1975

26march2012
 1975, seems like the next starting point, which starts with the end of a cyclone, named Tracy in Darwin. me, just hanging round the carnival that came every school holiday. they had a day where all proceeds went to the cyclone sufferers, most of evacuated to somewhere else, as i remember. i was looking forward to getting my first dole check, didn't happen. i went all that time , like 4 weeks or something not to get it. apparently, i ticked a box wrong , maybe this was the story of my life. i had a few apprentice jobs lined up, i got one in the mines as a fitter and turner, didn't start till January something.  i think the question was are you ready for full time employment i ticked no, cause of the mine job. i should have ticked yes, i done myself out of weeks of dole.

29march 2012
looking back and thinking about it , the carnival thing was  more early on than this, i had other friends and we'd hang two miles away at figtree riding bikes and such, the carnival was more a 7 till 10 thing,  and at that time money was not a big part , cause you didn't have much, basically scrounging. there was bottles , copper wire , rabbits, and the paper in the phone box trick. when i remember those days of sharing things like cigs, you'd never share these days like that, maybe the youngsters do, and the price now is ridiculous, i don't smoke no more anyways, but a lot of 1975 was spent smoking marlboro and winfield. people would come up and ask for a drag of your fag , and drag the guts out of it, i hated that. they'd check out the name typed on the bottom , not many smoked marlboro, they called them sterile sticks and wouldn't like them . so that was ok.

31march2012
on the music front, i had a few lps as mentioned before, these consisted mainly of lps from the australian cbs recorded club, advertised on the back of certain magazines , you got a number of records (6 in my case) for like $1.99, then you had to buy 1 a month for however long , 1 year i think, at their price, $1 more than the shop, i got a lot of zappa , alice cooper , pink floyd and such from there. on the local front, on the telly was sound unlimited with graham webb and donny sutherland, countdown was just starting really, i didn't go too much on that but watched it anyways , probably for 1 song if that. the big hits in aussie acts where, sherbet - summer love, john young(later jpy) - yesterdays hero, you know i use to like his pasadena song a few years before, mostly vanda and young written ditties. skyhooks with horror movie, i loved this when i first heard it on 2sm radio months earlier , a big hit on countdown, i also liked sherbets, free the people in 1971, i didnt really go much on the later stuff. acdc had the high voltage album out, i never had that although i did play the b side of a single called soul stripper on the jukebox some places, which was also on that album. as far as albums went there was very few australian albums with more than 3or 4 songs which were any good, mainly singles. the albums which i did have were hush alive and buffalo - volcanic rock, and these where later from the record club.

3april2012
don't know if that pilot song January was a hit then or the next year but it sure was hanging on me. other things i remember were joe cocker and alice cooper both in trouble in aussie land . with the mine job , i should have learn t from the tick on the dole form. i passed the test with 96%, the guy wondered why  i only got average mark in the s.c., that's pretty easy i wagged the last 4 months of school , the work i did in the first months helped me just scrape in, i didn't give a shit, but that's 1974. i did the medical out the joint coal board bellambi, blow as hard and as long in these little dunny roll things and keep the pen flowing along the paper, piss in a beaker. then, came the interview with the hierarchy of the pit. old codgers, different world, boats on weekends, houses and shit, i had none of it, sad really. on the way home from up the mountain , i waved at the the bus to stop, the old prick just kept going, long walk home , but i got the job. i'll tell you something if i had a bit better home life things would have been different, maybe it's cliche , but it's all so true. they were real jerks at the mine, you don't know how sad it is to write this. not a happy time.

4 april12
most of the other apprentices were sparkies and only a few fitters, they all started weeks earlier and had fitted in already. the big cruel was to be greased the first week, today this practice would be criminal , though i bet it still goes on, i copped it pretty bad from one arsehole sand and graphite grease, them big bosses just looking on . well that was over with, i wasn't  all that healthy,  i had asthma attacks regularly since i was young and did smoke. the mine wasn't really good for me, misfit. i never missed a day. i only lasted 3 months , i got an ear ring a they couldn't handle it , i was doomed,

6april12
there are always other involved with incidents , with the mine, i could go on, but i have to move. all i can say really, is i didn't say. i told the old man when it was to late, probably to avoid the row. thanks to hitler , he flow off the handle, as always. not for the first time i was out somewhere else. them days there was only the street, none this shit they have today. i done it tough for a week or so, decide to go home when there was just mum there. she was sick with worry, and told me to stay, the old man didn't matter. so i was, i wont say home, but i was there. i eventually got the dole of $26 a week, it was weekly then.

