Tales of The Royal George

Les Murray in The Chimaera

2011-08-19T14:28:00.001+10:00

New poems by Les Murray, and interview with Paul Stevens; poetry by Geoff Page, Ann Drysdale, Peter Coghill, Amit Majmudar and many more. Fiction. Reviews. Go. Read. Light up.

http://www.the-chimaera.com/

THE FLEA Rave -- free bugs!

2010-06-09T08:53:00.002+10:00

Come to THE FLEA Circus and Bug Rave — a cast of trillions!

http://www.the-flea.com/

Terry Stanton has hitch-hiked north for winter

2010-05-26T09:03:00.000+10:00

Stanton, Terrence Mawson

A unique and wonderful character.
Died peacefully Sunday May 23, 2010 aged 63 years.
Much loved son of Arthur and Marjory (both deceased)
Father of Putu. Brother of Ann.
Friends are invited to attend a celebration of Terrence’s life on Friday May 28
at 11.00 am at St. David’s Anglican Church, Palm Beach.

(from Krisee Oliver) http://www.facebook.com/krisee.oliver?ref=mf

Back to Taylor Square

2008-10-18T07:51:00.000+11:00

If you blow into this site in quest for the days of The Royal George, you will also love Lynne Komidar's blog Musical Notes -- it's chokka with yarns, memoirs, snippets, photos and goss about that era, and does a particular focus on the Taylor Square scene. If you were there in that era then like me you probably don't remember much -- until you start looking at the names, faces and yarns at Lynne's place. Starting to come to you back now? So -- lurch on out of The Royal George and begin the long but adventurous Odyssey up to Taylor Square... but watch out for The Chimaera along the way. And make sure you don't find yourself Up Shit Creek!

About Tales of The Royal George

2008-02-03T12:08:00.001+11:00

This blog is an attempt to gather and preserve documents, photographs, narratives and other materials concerning to The Royal George Hotel, Sydney: particularly those items which relate to the "Young Push" who started frequenting The George in the 1960s. I am interested too in their further adventures beyond The Royal George, and also in their antecedents, the Push (or the "Old Push" as they came to be called). Any readers of this journal who have memories, photographs, documents or tales of this era are invited to contact me at the email address listed beneath the Links section in the left-hand column of this page.

My involvement in producing this blog is very intermittent. There are many more stories that I can, and hopefully will, write about this era. But I have to earn a living, and on top of that I edit three online literary magazines (The Flea, The Shit Creek Review and The Chimaera) which seem to snaffle up most of my spare time. I will do my best to add to Tales of The Royal George as I find time or occasions.

The intent in preserving these tales of the past is to help preserve them from disappearing into the foulness of time, and to entertain. Both the Old and Young Push represented significant eras in Australian social and intellectual history, and from their ranks sprang many of those individuals who were important influences on the way Australia has developed. As for me: I was not a person of any significance, but I did observe and participate in a fair slice of the activities at The George, and I did meet some of those who went on to contribute to Australian culture. About others whom I did not meet, I heard intimate (if sometimes apocryphal) stories, for The George was, if nothing else, an incubator of steaming gossip. Perhaps collecting this material here will preserve some that might otherwise have been lost, and provide an interesting read for casual surfers-by. I hope too that some of those who lived through the Roaring Days at The Royal George might have their memories jogged, and be reminded of their friends and exploits from that now ancient era.

The Royal George—now gentrified and renamed "The Slip Inn"—in 2004

The Death of Paddy McGuinness

2008-02-02T06:02:00.000+11:00

''...McGuinness's contribution was a different one and, to those of us in the Labor Party, deliciously counterproductive. He was part of a group - I call them the Angry Right - who locked John Howard into policies that ensured he was, by early 2007, seen as out of touch and out of date: climate-change denial, support for George W. Bush in Iraq, loss of workers' rights...

"McGuinness was haunted by ghosts. I always had this feeling in conversation with him. Women from the Push days, his Labor Party buddies from the past, above all the imaginary leftists who seemed to occupy a large part of his mental space. The truth is, in reality they barely existed. But he's given them the last laugh anyway."

—Bob Carr, 'Paddy had lost the plot'.

"...It would be hard to imagine a more diverse crowd than the one that gathered yesterday to farewell a man who was described as a loyal and loving friend, and as a writer whose influences included anarchism, libertarianism, the sexually liberated beliefs of the Sydney "Push" of the 1950s, and free-market economics.

"Among the politicians present in the 300-strong crowd were former prime minister John Howard and his leading consigliere, former health minister Tony Abbott. From the world of newspapers came a gallery of noted hacks, including Frank and Miranda Devine, Bob Ellis, Piers Akerman, Bettina Arndt, Paul Kelly, Max Walsh and Ross Gittins.

"Distinguished Australian poets included Les Murray—poetry editor at Quadrant, which McGuinness edited for the last decade of his life—and Geoffrey Lehmann...

[Photo caption in print edition: "In attendance: movie producer and former member of the Sydney Push, Margaret Fink..."]

"...It would be no stretch to argue that McGuinness's funeral marks a kind of terminus in Sydney's intellectual history.

"He was possibly the last living embodiment of the free-thinking tradition of ideas associated with John Anderson, the Scottish philosopher and Sydney University professor who dominated the city's intellectual currents from the early 1930s to the late '50s..."

—The Australian

The Chimaera Returns

2008-01-27T06:30:00.000+11:00

The Chimaera is an online literary miscellany which I edit, whose first issue came out in October 2007, focusing on the theme of Expatriate Poets. Issue #2 is now online, and this time The Chimaera is obsessed with Translation.

Traduttore, Traditore? you ask.

The answer is—Found in Translation!

http://www.the-chimaera.com

But there's also general poetry and prose, and a spotlight feature on Tim Murphy's alcoholism poems too: 'A Prayer for Sobriety'.

Poems and prose by L. Ward Abel, Mary Alexandra Agner, Arlene Ang, Neil Carpathios, William Doreski, George Good, Howie Good, Simon Hunt, James Keane, Guy Kettelhack, Don Kimball, David W. Landrum, Ralph La Rosa, Dave McClure, Margaret Menamin, Corey Mesler, Chris O’Carroll, Samuel Prince, Gail White, Peter Wyton, and Donald Zirilli.

Translations by Mark Allinson, Robert Bolick, Antoine Cassar, Catherine Chandler, Debjani Chatterjee, Adam Elgar, B. J. Epstein, Rhina P. Espaillat, Anna Evans, Andrew Frisardi, Susan McLean, Nigel McLoughlin, Chris Mooney-Singh, Aaron Poochigian, Henry Quince, Jennifer Reeser, Wendy Sloan, Janice D. Soderling, Alan Sullivan and Timothy Murphy.

Billy Thorpe at Surf City

2007-02-28T08:53:00.001+11:00

There was me, and Mia and Eric Nolan, maybe English Peter, Adelaide Jeff, Chris Owen, Kate. It was any Saturday night in 1964. We had left the pub early, gone back to the rooms some of us rented in an elegant old terrace house in Victoria Street, Kings Cross, and refueled with some cheap and quick spag bol that Peter would whip up. The night was yet young - where to now? Why, Surf City of course - an old movie theatre transformed into a venue for rock bands and dancing. Just a walk down Victoria Street towards the bright lights at the corner of Darlinghurst Road, where a traffic policeman in long white gloves and pith helmet would be on duty signaling in grand formal style the streams of cars this way and that. Now round the corner to where the crowds of teenagers were - Surf City.

1964 - the Beatles and Stones had just become popular. "Popular" is too mild a word - they were a religion. With them they brought long hair as a fashion style for males. Us lads from the Royal George had a mighty advantage: we already had long hair - for us it had long previously been a statement of difference and rebellion, one for which we often paid by being verbally or physically assaulted. But it was part of our badge of difference, and we flaunted the very real social hostility with stubbornness, pride and humour. Not that our hair was that amazingly long - mine, the shortest of our bunch, just curled down the back of my collar and was starting to invade the shoulders. It was longer than any Beatles or Rolling Stones’ hair at that time though. And much longer than the newly-converted youths who had suddenly realised that abandoning the universal short-back and sides was the new and potent way to attract girls.

So when our group strolled into Surf City we rightly felt ourselves to be well ahead of the prevailing fashion there. I would be wearing my black polo-necked sweater and long dark velvet smoking jacket, jeans, cuban-heeled boots. Eric was wearing a black velvet suit with flowing scarlet tie and maybe a top-hat. Mia, tall and stately, had boots, a skirts that reached to her ankles (a rare length in those days), honey-blonde hair in a French roll, and was smoking – to the amazement of passing straights - a small, elegant pipe. Jeff had a black waistcoat, striped shirt, threadbare, holey jeans (again at least a decade ahead of the fashion), elastic-sided boots, and was unbelievably scruffy and dirty, partly as visual statement, partly as result of his life-style. Peter, tall and muscular, was dressed in conservative suit and tie offset by his long hair. Chris had battered jeans and jeans-jacket, beard, and a mass of curly auburn hair that seemed to make girls flock to him in droves. Fran was fashion-model-gorgeous (though too petite to be a model), smart, cheery, with bobbed hair and the latest Carnaby street fashions. I was secretly and shyly very keen on Fran.

Into Surf City then, with the lights and music blaring and the sea of dancers - Mods, Rockers, Sharpies, Surfies - frenetically dancing away there - and we'd be dancing too, though sometimes a little differently. It was a Young Push fashion to sometimes break into a kind of folk-dance, link arms and whirl, hands waving in the air, as if we were on the village green in back in 1743 dancing to a fiddler after quaffing ale and cider. A kind of modified Morris Dance. Anything to be different and to have fun. Most of the straights would be doing a sort of Chubby-Checker Twist. But we couldn't help ourselves - we'd have to be different.

And nearly always at Surf City we were dancing to the music pumped out by a band wearing neat suits, the beginnings of long hair, but with incredible energy and style: Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs. The lead singer, hands clasped behind his back, would be leaping around from one foot to the other out the front, belting out amazingly good songs. We thought that fact a bit of a rarity for Australian bands back then, which often seemed but pale imitations of British Beat bands. But this is how good Billy Thorpe was: we all reckoned that his version of "Poison Ivy" was a fair bit better than that of the Rolling Stones, who we adored. In fact Billy Thorpe's version of Poison Ivy actually went to Number One on the Hit Parade ahead of the Beatles while the Beatles were touring Australia. This seemed impossible, but it happened. That was the kind of amazing achievement we admired.

You couldn't listen to or dance to Bill Thorpe without getting a real buzz - his music was upbeat, brash, fun, yet entirely what would now be called "cool". It was just damned good, and made us feel that local groups could indeed match those from overseas - a feeling that Australia's years of cultural cringe to Britain and the US had made very difficult. In later years Billy Thorpe reinvented himself and his music several times, and importantly, after moving to Melbourne, pioneered Australian Pub Rock music and cricuits. I have always been impressed by his energy and cheerful, positive attitude. He was a good bloke.

Bright-eyed and buzzing, we would stumble out of Surf City after an hour or two into the Kings Cross night and glaring lights, the traffic and the crowds, and we'd do the Darlinghurst Road promenade, gawked at by tourists and suburban straights who had come up to the Cross to see the bizarre bohemian sights and to hunt for easy sex from the Strip-clubs and prostitutes, we would chat and laugh with diverse Cross regulars we bumped into, maybe Swiss Walter, or Jesus Larry; usually then down to the Piccolo coffee bar for a couple of hours drinking long blacks and listening to its fine selection on the juke box, sitting fish-bowled in the crowded window-seats, checking out and being checked out by the swirling Roslyn Street crowds.

Then back to the Victoria Street terrace house. I had the attic room there, several flights of stairs up, a satisfyingly bohemian garret with plenty of floor space for the various people who would crash there for the night - sometimes ten or twelve people would be sleeping on that floor. Or other activities. Me in the double bed, hopefully with a girl - sometimes with the lovely Mia; never, alas! with the delectable Fran.

Last night Billy Thorpe died of a massive heart attack, aged 60.

