The Dingoes' Lament. John Bois
in a sea of dolls, exotic hub caps, rolled-up maps, old cameras, wood and metal puzzles, and antique scientific instruments. He was a voracious reader: comics, individually wrapped in clear plastic, were stacked in hallowed corners; a huge bookshelf sagged under the weight of science fiction paperbacks, which were crammed into it at the rate of one every two Earth days. And, with his collection of books on the history, customs and conquest of the North and South American native peoples, he sought the fantastic in the real world too.
Brod’s wife was a seamstress. Pieces of material, quilts and cloth-filled cane hampers added plushness, a buffer to Brod’s clutter that was appreciated by the third denizen, Ronald, a lithe Persian cat. Ronald, if he wasn’t asleep in some dark, cushioned nook, could be seen bouncing from object to object in search of one or another of the infinite possibilities of its Broderickian universe.
But, as used to the wacky world of Broderick as Ronald was, I think he would have gone stark raving mad if he just once saw his master in action at the Station. At the end of Sydney Ladies, a song Brod wrote about American GIs on R&R from Vietnam, he would blow a ten-minute harp solo into his refurbished taxi-driver’s microphone. As he walked out onto the audience’s tables, people cleared their glasses to make way for his tattered tennis shoes. Girls mockingly clutched at his crumpled jeans. His hair stuck to the sweat on his cheeks and forehead as his frenzy increased. At the climax of his solo, the audience cheered as if someone had scored a go-ahead goal in the final second. Brod would affect smug appreciation for the applause and saluted the crowd like Hitler at the Nuremburg rally. Then he would introduce the next song:
‘Die fumph zong nicht einer kraftwerk von Chris Stockley, Achtung! Mein Kamerades die tempo: ein, zwei, drei …’
Stockley would play a lightning-fast introduction while Brod slid across the stage on his knees, prostrating himself before the guitar hero.
After this song, as I was tuning my bass, Brod would whisper into the microphone in the voice of a golf announcer, ‘John is moving onto his D string … no. Wait just a minute … I’m sorry. He’s changed his mind. He’s on the A string. He’s pulling it up … up … up … until it’s just right. Ooh, that was nicely done.’
On it went from a seemingly bottomless well of comic patter. And Brod never repeated himself — that was anathema to him.
What theory of personality could accommodate the contradictions in this man, this man who sat next to me with his elbows on his knees, wringing his hands in anxiety over life in general, and the phone call in particular?
He wasn’t sweating over the pool game, though. He stood up, ‘I’m going for a walk along the beach. I’ll see you back here about six.’
‘Okay, mate.’
‘See ya, Brod,’ said the others.
And he disappeared, worrying out the door.
Stockley looked at his fifth giveaway shot. It required him to put the cue behind his back with just one foot touching the floor. He grunted. ‘A little … tricky, this one, mate.’
He pocketed the ball with a motion that said: Take that! But he left himself in poor position for the next shot. He made a gallant shot off the cushion but just missed.
Then, to reach the white ball, I had to use the extension stick to rest my cue on.
‘Need the poofter stick, John?’ He stood leaning against the wall with his cue, his beer and his scars.
‘Would you mind buttoning up your shirt,’ I said. ‘It’s like trying to play next to the bloody Aurora Borealis.’
‘No way, mate.’
My ball went down but I had a long shot for the next one and I missed by a mile.
‘Too bad, mate.’
I left him in good position for his last two balls. He had not beaten me in quite a while so he took his time deciding which ball should go into which hole. He made his first shot and was nicely in line for the next, but, in trying to hit it too hard so the white ball would carry back up the table to the eight ball, his last ball bounced from side to side of the pocket and dribbled out impotently. ‘I was fucking robbed.’
‘Bit too much english, mate.’
By this time J.L. and Kerryn were watching. ‘Another round of beers?’ asked Kerryn.
‘Thanks, mate,’ we all said.
Stockley went to the bathroom and I punched in three balls while he was away. When he came back he looked at the table and said, ‘Was anybody watching this bastard?’
Next, instead of trying to make a difficult shot, I put the white ball behind my ball snookering Stockley. He was genuinely miffed.
Kerryn laughed. ‘I’m next,’ he said as he slapped some coins on the table.
Stockley couldn’t recover and I sank my last ball and then sent down the eight ball with a feather-touch side shot. It was a fluke.
‘See, mate? Finesse. You gotta have class in this game.’
‘You’re a ratbag, John,’ he said. And he guzzled down his beer. ‘I’m going upstairs. I’ll see you in the lobby at six.’
‘They’re dropping like flies, Kerryn.’
He collected the balls and looked for the rack. ‘Where’s the thing?’ he said.
I passed him the rack. ‘A thing by any other name is still a thing.’
Kerryn’s smile, like my sense of humour that day, was notable for its economy — only the corners of his mouth needed to turn up to indicate amusement. He positioned himself to break and pumped the cue vigorously. He thrashed the white ball and sent it ricocheting off the pack and bouncing off the table.
‘Okay, you blokes,’ whined the bartender as the ball bounced across the linoleum and smashed into the bar. ‘What do you think this is, cricket?’
‘Mind your own business,’ retorted Kerryn angrily. Then, instantly composed, ‘Sorry, mate. Can I try that again?’
‘Have at it,’ I said.
I had never seen Kerryn hit anyone, but I have often thought that he would be a good friend to have if things got rough. Perhaps his badly chipped front tooth gave that impression, or maybe it was his cocky stance and attitude. His posture and clothing bore a striking resemblance to the male dancer in Renoir’s Dance at Bougival. But Kerryn’s hair would not have fit under that gentleman’s hat. Kerryn, like the dancer, wore a beard, but his hair was long and frizzy and naturally assumed the shape of a toadstool. Apart from his hair, there was no extravagant sign of his driven creativity. For that you had to hear his songs.
No single reason for our success stood out. But Kerryn’s songs provided the intellectual justification for that success. We were praised in the rock press for charting new territory for Australian bands — we actually sang about Australia. To understand why this was so important you have to appreciate the unique history of Australia’s popular culture. Australian/European culture was only about a hundred years old before it was inundated by radio and, later, TV. The fully developed American and English popular cultures tended to wash aside any nascent local varieties. As a generation, we felt a keen sense of embarrassment at our lack of homegrown art forms. This embarrassment even had a name: the cultural cringe. Our songwriters avoided all mention of Australia in our popular songs.
But Kerryn found a voice. Though his music was heavily derivative of American blues, country and rock, his lyrics used Australian place names, situations, characters and language. This, in a serious tone, was new. Certainly, plenty of songs had been written about the outback, but they were novelty songs like the great The Pub with No Beer, and the not so great Red Back (spider) on the Toilet Seat. Now Kerryn had written a serious song about a man who went oil drilling in the western desert. It made the charts towards the end of 1973. In a later song, about people stuck in limbo, Waitin’ for the Tide to Turn, Kerryn