Chapter 38: Bicentennial Year – Part 2

Expo 88

September 1988

For our visit to Brisbane for our week-long gig at Expo, most of the people were flying, leaving Sydney early on Saturday morning for the hour and a half flight to Brisbane. Lisa and I were taking the train, the XPT left Central at 2:40 pm on Friday, getting into the main station in Brisbane just before 5:00 am on Saturday. We had booked a sleeper cabin for the trip, and the return journey would leave Brisbane just before 6:00 am in the following Sunday, arriving at Central just after 8:00 pm. We didn’t need a sleeper cabin for the return trip, a first-class carriage would be sufficient. At least on the train, we were able to get up and walk around, and the buffet car had a reasonable reputation for its food. Not up to the standard that the old Southern Aurora had, but I didn’t feel like driving the whole way, not on the Pacific Highway, and having to be back in Sydney in a condition to get back to work on Monday morning.

We had been booked into a hotel just across the street from the Expo site at Southbank, and Lisa and I had been promised an early check-in, so as soon as our train arrived in Brisbane, we could get across to our room, freshen up and wait for the others to arrive. All of our equipment would be arriving around midday on Saturday since we helped load it on the truck on Thursday. The sound and lighting equipment was already present at the riverside performance stage, it stayed permanently set up. All that we would have to do is wait until the previous group’s equipment was removed after their last performance on Saturday, get our equipment in place on Sunday morning, and do the necessary sound and lighting checks before our first performance on Sunday evening.

The train left on time and our sleeping cabin was set up for daytime use, we had comfortable seats, and allowed us to take in the view as the train travelled along. The trip was reasonably fast, it was just a bit over two hours to reach Newcastle – well, actually Broadmeadow, there was no point for the train to go into Newcastle proper, only to have to reverse and backtrack. A little after 6 pm, we stopped at Dungog, and we decided to make our way to the buffet car for dinner, while the attendant changed the cabin over to the sleeping configuration. We continued to take in the passing scenery until night fell, not long before we passed through Kempsey. Time to slide into the bunk – both of us could just squeeze into the single bunk; it was tight, but not uncomfortable, and we preferred to sleep together.

The gentle rocking of the train helped us fall asleep quickly; I think we stirred when the train stopped at Coffs Harbour and Grafton, but we slept soundly until a bit after 4:00 am when the attendant woke us to prepare for our detraining in Brisbane. The train arrived at the Roma Street station on time, just before 5 am, we collected our luggage and got a taxi to take us to our hotel. The room that had been book for us was a suite; I believe all the rooms in the hotel were suites, at least if the ‘All Suite Hotel’ on the sign at the entrance could be believed. The room seemed to be nice enough, the window looked out to the back of the hotel, away from the Southbank area and the river, and across the railway lines that less than an hour earlier we had come into the city along.

We unpacked our cases, putting our clothes for the week in the closet and drawers, and went downstairs to the lounge to wait for the others to arrive. It was close to lunchtime before they got to the hotel; their plane had been delayed in Sydney due to heavy fog this morning. But once they had settled into their rooms, Mary Beth called a band meeting in one of the small conference rooms to go over the plans for the week.

The first item was distributing the passes that would get us into the Expo facility for the week; these would get us into all of the exhibits, as well as the eating facilities, and the special ‘guest lounge area’ where we could sit down, have a shower and relax. There were also maps and guides to the Expo area, along with timetables of what events were on and where they were being held. There was a list of which countries had the best display, Canada rated pretty highly, as did the German beer hall.

Secondly, was the plan for tomorrow; we would have access to the stage when the site opened at 8:00 am; we had to get our instruments and mikes set up in time to do a full sound check at 2:00 pm. So there would be no time to waste tomorrow; we needed to be ready to get things set up as soon as we got access to the stage; the truck with all of our equipment was due to arrive sometime later this afternoon, they were due to go through Tweed Heads around lunchtime today.

“Everything’s on track for the start of our first show,” she said. “Tomorrow will be a busy morning, but once we’ve got the sound check done, you can all rest until the show starts.”

