Days of Wine and Rage

by Frank Moorhouse

  We are uncertain whether pub crawling is life-affirmative or life-negative. It probably depends on the attitude of each participant. Maybe it is an allegorical journey through all the moods of life to oblivion. But already we hear our fellow voyageurs shouting ‘loss of points for intellectualising’, one of the offences under Oxford University Rules for Pub Crawling.

  The points system of the Balmain crawl (based on the Oxford rules, which are found only in the oral tradition), is elaborate, arbitrary, and excruciatingly fair. It rewards and punishes with the subtlety and perceptiveness that you’d expect from eighty drunks.

  The Balmain crawl, although radically democratic (‘we are all organisers: we are all captains’), does have functionaries. The Chief Marshal’s position in recent years has been filled by lawyer Murray Sime. In recent years we have been the Scribe and the Chaplain; Adrian Heber, a divinity student, doubled as Caterer; and the Official Photographer’s post has been filled by Rob Wallis [now one of Sydney’s leading photographers].

  The points system penalises social misdemeanours such as zeal, grim determination, pride, and something called ‘complicating the issue’. For Oxford reasons the playing of pool or the piano in a hotel in the morning of the crawl is an offence called ‘diversion from the task at hand’, but in the afternoon it is likely to win you points as evidence that you can ‘drink and think’.

  The Rocks crawl is more formally structured even than this. Hotels on the route have time-punching machines at which participants have to clock their official entry card. Unlike the Balmain crawl where the route is historically fixed, the Rocks crawl is a matter of preference. There is a prize for the person who does the Rocks crawl according to a secret route, predetermined by the organisers. The prize is a case of Guinness stout, three dozen oysters, a taxi ride home, and an Alka Seltzer.

  The Rocks crawl raises funds for the Actors’ Benevolent Fund and the Rocks Old People’s Fund.

  Pub crawls attract journalists but little publicity. An organiser of the Rocks crawl, Shirley Ball, said, ‘It is really incredible – I counted twenty journalists on the crawl and we got hardly a word of publicity. They seem to forget about it next day.’

  The pubs around the Rocks ran out of glasses during the crawl because people either souvenired them or left them in the streets along the way.

  The Rocks crawl also organises entertainment at each of the hotels but as any voyageurs will tell you, to linger at any one hotel on a serious crawl is the trap of pub crawling. You stay for more than one drink and before you know it, hours have passed and the will to move has gone. Momentum is crucial.

  Despite the deliberate idleness of the Balmain crawl, some participants have been heard to seek justifications for it. We’ve heard people say that it was a great way to see historic Balmain and that it was better exercise than jogging. The women’s-movement team saw it as a way of surveying the local hotels for discrimination against women. Only one hotel has ever refused to serve women in the bar and it was boycotted.

  The Rocks crawl attracts many celebrities from television, stage and radio. The Balmain crawl has a rather more bookish and local membership – a sprinkling of university staff and poets, who generally live in the suburb. The old locals treat pub crawlers with head-shaking tolerance, having drunk in one pub and one pub only for a lifetime. At Balmain, one year, a barmaid asked why we chose Balmain for the pub crawl. She looked back at us with fearful disbelief when we told her that the whole motley crowd came from Balmain.

  Getting Credit

  (adapted, from the Bulletin, 27.12.75)

  Memo: To Trevor Kennedy, editor of the Bulletin.

  Could you use your influence to get us an American Express card? The advertisements asking people to apply for one are everywhere. We applied but didn’t get one. It’s because we live in Le Ghetto de Balmain. Paraphrased, the letter from American Express said that, with what we’d told them, together with what other people had told them, there was no way we’d get a card.

  We guessed it was because of where we lived and partly because we have no steady job, are not on the electoral roll, are not in the telephone book, do not own our own home, do not have a car, do not have insurance, and are divorced and a sexual deviant. But we do not gamble. Put that in – we are not gamblers.

  We’re the sort of person American Express needs – we are great luncheoners.

