Chapter 4: Building Relationships

Getting Back into Things

February, 1982

February saw life start to return to normal. Back at Uni, we started to prepare for the upcoming semester. Preliminary enrolment figures for Computing I indicated we would have slightly over three hundred full time students, and another sixty or so in the part time class. During the summer break another large room had been equipped with terminals connected to the Department’s PDP 11/70, which had also been upgraded with additional memory and disk storage. As well, another 11/40 had been commissioned, mainly for the assembler language programming class and graphics research.

I would be picking up another three graduate subjects, Digital Electronics and two communications subjects, which built on similar subjects in my undergraduate course, but went more into the design and architecture of computer processors and related hardware. The rest of my timetable was pretty much the same as last year, either giving or attending lectures in the mornings, an hour of running tutorials every afternoon, and Tuesday evenings were the part time classes. That still left plenty of time for work on my thesis; Doctor Dunworth and I spent a few days working on the plan for what I would try to achieve over the next few months, on both the router software development and the network expansion.

Meanwhile, the first stage of rehabilitation work at the house had finished, the front fence, driveway and entrance path were finished, the carpenters had repaired the area around the front bay window, replacing the old rotted timbers, spruced up the front veranda supports, and given the outside a fresh coat of paint. The back yard now looked far better, the jungle of lantana had been replaced by the native shrubs, and already some birds were starting to make an appearance. The next projects were to finish the repairs to the backyard shed and to build a vegetable garden along the side fence between the house and the shed. Eventually the broken concrete paths between the house and the garage and the back gate would be replaced; these wouldn’t be paved, but instead some compacted coarse sand would be put down, along with the brick edging to match the front path.

The next major project would be opening up access to the basement; Ian had started to draw up some plans, and we were trying to work out what rooms could fit in there. Some of the interior walls could be pulled out, but several of the walls bore the structural load of the house, so they would have to stay put. The plan we came up with had a large guest bedroom, and a half bath at the rear, along with what Ian called a ‘utility room’, which would contain the hot water heater and an air conditioner / central heating system. Where the old coal storage was would be turned into an office for me, and at the front, underneath my bedroom and the living room would be a large family room. It would mean pulling out the built in wardrobes in my bedroom and the second bedroom, so the two staircases could be put back in. Not that we would be rebuilding the attic at this stage, but it made sense to redo that staircase at the same time. There would be new built in wardrobes put on either side of each bedroom fireplace.

That work would cause some disruptions to our living arrangements; we tentatively scheduled it for the second week in May, which corresponded to the University mid-semester break, when we might be out of town on gigs somewhere. Since there would be a day without hot water when the heater was moved and disruption to the electricity as the main breaker board was also moved to the utility room, if we were away it would make for less disruption. However, that was still a few months away, Ian was still working on the details of the stairways, looking at possible designs for the balusters and rails that would be in keeping with the time period of the house.

Meanwhile, I took advantage of daylight savings giving good light well into the evenings, I spread some good lawn fertilizer over the grass. Some powdered and processed chicken manure, called ‘dynamic lifter’, that Celia recommended. For several days afterwards the whole yard stank of chicken shit; we had most of the neighbourhood dogs rolling around on the grass, trying to make themselves more attractive with the pungent odour, much to Fred’s disgust. But it did seem to improve the lawn; combined with regular deep watering the grass now had a good dark green colouring to it. Of course, that meant regular mowing; every Saturday morning I fired up the trusty Victa mower, and pushed it back and forward across the block. Celia’s suggestion of a ride on lawn tractor was looking very attractive, but that would have to wait for my next royalty check from Alberts, at least.

On the music front, things were doing well. We had the guys from Orange down staying for the week we were playing at Selina’s; we made room for them to camp in the studio. The three nights there, with them and us doing a double header went well; again Lisa was with us, helping Murph and Mary Beth on the lighting and sound desks. Sales for the album had passed the mark required to get ‘gold album’ status; there was to be a formal presentation at Chequers later in the month. As well, Ted would make a formal presentation of the share of album and ticket sales to the Children’s Cancer Fund; the final figures weren’t in yet, but Fifa believed it would be around two hundred thousand dollars that had been raised.

