In a suburb stuffed with notorious pubs, The Colac was Port Adelaide’s worst. It was known as The Bloodhouse. It was abandoned for decades. The land around it formerly summoned The Great Gatsby.
This is the valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens
The pub has reopened and is splendidly appointed. Opulent furnishing, sublime art, strangely odourless air. Light drenches the two stories and three distinct spaces, having bent in from the becalmed Port River. Later jazz, a piano ready on the stage. Wagyu and other prized cuts in a cabinet.
The wait staff were welcoming but began yapping at us like terrier pups, having gone from attentive to nutso annoying.
How were the customary hot chips? Sprinkled with fetta, garlic oil, wolfed.
The Colac is now crowded in by eager rows of boxy terrace homes, like an English village. Is the invigoration of the Port finally underway?
*
Home, with the dark descending. It’s my favourite hour for a vinyl album so I popped on Hotel California. Shoeless, Claire busied herself cheerfully. I plonked myself in a chair.
I read recently the title track is, among many other things, a reggae song. This genre is difficult to love due to its repetitive boing-boing. For me The Eagles’ tour de force is now tainted. I hope I can reverse this.
Clasping a refreshment, Life in the Fast Lane began with its sunset swagger. As Claire scurried in and out, I contemplated how the guitars are like a Chevy Impala hurtling down Mulholland Drive. The melody and the lyrics marry. When sound mirrors the meaning is this word painting the musical equivalent of onomatopoeia?
The penultimate track is the sun-kissed Try and Love Again, sung by the late Randy Meisner. He’s best known for Take It to the Limit, where his voice soars — arguably their finest. But the nightly demand of it became a private terror. ‘I was always kind of shy… They wanted me to stand in the middle of the stage… but I liked to be out of the spotlight.’ He quit at the zenith of their fame. How cruel to be haunted by your gift?
*
Saturday saw the next in this year’s succession of milestone parties. A 5.30pm start for our dear friend, JB. On the veranda, I wondered aloud to nobody that our social functions now conclude at the hour they once would have begun.
The theme was a reprise of her previous big celebration: come as the person, you’d like to be, so Claire and I both transmogrified to seventeen-year-olds. A school dress (Claire) and Kapunda High blazer (me). Are we misguided in wanting to be younger versions of ourselves?
At JB’s 2016 birthday, I’d gone as The Dude from The Big Lebowski. He remains a profound inspiration but now proved too difficult to properly source, sartorially.
Across the backyard, Eagle Rock chugged. With Michelle’s kind kidnapping, I participated — trousers hitched. Later the song Mickey played. Trish performed a cruelly accurate impression of year 12 me doing the Health Hustle.
In the courtyard, they danced on, sweet with summer sweat — some to remember, some to forget.
Well, the South side of Chicago is the baddest part of town And if you go down there, you better just beware Of a man named Leroy Brown Now, Leroy, more than trouble You see, he stands, about, six foot four All the downtown ladies call him ‘Treetop Lover’ All the men just call him ‘Sir’
We were beneficiaries of Kapunda High being a progressive school with teachers who were innovative. When I was in Year 11, vertical homegroups became part of the ongoing reform and this meant students from Years 8, 9 and 10 joined us in the Home Economics Centre under Mrs. Trinne’s watchful and occasionally fierce eye. This arrangement was representative of our bold education.
Mr. Schell was influential in setting up a daily fitness programme. Every day we’d have a different activity and the entire school would rotate through these, including all the staff. Most of this happened on the oval. But one memorable— if haunting session— was scheduled weekly in the former stables.
It’s called the Health Hustle, comprised three or four songs and each tune had a set workout routine. Our class members would claim their space on the rough concrete floor of the Stables and Schelly played the songs on a boombox. For some in our class this was fun and for others like me, it marked the beginning of my descent into dancephobia!
Technically, it’s known as chorophobia and yes, I’ve been attending the Monday meetings for many, many years. No, not really but to describe my dancing as uncoordinated would be a gigantic underrepresentation.
The mere mention today of Health Hustle prompts Claire and Trish to leap up from their otherwise comfy chairs and give a hilarious recreation of me feebly trying to dance in the stables all those years ago. All done with uncontrollable laughter. Look! There they go mimicking me and my tangle of disobedient, droopy limbs. Arrythmia not of the heart but of the body. Still, our friendship, if not my choreography, flourished.
Catching the opening notes of ‘Mickey’ or ‘Teach Your Children’ nowadays I’m sure many of the class of ‘83 also have a Pavlovian response that causes them to break into those deeply embedded routines. But I somehow retain affection for the Chicago gangster jaunt of ‘Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.’ The marriage of the Scorsese lyrics and the wide-eyed piano stomp is terrific.
