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I Remember When . . . LD5's, GSP's and mushrooms reigned supreme - Part 7 of the ongoing story

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  • I Remember When . . . LD5's, GSP's and mushrooms reigned supreme - Part 7 of the ongoing story

    “HUBBLE BUBBLE, TOIL and TROUBLE” [Manfred Mann]

    This is Part 7 of an ongoing series of articles on: “I Remember … when it was great to be . . .
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    [If you haven’t read the previous article that leads into this one, you should! Click on the Triumph picture.

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    Or to go to Part 1, click the ship that bought me to Australia.]

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    So, my bike was gone, my money was gone, and I was about to discover, that soon my home would be gone. the time I got back to Melbourne I discovered that David had moved out of Portland Place and somehow, even though Lyn, Julie and David McCready and Charles and Helen were still there, it didn’t feel the same.

    David had moved back to Greville Street, into the top flat of a block of three flats right opposite the Prahran Police Station. It didn’t take me long to discover why, when one day I stopped in to see if he had a smoke. At first I was simply stunned because on entering the lounge room there was this amazing glass apparatus. Glass bowls connected to glass condensers – one on top of the other. Tubes swirled, came back on themselves and eventually as the eyes followed the journey of this contraption, at the end there was a rubber tube and a mouthpiece. It was the most amazing, if not stunning water pipe I had ever seen. Each bowl had a coloured liquid in it.

    Pleased with his handiwork, David rolled a joint and explained to me how it worked. How it worked? The best way to see how it worked was to use it. He just smiled, and told me I had to wait. So several cups of tea and many joints later, the sun-set and all was ready. now there were around 6 people in the room, all waiting with anticipation. During the intervening period David had set up a range of coloured dichroic lights. What is a dichroic light? Well I can tell you the result is stunning, dramatic, eye-catching and dazzling. Dichroic means two colors. When this glass is viewed from different angles, it appears as numerous colors. As darkness descended a largish block of hash was bought forth and put into the small metal cup at the top of the apparatus. All the lights except for the dichroic’s were turned off, and the apparatus was light.

    To David went the honour of the first ‘toke’. As he inhaled, the air with the burning hash smoke was passed through the various bowls and the coloured liquid started bubbling. Under the dichroic lights the result was utterly mind blowing! The pipe was passed around one to another. However, the time the last person had used it, the room, indeed the entire flat, was so full of smoke you could barely see. It was somewhat haunting with streams of smoke wafting through the beams of light, being diffused and dancing in amazing patterns. We might have got paranoid except we also got stoned, very, very stoned! Personally after about 10 minutes and three tokes, and with In-A –Gadda-Da-Vida blaring out – I passed out. I wasn’t the only one!
    “In a gadda da vida, ba (In the Garden of Eden)
    In a gadda da vida, honey
    Don't you know that I'm lovin' you
    Oh, won't you come with me
    And take my hand
    Oh, won't you come with me
    And walk this land Please take my hand …”
    (In a Gadda Da Vida - Iron Butterfly)

    In retrospect it was bloody amazing we didn’t get busted. The flat had a rear entrance down a lane-way leading out the back to Chatham Street, but down the front stairs of the flat was Greville Street. Directly opposite was the Prahran Police Station. Now I’m not a superstitious person, but as I look back on these days it’s hard not to conclude that some how some of us were not under the protection of a guardian angel, of some sort. You see we were actually visited twice the police in that very flat.

    I remember the first instance involved the engine of a Morris LD5. The LD5 was a remarkable vehicle. It was a 1.5 ton, vastly underpowered yet for many of us a far better choice than the much smaller Kombi van. David was the first person I knew to buy one, but within 2 years no less than four of us within my extended group, owned an LD5.

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    What an LD5 in great condition, looks like

    As amazingly large as they were inside and fun to drive, the doors were notoriously pathetic. The driver and passenger doors were sliding doors and every LD5 I came across, including my own, had the ball bearings fall out of the channels basically rendering the doors useless, or severely impaired in their operation at the best! Anyway, we had barely 2 coins to rub together, so when they broke down – we fixed them.

    There was an occasion when something serious happened with the engine in David’s van, so, we whipped it out. We broke it down to several slightly smaller parts and carried them upstairs into the lounge room of the flat. Now, I should say that now (late 1972) Portland Place had broken up, as the developers were moving into the area even then. Lynne and I had broken up – I think the day I saw Mick Conway pushing her to his house down near the Station Hotel in a shopping trolley, was the time I knew that we were finished.

