashed him in the head with it. You can’t take Queensland out of the Jarratt boys.

  The NIDA year finished in November and didn’t start again until mid-Febuary 1972. I didn’t hold out much hope. Towards the end of the year, students were making lists of who they thought would make it into ’72. I wasn’t on any of them. I was voted least likely to succeed. I didn’t know how much faith John Clark had in me until years later, when he told me. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have made it.

  His faith in me was vindicated. Without sounding like a wanker (although I probably am) I’m the most well-known graduate from that group. Thanks, Clarky.

  NIDA holidays 1971

  I had a three-month break before returning to NIDA, so I decided to get my truck licence. I learnt the rules, booked a truck-driving lesson and took the test straight after the lesson. I got my licence first try. Yahoo.

  I answered an ad to drive a brewery truck for a company with a fleet of them. We’d drive around Sydney and collect empty beer bottles from depots in various suburbs. I’d turn up with a truck full of black plastic beer crates, unload those, stack filled crates onto the pallets on the truck and leave for the brewery with a full load of empty bottles.

  On my first day I was shown to my truck. I had to tie the crates down and head to Manly for my load of beer bottles. I’d never tied down a load before. I knew my Boy Scout knots but not my truckie knots. I did my best and off I went. I got lost and ended up in the hilly backstreets of Manly. I went up a steep hill and, still not used to the truck, I double-shuffled into first and jerked the truck savagely. The load fell off the back. I somehow got it back on and eventually found the bottle depot.

  The overseer of the truck fleet was the 22-year-old son of the boss and he was a little Hitler turd. By now he was screaming at me on the two-way about how long I was taking. The guy at the depot thankfully tied my load on for me and I went back to the brewery to deliver it. It was late by the time I got the truck back to the yard. The turd gave me another mouthful and threatened to sack me if I didn’t improve. I didn’t tell him about the load coming off, just that I’d got lost.

  Just after my parents married, on 1 January 1949, Dad got a job driving semitrailers for a couple of years. I went home that night and he showed me the running knot and the double running knot. I practised over and over for two hours. I went to work the next day on a mission. The turd sent me down to a goods train in Darling Harbour (back before it was ‘Darling Harbour’).

  There were bloody trains everywhere. I was given a code that would place the carriage, but I had no idea how to read it. The turd knew this and did nothing to help me. With the kind help of other truckies, I found my carriage full of empties. Again I was already late. By the time I’d loaded, the turd was screaming over the two-way again. The bastard had it in for me.

  Two weeks later, I knew what I was doing. I was loading and delivering to the brewery as fast, if not faster, as everyone else and he was still berating me. I took no notice and just did my job. After you delivered a load, you were given a beer ticket. You’d duck in to the private bar and a have a schooner. This was their best beer, it was like nectar from the gods. You’d be suckin’ on a beer and amazing people would be drinking beside you, like John Sattler and Ron Coote, legends of the famous Rabbitoh sides of the early seventies. The more loads you delivered, the more beer you drank; that was the incentive. By 4 p.m. you were the best truck driver in Sydney. No random breath testing in those days, that was still ten years away.

  The brewery was in Broadway, where that amazing building with the plants growing off it stands today. There was a long line of trucks at the brewery on this particular morning, which was unusual and new to me. I’d been in the job for two weeks. I finally unloaded and the forklift driver stacked my empty pallets just behind the cab. As per usual, I tied the pallets down. Next thing, the turd stormed up the loading ramp.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing? I’ve got fifteen trucks trying to get in here and you’re tying your pallets down. Drive out onto the street and tie them down there, you stupid cunt!’

  I turned to the fat guy sitting in a chair who gave you the beer tickets. ‘Did you hear what he called me?’

  ‘Yep, he called a you a cunt.’

  I walked over to the turd and punched him in the head. Couldn’t be better – the blow sent him reeling backwards into a mountainous stack of empty crates. They cascaded all around him. I left the truck sitting there, went out to the street, hailed a cab, went back to the truck depot, jumped in my car and went home.

