Always male, he was regarded as a hardy type, adaptable, independent, sport loving and resolute. He was egalitarian and valued mateship highly above any respect to authority. The anti-authoritarian character of the ‘Australian Type’ was perpetuated by images of bushranging, the persistent eulogising of Ned Kelly, the independence, resolve and uprisings on the gold digging fields …
Sara Cousins, Monash University National Centre for Australian Studies
Australia, as any guide book will tell you, is an odd duck of a country, full of anomalies and contradictions. The animals are an unholy mix of cuteness and death. The geography can be breathtaking, or mind-numbingly boring. And the people? Ask an Aussie their family history and you inevitably uncover a torrid love triangle, a secret child (or 6) and a family feud. Throw in a bush fire for good measure, and there you have Australia in a nutshell. (Or at least, that’s my family tree.)
Growing up, we were raised on a steady diet of Australia fair, but the Australia that lived most vividly in my heart was housed in a brown manila box hidden in my parent’s bedroom. It was full of memorabilia from the ‘60’s, a Pandora’s box of rebellion, motorcycles & counter-culture, told through sepia toned photographs and torn newspaper clippings. It captivated me. The newspapers called them “bikies,” a term I found funny and harmless. The men all dressed like John Travola in Grease and the women looked tough, like the sexy, black-leather version of Olivia Newton John. There were photos of laughter and adventure, men climbing on towers of kegs in the river, hundreds of motorcycles at the Bathurst races, free spirits sleeping under the stars in the outback.
Apart from my father (whom I idolized) there was one character in that box that shone brighter than them all, a man bordering on legend. Some children had Hans Christian Anderson, but I had a one legged, portly bon vivant named Hairy, best friend to my father, and unwitting co-founder of one of the most notorious biker gangs in Australia.
I was travelling to his funeral.
I’d met Hairy a grand total of twice in my life, but his persona loomed so large it felt like a constant presence. My affection for him was stronger than the bond I shared with many blood relatives. I desperately wanted to be at his funeral, needed to be there, knowing I had no business attending. Was it Hairy? Was it Australia? I couldn’t put a finger on it. Pushing down the guilt of abandoning my business and family in Winnipeg, I dusted off my Australian passport and drove to the airport.
Landing in Brisbane, I was awoken my first morning by a deafening cacophony of belligerent crows. Jetlagged & confused, I made my way onto the traditional green and white veranda. Two cockatoos were fighting over breakfast on the railing, and I looked past them, through a border of palm trees, to see the old man next door throwing fresh meat onto his front lawn. I presume he did this because it attracted the noisy creatures and it was his life’s ambition to piss people off, but I couldn’t be sure. If it was, however, it was working, because my host seethed with rage. The irony of a former Hell’s Angel being harassed by a curmudgeon with a crow fetish melted away any misgivings I had about coming on this trip. This was my kind of weird and wonderful Australia.
Meeting up with my parents, we headed north on the Bruce Highway towards the pensioner’s paradise of Hervey Bay. The town seemed an odd fit for an outlaw like Hairy. While it sported all the beauty and pristine beaches of Queensland’s renown, there felt an undercurrent of the forsaken. Bike lanes were used almost exclusively by octogenarians on motorized scooters. Shops opened and closed with the sun, and if you didn’t get to a restaurant before 8pm, you didn’t eat. My mother and I stood dumbfounded one evening, surveying an eerily empty main drag. It wasn’t long after dusk, yet the streets were already abandoned, the stores locked tight, and our only companion was a hungry fruit bat, darting through the rays of the street lamp. Hardly a rebel stronghold.
Then again, I reminded myself, the only thing Australians love more than a nickname, is irony. (Possibly the source of my own appreciation for it.) A bald man is Curly, a redhead is Bluey, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that the most rebellious man I knew would retire to a town known as “God’s Waiting Room.”
Arriving at Hairy’s funeral, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d secretly hoped for the spectacle of a full biker procession, forgetting momentarily that these veterans of the ‘60’s were now pushing eighty. Instead, they appeared before me as old men; men with canes, men with speech impediments, paralysed or missing limbs, men with the scars of a life hard-lived etched clearly across their bodies. Why this caught me by surprise I have no idea. I’d watched my father grow old, suffer illness and stroke, yet it never occurred to me that my Kodachrome heroes would have befallen the same fate.
Inside the service, Curly took to the podium. Curly’s real name is Mike, a soft spoken word-smith of deviously creative intelligence. If you needed anything or anyone in South East Asia in the ‘60’s & ‘70’s, you went through Curly. He was the official raconteur of this ragtag ensemble, and as such, it was his job to memorialize the man we all adored.