Long Hairs in The Domain

2006-12-30T12:15:00.000+11:00

Sydney, The Domain, August, 1964 - left to right: Swiss Walter, Name Forgotten, English Paul, Terry Stanton, Rick O'Hara, Rod Grayson (thanks, Cass) from Melbourne.

The joke was: longhairs were etxremely rare in Sydney in 1963-64 - so much so that everyone would stare at you, old ladies would pass comments ("The longer the hair the less brains!"), wits would wolf-whistle or say "What are ya - a boy or a girl?", real men would offer (and sometimes proceed) to beat you up. Yet here was this statue of a long-haired and bearded solid citizen of yore (Sir John Robertson, an 1860s NSW Lands Minister). Hence the irony of the imitative pose.

I was there when the photo was taken, by the way. Maybe I held the camera. I wasn't in the shot though because my own long hair had been recently cropped due to circumstances beyond my control (a story for another time). The photo was taken the same day as the top one in this post.

Busy, busy, busy... up Shit Creek

2006-12-21T08:38:00.000+11:00

I'm sorry I haven't posted for a while. I've been busy working on Issue #2 of The Shit Creek Review, due online in Early January. It really takes up a lot of time, though it's very rewarding: issue #2 will be a ripper. Anyway, once that's done I will get back to The George and sink a few, God willing.

But for now -

Merry Christmas!

How many plays for two bob?

2006-11-29T09:54:00.000+11:00

You'll need to turn the volume right up on this - one of my favourites though. They don't make bands like this any more.

On the Jukebox

2006-11-29T09:49:00.000+11:00

- Micky Mick and the Stones belt it out. If they can't get none, who can?

Tales of English Paul

2006-11-24T15:14:00.000+11:00

Peter Granger (pictured right at Mission Beach around the time he visited the Frank's Cafe bus at Kuranda) contacted me through the email address on the side-bar after reading about English Paul on this site. Here is his letter with reminiscences of Paul, which he has kindly agreed to share on this blog. I will post it on the Frank's Cafe site as well.

Peter provides an interesting view from the outside of Frank's Cafe and its workshop. I guess the shop he refers to was the Challis Avenue, Potts Point shop. The workshop would have been the Glenmore Road Paddington one where I was one of the "incomphrensible, prostate, mutified leather workers... residing in various parallel universes."

The story of the origin of Frank's Cafe as a leathershop name is typical English Paul. I suspect that the name "Frank's Cafe" owed something to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" which was popular among this group at that time. Then there was Frank Hammond, junkie dogman (he used to work as a dogman on cranes swinging on loads 12 stories up stoned out of his brain) who became a leather worker at the start and was known as Frank of Frank's Cafe. Paul was very creative in his explanations of this that and the other, and would often make up stories on a whim.

Here is Peter Granger's account:

Paul Adams/Clarke was an extroadinary person in more ways than one. Here it is in 2006, and this is the first I have learnt that Paul and Vyda had died long ago in quite extraordinary circumstances. It is quite a shock, but then again not so totally unexpected.

I was in Sydney about 1966 - having been unwillingly conscripted for the Vietnam conflict - when I first set eyes on his Frank's Cafe in Sydney. It totally blew me away, and is still burnt in my brain as if yesterday. I was delerious over the leatherwork - like nothing I could have dreamt up in my wildest imagination. It sure was a long way removed from the prevailing plastic, spit polish and patent leather of my world. I was convinced THAT 'look, feel and lifestyle ('hippy') was going to completely change the world - and I wanted to be part of it. I couldnt wait to get out of the Army and set up something similar back home in Melbourne. Paul subsequently came down to Melbourne by train, and helped me set up Stuff Leathery in a small shop in Caledonian Lane, Melbourne. We were up and away - and with the later arrival of Ron Collins, Ivor Udris (are you guys still with us?) and later again Andy White, we relocated to the big shop in Swanston St, cnr Little Lonsdale - near the RMIT and museum. It lasted almost a decade, with three shops in Greville St Prahran (pre-bastardisation days) one in Oxford St Paddington, and a wholesale business. By the time I had set up the Oxford St shop 6 years later Frank's Cafe was gone... but I would walk down to where his shop was located and reminisce on that day I first looked in his shop window and was completely transfixed.

"Frank's Cafe" - what a brilliant name for a leather shop. "What was the inspiration?" I asked Paul. "Nothing at all - the previous tenant was Frank and it was a cafe... we just didnt bother changing the name." But as was his way, it was a name more by design than mere accident. He would chuckle when telling the story of trying to register the shop name with the State Business Names Registation Office. The official refused, saying he couldn't allow him to call a leather shop a cafe. I don't think Paul thought "Frank's (or Paul's) Leather Shop" had the same cachet, and of course, he was completely right.

A visit to Frank's Cafe Paddington workshop was quite an experience - subject to the time of day. Not uncommonly there were incomphrensible, prostate, mutified leather workers and hangers on residing in various parallel universes. Communication was not always the most productive experience.

Paul finally decided to move up to Kuranda with the double decker bus/home - another brilliant idea - with the intention of becoming a crocodile hunter/shooter. That sure came out of left field - but nothing seemed beyond the reach of that man - except perhaps merchant banker. I believe he did the croc shooting for some time until it was banned. My late (now deceased) partner and myself visited the bus in 1972. There it was in the middle of an otherwise uninhabited rainforest, wide open, like Thomas the tank engine - waiting to depart for the next station - but where? It looked like it had been plonked there by a helicopter. But sadly, there was no sign of Paul and Vyda. With mobile phones not yet invented, and a rather large back yard to search, we regretfully abandoned the bus.

I never saw Paul again, but have never forgotten him. He was a creative genuius/visionary at the forefront of change. How hippies evolved out of the stultifying conservatism that prevailed at the time is difficult to comprehend, but at the time, people like Paul were not an incremental generational change, they were a totally radical departure. He was the manifestation in one artistic individual of the extreme changes society was about to undergo. He detected those winds of change long before most others, and had the courage, talent, charisma and wit to live by them.

I would love to hear of any other news/stories about Paul.

"Little Dick's About to speak!"

2006-11-23T08:47:00.000+11:00

More from Cass Cumerford:

Around 1965

First person I saw in the back room of the George was Little Africa . He was small and almost as thin as I was. He reminded me of a bird who'd seen too many cats. He had a love of Methedrine - the white stimulant tablets that gave more pure energy and elation than anyone who'd never experienced it could even imagine. When they were high enough, he and Black Alan would let me sit in and play my little flute. Whatever they were playing, at some stage I'd come in with a few bars of "Maria" the only bit I could play, and they'd go off their heads with delight at the dadaist weirdness of "Maria" popping up inside their arrangement. Sometimes we were joined by Jeanie Lewis... before she became well known. Her voice was so strong and good it intimidated us a little, so she usually sang with the better musos who dropped in only at night.

I saw "Little" Dick in the bar. He was called "little" because he was, and he spoke always in the softest voice. In order to hear him speak, you needed to get close to his mouth and listen intently. Like me, he read a lot about Buddhism and his mumbling, besides being hard to hear, was heard rarely. He'd gained the reputation of being a wise holy man, so when he did speak, the word went out,

"Li'l Dick's about to speak!".

People moved closer to hear the latest wisdom. What great enlightenment he spake never reached my ears, because by the time I ever got next to his lips he'd always finished. The one time I did make it in time I heard him mumble,

"Have you ever tasted a Boston bean?"

He would later be the first of our mob to leave the Cross and discover the joys of Nimbin ( at a place called The Buttery).

A fragment of poet-talk

2006-11-19T06:06:00.000+11:00

From the now-hibernating Burgundy poetry critique website, a discussion of "The Days of The Royal George":

By Paul Stevens (Caratacus) on Monday, August 15, 2005 - 10:23 pm:

This is meant as an ott sentimental piece of well-outdated-doggerel-pub-song written by a bleary-eyed old codger living in the past. It has obvious clanks and clunks, which I feel are right in the spirit of the thing. I posted a picture from the cricket match at my blog here.

By Bob Bolton (Bob) on Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 6:20 am:

and what was the name of the famous dark-haired witch whose portrait was on the wall...?

Well, you managed to subvert the cricket thread back to poesy, didn't you!

By Paul Stevens (Caratacus) on Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 10:17 am:

Was it Roslyn Norton? Was that at The George? Don't remember that bit... A lot of it's a blur...

By Bob Bolton (Bob) on Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 12:26 pm:

Yes of course, and wrong pub - I was thinking of the one down the Harbour end of George Street. Ah, also, the poor old Forth and Clyde at the bottom of Darling Street Balmain - now offices I think, then Hell's Angels etc ...

Plenty of scope here to avoid poetry altogether...

By Paul Stevens (Caratacus) on Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 7:14 pm:

The Newcastle on George Street was a Push pub - is that the one? I remember a coffee shop at Kings Cross with Roslyn Norton paintings - was it the Appolyon? Sort of Norman-Lindsay-goes-bent stuff: didn't like it much myself. The London at Balmain throve on in the 80s a bit, & The Rose, Shamrock & Thistle, but I don't know of anything much re: Push now. The Old Push moved out of The George in the aftermath of Bogle-Chandler deaths, & rather despised the Young Push as brainless pleasure-seekers, & didn't come in there much except for occasional raids to carry off nubiles for philosophical purposes. I think they drank at The United States for a while & then the pub whose name I can't remember up near Hyde Park. A large section of the Young Push morphed into hippy leather workers centred around Frank's Cafe in about 1967 or so. A double-decker busload of them drove up to Kuranda & dispersed around about the time of the Ourimbah rock festival. English Paul, "King" of The George & of Franks Cafe, & his lady Vyda were shotgunned & incinerated in their house at Mareeba in a case that was never solved. Not much has been written about the Young Push: I'm trying to get some of it down before the brain cells flake away.

By Paul Stevens (Caratacus) (203.63.205.3) on Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 7:20 pm:

Here ya go: Rosaleen Norton - here. Thanks for reminding me of her, Bob. Any more cues would be welcome as I try to piece it all together. Where did that brain-cell go?

Royal George Days (and Nights)

2006-11-06T13:22:00.000+11:00

Cass Cumerford is a Royal George regular who has survived on into the twenty-first century. His blog, Beatnik Casbah, is a goldmine of information, memories, names and outrageous anecdotes - well worth a visit. Here he walks us through a typical day at The George, around 1965.

In the morning it awakes at 10-00 and allows the hung-over ones in to rest up and hide in its back room. Then the exceedingly lonely come sauntering in, shyly trying to appear as if they belong. They are its favourite clientele - but they don't yet know it. Regular devotees drift in around 11, hoping some group booze-up will soon develop. Around 11-45, a laughing Mrs G flogs her counter lunches. Dockworkers crowd the public bar. They're always hungry. By 12-15 their big boots possess 70% of the bar's foot rail. A pint of Millers dark tastes better with one foot 6 inches off the floor. It costs one shilling and nine pence for 400 ml! There are no chips or peanuts laid out in poofy little dishes for nibbles like in classy joints. Any free food would last but two minutes.

1-15, the pub is now full of boozy workmen on very long lunch breaks. It was perfect for we "beats". Mrs G occasionally slipped a free counter lunch to a few of her favourites if she knew they were broke. "But don't go telling everyone," she'd whisper. The first time she gave me a free meal I thought, "Wow, this is great .At last I've arrived! I've made it." It was my ultimate status symbol. I'd spent the rest of the afternoon mooching drinks, discussing the philosophical dimensions of the new revolution we were certain would soon transform the world into a heaven of loving enlightenment, or keeping a lookout for a "tourist" to con, or even rob.

Around 1-30 the beatniks and Genuine Old Push are assembling, eyeing every incoming stranger like gunfighters in a western movie. By 2-30 they've all mingled into one Democratic formation of bon homie.

Walk with me now from the bar through this connecting door and into the passageway. Hear how the bar noise behind us diminishes? Look, here's the inner sanctum, the "back room". It's relatively quiet. Have just a quick peek in and a listen. Folks are quietly conversing at two of the three big oval tables.

"Who's here?" someone asks.

"No one of any great note."

"Seen Les Robinson today?"

"He got a job at Garden Island"

"Poor bugger."