Of course, we couldn’t rest on our laurels; we started thinking about the next album, which would be in a similar style to the latest one. We felt that we had found our niche with the mix of pub rock and blues style of music. Paul and Phil had worked on a few potential songs, they hadn’t got any lyrics yet, but the music sounded good. We kicked around a few ideas for some cover songs we could do as well; after kicking around quite a few possibilities, we had two that we couldn’t pick between, an old Shadows song, ‘The Rise and Fall of Fingel Bunt’ and a cover of Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’.

Stewie came up with a novel suggestion for ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, he had recently acquired a set of steel drums, and was able to play them reasonably well. He suggested we try to give the song a slight reggae / Caribbean feel, and he had a bootleg recording from a Jimmy Buffet concert where they had covered that song. It had a great catchy feel to it, and his ‘Coral Reefer Band’ had a similar composition to ours. By the time we have the full arrangement worked out, it sounded damn good, I thought, particularly with Allison and Traci dancing behind me. The music was infectious, as they were playing, Paul, Mandy, and Fiona were all moving and dancing. Even Murph, Lisa and Mary Beth got into the moves, dancing behind the consoles.

“That’s just what we want for a live performance,” Phil said. “Something to get the crowd moving, get them into it.”

Bruce suggested a country hit, ‘Tulsa Time’, and we all pooh poohed it as some corny country song, until he pulled out a Clapton live album, and played it for us.

“Sure, it’s got a bit of a country feel to it, but we can pound that out of it, make it sound more like our style,” he said.

“I still feel like in should be in some western honkytonk, doing the Texas two-step,” I said. “But let’s give it a try.”

I was a bit dubious that we could make the song work, but we gave it a go, and it didn’t sound too bad. It still have that country two-step rhythm to it, but with a bit of work, and rearranging the backing, it would be another good one to add to our list. With the three cover songs, plus the new ones that Phil and Paul had written, and some others written by George and Harry, we had a list of fifteen potential tracks.

Other things were happening in the country; the big news in early February was the result of the second inquest into the Azaria Chamberlain murder that happened in 1980. This time the Coroner recommended that Mrs Chamberlain be committed for the murder of her daughter, and her husband as an accessory after the fact. This caused all sorts of media speculation; lots of arguments on all sides of the story. I felt that the initial story that a dingo killed the baby were somewhat far-fetched, particularly how the baby’s clothes showed no evidence of being chewed on or bitten by a dingo. However, since it was now going to trial, all of the evidence would be analysed, dissected and analysed again.

I got back into the habit of having dinner on a regular basis with Mary Beth, Allison and Fiona; once she was back in classes Mary Beth and I would have dinner on Tuesday evenings when we were both at the University that night. Allison was Wednesday night; we would alternate between a restaurant on the lower North Shore, or on the Northern Beaches. Fiona and I would have dinner on Friday nights at the ‘Longy’. Lisa and I started to spend Saturday nights around the pool at her place; generally just talking about ourselves and our lives or current events.

In fact, I enjoyed the Saturday evenings talking with Lisa, she was intelligent, well read, and could more than hold her own on most subjects. For her senior high school subjects she had studied Modern History, Economics, Biology and taken the top level ‘three unit’ English. She could have got into almost any university course that she wanted, but she was unsure of what career she wanted to get into. She had just started a degree in public administration at Macquarie University, one year part time completed, with another five to go.

She told me about her hobbies and interests, as a young teenager she was into horse riding, but now her main interest was photography. She was very interested in seeing the copies of Cathy’s photos that I had, particularly the panoramic ones of Barrenjoey and Palm Beach taken from West Head. She was also complimentary about some of mine, but I felt she was just being polite.

“I’m not anywhere near the same ability as she is,” I said. “Sure, I can get the exposure, focus, depth of field correct. But I don’t have that artistic touch, I don’t have the same eye for composition that she has.”