    So I moved into David’s flat. Now picture this. The entire lounge floor was covered, absolutely covered, in parts of the LD5 engine. One night we were sound asleep when I heard David stir and then I heard voices. I thought nothing of it and went back to sleep. It turned out that the cops had visited us! Now David had fallen asleep on a mattress in the lounge and it was only the next morning that I learned of the story.

    Apparently we had left the back door open and the cops had decided to visit us, not worrying about niceties like warrants or anything. However, when they shone their torches into the lounge room all they could see the light of their torches was, van engine parts like the crankshaft, pistons, bits of this that and the other. It seems that the lead cop simply turned to the others and said something to the effect of, “Oh it looks like bikies, not the people we are looking for”!

    Were we the people they were looking for? That question was never answered, but for whatever reason they chose not too look any closer, and that was fortunate because we were holding. Thank you ‘Guardian Angel’ . . .! Now hopefully the statute of limitations kicks in with the next story – and it’s not one that I have spoken about before, but, it is part of folk lore and it is time to confirm the story because, not only did it happen, but it reflects the craziness of those years.

    David and Charles, despite discovering that my chemistry background really wasn’t of use to them, decided that they should have a try at making one or more compounds that were desirable, but not readily available. In fact this ‘experiment’ had commenced prior to the establishment of the Greville Street flat. So it becomes necessary to jump back around 3 or 4 months before following on with this story. Equipment was bought, chemicals were bought and serious attempts were made at manufacturing DMT. N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT or N,N-DMT) which is a psychedelic compound of the tryptamine family. Its presence is widespread throughout the plant kingdom.


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    DMT occurs in trace amounts in mammals, including humans, where it putatively functions as a trace neurotransmitter. Indigenous Amazonian Amerindian cultures consume DMT as the primary psychoactive in ayahuasca, a shamanistic brew used for divinatory and healing purposes. You might recall the series of books written Carlos Castaneda starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968. Castaneda wrote a series of books that describe his alleged training in shamanism.

    This work intrigued Charles and he was keen to experience the effect for himself. Obtaining the leaves from the required plant (which grew in South America) was simply impossible. So the logical conclusion was to manufacture it.

    The boys first effort started in Portland Place but with so many people around, it was deemed not to be ‘cool’! So a flat down the Yarra River was leased and a second attempt was made there. One of the disturbing things about the process was the amazing amount of heat generated during the chemical process and keeping the whole thing temperature cool (let alone place-wise cool) was really, really a challenge. On more than one occasion the reaction went out of control and while there was almost no chance of an explosion per se, more and more often the ceiling of the bathroom where it was all set up, was covered in the most evil smelling muck.

    Look, you put this experience down to the trails of fools, albeit desperate fools. I don’t write about this to glorify what was done, but more to document this untold historical, if not social, occurrence. It was certainly an enterprise that could have bought a lengthy gaol term, but we tried to be as careful as possible. Eventually a rather dubious final product was produced. It stank! No really, it absolutely stank, and the only thing worse than its odour, was the taste when smoking it. A chillum was packed with tobacco and the DMT. It was lit and the person taking the puff barely had time to inhale (and if lucky pass it on), before “WHAP!” It was like being hit a runaway freight train on fire.

    At the time we put it down to the DMT and I’m certain there was a certain quantity of active ingredient in it – it was best described as being like a weird acid trip that began and finished in a bout 5 minutes! Thinking about it a bit more, I suspect that it was probably still quite impure and that we also were suffering from inhaling various forms of alcohol fumes! All in all, it was not deemed a success and the project was abandoned, partially because the product was so terrible, and partially because the flat was beginning to stink to high heaven.

    However, it wasn’t all that long before I came home one day to the Greville Street flat to find the bathroom completely full of the chemical apparatus that had been removed from the flat down the Yarra. No, the boys were not going to try and synthesis anymore DMT, that lesson had been learned. This time it was going to be Mescaline. The connection with the works of Carlos Castaneda was being revisited in a slightly different way. Now Mescaline is the active psychotropic ingredient that occurs naturally in the peyote cactus.

