I do remember something else that happened at the time, vividly. Rosa was pregnant. It’s what we wanted and it was very exciting. I couldn’t wait to have a child. We lived in a beautiful place to grow a baby for nine months. Poor Rosa was one of those women who suffer morning sickness all the time, for the whole nine months. She also overheated, so she would be lying outside in a T-shirt in the middle of winter. I know she felt ill, but my God, she looked more beautiful than ever.
Okay, time to get serious. A Jarratt starts a family, a Jarratt builds a house. Further down the Pittwater was an island, Scotland Island. Hardly anyone knew about it in those days. To build there you needed to bring the materials across on a barge and truck them to the site. A block of land was cheap, and we found one with views straight up the Pittwater for $11,000, about a quarter of the price for similar land at Church Point on the mainland. These blocks were one back from the waterfront. I bought a chalet-style kit home for $35,000 and we had a house for $46,000.
My agent called about this film being cast called Mad Max. It was written by the director, Dr George Miller, who was a medical doctor who’d never made a feature film before. His mate Byron Kennedy, who was equally inexperienced, was going to direct it. They were going to smash cars and motorbikes all over the place and you were required to do a fair bit of the driving. There were stunts from one end to the other and they had bugger-all to make it. Sounded like a shitfight to me. I already had a film with the SAFC to do in Adelaide called Sound of Love, which was fully funded and made by professionals. I chose that. Mel and Steve didn’t have a lot of choice at the time and ended up doing Mad Max. Poor bastards.
In Sound of Love I played a Grand Prix racing-car mechanic who goes deaf from tuning noisy engines without ear protection. It was a very interesting film. We had to make it up as we went along a bit. Because this guy went deaf and he couldn’t do sign language, everything had to be written down for him. That was very challenging, as the film could have become very boring after a while. We found a way to keep it entertaining and we ended up with a poignant, insightful film.
Playing a deaf person taught me a lot. In many ways, being born deaf is as tough as being born blind. Blind people can communicate better because they can develop vocabulary, music and mathematics. It takes a deaf person a lot longer to grasp these things. You can at least see maths and literature but you can’t see music.
I came back from Sound of Love to a lovely pregnant wife and the wagging tail of our black Labrador-Kelpie-cross puppy called Georgie. We’d bought her at the pound in February. She was all alone at the back of the cage, shaking all over. I fell in love with her straight away. She was one of the warmest, most intelligent beings I’d ever come across. She is on the small list of the best friends I’ve ever had.
Thankfully, my next job was a play for the Old Tote. We rehearsed in the city and the play ran at the Parade Theatre, so I was home every night during rehearsal and every night during the run.
The play was crap and failed dismally. The good thing about it was that I met Ross Thompson, a wonderful screaming queen, and Michele Fawdon, who was later to become a close friend. Ross lived at Whale Beach and I gave him a lift home every night. He cracked me up. He put the word on Mick Jagger once and Mick said, ‘I’m not into that at the moment, is that aw right?’ He used to playfully come on to me when I was trying to drive and I just threw the Mick Jagger line at him. I lost track of Ross over the years, but it happens.
Zadia
Five a.m., 18 October 1977. Rosa’s waters broke. We both jumped out of bed panicking.
‘The baby’s coming, the baby’s coming, the baby’s coming!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I think so.’
We stood there looking at each other for a while, like a couple of zombies. Suddenly Rosa had a huge contraction.
‘The baby’s coming, the baby’s coming, where’s my bag, where’s my bag? There’s my bag…’
‘Now don’t panic, I’m not panicking…’ (I knew straight away I was panicking), ‘wallet, car keys, let’s go.’
We made our way gingerly down the path to the jetty with the aid of a Dolphin torch. I brought the HMAS RS around and placed Rosa gently into the boat. Off we went. The boat leaked and I developed a wiggling method to slosh the water into my little square bailing bucket. I had that bucket for six months, but I finished bailing and threw it away. I was panicking and Rosa was screaming with contraction pain.