She looked at the camera equipment that I had, and she told me that for Christmas she had received a new Canon AE-1 SLR camera. I asked her about the lenses she had, and as well as the standard 50mm lens, she had a 70mm to 210 mm zoom lens. She was hoping to do a few courses at the local tech college, not just on how to take photographs, but also on darkroom techniques, developing and printing. Initially black and white, but eventually colour, when time would permit.

“Not that there is anywhere at home to put a darkroom in; but it’s just something I would like to know how to do,” she said.

I had convinced her to come with me to the sailing club one Sunday, she was content to stay at the clubhouse during the race, and talk to some of the other people, but she took her camera, and got some photos of the start of the race, and when we crossed the finish line, too. She said she really enjoyed watching the boats, and she talked to Celia and some of the other women, and was able to get some basic ideas about what was going on.

“The last Sunday of each month is a social race, the ‘Family Race’, we have a barbecue on the deck afterwards,” I said. “You could come along and sail with us, if you want. I’ll check with Don, but I’m sure he would be happy to have you on the boat with us.”

“I wouldn’t be in the way, would I?” she asked. “I have absolutely no idea what to do on a boat, I would just be a hindrance.”

“Not at all, I mean, when you come along to our gigs, and help Chris and Mary Beth on the desks, you’re not a hindrance, you’ve picked that up pretty quickly. It will be fun having you sailing with us. Everyone at the club is really nice and friendly, you probably saw how they make you feel welcome today.”

“That would be fun, I think. Would I be able to bring my camera, take photos while we are sailing?”

“Sure, maybe if you have a splash proof bag for it. I can’t see it getting wet, but there’s always a chance that a wave might splash water on us. You’ll probably want to have a UV filter on your lenses, too.”

“I always have one on them, just to protect the surface of the lens,” she said. “What will I need to wear, and bring?”

I told her that all she would need to wear would be some comfortable shorts and a tee shirt, some white soled shoes, like sandshoes or tennis shoes, sunglasses, and a cloth cap. The important thing would be for her to wear what was comfortable; it didn’t have to be stylish, just something to keep the sun off. She thought it sounded a great idea, and we set a date for the next Sunday.

With all the gigs we were playing, it was difficult to find time for the regular dinners with others, but I did manage to have dinner with Allison early in the month. I took along the newspaper cuttings about the most recent fatality on the Wakehurst Parkway, the one involving yet another white panel van that came off the road and burst into flames. The authorities had identified the driver, a man in his mid-fifties, coincidentally the nephew of the infamous ex-police commissioner from the sixties, Norman Allen, a guy named Neil Prendergast. The other passenger, a young woman, had not been identified as yet. I wanted to check with Allison, to compare that to what Jillian had told us about the history of the ghost. Something about it seemed to ring a bell in my memory.

We were having dinner at a seafood restaurant on the Strand at Dee Why beach, and I asked her if she had heard about the most recent accident on the parkway. She said she had, but not the details, and I gave her the newspaper clippings to read. She quickly scanned both articles, put them down and looked at me.

“Holy shit!” she exclaimed. “So, do you think Jillian, and her group of ... what are they? Guardians? Did they have anything to do with that?”

“Now, didn’t she say that it all started when some teenage girl was raped and killed by a forty-something year old man in a panel van? Was there something about the police investigation being shut down from someone at the top?”

“Yes, that’s what I recall, too. I wonder if somehow they found the guy who did it originally, had him drive along there, and the ghost got in the car, caused the crash killing him, and because she had got her revenge, she could be finally killed.”

“That sounds possible,” I said. “I wonder if Jillian will let us know.”

“I’m sure she will. Now, what do you want to order for dinner? I think their snapper is very good, did you want to start with anything? Prawns? Scallops?”

We started with a seafood platter for the two of us; a mix of oysters, prawns, scallops and calamari, and we then settled on the grilled snapper fillets. The food was excellent, neither of us felt like any dessert. After the meal, we went for a walk along the walkway at the top of the beach, walking towards the swimming pool. As we walked, Allison slipped her arm around my waist and I liked the sensations of our hips bumping and rubbing against each other as we walked.