  The old man reckoned they’d sue me, but I never heard from them again. I missed out on a week’s wages but it was worth it to punch that maggot’s face. What a cunt!

  My next job was driving a chook truck. Since that job, I’ve never eaten takeaway fried chicken. That’s forty-four years. It was early December and chicken was in high demand. All the farms were holding out to get the chooks sold at this time for premium price. I got the job because they were absolutely flat-out. These chooks were hormone-treated. They were fully grown in nine to ten weeks, a chicken in a hen’s body. If you pick them up much later than that, they’d start growing into emus and their little chicken hearts would cave in and they’d have strokes. You’d turn up and half the chooks were dragging a leg around, having had strokes. By fourteen weeks they’d start dying. By fifteen weeks, you’d have a very angry chook farmer to deal with. This happened to me on many occasions. I don’t recommend driving a chook truck in December.

  The chooks were never in the dark. Lights were left on all night. Instinctively chickens roost at night, but these chooks would just keep going until they fell asleep through exhaustion. Why? Three reasons: they tend to grow faster, constant movement keeps the fat down, and when the truck arrives they turn the lights off and instinctively, the chickens group together and all lie down. We’d walk in and start to pick them up off the ground and shove them in cages. You’d reach in and grab one leg. You’d gather seven legs into each hand and pick up fourteen chooks at a time, jam them in a cage and chuck ’em on the truck. They’d scratch the crap out of your hand with the other leg. I was told to wear gloves. ‘I never wear gloves’ – a sad mantra I picked up from the old man. I got a poisoned hand, then I wore gloves.

  I was running a bit behind on this unseasonably cold, wet night. I was heading back from the Southern Highlands and I was coming down Razorback Hill. A long, straight, sweeping hill. So I put it in angel gear (neutral) and rocketed down. I got up to 130 k’s per hour at t
he bottom, the fastest I’ve ever gone in a truck. I got back to the slaughteryard and the bloke there said to me as I got out of the truck, ‘Have you been speeding?’

  I looked at him quizzically. ‘How’d you know?’

  The whole front line of chooks were dead. The combination of high wind and cold had killed them. If I’d driven in the winter, I’d have had to put a tarp over them to keep them warm. It didn’t stop us using them, they were freshly dead after all.

  I used to get a bit of overtime cutting necks. You’d back the truck up to ‘the line’. You’d pull the chooks out and hang them upside down in a W-shaped stainless-steel hanger. The legs were wedged into the valleys of the W. The Ws were attached to a moving cable, at about 500 mm intervals. You’d hang the chooks and the bloke beside you would pull the head down to stretch the neck and slit their throats. They’d then be plucked by the plucking machine. (No, I’m not going to pluckin’ go there.) Next the chook would be inspected. If it was unmarked it would go to packaging as a whole chook. If it was bruised or paralysed down one side due to a stroke, they’d cut off the bruising and paralysis and throw what was left in the Kentucky Fried Chicken basket. I haven’t touched that for forty-four years and now you know why.

  I enjoyed my time on the chook trucks. No turds, all good blokes.

  Study, drugs and rock ’n’ roll

  I didn’t socialise much; I missed Rosa. I couldn’t get her out of my head. There were beautiful girls at NIDA, both in my year and in the first year. I went to plenty of parties on weekends.

  I’d had my first joint the year before. Listening to ‘In-a-Gadda-da-Vida’ on the record player, stoned out of my tits on army grass, good shit brought back by the boys in ’Nam. Now, I couldn’t touch my toes, still can’t, I couldn’t sit cross-legged, still can’t. So I’m shit-faced, sitting cross-legged under a tie-dyed parachute. I have this girl’s fox fur in my lap, and I’m terribly upset about its demise. As the music continues my head dips towards the fox fur in my lap, and my face ends up in the fox fur. Next day I try to repeat the process straight, no way in the world, couldn’t do it. And this is from a bloke who shot the heads off heaps of foxes in Aramac. Drugs, man, strange shit, man.