The subsequent days would give us time to look around the Expo, check out the various pavilions and try some of the different food places. Lisa and I were also going to visit her cousins at some stage during the week, we had arranged for them to get backstage passes to our show. They already had annual passes to Expo, like most of the people living in Brisbane, and they had visited it many times already this year.

“Subsequent days we have time off; we don’t need to do any sound checks or anything like that. Of course, if you feel like you want to do some rehearsing, we can do that; they won’t run the main PA system, but we can work something out. But that gives time for all of us to check out everything here at Expo, or do some touristy stuff around the city. I know Will and Lisa have relatives that they want to visit, so there will be time for that, too. So, that’s it until tomorrow morning, it will be an early breakfast for us and then we start setting things up; go out and explore, have fun, and see you later!”

“What do you want to see first?” Fiona asked.

“The Munich Festhaus looks fun,” Lisa said. “They have authentic German beers, plus the oompah band ... Interested? Peter told me it’s a lot of fun, and not to miss it.”

Fiona and I agreed with Lisa, the German pavilion sounded like a lot of fun, so we collected our things, and headed across the street and into the Expo site. It wasn’t all that far to walk to the German pavilion; it was set up like a large beer hall; row upon row of wooden trestle tables with benches, sawdust on the floor, buxom beer wenches (whatever that was in German – Frauline? Or was that just German for ‘girl’?) carrying huge beer steins. On a raised platform to one side was the traditional German band, all the musicians were wearing lederhosen, the place looked like it was right out of an Oktoberfest celebration.

We found some seats at a table, ordered three beers from a passing wench – I tried not to stare at her very impressive cleavage, but must have failed miserably, because once she moved away, Fiona teased me.

“I bet you were thinking about burying your face between her bosoms,” she said.

“Um...” I stammered.

“I can’t say I would blame you, Will,” Lisa said. “I want to do that myself, she’s got very impressive tits!”

“I’m sure a lot of it is in the bra she wears, they are like the ones we get from Kinkz, with the inserts,” Fiona said. “Even I could look as busty as that.”

“And when will we see you like that?” I asked.

“Play your cards right, maybe later today,” she said, just as our beers were delivered. “Who wants some sausages to eat? I can go and get some for us.”

We thought that was a great idea, so Fiona went over to order three services of the bratwurst meals for us, meanwhile, we drank our beers and listened to the German music. Just as Fiona returned, they start to place the ‘Chicken Dance’. We had to quickly move our beers as some of the people stood on the tables to dance along to the music. Lisa and I didn’t get up on the table, instead, we danced next to our seats. When the song finished, everyone – us included – yelled out for them to play it again, which they did. It was a totally silly song, imitating a chicken, flapping ‘wings’, but it was great fun.

With the dancing over, at least for the time being, we sat down and had our lunch – brats, onions, sauerkraut, fried potatoes. All washed down with some crisp German beer; it was very good. I understood why this was at the top of the list of recommended national pavilions to visit, particularly for lunch.

“The English pub is also said to be pretty good to eat at,” Lisa said. “I was talking to my cousins, and they said the three top food places are here, the English pub and the Greek one.”

“It’s like taking a round-the-world trip over several lunchtimes,” Fiona said.

We finished our lunch and beers, listened to more German music, then it was time for Lisa and me to get back to our hotel, as her cousins, Peter and Nada were picking us up at 3:00 to take us to their place for a barbeque dinner. Fiona said she would continue to look around the Expo site, and we said that we would probably see her for breakfast. Lisa and I headed back to the hotel to wait for the others to pick us up; we had an enjoyable afternoon and evening with the Conways. They wanted to know what we had planned for our Expo performances, what the train trip was like from Sydney to Brisbane, and what other places we planned on eating at.

“The Munich FestHaus is a lot of fun,” Nada said. “Did the band play the Chicken Dance?”

“Oh yes,” Lisa said, “and they had people dancing up on the tables, too!”

Eventually, the evening came to an end, and Peter drove us back to our hotel, where we returned to our room, had a long, warm shower together before getting into the bed. It was a large, king-sized bed, far more comfortable than squeezing into the small berth that was in our sleeper cabin on the train. We didn’t have the gentle rocking of the train’s movement to lull us to sleep, but we were both quite tired, and fell asleep, even before making love.