8april12
the dole money helped to pay my record club debt , which was stopping me from buying any other releases elsewhere. i was just going home late, sleeping, then hitch into town and hang around pool halls, dead end. this went on and on , at one stage i was 7 and a half stone, didn't eat much. when i think about it, i left the mine in may, a few things happened in that time at the mine, quite a few really. one in particular comes to mind, the old man probably got tried of driving me to work in the morning, he bought another shitbox , and rather sell the old one he gave it to me. i couldn't drive , anything really, it was a manual. i told some dickhead mates,  they done the old come on lets do it over and over. i should of not even been hanging with them dickheads, we'd just hang at the pool joints till late , and i'd have to go to work in the morning all fucked up. i talked the old man into letting me have the car on friday night, i had a friend with a licence. i dont know who was more a dickhead me or the ol boy, i got the car. i had heard of a band called hawkwind , if you listen to them it was like tripping, from one of the sparkie apprentices. so, my big plan was to buy this hawkwind stuff and drive around like tripping, i had my sister's cassette player, we drove into town a big pile of us, i bought the space ritual tape, played it , waiting to see if it was like tripping, what a gip. we drove all round the place, the dickheads enjoying driving my car, we drove to sydney and back till real early like 2am. one by one they all got dropped off , till there was only 2 of us the other guy lived in dapto, he drove there and left me , i couldn't drive, i tried but was shit at manual , i was only young, the guy said he'd drive me home in the morning. he drove down near the pub a left me there. i walked home and told the old man. that was the end of the car.

13 april 2012
that car incident comes to mind when i see that simpsons episode, when bart got the licence, similar. there's lots of them early episodes that have things that have common with my adventures. i get teary sometimes watching that show , probably the dysfunction. getting back to this,  i could go on with them dickheads, but there's plenty more where they came from. i drifted into another scene in a pool hall/snooker room in town just a couple of school friends , and other pool hall dudes. it had always been a friday night thing, now, it was everyday. playing snooker, kelly pool and pinball. i also started to hang out with some german dudes down the road , from my olds place, in between us was a border line, so they went to dapto and we went to figtree high school. here is where i first heard the plastic ono album, the elder brother had a good record collection. i had to have that album, it spoke to me, it wasn't in the shops had to order it and wait, as i remember $5.95 with an extra lyric sheet, and a little bit of censoring in a few words, that was ok though , i played that album for awhile after i got it. working class hero some lines in that were me, i'm no hero though. they hurt you at home and they hit you at school.

15 april 2012
the timing could not have been stranger when i ordered that album , as i remember. the guy in the record shop said i was lucky to order it when i did, for some reason it was the last or something. anyways one of them dickheads got a half house in town, so the boys from boystown had a home , fagans lair. them dickheads were always in and out of boys homes. the funny thing with me going there, he got me to make some bake beans on toast , and for some reason i got my appetite back and started eating again. they had a few albums there mainly david bowie. they got welcome to my nightmare and venus and mars, thats where i first heard them albums. on my way to there one day i noticed an apple record on a turntable in a department store , display type of thing, john lennon , rock'n roll , although it didn't have a cover , i got it, they didn't like it much. i loved stand by me, but at that time it didn't fit in with the times, even today some of them songs can't be compared with the originals. i thought stand by me was his, actually i thought most of it was. i liked just because too, still do. i think it's as good as the original.

18april 2012
the john lennon  rock 'n roll didnt really get a play all that much, 3 songs don't make an album.  with the record club it was hard cause you didn't really know if the record was good or not, a few hit and misses, the hush alive was a miss, as was this lot santana welcome, status quo piledriver, alice cooper muscle of love although it did have 1 song i liked. i just got greatest hit things after awhile like alice cooper greatest , i got love it to death that was ok, and wish you where here and ian hunters solo that had a couple on it, led zepplin 2 and 4, when they brought out presence , i sort of went off them a bit, the physical  graffiti was a bit out of the reach in the finance department,   i loved apostrophe and overnite sensation by frank, but blew it on a few other of his releases that didn't cut. i had a few  albums before this, but these mentioned here were mainly 1975 .i thought i bought a single this year but i never did.

19 april 2012
the fashion at that time, say for teenages to early twenties, was  long haired hippy look, parted in the middle. there was skinheads mainly in sydney, and sharps or sharpies ,they  had hair styles a bit like mullets of today, but short on top and a bit long in the back. the guy who had the half house flat was a bit of a sharpie, he had the word sharp tattooed on his fore arm , sad looking thing that. started off okay, then drifted down , so the r and p were about half inch under the s , rather than straight across. i just wore levis or californians , type of corduroy material type of levis other than denim. thongs or dessert boots. western shirts were popular and lumber jackets and duffel coats.  t-shirt with pocket for the cigs. others wore pjs a brand of baggy jeans. there was high platform thongs(flip flops) and scaps or slaps or something , soft material amd strips of bamboo, they always broke. ugg boots had been around for a few years, so was most that has been mentioned. other jean types were amco and lee , amco had bogarts , flaired jeans with a crease sewed down the centre and trouser type pockets , i had them , also. i had them ruff tats too on my arm since 1971, i got them covered later that year, with brought ones up kings cross.

21april2012
i asked this bloke today about those thong things, and they were called slaps. funny they were popular, but flimsy things , we used to fix them with safety pins. when i was finishing at the mine , there was talk about another bloke who lasted 10 months and couldn't handle it or something . strange coincidence i actually hang around that guy at the pool hall. he was a bit older than me by a few years, a hippy really, thought i can play catch up but never make it, thats something that really shitted me with hippies. his reasons for leaving the mine, i dont think i ever really got an answer, although we sometimes we hung out together, i never felt part of that scene, he had all the , or his sister did, john lennon albums, i said i bought the first one, and it was, some other ones better, anything you can do i can do better. being my age in 1975, you got that.