"No - it's a grouse job. He's a tally clerk!"

"What a bludge!" A dozen individual conversations begin growing until the joint buzzes with sound. Walk four paces north and come into the saloon bar. Here are small intimate tables where you could chat up a potential lover. The drinks cost a few pence more but you could connect with some influential shakers and movers if you're lucky. There's some tourists who'd heard the joint was a great place to mix with the underbelly of Sydney. And in the corner, a couple of intellectuals fervently debating art, politics or sociology. Libertarians also meet here to discuss and pursue freedom.

Some days around this time, if we were excessively broke or weak with hunger, Dutch Andy, Bates and myself would roam around holding out empty tin pie plates and begging, "Small change please! Help feed the starving beatnik!" Not many gave, but we'd get enough to buy hot salty two-penny potato scallops from the next-door fish shop.

3 P.M.-- a longhaired spunky brunette feeds a two bob coin into the public bar jukebox slot (five plays for two shillings) She chooses "Satisfaction"," Out of Time", "House of the Rising Sun", Dylan's "Rainy Day Women" and "Gates of Eden". Cats on nearby stools nod approvingly at her choices. Phil the Pill yells, "Press 'Subterranean Homesick Blues!’" but Mrs G tells him, “Shut y' cakehole -- it's her money." The public bar smells of spilt beer .

By 5 pm, the three sections have mingled, and the joint floats on a warm cloud of bonhomie. Mrs G now flogs the evening hot meals. By 8 pm the day's alcohol has taken effect, and The George swings with loud rock'n'roll, arguments and laughter. There's no security guard, only a couple of barmen, who can handle any biff-ups.

As a teenager, I'd left Adelaide to search for the kind of people Kerouac had written about. It took me 5 years and 5 vagrancy laggings, but eventually I'd found this joint of beat subculture. The mixing with what I considered "real" individuals was a turning point in my life. No longer was I so alienated. I had found my Greenwich Village, Soho and Montmartre. That was the beauty of The George.

At 10 pm closing time, I 'd mingle on the crowded footpath outside while the Push decided where to continue grooving. Two or three nights a week there'd be an all-night party of some sort. An invitation was not necessary. It was assumed that if you'd found out where the party was you'd earned the right to attend. On nights when nothing was happening, I'd head for the 'Cross.

In those days it was sometimes dangerous to have long hair. Yobbo youths enjoyed picking fights with "longhairs". Heading toward the Cross, we'd walk fast and try to look butch, so that no bodgies or squares would pick on us. The route we took was like the journey to Mecca. Always the same: East along King St then through Queens Square, Cathedral Street Woolloomooloo, turn right at McElhone, then through two alleys and we were in the zone.

The first place to check if it was swinging was the Piccolo Bar, a coffee lounge in Roslyn Street. It's the one beat joint still open today with the same style and décor. A balding stocky bloke called Ossie ran it in '67. Bi-sexual Ali shared a house with Ossie. It was (and still is) a magnet for anyone a little different.

A loveable Italian movie aficionado named Vittorio is the present maitre D. Many famous show biz folk have hid in there ever since the '50s. Bobby Darin, the blonde rocker Heinz, Marianne Faithful, Gordon Chater, Rick Nelson, James Taylor. Vito has their signed photos on the walls. The chairs and tables are jammed close together and it's impossible not to become involved with other customers. It was one of only five joints in the Cross that stayed open all night. The jukebox was the only one in town that featured modern jazz.

The second coffee shop to check out was the Aristocrat (where Hungry Jacks stood until 2004). But it wasn't as intimate as the Picc.

English Paul and Elvis Gorilla

2006-10-06T17:30:00.000+10:00

Cass over at Beatnik Casbah has been reminiscing about some of the great brawls at The Royal George; and truly, there were some spectacular ones. I described one such involving Brian Raven in a previous post. The one I want to talk about now might have become a brawl, but turned out to be a remarkable incident with an unexpected result.

It involved someone called English Paul, of whom I shall have much more to write in later tales. Paul said his name was Paul Adams, though it turned out his real name was William Paul Clarke. He was an extraordinary person. At the time I'm talking of now, 1964, I pretty much hero-worshipped English Paul. Among the Young Push at that time he was regarded more or less as being the "King" of The Royal George - for all sorts of reasons. Even after we stopped going down to The George, he continued as a leader, creating by his energy the entity known as "Frank's Cafe", a leather-working co-operative that ended up with a number of shops and stalls selling sandals, bags and hippy paraphernalia, and providing a living for many who would never have held down "normal" jobs. Frank's Cafe included a good number of Royal George refugees, including myself: I will tell its story later, but English Paul's part in it ended when he and others bought an old government double-decker bus, refitted it at Dural, and in 1971 drove it to Kuranda in North Queensland to form various settlements there. Ten years later Paul was dead, along with his lady Vyda. But that's for another story.

Back to a busy Saturday night at The George in 1964. The pub was packed and the beer was flowing; flushed patrons happily shouted bizarre conversations at each other. I was standing with Paul and a few others in the large passageway or vestibule which led from the Public bar through to the back room and further on to the Saloon bar. We were drinking away and chatting about something or other, enjoying, no doubt, being eyed-off by the incredulous passing parade of Alfs (or "straights" - ie non-long-haired bohemian types) who regularly trolled through the pub looking for weirdos to gape at and loose girls to try their luck on. The more docile of these Alfs were a reliable source of revenue - "bread" - or free drinks, or car rides to parties and so forth. But a goodly percentage of them came in with more aggressive activities in mind, and so it was with one group this night.

They were "Rockers" - Elvis hair styles, shirtsleeves rolled up way over their bulging biceps practically to their shoulders, cigarettes dangling from the corners of mouths. The apparent leader, who looked like a farm boy or a Westie, was huge, and particularly muscly. He tried out the old favourite insult of Alfs in such situations, directed this time at English Paul with his shock of long, frizzy, sandy-coloured hair: "What are ya? A boy or a girl?"

Normally the witty composers of this type of insult would scuttle off, well pleased with themselves at having impressed their gawking pals by such a talented display of dashing sarcasm. But not this one. He was cocky, and tough, and wanted blood, and an easy victory. His huge paw pushed Paul roughly against the shoulder, and he stood there smirking, waiting for Paul to burst into tears or flee or whatever it was that he expected.

Paul sighed. He handed me his schooner of beer. He dropped his half-smoked hand-rolled cigarette onto the floor and crushed it under his boot, then turned towards Elvis, who had stepped back a little and bunched his fist, ready to deliver a smashing blow. Paul looked pale, and very, very serious.

Look at the picture of English Paul, up top. He was tall enough - about 6 foot one, I guess; but very thin and slight-looking. He had a sort of ethereal quality that at that time reminded me of the poet Shelley. He certainly seemed no match for Elvis Gorilla in the muscle department. I thought, like most there, "Uh-oh! Paul's going to cop a hiding now. Looks like a general brawl's about to happen."

As I thought that, Paul sprang with amazing speed and accuracy straight at Gorilla-boy and instantly threw an arm around his neck, then twisted him, in one quick move, into a headlock. Elvis Gorilla struggled, gasped, turned red, turned purple, pushed with his legs this way, that way - but it was no use. Paul just kept on holding the bloke's head across his hip in an unbreakable headlock. Every so often Paul would give the bulging head a little wrench, to increase its discomfort.

The struggle went on for several minutes until at last Paul said, quite calmly, "You had enough?" Elvis gasped and nodded (as far as he could) to indicate that yes, he supposed he had indeed had enough. Paul released the headlock. Elvis had no fight left in him. He straightened up, staggered, then stumbled off looking as sheepish as you might imagine; his chums tripping along behind him with thoughtful looks on their faces.

Somewhere in the melee, I'd put Paul's drink down and it had spilled. I went to the bar, bought him and myself another schooner each, and we all carried on with Saturday night, chatting about where our next beer was coming from, which girls were particularly spunky, how New Zealand Chris or Newcastle John or Dmitri or The Ox had got himself into or out of some ridiculous situation, and what party we might go to later on - all as if nothing at all of any note had just happened.

The search for the perfect pub

2006-10-02T11:30:00.000+10:00

L to R: Nigel Roberts, Pam Brown, Dipti Saravanamuttu, Courthouse Hotel beer garden, Newtown, Sydney

I met Nigel at Swiss Walter's place in Cathedral Street, Woolloomooloo, in 1964. Swiss Walter's place was a room in a large, airy terrace house full of artists and other assorted weirdos. Swiss Walter (aka 'Mad Walter', for example, had concealed sticks of gelignite (which he'd nicked from the Water Board when he worked there as a labourer) in a hidey-hole under the floorboards beneath his bed. I don't know why he'd done this but I suspect there was a revolutionary agenda of some sort. I thought it terribly brave and non-conformist to sleep with gelignite under your bed. In the kitchen the fridge, the visible electricity cables, and an area of the walls had been painted over by John Olsen like a colour negative of some tropical scene, to startling effect.

Anyway, it was Nigel's first night in Australia—he'd just come over from New Zealand—and Nigel was one of the few poets that I'd met (others included Harri Jones, who had once tried to crack on to my girlfriend Michele Mainwaring at a poetry reading, and who drowned in Newcastle's Bogey Hole around this time, Tom Naseby, Julian Croft, and Shelton Lea). There were a few other people at Walter's place, and a big bowl of yipee beans, so the talk was animated enough and went on till daybreak. I remember talking to Nigel at length about Robert Graves, whose work I was getting interested in.

Later that year (or maybe the next) Nigel and Daphnette became an item. This was fairly stunning to me because a) Daphnette was a lesbian and b) I had admired her ardently but entertained no hopes for a relationship because of a). So Nigel's winning of Daphnette was indeed an amazing coup. Daphnette was magnificent. At The George she always wore a black beret, a scarf, some amazingly Bohemian top (such as leopard skin), and black tights, a cigarette (Gitane, probably) in one hand, long copper-red hair, and a languid, appraising, sensitive look about her that seemed to come straight from La Bohème. She would sit at The George (this was before Nigel met her) with her beautiful, vulnerable glance brushing like your proverbial shy doe lightly over the various beautiful girls and women who thronged the bar. God she was gorgeous!

But unattainable to Man. Until Nigel proved otherwise.

Nigel went on to publish several books and become one of the main movers of the Poets' Union. He's in Les Murray's New Oxford Book of Australian Verse, so he's done well.

From John Tranter's review of Nigel Roberts'In Casablanca for the Waters (more of Nigel later):

It is a journalistic cliche that literary and artistic movements have their birth in particular suburbs — the beatniks in Greenwich Village, the Paris intellectuals of the Left Bank, the San Francisco Renaissance. The real focus is usually not a group of suburban dwellings, but the meeting-places: the restaurants, clubs and especially the coffee houses.

But the story of the Sydney intelligentsia is writ in alcohol, and its odyssey was the search for the perfect pub. Most of the good songs, stories, novels, poems and little magazines in the 1960s and 70s were born in the haze, good cheer, raging arguments and cacophony of pubs — the legendary Royal George, the Newcastle, the United States, the Criterion, the Vanity Fair, and in Balmain the Forth & Clyde and the London. Out of that school of hard knocks and hangovers grew the Balmain Renaissance...

Shelton Lea and Jack Dancer

2006-10-02T09:54:00.000+10:00

There was a crash pad for Royal George Young Push in Crown Street, Darlinghurst, in 1964. I used to go there a bit as a seventeen year old aspiring beatnik; it was a convenient place to take girls to (suitable venues being hard to find).

Another place I stayed, just down the road, was rented by Anna, who was reputed to have entertained John Lennon and Bob Dylan in 1964: but I never saw them there. I saw a lot of Anna though - she handpicked me from the throng at The Royal George, grabbed me by my turtle-necked sweater and frogmarched me to her flat, where she gave me a close inspection lasting several months. She had long, straight dark hair and looked like Joan Baez. She was very strong, once challenging me to a wrestling match and beating me - though I was big and strong enough - without too much effort.

