“ A Traveller’s Journal” Part 5
The Television Years
I feel so sorry for those who think they have beaten the system by living on welfare all their lives. To me the joy of working has not so much been the job itself, but the friendships made with co-workers. I have found that all people are interesting and many have fascinating stories to tell. If you don’t do the right thing and get a job you miss out on the wonderful opportunities to mix with other human beings. Consequently with this narrative I will not be concentrating so much on the work that I was involved in, but more the people that I worked with. Where it may cause embarrassment to those that I am writing about I have changed their names. In cases where the actual people are no longer with us, well, I guess it is okay to use their real names. Who knows! They may be watching what I write and having a chuckle to themselves. My early life in Mount Morgan, starting in 1935, has been covered previously under the title “Reminisces of the 40’s and 50’s”. The years spent overseas is under the title of “A Traveller’s Journal” which covers the period spent in London and Canada. This section starts with my return to Australia in 1968.…………..
Mount Morgan Mine 1968
Years 1968 - 1992
Channel 7 Sydney: After our arrival from Canada I returned to Mount Morgan with Roger, and was more than a little concerned about how he would take the jump backwards in living conditions, after living all his life in London and then Toronto. Mount Morgan, at that time, was still unsewered with the dunny sitting in the backyard like a monument to all that is primitive. However, he was pretty cool with that, but what I had forgotten to tell him was that the mine, clearly visible in the hills to the west, conducted blasting operations at night. We in Mount Morgan are quite used to that sort of thing, and accept it as part of every day life, forgetting the effect that it can have on visitors. As his bed was on the verandah, he copped the full impact of the night blasting which almost had him falling out of bed, thinking that the Luftwaffe had arrived again to drop their bombs, this time on Mount Morgan. There were many questions about Noel from people in the town, which I found difficult to answer truthfully because of all the scandal it caused in London. Despite his promise to write, he never did, so it was a chapter in my life that I closed the door on. After a couple of months of sight seeing in Queensland, we decided that it was time to seek employment as we were almost broke. We sent letters to what movie labs there were in Sydney, and received one enthusiastic reply offering both of us jobs at Channel 7. They had their own film lab and were in the process of expanding it and were looking for experienced staff. We were in the right place at the right time, so we packed our bags again, said our good byes and left for Sydney. With any good news, however, there is often not so good news around the corner. In our case when we arrived at Channel 7, the atmosphere was rather gloomy as the television series that we were going to work on had been cancelled. It was to be a new multi million dollar comedy series staring the brilliant English comedian Tony Hancock and was called “Hancock Down Under”. Unfortunately, while we were travelling to Sydney, Hancock had committed suicide and they had to cancel the series. Apparently behind the comic face, lived a tragic man. We had always been fans of Tony Hancock so we found the news rather shocking.
The film laboratory, however, still wished to employ us so we were offered jobs, one in the Optical Department and one in the Film Assembly Department. Roger took the optical job and I took the film assembly one. The lab was called Atlab and was linked to Channel 7 because of the new E-Cam filming process. This new process enabled the channel to produce better quality T.V. shows as they could be shot on film, while still using the multi camera technique that T.V shows always use. Instead of being recorded on video tape however, they were recorded on 35mm film which gave a much sharper image, and in colour. Fortunately there were still other shows being filmed in the studios in the E-Cam process. One was called “The Battlers” which I found myself working on. It was a boxing series starring John Armstrong, Bill Hunter, Mark Mc Manus and Carmen Duncan. The E-Cam process used three 35mm cameras, with each camera emitting its own sound signal, so that when the director changed cameras the master sound tape recorded the new camera’s particular signal. We, the assemblers, had to listen to the master sound tape, and when the camera signal changed it was our cue to cut in the footage from that particular camera. It was actually a form of automatic editing and worked quite well. When the positive rolls were assembled they went to the film editor who fine cut the assembled footage, under the guidance of the director, until he was happy with it. These positive rolls, called the workprint, then went to the negative cutters whose job it was to cut the original camera negative, to match the workprint exactly. This is done by matching the edge numbers on the negative to the edge numbers on the work print. The assembled final rolls of negative were then given to the graders who checked the balance of light and shade, or colour in the various scenes and adjusted the exposure light accordingly. From there the rolls of negative were passed on for printing and then processing to produce the final positive print. It’s this print that is transmitted to your television set or cinema projector. Sounds a bit complicated? Well! yes, I guess it is. Ultimately the E-Cam system proved to be much more expensive than the conventional video tape system and was eventually dropped as video tape improved. I then moved into negative cutting, which for me was a whole new craft to learn, while Roger now was happily creating optical effects for movies. My boss in the E.Cam assembly and neg cutting department was an older gentleman called Gordon Peck. He always wore a suit and tie to work, and seemed to belong in a world that had passed, or was passing. He was what I would describe as an old fashioned gentleman who never showed anger and was polite at all times. He lived with his mother and sister in an upper class, leafy North Shore suburb, but rumour had it that their home was in the middle of the new freeway extension, and, in time, they would have to vacate it. I had never met his family and he never discussed his personal life at work, but it was said that the pending loss of their home was causing a lot of stress in the household. He was a good boss, however, and we got along fine. The first feature film that I actually neg cut was one called “Sunstruck” which starred the English actor Harry Secombe and Australian actor John Mellion. We also handled films like “The Adventures of Barry McKenzie”, “Alvin Purple”& ”Stork”.
Roger and I actually collaborated on an Indonesia feature film called “Jalang”. As the industry was just getting started there, it was very badly made and edited with glaring gaps in the continuity. When told about this the director, who was in Djakarta, said “You go film something to fill in the holes!” so Roger and I worked together and figured out how to fill in the gaps. We made a list of shots that we wanted and gave the list to the channel’s cameraman who then went out and filmed the scenes. We were later astounded when word came from the producer in Djakarta that the film was a great success and that he was all set to make another film and send it to Atlab again. Everyone in the lab groaned and said “Oh no!”. It was here in the neg room that I met Wendy. Now Wendy was a quiet, unassuming, very attractive young lady that all the guys in the lab lusted after. However she had eyes for only one, an Englishman called Graham, who worked in the processing area. There is more to this story though, because Graham had a band and they were not long back from entertaining the troops in Vietnam as the war was still in progress at that time. When Wendy told me her sideline job was a go-go dancer with Graham’s band, I almost fell off my seat and started laughing saying “You a go-go dancer! You gotta be kidding!” She certainly had the looks and the figure, but it did not go with her rather reserved, demure personality. “Rhonda is a dancer too.” she said. Rhonda was another girl who worked in the lab and a lot more bold than Wendy. The go-go dancer confession then made me realise that she sure must love her man if she was willing to enter a war zone with him to entertain the troops. We attended their wedding a couple of years later and remain firm friends today. . Another person who arrived at the Lab was a young American called Mark. As a pacifist, he had fled to Australia to avoid the draft, and was a friendly guy with long dark hair who also shared our love of movies. One could think of him as a hippy, but he was not quite a carefree character as he always seemed to be worrying about something. I guess as the product of a marriage between a Jew and a Catholic, with a gay brother and a Government wanting to put him in jail for dodging the draft, he had an excuse for being a little bit paranoid. I will not even mention the “medication” that he was on, except to say it looked like a pretty green fern and grew happily in pots, and was smoked! Another interesting character at the lab was Monty. He belonged to the Radio Church of God and was a hypnotist. However, his religion frowned upon such a pastime and ordered him to stop it. But Monty couldn’t, and often hypnotised his workmates during the lunch breaks. It was supposed to be in secret, but we attended a few times and thought he was quite amazing. Some people were better subjects than others. One fellow would suddenly fall asleep when Monty clicked his fingers. This guy was particularly prone to post hypnotic suggestions so that at a certain time he would suddenly do what Monty had suggested earlier. Sadly it all came unstuck when Monty suggested to the guy that at a certain time he would run through the lab calling out “Run for your lives, the Indians are attacking!” It worked really well. The trouble was at that particular time there were some Channel 7 executives showing a group of potential clients their wonderful new Film Laboratory full of skilled, reliable staff. When they were walking down a corridor in the lab they were suddenly confronted by a wild eyed young man yelling “Run for your lives, the Indians are attacking.” It was not long after that episode that Monty left the Lab...Another really nice elderly guy found himself in trouble when he answered a phone call and thought it was a joke. He was a real dinki di Aussie, brought up on a diet of old radio shows that had a certain type of old fashioned humour and colourful characters. We just had a new woman start with us, a German lady, whose name was Anya Dingsdat. Bill worked in another section nearby and hadn’t met Anya yet, but as our phone was ringing he decided to answer it. Apparently the voice said “I am Lady Carrington - Smith and I would like to speak with Mrs Anya Dingsdat please.” Thinking it was someone having a joke Bill said “Yes! And I am MoMcCackie. There are no DINGBATS here only you!” and hung up. As it was really Lady Carrington - Smith, she complained to the management and Bill ended up running a small Post Office store near Bega. Anya was a good worker and tried to fit in, but her heavily accented English sometimes gave her, and us difficulties. She invited Wendy, Roger and I, over to her home in the northern suburbs for dinner one night. Graham couldn’t come because he had a gig with his band. It was all very nice but after dinner, and a few more drinks, Anya suddenly started dancing. She began gyrating wildly about the lounge room in what seemed to be a sort of gypsy dance, and wanted me to dance with her too. I politely refused as gyrating gypsy dancing was not really my thing. In Mount Morgan we used to do a dance called the “Gypsy Tap”, but that required a large ballroom. “You will have to excuse Anya.” her husband said softly to me. “She doesn’t handle alcohol very well. It makes her want to dance.” Channel 7 had a pretty bad employment record. The joke in the T.V. broadcast side of things was that you never went on holiday because when you came back someone else would have your job. One of the film editors, who kept a bottle of scotch hidden in his Moviola editing machine, was sacked because he made improper advances to a young male. The trouble was it was the station manager’s son. Being with Channel 7 worked well for me though because when we weren’t very busy I could have a walk about to see what was going in in the studios. One day I heard that Jane Powell, one of my all time favourite actress/singers was recording a show in one of the studios. I went and sneaked in to see her and listen to her singing. I couldn’t believe it. She seemed to be missing her notes. I left feeling a little bit betrayed, but then I thought that she was getting on a bit and her age was showing. Her hit movies were now about twenty years in the past. Then we had a character called “Tiny Tim”. He was not tiny, but quite tall, with long greasy looking black hair and he accompanied himself with a ukulele while he sang songs like “Tip Toe Through the Tulips” in a high falsetto voice. Another song which I found rather amusing was “The Ice Caps are Melting”(to wash away our sins!). This was well before Climate Change/Global Warming had been invented too. Elsewhere they were shooting a science fiction show in the studios called “Phoenix Five.” It was supposed to be Australia’s “Star Trek.” It wasn’t!. Compared with what is done now with digital effects, the effects were was rather tacky and at times laughable.
