The Hippie Hippie Shake

Richard Neville frequented The George. He even had a brush with the same magistrate that I did - one G. Locke, S.M., of whom more later:

Paddy McGuiness, a bearded and mumbling Economics lecturer, slouched about the campus [of the University of New South Wales] in bare feet and black corduroys, promoting the creed of anarchy as the best solution to the world's ills... Paddy was a member of 'The Push', a renowned cell of free-thinkers who favoured promiscuity, jazz and getting pissed. Their philosophy was propounded in a roneoed 'zine, The Libertarian Broadsheet.

Their pub was the Royal George. It was exciting to think I could mingle with anarchist pamphleteers, all railing against religion, patriotism, censorship and moral conventions. One Friday night I ventured in. Smokey alcoves, the juke box blasting Roy Orbison's 'Working For The Man,' paperbacks of Kafka and Camus protruding from pockets, people in black sweaters espousing free love... Then suddenly sirens, Black Marias ... the pub was surrounded by police, supposedly checking for under-age drinkers, but probably goaded by the pervasive whiff of anti-authoritarianism. A big word, much in favour at the time, for being a rebel without a cause. Anyone who wasn't anti-authoritarian was an alf, a despicable conformist. 'The George' was one of the few pubs a long-hair could enter without inciting an ocker's thump, the fearsome king-hit. The fatherly sergeant spilled the contents of my frothing schooner, indifferent to pleas I was not under age. "It's a bit too much for a nipper like you." It wasn't. The Push stance of permanent protest had struck a chord.

- Richard Neville, The Hippie Hippie Shake