We had a little 1964 Hillman Husky station wagon. We left the Palm Beach car park at around 6.30 a.m. The best place to give birth in Sydney was the Paddington Women’s Hospital, a looong way from Palm Beach. We were flying through Newport and Rosa was having massive contractions. She was putting a lot of weight on the bucket seat. Suddenly the back of it snapped and Rosa fell back with it and did the rest of the trip lying back with her head on the back seat.
I was frantic. ‘What about Mona Vale Hospital?’
‘Nooo-wa! Paddington!’
We hit the Wakehurst Parkway, single-lane for about 8 k’s, in peak hour. I drove the whole way up the table drain. Onto Willoughby, and the contractions were getting worse.
‘Whaddabout North Sydney Hospital?’
‘Paddington!’
We finally arrived outside the main door at Paddo Women’s. I was trying to drag a hysterical woman doubled up with pain out of the car. Nurses heard the noise and came out, then went straight back in to get a wheelchair. We put Rosa in the wheelchair and the force of the contraction made her lurch straight back out again. We managed to get her into the ward and onto a bed. She was already dilated and Zadia was well on the way. If we’d taken any longer, the baby would have been born in the car.
The head was crowning, Zadia was nearly with us. But I was extremely alarmed. Every time Rosa pushed Zadia’s head would come out, and it was pointed, flat on each side! I was thinking, She can’t possibly be alive with a head shaped like that. I looked at the doctor and nurses, but they didn’t seem worried. I thought they were used to these situations and knew how to keep a poker face. Next thing, pop, out came her head and it bounced straight into a perfect rounded shape. Nobody had told me that a baby’s skull is in four plates when it’s born and they flatten out to get through the birth canal.
My God she was beautiful, she was a perfect dark beauty like her mother. Lots of dark hair, big brown almond-shaped eyes, a full mouth, olive skin, a bubble bum, perfect, beautiful. We made her, she was ours, no one else’s, always ours, still ours – you can share her but she’s ours. We made her name up. We were looking through a flower book and didn’t get far.
‘Azalia? What about Zalia?’
‘No, it’s a bit weak.’
‘What if we put a D in it, what about Zadia?’
We got Zadia home and stayed at Coasters until just after Christmas. It was a delightful place to introduce Zadia to the world. Georgie loved her; she was Zadia’s dog even then. We needed to get a rental on Scotland Island so that I could start work on the house. We lucked out and got onto the place next door.
My father, Rosa’s father and I built the house on the island. My brothers, cousins and mates chipped in when they could. My father was a bloody nightmare: he was the one who knew exactly what to do, and because Charlie and I didn’t, there were times he treated us like idiots. He didn’t know how close he came to a smack in the mouth. If family hadn’t been involved, Charlie would have jobbed him for sure. Apart from that, their dedication was unbelievable. Initially, they both took a month off work when we got to floor level. It was a steep block: the galvanised pipe posts at the front were about 3 metres off the ground. Brian could weld and he put all the steel posts and bracing in for me.
Because it was a kit house, it was pre-cut. Once the floor was in, it was pretty straightforward and went together fairly smartly. There wasn’t much in the way of power tools in those days, so there were no battery tools. We had an 8-inch circular saw, a couple of electric drills, a planer, a belt s
ander and an orbital sander. Lots of hand tools.
Dad brought a caravan over he and Mum slept in that, and the two mums kept us fed from the van. Charlie and Carmela slept in the rental with us. We got the frame up by the end of the four weeks. I started cladding and finishing and the two dads came every weekend. By around about May we were in the new house. We still had plenty to do, but it was very liveble. It took about another year to get it finished. The following Christmas Day I was up the ladder painting the back wall. My mate Cliff from across the road yelled out, ‘Are you tripping?’ He’s still living there and still a good mate.
Little Boy Lost
Boy, 1978 was a bumper year for movies. I did Little Boy Lost, Blue Fin and The Odd Angry Shot.
Little Boy Lost was another con job. The producers gathered a great cast and crew. The only thing they did right was hire a good line producer. They’d convinced us they were big-time TV guys from South Africa, and said the film was being financed by some company in Cape Town. They were, but not nearly as much as they made out.