Anyway, Back to the Crown Street crash pad. Larry "Jesus" lived there, and English Paul, and Adelaide Jeff, and Shelton Lea, and many others. One of my defining memories of this period goes as follows: in the winter of '64, Crown Street (as the pad, a Victorian terrace house, is called) is full of long-hairs, bohemians, Push, artists, poets, beatniks and assorted entourage. It is bitterly cold, so the resourceful inhabitants are demolishing the wooden staircase, handrail and post, step by step, to feed into the fireplace. Eventually there is no staircase left, and the only way to go up or down is by gymnastic feat. The furniture, such as it is, is also disappearing into the fireplace to warm the shivering, ill-fed denizens, many of whom are in various stages of high or low pertaining to alcohol, yippee beans, bi-polar disorder and the rest of it. But one manic figure is unstoppably energetic: Shelton Lea, who leaps from one end of the dive to the other reciting his own poetry in a florid, rhetorical manner. Shelton is already a published poet - much to my envy - and will go on to build a considerable Underground Poetry Career in Sydney and especially Melbourne. At Crown Street and The George he is an italianate-looking curly-haired poetry machine, bright-eyed, unstoppably eloquent.

Now he is dead, as are many from the Days of The Royal George and after. English Paul, Vyda, Trevor, Warren, Jacques, Chuck Cookson, Marcia, Malto, Adrian Rawlins, Brian Raven, Vivienne.

I found this letter in a thread here. I have not yet verified the Ron Silliman allusion:

At 3:59 PM -0700 6/23/05, Ron Silliman wrote: Bard of the back streets Jen Jewel Brown 24jun05

Shelton Lea Poet, publisher and fine-book dealer. Born Melbourne, August 25, 1946. Died Melbourne, May 13, aged 58.

RAPSCALLION, big-hearted mentor and arguably Australia's finest romantic poet, Shelton Lea died peacefully at home in Clifton Hill, Melbourne, on Friday, May 13. He was renowned as the beautiful, charming, dope-smoking wag who was a close mate of Heide's Barrett Reid (poet and librarian) and Sweeney Reed (artist and gallery owner). He lived at Heide for years after John and Sunday Reed died, helping Reid put out Overland magazine.

Last year Lea spoke eloquently on ABC television's Stateline about his experiences as a 16-year-old in Pentridge, helping in the campaign to keep children out of adult jails. Later that year, the Victorian Children and Young Persons (Age Jurisdiction) Act 2004 was passed, effectively extending the definition of child from 17 to 18 in several areas of the law.

Lea lived life on a grand scale. Mystery surrounds the identity of his father, thought to have suffered a breakdown after serving in World War II. His mother came to Melbourne from Perth in 1946 to give birth to Shelton at the Haven, a home for unmarried mothers. The lively boy spent the first 15 months of his life there. One carer remembered him decades later as a delightful child, if a head-banger.

He was adopted into the Lea family of Toorak, famous for its confectionery. At 12 he became "too close" to a chocolate factory worker, who was accordingly fired. Distraught, Shelton told his adoptive father "I fire you" and ran away from home, ending up in various homes for wayward youngsters. He met Aborigines for the first time and was made an honorary black. At 16, he ended up in Pentridge's notorious C Division, where he witnessed rape and murder.

Time in Long Bay, Goulburn and Grafton jails followed. Lea became a skilled pickpocket and cat burglar. He penned love poems and letters for grateful inmates. For a time in the early 1960s he lived with gypsies on the roads of rural Australia. After being thrown out of Kings Cross for manufacturing LSD, he moved back to Melbourne where he met the Heide set through sculptor Joel Elenberg.

In his 58 years Lea had children with three women. Nine books of his poetry have been published. He is known for his articulate, street-smart humour, his gentle love poetry and the mythic, visceral masculinity of his visions. In a country where artists are generally asked what their real job is, he took his poetic calling seriously. A popular reader, he approached performance with an almost Shakespearean bravura. He also published several other poets' books through his imprint Eaglemont Press and ran fine bookshops including, recently, De Havillands in Clifton Hill.

His February diagnosis of Jack Dancer (as he liked to call his lung cancer) left him three months to live. He made the most of it, pushing through the release of his ninth book Nebuchadnezzar (through Black Pepper), while poems from it were accepted by The Age and The Australian.

Nebuchadnezzar was launched by Dorothy Porter at the Rochester Castle Hotel in Fitzroy, eight days before the poet's death. The pub overflowed. Although he had thought he wouldn't have the breath, Lea decided on the night to make a final, moving reading of the title poem. In the voice (with permission) of Aboriginal identity Sonny Booth and dedicated to Booth and Lionel Rose, the work is inspired by the Arthur Boyd painting, Nebuchadnezzar Burning.

Shelton Lea is survived by his partner Leith Woodgate, his children Kaye, Destiny, Danay and Zero, godson Ben, half and adopted siblings, and grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

The Hippie Hippie Shake

2006-10-01T16:08:00.000+10:00

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

Martin Sharp and the Yellow House

2006-09-30T09:37:00.000+10:00

..."His work is loaded with levels of meaning, says artist Peter Kingston, who worked with Sharp on Oz in Sydney, at Luna Park and at the Yellow House artists' mecca at Kings Cross in the 1970s. "Most of the things come with humour and a sting," he says....

'He's part social commentator, part shaman' - SMH

The Yellow House and other Cross Currents - SMH

Mellow Yellow - SMH

Milesago Yellow House

Yellow House - ABC

Wikipedia

Richard Neville visited The Royal George; I'm not sure if Martin Sharp did, but I well remember The Yellow House at Kings Cross about 1970: it was in Macleay Street, just round the corner from Frank's Cafe (in Challis Avenue), the leather shop run by many from The George's Young Push and others. There were fantastic exhibition openings/parties/concerts there: once Jeannie Lewis, whom I knew as a friend and folksinger from The George, completed the blowing of my already well-blown mind by singing at a Yellow House opening one of the sexiest, most amazing riffs I have ever heard.

In Push Society

2006-09-29T01:37:00.000+10:00

More on the Rocks Push. The Pushes were Sydney gangs of the 19th century after whom the Sydney Libertarians ("The Old Push" or "The Sydney Push") of The Royal George were named.

This is chapter III, "In Push Society", from An Outback Marriage by Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson

THE PASSING of the evening afterwards is the only true test of a dinner’s success. Many a good dinner, enlivened with wine and made brilliant with repartee, has died out in gloom. The quests have all said their best things during the meal, and nothing is left but to smoke moodily and look at the clock. Our heroes were not of that mettle. They meant to have some sort of fun, and the various amusements of Sydney were canvassed. It was unanimously voted too hot for the theatres, ditto for billiards. There were no supporters for a proposal to stop in the smoking-room and drink, and gambling in the cardrooms had no attractions on such a night. At last Cordon hit off a scent.

“What do you say,” he drawled, “if we go and have a look at a dancing saloon—one of these larrikin dancing saloons?”

“I’d like it awfully,” said one Englishman.

“Most interesting,” said the other. “I’ve heard such a lot about the Australian larrikin. What they call a basher in England, isn’t it? Eh, what? Sort of rough that lays for you with a pal and robs you, eh?”

The Bo’sun rang for cigars and liqueurs, and then answered the question. “Pretty much the same as a basher,” he said, “but with a lot more science and dog-cunning about him. They go in gangs, and if you hit one of the gang, all the rest will ‘deal with you’, as they call it.

“If they have to wait a year to get you, they’ll wait, and get you alone some night or other and set on to you. They jump on a man if they get him down, too. Oh, they’re regular beauties.”

“Rather roughish sort of Johnnies, eh?” said the Englishman. “But we might go and see the dancing—no harm in that.”

Pinnock said he had to go back to his office; the globe-trotter didn’t care about going out at night: and the Bo’sun tried to laugh the thing off. “You don’t catch me going,” he said. “There’s nothing to be seen—just a lot of flash young rowdies dancing. You’ll gape at them, and they’ll gape at you, and you’ll feel rather a pair of fools, and you’ll come away. Better stop and have a rubber.”

“If you dance with any of their women, you get her particular fancy-man on to you, don’t you?” asked Gordon. “It’s years since I was at that sort of place myself.”

The Bo’sun, who knew nothing about it, assumed the Sir Oracle at once.

“I don’t suppose their women would dance with you if you paid ’em five shillings a step,” he said.

“There’d certainly be a fight if they did. Are you fond of fighting, Carew?”

“Not a bit,” replied that worthy. “Never fight if you can help it. No chap with any sense ever does.”

“That’s like me,” said Gordon. “I’d sooner run a mile than fight, any time. I’m like a rat if I’m cornered, but it takes a man with a stockwhip to corner me. I never start fighting till I’m done running. But we needn’t get into a row. I vote we go. Will you come, Carew?”

“Oh, yes; I’d like to,” said the Englishman. “I don’t suppose we need get into a fight.”

So, after many jeers from the Bo’sun, and promises to come back and and tell them all about it, Carew and Gordon sallied forth, a pair of men as capable of looking after themselves as one would meet in a day’s march. Stepping into the street they called a cab.

“Where to, sir?” asked the cabman.

“Nearest dancing saloon,” said Gordon, briefly.

“Nearest darncin’ saloon,” said the cabman. “There ain’t no parties tonight, sir; it’s too ’ot.”

“We’re not expecting to drop into a ballroom without being asked, thank you,” said Gordon.

“We want to go to one of those saloons where you pay a shilling to go in. Some place where the larrikins go.”

“Ho! is that it, sir?” said the cabman, with a grin. “Well, I’ll take you to a noo place, most selectest place I know. Git up,’orse.” And off they rattled through the quiet streets, turning corners and crossing tramlines every fifty yards, apparently, and bumping against each other in the most fraternal manner.

Soon the cab pulled up in a narrow, ill-lit street, at the open door of a dingy house. Instructing the cabman to wait, they hustled upstairs, to be confronted at the top by a man who took a shilling from each, and then was not sure whether he would admit them. He didn’t seem to like their form exactly, and muttered something to a by-stander as they went in. They saw a long, low room, brilliantly lighted by flaring gas jets. Down one side, on wooden forms, was seated a row of flashily dressed girls—larrikinesses on their native heath, barmaids from cheap, disreputable hotels, shop girls, factory girls—all sharp-faced and pert, young in years, but old in knowledge of evil. The demon of mischief peeped out of their quick-moving restless eyes. They had elaborate fringes, and their short dresses exhibited well-turned ankles and legs.

A large notice on the wall stated that “Gentlemen must not dance with nails in their boots. Gentlemen must not dance together.”

“That blocks us,” said Gordon, pointing to the notice. “Can’t dance together, no matter how much we want to. Look at these fellows here.”

Opposite the women sat or lounged a score or two of youths—wiry, hard-faced little fellows, for the most part, with scarcely a sizeable man amongst them. They were all clothed in “push” evening dress—black bell-bottomed pants, no waistcoat, very short black paget coat, white shirt with no collar, and a gaudy neckerchief round the bare throat. Their boots were marvels, very high in the heel and picked out with all sorts of colours down the sides. They looked “varminty” enough for anything; but the shifty eyes, low foreheads, and evil faces gave our two heroes a sense of disgust. The Englishman thought that all the stories he had heard of the Australian larrikin must be exaggerated, and that any man who was at all athletic could easily hold his own among such a poor-looking lot. The whole spectacle was disappointing. The most elaborately decorous order prevailed; no excitement or rough play was noticeable, and their expedition seemed likely to be a failure.

The bushman stared down the room with far-seeing eyes, apparently looking at nothing, and contemplated the whole show with bored indifference.

“Nothing very dazzling about this,” he said. “I’m afraid we can’t show you anything very exciting here. Better go back to the club, eh?”

Just then the band (piano and violin) struck up a slow, laboured waltz, “Bid me goodbye and go,” and each black-coated male, with languid self-possession, strolled across the room, seized a lady by the arm, jerked her to her feet without saying a syllable, and commenced to dance in slow, convulsive movements, making a great many revolutions for very little progress. Two or three girls were left sitting, as their partners were talking in a little knot at the far end of the room; one among them was conspicuously pretty, and she began to ogle Carew in a very pronounced way.