He got a custom Continental He got an El Dorado too He got a 32 gun in his pocket full a fun He got a razor in his shoe
*
Resuming our drone flight over Kapunda, we’re now on the Main Street and peer under the veranda of Rawady’s Deli. Pausing at the front window we see sporting team sheets sticky-taped to the glass. Handwritten names on a paper footy oval or for cricket, a list of eleven boys along with details of when and where. If it was a summer’s Saturday morning, there’d be a white huddle on the veranda, ready to head to Eudunda or Angaston or maybe Truro.
Gazing further into the shop we witness a constant flurry of activity behind and in front of the long counter. Reg is moving about, helping people with his baritone that always seemed too large for his tiny frame while out the back Brian’s endlessly cooking chips in the deep fryer. Rawady’s Deli was the town’s heartbeat and epicentre for much communal good.
On any given day, my Mum or sister, Jill could be working or it might be Claire making me a post-cricket milkshake. If I was in there with Greggy Higgins getting mixed lollies before Thursday afternoon RE with Mrs. Schultz at the former convent then we’d see this transaction-
‘Yes, thanks. Can I have ten cobbers?’
‘Sure.’ Ten cobbers would then be shoved into the white paper bag by someone like Eli. ‘Okay. What’s next?’
‘How about some of those red ones?’
‘Which ones?’ This question would emerge from deep in the lolly cabinet. A headless voice.
Greggy would sometimes say, ‘See where your hand is? Not there. Over to your left.’ We’d then both giggle.
‘Okay. These?’ An impatient finger would point at a box of bananas or teeth or red snakes.
‘No. Not my left. Your left.’
We then fly down the street to the outskirts of town and the Esso service station. A man of relentless motion like the Rawady brothers, the owner, Rex Draper was also a Musical Society devotee. Like Rawady’s Deli many locals worked there. The girl fourth from the left (here too), Damian Trotta (still there) Nevvy Ellis, Grantley Dodman— who called himself a petroleum transfer engineer—and for about six years, me.
Most Sundays around six my cousin Paul ‘Boogly’ Ryan would drive in, piloting his HQ Holden Kingswood. Hearing him before I saw his car, he’d cruise past Trotta’s Hardware and swing up the volume on his Kenwood stereo and it blasted across the dusty, otherwise tranquil townscape. This ritual always made me laugh.
We were massive fans of the Rolling Stones and knew how cool they were. From their last great album, Tattoo You, ‘Slave’ was a blues jam and part of our shared vernacular. It was always greeted with nodding heads and wry smiles.
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it Do it, do it, do it, do it
Don’t wanna be your slave Don’t wanna be your slave Don’t wanna be your slave
Let’s zoom in now as a sinister black motorbike has rumbled onto the forecourt of Rex’s servo and shuddered noisily to a stop. In 1983 full driveway service was expected. Fill her up, check the oil and tyres, clean the windshield. I recall my utter terror when a bikie—always fat and gruff and menacing—would scowl before murmuring instructions to me. This was scarier. Their lifeless eyes always hidden by impenetrably black sunglasses.
He’d order, ‘Fill it up.’ I’d gulp, knowing what was next. My hands shaking as I eased the now unwittingly weaponised nozzle into the tank of the Harley. Brain surgery would’ve been less intimidating. They’d often be returning from a day trip to Cadell Prison. He’d then whisper in a barely disguised death-threat. ‘Don’t spill any on the tank. I’ve just had it repainted.’
Of course. These feckers had always just repainted their tank. They lived only for their Harleys. They didn’t have lives or hobbies or volunteer to goal umpire the junior colts. Just repainting the fecking tank on their fecking murder machines.
*
Late in 1983 we had our final school social. These were terrific fun and the last dance was always ‘Hotel California.’ With the duelling guitar solo still ringing out as the lights came up in the Parish Hall, Davo, Chrisso, and I pointed my sky-blue HR Holden towards our friend Stephen’s unit in Plympton where we spent the night.
The next day was Friday and our last at Kapunda High. Some like Chrisso didn’t appear fussed and Paul Hansberry was already working at the silos for the summer. I remembered my first day in year 8 when I was scared at what high school would hold. Now, on our concluding day I was scared at what life beyond school might hold as the world opened up in vast and uncertain ways.
I’m quite sure I didn’t thank my teachers—Mrs. Schultz, Miss Searle, Ali Bogle (she was young so didn’t have an honorific, sorry), Mr Krips and Mr. McCarthy. Macca—who would speak at the footy club wedding reception Claire and I would have many years into the future. So, I thank them now.
Trish and Claire and Belly and Lisa and Davo and Penny and Chrisso and Crackshot and I would’ve said things like this to each other-
‘Well, we’re done. See you round.’
‘Bye, you.’ Accompanied by a friendly punch and a grin.
‘I’ll see you soon, probably before Christmas.’
And that was it.
I didn’t realise it then but Kapunda High—indeed the entire town—had prepared me well. They had accomplished that most miraculous feat, the very thing that every day drives our teachers, parents and coaches. Despite our frequent resistance, they persevered. They had helped create our lives.
1983 was soon replaced and off we all went. Uni, the air force, nursing, work. The world was waiting. Kapunda High had been great.
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