after some morning rain things brightened up while visiting the koala park, where the guys got to see many strange australian animals.
spent the rest of the day mad dashing around the city for quick visits to various eateries and photo ops at the opera house.
finally, we kicked back with some fine thai food and much joking about koji’s potential sexual performance with gaijin girls!
koji – ” i was very moved by the beauty of the opera house. thai food was ‘fucking ripper, mate’ and koala is cute”
jj – “the thai food was excellent – in japan people go to thai restaurants to drink and i don’t drink much so i don’t have much chance to try thai food”
yukari – “when we first arrived we were so busy but today we got to see many things – opera house, clothes shops, supermarket (to buy tim tams and lamingtons) – and i can feel ‘this is australia'”
had to get up early today and make a mad dash down to the 2ser studios to record an interview for wednesday overdrive – everything went really well thanks to ben, host of the show – looking forward to hearing it sometime in the future (we won’t be here on wednesday to hear it go to air).
while in the studio the weather turned cool and windy so limited express (has gone?) did some souvenir shopping before we headed off to bondi to contemplate the possibility of swimming. unfortunately, it was way too cold to tempt them into some pretty good surfing conditions even though it was t-shirt weather for me.
toured around to south head and watson’s bay where i think we finally started to wind down after the weekend’s shows.
we dropped into newtown to oporto for these junk food freaks and met up with pure evil again in paint it black much to yukari’s delight!
soon after we were in the 2rrr studio with the wonderful micko to talk and play cool japanese and tenzenmen music for an hour – koji was particularly interested to talk more this time.
finally home to rest and pizza and beer.
yukari – “many things….but #1 is micko’s interview because koji talked much and i could play a lot of japanese music and introduce it to australia”
koji – “the highlight was going to bondi beach – i enjoyed the sightseeing and i talked on the radio in english, i had lots of fun but sorry about bad english”
S: Hey. Hope yr having a fine day. I’m still lost and gone in last night. Hope you can come along tonight after Patti Smith. Daevid Allen is tomorrow night. Me, I’m every night! (For you) Shaunus the Menace
T: thanks for last night babe.
S: Anytime – you got it!
T: still lost with ya.
S: YYYYEEEEEAAAAHHHHHHH!!!
T: i still don’t know what my plans are for tonight, i may have to skip what is music and go tomorrow night instead,
S: OK – you take care getting home tonight though.
T: though i was still pretty keen to see Jad Fair and Daevid Allen.
S: Yeah, I think Jad Fair should be interesting but all the others will be good. Looking forward to Sportsbra who is Nick from Phlegm (I think).
T: Hum’s address is 81 oxford st. paddington,
S: I’ll meet you there although I’ll probably be late and may not be able to get in. I’ll meet you outside after it’s finished. If YOU can’t get in then I’ll meet you outside and maybe we’ll go get some dinner somewhere (cheap). Actually I could probably give you a lift to a station somewhere when you need to go home. WIM starts at 8(ish).
T: and ph 9331 xxxx for enquiries. I’m hoping to get there early. what time do you reckon you’ll leave what is music? tonight?
S: If you go whenever you want – if you don’t go then whenever I want! Probably late -just depends on how tired I am but I’ll try and see it all.
T: i was thinking i might get the new patti smith cd to see if i can get it signed. – but it’ll probably be too busy.
S: Good idea – tell her to say hello to Bob from me! (Have you heard the new Patti Smith though?) Toe to Toe covered Rock N Roll Nigger as an encore to their show at the Iron Duke recently. Great song.