“There’s one hasn’t got a partner,” said Gordon. “Good-looking Tottie, too. Go and ask her to dance. See what she says.” The Englishman hesitated for a second. “I don’t like asking a perfect stranger to dance,” he said.

“Go on,” said Gordon, “it’s all right. She’ll like it.”

Carew drew down his cuffs, squared his shoulders, assumed his most absolutely stolid drawing-room manner, and walked across the room, a gleaming vision of splendour in his immaculate evening dress.

“May I—er—have the pleasure of this dance?” he said, with elaborate politeness.

The girl giggled a little, but said nothing, then rose and took his arm. As she did so, a youth among the talkers at the other end of the room looked round, and stared for a second. Then he moistened his fingers with his tongue, smoothed the hair on his temples, and with elbows held out from his sides, shoulders hunched up and under-jaw stuck well out, bore down on Carew and the girl, who were getting under way when he came up. Taking not the slightest notice of Carew, he touched the girl on the shoulder with a sharp peremptory tap, and brought their dance to a stop.

“’Ere,” he said, in commanding tones. “’Oo are you darncin’ with?”

“I’m darncin’ with ’im,” answered the girl, pertly, indicating the Englishman with a jerk of her head.

“Ho, you’re darncin’ with ’im, are you? ’E brought you ’ere, p’r’aps?”

“No, he didn’t,” she said.

“No,” said he. “You know well enough ’e didn’t.”

While this conversation was going on, the Englishman maintained an attitude of dignified reserve, leaving it to the lady to decide who was to be the favoured man. At last he felt it was hardly right for an Oxford man, and a triple blue at that, to be discussed in this contemptuous way by a larrikin and his “donah”, so he broke into the discussion, perhaps a little abruptly, but using his most polished style.

“I—ah—asked this lady to dance, and if she—er—would be kind enough to do me the honour,” he said, “I ——”

“Oh! you arst ’er to darnce? And what right ’ad you to arst ’er to darnce, you lop-eared rabbit?” interrupted the larrikin, raising his voice as he warmed to his subject. “I brought ’er ’ere. I paid the shillin’. Now then, you take your ’ook,” he went on, pointing sternly to the door, and talking as he would to a disobedient dog. “Go on, now. Take your ’ook.”

The Englishman said nothing, but his jaw set ominously. The girl giggled, delighted at being the centre of so much observation. The band stopped playing, and the dancers crowded round. Word was passed down that it was a “toff darncin’ with Nugget’s donah”, and from various parts of the room blackcoated duplicates of Nugget hurried swiftly to the scene.

The doorkeeper turned to Gordon. “You’d best get your mate out o’ this,” he said. “These are the Rocks Push, and they’ll deal with him all right.”

“Deal with him, will they?” said Gordon, looking at the gesticulating Nugget. “They’ll bite off more than they can chew if they interfere with him. This is just his form, a row like this. He’s a bit of a champion in a rough-and-tumble, I believe.”

“Is he?” said the doorkeeper, sardonically. “Well, look ’ere, now, you take it from me, if there’s a row Nugget will spread him out as flat as a newspaper. They’ve all been in the ring in their time, these coves. There’s Nugget, and Ginger, and Brummy—all red ’ot. You get him away!”

Meanwhile the Englishman’s ire was gradually rising. He was past the stage of considering whether it was worth while to have a fight over a factory girl in a shilling dancing saloon, and the desire for battle blazed up in his eyes. He turned and confronted Nugget.

“You go about your business,” he said, dropping all the laboured politeness out of his tones. “If she likes to dance—”

He got no further. A shrill whistle rang through the room; a voice shouted, “Don’t ’it ’im; ’ook ’im!” His arms were seized from behind and pinioned to his sides. The lights were turned out. Somebody in front hit him a terrific crack in the eye at the same moment that someone else administered a violent kick from the rear. He was propelled by an invisible force to the head of the stairs, and then—whizz! down he went in one prodigious leap, clear from the top to the first landing.

Here, in pitch-darkness, he grappled one of his assailants. For a few seconds they swayed and struggled, and then rolled down the rest of the stairs, over and over each other, grappling and clawing, each trying to tear the other’s shirt off. When they rolled into the street, Carew discovered that he had hold of Charlie Gordon.

They sat up and looked at each other. Then they made a simultaneous rush for the stairs, but the street door was slammed in their faces. They kicked it violently, but without result, except that a mob of faces looked out of the first-floor window and hooted, and a bucket of water was emptied over them. A crowd collected as if by magic, and the spectacle of two gentlemen in evening dress trying to kick in the door of a shilling dancing saloon afforded it unmitigated delight.

“’Ere’s two toffs got done in all right,” said one.

“What O! Won’t she darnce with you?” said another; and somebody from the back threw banana peel at them.

Charlie recovered his wits first. The Englishman was fairly berserk with rage, and glared round on the bystanders as if he contemplated a rush among them. The cabman put an end to the performance. He was tranquil and unemotional, and he soothed them down and coaxed them into the cab. The band in the room above resumed the dreamy waltz music of “Bid me goodbye and go!” and they went.

Carew subsided into the corner, breathing hard and feeling his eye. Charlie leant forward and peered out into the darkness. They were nearly at the club before they spoke. Then he said, “Well, I’m blessed! We made a nice mess of that, didn’t we?”

“I’d like to have got one fair crack at some of ’em,” said the Englishman, with heartfelt earnestness. “Couldn’t we go back now?”

“No, what’s the good? We’d never get in. Let the thing alone. We needn’t say anything about it. If once it gets known that we were chucked out, we’ll never hear the last of it. Are you marked at all?”

“Got an awful swipe in the eye,” replied the other briefly.

“I’ve got a cut lip, and my head nearly screwed off. You did that. I’ll know the place again. Some day we’ll get a few of the right sort to come with us, and we’ll just go there quietly, as if we didn’t mean anything, and then, all of a sudden, we’ll turn in and break the whole place up! Come and have a drink now.”

They had a silent drink in the deserted club. The mind of each was filled with a sickening sense of defeat, and without much conversation they retired to bed. They thanked heaven that the Bo’sun, Pinnock, and Gillespie had disappeared.

Even then Fate hadn’t quite finished with the bushman. A newly joined member of the club, he had lived a life in which he had to shift for himself, and the ways of luxury were new to him. Consequently, when he awoke next morning and saw a man moving with cat-like tread about his room, absolutely taking the money out of his clothes before his very eyes, he sprang out of bed with a bound and halfthrottled the robber. Then, of course, it turned out that it was only the bedroom waiter, who was taking his clothes away to brush them. This contretemps, on top of the overnight mishap, made him determined to get away from town with all speed. When he looked in the glass, he found his lip so much swelled that his moustache stuck out in front like the bowsprit of a ship. At breakfast he joined the Englishman, who had an eye with as many colours as an opal, not to mention a tired look and dusty boots.

“Are you only just up?” asked Charlie, as they contemplated each other.

Carew had resumed his mantle of stolidity, but he coloured a little at the question. “I’ve been out for a bit of a walk round town,” he said. “Fact is,” he added in a sudden burst of confidence, “I’ve been all over town lookin’ for that place where we were last night. Couldn’t find anything like it at all.”

Charlie laughed at his earnestness. “Oh, bother the place,” he said. “If you had found it, there wouldn’t have been any of them there. Now, about ourselves—we can’t show out like this. We’d better be off today, and no one need know anything about it. Besides, I half-killed a waiter this morning. I thought he was some chap stealing my money, when he only wanted to take my clothes away to brush ’em. Sooner we’re out of town the better. I’ll wire to the old man that I’ve taken you with me.”

So saying, they settled down to breakfast, and by tacit agreement avoided the club for the rest of the day.

Before leaving, Charlie had to call and interview Pinnock, and left Carew waiting outside while he went in. He didn’t want to parade their injuries, and knew that Carew’s eye would excite remark; but by keeping his upper lip well drawn over his teeth, he hoped his own trouble would escape notice.

“Seems a harmless sort of chap, that new chum,” said Pinnock.

“He’ll do all right,” said Charlie casually. “I’ve met his sort before. He’s not such a fool as he lets on to be. Shouldn’t wonder if he killed somebody before he gets back here, anyhow.”

“How did you get on at the dancing saloon?” asked Pinnock.

“Oh, slow enough. Nothing worth seeing. Goodbye.”

They sneaked on board the steamer without meeting the Bo’sun or anybody, and before evening were well on their way to No Man’s Land.

Whitewolf

The Bastard from the Bush

2006-09-29T01:01:00.000+10:00

Attributed by some to Henry Lawson

As the night was falling slowly over city, town and bush,
From a slum in Jones's Alley came the Captain of the Push,
And his whistle loud and piercing woke the echoes of the Rocks,
And a dozen ghouls came slouching round the corners of the blocks.

Then the Captain jerked a finger at a stranger on the kerb
Whom he qualified politely with an adjective and verb.
Then he made the introduction: 'Here's a covey from the bush-
Tuck me blind, he wants to join us—be a member of the Push.'

Then the stranger made this answer to the Captain of the Push,
'Why, fuck you dead, I'm Foreskin Fred, the bastard from the bush.
'I've been in every two-up school from Darwin to the 'Loo,
'I've ridden colts and black gins—what more can a bastard do.'

'Are you game to smash a window?' asked the Captain of the Push.
'I'd knock a fucking house down,' said the bastard from the bush.
'Would you take a maiden's baby?' said the Captain of the Push.
'I'd take a baby's maiden,' said the bastard from the bush.

'Would you dong a bloody copper if you caught the cunt alone,
'Would you stoush a swell or Chinkee, split his garret with a stone?
'Would you have a moll to keep you, would you swear off work for good?'
'What? Live on prostitution? My colonial oath I would!'

'Would you care to have a gasper?' said the Captain of the Push.
'I'll take the bloody packet,' said the bastard from the bush.
Then the Pushites all took counsel, saying, 'Fuck me, but he's game.
'Let's make him our star basher, he'll live up to his name.'

So they took him to their hideout, that bastard from the bush,
And they granted him all privileges appertaining to the Push.
But soon they found his little ways were more than they could stand,
And finally the Captain thus addressed his little band.

'Now listen here, you buggers, we've caught a fucking tartar,
'At every kind of bludging, that bastard is a starter,
'At poker and at two-up, he's shook our fucking rolls,
'He swipes our fucking liquor, and he robs our fucking molls.'

So down in Jones's Alley all the members of the Push
Laid a dark and dirty ambush for the bastard from the bush.
But against the wall of Riley's pub, the bastard made a stand,
A nasty grin upon his dial, a bike-chain in each hand.

They sprang upon him in a bunch, but one by one they fell,
With crack of bone, unearthly groan, and agonising yell,
Till the sorely-battered Captain, spitting teeth and gouts of blood,
Held an ear all torn and bleeding in a hand bedaubed with mud.

' You low polluted bastard,' snarled the Captain of the Push,
'Get back to where your sort belong, that's somewhere in the bush:
'And I hope heaps of misfortune may soon tumble down on you,
'May some lousy harlot dose you till your ballocks turn sky-blue.

'May the pangs of windy spasms through your bowels dart,
'May you shit your bloody trousers every time you try to fart,
'May you take a swig of gin's piss, mistaking it for beer,
'May the next push you impose on toss you out upon your ear.

'May the itching piles torment you, may corns grow on your feet,
'May crabs as big as spiders attack your balls a treat,
'Then when you're down and outed, to a hopeless bloody wreck,
'May you slip back through your arsehole, and break your fucking neck.'

It is uncertain whether Lawson wrote the rude poem 'The Bastard from the Bush' and cleaned it up, publishing it as 'The Captain of the Push' (The Bulletin, March 26, 1892), or whether the blue version is a parody of the published poem. (The word 'push' is a mainly Sydney term meaning a company of rowdy fellows gathered together for ungentle purposes. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, larrikins assembled in groups called 'pushes', such as the Bantry Bay Devils, the Stars, the Golden Dragons, the Livers, the Forty Thieves and perhaps the best-known of all, the Rocks Push.)