“Something Weird This Way Comes”. When we arrived in Sydney to work at Channel 7, we found ourselves a nice flat in Epping not far from the railway station and shops. It was also within walking distance of the Channel 7 studios and in a quiet street with lots of trees. Our two bedroom unit was one of four units on the ground floor of a block housing twelve units. Opposite was a duplicate of the same block with car access between the two buildings that led to the parking bays beneath them. On each floor was a small laundry that served the occupants of that floor. The sound proofing was very good and we never heard our neighbours, which suited us just fine. However, we did bump into one pair in the laundry one day. They shared the unit beside us and they gave us a run down on the others who shared our floor. Opposite them was a young married couple who were no problem and kept to themselves, but opposite us was a German gentleman called Mister Berg. He lived alone but was sometimes visited by his mother who lived in Dungong they told us. We mentioned that we had seen her and that she appeared to be living in the laundry for a few days. They explained that as relations between them is not the best he occasionally throws her out so she camps in the laundry until he lets her in again.
“Most times he just puts her on the train and sends her back to Dungong.” one of them said.
We said that we had seen him around but had not spoken to him.
“Best not to!” was their advice.
About a week later we opened the front door one morning and found two bottles of German beer sitting there. Our next door neighbours also had two bottles placed at their door as well. On our bottles was a note saying “ der Fuhrer General ist hier.” We looked at each other and decided that they could only have come from our German friend opposite us. We grabbed the bottles and note then retreated back inside.
“What should we do?” said Roger.
“I haven’t a clue.” said I, but after thinking for a bit said “Something tells me that we should not go knocking on his door. If we see him we will thank him; if it is him.”
“Well, it’s gotta be him!“ said Roger “after all the note is in German isn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess!.. But referring to himself as the Fuhrer is a bit of a worry.”
We agreed to just put the bottles of beer aside and wait until we saw him, or our neighbours to seek their advice. However we saw neither in the weeks ahead and forgot all about the incident. Then not long before Christmas we heard a disturbance in the street outside.
“I’ll go and check it.” volunteered Roger and disappeared outside the door. After a while he returned. “Did you find out what was going on?” I asked.
“Yes! It’s Mister Berg.” he answered “He’s rolling garbage bins down the road.”
“He’s what?”
“In his underpants!”
“You’re joking!” I said in dismay.
“No! He’s having a great time.”
“Has he hit any cars yet?”
“From what I saw the cars have so far managed to avoid being hit.”
“What should we do?”
“We can’t call the cops because we don’t have a phone.”
“Maybe someone else will.” I suggested.
A little bit later the noise stopped and we caught a glimpse of a cop car’s light flashing. Some weeks later I decided to go for a walk one night after dinner as it was such a nice evening. When I reached the nearby intersection I was startled to see a man wearing only underpants in the middle of the road directing the traffic. It was our neighbour Mister Berg again. While I stood there aghast, a cop car came cruising along and stopped. Not wanting to get involved I disappeared quickly into the shadows as I guessed that by now the local police must be getting quite familiar with the behaviour of our eccentric neighbour. It all came to a climax early in the new year when we were preparing to go out one Saturday morning. Suddenly we heard a gun shot and something whacked our front door. We looked at each other, then quickly opened the door to see what had happened. The guys next door opened their door too saying “We heard a gunshot. Are you guys okay?”
“Something hit our door!” Roger answered back.
“Hey!” one of the boys said “There’s a hole in Berg’s door!”
After a quick check of his door, we then found another bullet hole in our door frame.
“Shit! He’s got a gun in there.” one of them said .
“It has either been shot deliberately or accidentally.“ said his friend “Either way, out here is not a good place to be. We don’t know what’s going on inside there.”
“We had better get back inside quickly before any more bullets start flying around.” I said.
“You have a phone?” one of them asked.
“No!” answered Roger.
“We have! We’ll phone the cops.”
“Thanks!” we both answered. retreating hastily inside out flat.
“He’s done it now.” Roger said.
“He must be quite nuts!” said I.
After pondering our situation for a few moments I said “We are not really safe here, you know.”
“I guess not.” answered Roger looking at our door “If he fires any more shots they could come right through the door and hit us.”
After a bit more discussion we decided that the safest thing to do was to vacate our unit by climbing out the bedroom window, which faced the street. However we felt quite foolish as we clambered out the window and saw that a few people had already gathered on the footpath and were watching us.
“We heard a gunshot. What’s going on?” someone called out.
After a quick explanation from Roger they seemed relieved to hear that the police had been called and were on their way. They arrived a short time later and after a quick consultation with us they decided to make their way into the building. They crept along the footpath, using the side of the building for protection as one of their number called out “Put down the gun Mister Berg. We don’t want to harm you.”
“This is just like the movies!” I said to Roger as the armed officers entered the building. However there was no shoot out and the police emerged later with a carefully restrained Mister Berg who looked as if he was wondering what all the fuss was about. Thankfully he was wearing more than just his underpants. We returned to our unit, and later, when the police had gathered what evidence they required and left, we opened our door again. We were somewhat surprised to find that Mister Berg’s door had been left open. However, moving closer, we could see the curator, who we knew well, moving about inside.
“Come in boys!” he called out. “You wont believe this.”
When we walked in the first thing that we saw was a table covered in rotting food. In the centre was a loaf of bread that was completely covered in green and yellowish mould. Everything appeared to be growing. Beside the table was a garbage bin. It too was full of rotting food that was covered in mould.
“Now we know the reason for the strange odours that we have been smelling.” said Roger.
“How could anyone live like this?” said I with mouth agape.
“What does it remind you of?” asked Roger.
We both looked at each other and said one word at the same time.
“Repulsion!”.
It was a cult movie made by Roman Polanski in 1965, about a person’s descent into madness. The scene that we now saw before us looked very much like one of the climatic scenes in the movie as it too featured rotting mouldy food..
“Look! Over here too.” said the curator opening the refrigerator door.
Inside was a similar scene of rotting food with mould everywhere.
“This must have been there for months.” I said knowing just how long it would take food to decay like that inside a refrigerator.
“Have you got the job of cleaning all this up?” said Roger to the curator.
“Unfortunately, yes.” he answered
“It makes me feel sick.” I said.
“Well don’t be sick in here; I have enough to clean up.” said the poor guy as he looked about at the bizarre scene surrounding him.
We left him there wondering where to start first.
“How could anyone live like that?” said Roger as we returned to our own unit.
“It’s incredible!” I answered “I wonder what they are going to do with him.”
“As long as he doesn’t come back here, I don’t care.” said Roger.
About six months later we moved into a unit of our own at North Ryde and heard no more of “Die Fuhrer General.”……………..
Getting a loan was a bit of a hassle though because the Bank of New South Wales in Epping refused to give us one because we were not a married couple.!! We eventually got a loan from a building society. With a price tag of $18,800 it was a lot of money, but we thought it was about time to make such a business commitment. After all I was in my mid thirties and had arrived back in Australia with an almost empty bank account. Back at the Lab we had a couple of surprises. The phone rang one day and a voice said “Barry, do you know a Harry Kyle?”
“Harry Kyle from ENGLAND?” I said.
“Yes, that’s him. He is here looking for a job.” she answered.
“I’ll be right down.” said I dashing out the door. Harry was one of our mates from Humphries Labs in London. I couldn’t believe it! When I walked in to the reception area, there he was and he wasted no time in saying “G’Day Cobber.” Harry was always teasing me about being Aussie and said things like “Where did you park the Kangaroo this morning Bazza?” as I entered Humphries lab. We had a great reunion. He now had a wife and young son and was looking for an editing job. After he left Humphries he went into editing, and said that his first job had him editing a documentary film on travel. As he was running some footage on Hong Kong where the ocean liner “Canberra” had just docked, the cameraman turned his attention to the passengers disembarking. As Harry watched he said that he got the surprise of his life when he saw Roger and me walking down the gangway. That night we met his lovely wife Muriel and son Julian. Harry got an assistant editing job at the channel’s Artransa Park Studios at French’s Forest where many T.V. series were made. Another visitor from the past, again from Humphries, was a very tall Maori woman called Martina. One of the office staff brought her up to see me and we had another great re-union. When she walked in I said “Martina! The last time I saw you, you dumped me in the rubbish bin and I couldn’t get out. It was not quite true as it was not really the last time I saw her. It was, however, her retaliation once for me teasing her which I frequently did when we worked together at Humphries and Martina was a tall powerful woman. We told the others the story and there was much laughter all round. Unfortunately there was nothing available at Atlab, but I heard later that she returned to New Zealand and set up her own Neg Cutting business. It was something that we had thought of doing ourselves. The opportunity came along when one of our editor friends, Tim Wellburn, said that he was starting work on a new television series called “Silent Number” and offered us the negative cutting. They wanted to keep the costs down so our editor friend offered us the work. We could work at the lab during the day and do the neg cutting at night. The initial set up cost was not all that high if we restricted it to 16mm work only. “Silent Number” was set in and around Sydney, and was about a doctor who helped police with their investigations. It starred Grigor Taylor, and Elizabeth Alexander as his wife.
Things went along fine with us doing two jobs but then union trouble flared up at Atlab. The union called a meeting of its members and the management of Channel 7 announced that anyone who attended the meeting would be sacked. Around 90% of the lab workers attended the meeting and we were all promptly sacked as soon as we returned to the lab. It did not worry us too much as we still had “Silent Number” to do on the side. However, we found that we were running out of leaders. These leaders are placed at the head of every roll of film to act as a count down to the start of the actual picture. As Atlab was basically closed, the only place that we could obtain them was from the rival lab, Colorfilm on the other side of the city. As soon as Roger phoned Colorfilm we were offered jobs there. They wanted Roger badly because he was becoming known in the optical effects business and could bring more work their way. As Colorfilm did most of the feature film work in Australia, it was a great opportunity for him. I was offered a position in their neg cutting department so we both took up their offer. The only down side was that we would be leaving our friends in Atlab, who were all eventually re-instated, with the exception of Wendy who was offered a neg cutting job at the A.B.C. which she gladly accepted. It was now 1974 and we had been with Atlab for 6 years and would miss our friends there.
