The Bastard from the Bush: An Australian Life

by Jarratt, John

  In June 1990 I had an a-ha moment. I looked back at all the disasters within my relationships, especially with Rosa, and 99 per cent of them had happened when I was drunk. I have never had a mistress or a long-running affair, but I have got drunk and been lustful. Usually I’ve been too drunk to get anywhere unless I’ve happened upon a woman who’s as drunk as I am, or someone who wants to sleep with an actor. I have been guilty of one-night stands, not that many. I’m more guilty of making an arse of myself under the influence, in public places. This has given fuel to the rumour of me playing the field. In reality, most times I ended up face first in the field.

  I’ve always loved Rosa deeply and I always will. Back in the day, when I was guilty of this behaviour, I ached to my core at what I’d done. I’d defend myself to try to get back the peace. ‘I was drunk, I didn’t know what I was doing. I hardly ever get drunk, why can’t I get drunk occasionally? Could be worse, you could be living with Blah Blah, he drinks every day.’ You can justify anything, just ask Hitler.

  Since giving up drinking twenty-five years ago, I haven’t lost my temper, I haven’t had a fight, I haven’t crashed a car and I haven’t cheated on my partner. Alcohol is a very dangerous drug.

  We of the Never Never

  I was about to head off to Mataranka in the middle of the Northern Territory to make We of the Never Never. A week before that I was going to the Logies: I was nominated for Best Actor for The Last Outlaw and I was also presenting an award. The night before the awards there was a rehearsal for the presenters. Afterwards we had a few drinks. I got terribly drunk with Barry Crocker; nice guy, I’ve bumped him a few times since, always a pleasure. I’d hired a car because mine was with my mechanic. I drove from the city to Church Point. I blacked out and I came to flying through the air. I landed in a culvert on Pittwater Road not far from Church Point. I jumped out of the car, and my head was bleeding. I knew that if I stayed, I’d be arrested as I was way over the limit. I ran down the road the best I could until I got to Church Point.

  Being inebriated I decided to pinch a boat from out the front of the shops as the commuter wharf was further down and I wanted to get away before the cops came. I got halfway to Scotland Island when the outboard stopped. The owner of the boat had taken their fuel line. I then had to row a 16-foot boat half a kilometre in a southerly, with one oar, drunk. It took a while. I hit the shore at Bells Wharf and took the shortcut straight over the top of the island, instead of the road going around it. It was pitch black, I got lost and found myself getting scratched mercilessly by great swathes of lantana. Finally I was standing in my bedroom at God knows what time, scratched and bleeding from my head. I took the best course of action you can possibly take in that situation: I started to sob loudly to get Rosa’s sympathy. It worked until the next day. Rosa turned from sympathy to seething. And rightly so.

  I went to a doctor the next day. I had concussion and a hangover. The doc got me off the hook with the cops and the insurance paid for the write-off of the rented car. I went to the Logies that night with a dreadful concussion headache. The world was swirling but I somehow got through it. I won Best Actor and my speech was appalling.

  The following week, I flew to the Northern Territory to start work on We of the Never Never. It starred Angela Punch McGregor (my mate from NIDA days), Arthur Dignam, Tom E Lewis (star of The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith), Lewis Fitz-Gerald (who played Tom in The Last Outlaw) and me.

  I turned up just before we started filming. We were staying at the Mataranka Hotel, about 100 kilometres south of Katherine. The hotel had a restaurant and rooms at the back and a typical open ‘tropical bar’ out the front. Out the back were two long rows of motel rooms separated by dirt about 10 metres wide and 50 metres long. This was to be christened ‘Lygon Street’ by the many Melburnians in the crew.

  I met Tommy Lewis, who was to become a lifelong friend. He’s a very striking-looking dude: his dad was Irish and his mum was Aboriginal. He lived locally and his people made up the community used in the film. I offered him a joint, which was his first. Then I lost track of him. I went to the arrival party that night, no Tommy. I found him the next day. The dope had had a profound effect on him, and he said he went walkabout for hours, off his tree. It was the beginning of a love affair with the weed and I’m responsible.