When we woke, there was time for some lovemaking before our shower, then it was down to the dining room for breakfast. There was a pretty impressive breakfast buffet; sausages, bacon, eggs, home fries – which even met with Mary Beth’s approval, waffles, pancakes, toast ... you could also get omelettes made, with a vast array of fillings. Lisa had to remind me not to stuff myself with too much food, otherwise, I would end up being out of condition for sailing. I did sort of restrain myself; I only went back for seconds, not for thirds...

With breakfast done, it was time to get across to the Riverside stage and start to set up our equipment. The truck had arrived on time last night, and we were meeting the roadies there so we could start unloading and positioning our instruments and amps. Mary Beth had the location plan and microphone cabling diagram. The road crew unloaded the equipment cases, we worked to her plan, placing thing exactly where they had to go. The stage wasn’t quite as large as the one we had used on our summer tours, but still, it was large enough for all of us. There wouldn’t be as much room between each of us and the amps, so as we moved around, we would just have to take extra care not to bump anything.

I think we must have been the largest group, at least in terms of the number of microphones required that had performed at Expo; certainly, with two drum kits and a big percussion stand to mike up, we were using all of the input channels on the mixer panel. Lisa and Chris went over the running sheets with their sound engineer, to make sure they knew how to operate the console. The lighting promised to be interesting, some fancy programmable laser lights had been set up to display various patterns on some white canvas sheets on the sides and above the stage. It sounded interesting, but sadly we wouldn’t get to see the effect, since we would be on-stage at the time.

By mid-morning, we had everything set up in their correct places, all of the microphone and audio cables were run, time to check that things were connected correctly, and we could hear ourselves through the foldback speakers. After a few corrections, mainly to the mikes on the drum sets, everything sounded right, Mary Beth was happy with it all. Time for us to have some lunch, and return later in the afternoon to do the proper sound check, and allow the lighting riggers to make sure the spots were aimed correctly.

Lunch today was at the English pub; fish and chips, washed down with a half-pint of bitter. All quite nice, although I drew the line at putting malt vinegar on my chips, I wasn’t going to go that far. We looked around a few of the other pavilions, including the Irish one. They had a computer terminal set up for people to do family history research, to find where their Irish ancestors might have come from. Lisa looked up the birth details of her grandfather, Patrick Joseph Conway, who was born in Ballina, Ireland in 1890, and came to Australia – Queensland – to work as an accountant for the big copper mines in Chillagoe. His father was also named Patrick Joseph, and the name had been carried down through the generations, his mother’s uncle was also Patrick Joseph, but he was shot down over Germany in World War Two, serving in the RAAF as a navigator on bombers. But her other uncle, Peter’s father, Ossie, named his oldest son Patrick Joseph, to continue the tradition. She printed off some copies of the birth records to give to her cousins.

Mid-afternoon, it was back to the stage for a rehearsal and sound check; we ran through the first two sets while the engineers adjusted the equalizers, mixer settings and microphone positions. Eventually, we were happy with how things sounded, but because it was still quite light, they really couldn’t see how the lighting effects looked. But we felt that things would work out well once the show started. All we had to do was rest up, have a meal, and get dressed before we went on stage at 7:30. Fairly impressive, although not one of the largest crowds that we had played to. We had prepared a special opening for our Expo shows, we started with ‘Time is Tight’, and at the end, I introduced each member as usual, but before we segued into the next song, I had a speech prepared.

“Expo, it’s great to be here, playing for you,” I said, and there was a cheer from the crowd. “This is a great experience for us, playing here, and helping showcase some of Australia’s musical talent. For those of you who have seen us perform before, it’s great to have you back. For those who have never seen us, welcome, we are glad to be able to play for you, and we hope you enjoy the experience.