Colorfilm, being larger than Atlab, suited Roger perfectly as he was now well placed to be involved in the new wave of Australian cinematic masterpieces, just going into production or being planned. I, on the other hand, found myself working in their neg cutting department with an elderly female supervisor who was quite peculiar. She was unmarried and looked upon the staff as her children and treated us that way. The rest of the staff just laughed at her eccentric ways, but I found myself thinking up ways to murder her. Apparently she was one of the Windmill Theatre chorus girls in London during W.W.2. Their motto was “We Never Closed”, though some thought it should have been “We Never Clothed!” Whatever happened there must have made her a little bit bonkers. Although she was highly regarded in the industry, to me her system of working was seriously flawed, so when the opportunity came to join Roger in the Optical Department I took it and became an optical printer. I told our American friend Mark at Atlab of the vacancy in the neg room, so, despite my warnings, he applied and got it. I hoped that he would be more tolerant of Margaret than I was. For me it was great to be working with sane adult people once again and it was an opportunity to learn about the complicated world of optical printing. The Optical Department is the place that does everything that cannot be done when filming the original film. They add titles, make scenes appear to dissolve into one another, make Superman fly through the sky and all that funny, fancy stuff that can't be done in the original camera shoot. I wasn’t all that happy with being a machine operator though, as it was doing a job that was often hit or miss, so when word came from Wendy to tell me that there was a negative cutting job going at the A.B.C. I jumped at it. Wendy was working in the Drama Department at Dixon Street, but this was a position that was available in their Documentary Department at nearby Gore Hill. I had an interview and started there a couple of weeks later.
The A.B.C…..There were four other cutters in the department, three women and one man, with a supervisor, an Irishman called Michael Hardiman. Michael told me that he came out here to Australia with the English film director Michael Powell who was then about to film the movie “Age of Consent” on Dunk Island. It starred James Mason and Helen Mirren and, when completed, was very well received. Michael, however, was a larger than life character who could have been the subject of a movie himself. Then there were the ladies! There was very nice lady called Meryl, then another called Sue and a young Italian lady, Donna, who handled the filing and small assembly jobs. The other guy was a young charismatic Englishman called Tim. When, the boss, Michael, was absent it was usually Showtime. I became very fond of English people when working in London, as they did not take work too seriously and loved to laugh. Tim was one of those. He was in his late twenties, was married with one child, a boy called Daniel. While in England he was a jack of all trades and at one time worked in a Butlin’s Holiday Camp. These places were found at seaside holiday towns and they also provided entertainment for their guests, as the nearby beaches were usually quite dreadful. Tim was often the master of ceremonies at such events, and used to entertaining a crowd. Sometimes in Michael’s absence he entertained us. It would go like this -
Meryl - “Give us a song Tim”
Tim(acting bashful) “I’m too shy!”
Much laughter.
Meryl “Come on Tim. How about “Henry the Eighth”
Tim (taking up his stage position) - “I’m Henery the eighth oiyam, Henery the eighth oiyam, oiyam….”
If he was feeling cheeky we got the stage movements as well. As Michael often disappeared, Tim, in time, managed to get through his whole repertoire of old English Musical Hall songs. All the girls loved Tim, except Donna. Well I guess Donna did too, but she was going through an anti-men period with trouble in her marriage. After a couple of months her husband left and returned to Italy, so Donna was left to look after their child on her own. She and Michael did not get along either, but she did her job well which was the main thing. I became great friends with Meryl, and, as her husband was a film producer, we had much in common and often had dinner parties at each other’s homes. After a few months, Sue left to start a family and I notified our American friend Mark of the vacancy as I knew he was not very happy in the Colorfilm neg room. He jumped at the chance of getting away from “the witch” as he called the supervisor saying that she must have been Margaret Hamilton’s sister. (Margaret Hamilton played the witch in “Wizard of Oz”). So, with Marks arrival we now had an Irishman, an Englishman, an Italian and an American working in the Neg Room, with Meryl and I being the only Aussies. It was a little United Nations. Tim and Mark became buddies immediately, as they had a lot in common. Although Tim was married, it did not stop him from other involvements with the ladies and had at least one mistress that I knew of. Mark had a girlfriend, but she apparently cheated on him with his best friend. It all seemed so very complicated to an outsider and they often had their heads together discussing each others problems, or sharing jokes. Michael never objected to inter action between the staff, as long as we got the work done. When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Mark returned to the U.S.A. and began working in Hollywood, where his father worked. He returned to Australia a couple of times and stayed with us and is now one of the producer/directors on the popular T.V series “NCIS“. When Mark left, another co-worker from Atlab joined us. His name was Ed and he had a young family, and lived in the western suburbs. He was a quiet easy going bloke and fitted in well with the crowd there. One of the most popular television shows that we worked on was the “Big Country” series, which was followed later by “Bill Peach’s Australia” and “On the Road with Harry Butler”. We also did the neg. cutting for the states, which brought me back into contact with John Spence, who was now a film editor at the A.B.C. in Brisbane. John was the other Aussie at Humphries Film Labs in London and we attended his wedding in Manchester in 1965. He was originally from Brisbane and when he married Carol they returned to settle there and raise a family. Long luncheons were the thing at the A.B.C. and sometimes we in the Neg Room we asked to join the editors and their assistants for the occasional picnic in the park, or restaurant. One memorable event that occurred on my watch was when Michael was off on holidays. “You look after the department, Bazza.” he said. One of the editors, who was a very nice guy and, I suspected, a low key gay, invited us, in the Neg Room, to his nearby apartment for lunch. It was a friendly, fun lunch with tasty food and wine or beer to drink. That was not all though, for as we were about to leave he offered us a -er “smoke”. We were not busy though, so when Tim and Ed expressed their desire to remain, I gave them the okay. Just before 4.p.m Ed floated in the door looking very strange and somewhat “away with the fairies.” He managed to pick up the phone and ring his wife to explain that he was incapable of driving the car home, and asked her if she could come and collect him and the car. Fortunately, she was able to get their neighbour to drive her in to the city where she was able to collect her husband, plus car. However, she was not very happy about it and glared about at everyone as if it was our fault. There was no sign of Tim at all. At five I closed up the department and went home. Next day Tim breezed in and just said that he had to wait at David’s until he was sufficiently recovered to drive his car home. I knew that there was more to it than that because I always suspected that Tim was one of those guys who swung both ways, as the saying goes. I also assume that David took the afternoon off as well. Lunch time was a good opportunity for socialising and the area had a few small parks and restaurants that were ideal for that purpose. It also enabled us to get together with Wendy whose cutting room was in Dixon Street few blocks away. About a year later the big upheaval came. The A.B.C. management decided to move Film Services, the collective name for the Editors and Negative Cutters, to a new office block in Chandos Street, St Leonards, a short distance away. With many and varied restaurants, the area had even more to offer for those long ABC luncheons. Ed , who was a good artist, created a cartoon featuring himself that commented on those ABC get togethers.
Michael was delighted with the move as the St Leonards pub was just around the corner. It also meant that, as he lived in Crows Nest, he would not need to drive his car to work, so there would be no breathalyser tests to worry about on the way home. However, it now gave me a problem, as Michael often disappeared for lengthy periods of time and would reappear later somewhat under the influence. One of the rumours about Michael was that he had links with the I.R.A. which gave me a laugh when I first heard it, but as I got to know him better I began to revise my opinion. One event in particular is ingrained in my memory. Just after the re-location Michael sidled up to me and said “Come downstairs with me Bazza, I’ve got something to show you.” I sighed inwardly and thought what now?. Michael’s frequent interruptions were an annoyance but I had learnt to put up with them. As we entered the lift I noticed that Michael was carrying a 35mm. film can. It was like something out of a museum as almost all our work was with 16mm. film. When the doors opened we stepped out into the basement car park and Michael slowly removed the lid from the can. Inside was a large roll of film; about 400feet of it.
“It’s Nitrate!” said Michael.
“Where did you get it?” I said with a worried look “It’s highly flammable!”
Now, nitrate film stock was the only film base that existed in the early days of film and it caused many fires with much loss of life when cinemas burnt down. In time it was replaced with a safety base stock which would not ignite. Humphries Film Laboratories, in London, had a separate vault for the storage of old nitrate films, and had stringent rules for anyone who had to handle it. Here we were in a basement car park, surrounded by cars with an exposed roll of the stuff with Michael about to light a cigarette.
“Michael! You cannot smoke with that stuff around.” said I in a higher pitched voice than I would normally use.
“It’s aright!” he replied “Just goin’ ta have a bit of fun with it. We used ta do it altha time back in Oiland.”
After he said that he bent down and lit the roll of nitrate film with his cigarette lighter.
“Jesus! Michael! What are you doing?” I yelled at him. “That’s dangerous stuff.”
“Aaarh! Not if it’s wound tight. It only smokes if it is wound tight” he replied.
By now the burning film was pouring out great amounts of smoke, but, thank the Lord, it hadn‘t burst into flames - yet!.”
“Michael! You’re crazy!” I yelled at him through the gathering smoke cloud. “Someone will call the police and the fire brigade. What if it sets off the all the sprinklers in the building. It will be chaos!?”
“Then they will all get wet.” answered Michael quite unconcerned.
“Fuck this Michael!” said I with a look of panic on my face. “I’m outa here!” As I said that I began groping about in the smoke trying to find the stairs. When I burst through the door to the neg room I gazed up at the automatic sprinklers and was relieved to see that they had not been activated - yet!. I then walked over to the windows to look out on the lane way below.
“What’s going on?” said the ever observant Tim.
“Michael just lit a roll of nitrate film in the basement.” I replied.
“He WHAT?” said Tim with a horrified look.
“What’s nitrate film?” asked Meryl.
“It’s highly flammable film.” answered Tim “and very, very dangerous.” He then turned to me and said “You’re joking? Right?”
“Unfortunately no.” I replied “Look out on the back lane.”
They all went to the windows and gazed down upon the narrow lane below. It was filled with smoke.
“He’s crazy!” said Tim
“I knew he’d go too far one day!” said Ed.
“Should we call the fire brigade?” suggested Meryl.
Fortunately there was nothing opposite us, only a building construction site, so it was possible that no one else had seen the smoke pouring out of our building’s basement.
“We’ll wait a few minutes and see how it goes.” I replied.
Eventually the smoke lessened, then disappeared, as did Michael.
I knew where he had gone of course, and he returned later that afternoon, a little under the weather with no mention of the nitrate film incident. Another Michael story was on a lunch break at the Crows Nest pub. Michael wanted to introduce me to his friends around the Crows Nest shops; but only after we had a few beers first. Before we went in he bought a pie from the pie shop. After a couple of beers he thought he would eat his pie, so he sat the pie on the brown paper bag that it came in, walked over to the cutlery holder and removed a spoon. When he returned he said “Aaarh, you Aussies just don’t know how ta make a decent pie.” After he said that he removed the top of the pie, scooped the filling out and put it in the ash tray, and proceeded to eat the pastry. I was dumbfounded. As for meeting his friends, well they mostly ground their teeth and glared at me. I guessed they were thinking “Now there’s two of them!” Another of Michael’s drinking buddies was the Minister for Immigration in the Whitlam government, Al Grassby. Apparently he had an office, or lived in the area because I had seen him sometimes in Crows Nest myself, so it was no stretch of the imagination to see them together as drinking buddies. After all, Al was of Spanish/Irish decent and was reported to have links with the Calabrian Mafia. Also, the fact that he wore outlandish colourful ties, was a dead give away. When Michael had his desk in the Neg Room it was always covered with items for sale and no one asked where they came from. At Humphries, in London, a similar furtive operation existed and it was said that the items fell off the back of a truck. As there were always people coming and going it was not unusual for Michael to make a few sales. One day he offered me some ties. “I can’t wear those Michael.” I said
“Why?” he asked.