  For me, Never Never was a boring film, the script wasn’t very exciting and the production was incompetent. It was all about the love story between Arthur and Angela’s characters, it became a kind of Pride and Prejudice of the outback. Lewis, Tommy, Martin Vaughan and I played the drovers. We called ourselves ‘the Bee Gees’, from BG – background.

  The only excitement I got was the droving sequences. There was a horse stampede sequence choreographed by Heath Harris. Heath had just finished The Man from Snowy River; he’d come off a horse and broke his leg badly. He had plaster up to his thigh and he stood beside the camera yelling instructions.

  Tommy and I had been around horses since we were kids and my experience on horse movies had put the icing on the cake for me. We were the only two actors allowed to ride in this sequence.

  As I wasn’t a double and could be seen close up, my job was to gallop up to the camera and pull up beside it as the stampeding horses went past me. There were about 100 head of horses. The stunt horsemen were to ride along the outside of the mob and turn them into a circle. This manoeuvre caused the mob to stop.

  Unfortunately, there was a very fast pale horse out front and the outside horsemen couldn’t get to the front to turn them. They were moving out into a wide arc and heading for Darwin. There were no fences out there and we were about to lose the mob. There was only one horsemen in a position to head across country and cut them off: me. I had a very fast horse and I didn’t hesitate. I took off through the scrub, ducking branches and jumping fallen logs, slapping and kicking the shit out of my horse to keep it at full throttle. I had my eye on the leader and I was on song. I hit the clearing and cut the lead horse. I was waving and yelling and snorting and they came to an abrupt halt. Ten seconds later a big, tall blackfella screamed in on his horse. He pulled up, yahooed and slapped me with his hat and nearly knocked me over with his huge smile of perfect teeth.

  Heath offered me a full-time job with the wranglers. I should’ve taken him up on it, I might’ve been better off. That was by far the most exhilarating ride of my life; the only thing that came close was the Ned Kelly Stakes, when the Gang and I raced at the Seymour race day during The Last Outlaw. We rode our horses fully kitted up in our Outlaw outfits. Mirth was explosive, and we won by eight lengths.

  Things weren’t too boring off the set. There were a lot of rednecks in Mataranka, many of whom were employed on the film. Racism was rife. One of our blackfellas got drunk and made a mess of things at the bar. The little fat prick who managed the joint banned all blackfellas from drinking at the bar. Tensions were rising, so Tom suggested he and his people should set up camp out on location at the Mataranka Homestead set. The wranglers were already out there and I moved out there too. I loved it. We were camped on the banks of the Roper River, and Frank Manly’s catering bus was there too, so we ate like kings for three meals a day. I went to sleep to the sound of Peter playing didgeridoo. ‘I been to London to play the didge for His Majesty Queen Lisbath’. Donald Blitner, who played Goggle Eye, the chief elder in the film, slept at the front of my tent to protect me from snakes.

  Our director had problems getting Donald to understand what he was supposed to do. He’d give instructions like he was instructing the Kings College rowing team. I ended up directing him: I learnt how to impersonate him and I’d say the line, he’d repeat it, get the hang of it and off he’d go. Beautiful man.

  When we were still at the pub, Donald came into my room drunk at about 4 a.m. He woke me singing in language and banging his matchbox against his cigarette packet. I sat up blurry eyed and he’s singing, ‘Oomaraaa ingana de bodoowa – this mean big bird come down to boab tree; oonooomanawa inawanna gonamwa anonaw
anna goniwana byan nyana na wana – this mean snake come out of the tree and eat him that bird and he swim off down that river. You got five dollar for Uncle Donald?’ At least he busked for his five bucks!

  When we moved out to the camp, Donald stopped drinking. He lived his life as a drover, and he was head stockman at Beswick Station where Tommy was raised. Tough man. He once got gored in the stomach by a wild bull. He got the two young men with him to hang him upside down, push his guts back in and instructed them how to sew him up with horsehair. When he recovered the bull was paddocked, so he ran that bull ragged before he killed him for meat.

  I annoyed the crap out of Donald trying to work out the Dreamtime stuff and the ancestral stuff and the spiritual stuff. He said he talked to his ancestors and they talked back as clearly as we were talking. He always looked around to make sure no whitefellas heard him talking to them: ‘They think I’m a mad blackfella.’