“Expo ... This is an opportunity for Australia to show itself off to the world and for other countries to give us here a little taste of what they are like. It’s appropriate that we are having this event this year, the bicentennial, the two hundredth anniversary of the first European settlement in this continent, a bunch of prisoners from the United Kingdom who had been sent halfway around the world as punishment for their crimes. Who knew that prison settlement would develop into one of the most desirable places in the world for which to live.

“But this is more than just a celebration of European or British colonization of this country. For the people who were already living in this land, the native Australians who had been here for some seventy thousand years, there wasn’t much joy in the arrival of these newcomers. Their land was taken from them, their culture obliterated, and many of them lost their lives to new diseases, or the colonists – or more appropriately to them, the invaders – using vastly superior weapons to defend the lands they had taken. For many of the native Australians, that day, January 26th, 1788, is regarded as Invasion Day.”

The crowd was silent, taking in the message that I had just given them. I looked around, and counted us in for ‘Invasion Day’. I noticed the spotlights were focused on Rachel, Stewie and Traci, which I felt was appropriate, showing that we weren’t just all talk, but had Aboriginal Australians as a key part of the group. I wondered if we would get any criticism about my words, it certainly wasn’t part of the ‘message’ that the Expo 88 organizers wanted to be made, but tough shit, we could say whatever we wanted to.

We continued with the remainder of the set, the crowd seemed to enjoy the music, we finished the set off with ‘Midnight Hour’ and ‘Treat Her Right’, songs that always got the crowd fired up. The second set started with some slower songs, “We’ve Got Tonight’, then Allison did her soulful rendition of ‘Desperado’, and that led into ‘Fast Woman on a Slow Train’. Time for some of our original songs, mainly from the ‘Last Wave of Summer’ album to close out that set. For the final set, it was mainly some of our original songs, finishing out with the three Stones numbers before the encore; which included ‘Mean Woman Blues’, ‘Good Times’ and “Make You Happy’. We ended on time, at 10:30, the crowd seemed to be pretty pleased with our show, I’m sure they wanted us to keep playing, but the agreement was that concerts would finish at 10:30 pm. It was back to our hotel, and off to bed, a successful first night show behind us.

Mid-morning, we were hanging around the sitting area in the hotel, not quite sure of what best to do, when Mary Beth asked Paul, Phil and myself to come with her for a meeting with the Expo entertainment organizers.

“The chairman, Llew Edwards, wasn’t at all pleased with your introduction to ‘Invasion Day’ last night, Will,” she said. “I think they want to tell us to cut the remarks from future performances.”

“They can take a hike,” Phil said. “We can say anything we like, play whatever we want to, it’s our performance. If they don’t like it, they can cancel our performances. And we’ll get our lawyers onto them for breach of contract!”

“I doubt it will come to that,” she said. “I think I can hose things down.”

We entered one of the small meeting rooms, there were two guys in suits – neither was Llew Edwards, the retired state Liberal politician who had been appointed Chairman of Expo, thank goodness. Mary Beth introduced one of them as Ric Birch, who was the entertainment director for Expo. I knew of him, he had a huge reputation as the person responsible for producing major entertainment productions, special events, as well as film and theatre, and was responsible for the opening and closing ceremonies at the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games. Once Mary Beth had introduced everyone, Ric started the meeting, by mentioning that ‘the Chairman was very unhappy about the controversial political remarks regarding the settlement of Australia’.

“Llew felt that it’s not your role to make controversial political statements,” he said. “Particularly in the current political climate, he wants you to just play your music, and stay out of things that are divisive.”

“So you are telling us what we can and can’t have in our performance?” I asked. “We can’t make an introduction to the music we are playing? What other artistic controls does the Chairman want to make?”

“It’s not about imposing controls,” he said. “It’s just about what was specified in the performance agreement, you can do anything, provided it’s not obscene or brings disrepute on Expo, the State of Queensland, or Australia. And Sir Llew feels that referring to British colonization as an ‘invasion’, as well as your remarks about the destruction of Aboriginal culture and genocide fits into that definition.”

“Even if it is true, even if it’s part of the nation’s history?” Phil said.

“He would say the truth of that is up for debate, and the performance stage of Expo is not the place for that debate.”