“They’re too loud.”
“They’re just colourful!” he protested.
I stood my ground and said “No way!”
A couple of weeks later a picture of Al Grassby appeared in the newspaper and I’ll swear he was wearing one of those ties. After that he become known as “Flash Al” because of the colourful ties that he wore. He must have been taking advice from Michael too because he introduced the policy of Multiculturalism, which ultimately led to him losing his seat in the 1974 election. Another Ed cartoon was one of Michael passing judgement on the department’s secretary.
The move to St Leonards also meant that Donna would have less time on the road; a fact that delighted Michael. I know it is wrong to stereotype people, but where some said that Michael was a typical Irishman, it could also be said that Donna was a typical Italian when it came to driving. It was one of the aspects about Rome that terrified me when we were there. The drivers just seemed to ignore all the road rules in their quest to reach their destination in the quickest possible time. Michael said that he was always afraid of meeting Donna on the road, and loved to describe how she once stood a truck up on its front wheels when she caused the driver to emergency brake when she suddenly pulled over in front of him and stopped abruptly when the lights changed to red. However she seemed to have a guardian angel. When the local council became upset with her for not paying her numerous parking fines they took her to court. She represented herself in court and gave such a good story to the magistrate about being a single parent and all that, that the magistrate quashed all her unpaid fines and ordered the council to refund all the money that she had paid to them for other previous fines. Somehow Donna had the uncanny knack of being able to cause chaos where ever she went. Ed even did a drawing of Donna arriving for morning tea which I shall put below.........
Tim’s closest friend was a guy called John and they went out a lot together. As it happened John worked with Roger in the Optical Department at Colorfilm. One Monday I came home from work, and when Roger arrived home we discussed the weekend. I was a bit disappointed because it was cloudy and a bit grim looking where we lived at North Ryde, so we cancelled our plans to go to the beach. When I mentioned the weekend weather to Tim, he said that it was beautiful at the coast and he and family spent a great day at the beach, describing in detail all the things that they did. When I related to Roger what Tim had told me about the great weather and the good time he had with his family, Roger gave me an odd look, and said “That’s a load of old rubbish. He spent Sunday with Felicity at her place. John told me all about it.”
“But he was totally convincing about spending the day with Gloria and Daniel. He described everything that they did together in detail.”
“Well, John would not lie about that. They share all their information and intimacies and John said that Tim spent the weekend with Felicity.”
Discovering that I had been blatantly lied to was not a nice feeling, but maybe it was the changing world. Out with the old, in with the new. It was now the world of the permissive society. Sex parties and wife swapping were supposed to be the in thing. However, as the old song said “Anything Goes” and society seemed to be breaking away from the old fashioned norm. We knew that John was into all that stuff and apparently Tim was too. It seems that Tim’s marriage was just a façade and he was a superb liar. Nether the less it was difficult to dislike Tim. He was still outwardly a very nice guy who liked to make people laugh. As a sideline he worked a few nights a week as a waiter at a well known Sydney restaurant. One morning he came in and told us about the night before when one of the waiters had an argument with the manager, and got himself sacked. Before he left he urinated into the large container of coleslaw salad. “So you had to make up a new batch?” said Meryl with a look of disgust on her face.
“Oh no!” replied Tom “We just served it up.” It was not long after that he invited Roger and I over to his house for dinner. He promised not to serve up coleslaw salad so we accepted. Tim was a fan of the epic book series called “Lord of the Rings” and wanted us to meet Bilbo Baggins. It appears that he named his very large goldfish after the book’s main character. As the negative cutter at the French’s Forest studios was leaving, Meryl requested a transfer to the cutting room there as she and Michael just did not get along at all. Neither had a nice word to say about the other and I suspect that the problem went back to before I joined the team, as Meryl knew Michael’s wife. Michael never mentioned her, nor anything to do with his domestic situation, except to complain about having to mow the lawn. One day he came to me and said that he had solved his lawn problem. When asked what he had done, he answered that he had concreted it all in and painted it green. With the work load increasing Mike asked me if I knew where he could get two more bodies as he called them. I notified two more of the old Atlab crew, Brian and Ann, and they jumped at the opportunity to join the A.B.C. Brian was a very quiet guy who minded his own business and just got on with the job. Ann, however, was quite different. She was a tall, attractive Dutch lady, recently divorced, and a bit of an extrovert, and not at all shy about matters of sex. She never forgave Captain Cook and the English for claiming that they discovered Australia, when everyone knows that it was the Dutch. Her aggressive sexually led to one hilarious incident in the neg room, again, when Michael was absent. One of the assistant editors was a guy called Gerald. He was quite good looking and a Kiwi. Well, we Aussies all know that those who come from the land of the Great White Cloud are a little bit strange and Gerald was no exception. He had an obsession with other people’s sex lives. If you got into a conversation with Gerald in no time at all he would be trying to find out all about your latest sexual escapade. Anyway, one day Ann called his bluff and began making sexual advances towards him. He was suddenly terrified and tried to escape. Ann, however, had blocked his exit path and came towards him looking at his groin and making groping motions with her hands saying. “Come on big boy! Show me what you‘ve got!”. Seeing that his escape route was blocked he jumped up on one of the tables. Ann hurried towards him saying “Ah! You are making it easier for me my darlink!” and came towards him as if to grab him in the crotch. Up until this point I thought that Gerald might have just been playing along with things, but he did really look terrified. Fortunately he was able to leap off the table and this time he managed to find a clear pathway to the door. As he burst through it he almost knocked over one of the other assistants who was on her way in with a can of film. “What did you do to Gerald?” she asked as she entered the room “He looked terrified.”
“Just giving him a lesson in manners.“ replied Ann looking like the cat who had just swallowed the canary. We did not see Gerald for some time after that and when he did return he was rather subdued and would not go anywhere near Ann. It’s something that I never understood about him as he had a lovely wife, and a happy marriage. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that back in New Zealand his father was a Bishop in the Anglican church.. He was also what we called a foodie and loved trying new recipes and dining out at trendy restaurants. When he went for a holiday in Bali Ed drew a cartoon where Gerald had the tables turned on him…
Not long after the Gerald episode a memo came around from the head office telling us what to do if we found ourselves sexually harassed at work. It even had a map of the naked human body with instructions how to mark with an X the spots on your body where you had been sexually harassed. We thought it was a joke, but later found out that it was not a joke and was indeed an official memo. I think the A.B.C. had a special department whose job it was to send out memos. They flowed in all the time, and Michael usually just threw them into the waste paper basket without reading them. He did give me some very good advice though about how to stay out of trouble in the public service. “Be very, very careful Bazza, about what you put your name to. Once your name’s on a memo it is there in the files forever and one day it could come back to bite you!” It was a piece of advice that I always heeded. Eventually Donna left to work as a translator for sub-titling movies with S.B.S. I was sorry to lose Donna as she was a very good worker, but happy for her as it was something more involving for her than filing cans of negative. However, we have always kept in touch and she is now a happy grandmother, although her life is still chaotic. She frequently flies to Italy and back as she endeavours to sort out family problems back there. Donna’s departure left another vacancy in the department, so the ABC advertised for a junior person to take her place. As I was again standing in for Michael, who was away on holidays at the time, I had to choose from about half a dozen applicants. I chose a youth from the western suburbs called Darren. It apparently ruffled a few feathers at the time and I was told that the ABC always chooses staff with a University education from the eastern suburbs. I explained that as he had his own movie camera, he had a knowledge of the job and showed enthusiasm for it, so therefore he was, in my opinion, the best person for the job. He never let me down and was a very good worker. However, he had a strange sense of humour, which sometimes bordered on the bizarre. Not long after Darren arrived, Tim left to become the manager of a rock band so I contacted another old friend, Robin, who I worked with in the neg room at Colorfilm. She was a lot of fun there and referred to our boss, Margaret, as Maggots! (only when she was out of earshot of course.) Robin jumped at the chance to join us at the ABC and management then had to wear two people in their Neg Room from the Western Suburbs. Like Darren, she too had a terrific sense of humour and in no time at all they were both into mischief. I always bought a newspaper on the way to work and, as I arrived early, I would check out any major news items before I began working. When Michael arrived, about an hour later he would sit beside my workbench, read the paper, and do the crossword puzzle. One day Darren and Robin got to the paper first and sabotaged the cross word puzzle by carefully adding a few more black squares. When Michael started doing the crossword I could see that he was getting frustrated with it. I said nothing however until he announced loudly “This is a shithouse crossword puzzle! Nothing fits. Look here!” he said holding up the puzzle “It says Means of transport. ONE letter!” By now Robin couldn’t contain herself and burst out laughing, followed by everyone else. I said somewhat gently to Michael “Er!.. Um..The crossword puzzle has been sabotaged Michael. It has extra black squares. That’s why you can’t get anything to fit.” He then flung the paper down and stormed out of the room. Another time Darren got one of the black round film rewinding plates and, by using packaging tape, carefully made it into what he called a “Pentagram” and placed it on the booking in table near the door. I did not take much notice of it because Darren was often doing strange things. The assistant editors came and went as they booked in new rolls of negative, and then I noticed the door open and pause, then close again. A few minutes later one of the assistants came in and gave me a can of negative saying “This is from Yvonne. She won’t come in because of that.” and pointed to Darren’s creation sitting on the booking in table. I took the can of negative from her and grabbed my dictionary that I always kept beside me and looked up “Pentagram”. It told me that it was a warning sign to mark a place where occult practices occur..….. “Darren!” I yelled out. Then he had what he called his “Blokie Alarm Watch”. “Blokie” was Darren’s term for a gay person and he explained that it warned him whenever one was present. Of course his watch had a manually operated beeper and was another way for Darren to cause mayhem. One of the editors frequently set it off as he had certain mannerisms.(over the top! some might say). He had only to walk into the neg room, wave his arms and say “Hello everybody!” and Darren’s watch would go “Beeep! Beeep! Beeep!”. Michael sometimes poked his head around the door to say something like “Barry! Would you come out here. I have something to show you” and Darren’s watch would immediately react with loud beeps. Another editor, who was once a dancer at the “Purple Onion”(a gay night spot) caused the beeper to go off every time he opened the door. Of course it was an in joke between us and it always started Robin giggling. This in turn caused Michael to remark to me many times “What’s wrong with that woman? Is she demented or something?” I never told him about Darren’s watch. Darren was a hard worker though and quick to learn. He even enrolled in the nearby Technical College to do a night course in Film Editing. Robin left eventually to start a family and Greg joined us. Greg had his own neg cutting business with an associate, but the up and down nature of the film production world made Greg decide to get himself a more stable job with a guaranteed income, as he had a wife and child to look after. He also had a very dry sense of humour and a ready wit and often had us laughing. He was a biker, as against bikie, and was always ready to explain the difference. The former was about doing the right thing and not having a hairy face and not wearing confronting leather gear. It was Greg who talked me into going to Bali for the first time. He was a frequent visitor there, and loved the place because it was easy to hire a motor bike and travel to the best surfing locations. Once Michael reached retirement age he was told in no uncertain terms that it would be best for all concerned if he did just that, and retired. It was no secret that he sneaked off to the pub during working hours. With Michael’s departure I was elevated to department head, a job I had been doing anyway during Michael‘s frequent absences . At least now I would get paid for it. However, I missed the crazy Irishman, even though, at times he drove me mad!
