Redemption

*

The streets were already busy in the pre-dawn. There was an element of flight, he couldn't deny that. The ceilings in the kitchen and bathroom had collapsed, the plumbing was off line and suddenly he was homeless. Sam was at his grandmother's and Henrietta at school. The house was a bombshell, dust everywhere, Craig from nextdoor busily working. If everything he had ever believed in turned out to be a romantic falsehood, as was appearing very likely, even so life offered new turmoils; and he was forced to go. There seemed no other alternative. Everything was an inclusivfe madness. Everything was being swept clean. He loaded old boxes on to the back of the truck they hadd hired from Balmain Rentals. The heating doesn't work but worse, it blows a constant stream of cold air. It's freezing. He became frozen in a way he hadn't been since last in Europe, years ago now. He hadn't expected life to unfold here, children, a stable job.

Thank you for my courage, thank you for my decency, went the chant, andd that was it now, everything being swept away. Some of the boxes hadn't been opened since he last moved to Redfern around New Year in 2001. Then it was a fresh start, now it was a rut, a comfotable rut. So many of the boxes, unsorted in the last hasty move, and the one before that, and before that, related to the days before Google Docs and easy storage, before word processing, before the technology allowed everyone in the world to have a website like this for free. In those old old days there was a thing called paper, and if you made too many mistakes on a page you would have to retype it. He couldn't go on living in the twilight zone, one foot in one camp, one in the father. One half way to heaven and one half way to hell. He couldn't stand the hypocrisy anymore. He couldn't stanad to be around high functioning, intelligent, professional people one minute; and nodding in agreement at the abyss the next.

So he packed the boxes one after the other after the other. He caught sight of things he had long forgot. The flyer for Writers in the Park, which was held at the Harold Park Hotel, an infamous entertainment pub of the era. For a period the event was a great success. Somehow or other, he had been friends with some of the organisers, he had ended up in the role of videoing it. Bron provided the video camera and all the equipment, as he provided so many things in that era, up there in his apartment overlooking what is now Darling Harbour, a glistening modern place in absolute contrast to what was then. So pissed some nights, exhausted by lifestyle issues, he would begin to nod off over the camera. One day a poet was going on about "sleep, sleep" and then the whole room noticed him passed out of the video equipment and began to laugh. Well that was what it was like. There was always laughter, there was always insanity.

There was the book, Writers in the Park, which was a collection of writings from people who had appeared there. He had written the introduction, told the whole story of how it came to be that a string of the best known writers of the era, from David Malouf to Frank Hardy, came to that pub opposite the greyhound races. Of how a whole of group of people gave of their time and energy to make it possible. He hadn't seen that cover in years, or even thought of it. Eventually he had sold the tapes to the Mitchell Library for several thousand dollars.There had been debate for years other their ultimate resting place. The state public library seemed the only decent place.
Twenty years. Thousands of years had passed inside his skull. Kissed with infinite longing, every day was an eternity. Yet here it was, the detritus of years, decades, of the days before computers, being loaded on to the back of a cage truck and sent off to the country, where they and the couches will gather spiders and dust, perhaps never even to be properly filed.

Twenty years. That's how long ago it was. Kim O'Brien was one of the central characters, and if there were flaws in the character, flaws in the glass, it came from his own low moral standards and practising alcoholism, as every day turned into a pissed disaster and friendships slowly collapsed, because no one could bear the ever grasping tactics of an ever grasping addict. Cue financial chaos. Always needy. Always melancholy. Always in despair. Sickening crap and he just swept it away, into boxes, into bags, into the truck and go go go. Finally the day was getting warmer. Major, the dog ahd been fed and was sleeping comfortably in front of the fire at Toni Smith's house, Toni who he had known since universtiy days and he dropped round for breakfast on a Sunday morning, as was his want. All was lost, but he didn't believe that anymore, nothing but trite melodrama; there was hope in the wind and in the sun glittering on the leaves, in the sound of birds and blue sky, in sensory overload and a comforting fire, bringing him back to Earth; and every onwards.

http://www.booksandcollectibles.com.au/dump/Gotcha_By_The_Books/books-0013/8114.html

"Writers in the Park: the book 1985-86 Christie, Carol; O'Brien, Kim (eds)

8114 Sydney FAB Press 1986 1st Edition paperback b&w photos 8vo 104pp Very Good A collection of the work considered most representative of The Harold Park Readings by Australian poets and writers; mostly poetry and performance poetry; work by Rodriguez, Hewett, Komninos, Shapcott, Beveridge, Duggan, Viidikas, Dorothy Porter, and many more; this copy has one small lightly worn spot to fep, endpapers foxed, o.w. Very Good. ISBN: 1-86252-686-9 $17.00AUD

http://www.jamesgriffin.com.au/photos.htm

Spoken Word Performance at Writers in the Park. 1986, Harold Park Hotel, Sydney.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1301&dat=19890825&id=1jcRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7OcDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4776,3470169

Advertisement.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/good-living/popular-pub-rises-again/2007/07/18/1184559828846.html

The Harold Park Hotel will be hardly recognisable to patrons who were locked in there in the '80s to hear One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author Ken Kesey read while drug dealers tried to break in with axes.

The one-time Sydney entertainment institution was trendily refurbished for Wednesday night's reopening party.

The Glebe hotel opposite the paceway hosted some of the world's top comedy acts and writers in the '80s and '90s and many of Sydney's up-and-coming bands.

English comic Ben Elton performed there and Hollywood star Robin Williams dropped in for one or two impromptu slots. Australian authors Peter Carey and Thomas Keneally spoke there.

Comedian Akmal once described the Harold Park as "the best venue ever".

"Not only did the Harold Park have a great atmosphere but it also attracted a very intelligent, respectful audience. It gave the opportunity to performers whose style did not suit the aggressive vibe of a typical Sydney pub, such as Andrew Denton, Stephen Abbott [The Sandman], Paul Livingstone [Flacco], Bob Downe and Mikey Robins."

Former licensee Simon Morgan said he sold and closed the pub in 1999 because Leichhardt Council refused to extend his licence to midnight. The pub will now stay open until midnight on Friday and Saturday nights.

The hotel was sold with an approved development application for serviced apartments behind the hotel, and it was presumed the pub would stay closed. It was a sad time in Sydney's entertainment scene, with many pubs closing their doors to live entertainment and embracing poker machines.

The site went through a number of hands before ending up with developers Barton Corporation - Bob Barton and his sons John and Jeff - in 2004.

"We're gonna turn [the Harold Park Hotel] back into the way it was," John Barton, 36, said.

Comedians Chris Franklin, Pizza star Tahir and Footy Show regular Mick Meredith have already performed at the pub's free Tuesday night comedy, and Barton said there were plans to also bring back the pub's other nights, including Writers in the Park, Politics in the Pub and Poetry in the Park.

But his motives for trying to restore the pub to its glory days aren't altruistic.

"We like cash flow," he said. "The pub's got a lot of potential. There's not many hotels you can buy that come with that sort of name. The majority people know the Comedy Club. Last Tuesday we packed it out."

The pub also hosts covers bands and plan to increase the number of poker machines from eight to 18.

That probably won't please Whitlams frontman Tim Freedman, who played a residency there in 1986 with his band Penguins on Safari and later had a hit with Blow Up the Pokies.

"I remember being down there one night when [left-wing author] Frank Hardie was speaking and the cops came for his parking fines," Freedman said. "Everyone surrounded the paddy wagon not knowing that Frank should have paid his fines. It wasn't two fines; it was $3000 worth."