“I was working with serious Academics at the Institute of Criminology. I was given incredible access and ran around Sydney talking to Area Commanders about how they approached this issue. What an amazing insight into how Australia worked at the coal face of our communities and to understand the privileged inner city uni students perspectives that we had. We were quite limited. You know, going up to the Northern Beaches and talking to Inspector Keogh and his wariness around me was so profound.
I thought about a career as an Academic and I saw what was happening around me and I thought it was probably going to be soul destroying. Things were getting very conservative very quickly and Bob Carr who did great things for the environment in Sydney and NSW, did terrible things with our Criminal Justice and prison systems. He was almost personally responsible for creating the law and order gaze on criminal justice in our State and I’ll never forgive him for it.
During that time I’d also done a professional play with the Griffin Theatre Company that did pretty well and ran a couple of months. I also did some one-man shows at The Stables of The Griffin and downstairs at The Belvoir. I had a lot of fun, knew a lot of people in theatre and music and enjoyed my life. I travelled to Central America and when I returned I decided to go to College of Law and straighten up a bit.
I met someone and we eventually had a son Aubrey and I worked as a Lawyer for a while. I loved being a Dad and we decided to go to the UK. I lived there with Aubrey and his Mum Heather for a few years. Things didn’t quite work out as planned and I ended up working in a corporate job with Barclay’s Bank. That was my genuine time with the devil and I had a stupid car and it felt like role playing. We came back to Australia and Heather and I split up. I lived in the Blue Mountains for a while and then my mother who was always sporty and a hard worker died unexpectedly at 68. I’d spent a lot of time with my father Charles who had Dementia and more or less became his mate during the last three years of his life. We’d always loved each other but we’d never been close. He was an evasive fellow but mainly of himself, so therefore he couldn’t really form bonds with other people. He was a school teacher, very funny, clever and charismatic fellow. Dad died three years after Mum.
I did a show last September at the Drill Hall in Mullum and a short week at The Fringe in Sydney and it’s about my Mum and family and I would like to do it again, maybe at the Rochdale Theatre because it struck a chord. It’s really about how our parents shape us and the mysteries, the unanswered questions in all families really define who we are. I have a younger sister Kim who lives in Millthorpe. She writes under Kim Kelly and she’s written several novels. A year ago she came up to the Book Room in Byron and Ange Catterns did an in conversation with Kim talking about her book called Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room.
I had a relationship with someone who was a girlfriend at University and we were briefly married in our 40s. Her name was Julia. I’ve had a pretty mad life. We were only together for a few years and we did love each other very much but not well. It was after my mother had died and as my father was dying. It influenced everything in my life. My son Aubrey and his Mum moved back to the UK. I assumed that my son would come back to Australia as soon as he finished high school but he didn’t. Ever since I have gone back to visit him at least once a year and for many years I’ve organised my life so I can do that. It’s the sole source of real anguish in my life. Anyway, Julia and I broke up and Julia was a well known Writer and she made a film which did well and got into competitions including Cannes. I went over as Julia’s man bag and I think I enjoyed it more than she did.
Julia thought it was her right to have a child with me and it’s a really long story, but she ended up writing a book called Avalanche which contains an account of our marriage. It’s a book about her IVF journey in which our marriage is characterised essentially as a sub-plot. It’s cold and it’s bitter and it’s horrible. A mutual friend of ours from Uni said to Julia, after reading the manuscript…’There are some projects where you ought to open the bottom drawer of your desk and leave the pages there for a year and then come back to it.’ The Sydney Theatre Company did a theatre version of this story which gives you an idea of the charisma of Julia but it was not a worthy project, as a proper legitimate work of art, it wasn’t. That was nearly a decade ago and Julia hasn’t done anything since.
After that craziness I then came up to Mullum Music Festival and Kathryn and I got married and had a fantastic time for a long time. I became a very engaged Stepfather to Nina who is now 17 and Thibault who is now 22. Aubrey is 29. We were together for seven years and we all had dinner before Christmas and it was all very loving. We haven’t argued since we separated and Nina visited me at the office today. She and I spent the last two seasons playing football at Eureka.”