by Bunkie King
Over the years, Jack reminisced about milking the goats first thing in the morning and how wonderfully alternative Lake House was with its open learning. For example, when a child showed a fascination with the stars, Geyda found books about this subject. She took them out at night to show them the sky and point out the constellations.
The school’s revolutionary educational approach appealed to many of the northern beaches bohemian-intellectuals, who sent their children there. These were often educated people who might have been posted to Canberra, the new national capital, or possibly overseas. These children might go home at the end of the day, or the end of the week or on holidays, but Jack and David stayed. They didn’t have any family who took an interest in them. Apparently Harold only ever paid the first year’s school fees yet, through charity, his sons were allowed to remain at Lake House. Jack found out years later that Harold’s second wife didn’t want their children to know about Jack and David. They were never mentioned.
At Lake House, Jack befriended a dayboy, Peter Thompson, who was the same age and shared the same sense of wonder and imagination. They played with cars, built roads and houses and made model planes together. They were inseparable. Jack began to spend weekends and holidays at the Thompson house, as Peter was an only child who needed a playmate.
Peter’s parents, Pat and John, dearly wanted another child but it was too dangerous for Pat’s health. This proved to be fortunate for Jack and they set about adopting him, although as Pat often commented, ‘He adopted us!’ Yet unfortunately for Jack’s brother, the Thompsons were afraid that if David was also brought into the family, it might create some conflict. They tried and failed to arrange for a friend to adopt him. David stayed at Lake House until he was 17 and joined the navy to study engineering. Jack and David became estranged, only connecting again much later.
John and Pat Thompson were widely travelled, university-educated, cultured people. Pat worked as a court reporter; John produced radio programs for the ABC. Jack met a broad range of people who often attended their dinner parties and Sunday afternoon salons, including all sorts of academics, artists, arts administrators, even actors (such as Peter Finch and Bud Tingwell). All were part of their social network. The Thompsons had both been involved in the literary scenes in London and Paris before World War II, and John hired actors to work on his ABC radio productions. He created the first Australian poetry radio program called Poet’s Tongue and gave Peter Finch his first job on radio.
Jack left school at 14 to work on a cattle station in the Northern Territory. The pastoral industry became his passion. He found himself in Trangie, western New South Wales, and gravitated towards the Department of Agriculture, working as a laboratory assistant. Scientific research satisfied his intellectual hunger. While he would have loved to study further, Jack only completed a few years of high school at Sydney Boys before leaving for the outback.
Luckily for him, a friend of the Thompsons, the distinguished scientist Dr Phyllis Rowntree, head of the Fairfax Institute of Pathology at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, informed Jack of a scheme where service personnel were trained to work in the laboratory at RPA.
So in 1961, aged 20, Jack joined the army in order to get an education. He signed up for six years and began his training as a medical assistant at the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps School in Healesville, east of Melbourne. He had signed on at a lively time — the world seemed on the brink of a nuclear war. Russia and the US were facing off over the Bay of Pigs incident.
After basic training and a two-month course as a medical assistant with the RAAMC, Jack was posted to Ingleburn army camp on the outskirts of Sydney. He worked in a casualty clearing station — 3CCS. This battlefront medical unit provided triage and urgent surgery for seriously wounded soldiers, similar to the MASH units in the Korean War. Prime Minister Menzies first committed troops to Vietnam in 1962; however, Jack managed to serve out his six-year engagement as a laboratory technician at 1 Camp Hospital in Brisbane while Australia’s involvement escalated.
When I met him, Jack presented as a counter-cultural hero. He explained how he had avoided being sent to Vietnam when the first field ambulance units were being sent. He had told his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel (Dr) Bertram Wainer, ‘Don’t send me because I am a security risk.’ He claimed he told Wainer that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation had a file on him because of his anti-war activism.
