The Fence-Painting Fortnight of Destiny: A memoir

by Meshel Laurie

  It was small and dark and had an actual fireplace burning away in the band room. There was no stage at all, so the band would set up on the floor, playing for a couple of dozen ‘swampies’ who would sit on the filthy floor, being careful never to look too interested in anything or anyone. ‘Swampies’ was the name Toowoomba gave to kids who wore black and didn’t listen to pop music. I wanted to be one real bad, but it was hard when all my friends were popped-collar, chambray-shirt, JAG-jeans wearers. It was easier to drag them up there in summer because it had a fantastic beer garden, but in winter, when the fire was going and the vibe was at its most Dogs in Space like, they’d complain about the lack of seating and the way it made their navy Country Road jumpers smell like smoke and we’d have to leave.

  Because the pubs shut at about midnight, and Rumours was, as we’ve discussed, a dump, Saturday night was house party night. For about twelve months, a little two-bedroom fibro house in Erin Street was the location for the hottest parties in town. I never did know who lived there, but I heard it was a guy from St Mary’s and his older brother who had no parents. Whoever they were, I don’t know how they lived in that joint during the week, because it always looked (and smelt) like a busted shearing shed whenever I was in it. There was a huge weekly bonfire, and the police arrived earlier and earlier every week, which we loved.

  Erin Street was where I first encountered the St Mary’s swampies who listened to the Violent Femmes and smoked pot. I immediately gave them money to score for me, but those greedy bastards became the first—and only—people to ever rip me off for drugs. It took me another six months but finally, just a couple of weeks before I graduated from high school, I got my hands on some pot, which I had planned for years to use as a ‘gateway drug’.

  It was all coming together, right on schedule, and I felt nothing but excitement as I coldly planned to shake off my childhood, my family, my friends and my entire persona, to move into a dark, romantic new life.

  TEENAGE INSPIRATIONS

  Melbourne was the light at the end of the tunnel of my teenage years. It was the setting for all my daydreams and the place I knew I’d find my tribe, even though I had never actually been there.

  It all started with my Uncle Frank. Technically he was Mum’s Uncle Frank, Peggy’s long-lost brother who’d returned to Queensland in his fifties to live with his mother. They were my mother’s only living relatives by then and both were suffering from serious health problems. Frank’s mother had the usual issues you’d expect from a woman in her eighties, but he had kidney disease and without dialysis would die within days, so they relocated to a small flat in the dreary northern suburbs of Brisbane.

  Uncle Frank would drive the two of them down to Toowoomba a couple of times a year to visit and they’d stay in our house, which meant a lot of sharing of beds and borrowing of mattresses from friends. Mum’s grandmother was called ‘Gag’ because some long grown-up baby couldn’t manage ‘Grandma’, and ‘Gag’ was the combination of sounds he or she settled on. The nickname stuck, as they tended to do back in the days when there were only about half a dozen actual first names to go around, and she was known to all and sundry as Gag for most of her life.

  Gag was a tiny little lady by the time I knew her, with a quivering voice, wiry grey hair and skin like an axolotl. She was deaf as a post and farted constantly, without reacting to it in any way. Mum called it ‘popping off’. We kids thought it was magic. ‘Stop laughing,’ Mum would whisper through her teeth, ‘She can’t help it. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She’s deaf!’

  ‘She can still feel them,’ I’d counter. ‘She doesn’t have deafness of the sphincter!’

  She’d just wander aimlessly around the place farting for a couple of weeks, with Mum hanging off her every word and constantly offering to take her for a drive. For some reason Mum thought old people liked to be taken for drives around Toowoomba and it was her go-to entertainment option whenever we had one in our custody. We loved it because we knew that at the end of the boring drive around the boring town listening to boring conversation from the front seat, there would be ice cream (at the boring lookout).

  Uncle Frank, on the other hand, was funny. So funny. He loved those old British comedy shows like On the Buses and Love Thy Neighbour and he talked like he was a character in one of them. He would say things like ‘Knickers!’ when he disagreed with something, and he trained us to yell ‘Cobblers!’ in reply. He also had a habit of asking ‘See?’ at the end of sentences, which I still do sometimes today.

