The Bastard from the Bush: An Australian Life

by Jarratt, John

  Mirth was a lively horse and she was hard to control. She wasn’t like the Western horses that stand like statues on camera. She twisted and turned and hopped around. That’s what I wanted, the kind of horse Ned would have had. Our wrangler Johnny Baird had found the perfect horse. I got on her the first day, I kicked her up and she took the bit and bolted. The best thing to do when a horse bolts is to kick the bastard and try to make it gallop faster, then the horse thinks you’re in control. I did this and aimed Mirth at a hill. She galloped up it, and by the time she got to the top she was buggered. I turned her around, walked her down the hill and made her gallop up again. That was the last time she ever bolted.

  The first big sequence was the battle of Stringybark Creek. The cops were looking for the Gang, but Ned found them first. It was kill or be killed. Three cops were killed and one was wounded; he got away. As Ned said to his sister, ‘There was a fight and we won.’ I wore a replica pair of Ned’s boots, which were Cuban-heeled with no ankle support. I had to run through the bush chasing a wounded cop. I twisted my ankle really badly coming over a log. My ankle was bandaged and I hobbled on, favouring the twisted ankle, and in doing so twisted the other one. Thankfully we’d run out of light and we wrapped for the day. John Ley was very adept at healing these sorts of things: his father was a physio and he’d taught John. He got stuck in and rubbed my ankles for about two hours. By next day they seemed a lot better. I ran again and twisted the worst of the two again. I was so frustrated I cried, and I don’t cry easily. They had to get a runner for me. I took the boots off and threw them away. I wore R M Williams from then on; you couldn’t see the boots under the trousers anyway.

  Ned Kelly was eloquent, and his speeches were extraordinary. Google the Jerilderie Letter or look up Ned Kelly quotations. My favourite is that on being told by Judge Barry he was to hang, he said, ‘I fear death as little as I fear a cup of tea.’ His schooling was limited but he loved to read. He was also blessed with high intelligence. I think if he lived in today’s world he’d come from a broken lower-class home and probably steal a few cars until he woke up to himself. He would have then used his considerable intelligence and maturity to become very successful all round. He’d be driving a Toyota HiLux and running a high-return property.

  The Last Outlaw was an interesting exercise. It involved six months of living with the Kelly Gang, living the Gang every day and being enthusiastic to be as close to young Irish rebels as we could possibly be.

  Lewis Fitz-Gerald played Ned’s cousin Tom Lloyd, the silent fifth member of the Gang. Tom was the strategist for the Gang and an integral part of the saga. It was fitting that Lewis got us out of the Seymour Motel and into a rough-and-tumble shearers quarters just out of town. We all lived there for the entire shoot.

  There was a massive pile of dead trees nearby, so we set up a magnificent circular fireplace out the front. We sat round that fire spinning yarns, going through the next day’s scenes and singing songs to Ric Herbert’s guitar accompaniment. We all had Irish backgrounds and we were becoming chronically Irish.

  The weekends were wild. Sometimes we’d drive to Melbourne and shack up at the inner-city home of famous photographer Rennie Ellis. Johnny Ley lived there and Rennie loved these ‘wild bastards’ sleeping on his floors. Drugs and booze were the order of the day, in both Seymour and Melbourne. We were young and crazy.

  My craziest day started at the quarters with a marijuana tea breakfast with Ric Herbert. We drove to Melbourne to join the rest of the Gang at a pub. Ric and I got there early so we went to another pub for a beer. We were sitting there having a quiet drink when this bloke further up the bar turned to his mate and said, looking at me, ‘That wild bastard’s back.’

  I turned to Ric. ‘Let’s go.’

  I swear, I don’t remember ever being there before, but I suffered from blackouts. We got to the pub and had a few more beers. Bizo turned up late, by which time we were upstairs with the pub manager dropping mescaline.

  We decided to leave for a party, and I bought a large bottle of Scotch for the journey.

  I jumped into Bizo’s V8 Valiant and by the time we arrived I was drunk, stoned, tripping and blacked out. I can’t remember a thing, but this is what I’m told happened next. I went for a leak in this house and threw the bathroom door open. A woman was already in there and I terrorised her, screaming, yelling and carrying on. Bizo dragged me out into the hall, trying to get me to his car. I proclaimed, ‘I am a rock,’ and braced my hands, pushing my arms into the hall walls as hard as I could, and they couldn’t budge me. Bizo then thumped me a few times and got me into the car.