The best evidence against the naughty version being Lawson's is that 'The Shearer's Dream' although hardly offensive, is as close as we know that he came to composing a rude poem; in fact, Lawson appears to have been somewhat puritanical in some ways – for example, he never swore unless extremely drunk and agitated, as in being arrested. However, HA Lindsay (Quadrant, Summer, 1957 - 59) asserts that Lawson "wrote the obscene version himself and circulated copies among his friends". Later, wanting some money in a hurry, he toned it down considerably and it was published under the title of 'The Captain of the Push'". Whatever the truth might be (and it seems there is no evidence either way), the profane version entered Australian folklore and is generally attributed to Lawson.

Wilson's Almanac

The Captain of the Push

2006-09-29T00:55:00.000+10:00

1892

Henry Lawson

As the night was falling slowly down on city, town and bush,
From a slum in Jones’s Alley sloped the Captain of the Push;
And he scowled towards the North, and he scowled towards the South,
As he hooked his little finger in the corners of his mouth.
Then his whistle, loud and shrill, woke the echoes of the ‘Rocks’,
And a dozen ghouls came sloping round the corners of the blocks.

There was nought to rouse their anger; yet the oath that each one swore
Seemed less fit for publication than the one that went before.
For they spoke the gutter language with the easy flow that comes
Only to the men whose childhood knew the brothels and the slums.
Then they spat in turns, and halted; and the one that came behind,
Spitting fiercely on the pavement, called on Heaven to strike him blind.

Let us first describe the captain, bottle-shouldered, pale and thin,
For he was the beau-ideal of a Sydney larrikin;
E’en his hat was most suggestive of the city where we live,
With a gallows-tilt that no one, save a larrikin, can give;
And the coat, a little shorter than the writer would desire,
Showed a more or less uncertain portion of his strange attire.

That which tailors know as ‘trousers’—known by him as ‘bloomin’ bags’—
Hanging loosely from his person, swept, with tattered ends, the flags;
And he had a pointed sternpost to the boots that peeped below
(Which he laced up from the centre of the nail of his great toe),
And he wore his shirt uncollar’d, and the tie correctly wrong;
But I think his vest was shorter than should be in one so long.

And the captain crooked his finger at a stranger on the kerb,
Whom he qualified politely with an adjective and verb,
And he begged the Gory Bleeders that they wouldn’t interrupt
Till he gave an introduction—it was painfully abrupt—
‘Here’s the bleedin’ push, me covey—here’s a (something) from the bush!
Strike me dead, he wants to join us!’ said the captain of the push.

Said the stranger: ‘I am nothing but a bushy and a dunce;
‘But I read about the Bleeders in the Weekly Gasbag once;
‘Sitting lonely in the humpy when the wind began to “whoosh,”
‘How I longed to share the dangers and the pleasures of the push!
‘Gosh! I hate the swells and good ’uns—I could burn ’em in their beds;
‘I am with you, if you’ll have me, and I’ll break their blazing heads.’

‘Now, look here,’ exclaimed the captain to the stranger from the bush,
‘Now, look here—suppose a feller was to split upon the push,
‘Would you lay for him and fetch him, even if the traps were round?
‘Would you lay him out and kick him to a jelly on the ground?
‘Would you jump upon the nameless—kill, or cripple him, or both?
‘Speak? or else I’ll speak!’ The stranger answered, ‘My kerlonial oath!’

‘Now, look here,’ exclaimed the captain to the stranger from the bush,
‘Now, look here—suppose the Bleeders let you come and join the push,
‘Would you smash a bleedin’ bobby if you got the blank alone?
‘Would you break a swell or Chinkie—split his garret with a stone?
‘Would you have a “moll” to keep yer—like to swear off work for good?’
‘Yes, my oath!’ replied the stranger. ‘My kerlonial oath! I would!’

‘Now, look here,’ exclaimed the captain to the stranger from the bush,
‘Now, look here—before the Bleeders let yer come and join the push,
‘You must prove that you’re a blazer—you must prove that you have grit
‘Worthy of a Gory Bleeder—you must show your form a bit—
‘Take a rock and smash that winder!’ and the stranger, nothing loth,
Took the rock—and smash! They only muttered, ‘My kerlonial oath!’

So they swore him in, and found him sure of aim and light of heel,
And his only fault, if any, lay in his excessive zeal;
He was good at throwing metal, but we chronicle with pain
That he jumped upon a victim, damaging the watch and chain,
Ere the Bleeders had secured them; yet the captain of the push
Swore a dozen oaths in favour of the stranger from the bush.

Late next morn the captain, rising, hoarse and thirsty from his lair,
Called the newly-feather’d Bleeder, but the stranger wasn’t there!
Quickly going through the pockets of his ‘bloomin’ bags,’ he learned
That the stranger had been through him for the stuff his ‘moll’ had earned;
And the language that he muttered I should scarcely like to tell.
(Stars! and notes of exclamation!! blank and dash will do as well).

In the night the captain’s signal woke the echoes of the ‘Rocks,’
Brought the Gory Bleeders sloping thro’ the shadows of the blocks;
And they swore the stranger’s action was a blood-escaping shame,
While they waited for the nameless, but the nameless never came.
And the Bleeders soon forgot him; but the captain of the push
Still is ‘laying’ round, in ballast, for the nameless ‘from the bush.’

The Rocks Push was a notorious gang, which dominated the The Rocks area of Sydney, Australia from 1870s to the end of the 1890s. In its day it was referred to as The Push, a title which has since come to be more widely used for the Sydney Push.

The gang were engaged in running warfare with other Sydney gangs of the time such as the Straw Hat Push, the Glebe Push, the Argyle Cut Push, the Forty Thieves from Surry Hills and the Gibb Street Mob. They conducted such crimes as theft, assault and battery against police and pedestrians in the Rocks area. Female members of the Push would entice drunks and seamen into dark areas to be assaulted and robbed by the gang.

Australian authors of the time mentioned the Push in various of their works.

A poem called Bastard from the Bush, often attributed to Henry Lawson, describes (in vivid and colourful language) a meeting between a "Captain" of the Push and the "Bastard from the Bush". Banjo Paterson, in In Push Society, describes a group of tourists who go to visit the Rocks Push, and paints the following picture of the appearance of the gang members:
Wiry, hard-faced little fellows, for the most part, with scarcely a sizeable man amongst them. They were all clothed in “push” evening dress—black bell-bottomed pants, no waistcoat, very short black paget coat, white shirt with no collar, and a gaudy neckerchief round the bare throat. Their boots were marvels, very high in the heel and picked out with all sorts of colours down the sides.

Paterson also said, addressing Lawson in In Defence of the Bush:
You had better stick to Sydney and make merry with the "push",
For the bush will never suit you, and you'll never suit the bush.

One of the most famous haunts of the Rocks Push was Harrington Place, also known as the "Suez Canal" (supposedly a pun on "sewers"), one of the most unsavoury places in Sydney in its time.

During the period when the Rocks Push was active, such gang members were also known as "larrikins", but their behaviour bore little in common with larrikinism as it is commonly understood today.

Wikipedia

The Rocks, c. 1900, from NSW Government Records - lots of great photos.

See also Picture Australia and State Library, Victoria.

The Missing Links

2006-09-23T23:21:00.000+10:00

'[Andy] Anderson wanted to check the source of the energy that was invigorating the pop scene, and aged just 16, he loaded up his green sparkly Ludwig drums and headed for Sydney, the first stop, he thought, on his way to England. In Sydney, he changed his name to Andy James and fell in with a bunch of bluesy long-hairs called the Missing Links. Anderson: "They were wild, as in head turners on the streets. Pete (Anson) and John (Jones) had the longest hair I'd ever seen. I had reasonably long hair, but these guys had shoulder-length hair. They were playing a lot of Leadbelly, and old R&B stuff I'd never heard." Anderson joined the Links after they'd released their only Parlophone single, "We 2 Could Live"/"Untrue", by which time the line-up was Ronnie Peel (bass), Dave Boyne (replaced by John Jones) (guitar), Pete Anson (guitar) and Bob Brady up front.

'"We used to play a wild pub opposite Darling Harbour, full of early beats," remembers Andy "I loved that place, I'd never seen anything like it. I first met Chris Gray (future Missing Link and sometime roadie) there. He was playing a guitar and harp, like Dylan."

'Gray was a dope smoking rich kid with bohemian leanings, but he slotted right in with James, who was living a similar-styled life in Kings Cross, Sydney's red light district. They were all habitues of the Royal George, the beat friendly pub Anderson describes above...

The Missing Links

Declan Affley

2006-09-23T23:14:00.000+10:00

"...he sang in "low dives and pubs", such as the Royal George, Sydney and Tattersalls in Melbourne. Irish rebel songs and other folksongs were sung with great gusto in these pubs and it was here that Declan met singers such a Brian Mooney, Don Ayrton, Paul Marks and Martin Wyndham-Read.

"Declan eventually became a regular performer at the Troubadour Coffee Lounge in Edgecliff, Sydney and later at Frank Traynor's Folk Club, Melbourne. He was also a frequent guest at the "Greenwich Village", the Elizabeth Hotel - "the Liz", Pact folk, Edinburgh Castle and other Sydney folk venues. He also became a stalwart of the first folk clubs in pubs in Melbourne in the late 1960s such as Fogarty's..."

Here

Who was who of me

2006-09-23T12:01:00.001+10:00

So you know what you're dealing with: here I am in 1963, in one of those old photo booths (taken with my mate Garry Renshaw partly visible as we headed down to check out The Royal George).

Here aged 16 with my first girlfriend, Michele, who'd laid her head in my lap. She gave me this copy of the picture when I met her again in London in 2006: she'd cut and pasted the picture to move her head closer to mine; she also gave me back a book I loaned her in 1963, as recounted here.

This one was taken about 1965-66: my hair had grown long, been cropped, and was growing again.

This was taken in 1970 at the Nagoya Sukiyaki House, Kings Cross, with my chum John Paul Dean who was in the US First Air Cavalry, on R&R in Sydney. He came from near Big Sur, California: I often wonder what happened to him. Me in tie-dye shirt etc - I was working as a sandal-maker at the Frank's Cafe leather co-operative: we had shops in Challis Avenue, Kings Cross, at the Kings Cross Market; later at Liverpool Street near Oxford Street, and at The Argylle Arts Centre at The Rocks. Frank's Cafe grew out of The Royal George and a leather shop started by two Americans, called The Peg & Awl. It included English Paul, Dave Howie (a Scot), Dave Quint (an ex-London bobby), Chuck Cookson (who had been one of Lee Gordon's boys), Christa, Kate Cawcutt, Vyda, Vince Healey, Frank Hammond, Alan Heptinstall, Warren, Little Maxie, Christine Quirk, Jacques Baudie and Miggs (with their baby Spunky), Norwegian Eric, Henry,... many others whom I'll add as I think of them. Frequent and occasional visitors included Al Head, Lady George, Vivienne, Starlee Ford, Dutch Andie, John Sandies, Malto, Rick O'Hara, Cass and Mindless, Karolline King from Hair, Black Alan, Maid Marion, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Frank Scarfe...

Teaching Roman History at Killarney Heights High, c. 1986:

Who's some of who

2006-09-23T09:14:00.000+10:00

Left to right, Standing: English Paul (Paul Clarke, Paul Adams), Newcastle John, ? , ? , Rod (from Melbourne),? , ? , ? , ? , Larry.

Middle Row: Paul (me, with bat, looking down), Terry Stanton, Rick O'Hara, ?, Zita (middle girl with sun-glasses), ? , ?.

Front row (sort of): Geoff Robertson, Swiss Walter, Katya (? - she was Estonian), Rita (? another Estonian) , Marcia, Chris "Rip-Off" Heald (aka New Zealand Chris - ?) , ? , ? (girl with hand to hair), Trevor Trueheart, ? .

The George in the '60s

2006-09-16T15:42:00.000+10:00

A Black Maria is usually lurking. The drinkers spill onto the footpath after "Time, Gents, please!" to sign up for a promising party. To the nearby chipshop first for chips, potato scallops, pickled onions? The evening's flirtations across the bar are pushed a stage further. Who will go to whose party with whom? Which party is she/he going to? Whose car? Yippee beans in a matchbox?