Curly spoke eloquently of days past, and delighted with stories of mischief and mayhem. For every stereotype of Australia, there was a Hairy to match. He was egalitarian. In Sydney in the 60’s, Hairy held court at Whitty’s Wonderful Wine Bar, regaling the hippie chicks with bikie tales, bringing the anti-conformists together. He was sentimental. After taking a wet corner too fast in ’67, Hairy suffered a near death crash. The doctors gave him an option – try to save the leg, which meant months of surgeries and hospitalization, or amputate and be out in a couple weeks. Hairy was not a man to make his mother eat Christmas dinner alone, so off came the leg.
Luke (my host in Brisbane) & Curly. Late 60’s.
He was a true rebel. With others in the room, Hairy had founded The Finks MC. They held cannon shoots, motorcycle rallies, and partied too hard. The Hollywood director, Phillip Noyce, unknowingly bought his 1st house in Sydney, sandwiched between two Finks strongholds. Years later, he would tell my mother that he felt his only choice was sell his newly acquired home (which he’d just saved enough money to buy), or befriend the rabble rousers. So he made them the stars of a short film, forever protecting his investment. Inevitably, the Finks evolved into a monster Hairy could no longer control. When I saw him last, he was technically a lifer, but not actively involved. “The boys” would still drop him a little weed to sell, however, so he could pay medical bills. Always the gentleman, Hairy made it clear that if I needed any, I was to help myself. Mary was kept in the crisper in the kitchen.
Hairy had been a labourer in the outback and a prospector on the gem fields. With fellow biker, Scunge, he’d struck it rich on opals in Coober Pedy, buying a catamaran with the windfall. They became tour operators, and promptly crashed the vessel off the Great Barrier Reef. Hairy also spoke in the rare Cockney-style rhyming slang of old. He would ring up my mom and say “how’s my old china plate?” (China plate = mate.) I had so much trouble understanding him, I’d look to others for translation, only to find them just as confused. If academics ever needed a case study on the embodiment of the Australian identity, they need look no further than my Uncle Hairy.
Later that evening, after the funeral and the wake, the old-timers made plans to continue their memorial at Maggot’s house – a property on the outskirts of town. My mother knew where this was going and worried the booze and potential drugs would be too much for my father’s ailing health. But I saw in my father a man suffering deep pain and loss. Let them go, I thought. Let them do their worst, relive some of that past glory and shared history. They’d lost their best friend and they needed healing. I offered myself up as chauffeur.
Returning in the wee hours of the morning to collect my charges, I stood in the dark on the edge of the yard and waited for my eyes to adjust. The property was bordered with eucalyptus trees, whose distinct blend of menthol and honey perfumed the night air. The menagerie of exotic parrots that had earlier been squawking, were all asleep in their cages. The survivors of the evening sat around a bonfire, the remains of a Queenslander’s feast of Balmain bugs, beer & prawns splayed across a fold out table under the lean-to off the house. Some of them were drunk, some stoned, some both – these rebels of a bygone age. Hands on shoulders. Laughter. Declarations of love from men who did not speak of such things.
Suddenly I saw it all clearly. I saw their youth, felt their journey. I finally understood their brotherhood, not through two dimensional images, but through the unbreakable bond of camaraderie. Exactly fifty years after the birth of the Finks, they had come together to say goodbye to its catalyst. Hairy was a legend, not because he set out to be, but because these men made him so. His story, told by those who loved him, spoke more to me of Australia than any cuddly koala or bikini clad Bondi blonde ever could. Because my Australia is Hairy. He was the link between my mother and father, between my Mom’s Australia and the ever evolving continent she left behind. He was the anti-authoritarian bushranger, my own personal Ned Kelly.
Like Australia, Hairy could be sexist, he could be homophobic, he could be dangerous in the wrong crowd. He was a gentleman, but only if you were a lady. If he cared about you, he was yours for life, but like many of his generation, his affection could be betrayed by his language of old prejudices. (It didn’t mean he cared for you any less.) He loved my brother like a son, and the two of them would drink into the wee hours of the morning, listening to Leonard Cohen and talking about obscure Canadian film makers. To this day I’m not sure if Hairy knew my brother is gay. To this day, I’m not sure if it mattered.
My Australia, like Hairy, is rough, dangerous, loveable, rebellious. It’s sad in parts, broken in others, it has died more than once and come back to fight again. My Australia is as contradictory as the flora and fauna that inhabit it.
As the night came to a close, and I escorted (half carried) my father and Curly to the car, I did some reflection of my own. With Hairy gone, what becomes of my Australia? Must I lay it to rest with him? Will my child ever know my Australia, or is than an illusion? Did I ever really know my mother’s ….
Foundations, I thought. Hidden foundations cemented by the myths, legends and bonds of the past – that’s what we build our identities on. My son may know a different Australia than mine, but I could return to Canada confident in the fact that a foundation as strong as Hairy could never be broken.
He will always be there, holding it all together … my Australia.