  We travelled to a comedy club. I was the only passenger in Bizo’s car; everyone else followed in a jam-packed VW. They were behind us and witnessed the most disgusting sight. I had this monster beard and I threw up, spraying the back window from passenger’s side to driver’s side. I threw Bizo’s silk jacket out the window and then opened the door to get out. Bizo hit the brakes and went from 80 kilometres per hour to zero as my foot touched the pavement. I went back to the VW, which had almost crashed into us, and pulled the driver’s door open.

  I yelled at the frightened driver, ‘Where’s your girlfriend Megan Williams?’

  ‘In Adelaide.’

  ‘Oh.’

  And I got back into Bizo’s car.

  I woke up feeling like the aftermath of Hiroshima on the floor of a house I’d never been in. I still don’t know how I got there. Bizo had kicked me out. A rather obese, Greek-looking girl was shaking me awake. I walked out of the house and she followed me. I somehow found Rennie’s house after an hour or so, and the girl was still following me. I was too sick to ask her why. I passed out on the couch in Rennie’s lounge room, and the girl sat with me. Finally the Gang turned up.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Who’s the girl?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Enough strange things happened that I should have realised I had a problem, but I didn’t. I had a meal at about one in the morning, when we were all drunk on ouzo. My meal was trout and the last thing I remember was the dish being served. I woke up the next morning feeling like one side of my face was sunburnt.

  I said to the boys, ‘The last thing I remember was the trout dish.’

  ‘That’s because you passed out in your plate.’

  ‘That’s why my face feels burnt, it’s been cooked! Why did you leave my face in it?’

  ‘Cause it looked funny.’

  Because I was playing Ned, I was continually confronted as some sort of male conquest. One night Sigrid Thornton’s husband, Tom Burstall, got stuck in. He was from the famous Burstalls, including Tim the director and Dan the cameraman. I’ve worked with all of them, love all of them, but they’re not scared of giving an opinion. Tom and I had had a few and he was at me about Ned being gay, trying to get a rise out of me. It went on for a bit and I said, ‘I don’t care if he was a poof, I really don’t, he was an extraordinary man who changed history, as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t matter where his penis was, it’s where his mind and heart were that matters.’ Tom wasn’t the first to raise this argument to me. It doesn’t matter if Ned Kelly was gay: so is the out and proud CEO of Qantas.

  I was at a Lebanese restaurant with a bunch of people from The Last Outlaw. I was sitting next to the boyfriend of the make-up artist. He was drunk and he got stuck into me about what an arsehole Ned Kelly was and what a hypocrite I was to be playing him. In the end I said to him, ‘My right ear is now deaf, I can’t hear you.’ I then turned to Rosa and the others to the left of me. This guy then started calling me a cunt, over and over.

  George Miller, the director, said, ‘Hey mate, have you got a death wish?’

  Then he got worse. Suddenly I lost it. I grabbed him by the shirt, threw him against the wall and proceeded to belt him about his face. They dragged him away and took him home. I apologised to the Lebanese owner, who said he’d seen the whole thin
g, and as there was no one else at the restaurant, would I like some Lebanese gold hash? He then produced a hookah, a large water-cooled pipe. It was powerful stuff. I never thought I’d be happy about fighting in a restaurant.

  The Last Outlaw was an extraordinary experience. I can’t do it justice writing about it. I felt different, I felt like Ned Kelly, I felt like I’d jumped back in time to the 1870s. The drama, the battles, the adventure, the family, the Republic of North-East Victoria, the rifles, the horses, the bravery, the heroism of those stoic Irish peasants. Would I have behaved as Ned did under similar circumstances? I think I would. I pray that under those circumstances I’d have enough guts. Do I fear death as little as I fear a cup of tea? No, I’m not in Ned’s league.

  The most amazing time for me as Ned was saying goodbye to my family in the jail and the hanging. Saying goodbye to friends and family was the most moving acting experience of my life. I doubt it’ll ever be surpassed. Then the hanging. I walked out of the very cell Ned had been in and onto the gallows Ned had stood on. This is the only place I stood on that Ned had stood on. I thought, If Ned isn’t happy with the miniseries, once they place the noose around my neck he’ll pop the welds on the trapdoor from beyond and I’ll hang.