He proudly told me he was a pacifist and had demonstrated against the war when US President Lyndon Johnson visited Australia in 1966. The conscription issue mobilised thousands of anti-war protesters. Jack, a part-time student while still in the army, was one of 5000 students who marched from the university into Roma Street to protest the war.
Jack also told me that while he’d managed to avoid serving in Vietnam, he nevertheless saw first-hand the results of war as 1 Camp Hospital was one of the busiest military hospitals in Australia. He lived off base with his wife Beverley, a newly qualified teacher he had met in Sydney.
As soon as he had arrived in Brisbane Jack joined the Twelfth Night Theatre, a semi-professional company. He performed in a range of plays, Shakespeare and Pinter among them. When this became more than a hobby, he switched to an Arts degree, studying English and Psychology. In the late 1960s drugs became an increasing presence on university campuses and Jack enjoyed the transcendent freedoms on offer.
He became passionate about the possibilities of experimental theatre. With two fellow students, he devised a performance piece called Alice Is. The Disney film Alice in Wonderland had gained a new generation of hip young students on university campuses who viewed the film’s colour, light and music as the ideal psychedelic experience. Alice swallows potions and mushrooms that change her size and alter her consciousness. With its surreal images and representation of sound as colour, it resembles tripping on LSD. Jack was also inspired by Ken Kesey and the way he celebrated LSD ‘acid trips’ in public performances with music-and-light shows in which there was no separation between the show and the audience.
On a visit to Sydney, Jack excitedly described to his parents every aspect of the production that he created from his own interpretation of the Alice theme with dancing, music and a light show. His father asked him whether he had considered acting as a career and this encouragement gave Jack the inspiration to pursue his passion. He convinced Beverley to relocate to Sydney so he could have a better chance of a professional acting career after leaving the army.
Jack arrived in Sydney just at the right time. His natural charisma was enhanced by enormous drive and energy, an irresistible combination. Until then, only actors with plummy English-sounding accents were employed as radio broadcasters, newsreaders and actors. But thanks to television, Australians were beginning to accept and delight in hearing their own accent and characters portrayed on the screen. Right place, perfect time.
Chapter 11
‘I’ll look after you’
Immediately on our return from Asia we head to Melbourne. Jack has been cast in one of a quartet of stories that make up a feature-length film on contemporary sexuality called Libido. It’s a small-budget project so we stay with a friend of David Baker, the director, in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne. (A story circulated that Baker, a wonderfully eccentric man who directed many Spyforce episodes, once insisted that his wife and kids eat gum leaves to save money. Not for long, though; everyone, of course, fell ill.) It is winter, freezing cold, and fog enshrouds the house until about lunchtime, sometimes all day. I have tropical ulcers on my ankles from Bali and can’t wear shoes. I spend the whole time huddled around a heater tending my ulcers, depressed. I feel I made a fool of myself with Chris in Sri Lanka; what an embarrassment for all of us.
Jack insists that he is the only man who truly loves me.
‘Nobody will ever love you the way I do,’ he tells me. ‘You should trust me, I really do care a great deal.’
When he explains how my naivety makes me vuln
erable to men who would just use me, I believe he has the best of intentions. I’ve lost all confidence in my ability to make choices and decisions and retreat into myself.
Later that year, again in Melbourne, Jack gets his first lead role in a feature film, Tim Burstall’s Petersen. His character Tony Petersen is an electrician and ex-champion footballer aspiring to improve himself by studying Arts at university. Petersen thinks nothing of being unfaithful to his wife Susie, played by Jackie Weaver, the mother of their two children. He has an affair with academic Dr Trish Kent, played by Wendy Hughes. He also has a sexual dalliance with his best mate’s wife and public intercourse with a fellow student on a dare by a feminist action group as part of a protest at university.