  He’d been too young to fight in the war, but he’d left home soon after to seek his fortune down south under the bright lights of Sydney and Melbourne. He must’ve liked Melbourne best, because it was the setting of most of his colourful yarns. My favourite stories were about his slightly shifty survival methods, such as pocketing chops from the meatworks at which he was employed. He quite literally slipped a chop into each pocket of his trousers on his way out the door every evening, which struck me as rather wonderful somehow.

  Uncle Frank didn’t seem to have a single friend in Queensland, but spoke longingly of his great mates in Melbourne. Only later did I realise what a sad state of affairs that was.

  Eventually Gag died and Uncle Frank moved to Toowoomba to be nearer to Mum, who clung to him like he was a clanging buoy, bobbing in an uncertain sea. His kidney disease was getting pretty serious by this stage and he likewise clung to Mum like she was the only thing keeping him alive.

  He didn’t have much time for me as a teenager. He hated the way I spoke to Mum and the way I carried on like an obnoxious idiot, because he was a bachelor and didn’t realise it was normal. I still liked his stories though, and they planted a powerful seed in my mind.

  Around the time Uncle Frank was finding me rather unpleasant and telling Mum I needed a swift kick up the ‘jacksie’, the seed he’d planted was being fertilised by a late-night TV show on the ABC. My friend Jodie told me about it first. She was the funniest person I knew and had previously brought The Young Ones to my attention, so when she told me about The Big Gig I got right on it and it changed my life forever.

  It was a live stand-up comedy show that beamed into our house in Toowoomba every Tuesday night from Melbourne. It introduced me to people like Rachel Berger, Denise Scott, Lynda Gibson, Judith Lucy, The Found Objects (two-thirds of which became Lano and Woodley), Jimeoin, Anthony Morgan, Greg Fleet, Richard Stubbs and many more. At the time, they were completely unknown to me and to the greater Australian public. Of course they would go on to become some of the most recognisable faces in the country, but back then they were the hottest young things on the Melbourne comedy scene.

  Luckily we had two tellies by then, so I didn’t have to share the show with the lame-oes in the lounge room. I sat alone out in the dark kitchen and absorbed every second of it like medicine. It always started with Wendy Harmer, who’d deliver about five minutes of pitch-perfect stand-up, some of which I can still recite today. She was so inspirational to me. She talked about sex and drugs, religion and politics like she knew plenty about all of them, and she was so funny that everyone listened to every word. Occasionally she’d shock the crowd into a blushing ‘Ooooohhhhh’, but she never apologised—instead she teased them for their conservatism and challenged them to keep up, because she certainly wasn’t slowing down for anyone. She set the tone for a show that was as much about truth as it was about comedy. These comedians talked about real things that happened in their lives and in the world around them, around all of us, and they never hesitated to share stories that were embarrassing or scandalous. They smashed through the barriers of politeness and quiet acceptance of circumstance that I’d spent my life surrounded by. I’d been raised with shame as a default position, and The Big Gig showed me a group of people who seemed to have none, and were captivating for it.

  No one had a bigger impact on me than the act that closed the show every week, the Doug Anthony All Stars. Paul McDermott, Tim Ferguson and Richard Fidler changed
everything for me. Their comedy was aggressive and sexy. They swore a lot, which I loved, and crucially, they toured relentlessly. They were the first comedy act I ever saw live and I still think, with the benefit of having watched live comedy for over twenty years, that their act was a masterclass. They had the ability to make every audience feel like the show they were watching was an anarchic mess that could veer violently into chaos at any moment. However, anyone who saw as many of their gigs as I did knew it was a tightly scripted show, with thrills and spills carefully built in and skilfully delivered. I doubt anyone has ever thought to themselves that my comedy reminded them of the Doug Anthony All Stars, but I’ve always known it was there. Not only did I learn a lot about structure and bluff from them, but they shaped my very sense of humour.