  Another equally moving thing happened that day. There to support me were the main actors, the Kelly family, the Gang and the Kelly friends. A lot of them were wrapped from the series and came back specially, some from Sydney. Bizo, Ric, Peter and Johnny Ley’s characters were killed at that time. I puddled up when I saw them all there. I’m puddling up right now as I write.

  We shot Episode 1 backwards and slowly trimmed the beard back to a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old. I was twenty-seven at the time. The first thing we shot was the heavyweight title fight between Ned and Wild Wright, played by my darlin’ mate Mr Sexy Voice with the Solo man face, David Bradshaw. We had a day to shoot it and it was the climax of Episode 1. They sent a wrestler who had no film experience to choreograph the fight, so I choreographed it and David and I were very proud of it. I believe it’s one of the best fights ever filmed in Australia. It went beautifully, and all our sequences worked. Trouble was, we needed two days to shoot it. It was 4 p.m. and we were running out of light. Our director, Kevin Dobson, asked if we could improvise and they’d just shoot the shit out of it, handheld. David and I of course said, ‘Fuck it, let’s do it.’ So we got stuck into it and tried not to hit each other. We did connect a few times. David is a solid bloke, well-cast as Wild Wright. He picked me up and drove me into the ground and dislocated my shoulder. John Ley knew how to pop my shoulder back in, which he did, with much pain. We then had to wrap it up. There was one more shot we had to get. That was the knockout punch that finishes the fight. It’s shot in slow motion. I look very aggressive and angry and I roar at Wild. In reality I was roaring in agony. David didn’t get away scot-free: I broke three of his ribs.

  Following the fight I had to shoot a scene splitting rocks in jail with a sledgehammer. I did it left-handed. Two weeks later I had another big fight scene. The shoulder was OK by then, but it never healed properly. It’s still a bit sore to this day.

  We were in the last two weeks of filming and I got to work with the biggest TV star in the country at the time, Gerard Kennedy from Division 4. He was a two-time Gold Logie winner. He played Harry Power fabulously, with an impeccable Irish accent. He recently worked on Underbelly and Wolf Creek 2; I suggested him. He’s eighty-three years young.

  Rossini’s Raiders

  I went home to Rosa and Zadia and fell over sick for two weeks. I think it was from exhaustion and living on adrenaline; I just let go and collapsed. ‘Hi honey, I’m home.’ Snore.

  A beautiful bloke, Charlie Rossini, his wife, Teresa, and two kids, Josephine, nine-ish, and Sebastian, four, moved into the house below us. We hit it off straight away and became friends. Charlie worked doing odd jobs in the area with his brother Johnny, and he offered me a job working with them. I’d earned quite good money as an actor over the years, but not what you’d call a lot. The money was in TV series and soap operas. I was idealistic in those days and I pooh-poohed the idea of doing that. So I took the job and kept it until I left the area in 1984.

  We were working on a stone wall and pavers in Lovett Bay. My brother Barry, who was twenty-two and a qualified stonemason, lived in Narrabeen, not far from us. He came and joined us. The other member of the group was John Hebdon, ‘Hebbo’, who pushed the barge that delivered our materials to the job. So we were two sets of brothers and Hebbo, and became known locally as Rossini’s Raiders. I loved the work: we built sandstone sea walls, landscaping, decks, extensions, whole houses sometimes.

  We wore thongs as we were always up to our knees in water. Everyone kept telling us we’d end up with crushed feet but it never happened, although we came close, mind you. I loved everything about the island, it’s paradise for me, but I’ve never found a partner with the same passion for the place.

  From that point on, up until four years ago, I’d have described myself as an actor–builder. I’ve built or renovated nine houses of my own, but lost all of them over the years. Careless, huh?

  The Rossini brothers were wonderful, colourful characters. Like chalk and cheese. Raised in Hunters Hill, Charlie was a well-educated, sophisticated, well-spoken, bohemian hippie. Johnny described himself as ‘the ocker wog’: he was a hard-drinking, hard-living, surfing mechanic. They both ended up on Scotland Island doing landscaping, mainly. We became all-rounders, sea walls becoming a speciality once Barry joined the team. Barry’s built like Popeye, a wiry little bloke with big forearms. He worked hard and drank hard, still does – he and Johnny were similar in that way.