It starred John Hargreaves, Lorna Lesley, Tony Barry and me. It was a complete shambles. Tony Barry went into the producer’s office one evening when nobody, including the town of Guyra, had been paid. He punched the panels out of the door while singing Rod Stewart’s ‘Tonight’s the Night’. We also had to stop the horse wrangler, a drunk Heath Harris, from dropping the horse he trained to drop, onto them. The film ground to a halt and it was taken over. Terry Bourke ended up directing and Phil Avalon, my old sparring partner from Summer City, became the producer. At least he had experience with shonky films. The film was shut down and moved to Sydney.
Dad had taken over as my agent by this stage, as I wasn’t happy with mine or any others on offer. He and Mum handled it with my help from 1976 to 1980, when Billy Shanahan came on the scene and turned the game on its head.
Dad did very well. I did some of my best work with him managing me. About a month later they’d found money and Little Boy Lost was ready to continue filming in Sydney. They rang Dad inquiring about my availability. Dad said he couldn’t discuss my availability until I was paid the $900 they owed me. They said it wouldn’t be a problem. The cheque would be at Actors Equity the next day. Dad went in and collected the cheque.
They rang him back. ‘Did you get the cheque all right, Bruce?’
‘Yes I did, thank you very much.’
‘Good, can we talk about his availability?’
‘Yeah, sure, he’s not available, he’s in South Australia doing Blue Fin.’
As I said, he did very well.
Blue Fin was set in a sleepy fishing village on the edge of the Great Australian Bight. It starred a fourteen-year-old Greg Rowe, who was coming off a high from a successful film called Storm Boy. It also starred Hardy Kruger, a German actor who’d carved out a career being the go-to German actor in Hollywood. He was a quiet guy, easy to work with, who played his part as the skipper of the tuna boat very well. My role was pretty straightforward and not at all demanding, as the young cool dude of the crew and Greg’s hero.
We spent most of our time catching lifelike rubber tuna off the stern of the boat. My character’s job was to climb the main mast to the lookout to scan the sea for churning water. Beneath the churning water was a huge school of blue-fin tuna. I absolutely loved it. The view from up there was spectacular. We’d steam out of the bay into the Southern Ocean for the first half of the day, have lunch and steam back to Streaky Bay, filming all the way. The cameraman was John Seale, who was recently the director of photography for Fury Road. He’s an old bastard now, seventy-two! Can’t keep a good man down.
From the lookout I saw all manner of things, including a large great white shark. Dolphins were always riding the bow wave and a large array of seabirds were always following. Hugh Keayes Byrne (famous for playing the villain in Mad Max and Fury Road) played one of the crew. He shouldn’t have! He suffers chronic seasickness. I’d be up in the lookout in a rough sea. This would make the top of the mast sway in very wide loops. Hugh would be in a crumpled heap below on the deck. I’d yell out, ‘Hey, Hugh!’ He’d look up at me and race for the rail, yelling ‘Fuck you, Jarratt!’ Puke, over the side.
The climax of the film was a storm at sea. Greg Rowe’s character falls overboard and I go in after him. The sequence was shot at night, in July, at the end of the Streaky Bay Wharf, which was about a kilometre long. It was a night shoot and it was freezing. There were half a dozen crew in the water in wetsuits forming a semicircle around the film site.
I asked ‘What are they doing?’
‘Safety – they’re white pointer bait.’
Very reassuring.
So Greg and I had been jumping in and out of the water for four hours. We were wearing short wetsuits, which didn’t help much. I didn’t complain because I looked across at fourteen-year-old Greg who was being extremely stoic, but a tear gave him up as it rolled down his brave face.
Back in the water and all hell broke loose. There was a large dark shape coming at us from below. Greg and I were out and onto the boat faster than Ian Thorpe could’ve done it. It was a bloody big seal. What a night – the worst night of filming in my life.
I awoke the next day at around noon. I was walking across to the breakfast room when a crew member yelled out to me, ‘Did you hear the news? All the stuff they shot was NG (no good), we’ve gotta shoot it again tonight.’
‘That’s not even remotely fuckin’ funny, Ray.’