  Local whitefellas would say, ‘Blackfellas are lazy bastards, they sit around under a tree all day.’ That’s because a blackfella can, whitefellas can’t. Donald sat on a rug under a tree for hours on end. I asked him why. He said, ‘See that dead branch on that tree over there, hollow one that one, goanna in there. Tree to the right, honey ant in there. In them reeds on the river, goose in there.’ Blackfellas have incredible eyesight. Donald had his evening meal sorted if he needed it.

  I was annoying Donald again one day at breakfast and I think he’d had a gutful. He said, ‘You know in dry time when the river dries up, turtle get stuck in waterhole, goanna come along, turtle gets on goanna’s back and goanna take him to the river, you believe that?’

  I looked at him speechless, my white scepticism bouncing around in my brain.

  ‘That’s why you never understand, John, I tell noongar (child) that, they know it’s true. You whitefella, you believe in Jesus Christ. I don’t just believe, I know!’

  Bang! Donald was the real deal. Every community, every race, every culture, no matter how distant and isolated from each other, has a spiritual base. There’s gotta be something in it.

  In 1988 Donald got a gig on a miniseries I did called Naked Under Capricorn. It was shot in Alice Springs. I had a couple of days off so I decided to go to Uluru. Donald said, ‘Don’t you climb on that rock, it’s sacred.’

  ‘Why not? I’m not a blackfella.’

  ‘I don’t come to Sydney with a ladder and climb on your church roof.’

  He was so wise and complete, I miss him. I’m sitting here now trying my best to communicate with him. Trying to break open the whitefella block between here and the afterlife. It’d be easier to walk to New Zealand.

  There was a lot of racial tension going on. I was still in my twenties with a lot of immature Irish rebel still flowing through my veins. I decided to take a busload of my fellow campers to the Mataranka bar they were banned from. There were about a dozen of us; we swaggered up to the bar and sat down. The nervous barman said weakly, ‘We’re not allowed to serve alcohol to the blacks.’

  ‘What are you having, Roy?’

  ‘I’ll have a Coke, thanks, Johnny.’

  ‘What are you having, Jamie?’

  ‘Coke too, please.’

  ‘I’ll have lemonade.’

  ‘They got Passiona?’

  And so on: we all had a soft drink each. The barman walked out the back and returned with the fat-arsed manager.

  ‘What’s your problem, Jarratt?’

  ‘I’m thirsty.’

  ‘You’re a smart-arse, aren’t you?’

  ‘Nah, just thirsty.’

  ‘Go on, get out of here, and take your black mates with you.’

  ‘When we’ve finished our soft drinks.’

  ‘I’ll call the coppers.’

  ‘You do that. By the time they arrive we’ll be gone.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘No, sorry, you can’t, I’m straight.’

  That night Tommy was playing pool at the bar. The fat bastard came into the bar and punched Tommy in the stomach. Tom didn’t hit back because he’s been around long enough to know he’d be beaten up and thrown into a cell. I found out about it and went to the hotel. I found the fat bastard walking down the hallway and shirt-fronted him.

  ‘If you so much as touch a hair on Tommy’s head, I’ll bounce you off these walls like a beach ball, you fat cunt, do I make myself clear?’

  He raised a fist to hit me.

  ‘Please thump me. Give me an excuse to start spreading you around.’

  He went to water and said nothing. I walked away.

  The wrap party was coming up. The production office was worried about the rednecks and blackfellas fighting, and they called me in. I said I’d make sure the blackfellas stayed off the grog for the night. I explained to them it was just one night and let’s show the world that blackfellas didn’t have to get drunk to have a good time. We ordered a few cartons of light beer and God love them, they didn’t get drunk. I did.

  The party was held outdoors and it was going just fine. I was dancing with one of Tommy’s sisters, Barbara, a big, lovely, bubbly woman. This bloke came up to me; he was the bull catcher for the film. He wasn’t tall but he was broad and muscular, with arms like tree trunks and no front teeth.

  He yelled at me, ‘You black-lovin’ arseho–’

  He didn’t get the word ‘hole’ out because my fist hit his mouth. My old man taught me well. ‘If ya gonna get hit, hit first.’ I hit him hard and fast and kept hitting him all the way to the ground. One of the wranglers, Jim Willoughby, dragged me away.