  Johnny was a very funny man. On Saturdays, we went quoting. This rich couple had a waterfront weekender, and they wanted us to build a large deck off the front of their house. We were measuring up and the wife enquired, ‘How high should the rail be?’

  Johnny walked over to the husband and instructed him. ‘Hold the end of the tape measure at the top of your inside leg.’

  The husband, somewhat bemused, did so.

  ‘Now stand on your toes.’

  He did so.

  “Nine-sixty mil.”

  ‘Why did you want me to stand on my toes?’

  ‘When you piss over the rail you always have to stand on your toes right.’

  I had a ten-month break between The Last Outlaw and We of the Never Never. I needed it as I’d been away a lot over the years, and working for Rossini’s Raiders allowed me to do that comfortably. It enabled me to be with Rosa and Zadia and to finish building our house. For me, this was the best time in my relationship. It had been bumpy for a number of reasons, but from 1979 to 1982 was a great period for us.

  I really enjoyed that ten-month break. Charlie and I became good mates: he was always calm, philosophical, artistic, wise beyond his years. He was about ten years older than me, he’d spent time in Europe and he was married to an Englishwoman, Teresa, who was nothing like him; she was out there.

  It was about a month before I was to go to the Northern Territory to do Never Never. I was building a set of shelves at Elvina Bay with a mate of mine, an Irish comedian, the lovely Sean Kramer. Sean taught me the Irish accent for Ned. He wrote sayings for me to do.

  ‘Rough Robert the Ribald Rooter Fucked Violet the Whore.’

  ‘I love me horse because me horse knows the course.’

  ‘I looked in me eye and saw a fly, I said to myself, that fly is sly.’

  He was so Irish. Everyone would be sailing into the Pittwater to get out of an oncoming storm, except one: Sean Kramer would be sailing out to do battle. Enough said.

  We received a phone call. Sean picked it up and became ashen-faced. He handed me the phone. It was Rosa, sobbing. Charlie had tried to dry a fibreglass patch on his boat with a radiator. He was on the wet sand in front of his house. The radiator became live, it fell on his chest and probably went through him for ten minutes before he was found by Matty Penfold
. Matty had picked up the radiator and got booted by it. Thankfully it threw him off it, otherwise we’d be burying two corpses.

  Sean and I took off back to the island. He was amazing that day. He didn’t know Teresa that well, they were both sober and he held her hand and spoke all the right words. It’s a big part of sobriety to reach out. Sean felt he was meant to be part of the tragedy and acted appropriately. I just sat with Rosa and we sobbed. The untimely death of a young person is always surreal and impossible to come to terms with. That was thirty-four years ago and I still can’t believe it.

  My addictions

  In writing this book, I don’t intend to hurt anyone, put anyone down unnecessarily or write too much about the darker things that have happened between me and others. One, because I don’t want to implicate anyone, and two, it’s nobody else’s business.

  I wouldn’t have written this book while my father was still alive, as it would have hurt him. If there is an afterlife, I’m sure from that lofty position he understands.

  Having said that, I’m not too afraid to talk about my own defects, otherwise this book won’t make sense. As a young man I got a bit of a reputation as a hard-fighting, fast-driving, womanising party animal. I was none of those, but I’m an alcoholic–addict and when under the influence I can become that person. Instant arsehole: just add alcohol. I chain-smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine when I could afford it, took tabs of acid and engaged in binge drinking.

  Alcohol was the daddy of them all for me. If I hadn’t had so much weed in my life, I think I would have been drunk a lot more. I was the type of drunk who’d be sent to get a carton of milk and return four hours later, drunk as a skunk without the milk. I used to say smugly, ‘I’m weak, therefore I’m strong, I stay strong and don’t drink because it’s trouble.’ I thought because I got drunk on occasions and not every day, I was in control. I later learnt that it’s not how much you drink, it’s what it does to you.

  When I get drunk I can be the all-singing, all-dancing life of the party. I could be having the time of my life doing the flamenco on a table when the host would come up and ask me to stop as I was scratching the crap out of his table. I’d jump off the table and smack him in the mouth and start seriously flirting with his wife, who’d be screaming at me because I’ve KO’d her husband. Sound a bit far-fetched? Well, that happened and it wasn’t unusual.