  Everywhere we go an American Express symbol looks at us with contempt: ‘second-class citizen’, it seems to say, ‘second-class citizen’. Could you mediate with American Express and point out to them that the way we run our lives means nothing about us as a credit risk. Some of the worst credit risks in the world are married, own a house, a car, have a steady job and credit references. Some of them owe us money.

  Letter from American Express

  Dear Sir,

  It is not that you live in Balmain (some of our best friends …) and it’s not that you are an unemployed, uninsured, homeless, divorced, disenfranchised, pedestrian deviant with no telephone. It’s just that no one admitted to knowing you … [thank you friends].

  [Signed] George J. Fesus, Vice President.

  Enclosed was an American Express card.

  It was, we wrote to American Express, good to see the human face of capitalism.

  Luncheon With a Royal Highness

  (adapted, from the Bulletin, 15.11.75)

  We represented the Ghetto at the New South Wales government’s arts luncheon for Princess Margaret.

  We went along with ‘a composer, four singers, an actor, three stage directors, a painter, two poets, a pianist, and a clarinetist,’ as the Sydney Morning Herald so accurately described us. We managed to talk to the princess about Balmain and the conversation then moved widely over Toad of Toad Hall, the young and poetry, talking animals in literature.

  We mentioned to Nancy Keesing, chairperson of the Literature Board, who was there, that we thought that we should’ve been put through a training session on protocol. She said royalty was much more casual these days.

  That was what we suspected and felt disappointed. We missed the pomp from the picture books of childhood. Gilded carriages and doffed hats. But they’ve still got the magic. We think that the way royalty use the magic now – putting on an everyday guise to walk and talk like ‘ordinary people’ – in fact reinforces their distance. The magic is saying ‘We have to make a huge effort to be like humans and it’s really just a trick – we are still divine.’

  One of the princess’s party told us that the trip had got rotten press coverage. She said the Australian seemed to have something against them. And then there were, she said, ‘those beastly Brownies at Bowral who cried’.

  That was when the royal party took the day off and left the Brownies standing on the railway platform all day with their flags in their hands ready to wave.

  ‘They’re not supposed to cry,’ she said.

  We ate fresh asparagus, pheasant, strawberries Victoria, cheese and petits fours. A simple writer’s lunch.

  The wine, Philip Hermitage 1959, is named after Princess Margaret’s brother-in-law. Come to think of it, the strawberry dish is probably named after a relative too.

  We sat with the fabulous Lady Anne Tennant, lady-in-waiting and childhood friend of Princess Margaret, and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

  Lilian Horler, a lawyer, made some sort of protest by talking republicanism at lunch.

  The Pears Soap Story

  (adapted, from the Bulletin, 29.5.76)

  Balmain makes other things beside poetry, lesbians and revolution.

  Balmain makes Pears soap.

  We have two soap factories at Balmain and some days the suburb smells very clean indeed. It’s difficult to know whether to classify this as pollution or very clean air. Pears is one of those soaps that everyone knows about but very few use. It is used by a subsection of the middle class (probably British-oriented) and has only about 2 per cent of the toilet soap market, and that is at the expensive end. The
re are twenty brands in the toilet soap market.

  We have been in many discussions about whether Pears soap had ‘changed’.

  We started our investigation with the tough questions. Peter Dunstan, general manager of Pears’ information and public affairs, answered them.

  We asked, ‘It’s claimed by you that Pears soap is transparent but we can’t see through it.’

  We pointed out that the word ‘transparent’ is as large as the word ‘Pears’ on the wrapper.

  Chris Hobart, managing director of Unilever subsidiary Rexona, was brought in. He argued that if you cut a slice of Pears soap you can in fact see through it. This was not true of other soaps.

  We carried out this test later in our home laboratory but we still have to say that it is more translucent than transparent. We suppose it depends on the fineness of the slice.