“So, he wants to censor us, he doesn’t want us saying things that goes against what his political masters want to be brought to the public’s attention,” I said. “And what if we refuse to be quiet? Are you going to turn off power to the stage? Force us to be silent?”

“No, we certainly don’t want to go to that extreme,” Ric said. “I’m sure we can come to a reasonable compromise, where you can still give an introduction to that song, but without implying the settlers did anything wrong.”

“So, we continue with the cover-up, and let’s sweep any unpleasantness under the carpet, so we don’t offend anyone,” I said. “Yeah, we can ignore our conscience, and pretend bad things never actually happened, that will make all of the conservatives happy. Move along, people, nothing to see here. Seriously, Ric, do you think we are going to sell our souls for the equivalent of thirty pieces of silver? Do you think we are that shallow?”

I tried to make myself sound more pissed off than I was, and I must have been successful because he back right down.

“No, no ... that’s not what I was implying, of course, we’re not trying to suppress anything,” he said, “and we weren’t wanting to make a big issue out of it. Say what you need to as an introduction, but try not to make a huge deal of things like ‘invasion’ or ‘genocide’, okay?”

“We can work with that,” Mary Beth said. “But we’re not going to be part of covering up or white-washing what really happened. I’m sure Will can introduce the song in a slightly different way, that still conveys what happened, but without triggering conservative politicians. You can do that, can’t you, Will?”

“Yeah, I’ll work on something this afternoon,” I said. Mary Beth had left me a lot of scope.

“Okay, I think that’s about it,” Ric said. “But apart from that announcement, your show last night was great, a good mix of songs and the crowd really seemed to enjoy it. Keep it up, I’m sure the reviews will be great.”

With that, they left, probably satisfied that they had passed on the Chairman’s message to us. Mary Beth looked at them as they left, and in a very exaggerated manner rolled her eyes.

“Don’t make any real changes, Will,” she said. “Fuck Edwards, he can go and piss into the wind as far as I’m concerned! I don’t want anyone telling us how to run our gigs, what to play, or what not to say when we announce things!”

“Okay, I’ll just change around the order of what I say,” I said. “You’re the manager, if there’s any flak, you’ll be the one to get it.”

“That’s why I get paid the big bucks!” she said, laughing. “We’ll be fine, I think Edwards just wanted to throw his weight around, let us know he’s still someone important. By the way, we will probably have an interview session with TVQ-10, they have a studio on-site, as they are the official ‘TV Partner’ and broadcaster for the Expo.”

“Have you made inquiries about us releasing ‘Invasion Day’ as a single?” I asked her. “I’ve had a few people ask me, and we are going to get some publicity for it, I’m sure.”

“Okay, let me talk to Fifa, I raised that with her back in March or April, and they had no objections, we can go ahead, see what pans out. I’m sure they still have the master tapes somewhere in their vault, so cutting a master won’t be a big problem.”

“We would just have to work out what to put in the B side,” I said. “Maybe we can discuss that at our band meeting this arvo.”

Back with Lisa and Fiona, I told them what had happened at that meeting, and how Llew Edwards, the Expo chairman, didn’t like my remarks about ‘Invasion Day’. They wanted to know what we were going to do about it, and when I said ‘nothing’, they were pleased. Since it was now getting close to lunch, we decided to return to the German pavilion and have more beer, sausages and listen to the oompah band some more. Since it was a Monday, Expo wasn’t as crowded as it had been on the weekend, and we had no trouble finding a place to sit to eat and drink. Once again, a rather buxom fraulein served us beer, and we each got a service of brats, potatoes and onions to eat, along with some crusty dark bread. The food was just as tasty as it was the first time we ate there, and the music just as entertaining. We spent an hour there, listening to the music, enjoying our beers – I limited myself to one – and soaking in the atmosphere. Eventually, we had to return to the hotel for the group meeting, we had a quick post mortem of the previous night’s gig; no one saw anything that needed to be changed or anything that went wrong. We kicked around a few ideas for the B side on a re-released ‘Invasion Day’, no one song in particular from our ‘Songs of Injustice’ album was a clear favourite, so we would think on it overnight.