Debbie (shouting) “Give that back!”
Darren: “You’re not using it!”
Debbie: “I was just about to!”
Darren: “You weren’t!”
Debbie: “I was!”
Darren: “Use the other one!”
Debbie: “No! I like that one. Give it back!”
Darren: “No!”
Me. “What’s going on with you two now?”
Debbie: ”Darren stole my split reel.”
Darren: “She wasn’t using it.”
Debbie: “I was too!”
Darren: “You weren’t”
Debbie: “I was just going to.”
Darren: “You weren’t!”
Me (with a sigh) ”Darren use the other one.”
Darren: “But It’s a bit wonky.”
Me: “It‘s usable. So use it.”
Darren (looking dejected) “Ohh, alright.”
As he reluctantly turned his back on Debbie and walked away she frowned and poked her tongue out at him. I had to stop myself from laughing and pretend not to notice……As time passed she became involved with one of the good looking assistant editors. They were very discreet about it and did not make it obvious. Then one day Darren, too, came up to me and said “I’ve got a girlfriend!”
“That’s nice!” I replied “Where did you meet her?”
“On the Epping road.”
“Did you run over her or something?”
“No!”
“How did you meet her there then?”
“At the traffic lights.”
“um!…. At the traffic lights?”
“Yeah!”
“What happened at the traffic lights?”
“We both used to be driving home at the same time and we would sometimes be together at the traffic lights.”
“and one time you asked her for a date?’
“Yeah!”
“and she said yes!”
“Not the first time, no.”
“but later?”
“Yeah!”
“How romantic.”
“Yeah!”
The were married about a year later……..
Darren had a very definite view on the A.B.C. In conversation one day he said “They’re all up ‘em selves here!” I agreed with him though perhaps I would have put it differently. Maybe referring to it as a “protected workshop” would be more appropriate.
Now, in the new Millennium it has completely disregarded its charter of fairness for all, and has become the attack dog of the far left. Eventually Darren moved into the news department as an assistant editor. He had a strong sense of justice, and of what was right and wrong. One day he came to me and said that one of his news items on Northern Territory aborigines had been dumped, because the news supervisor said that it showed the Aborigines in a bad light. “We can’t show that!” he was told. Darren said that he argued with him about being truthful but was told that there were some things that the public should not know. It was the first time that I realised that “our” ABC censored its news. Eventually Darren went to the U.S.A to join the A.B.C. news team in Washington D.C. and decided to remain there. The last time I heard from him he was a freelance editor working for National Geographic.
Brian, Darren, Ann, Barry & Debbie in front.
When Darren transferred over into news editing another young American guy joined us. His name was Tony and he was a likeable lad, even for an American. He came to Australia to stay with his sister as his mother was involved in messy divorce proceedings against his father.. I didn’t probe too deeply but it seemed as if they wanted Tony out of the way. His sister and her husband were the licensees of the hotel at the wharves, so he was staying with them. He was a good worker and a talented lad and another one who was very good at drawing cartoons. He came up with a rather risqué series called “The Adventures of Captain Condom.” It was very funny and as he drew the cartoons he pinned them up on the Film Services notice board so everyone could get a laugh at them. Unfortunately, one day they all disappeared. We joked that the thief was probably someone from children’s television where they were looking for a new show to replace “Bananas in Pyjamas.” In time, Debbie too, left the Neg Room to become an assistant editor herself. When Debbie left, Larissa joined us. She was also a very attractive young lady, but there the resemblance ended. When Debbie was around you always knew it. Larissa was very much the opposite and seemed to be quite comfortable with her self, and those about her. When Debbie was present, she somehow always drew attention to herself. Larissa just worked away so quietly that you hardly knew that she was there. About a year later she announced that she would be resigning to get married. The groom was a well known controversial left wing film maker noted for his confrontational approach to his subject. They were like chalk and cheese. To say that we were surprised was a massive understatement. As Film Services downsized we eventually moved back to the main studios at Gore Hill. Here we were visited by Tony’s mother who had decided to fly out for a visit. After she met us(or should I say glared at us), Tony showed her around the complex of ramshackle old buildings that was the ABC Gore Hill studios and when asked later what she thought of it all, Tony said that she described it as “sordid”?? He also said that she was going to get married again. Something made me feel sorry for her new husband!
Tony, Barry, Brian, Larissa & Ann sitting.
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“Cinema Papers”
“The funny part about it” says Roger Cowland “the good opticals are the ones you don’t see.”
Where did you start, Roger, and how did you come to be supervising the feature opticals department at Colorfilm?It goes back 20 years to George Humphries, London. I started there in the neg cutting department, and doing all sorts of jobs, learning all the laboratory procedures. Then I went to Canada, Toronto, at Film House, in charge of quality control. After a year in Canada, I came to Australia to work on the Tony Hancock series that was being made out here. Unfortunately, he died on the first week of the series. So because there wasn’t a lot of work about then, I alternated between cutting and opticals, gradually moving into opticals full time. Then I came to Colorfilm.
The year in Canada must have been interesting. They have a very high standard there.
They have, extremely high. We did mostly commercials as they weren’t doing a lot of features then. We used to do a lot of release prints for the States, it was cheaper for them.
Let’s talk about opticals work. Could you briefly explain the process?
There are two areas in Colorfilm’s opticals department, make up and printing. Make up is the actual translation of the effects required into a print. To do that the make up operator must be able to visualise the effects the editor has in mind. When we get the cut work print the edge numbers are recorded and sent to the neg department, and the negative is extracted from the original camera rolls. It’s graded and sent back to us. Each scene is matched to the cut work print and cued according to the required optical. This is all laid out on a make up timing sheet, which sets out in frames the desired effect and how long it should run for. The cue sheet then goes down to the printer. This is a slow process - you’re printing a frame at a time, and when you’ve got multiple exposures, you’ve got to keep going back over the same piece of film. If you are a frame out, it’s history and the job’s no good,
So all the opticals are printed in the optical department. Do you have special printers?
As a matter of fact we’ve just installed another new one, an Oxberry. It’s an aerial image machine with two projector heads, one mounted behind the other so you can run negatives in one and your hi-con mattes or titles in the other. This makes it a lot easier for re-positioning, zooming of the other image, re-positioning a title, or just enlarging an image. It’s got automatic zoom, skip framing, fades, dissolves, things like that.
If I bring a film into Colorfilm, what can I expect optically?
Given the right material to start with, there’s nothing we can’t do. If it’s properly prepared. That’s terribly important, preparation. One of the things I try to get clients to do is to come in and talk the opticals over before they get into expensive shooting, and find out when they’ve shot it the effect they want is not going to work.
You’d rather people came in and talked about opticals at the script stage?
Yes. In a few cases people have come in and talked about things, and of course they work, because we know what they want, and they know how to help us get it for them.
Can you give us an example?
Well, “Harlequin” was one, although it didn’t go from pre-production stages, they asked me to go down to Melbourne when they were cutting it to discuss the opticals. There were a few opticals they wanted and they weren’t quite sure if they’d work. So I saw the whole fine cut down there, which is a good thing, I got a feel for the film. Which is important for matching the opticals to the mood. Anyway there’s some places in “Harlequin” where they looked at the edited work print and decided some scenes needed sunsets which didn’t have sunsets. We had to superimpose them, and it worked very well. We added a streaky sunset sky, and storm clouds over the house.
I didn’t notice it.
No. The good opticals are the ones you don’t see. There are about 70 in “Harlequin”, and quite a lot in “Newsfront,” which most people wouldn’t notice. Then there was the client who wanted a special optical for a commercial. They wanted two guys - one on each side of the frame - facing each other, swing in together and shatter. They talked about it before they shot it, we discussed how they should shoot it. They brought it in, great, the effect worked. If you can get people to shoot things with opticals in mind, it works better. You know, if they have an effect, like a double exposure in mind, they work better if they’re shot correctly, like a night shot superimposed over a day shot just won’t work.
How else can an editor help get the opticals he wants?
By clearly marking work prints. One very common mistake made is that they don’t check their trims. They want a dissolve, and we find there’s not enough material to cover it. I think a lot of editors leave things out of the cut work print that they should put down. For example fades and dissolves, they just mark them up and assume you understand what it is. For titles, choosing a good legible lettering style. This is very important because depending on backgrounds they can break up and be lost. I can only say pick a bold style.
Avoid serifs?
Yes! Night shots tend to be the worst for titles to be over.
Can you see any radical changes to the business of opticals in the future?
Well, a lot of things have gone over to video tape, especially commercials, mainly because of the speed. But I think the advent of the CRI has made a difference - with opticals being turned around quicker. I still think you can’t beat film for quality.
Do you like films?
Do I like films? You can say that again. I’ve always liked films, that’s why I’m working here. That’s another important thing. I feel if it’s possible for anyone to work at something they really love doing, that’s great. I think that’s when you put your best into it.
Do you have a favourite film?
“2001: A Space Odyssey.” I’m a science fiction freak.
An optical man’s dream or nightmare?
Dream. I’d love to do something like that.
What makes Colorfilm a special lab?
The people. They place a lot of importance on skilled technicians. And they look after their staff. It makes for a lot happier working area, people are more interested in and care more about what they are doing. I think it’s terribly important for a producer to feel that he is in safe hands, that his film is going to be looked after as an individual thing, and he can be assured of the result.
Roger Cowland at Colorfilm 1980
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------After reading this article myself in the present time I posed a question to Roger and said What would you have said to Peter Jackson if he had walked into the optical department at that time and said “I’m going to make a movie of 'The Lord of the Rings'. Here’s a list of the optical effects that I want.”
Roger’s reply was I would say come back in thirty years time when the technology is available!