  We probed the contents of Pears soap. We were once told by a Balmain consumer radical that it was not in fact ‘pure’; it was allegedly made from the scraps of other soaps. Being a student of rumours, popular fallacies and folk beliefs, this seemed a typical example – that everything is the opposite of what it claims to be.

  The Unilever people told me that Pears is made from animal tallow (beef), caustic soda, rosin gum (from trees in China), coconut oil and rose scent, in an alcohol base (most soaps use a water base). The soap is about 80 per cent tallow, the beef and rosin gum giving colour and lather.

  There is no pear fruit in the soap despite the trademark and the old advertising slogan ‘Apples make cider, Pears make soap’.

  But was it the same Pears as you got in England; was it the same as it always had been? Chris Hobart conceded that ‘it is a lighter colour in England – a honey colour’. Out here it is a darker ruby red but the formula is the same.

  The chemists later told us that the formula did vary, with 2 per cent more coconut oil in the Australian soap but that this would not produce a discernible difference.

  ‘We are trying to bring the Australian Pears towards the British soap in colour – to lighten it up. The belief has been that the Australian consumer preferred a darker Pears.

  Chris said that he thought the colour balance was definitely out. Having just arrived from England, he thought the soap needed more rose bouquet too and he wanted the Andrew Pears signature on the wrapper again (had you noticed that it was gone?).

  ‘But,’ said Chris, ‘the soap is still as pure and as natural as ever.’

  Rose? We were dumbfounded to be told that it was a perfumed soap. We’d thought that Pears was without scent. It was something of a blow to our boyhood masculinity, having preferred it as a non-perfumed, non-sissy soap.

  We raised the question of firmness and the complaint that Pears in Australia was more inclined to go to mush.

  The Unilever people came up later with an answer that the British water is harder than Australian water (the harder the water the harder it is to lather the soap; hence soft water over-lathers and softens the soap).

  We watched the handfilling of the moulds in the classic Pears soap shape. The soap matures in the moulds over fourteen weeks and dries out, leaving the hollow or ‘dimple’ (where you stick the small remaining piece of the cake you were using).

  This is an old method. Other soaps we saw being made come out in a continuous flowing strip of hardened paste and are cut, shaped and wrapped in one operation.

  Pears is a flagship product of Unilever.

  The story of Pears is that a barber, Andrew Pears, started making the soap for his customers in 1789. In the mid nineteenth century an advertising man (one of the first), named Thomas Barratt, began to mass-market the soap. Barratt devised what are now standard advertising techniques including the testimonial, and then the parody of testimonials. He began with well-known people, stating in the advertisement that ‘Two years ago I used your soap, since when I have used no other.’ The parody had a tramp saying it.

  Barratt created Pears Cyclopaedia in 1897. He also made the first classic failure of advertising – one that haunts all advertising people – he made the soap product a household word but not a household presence. People read the advertisements, enjoyed them, came to know the name of the soap, but did not buy it, not as a mass product anyhow.

  It is obviously not quite what most people want from a soap.

  How does soap work?

  Dirt, say on a collar, or the skin, is made up of fatty excretions from the body, dust and soot from the atmosphere. This dirt gets jammed into the fibres of the collar or the surface of the skin by absorption or by a feeble chemical bonding, or is sometimes held there by static electricity.

  The soap or detergent contains molecules which when mixed with water try to flee the water; they flee into the dirt and this impact loosens the dirt, prises it off the collar or skin. Rubbing or agitation then carries the dirt away.

  But we know that we wash our hands for reasons other than hygiene. We do it to please our mother. We do it to punctuate our routines – the beginning or ending of something, say a meal or a piece of work.

  We use hand-washing to re-concentrate on the task. We use it to shed unpleasant experiences from our consciousness. It is a ritual of rejuvenation or awakening. A stimulant.

  We liked the irony that Balmain made the most middle-class of soaps.

  [Note: Pears soap is now back to its original colouring and is again transparent, thanks to campaigning consumer journalism.]