“I think I’ve found someone for me,” Allison said softly. “Remember how I said there was a woman I met a month or so back, one Friday night at the Arms? A teacher at Bilgola Plateau School.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“Well, we met for drinks last Sunday afternoon again, and ... there’s a real strong vibe between us. Because she’s a teacher, we have to be pretty discrete, not that there’s any Departmental policy about things, but it’s a pretty conservative area, and if it got out that she was a lesbian, well, some of the parents could make things difficult for her. But we are talking about me at least moving into a room in her house up on the plateau.”

“That sounds promising,” I said. “I hope it works out for you, Allison.”

“We might have to cut back on our dinners together,” she said. “Maybe to once a month, and you could have dinner with Sandra and me.”

“That would be good; I would like to meet her. Give her my stamp of approval, as it were.”

“But I told her that I may still want to spend a night with you, depending on how things go with the young and lovely Lisa. Do you think she’s the one Jillian said would be the one for you?”

“Oh, it’s much too early to say; we’re just getting to know each other at the moment,” I said. “But she is a lovely girl, and I enjoy being with her, but ... I don’t want to rush anything.”

“Well, don’t screw things up, I have a good feeling about her, I think she will be right for you. She’s a nice girl, too.”

“Not that you’re putting any pressure on me,” I said, smiling.

“You know I have your best interest at heart,” she said. “And after everything that’s happened in the last few years, you deserve to have a nice woman, who loves you and that you can settle down with. I’m not starting to pick out names for your kids yet, but I do have a good feeling about her. As I said, don’t screw things up!”

“No, Mum, I won’t!”

“Dickhead; sometimes I wonder why I bother to care about you.”

We walked back to our cars, and had a long kiss before we drove to our respective homes. In bed, I thought about what Allison had said about Lisa; maybe this weekend sailing might give me more of an insight as to how she might be.

The final week of February we had a two night booking at Chequers on the Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and Thursday night we were there for the gold record presentation for the latest album. We had been told by Ted that as well as the gold album, he would be presenting a check to the Children’s Cancer Council, and the media would probably want to get some photos of us, or at least with me associated with the check presentation.

We were waiting around for the formal proceedings to start, talking to various industry people, when I saw my Labor party friend, Paul Landa standing with some others. I waved to him, and he motioned for me to come over to where he was.

“Will! Comrade, great to see you!” he said, shaking my hand. “You know Laurie, the Minister for Health? Laurie, Will Morris; Will, Laurie Brereton.”

I shook hands with him as well; I knew of him; but as he and his sister were key members of the Right faction, I had little to do with him, our paths in the party never crossed. But he certainly was one of the key powerbrokers in the State Labor party.

“How are things going in the leafy lower North Shore?” Paul asked me. “Do you miss the excitement and rough and tumble of the inner city branch?”

“Well, it’s certainly not as convenient to where I work at the University,” I said. “But it’s a nice area to live, quiet, plenty of good restaurants around, if you are prepared to drive for a few minutes. I’ve bought the place that I was renting from the Ramos brothers, starting to restore it to its former glory. Anyway, what brings you here tonight? I didn’t think either of you were into rock music presentations.”

“We, that is Neville and the caucus, agreed that the Government should make a matching grant to that cancer charity,” Laurie said. “As the responsible minister, I’m here to make the presentation, and Paul’s come along to make sure I don’t say anything out of line...”

“Well, thank you very much,” I said. “I’m sure Janelle would be very appreciative of everything you’ve done, and the money you’ve contributed already. I was quite touched with the donation you made at her funeral; I wasn’t expecting the personal donations you collected.”

“More than happy to help,” Paul said. “Now, could I ask a favour from you? I bought a copy of the album myself; although my daughter has commandeered it. Do you think I could get you, and the other band members to autograph it for her?”

“Not a problem, we would be more than happy. Grab me before everything starts to pack up here, and we will do that for you.”