We are staying in a unit near St Kilda beach, and I sometimes visit the set. But it is awkward; there is a weird sexual tension in the air. One day, all the actresses from the film — Jackie Weaver, Belinda Giblin, Wendy Hughes and Helen Morse — come to the unit unannounced. Jack is not there. We invite them in; Leona makes them some tea. But again it is awkward; we all sit there, looking around, unsure what to say. I have no idea what this drop-in is all about.
During a break in filming we visit Montsalvat, the artists’ colony in Eltham, outside Melbourne. Jack had been there as a child when John Thompson took the family for a visit. John was an early supporter and follower of Justus Jorgensen, the artist who, along with the brilliant work of many hands, developed the community in the 1930s. Justus had a grand vision of a sanctuary for artists who could live freely, exploring and expressing their creative passions. He formed a centre for artistic people to work together to construct the Gothic-inspired halls, studios and dwellings in the style of a medieval village. The Montsalvat lifestyle involved pleasure as well as hard work and creativity. Red wine encouraged the laissez-faire atmosphere that probably fostered the perception that these artists were communing with the devil.
Justus Jorgensen lived with two women in the days when it was viewed as outrageous. He had children both with his wife, a doctor who was chronically ill, and his mistress, Helen. I think that Montsalvat may have influenced Jack’s attitude towards relationships. Given that he also has two ‘wives’, he feels he has something in common with old ‘Jorgie’.
***
In late 1973, when Petersen was being shot, Jack could still walk down the street without everyone recognising him. Within a year, that changes completely. The film’s advertising slogan reads: Jack Thompson is Petersen. The film’s sexual content becomes the focus of the marketing campaign.
With his charisma and intelligence, Jack charms the journalists and quickly becomes a media darling. ‘I’m just as happy being a farmer,’ he protests during interviews, but admits his livelihood depends on publicity. He willingly accepts his role as a product to be marketed.
I look on as Jack masters the art of seducing the media to further his career. Just as he applied himself to becoming a better actor, he dedicates himself to learning about the business of self-promotion, to myth making. According to Jack, it’s part of his job to be seen. At social functions he flirts with everyone — men and women. Le and I usually stand unobtrusively waiting for the performance to finish so we can go home. Le manages to develop conversational skills; she likens it to being a diplomat’s wife. I don’t have these skills. If anything, I feel more like the diplomat’s shy, adolescent daughter.
Jack is unfailingly polite under all circumstances and can be extremely solicitous. Beyond his reputation as an actor, his appearance — tanned, blond, muscular — aids his seductiveness. He caresses with words, draws people close and impresses with his sincerity. He’s the king of schmooze.
We embark on an extensive tour to publicise Petersen, travelling throughout country Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Jack’s face is on billboards everywhere. Late one night in northern Queensland he teams up, bizarrely, with the captain of a Russian submarine. Because I don’t drink, I retire to the hotel to sleep, while Jack and Le accompany the captain back to his sub. By the time they return at five o’clock the next morning, Jack has consumed vast amounts of vodka. After a spell vomiting in the bathroom, he has a shower then is off to do a 7 a.m. radio interview. I’m startled by his recovery skills. I would have been tempted to crawl back under the covers and sleep it off — but Jack keeps on rolling.
During that same promotional trip, a local distributor in far northern Queensland takes us out one afternoon.
‘Let’s go hippie spotting,’ he tells us, as we climb into his car.
As we drive along, he slows down, points out the window and announces, ‘Look, there’s one,’ as if we are out spotting kangaroos at night. This is odd; here we are, stoned, pretty much living the hippie life ourselves, and this guy thinks it’s some weird form of entertainment. We see it as a lifestyle choice.
Sometimes our regular pot smoking gets us into trouble. We are invited to the house of TV chef Bernard King for one of his famous soirees. As we sit there, Le starts to roll a joint — and King explodes.
‘How dare you bring that filthy stuff into my house!’ he shrieks, hustling us to the door and pushing us into the street. I guess we should have asked first if it was OK.
***
With the growth of the film industry in Australia and Jack’s regular work, he informs Le and me that we don’t need to work any more.