  Camping In Balmain

  (adapted, from the Bulletin, 19.6.71)

  The opening of Sydney’s first homosexual club rooms and offices opposite the Balmain police station required a little daring, we thought.

  To us it seemed fraught with social combustion because it was not only opposite the police but also a boys’ club run by the police, and just down the road was the Balmain RSL.

  It’s true that Balmain’s social profile has altered in the last five years, changing from a working-class, inner-city suburb to visibly semi-noncomformist, middle-class and hippy. While Balmain adapted with only slight friction, the Camp Inc club would be a real test of social tolerance.

  Not that Camp Inc has any special fondness for Balmain (or maybe it has a secret fondness) – as its journal said, ‘Camp Inc is alive and living in Balmain!! (and who would want to die there anyway???)’. Camp Inc moved to Balmain because the camp real-estate network found them ideal accommodation there.

  The club is a large, gracious, two-storey, stone colonial house designed by Blackett. Formerly a methodist youth centre, it has offices, kitchen, relaxing grounds with a barbecue, and a number of large rooms for socialising. Upstairs there are two flats, one occupied by Michael and John, activists and founders of Camp Inc.

  The Balmain police were informed of the club’s existence by their legal adviser but have never paid a visit. ‘The firemen next door at the Balmain brigade have,’ Michael told us.

  The club has socialising every night except Sunday, when an afternoon barbecue is held to raise the rent. So far the calendar offers films, discussions (next week ‘The Married Homosexual’), trips out of Sydney, and informal wine and cheese parties.

  Use of the club is accelerating, with about sixty and more attending every night. ‘They’re all types – butch dykes, queens,’ Michael said. ‘Naturally, at first we were all strangers and socialising was a bit hesitant.’

  The club hopes to organise its space to provide for different groupings. ‘Homosexuality by itself is not enough of a social link, really,’ John said. ‘It brings such a wide diversity of backgrounds and interests.’

  The club has been offering counselling – at least advice and ‘a friendly ear’, with reference to a sympathetic psychiatrist if a person feels the need for that sort of help. It is working the other way too – with psychiatrists sending patients to Camp Inc as a way of helping them out of social isolation.

  ‘Some people just come to me to talk and to say “I am a homosexual”,’ John said, ‘to admit it to themselves through me. The
letters we get are like that too.’

  Most of the people there on the Sunday we went were male, although about a third of the Camp Inc membership is female. There was some of the extravagant carry-on and affectation popularly associated with the image of homosexuality but of course most were conventional in dress and manner.

  We talked with Len, a middle-aged publican, about the origins of the words ‘gay’ and ‘camp’. He said that American troops during the second world war had used ‘gay’ to mean homosexual and it was now reviving. ‘Camp’, he said, went way, way back, although now he’d noticed that the newspapers were using it. He didn’t accept the idea that camp derived from the police acronym ‘Known as A Male Prostitute’.

  The journalism of the homosexual magazine Camp Ink and their newsletters is a self-concious parody of camp humour and jargon.

  All right you Melbourne lot – we’ve got a bash coming up for you, so you can stop whingeing … we’d like to call it Cocktails and Hors d’oevres but actually it’s the usual cheap plonk with party pies, little savs, lamingtons, and bread and butter with hundreds-and-thousands. Oh, and prunes and bacon for those with irregularities … everything included unless you care for lollie water, in which case BYO. Dress semi, so no need to wear your ruffles, but suggest leaving your jeans and Snoopy sweatshirt in the wash. We’ve told you what you’re getting so that you won’t have a fit of the vapours over the price – $7.50 a head. Oh dear, some fainted anyway … don’t worry if you are coming alone because it’s always a family affair …

  John sees problems in the club rooms. ‘The danger is that we will put all our energy into the money-making side and lose the – original political aim – to challenge and change the laws and opinion. We don’t want the clubs to develop into bigger and better ghettos.’

  Sonnet 95

  James Michener thinks of writing a guide book