It was about time for the formal part of the evening to start; we took our places on the stage. Ted took the microphone at the centre of the stage, called for quiet, and addressed the audience.

“Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the gold record presentation this evening,” he said. “Before we do the actual presentation of the record, there is another equally important matter to deal with. The album was dedicated to Janelle Ward, a nurse in the paediatric cancer unit at Royal North Shore hospital, who was engaged to one of the band members. She lost her life, tragically in a car accident last year, going into work to take care of kids suffering from cancer.

“We decided that a portion of the sales of each album and concert receipts we would donate to the charity set up in her name. I would now would like to introduce Doctor James Phillips, the chairman of the NSW Children’s Cancer Council, to accept this check for two hundred thousand dollars.”

There was a long round of applause from the audience, Doctor Phillips came up to the stage, and he accepted the large (both physically and monetarily) check from Ted. He made a short speech about some of the uses that they were putting the money generated to, then Ted called the Minister for Health to the microphone.

“Ted, Doctor Phillips, thank you for giving the Government the opportunity to help in this very worthy cause,” Laurie said. “Sometimes it takes a tragic event to remind us of what is truly important in our society. The sad death of a dedicated young nurse, losing her life while driving to work, to fill in for a sick colleague; her dedication to helping the most helpless in our country, calls upon all of us to step up, and challenges us to ask ourselves what can we do to help.

Last year, I instructed my Department to increase the budget for that cancer ward, so that more nursing and support staff could be employed, and I’m pleased to announce this evening that we will be matching the money raised by Alberts and the Roberttones, with another two hundred thousand to the Janelle Ward cancer fund, to go to train more nursing staff and to help fund research into more effective treatment options.”

More applause as Doctor Phillips accepted another check, he made a short speech thanking everyone involved, and then handed the microphone back to Ted. Ted made a short speech about how we had worked on the album, refined songs in live shows, and then promoted the album through the summer. He said that we were one of the hardest working groups on his label, and then Fifa came out with the actual presentation ‘gold album’ in its frame, and Phil and I walked up, collected the album, and shook his hand.

“Now, how about you play a selection of tracks from the album,” he suggested.

That was our cue to start; we played ‘Janelle’s Blues’, and several others from the album. Afterwards it was the usual meet and greet time, doing the rounds of industry ‘movers and shakers’, thanking radio station programme managers for giving the songs airplay, and the same with sales directors for various music and record stores. We had to make them feel that they were doing us a huge favour by playing our records; it would be bad form to remind them that if they didn’t have the product, the material to sell or broadcast that people wanted to hear, then ... But that was being a bit churlish.

I had been to enough of these industry events to know that they were a necessary evil; same as album release parties. It was all about stroking the egos of people who thought they were the most important people in the industry. Of course, even when we couldn’t get commercial airplay for our “Songs of Injustice” album, we still sold plenty of copies, but FARB – the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters, who represented the commercial broadcasting sector – would never admit that without their airplay, without them pushing an album or single, how could it ever be successful? Most of them lived in their own little world.

Before we packed up, I found Paul Landa, and we arranged to get everyone to sign his daughter’s copy of the album. He was very appreciative.

“To her, that is a far greater achievement that saving the Terania Creek rainforest, or getting native trees planted in schools,” he said. “Her perspective on what the important things are in life tend to be a little different from mine.”

We packed things up, headed home. That was the last of the major gigs; from next week, once some of us were back at University, we would do maybe one gig a week, generally on a Friday night.

Sunday morning I packed the Esky with food and drink for the post-race barbecue, picked up Lisa from her place, and we drove up to the sailing club. When we reached Mona Vale, I detoured past my primary school, then by my parent’s place, and finally past the high school, just so she could see places from my childhood. When we reached the clubhouse, I introduced her to Don and a few of the others, we made a note of our start time and the course for the day, and once Don had signed the starting sheet to officially enter us in the race, we went out to ‘Koolong’ to rig her for the race.