  There were moments in my watching of The Big Gig that brought me to tears of relief and anticipation. I convinced myself in that dark kitchen in Toowoomba, as only a teenage girl can, that I’d found my tribe and I had to do whatever was necessary to get to Melbourne and join them. In a beautiful, symbiotic moment, I recently heard Dave Graney interviewed by former Doug Anthony All Star Richard Fidler on his ABC ‘Conversation Hour’ podcast. They were talking about Graney’s own memoir, 1001 Australian Nights, and in discussing his own teenage yearning to escape his home town of Mt Gambier, Graney said that ‘the incessant boredom of small towns can be inspiring’. I knew exactly what he meant.

  I announced to my family that I’d be moving to Melbourne when I finished school. They laughed. Even Uncle Frank, who’d achieved exactly the kind of emancipation I was planning, said I didn’t know what I was talking about and teased me with questions about where I would live and what I would do for money. I realised I wasn’t cut out for pilfering from the meatworks like him, but I also figured I’d work something out when I got there, as he had done. I was used to being treated like a ridiculous daydreamer around the house, and I managed to turn it into motivation. I’d show them who didn’t know what they were talking about, if I ever spoke to them again!

  It’s a great skill to be able to turn discouragement into motivation, if I do say so myself. To this day I often feel underestimated when I announce a new plan to my family and colleagues. I don’t even let myself feel disappointed anymore because I know I’ll be able to pull it off, and I use other people’s lack of confidence in me to propel me forward. I have smugness to look forward to, after all!

  I honestly don’t know where my limit lies. What length of discouragement without let-up would really do me in. I think I may have come close to it over a couple of desperate years in Brisbane, but we’ll come to that later. In any case, I’ve yet to give up on a dream altogether, and I’ve certainly never let anyone else’s fears prevent me from having a go.

  I didn’t recognise it was fear they were throwing at me across the breakfast table back then. I wish I had, because the way I coped with all the negativity and lack of support was to decide that the judgment of my parents was irrelevant to me. To be honest, I sort of wrote them out of myself altogether around that time. I conducted the odd conversation and hit them up for money, but emotionally I checked out of that relationship for many, many years.

  I knew instinctively that if I were to achieve my dream, I’d have to commit myself unwaveringly to the cause. I had to think positively about it at all times, as though it was absolutely and without question going to happen, and I simply couldn’t afford to listen to naysayers. Everyone does it now—it’s called ‘putting it out to the universe’ or ‘The Secret’. Back then it was called ‘being a stupid girl who needed to wake up to herself’.

  My fate was sealed when my number-one fantasy boyfriend Michael Hutchence made his acting debut in a low-budget Australian film, ostensibly about the ‘Little Band scene’, an experimental post-punk movement that sprung up in Melbourne in the late ’70s. In reality though, the movie is about the share house in which it’s set—a rambling double-storey terrace in Richmond, which has a Facebook page dedicated to it now, for tragic old fans like me.

  The movie, Dogs in Space, and that house were everything I wanted my young adulthood to be, and whether or not I reached old adulthood didn’t bother me. Sex, drugs and art, far away from my family and my town, surrounded by other people just like me, ‘kicking against the pricks’ as Nick Cave would say. I recently found out that it was actually Jesus who first uttered the phrase, mentioning to his disciple Paul, ‘It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks’—Acts 9:5. This discovery supported my theory that Jesus would’ve been right at home in my fantasy post-punk share house, and would’ve been running just as hard from contemporary Christianity as any of us.

  There was no internet of course, but every two weeks there was Smash Hits magazine, which kept me fairly well informed of the progress of Michael’s first film. Unsurprisingly its theatrical release bypassed Toowoomba, but eventually it was released on video. It was then rented by me, watched at least once a day for about two years, and never, ever returned to the video shop. It remains in my possession today, although I haven’t owned a video recorder to play it in for at least a decade.

  Dogs in Space introduced me to a whole new world of music, and suddenly it was Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Nick Cave blaring from my bedroom in place of INXS and Crowded House. I bought black tights and scoured op shops for old dead men’s suit jackets. My mascara budget became an issue. Uncle Frank shook his head in disgust. Mum didn’t know what to do. Dad stayed away from home as much as possible, but got very angry whenever he was there.