  ‘He’s had enough, J J.’

  Then his brother Bill king-hit me in the ear. The bastard, he was supposed to be on my side. So I started on Bill and Jim dragged him away, calling him for everything.

  I was revvin’. ‘Any one else wanna go, huh? Huh?’

  The party was over, and we went back to Lygon Street and kicked on. About an hour later a big mob of Mataranka rednecks were standing at the top of Lygon Street. It was like the OK Corral. It was on, an all-in brawl, a whole lotta thumpin’ goin’ on. I’ll never forget the sight of Heath Harris sitting on the ground with his broken leg taking rednecks out with his crutches. The crew won. Great night.

  I broke my little finger but I put the bull catcher in hospital. For a long time, poor old Tommy had to carry a shotgun in his car when he went through Mataranka, because of me.

  The next day I said goodbye to all my blackfella mates. I was so moved: they started crying, Donald was inconsolable. Sober blackfellas are amazing people, so in touch with their feelings and the world around them. Of course the rednecks can’t cope with them; they usually see them drunk around the pub that they’re getting drunk at themselves. That’s just a recipe for disaster.

  The big three blackfella actors are David Gulpilil, Tom E Lewis and Ernie Dingo. Today, hallelujah, none of them drink. Ernie never did; Tom drank a lot but gave it away twenty years ago; David nearly drank himself to death, but he did Charlie’s Country sober and used it to help him get off the grog. He’s been sober since 2011 and no cigarettes either. He worked on a short film with me recently. Why, because he found out I was working on it, which was very humbling for me. I believe he will remain clean and sober. I can’t tell you how pleased I am for him.

  One film after the other

  I just kept doing one film after the other. I know I sound up myself, but I haven’t got the space to mention all of them. My next film was Next of Kin, a classic horror film set in a mental hospital. I was the boyfriend of the lead character, a hapless victim played by Jacki Kerin. I end up rattling down the hall, dead and bloody in a wheelchair, and bump into a screaming Jacki. Quentin Tarantino loves this film.

  He was most intrigued about a crane shot. I had a drink with him in 2003 at Circular Quay and filled him in. The crane starts high and wide, looking at a lonely service station. Our heroine runs out and jumps into a ute. We follow her into the car. The camera ends up in the back of the ute, they tongue the camera off
the crane and attach it to the ute. The ute takes off, with the camera looking at the back of the driver’s head. The crane meanwhile is panned out of shot, and the camera turns 180 degrees and takes in the shot of the garage blowing up. Suddenly the evil villain sits up into shot with a knife in her hand, screaming through her mutilated face. They only had one go at it. They rehearsed it all day the day before. Amazing camerawork.

  The cameraman was the late great Gary Hansen, who also shot We of the Never Never. Like Charlie Rossini, I only knew him for a year and we’d become such great mates, I spoke at his funeral. Shortly after Next of Kin, Gary was shooting a doco in the Snowy Mountains when the chopper he was filming in hit powerlines. His camera assistant Johnny Jasiwkowicz (J J, like me) also died. I have a photo Gary took of us two J Js when we were doing Next of Kin. We were working in a graveyard and Gary suggested we run towards him and leap in the air. Spooky photo. (See the picture section.)

  Gary was salt of the earth and we had a lot in common. He loved the Australian bush. He published a brilliant book of Australian landscape photos and Tom Keneally wrote accompanying pieces to the visuals. He had a great sense of humour: we had chooks at the Mataranka film set. He collected the eggs, got in his car and drove around egging cast and crew. He was larger than life and an absolute pleasure to be with. He won a posthumous AFI award for best cinematography for We of the Never Never. Onya Gaz.

  I did a kids film called Fluteman next. It was a kind of modern-day Pied Piper. I didn’t like it much, and it didn’t do very well. I loved the cast, though. Michael Caton and Johnny Ewart were hilarious in it. The upside was that it was shot in Sydney, so I didn’t have to go away, for a change. I had my hair curled; I looked good with curly hair. My favourite photo of Zadia and me is from that time. (See the picture section.)