Arriving in Sydney, Australia I soon made it an objective to find the punk scene here. I found the record stores, the pub venues and slowly fell in with those making it happen. It wasn’t exactly the same as I was used to in Southampton but close enough. One of the first people I was introduced to was Sean No Deal (his record label was called No Deal) and Bronwyn and I hung out with him, his girlfriend and friends around Newtown sometimes. Everyone was friendly but obviously, I was the outsider and it wasn’t easy to break into this group’s inner circle. Coming from cold England where we kept ourselves busy doing things so as to stay warm I sometimes found the laid-back attitude of Australians a little frustrating. I thought I could take advantage of this and get involved somehow in making things happen a little quicker. I just had to figure out a way. I’d already been up on the Central Coast and got into DJing on the local license-seeking PCR-FM where I played the most out-there music that I could find. I’d also stumbled upon the folks behind Phlegm and the soon-to-be-launched What Is Music? Festival. In hardcore punk terms though, Sean seemed to be the one guy everyone told me to talk to and after doing so I found out that he’s pitched to Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll about doing an All Australian issue of the fanzine and had already started work on it. Awesome – that sounded like something I could really help out with. I threw around some ideas which were agreeable – ie – go for your life! In keeping Sean up to date with my ideas I asked for all the contacts he had around the country and then to see what he’d done so far so that I didn’t double up. This is when I found out that next to fuck-all had been done so far and some of that was already out of date. It surprises me that Australians ever get anything done sometimes but that’s also one of the things to love about their laid-back attitude. I took everything Sean had and decided now was the time to throw myself into something. Bronwyn and I were back in Sydney from the Central Coast, with a baby on the way and me just starting my career in IT. I needed to get this done before the baby was born and do it I did. About four months after sending off a package of papers, pictures and floppy disks a free copy of the fanzine arrived in our mail and I was quite proud of what I’d managed to achieve in such a short time. In the end, there were many other contributors who provided scene reports, interviews and information and I was really just the focal point to bring it all together to make it happen. I’ll add some posts here with some of the interviews I did and the whole magazine is available at archive.org.
Proud to be alongside these legends. In the following decade, I would also meet Mykel Board and Adrienne Droogas along with Lawrence Livermore again.
The one thing that got pulled from being printed was an interview with Oren Ambarchi and Phlegm and the What Is Music? Festival, which is a shame because that was what I was most interested in at the time.
Well, there’s only one place to go on New Year’s Eve and that’s the big city, so we end up at Libby and Dougie’s via Hornsby where P_ is looking after Ben and James (not that Ben needs looking after) and then on train to Cathy’s (remember you have to be mad to drive in Sydney and we don’t feel like it today which will be one of the busiest days of the year).
Cathy’s mad though and drives us into the city where we all settle into a long night of drinking cocktails, beer and champagne and smoking cones, playing party games and being too drunk to be coherent.
At nine or so I manage to convince everyone who can to come up the road to see the fireworks that go off in the harbour and on the bridge. They last for about half an hour and though our view is obscured slightly by a big gum tree they look magnificent in the dry night sky. The bridge we can see clearly though and that goes off with magnificent cascades and fountains of sparks imitating the previous storms.
We stumble back drunk and happy, high on life, chatting furiously and continue with party games and more merriment ’til time comes to wish each other a happy new year and we’re into 1995.
And the first thing I can remember of this new year is a glorious hangover.
Today is so hot, skin is melting. The wind burns as it blows, it’s nearing fifty in the sun. It’s too hot to do anything!
Broni, unfortunately, is away in this heat travelling on the trains up to Gosford for a job interview, I don’t envy her as I swim for a couple of hours at the pool, bare feet burning on the tarmac on the walk home.
With most everything packed up already I sit and play cards or tidy up a little more. Broni gets back later and we go to pick up the rental truck which is like the hugest thing I’ve ever driven and it seems ok, I turn out the first corner and head up to the lights and can’t find the brake, the taxi cab in front gettting closer, looking shinier and newer the closer we get, inching forward in a slow free fall, like slow motion replay, brief flashes of the thousand dollar excess hit my brain as I reach for the handbrake, not in the customary, by the seat position but at the dashboard, I’m reaching, Broni’s screaming, we’ve only been in the truck two minutes arggghh, pull the handbrakes, our hearts are pounding, God knows how far the bullbars were away from the shiny boot of the red and white taxi but we made it and sat in the road as the lights changed and we watched it pull away. phew!
Into the hectic traffic we go, confidence not good, we’re headed up to C_ and P_’s in Hornsby to pick up a free washing machine but time is against us, stuck in this pre-Christmas rush hour jam we decide to head east where we’re due for Scott’s 30th birthday at his parents house which has just got the coolest view down to the river and the ocean way in the distance and bushland dark and red in the sunset.