  I didn’t care what any of them did, to be honest. I wasn’t of them anymore. I lived inside that movie. My dreams, sleeping and waking, were about dark pubs with tiny stages, poverty and sniffling junky boyfriends. I couldn’t wait to get there.

  I watched the movie again on ABC2 not long ago, along with an accompanying documentary called We’re Livin’ on Dog Food, after the Iggy Pop song that opens the movie, and all the old feelings came rushing back. The desperate pang to be part of a ‘scene’ in Melbourne, to be whirling around its greasy wet streets in an old Volkswagen, dodging trams and shivering in torn black tights and op-shop cardigans. The funny thing is, I’ve actually done all of those things—and a great many other things I saw in that movie besides—but part of me still dreams of being that girl, in that Volkswagen, with Michael Hutchence by my side. To my everlasting gratitude, Saskia Post, the actress who played the young woman I will always want to be, accepted my friend request on Facebook. She’s a beautiful, gentle spirit. I often wonder how many creepy stalkers like me she’s had to contend with over the years. Not to mention how subsequent owners and tenants of that house in Richmond have responded to the reverence it is paid.

  Teenage passion is such a powerful force. In my case it sustained me through what could have been a very sad adolescence, and God only knows what kind of life beyond that. It took the place of self-esteem really. I didn’t like myself, but I believed that once I got out from under my family, my school, my religion and my town, I’d be free to create a ‘me’ I could like. That’s what got me through every day.

  My dreams protected me from the changing landscape of my family, the misplaced anger of my Dad, the disappointment of my Mum, the wrongness of my body, the bitchiness of my friends and every other shitful aspect of my very typical teenage years. Many people have tried to ‘pull my head out of the clouds’ and ‘bring me back down to earth’, but I’m so happy to say that no one has succeeded yet, and my dreams continue to insulate me from the harshest edges of life.

  Now that I have children of my own, I wonder how I’ll handle their inevitable flights of fancy. I’ve spoken to many parents about the risk of encouraging children who are dreaming dreams that in reality are probably beyond their capabilities. Most kids won’t grow up to win gold medals, or play professional footy, or win Oscars, or tour the world with their band. What will happen to them when they realise that our telling them they could achieve whatever they set their mind to was largely bullshit
?

  All I have is my own experience, which is that I achieved everything I pictured while staring at the sky from my desk at St Saviour’s in Toowoomba when I was fifteen. Every adult I knew was telling me that my faith in myself was bullshit, and as it turned out they were all wrong.

  WHY WAS MY DAD SO ANGRY?

  What made him change from the cheeky character whose humour and openness had drawn people to him for the first 35 years of his life, into the angry bastard he became so soon after? Well, I think we all reach a moment in our lives when the reality of being a grown-up hits us right between the eyes, and it hurts. It’s the pressure, the responsibility, and the relentless pace of keeping the machine of family life grinding on, and the frustration that comes from knowing you bought and paid for every complicated cog. In my father’s case, the 1980s provided the perfect storm in which he lost his family, his dreams, his confidence and his joy.

  One morning in 1982 I was awoken in the pink bedroom I shared with my sister by Mum, Dad and Grandma. I remember starting to think it was weird that Grandma was there so early, and dressed, but before I could finish that simple little thought, the heavy, hideous realisation of why she was there crashed down upon me. She was there and crying and Mum and Dad were coming to sit on my bed and comfort me, and I just knew before they said anything that Grandad was dead. He’d been dying of emphysema for years, but I don’t think anyone was really ready for him to go, least of all me. I was nine, and I was devastated.

  Whatever beef he’d had with my parents, even they will tell you that Jim Laurie kicked arse as a grandad. There were gifts and treats of course, but none as memorable as the way he made me feel, as though he really enjoyed my company. I knew he was always thrilled to see me come, and sad to see me go, and missed me when we were apart, at least as much as I missed him. If he had an errand to run, he took me with him. If he was going to visit a friend, he took me with him. If he was working in the shed, feeding the chooks or digging up the strawberries in his garden, I tagged along, and now that I have kids of my own, I know how frustratingly counterproductive that can be! He never made me feel like I was anything but a helpful contributor, or that I had to do anything or be anything to deserve his love. It was truly unconditional.