Don took the time to explain the purpose of just about everything on the boat to Lisa; telling her what would be done during the race, the starting process, and how the sails made the boat move through the water. She listened attentively, asking what I thought were good questions when something wasn’t clear to her.

“Why are most of the boats starting before us?” she asked, once the starting sequence began. “Isn’t that unfair on us?”

“The aim of the handicap start,” Don said, “is that if every boat sails according to their ability, everyone should finish at the same time. It makes the starts less frantic, because normally there would be ten or fifteen boats all moving around at the same time, with everyone attempting to cross the start line at the same time. It’s a bit intimidating for some people. This way, because we are one of the fastest boats in the club, we try to catch and pass everyone else. In a normal race, everyone starts at the same time, but their actual elapsed race time is multiplied by a handicap factor. Sorry, divided by that factor, we have a handicap rating of around 0.7, so when we finish, our handicap time is greater than our actual time. The slower boats have their actual time reduced, with the aim to give everyone a chance of winning on corrected time.”

“It all sounds very complicated,” she said. “So how do we know if we are winning?”

“In this race, if anyone is still between us and the finish line, they are really leading us. We have to try to pass everyone, but see that boat there?”

He pointed towards ‘Ed Ake’.

“We don’t want to let them pass us. They will start a minute behind us, and they will be the last boat to start.”

Don explained today’s course to Lisa, we would first beat upwind to Stokes Point, round it to port, then downwind to Taylor’s Point, a broad reach across to the mark off Lovett Bay, then Towlers Bay, Longnose Point, Stokes again – this time to starboard, and a final run to the finish. A fairly short course, and I doubted we would have sufficient time to catch everyone, particularly given the good twelve to fifteen knot nor-easter.

I kept my eye on the time board, and when there were two minutes to go until our start time, we lined up for our starting approach. Ian was up on the bow, counting down the distance to the line, and we crossed at full speed maybe two seconds after our time flipped over. Then it was hiking out, heading upwind to the first mark. Don explained how we uses the tell-tales on the sail to make sure the trim was adjusted, and I pointed out how we would look for the disturbances on the water, indicating an approaching wind puff.

It was cramped on the rail with the four of us; the Etchell was really a three person boat. Lisa was right at the back, sitting on the rail, then myself, Don, and Ian at the front. We passed two others before reaching the Stokes point mark, ‘Koolong’s’ ability to point higher than most others helped us, we passed them clear to windward, and we made the mark without having to put in a tack.

Once we rounded the mark, we sailed wing on wing back down to Taylor’s Point; Ian set the spinnaker pole out to keep the genoa from collapsing. Again, Don explained to Lisa how normally we would use the spinnaker for downwind legs, but this race was a ‘no extras’ race. We passed another two boats before gybing around the Taylor’s mark, and another boat as we reached across to the western shore. There were only four others ahead of us at what was the halfway stage of the race.

Rounding the Lovett Bay mark, we sheeted the sails in; Lisa tailed the genoa sheet for me as I ground the winch in; it was a fairly tight starboard tack to Towlers bay. We didn’t want to get too close to the shore where we would be in the wind shadow of the cliffs, but we had to clear the Longnose Point mark to our starboard side. As we approached the mark, and ‘Fat Cat’ who was just ahead of us, we hardened up, and Don steered us closer to the wind so we could clear the mark. ‘Fat Cat’ hadn’t judged the line to the mark correctly, and were too far below the mark to fetch it. As they put in two tacks to clear the mark we were able to pass them.

Three boats left to pass, ‘Rosa’, ‘Inga’ and ‘Sama’. I couldn’t see us catching Ron in ‘Sama’, but the other two ... We eased the sheets to take a faster line across towards the Clareville side of the bay, reeling in Rosa before we hardened up to pass the Stokes mark. That left Brian Milton in ‘Inga’ only five boat lengths in front, but ‘Sama’ was halfway to the finish line. Brian was cunning, and he didn’t let us pass him easily, but out superior boat speed had him behind us by the time we were three hundred metres from the finish. About the same time we heard Ron get the finishing gun.