It’s still 30 degrees as we sit on the verandah with a ton of Scott and Lynette’s friends drinking up beer and champagne (mineral water for me) and it’s nine at night, insects buzzing round. There’s talk of a southerly heading up the coast which would bring relief, someone had a call from the south saying they got it at 7 or so, so it should be hitting Sydney very soon. But the air is still and hot.
Out of nowhere the breeze comes, the temperature drops five degrees in as many minutes, it’s such an amazing change it has to be experienced, within a second all the plastic cups are being whipped around the table and after a little tidy up everyone’s out on the verandah letting the wind blow over them.
We have to leave soon after this to go up to Hornsby to pick up the washing machine before everyone’s asleep, we get there about ten thirty and set the dogs off next door, eventually getting this huge machine in the back of the truck and securing it, I didn’t think it was gonna move anywhere it was so heavy but was advised to tie it down.
Anyways, we have a cuppa and leave about midnight and get to the end of the street and stop to look at the map and then the police come over and want to know if we had anything to do with the dogs barking and cop number one is ok and cop number two is a sarcastic asshole and I think twice before giving him some shit cos it’s late and I’ve got better things to be doing than fucking about with some idiot meathead cop, man this guy really lived up to his stereotype.
Anyway, tongue bitten we head off home and straight into that bed for the last time.
Catch up again now we’re the other side of the weekend.
Thursday became an exciting day after the discovery of how to make a tape trade list on the computer so I set about doing that, in between playing games and stuff like that, and I get to realise just how many tapes I seem to possess and realise how long it might take to write this list. I do the same for most of Friday and the sun shines in through the window tempting me out.
We leave for the city as Broni has promised to babysit for Libby and Dougie and I’m off to see some bands, having half arranged to meet a guy who does a fanzine. Libby feeds us a treat and decides not to go out after all so Broni and her play together while I make my way across the city to the Annandale Hotel. Aaron, the dude I’m supposed to meet, says there’s two good bands playing tonight so I pay $6 to get in and then astound myself by parting with $4.60 for a beer, the band starts, the room is packed, I look for some dude selling fanzines. As I don’t have any idea what this guy looks like or sounds like, I don’t find him, the band has a good sound, a great sound, but they are boring as all hell grunge by numbers which goes down well with the crowd.
I stand at the back and pick up a copy of the weekly music magazine and see that Phlegm are playing at the Vulcan (wherever that is), Phlegm having already aroused my interest by being reviewed as a noise band and having played with the Boredoms and Ruins in Japan (or something like that), so I happily leave and start walking back to the city, hailing a taxi at the petrol station, getting dropped off near the Vulcan.
I walk down the side streets, luckily having some idea of where I am, but nervous as I walk past three big guys drinking in the shadows of the houses. The Vulcan is within sight though and I head toward the noise. As I go in the band is playing right next to the door, I join about four other people watching, the Vulcan is a divey little back bar but to me seems absolutely great, reminding me of sparsely attended gigs back home years ago.
The band is playing good thrash/grindcore with lots of time changes and wild vocals from the drummer, also a keyboard player content just to make strange noises with his equipment which integrate quite well, extremely tight and intricate they strangely appeal to me and I have no interest in that genre of music really, so I’m already happy to make the decision of coming here instead of the previous engagement.
I ring Broni to let her know what’s going on and then come back in to watch Farm of Tongues, the drums are set up oddly and one bass player has six strings on his bass, he also reminds me of Mick, with a mad look in his eyes like safety behind a guitar, like all of sudden I’m superhuman behind this animal machine (that’s how Mick’d describe it).
The band rip into their songs and are exceptionally brilliant and talented, the drummer all over the place with jazz beats here and there and the three guitarists mixing up all sorts of snippets of styles into short bursts of everything, they remind me of Ruins and Naked City (w/o sax). I talk to Mark, their bass player after and get his phone number to ring him to get a tape of the band, they’ve only been together for six months which seems incredible to me considering how complicated their songs were and how well they played them.