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Gay Sydney: In Australia, in 1968, Homosexual acts between two men were a criminal offence. I remember reading in a Sydney newspaper not long after we arrived that two country youths had been found engaged in a homosexual act in one of the stables during the Royal Easter Show. They were charged and dragged through the courts which resulted in a jail sentence for them both. Goodness knows what happened to them in jail!… It seemed such utter madness that the law should be involved in what people do in private. We had never been involved in the gay scene at all but apparently the Sydney scene was very much swinging at that time. It was centred around two night clubs “Capricco’s and “The Purple Onion” which staged lavish drag shows. However it was not all fun and frolicking because the performers were frequently beaten up by the police or other homophobic thugs if they ventured out on the streets wearing their costumes and make up. It was not until a legal protest march in June, 1978, forced the inevitable confrontation between gays and police, with many protesters being bashed and jailed. The following is an account from a newspaper at the time………..
“But the marchers gathered supporters along the way, and the police misjudged the mood of the growing crowd. Kings Cross erupted, and in the ensuing melée many more onlookers joined in, hurling garbage bins, bottles and cans at the police.
What had started as a parade to commemorate a riot in New York nine years earlier became a full-scale riot in Sydney. Sydneysiders were somewhat taken aback at the turn of events, not that they were unaware of the thuggish behaviour of the police. As The Australian reported the next day: At 10.30 pm Australia's first homosexual Mardi Gras was in full swing, with about 1000 people singing and dancing down Sydney's Oxford Street, caught up in the excitement of a jubilant crowd. One hour later, the mardi gras had become a two-hour spree of screaming, bashing and arrests. In one incident, police took off their identification numbers and waded into a crowd of homosexuals. Fifty-three people were arrested during the pitched battle between police and marchers, these were later joined by onlookers who had little cause to love or respect the state's police. What happened next exacerbated the situation. When those arrested appeared at the city's Central Court of Petty Sessions a few days later, a huge contingent of police blocked access into the chamber. Despite the magistrate's decision that the court be opened to the public, the police forcibly restricted access, effectively closing the court. This led to further clashes, with another seven people arrested. TV news cameras captured these images, which flashed across the world, and once again drew attention to the role of the New South Wales police, embarrassing the state Labor government of Premier Neville Wran, a lawyer who had claimed to be a staunch upholder of civil rights…….. The Government eventually legalised Homosexuality in 1984.
First Mardi Gras event June 1978
This was the news that everyone had been waiting for, but it was also the time that the hate crimes really started. Recent investigations have discovered that between 1985 to 1995, 80 homosexual men were murdered across New South Wales. Gay bashing became a regular sport with gangs of young men from western Sydney descending on known beats to kick their victims to death. At Bondi they were simply thrown over the cliffs. The police force labelled the deaths as suicides; though how a young man could kick himself to death was never explained. With the police turning a blind eye to the killings, very few of the perpetrators were caught. We, on the other hand, just wanted to get on with our lives as two ordinary people. It was not until many years later that we began moving towards the gay scene with some new friends that we had made through an old friend from the Atlab days. His name was Roy. When we met him he was in his late teens, quite tall and good looking though a little thin and shy. I suspected that he might be gay, but the subject was never mentioned until many years later, when he was over for dinner one night. In the course of conversation, somehow the truth came out. As he was a devout Roman Catholic I asked him how he reconciled being gay with his religion. He said that he mentioned it to a priest one night during confession.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He told me where the best beats were.” answered Roy in all seriousness. (beats are secluded areas in bushland or parks where gays go to indulge in sexual activity). I almost fell off my seat and said “You’re joking!”
“No! He really knew where the action was, and they were the best places to go” Roy replied in his usual very serious manner. That’s a subject that we will now leave alone except to say that this guy always seemed to be getting himself into awkward situations. I remembered him saying once that he went to a fancy dress party.
“Was it a lot of fun?” I asked.
“No, it was embarrassing!” he replied.
“Why?”
“I was the only one in fancy dress.”
“What did you go as?”
“Tarzan!” was his reply.
I tried not to laugh as I visualised skinny Roy in his loin cloth surrounded by all the young Sydney swingers in their latest trendy gear. Another time he got involved in the Gay Mardi Gras. He was with a church fellowship group who decided that their group should march with the gay revellers to give them support. Naturally it is the sort of event that is covered by the news teams, so we watched the news the next night to see how it all went. We got the surprise of our lives, when watching the news, when our friend Roy appeared full screen and fully clothed, in the middle of all the bare flesh, sequins and feathers. When asked about it later he said that his brother was also watching the same newscast and he “hit the roof!” because he happened to be watching it with his girl friend. When Roy was in his late twenties he came into some money and decided to share it with his friends, so he invited those who fell into that category to a dinner in a Sydney restaurant. It was a pretty mixed lot, but we immediately took a liking to a guy called Gerry. He had none of the mannerisms of obvious gay people and could pass easily as “straight.” As he lived not far from us with his mother in Epping, we soon became friends and his friends became our friends. He was involved in the Epping Progress Association and he knew a lot of people, some of whom were young married couples. This led to us to all dining out together, which was great until one of the marriages fell apart and then our small group broke up too. We still kept friendly with Gerry, and, as he had introduced us to some of his gay friends, we found ourselves dining out with a group of them one night. A couple were a little over the top, as the saying goes, and soon our table was the centre of attention. It was made even more so when one of the guys released a toy jumping penis that bounced all around the table making funny sounds. It was terribly embarrassing and I felt like hiding under the table - although that would have lead to more risqué jokes. We decided that night that involvement in that type of outrageous gay scene was not for us. A dinner party of a very different kind occurred when friends from Queensland came for a visit. On this particular night we decided to go out for a Chinese dinner at a nearby restaurant at Lane Cove. They were old friends from my teenage days, Steve & Mary, who now had two children a boy, Paul, who was about to enter the teenage years himself and a younger sister, Kathy. The main courses were very good and we now had to decide on dessert. I can’t remember what the rest of us chose, but I DO remember what Paul chose. He ordered a Banana Split and when it came it was in one of those oval sundae dishes. It had a perfectly round scoop of vanilla ice cream topped with a small red glace cherry at each end, with a long banana resting between them. The sexual symbolism was apparent to all who gazed down upon this pornographic creation masquerading as dessert. No one said a word, we were all speechless. Suddenly Mary grabbed a folk and spoon and, with a sudden burst of speed that only a mother has when protecting her young from a perilous situation, chopped it all up. Roger broke the silence by saying “and what plans do you have for tomorrow guys?”…… We did not give the gay scene away completely however, as we still kept friends with Gerry as he was more the low key type. A worrying aspect of his personality, unfortunately, was that he had a weakness for teenage youths, preferably straight, which was a bit foolish as he was involved in Epping civic affairs and working for the community. However all that almost came unstuck when he mixed up two e-mails. One e-mail concerned the association’s budget, and the other had some pictures of naked men that he was sending to one of his other mates. Yep! You guessed it. The president and committee of the association got the naked men, and his mate got the budget statement. When asked the result, he said that when he realised what he had done a few moments later, he immediately got on the phone and apologised to everybody telling them not to look at the E-mails that he had sent them in error. After a lot of grovelling they agreed to accept his apology and allowed him to keep doing his job. The gay scene must be very confusing to those on the outside looking in, because it is also very confusing for those involved in it. Many gays wished to have a relationship like Roger and I had, but that requires commitment and a certain amount of loyalty and trust. To reinforce the idea that they are desirable to members of their own sex, many become involved in promiscuous behaviour which leads to a life that revolves around frequently picking up other men purely for sex. It is called one night stands and it leads to an empty shallow existence and a lonely life. We were never able to get involved with this crowd as we found ourselves more comfortable with couples who had committed to each other. This led us to a friendship with pair of male friends who, we thought, were in a position similar to our own. One was at the Sydney University studying physiotherapy, and the other, a much older person, was a television executive. I will refer to them as Ashley and Charles. We hung out a lot together for a couple of years, going to movies and restaurants, and even going on holidays together. Then one day Ashley told me that he would soon be marrying Margaret, a girl friend of many years.
“What about Charles?” I said.
“He understands. My family expect me to get married and I want to have children.”
“But you’re not….. Can you do it with Margaret?”
“Oh yes!” was his reply.
Not long after that we drifted apart. I think Ashley, being younger, found us too boring. The last I heard he was married and had a couple of children, but was still involved with Charles. In the Colorfilm Film Laboratory where Roger worked, one of the chief technicians was homosexual. He was also married with a family. It was not a happy marriage, but his wife allowed him his freedom to associate with other men, saying “At least I know that he won’t run off with another woman.” If you, the reader finds all this confusing, don’t worry you are not alone. There are many aspects that Roger and I both do not understand; like Roger’s cousin Eric. They are a similar age, but for a long time they had lost contact with each other. Then out of the blue an email arrived from Eric, now living in New Zealand. He told Roger that he had been married and had two children, but was now divorced, and was a female, known as Erica. He explained that he was never comfortable as a man and the operation had now allowed him to be a woman and dress as a woman. “There was an article about it in the Women’s Weekly, didn’t you see it?.” he said. Roger expected him to announce that he was now living with another man, but he said that his new companion was named Joyce and they were very much in love. Now Roger was really confused; and so was I. We had endless arguments about it.
“Why would he have a sex change if he is attracted to women.” said Roger.
“That would make him a lesbian.” I said.
“A man can’t be a lesbian!” said Roger.
“Well if he is sexually attracted to women, but feels uncomfortable as a man, then changes his sex and dresses as a woman, then he must be a lesbian.”
“That means that Joyce must be a lesbian too.” said an exasperated Roger. We both remained confused but agreed that people’s sexuality can be very, very complicated. Hardly anything is black and white. Then again, it’s not our business to pry into the sexual lives of other people, as our friend Gerald found out. Another couple in the group that we knocked around with were brothers and were a few years older than us. They lived together in an extravagantly furnished home in one of the inner city suburbs and we were sometimes invited to their place for dinners. At one dinner party they had a beautiful expensive white lace tablecloth on the table. Of course everyone remarked on it, and praised its beauty and skilled handicraft in its creation. During the meal someone passed Roger the beetroot salad which was composed of little small round beetroots. As he was selecting some they fell on the table and rolled along the length of it leaving a bright red beetroot juice stain on the white tablecloth in their wake. The funny thing was that no one tried to stop them. They all just sat there watching in horror. We did not get asked back for dinner again, but they did invite us to a barbecue. I assumed that the barbecue would be a male only affair, as all their dinners were, so I took over some photos. We were just back from a holiday in Greece & London so I though they would like to see a few photos taken in Greece.(See Part5B for “London - The Return”). One of the places that we went to was the island of Mykonos which is noted for its glorious beaches, where swimsuits are optional. Our visit there coincided with the opening of the Seoul Olympics in September 1988, so the guys on Super Paradise beach decided to stage their own historically correct version with the participants running naked. We took some pictures during the festivities and they were quite funny so I decided to take a few along to the barbecue. When the other guests arrived I was surprised to see a middle aged lady amongst them. She was introduced as Beryl and was quite elegant and very lady like. “I can’t show the Greece photos to her.” I whispered to one of the brothers. “Oh! Don’t worry about it” was his answer “She won’t mind.” I was dismayed as she looked just like my favourite Aunt who, I knew, would be horrified if shown pictures of naked men. When the group had eaten one of the hosts said “Barry has some pictures to show us!” Reluctantly I got out the photos and began passing them around. Unfortunately Beryl was beside me and when she saw the first naked male photo she made a comment that somewhat shocked me as it was the type of comment that my favourite Aunt would never make. However, I seemed to be the only one who was embarrassed, so I kept passing the photos around. It all went well and was a lively barbecue with much laughter.