‘No, no, it’s not bullshit, it’s true.’
It was true.
I had a defining moment on Blue Fin. I had a close friendship with a remarkable make-up artist: Jose Perez, a striking-looking Spaniard. If I was gay I would go for him, if he was gay maybe he’d go for me, we’ll never know! It was a brilliant full moon. Jose and I jumped on pushbikes and took a dirt road out of town towards these fishing shacks. The stars out there were mindblowing; the air was so clear you could see billions of them.
We stopped the bikes and lay on the sand to take in the stars.
We started talking about the possibility of an afterlife.
Jose said, ‘Of course there is. Look at those stars and feel your mind working. That mind doesn’t belong to your body, it’s inside you, outside you, all around you and connected to the stars. You feel the connection, right?’
‘Yes, yes, I do.’
‘Of course you do.’
Back home to Rosa and Zadia. It never ceased to amaze me: I knew Rosa was amazingly beautiful, but every time I’d been away for any length of time, she was even more beautiful than I’d remembered – she took my breath away. And Zadia, eight months old and an innocent angel. If I could have somehow bottled her pureness I would be a billionaire.
Immediately, I was back on the tools finishing the house. I’m quite a driven person. I have tunnel vision: if I’m into something, I’ll attack it relentlessly. I’d do movies and come home and work seven days a week to finish the house. It drove Rosa crazy, because she wanted time with me. I would tell her that we could have time when the house was finished. She’d get angry about that, then I’d say, ‘I’m getting in trouble for working hard – get angry when I spend all day at the golf club like other husbands.’ When I did go to a party or something, I’d get rolling drunk. I reasoned in my young ignorant head that I’d worked hard and I deserved to get drunk and have a good time. So Rosa had this guy who went off on films, came home and ignored her in favour of building and got drunk and out of control at get-togethers and parties. I was blind, and couldn’t see that I was doing much wrong.
The Odd Angry Shot
My next film that year was The Odd Angry Shot. I worked with the cream of alpha Australian actors on that film: Bryan Brown, John Hargreaves, Graeme Blundell and TV legend Graham ‘the King’ Kennedy.
I first met Bryan in 1975 at the White Horse Hotel in Sydney, where he and a bunch of actors put together a review-type show. He was very entrepreneurial and everyone was talking about it.
I went along to see what the fuss was all about. Bryan came out and did a very funny send-up of a commercial, ‘Where do ya get it!’ was the catchcry. After the show he came up to me and said, ‘G’day, John, Bryan Brown, how do ya get into movies?’ He’s always been up-front.
There have been plenty of knockers in this country regarding Bryan. Nobody knocked him on the way up, of course – they were raving about him – then he had the hide to get successful. ‘He just plays himself.’ No he bloody doesn’t. Bryan is what acting is all about, getting inside the character and not being afraid to throw as much of himself at it to make it believable. Bryan is a suburban boy from Bankstown. When he was cast as the lead in The Shiralee I was pissed off: the character was from the bush, I was more right for it, I thought. It’s his best performance, as far as I’m concerned – that character was dripping with bushman. Bryan obviously has an affinity with the outback even though he was raised in the city. They chose the right bloke to play the role; he did it better than I could. He also has this other thing called charisma, and anyone who’s ever met him will know what I’m talking about. It’s the thing that made Mel Gibson shine in Gallipoli.
John Hargreaves was one of my all-time favourite actors and my mate. He had everything Bryan does, as well as a tremendous depth that Bryan and I could only dream about. He could play a thug, a lawyer, a priest, anything, with consummate ease. As a human being he was outrageous, funny and a pain in the arse. He’d drive people crazy, and have actors and directors in tears or wanting to hit him. He never got the better of people like Bryan and me.
He was being a bitchin’ pain in the arse in the wardrobe truck. He was in his undies about to get into his army uniform. Bryan said to me, ‘Fuck this, let’s chuck him out.’
‘Suits me.’
We grabbed him, took him kicking out of the truck, threw him over a wire fence and threw his uniform at him. We never took him seriously.
The Bastard from the Bush: An Australian Life Page 18