Mark tells me that Phlegm’s drummer has pneumonia so they’ll be playing an improvised set tonight and their guitarist sets up and starts twisting strange noise out of his cut off instrument and his colleague gets on the mic and starts gibbering in a Trumans Water manner and ocassionally picking up the bass and messing around with it. It’s a beautiful cacophony of screeching hell that seems odd in this place but unimaginable anywhere else.
I leave at about half midnight hoping to catch a late train, but missing it I opt to navigate my way back to Libby’s on foot, which I manage quite successfully despite my four beer drunkeness! Broni lets me in and we crash out immediately – to be awoken by little Reg and Gough, running round in the kitchen at some ungodly hour and Libby and Dougie running around after them, we manage to stay in bed for another hour or so before having to play with the kids, we’re both knackered out and running on reserves but manage to keep going the whole day while Libby and Dougie go off to a wedding of a friend and later come back drunk with Christine and Andrew in tow and then launching into more beer and cocktails and smoke for those inclined.
Drunk again we make our way home back, even before sunset, we waste the rest of the evening with TV and pizza and a bath we nearly fall asleep in, ah sweet life.
And Sunday I notice that things here are seeming more normal like I remember the first day here I walked into Hurstville with Broni and I was agog looking at everything, all new and unreal and doing that same walk on Sunday seemed so normal and satisfying, now feeling safer in this place.
I later ring my mum and she asks if I feel I’ve made the right decision and I say despite any bad times I have here like missing people I have undoubtedly made the right choice, I can’t imagine how sad I would feel if I hadn’t taken this opportunity to further myself. Ok, brave soldiers.
25th Mar 2021 – Leaving that first show at the Annandale Hotel and discovering Phlegm and Farm of Tongues at the Vulcan Hotel was an auspicious event and would lead to lots of new friendships. I also distinctly remembering walking back to Libby’s house, walking through Hyde Park in the early hours and having a feeling of absolute safety – something that would have been impossible in England for me at that time. In England you always had to be aware of things going on around you – it felt like there was always someone looking for trouble. In a new country, it may just have been ignorance – either way, it was a feeling that has stayed with me until now.
Well, are you feeling festive on the first of the Christmas month? I’m sure confused because Christmas time normally means cold days, long nights and sifting around with the heating on. I’m currently running around in t-shirt and jeans and mostly less than that! Not much snow forecast in Sydney for Christmas I don’t suppose.
Anyway, after coming back from cousin Jan’s we attempted to park the car in the garage and scraped the front, taking off some paint, which we thought might cost us some to repair if they pick up on it when we return it on Tuesday. Oh well, nothing we could do about it.
After all the excitement of the beach on Sunday we had to get Broni into the city for a job interview, it turned out to be a bit of a waste of time as it was pretty much earmarked for someone else and they were just going through the motions of interviewing people anyway. It was interview practice anyway, for her interview in Newcastle, which is where we headed after that, this road will be as familiar to me as the Poole-London motorway soon, at least this road is a sight prettier.
We hoped to hit the beach but the weather turned from boiling hot sunshine to a dull mist by the time we got there. As we drove through I figured Newcastle seemed like a cool place to live, not too far away from Sydney and a little more relaxed than there. We planned to stay with Broni’s friend Christa and after bumming around town for a bit we went to her house, a Victorian looking terrace house about a hundred yards from the beach (lots of beaches here!).
Inside, the house just blew me away, it was huge, kinda deceptive from the outside cos it looked kinda squashed in there, though it did remind me of something out of Chelsea, London. So, inside Christa shows us around. The ceilings are high which give the impression of space, the floors polished wood, furniture sparse and functional, all clean and tidy, as we go we get to meet the rest of the household, Michael, who actually owns the place, he’s a doctor,Jim, who’s also a doctor and practicing surfing, so we agreed to get down to the beach sometime in the future, and Cathy who’s a physio and gave me that deja vu feeling that I’d seen her somewhere before. Christa is an occupational therapist, so everyone in the house is well paid and they’re having a ball, quite prepared though they were to share their good fortune with their friends.