Some are too drunk to play their hands effectively; they stagger, blithering or drooling; they sway, singing or spouting nonsense. Some of these end up in the Black Maria. No party? The Folk Attic? Surf City? King's Cross? The Piccolo? A walk to Paddington? A bus or train home?

Thanks to Beatnik Casbah for the scratchboard image.

Brian Raven at The George

2006-09-16T10:11:00.000+10:00

The drinkers were shouting happily at each other, the music was blaring, the beer and the fine talk was flowing and splashing and spilling, in the crowded Public Bar of The Royal George, one busy night in 1964. I was standing with some cronies near the door that connected the Public Bar to a passage leading to the back room, the side exit steps, and through to the Lounge.

Across the other side of the Public Bar, near the doors, a whole group of perhaps twenty blokes suddenly, as one, leapt on each other and started punching, swinging, grappling, head-locking, throttling, kneeing, gouging and generally brawling. It was such an abrupt transition: from cheery alcohol-fuelled chatting to intense fist-swinging, wrestling, stool-throwing, crashing, out-the-doors-and-into-the-street instantaneous full-on donnybrooking, as if a switch had been thrown or a signal given that all had reponded to on the instant.

The bouncers and barmen began to re-establish the rule of law as the fight tumbled onto Sussex Street. We onlookers toddled across, beers in hands, and peered out at the finale. I remember a chap called Brian Raven astride a wharfie, Brian with his hands around the wharfie's throat and attempting to throttle him. I think the wharfie was called Les - he regularly wore a baseball-type cap.

Here memory fails: I think that the main players were bundled into a Black Maria (there always seemed to be one nearby The George), but I couldn't swear to that. The image of Instant bar Brawl has stayed with me ever since.

Brian Raven. My recollection is that he was reputed to be some kind of Nazi leader or storm-trooper or some such. This I never verified, and quite frankly I wouldn't have a clue about the truth: but it was certainly the image held by many at the time. But I came across a reference to his alleged right-wing tendencies via Google on this Indymedia site, in a discussion on Brian's interest in the Ivan Milat Belanglo serial killer case. The main interest of the discussion for me is as a survey or catalogue of some of the identities that frequented The George:

Brian Raven and 'The Push'
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 2006/07/03 - 5:11pm.

Oh, what a wild crowd they made, when will their glory fade? ... You wanted a good drinking session? then find Bob Cumming, Nestor Grivas, Bunny Britton, Ron Opie, Ian Parker, Rod Streeter, John Pentony, Peter Roblin ... Or with the folk singers like Ayrton, Earls, Brian Mooney, Terry Driscoll ... For a board game, The Horse, Molnar, Maze, Ivo, John Meggitt, Lyn Speedy ... the long line of people come up from Melbourne, Lee Tonkin, Patty Dixon, Heli, Jan Miller, Marilyn Little, Ken Cobb, John Fogarty ... Medical observers and/or advisers, Ross Byrne, Rocky, Ram, gambling John, young John ... The early Argentine Ant Squad with Ashleigh Sellars, Roger Cox, Appleton, Smilde ... The later exploits of Flash Ash and Neil Shard ... the Shadforth Army of Retreat with Michael Baldwin, Chairman Gunter, Parker, Morag, Peter the Peddler, Diana Kemp ... The military man of a different colour, the Good Soldier Pattenden ... That fine anglican Churchman, Archbishop Gough, whom Libertarians would have been pleased to invent if he had not existed, who denounced Sydney academics for advocating Communism and free love, and amusingly in the resulting hubbub not only Anderson, but someone as unlikely as the University politician W.M. O'Neil, got some of the blame. Later the Archbishop sooled the police on to capture Baldwin for blasphemy, owing to his story "God in the Marijuana Patch", but the police, feeling sure that the name "Michael Baldwin" would be a pseudonym, did not look too hard in The Push pub ... the expert performer who well knew how to liven up a Push cricket match, John Cardensana ... The Bulgarian Anarchists come to Sydney, including notably Jack the Anarchist ... The eye-catching trio of Witch Girls, Kay Hancox, Lyn Gain, and Robyn Robb ... The poets like Hooton, Appleton, Lex Banning, Chester, Geoffrey Lehman, Peter Newton... the writers and literary people like Geoff Mill, Sylvia Lawson, Frank Moorhouse, Edna Wilson, Ken- Quinnell, Michael Thornhill, Michael Wilding ... The right wing drinkers in The Push, Brian Raven, Graham Royce and Cyrus ... The posters produced by the Midnight Activists criticising the police hunt for the prison escapees, Simmonds and Newcombe, and the delight of The Push when the police psychiatrist, Dr McGeorge came out with the verdict: whoever the people are who produced this poster, they are certifiably insane ... The other posters brought out at election times, such as the ones depicting a well dressed pig and bearing the caption, "Whoever you vote for, a politician always gets in; vote informal"...

reply
A Right-Wing Drinker?
Submitted by Anonymøus on Mon, 2006/07/03 - 9:05pm.

No, Brian was no 'right-wing' drinker. He was maybe right of the left but certainly no fascist! Still, his involvement with the Sydney Push is interesting history. The Push was a predominantly left-wing subculture from the 1940s to the early 1970s. They were considered a very shocking bunch of people in their time! They rejected conventional morality and authoritarianism. The pub was their central meeting place.

http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/push/

My Purposes

2006-09-16T09:51:00.000+10:00

I was a person of no importance in what was called the Young Push, but spent some time at the Royal George in the post-Bogle/Chandler days of 1963 and following, and on into a kind of off-shoot of that scene, a leather working co-operative called Frank's Cafe. Because I was one of the very first among the Young Push - I think the very first - to have his ear pierced (in August, 1964, with a gold sleeper), I was known as "Ear-ring Paul", to distinguish me from English Paul and American Paul and others; such was the naming practice at The George in the early sixties.

My purpose here is to gather as much material, as much documentary evidence as possible, relating to this era. I hope by centralising access to this evidence to provide a kind of archive, as well as a collection of links to other such sites that relate in various way to this extraordinary chapter (or rather, several chapters) in Sydney's history. One such site is Beatnik Casbah, which includes some great memoirs of this time. Cass, the writer of these, evokes the atmosphere and detail of one sector of those times with amazing colour, authenticity and honesty.

I am looking for, and would love to hear about, any other such sites; or from anyone else who can contribute to these Histories - or rather, this collection of sources. Emails may be sent to theroyalgeorge@gmail.com, or comments left on this site in the comment boxes.

When I have time and inspiration I will write into it my own reminiscences as well.

The George - Photos

2006-09-09T15:11:00.000+10:00

The Royal George, Sydney, now - increasingly gentrified and increasingly isolated by fly-overs, bridges and the like.

The Royal George in the 1980s. I do not know why it had taken on such a sideways lean.

If any one can supply me with, or point me to, images of or connected with The Royal George and The Push, I would be very grateful.

The Bogle-Chandler Murders and The George

2006-09-09T13:56:00.000+10:00

...On New Year’s Eve, 1962, CSIRO technician Geoffrey Chandler and his wife Margaret attended a party. As befitted a fringe Push member, Chandler, `unable to accept the petty rules and regulations of society’, in his own words, approved of `open’ marriages. He had given his wife to understand that she was free to have an affair with Gilbert Bogle, who was also to attend the party. Bogle was a leading young CSIRO research physicist, working on the new field of masers and lasers. Chandler and his girlfriend, a secretary in the Sydney University Psychology Department, went on to a Push party. The bodies of Bogle and Mrs Chandler were found the next morning beside the Lane Cove River. The cause of death was never definitively established, though an LSD overdose is the leading theory. The mystery surrounding the deaths and the connections of those involved made it one of Australia’s best-known murder cases. Reporters invaded the Royal George Hotel but the Push in general refused to speak to them. Chandler was grateful to a number of Push people who hid him from the pack...

- James Franklin, The Push and Critical Drinkers

Peter Coleman on James Franklin on The Push

2006-09-09T12:02:00.000+10:00

...Another definitive chapter deals with the Sydney Push. Franklin has little patience with its mix of anarchism and quietism. He calls it "self-serving tripe". But he also believes that some of its adepts contributed significantly to the ideology of the 1960s - and not only in Australia. Germaine Greer's anti-reformist or revolutionary feminism and Richard Neville's hippie magazine Oz in London had international influence. Franklin could have added Dennis Altman's Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation and Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopaedia in New York. As for its Australian influence, Franklin considers the annual Gay Mardi Gras to be the greatest triumph of its ideas (although he also notes the useful work of philosophers such as George Molnar the Younger). He does not examine the Push's critics - which means he neglects Amy Witting's memorable spoof, her story "A Piece of this Puzzle is Missing"...

- from Peter Coleman's Quadrant Magazine review of James Franklin's Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia

Sex and Anarchy - the life and death of the Sydney Push

2006-09-09T11:22:00.000+10:00

Like the grasshopper in the fable, they lazed in the sun or in the gloom of a hotel bar, gambling, drinking, fornicating and endlessly talking. Though they had a critique for every aspect of society, they had no remedies. They produced dozens of argumentative little magazines, but they created hardly any art, film or music. They were proud of their lack of illusions - their dedication to the truth seemed bracing to some, and brutal to others. They appeared to have no avarice, and they opposed violence of any sort. They could have been Zen saints dedicated to the life of contemplation and non-action, except for their sloth, lust, and jealousy. They were the Sydney "Push", a loose and changing group of bohemian intellectuals, university lecturers, adventurous secretaries, journalists, gamblers, writers, free-thinking businessmen and students.

They formed in the turmoil of the 1940s, and flourished during the conservative 1950s. They were still a force in the early 1960s, but as the decade progressed and Australian society became freer and more tolerant, their distinctiveness and their importance faded.

Eventually many of the younger members moved out of the pubs and into the streets. They attacked censorship, they fought on behalf of feminism, and they protested against the Vietnam War, corrupt police, and rapacious urban developers. The older Push philosophers disapproved of this descent into direct action, with its inevitable bargains, concessions and compromises, but they were left talking to empty chairs...

As Coombs points out, the Push ideals are full of contradictions. For a start, the Push was a Leftist movement that did not believe in the goals of the Left, and they refused to be pigeon-holed politically. They took their beliefs from a wide range of philosophers and thinkers. Wilhelm Reich pushed Freud's sexual revolution to the edge of lunacy. Max Nomad asserted the need for permanent protest, but then the Italian philosopher Pareto convinced them that a revolution only brings to the surface another power elite, and Michels propounded the "iron law of oligarchy", that even democracies produce power elites, and do so inevitably. Where could they turn, except to the pub?

Their centre was Sydney, and their philosophy didn't travel well, or find acolytes in other cities. Germaine Greer in 1959 and Wendy Bacon in 1966 had to move from Melbourne to Sydney to discover the Push. It had no influence overseas.

Margaret Fink has called them "a dreary lot who wore dreary clothes, drank in dreary pubs and lived in dreary dwellings with nothing on the walls." True - Push people had little liking for art. To many of them, the creative life was woolly and lacking in intellectual rigour. Their taste in music was also a blank: folk songs and "trad jazz" was their idea of fun, and the rich delights of modern jazz and rock'n'roll were lost on them.

Women were treated as equals, in the male-dominated Push. They were expected to swear, fornicate freely, and drink in the public bar with the men (forbidden in most Sydney hotels until the late 1960s). But the focus on sex and status meant that when they had children, they lost their place at the bar. Nor were they encouraged to address political discussion groups, or to develop a career. The feminism of the late 1960s and early 1970s encouraged many of these women to grow and develop, and to work for success in their field. The feminist women in this book stand out as achievers, though it would seem they had to leave or outgrow the Push to do their best work - Wendy Bacon, Eva Cox, Germaine Greer, Lillian Roxon, Lynne Segal, and many others.

And for many of the men, the price of success in the Push was relative lack of success in their life outside it. This wasn't the case in similar movements overseas: the French Existentialists, the American beats, the English "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s all produced industrious, successful and famous writers and thinkers. Why didn't we?