‘I’ll look after you,’ he tells us.
We travel with Jack from now on, wherever he goes, having given up our jobs prior to our first overseas trip. All his subsequent deals include fares and accommodation for three. Sometimes we have to stay in some pretty crappy places, possibly because of the extra cost of supplying two rooms. But Jack never complains, never puts on the star act. Some movie stars demand Perrier water in their fridges, but I think Jack is grateful to be working.
While the movie star life offers the excitement of travelling and meeting interesting, creative people, the downside is that while Jack’s world expands, mine contracts. I have no existence outside his world. My life is dictated by what Jack is doing, where he is working. He pursues his dream while Le and I follow loyally and without question. Jack is free to come and go and do as he pleases. We wait quietly at home for him to return from wherever and whatever he is doing.
Our job when on the road is to make Jack’s life as comfortable as possible. Le is a natural homemaker and loves to create a harmonious environment. She usually has the main bedroom when we stay in hotels and transforms the living area into a home; there are bowls of fruit on the table and colourful sarongs draped over the furniture. We had experience of working as a team in a big family where everyone had to pull their weight. Realising that my cooking is ordinary at best, she does most of it. Le enjoys planning meals; I don’t. I help with the shopping, chopping vegetables, laying the table and then cleaning up afterwards.
When we are about to go on location for a few weeks, perhaps months, Le handles the domestic arrangements in advance. I pack my bag and the office/secretarial-type things we need; Le is responsible for packing his and her bags. Jack is so dependent on her bag packing that once, when he threw a tantrum, he shouted for Le to pack his bag because he was leaving us. I’m pretty sure he was serious. Le told him to get fucked.
‘If you want to leave, pack your own bags.’
At one point, Le says that I should help with ironing Jack’s clothes. I rarely iron my own clothes but he insists that his jeans and t-shirts be ironed, as well as his shirts. Ironed jeans? This boggles my mind, although I accept that Jack needs to look good for auditions and to socialise — but ironed jeans? I guess he is very image-conscious. Both he and Le take much longer than me to get ready whenever we are going somewhere. I usually have to wait ages for both of them. But where Le is magnetic and has presence, I don’t bother. I don’t think I’ll make much of an impression anyway. Just as when I was a child, I still believe I am indistinct, invisible.
Le and I are mainly there for each other as companions, grateful
that we aren’t sitting alone day after day while Jack is out and about. I tend to be overly sensitive about not upsetting people so I make sure I don’t interfere with her space. I spend my time reading or watching TV, while she reads one of her cookbooks. Though we get along reasonably well, superficially at least, Le and I are unable to outgrow our sibling baggage with no other connection except this one man whom we are both living with. Any early antagonism has been replaced by the occasional snide comment here and there. I don’t remember the ones I made — although I’m sure I made my share — but I do remember Le’s.
On one occasion I am voicing an opinion quite strongly.
‘But you didn’t even finish high school!’ Le snaps. ‘What would you know?’
It is one time that Jack stands up for me. He turns to Le and says, ‘Well, no, actually, she’s right. And just because she didn’t finish high school doesn’t mean that she doesn’t know. I didn’t finish high school either.’
One day I wear my hair with two tiny plaits hanging on either side of my face. Le remarks that I am ‘mutton dressed as lamb’. I am only 22!
Perhaps Le thinks she isn’t attractive but she is in fact incredibly beautiful, with high cheekbones, a fine chiselled nose and perfect teeth. We all grew up not believing we were pretty though, because nobody ever told us.
Mostly, when Jack isn’t present, we’re reasonable company for each other. We know we need to compromise and make do because we’re completely governed by Jack, emotionally and financially. He controls the money; we never know how much he is making or if he is financially secure. His attitude is the same the whole time: We’re broke. And while I’m not overly convinced that’s the case, Le and I survive on a tight budget and rarely ask him for money. I don’t think I have the right to spend what he earns.