The house goes down one floor to the kitchen and a bedroom and outside into a yard where Michael and Jim were making some mighty fine home brew (checked some they’d made earlier and it was good). Upstairs to more bedrooms and bathroom that included a spa bath and a shower that hung down in the middle of the bath with at least a seven inch head. Through another bedroom that lead out onto a front verandah that was shut off with big yellow storm doors, and upstairs again to an attic room that just about had a view of the beach left between the buildings that had recently been constructed. What an amazing place to live and incredibly cheaply too, these guys had really fallen on their feet. They all made us feel really comfortable and relaxed.
After much chat, me, Broni and Christa headed into town, in what was a dull rainy old night, though still warm enough for only a shirt, we hit the Thai restaurant and deluged ourselves with red curries and satay sauces. The pace in the whole town seemed really comfortable and more to my liking compared with Sydney, so we hope that Broni goes well in her interview, in fact Jim’s girlfriend is a speech pathologist at another hospital and gave us some inside information which could mean well for Broni, let’s hope so.
Off to bed, Broni sits up and revises, especially in light of this new information, and when she eventually turns out the light we lay awake for sometime before hitting snoozeland.
Bright and early risers with much on our minds, fingers crossed and all that, we say our farewells and thanks to our new friends and drive up to the hospital, which is set around beautiful bushland, the birds screaming mad messages at the edge of the car park.
Broni comes out about an hour later with a big smile, knowing she’s done well and in with a chance, now the desperate wait ’til they get in touch and advise us. We grab a local paper with houses for rent and other jobs for me advertised, let’s force our luck, hey?
We drive up to Peter and Paula’s house, which is another stylish house with an incredible view over the beach and the town, must cost a fortune to live up here. They feed us, Peter decides to help out by painting the scrape in the car, unfortunately it doesn’t work too well in the short time we have to fix it and he comes up with this hail’ brained scheme of covering the car in dirt and mud which he then proceeds to do, a little bit of oxide thrown in for good measure, we have to dash to get back to Sydney in time but on the way we start to feel guilty and stop quickly at a jet wash and hose off the offending dirt, leaving just a small trace of oxide near the scrape.
Gunning for home, hitting 140 on the flat, that’s k’s now, not mph ok, we break the sound barrier and arrive with a half hour to spare, run in and pay and run out again straight to the train station and onto a train where we sit back and relax.
We get some beer and wine and celebrate the night away, exhausted after these five free days, free to drive anywhere anytime and boy, did we, nearly a thousand k’s.
Well, that’s as much excitement as I could stand these days so I’ve spent the next two calming myself down a bit. And today, I’m gloriously happy, content with life and my long term buddy, Broni, and happy at all the fun I’m due to have, come and get me!
25th Mar 2021 – I remember none of this except the scrape on the car. I’m thinking it’s a good job I wrote it down but then wondering if I haven’t bothered to remember it much because I wrote it down? It is a lot of beers ago now though.
Searching for images to use for some of these posts throws out some really nice old old pictures. 1924 or 1994 – it’s all getting old these days.
Pic: First passenger train to cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge – I love finding old photos like this online.
Today we went up to the north of the city, getting a train over the Harbour Bridge, up to see Cathy in Artarmon, again up to the north the views from the train are a bit more pretty than our usual journey.
Her friend Robert comes round and we head off in the car, this time back into the city to go to St Mary’s church to see a friend of theirs get married, not officially invited we just sit at the back.
We watched the big limo pull up and the bride had to faff around waiting for photos to be taken of her and her bridesmaids, then she walked up the steps and into the church and then a few minutes later down the aisle. It felt really voyeuristic to watch and it was odd seeing Japanese tourists come and go while the priest was mumbling away.
The echo was awful (remember how I described how big this place is?) and they set up a microphone and a couple of speakers for the priest which may help in some parts of the building but at the back it just turned into an echoey mumble, we left about halfway through, slightly disappointed that such a magnificent building didn’t seem to make for a good ceremony. We got a few ideas from it in that it showed us a few things that we don’t want at our wedding.
Kathy drove us all the way home and it was good to have someone else in the house for a change. It was teatime* by the time they left and we realised we hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so whipped up some food and alcohol and lazed away the evening watching crumby TV and playing games on the computer, which Broni was proud to win.
17th Mar 2021: It’s funny seeing the word teatime now. Definitely a hold over from English culture and something I no longer use.
1994ever 