Coombs puts her finger on the cultural psychology behind it: achievement requires ambition and dedicated effort, and ambition is still regarded by many Australians with suspicion. Art was for sissies, business was tainted with capitalism, and in politics, "careerism" was a dirty word. I feel this "futilitarianism" began with our convict past: if you tried to get on, you had to side with the English ruling class, and before long your fellow-convicts as well as your gaolers put you back in your place.

It's easy to criticise the Push for failing to achieve anything tangible, but to oppose conventional morality and politics was not easy in the 1950s. It should be pointed out that, as children, the people of the Push were taught to salute the flag at the weekly school assembly, to attend Scripture classes once a week even in state-run schools, and to stand for the national anthem and the image of the Queen of England at the start of every session at the movies - or the "pictures" as they were called then. For all their faults, it should be remembered that they were better people in many ways - more frank and honest, more socially aware and concerned - than those who chose the way of conformity and the compromises and hypocrisy that went with it...

- This is an excerpt from poet John Tranter's review of Anne Coombs' Sex and Anarchy

Paddy McGuinness on Germaine and The George

2006-09-09T11:10:00.000+10:00

A push back to the 1950s, with our Mary

May 18, 2004

So Mary Donaldson and her Prince met at the Slip Inn in Sussex Street and everything ended in a fairytale wedding. Good luck to them - after all, years ago the same kind of thing happened to quite a few patrons of that establishment, which was in my youth known as the Royal George Hotel.

It was there that in its heyday the Sydney Push, one of our best known bohemian groups, used to meet and no doubt some of them also were in search of something like a fairytale wedding.

Not the least of its one-time patrons was Germaine Greer, and indeed she met her prince there - he was one of the senior gurus of the Push, the two or three blokes known to their irreverent juniors as "the Princes of the Push". She did, after all, want to seize a prominent role in whichever group she found herself in. Not that Greer married her prince, nor did they live happily ever after.

Marriage was definitely not highly thought of in those circles, nor was lifelong fidelity. Or even affair-long fidelity. But then perhaps Greer was more like another fairytale princess, who after a glittering fairytale wedding in Westminster Abbey began to behave more like the Push girls of those days. Happily, Greer has not come to such a tragic end...

- More

and

...To understand Paddy you've got to understand the Sydney Push and the philosophy called contrarianism. The Push was a rooting club, pseudo-intellectual drinking circle and philosophical talk shop and that flourished in Sydney from just after World War II to the late sixties. In hindsight it was mainly a support network for desperados and bullshit artists who were waiting for well-paid careers as apologists for the prevailing order.

They called themselves libertarians. Some talked out of the left side of their mouth and some out of the right, but when you get down to it, contrarianism was the most lasting intellectual product of the Push. It is a philosophy tailor-made for professional ideological provocateurs or "controversialists" as they are called in the industry...

When Push comes to Shove at Nick Possum's wonderful blog.

The Sydney Push

2006-09-09T09:58:00.000+10:00

The Sydney Push was a predominantly left-wing intellectual sub-culture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early '70s. Famous associates of "The Push" include Wendy Bacon, Eva Cox, Liz Fell, Germaine Greer, Clive James, John Flaus, Harry Hooton, Robert Hughes, Frank Moorhouse, Lillian Roxon, Sasha Soldatow, Margaret Fink and Jim Staples. In 1961-2, poet Les Murray resided in Brian Jenkins's Push household at Glen Street, Milsons Point, which became a mecca for associates visiting Sydney from Melbourne and other cities...

More at Wikipedia

Germaine Greer at The George

2006-09-09T09:56:00.000+10:00

For Germaine, [the Push] provided a philosophy to underpin the attitude and lifestyle she had already acquired in Melbourne. She walked into the Royal George Hotel, into the throng talking themselves hoarse in a room stinking of stale beer and thick with cigarette smoke, and set out to follow the Push way of life — 'an intolerably difficult discipline which I forced myself to learn'. The Push struck her as completely different from the Melbourne intelligentsia she had engaged with in the Drift, 'who always talked about art and truth and beauty and argument ad hominem; instead, these people talked about truth and only truth, insisting that most of what we were exposed to during the day was ideology, which was a synonym for lies — or bullshit, as they called it.' Her Damascus turned out to be the Royal George, and the Hume Highway was the road to it. 'I was already an anarchist,' she says. 'I just didn't know why I was an anarchist. They put me in touch with the basic texts and I found out what the internal logic was about how I felt and thought'.

- Wallace, Christine, (1997), Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew, Faber & Faber, 1999, ISBN 0-571-19934-8

Some Royal George Denizens

2006-03-10T09:59:00.001+11:00

?, Rick O'Hara, Terry Stanton, English Paul, Larry (Jesus), ? squatting - 1964, the Domain, Sydney. I was there when the photo was taken, but because of a recent brush with the law, I'd had my long hair cropped to a short-back-and-sides: and it was long-hairs only in the photo.

By the way, I think I have located Terry Stanton in this photo, labelled "Australian Actress Annie Marie Winchester [Anna-Maria Winchester], Putu Sugianta and Terry Stanton, inventor of the big bamboo sofa. 1980":

from this site. It looks like the same chap and I know he has an Indonesian connection. I think I will be able to give more information on this in the future.

Back to 1964: waistcoats were very à-la-mode, and could be bought for a few pence at Paddy's Market. It was very hard to get work in 1964 if you were a male with long hair - many of us used to line up at "Camberg's Corner" (named after a carpet shop there)near Sydney's Central Railway at 7:00 am to be picked - or not - by Middlemass Pty Ltd for day labour to clean out industrial sites, mostly oil refineries. One attraction was that you could get your pay at the end of the day (rather than wait a week or fortnight) and head down to The George to spend it that very same night. So you had to go down again to Camberg's Corner next morning to get money for the next round.

The line-up was very popular too with winoes, derroes and alkies who had often been drinking at the early-openers since 5:00 am before rolling up to Camberg's Corner, or in some cases were well away on methylated spirits. But the Young Push lads kept separate from these and generally stuck to beer and methedrine tablets (yippee beans)- but only the night before, not in the early morning. You had to keep some standards!

Another favourite place for day-labour for long-haired Push members was the wharves, loading wool-bales. The railways would hire long-hairs as goods loaders or fettlers: I fettled at Darling Harbour goods yard (now converted to an entertainment precinct).

The Sydney Metropolitan Water, Sewerage and Drainage Board also hired long-hairs, and was very popular. But it had a policy that it would not hire the same person twice, so you had to sign up under aliases (I used poets - Shelley, Keats, Byron, Shakespeare etc). I did this 15 times, working a few weeks boodling or jack-picking (and once 176 feet underground on a concrete gang building a sewerage tunnel at Dee Why), collecting my money and buggering off to Kings Cross, Paddo or The George to resume bohemian activities again. This was a fairly typical pattern.

Conversation at the Artarmon Water Board depot:

Wages Clerk: Ahh, you're back again Paul. What name is it this time?

Me: Alfred Tennyson.

Clerk: And how long are we here for this time, Mr Tennyson?

This clerk was cool. He became fascinated by the stream of long-haired layabouts turning up every so often under various bizarre names, and took to coming down to The George himself for a while.

Off to Kings Cross to resume bohemian activities: Looking down William Street to Kings Cross in the early 1960s. Note the Dunlop sign where the Coke sign is today. But if you look hard, you'll see the smaller Coca Cola sign underneath (Sydney Morning Herald)

Swiss Walter (back), seated Irene Smith? (I think) - a Jewish girl who with her (later) husband Keith Smith started Earth Garden magazine in 1972, Paul Stevens (in towel). Location: fisherman's hut near (I think) Bobbin Head which had big bunks inside - maybe a dozen from The Royal George were present, including Paul Clarke (Paul Adams, English Paul), Chris Owen, Terry Stanton, and Fran ?. 1964

Tales of The George: Clive and Germaine

2005-08-17T22:15:00.000+10:00

How unreliable is this memoir? But it makes an amusing tale......

Slightly older than I and already equipped with a degree from Melbourne, Germaine Greer had descended on Sydney University in the early 1960s while I was still a second year. Tall, striking and already famous for her brilliantly foul tongue, she had pursued graduate studies, libertarian polemics, and, for a brief period, me. At the risk of sounding even more conceited than usual, it is important that I record this fact, for a reason which will shortly emerge. At the time I was having published, in the literary pages of the Sydney University student newspaper honi soit, a lot of articles, poems and short stories conveying omniscience, poise and worldly wisdom. Publication was not difficult to arrange, because I edited those pages. Correctly intuiting at a glance that I was grass-green in all matters and emerald-green in the matter of sex, Germaine, at her table in the Royal George Hotel, took bets with the Downtown Push that she could seduce me within twenty-four hours. Next day the news reached me before she did. When she appeared, striding like a Homeric goddess, at the door of the cafeteria in Manning House, I cravenly escaped through the side entrance and hid behind the large adjacent gum tree. The rumour that I hid up the tree was false but slow to die. .......

Clive James, May Week Was in June, mutatis mutandi.

The Days of The Royal George

2005-08-17T17:00:00.000+10:00

A song of the Young Push, The Royal George Hotel, corner of King and Sussex Streets, Sydney, 1964

I

You'd walk in the bar and enter the realm
of the bright and the heightened soul,
where the wild boys drank and the wild girls too,
and the decks would tip and roll,
as we voyaged in schooners and glass canoes
down rivers of words to the sea,
set our course by the stars to fabled shores
where the myths that we made could be:

in the days of juice and certainty
such legends we did forge -
in the roaring days, the invincible nights,
in the days of The Royal George.

II

The Young Push ruled the Royal George,
where wharfies and Nazis brawled,
where Libertarians chased nymphettes;
where Larry, and English Paul,
Dimitri, Daphnette, Kate, and Chris,
and Newcastle John, and all,
would drink and sing the days away,
and the nights, till the final call -

in the nights of yippee beans and truth,
such legends we did forge -
in the roaring days, the invincible nights,
in the days of The Royal George.

III

The folksingers in the backroom,
sing, banjo and guitar,
and romances stir and blaze in the lounge,
and the Beatles blare loud in the bar,
and the Lads at the side-entrance steps -
tourists gape from passing cars
at their flying hair and Edwardian gear
as they hoist up their ale-filled jars;

all the singing and fighting and loving,
such legends we did forge -
in the roaring days, the invincible nights,
in the days of The Royal George.

IV

Oh, Rick O'Hara, and Zita and Jeff,
Terry Stanton, Swiss Walter and me,
played cricket in Hyde Park, free as lords,
which the populace gathered to see:
and I clean-bowled Paul, who threw down his bat,
for he thought that it could not be done!
Then back to The George, to weave our tale
of an epic lost and won,

in the hero-days, when we strode like gods,
such legends we did forge -
in the roaring days, the invincible nights,
in the days of The Royal George.

V

We turned our speech into poetry,
the universe into our own;
and many a pair of flirting eyes
met mine, and, challenging, shone;
and many a smile made promises
as the evening's glow wore on,
as the beers were poured, and the parties planned,
as the hours passed, and were gone:
till the barman called out, "Time, gents, please!"
and we drifted off, one by one,

away from the songs, and the hero-tales,
and the romances we once forged -
in the roaring days, the invincible nights,
in the days of The Royal George.

VI

The pub in my mind is empty now,
all the wild boys and wild girls - gone;
and I say their names over like a spell,
whose faces and voices I knew so well,
whose friendship is some old story I tell,
whose handshakes and kisses I once could touch,
who smile to me now, just beyond my reach -

for we've finished our drinks, walked out to the night,
no heroic myths left to forge -
and the roaring days have faded and gone,
the days of The Royal George.

The Old Push here, here, here, here, here and here.

Known Antecedents of The Days of The Royal George:

Henry Lawson

Bob Dylan

and again

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

and, of course, Mary Hopkins

Update: I went back to The Royal George recently, but you never can go back. The old bare floor-boards pub with Rugby League or Cricket Reschs and Tooths Lager signs has been gutted and renovated, gentrified, carpeted, up-marketed: a safe haven for corporate refugees, not the roaring, rioting, racketing reality-theatre of the wild men and women of yore. Sic gloria transit mundi. Où sont les neiges d'antan?

More Australian Bohemia:

here