Nothing to do but relax before the night’s performance, I thought about how to modify my introduction to ‘Invasion Day’, but I couldn’t think of a way that would appease everyone. Of course, I would mention that we were about to release it on a single, so that would be a minor difference.

I thought the performance went well, we had become accustomed to the different stage size and layout, our choreography seemed to flow better, but maybe that was just my perception. On the first night, during Allison and me moving on stage during ‘Honky Tonk Woman’, I was maybe overly conscious of the slightly less space to work with, and I wasn’t really able to give it my best. Tonight, I was more comfortable, and I felt I strutted better ... At least Allison seemed to respond better when I ripped her leather miniskirt off, she smirked at me, and between songs whispered in my ear.

“I wish we could sleep together this week,” she said softly.

The next few days were pretty much the same – but without the meeting with Ric Burch and concerns about me making overly political remarks. The fuss over that seemed to have died down. Lisa, Fiona and I explored most of the Expo site, sampled pretty much all of the food offerings, rode on the monorail ‘people mover’ many times, and caught up with her cousins after the show on Wednesday night. Thursday afternoon we had the scheduled interview with the TVQ-10 people in the Expo studio, it was going to be a typical media event, questions about how we originally formed, what inspires our music, whether we had plans for another album, or future tours to Queensland, all of the usual questions.

We didn’t want to overwhelm them by having all of us turn up for the interview; we decided that just Paul, Phil, Bruce, Stewie and myself would go to the studio. The first few questions were pretty much the standard ‘softball’ questions, ones that we thought we would get, and we gave the stock answers. Then there was a new one, about the diversty of members in the group.

“What is interesting, to me at least,” the interviewer asked, “is how diverse your group is; quite a few women, several aboriginal members, even one who is blind. Has that been a conscious decision to do that, maybe to make some sort of political statement?”

We looked at each other, we had never been asked anything like that before.

“Absolutely not,” Phil said. “Everyone in the group started as a friend of one of the existing group members, someone who we knew, and we knew what their musical talents were and whether they would fit in with existing group members. They earned their place in the group, not because of their race or gender or disability, but purely on their talents as a musician, and to suggest otherwise is a bit insulting to them.”

“That attitude tends to be typical in society though, maybe it’s a reaction to the women’s lib movement, or affirmative action, or the ‘International Year of the Disabled Person’,” I said. “There’s the assumption that if as a society, we are trying to remove some of the discriminations of past years, that somehow these ‘favoured groups’ are getting a free ride, and somehow being given opportunities that they wouldn’t have got otherwise, they are getting things at the expense of everyone else, things they didn’t deserve on their own merits.”

“The problem starts where you get people or groups who at one stage, had a privileged position in society, once they are treated the same as everyone else, they cry and complain that they are being discriminated against,” Bruce said.

“If we want to make a political statement, we let our music do that,” I said.

“You certainly have some hard-hitting political messages in some of your songs,” he said. “Which brings me to my next question, that song ‘Invasion Day’, don’t you think it’s in bad taste putting out that message in this year, the bicentennial year?”

“Even more of a reason to bring that traditionally suppressed opinion out into the public,” Phil said. “There needs to be an alternative to the Government’s ‘bread and circuses’ approach to the anniversary of the establishment of the colony of New South Wales.”

“But calling it an invasion?” the interviewer asked. “That’s a bit over the top, isn’t it?”

“Over the top? Only for people who are unable to see things from any position other than the official one, that the continent was unoccupied, Cook claimed all of the eastern part of it for Britain, and then the First Fleet established the colony in Sydney Cove, and two hundred years later, we’ve developed into a wonderful country. Never mind what happened to the people who were living here at the time of the ‘colonization’, they don’t matter, do they?

“It all depends on your perspective, people haven’t been taught how to look at a situation from alternative viewpoints. Let me give you an example. You are at home, with your family, and there’s a knock at the door, some strange people, with what looks like some armed men behind them are there, telling you that the place is no longer yours, you have to get out, it doesn’t belong to you. How would you feel? You might be told that if you behave yourself, then you can sleep in a tent at the bottom of the back yard.”