Mykonos
The picture at the end of the Mykonos scenes may be a little bit rude, but it does illustrate the conflict of cultures that exists on Mykonos. Here on this beach is the high living, partying crowd from all around the world, as a Greek lady rides her donkey through them on her way to the nearest village to do her shopping, as has always been the custom.When we were leaving and thanking our hosts I mentioned my surprise at seeing a woman among the guests. “She’s not a woman!” said our host “That’s Bert. He had a sex change so now he’s Beryl.” I was dumfounded. I had seen many men dressed as women and trying to act as a woman does, but I could always pick them. Generally they use too much make up, and their way of talking and moving always gives them away. The voice, in particular, is always difficult as a male cannot achieve the softer tones of a woman, or so I thought. Yet here we spent the day with a trans gender person and I just didn’t have a clue………When I now look back and compare the Sydney of 1968 to the Sydney of today I am utterly amazed at the changes. Now the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is an annual event, and it has become world famous, with people coming from all corners of the globe to witness the gala event. Even the police force join in and march alongside the revellers that they once bashed.
Mardi Gras Now
It did not receive universal approval, however, as the reverend Fred Nile and his band of loyal followers, always gathered together in Hyde Park, just prior to the parade, year after year, to pray for rain. It almost never happened. With the legalisation of homosexuality many bath houses opened up where gay people could go to meet each other and openly engage in sexual activity. It was not all good news however, for the Aids virus began making its presence felt in the early eighties. Suddenly males began dying of this mysterious virus. It claimed many lives here and around the world. One would have thought that it would cast a pall of gloom on the gay scene, but it didn’t seem to. I guess people were more careful, and mindful of the friends that they had lost; but life carried on. At the ABC one of the young assistant editors appeared in the tea room one day looking pale and gaunt. I didn’t have to inquire as to the state of his health. I knew what was happening to him. In a few months he was gone. He was one of the best of the assistants too. A few we knew at the film laboratories became victims and died. Within our own circle, Harry, the young man who loved to laugh and was the one who released the jumping penis on the restaurant table, succumbed too. Worldwide we lost some of the most creative, talented people. Now, here in the twenty first century, there is still no cure for HIV/AIDs, but with the advanced medical treatments available the lifespan can now be extended until, hopefully, the elusive cure is found. Public acceptance is such now that marriage equality in Australia is just around the corner; although it possibly would have been allowed sooner if it had have been called something else like civil unions or legal partnerships. To refer to it as a marriage is like waving a red flag at a bull. No wonder so many conservative people are upset about it. Marriage is between a man and a woman. To refer to a gay union as a marriage leads to the embarrassing question for guys when someone says “..and who’s going to be the bride?” I think back to those two country boys back in 1969 who were tried in a court and jailed for an act of love. Now, in the new Australia, hopefully, they will be able to enter into a legal partnership together.
Famous People: When people find out that I have worked in the T.V. and film industries, they often say “You must have seen a lot of famous people?”. Well the answer to that is that I was more part of the behind the scenes staff dealing mostly with film editors. Roger, on the other hand, has worked closely with many of the now famous directors. People like Peter Weir, (“Picnic at Hanging Rock“) George Miller(“Mad Max“), George Miller (“Babe”), Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career”) Philip Noyce (“Newsfront“), Simon Wincer, (“Phar Lap”), Paul Hogan (“Crocodile Dundee), Baz Lurman (“Strictly Ballroom”), Stephan Elliot (“Priscella Queen of the Desert“) and Fred Schepisi. (“Devil’s Playground“). All of them went on to be famous on the international scene. When Roger and I attended the premier of “The Devil’s Playground” we had to catch the bus home afterwards as the car was out of action at that time. It has always been a cause of embarrassment for me because as the film ended we ran like mad out of the cinema to try and catch the last bus home. Unfortunately we were the first out and had to dash past a very apprehensive Fred Schepisi who was anxiously waiting there in the foyer, with the drinks and nibbles, to get the first reaction from the audience of invited guests. I am afraid that seeing two of his audience fleeing the cinema when his movie ended was not the reaction that he would have been hoping for. I always felt bad about that because it was a very good film. A few years later when Roger went to Melbourne to represent Colorfilm at the annual Australian Film Institute awards, he chatted for some time with Mel Gibson when their paths crossed. Roger said he seemed a very nice guy, but he was a little nervous about the proceedings to follow. As for myself, well, I have shared a lift with Dame Joan Southerland, when our paths crossed at the A.B.C Film Services building. She had an appointment to view a film on her life that was being edited there. I got a nice smile and a simple “Hello!” from the lovely, gracious lady. Another time Roger and I were at a cinema in Paddington to see a movie. It was pretty full, but we found two seats in the middle of the theatre. When we sat down we noticed that there were two empty seats right in front of us too. Just before the movie started two very tall persons made their way along the row and sat down in the those two empty seats in front of us. When we saw that it was Gough and Margaret Whitlam we just looked at each other and agreed to suffer in silence and watch the movie by peeping around their tall frames. Where we live now we often see Jack Thompson, who is one of the locals, as is David Helfgott, the pianist of “Shine” fame. We once went to a recital where David played the music of George Gershwin. When he got to “Rhapsody in Blue“, he played it with such emotion that it brought tears to my eyes. Here was this strangely flawed character, yet he was able to communicate with an audience through his piano playing. In between numbers he would leave his piano seat and run over to the audience to shake their hands and hug them, until his minders gently brought him back to his piano seat again where he sat and played another beautiful Gershwin number.………
David Helfgott with wife Gillian and minder.
Back at the ABC: As the years passed there were big advances in video tape technology that saw the gradual decline in film usage. Video tape was cheaper and easier to edit than film. The only thing that film had going for it was that video tape could not match the high image quality of film. However this was not a concern for television, so gradually the use of film lessened as producers chose to swing over to cheaper video tape. In the neg room there was still enough work to keep us busy. However, as it was decided to close the neg room at French’s Forest I was told that Meryl would be returning to our neg cutting room. She was quite happy to return now that Michael was gone. When I told the others, Ann came to me looking a bit worried, saying “Barry, there is something that you should be made aware of.”
“Yes, okay then. What is it?” said I.
“Maybe we should go out side.”
“Okay, if you wish.” I replied.
We then went outside and stood in the corridor, where Ann said “You know I have had a boyfriend for some time?‘
“You have mentioned him, yes, but never told me who it was.”
“It is John, Meryl’s husband!”
At this point I just stared agape at Anne, who, for the first time since I had known her, looked a bit contrite and out of her depth.
“Oh! No!” I said “it can’t be!”
“It is! It’s John.”
My mind then started racing with the implications.
“You mean all those episodes that you talked about, it was actually John that you were involved with?”
“Yes!’
“Jesus Ann! Does Meryl know?”
“I think not.”
“I should jolly well hope she doesn’t. If she even had an inkling that you were her husband’s mistress we would have an intolerable situation here.”
There was a lot more we talked about, but agreed that we would
just have to wait and see. I thanked Ann for making me aware of it. At least with that knowledge I could monitor the situation. As I mentioned before, Meryl’s husband was a film producer and the four of us sometimes dined together at each other’s homes. I found this revelation deeply shocking. As it happened, when Meryl arrived she kept to herself, and, after a couple of months she decided to take her long service leave to go touring Europe with her husband. While absent she sent in her resignation, thus putting an end to a very awkward situation. As for Ann’s fate, well, she took a redundancy package when the ABC was cutting back on staff, and left a short time later. It was not long after that we heard that she died suddenly of cancer. I was very surprised and saddened as I knew that she always had regular checks ups, but it must have been something that the tests failed to pick up. As the film staff left they were not replaced. The Neg Room finished up with just Brian and me, until Brian took up a position in another negative cutting business which left just me….However, before film was dropped completely I got to neg cut the first ABC feature film. It had the odd title of “Wendy Cracked a Walnut” and starred the American actress Rosanna Arquette. When it was released in the United States the title was changed to “Almost”. After that the A.B.C. went ahead with another feature film called “Waiting”, made in conjunction with Filmside Productions Limited. Both were edited by Mike Honey, one of the good guys in film production. “Waiting” was directed by Jackie McKimmie with an all Australian cast. Like “Wendy” it was another film that both Roger and I worked on together with him doing the visual effects on both films. “Waiting” was nominated for four A.F.I. awards including Best Editing for Mike. The last film project that I worked on at the ABC was “Police Rescue”. It was being filmed at the French‘s Forest Studios but without a neg cutter there, it came over to Gore Hill. It was quite a successful series and was shown in England and other European countries. It starred the ever popular Gary Sweet with a cast list that included most of the countries now well known actors.
Retirement:…There we no financial worries as I had my super and we had a modest income from our rental properties, so I decided that it was a good time to learn to use a computer. Home computers were just coming in and Roger bought an Amiga Computer which was well set up to do animation, a field that we had always been interested in. The traditional way of drawing on cells frame by frame and then photographing them, was very laborious and time consuming, but the Amiga Computer had programmes that made it all so much simpler. It could do the same thing in a fraction of the time. I also began to take more interest in still photography, but shied away from movie cameras, because I knew that to do it properly involved a lot of work and equipment that we did not have. Some years previously Mark arrived from the U.S.A to stay with us again and he showed us his new video camera for amateur users. It was rather cumbersome and a large battery had to be carried about to power it. I was not terribly impressed. Some of our other friends had these too but the units were just too bulky. By now Bali had become almost a second home to us and we visited it every year. With our Epping friend, Gerry, we also visited the Philippines as he had friends there and knew the place well. He also had one of the new video cameras, but I remained unimpressed. Then a year or two later he purchased a new compact movie camera called a “Sony Hi 8”.. We both liked its compact nature and versatility. It also came with an internal battery and a sharper lens that delivered a good quality image. As the saying goes “If you can’t beat ‘em, you join ‘em!”, so we bought our first video tape camera; a Sony Hi 8 like Gerry’s. It did make us feel like traitors though, so I never bothered with it much. I was still reluctant to get involved because of my previous foray into movie making in the late fifties. What I learnt from it all then still held true. If you are going to get into the business of making movies, you have to do it properly. We took the Hi 8 with us to Bali one time and made a small movie there, but it mostly lay idle in a cupboard until 1997 when we decided to do a trip around Australia. We had purchased a new car, a six cylinder Mitsubishi Magna and were very pleased with it. Next we bought a Cub fold out trailer. Neither of us liked the idea of towing a caravan, and the small Cub Camper trailer seemed to be the ideal compromise. I had already experienced towing a caravan over rough outback roads in 1962, and did not wish to repeat that experience again. However, the Magna and camper trailer proved to be a good combination and whizzed along the road effortlessly. In September 1997 we felt that it was time to do something big, so we decided to drive right around Australia ; a distance of around 14,500 kms or 9,000 miles. We set out taking the coastal road to Rockhampton, then travelled west from there to Darwin. While in the Northern Territory we went to the Kakadu National Park and it was on the Yellow Waters cruise I had something that could be called a life changing experience. It was a place of great beauty, that gave shelter to an abundance of wildlife including Magpie Geese, Whistler Ducks and Lotus Birds (and the occasional Crocodile). As we sailed through the calm waters where masses of blue water lilies and pink lotus flowers bloomed, the guide was telling us all about the wonderful wildlife that Australia had and how much of it was endangered. He spoke with the passion of an old time preacher, and I felt something stirring inside me. I have never responded to ministers at a church service when they raved and ranted about this and that, but this guy touched a chord within me…..He was speaking about his country, and my country, warning us that we stood to lose so much unless we do something to preserve it now. This was for real! “Whammo!’ it hit me hard. From that moment I, we, decided to do all we could to make people aware of Australia’s natural beauty and unique wildlife. It was a rather lofty ambition, but all things have to start somewhere. We had a camera, and we had the knowledge on how to use it. It was a great adventure as we attempted to record what we saw. When we got back to Sydney we looked at what we had and realised that as the film was not planned, we really only had half a film. Using a new programme, that had just been released, Roger started editing the footage on his Amiga computer, while I chose the accompanying music and thought about how to fill in the gaps with animation. The final result was called “Travels with a Trailer” and can be seen at - - - - - http://youtu.be/SkfDLV2kS4k
It was now 1998 and Roger decided that it was time he retired as well. The industry was changing from film optical effects to computer generated digital effects which could be delivered faster and offered the director a much wider range of effects. During his time at Colorfilm Roger had created the optical effects on 274 Australian films. A few of them are placed below…………….
A Health Problem… Just after we joined the club, however, in March 2002 I had a sudden heart problem. It was classed as a heart event, not a heart attack because it was acted on quickly and there was no apparent damage done to the heart muscle. It all started when I woke on the Saturday morning with a sudden chest pain hitting me as I sat up in bed. I lay down again but it didn’t go away. When it was still there about an hour later I thought that perhaps I should see a doctor, so Roger drove me to the nearby Macquarie Centre where there was a Medical Centre. Thus began the most hilarious weekend in my life. When I walked in and told the receptionist that I had a severe chest pain, she immediately called the doctor. When he arrived I saw that he was an Indian gentleman and he appeared to be having a heart attack himself. He was completely flustered and did not appear to know what to do. I said “Shouldn’t you run a E.C G. scan ?” (I had had chest pains checked out before, so at least I knew what to do.) He seemed to think that was a good idea and put me up on an examination table. When he wheeled the machine over and tried to put the wires on my chest he appeared to get them tangled up, so thankfully a nurse took over. I forget what the test showed, but he decided to call the ambulance anyway. They arrived quickly and I was wheeled out on a gurney and put in the ambulance. It was driven by two Aussie guys so I felt in safer hands. They gave me a morphine shot for the pain and as we drove out of the centre, which was at North Ryde, I overheard them discussing which hospital to take me too. They should have taken me to the Ryde Hospital which was nearer, but they decided to take me to the Royal North Shore Hospital, because, as I found out later, it was the only hospital that did stent operations at the weekend. By the time we arrived at the Royal North Shore I was a little bit “away with the fairies” due to the morphine. In no time at all I found myself quickly placed in a bed and given another injection, with the nurse asking me how the pain was now on a scale of 1 to 10. I think my first answer was about 8. We continued like this until the pain level dropped to around 3...However, there were distractions. At the entrance a group of big burly security guards were attempting to subdue an elderly woman and get her into a bed. She would have none of it and fought them off all the way. They did eventually get her into a bed and were attempting to get her to lie there, but she still fought them off. My male nurse came over to me to see how I was doing, but he seemed more interested in the other ruckus. “Gee!” he said gazing in awe at the other bed “She is eighty six and it has taken four big security guards to subdue her. I hope that I have that sort of strength when I am eighty six.” He then explained that she was an alcoholic and while drunk she fell over and broke an arm, but resisted all attempts to get her to hospital. It made me realise then what those guys had to go through to help other people. In the afternoon I was taken up to an operating theatre to be given an angioplasty. The procedure involves first injecting the patient with a dye in the groin so the cardiologist can trace the arteries to ascertain if a blockage has occurred. If that is found to be the problem, then a small stent is inserted in the groin and taken through the artery to the blockage, where it is opened out like an umbrella to push the artery walls back, thus allowing the blood to flow as normal again. This was found to be the problem so I had to have a stent inserted. I was conscious the whole time, which was a mixed blessing as I could hear all the chit chat that was going on around me. There were about five of them around the table and while they were operating on me they were discussing the latest football scores. Then, after that, they got into a discussion about who was taking who to a barbecue the next day. I hoped that they could agree and not get into an argument over it. As they all carried on with their discussion I felt like putting my hand up and saying “Don’t forget me fellas!” Anyway it all went well and I was wheeled into the intensive care ward and wired up to the machinery that has the blinking lights and digital readouts. The head nurse, a young male who introduced himself as John, came over to check on me and my wound saying “Now you have to be very careful with that Barry and do not put it under stress. Do not laugh as that will place too much strain on the wound.” When I looked at him oddly he said “Okay, if you find yourself going to laugh you must support the wound.” He then demonstrated what I should do. Unfortunately for me and my wound, the guy turned out to be a natural born comedian. He had me in stitches, or almost busting out of them, the entire weekend. Not only that, but one of the other patients was suffering from dementia, and was convinced that we were fighting W.W.2 again. When the nurses were standing at the ward desk checking admission forms the lady accused them of being German spies going through her husband’s papers and kept threatening to call the police. She refused to go to the toilet without a security guard because she was convinced that the Germans had planted a bomb in there. I felt that I had landed slap bang in the middle of one of the great British comedy shows like “Carry on Nurse” or “Fawlty Towers”. When John arrived for his shift the next day and asked me how things went during the night I answered that my stitches were somehow still holding together but “Don’t mention the Germans.” I think he caught my drift and walked away chuckling. The cardiologist came in the afternoon and checked things out and pronounced me well enough to go home. John was somewhat surprised at that and wanted me to walk about wearing a heart monitor to be sure. I did what he wanted and managed to get myself lost in the hospital’s maze of passageways and corridors. When I finally found my way back he checked things out again and said “It all looks okay. Well I guess you can go home.” I was overjoyed of course and that night enjoyed my first real meal of the weekend. My brother Ron faced a similar problem in Mount Morgan many years ago and he had to be taken to Brisbane where he had heart by-pass surgery done. It was a complicated process which involved taking a vein from the leg and using it to replace the faulty section in the artery that was blocked. It was a long operation and it took him weeks to recover. There I was in 2002 with the same problem and the procedure took less than an hour, with me being conscious the whole time and sent home the next day.
The Club: The club was a mixture of both good and bad. The good part of it was that we learnt of a new camera that Sony had just brought out called the Sony 900. It was an amazing camera with advanced digital technology that gave it an image quality almost as good as a professional video camera. We were so impressed that we retired the Hi8 camera and bought two of these new super cameras. On the not so good side, the club did not work out quite as we expected. I thought that as a group of people with a common interest we would mix in to share ideas and learn from others, and maybe make a few new friends in the process. Wrong! Because we started winning prizes in various competitions, petty jealousies sprang up and we found ourselves disliked and pretty much shunned by the members. I had heard this about clubs before so I should have realised the possible problems. It was not all bad news, however, for we did make one good friend there who helped us all he could, and, in a way, became our mentor. His name was Noel Leeder and in his capacity as manager of the Coalcliff Colliery in New South Wales in the 1950s, he helped boost the economy of post-war Australia which was not in very good shape after W.W.2.. In appreciation of his efforts the town of Coalcliff named the beachside park that his company had constructed after him. Noel made us aware of the various competitions across the world and the first one we entered, won the American Cinematographer’s Award for the Best Photography. The movie was called “Lady Elliot - Cinderella Island” and was shown at the Cotswolds International Film and Video Festival in England in 2002. We were not the sole representatives from the club, however, because another member, Bob Hallett, got the award for Best Film with his wonderful entry in the drama section called “Me and My Dad”. It starred a very young Matthew Corby, who, years later, was a runner up in the “Australian Idol” talent competition and is now one of the countries top singer/songwriters. To acknowledge the international success of its members the club had a special awards night where Noel presented us with the awards.
We entered many international competitions after that, and won so many awards that we ran out of space to display them. One of our films, an animation film called “Rebel”, was regularly screened on a cruise ship in Alaska of all places….
Eventually we left the club because we decided that it was time to leave Sydney. We had made it our home for the past 38 years, but it seemed the right time to move on. We traded the trailer in for a motor home and set out again to rediscover Australia. On a trip to Cooktown in 2006 for the Cook landing re-enactment ceremony we decided to look for an appropriate home somewhere along the Eastern coast. We found it at Coffs Harbour at the edge of a forest…………
Now, here, in this amazing home, we no longer have to go in search of wildlife, as the wildlife now comes to us. It is truly astonishing how friendly wildlife can be once you win their trust. With so many movies we wondered what we should do with them, so Roger set up an internet channel called Ozpix. It was so successful that he set up two more; Roco43 and Ozbirdz. As of mid 2015 we have over two and a half million viewers across the world. Many ask questions about the movies, and Australia, and we do our best to answer all of them.. Sometimes the messages are in foreign languages, so with the aid of Google Translate, we found it was possible to read them and reply in their own language. We have also supplied footage to the B.B.C. and National Geographic. What surprised us was the overseas interest in Australia’s Aboriginal culture and we have supplied, free of charge, footage of Aboriginal dancers to schools in Europe who want to include Aboriginal dancing in their dance classes. I could not help smiling at the thought of the European school children copying the expressive, staccato like movements of Aboriginal dancing, which is far removed from the traditional classical ballets of Europe.
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