    Now to try and have a mescaline experience, religious or otherwise, meant either importing peyote buttons which while not being impossible, was certainly risky. The other option meant synthesising it. The boys chose the later. And so the ‘hubble bubble’ of the apparatus originally set up in the flat to work as a ‘space-age’ smoking pipe, was now bubbling along making mescaline. This exercise was actually fantastically successful. However, whilst a very pure yield was obtained, the quantity was very small only enough for three! The two boys took one capsule each and I was given the third.

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    Mescaline

    A sunny afternoon in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens quickly turned into a most wondrous afternoon!
    "Help me, help me, help me sail away,
    Well give me two good reasons why I oughta stay.
    Cause I love to live so pleasantly,
    Live this life of luxury,
    Lazing on a sunny afternoon."
    (Sunny Afternoon – The Kinks)

    So for all that toil this time came real reward. You could be forgiven for asking the question, “Did they make more”?

    Well here the story takes a dramatic turn. It was only about 48 hours after experiencing the results of this experiment and the time was the very early hours of a particular morning. Again I remind you that the flat was almost directly opposite the Prahran Police Station. You will be familiar with the saying, “The best place to hide something is in plain sight”. Well, that philosophy had stood us in good stead. So much time has passed I can’t recall clearly now the precise details, but suffice to say in the early hours of the morning I went to the toilet and as I came out I was a aware of torchlight flashing up the staircase. Our front door, that faced the inside stairs, had a frosted glass panel in the door.

    I could hear voices and I knew instinctively that it was the cops. I quickly and quietly roused David and we were trying to decide whether to leave out the back door. Things were happening fast! We knew it was a raid and surely that would be caught out . The lights, the (heavy) footsteps and the voices got even closer. Suddenly there was an almighty crash, it was the sound of a door being broken in but, it wasn’t our door! Iit was the door to the flat on the second floor, the floor below us.

    now we were frozen solid, crouched on the floor, barely daring to breath. Noises went on, voices were raised the lights flashed up the staircase. There was a loud thump! thump! thumping noise. It was our hearts! Then, there was silence. . . it was all over. They had left!

    Do you know, we never knew what the poor bastard downstairs was busted for, but the message to us was clear. We had used up all our luck and if they had discovered what was in our bathroom, the key would have been thrown away. The equipment was packed up the very next day and taken away to the factory of a friend for storage in David’s LD5.

    That ended the experiments in chemistry, clearly the ‘guardian angels’ had worked their magic again, but we were not about to push it!

    Money was becoming an issue. Rents were rising and as much as we could live cheaply, I wanted to buy a van and David had his own financial agenda’s and in addition we figured we had to get out of the flat, and really, out of Greville Street. So it was back to taxi driving! Now I had previously driven cabs as alluded to previously, but David decided that he should drive as well. This had a major advantage in that we could have the one cab with me taking the day shift and he, taking the night shift. Apart from meaning I no longer had to take the cab back to the depot at the end of a shift, it was kind of neat having my now best friend sharing the experience.

    So “Gay 50” (our call sign) became the focus of our lives. On most occasions driving a taxi is fairly tedious, if not boring. You also need to understand that back in the days when we were driving, the connotation of the call sign being ‘Gay’ wasn’t an issue and it was only years later that it became funny to us. Now back in the early 1970's taxi drivers were fairly secure in the knowledge that they would arrive home in the same condition as when they left. There were almost no attacks on cabbies, and the worse you might expect, was to have a drunk throw up in the back of your taxi. How things have changed today. It would be easy to fill up a page or more about taxi driving but the fact of the matter is, it is was fairly mundane and boring.

    An example of an exciting day driving cabs for me was having someone jump into the cab in the city and to tell me to start chasing a train that is on its way to Morwell. After missing it at Dandenong (a decent ride), I was told to keep chasing, we never got close and in the end I had the fare all the way to Morwell.

    now we decided to move on from Greville Street. It was beginning to loose a little of its ‘hipness’, already the part-time ‘hippies’ were moving in, working their 9 – 5 jobs and after hours and on weekends changing into their ‘finery’ and beads.
    “Oh Oh yeah Who's that coming round the corner
    Tell me Who's that coming round the bend
    He doesn't look like me
    But the mum and the dads think he's gas

    Who's that coming round the corner
    Ha, He's so square and laughs at me
    He's a 5:10 man
    It's kids like us that he cans
    He can see that we're free and We know that it's just jealousy
    Who's that coming round the corner
    Who's that coming round the bend
    You can see him catch the 5:10 train
    You can see him with his hat and cane.”
    (5:10 Man, Masters Apprentices)

    The Station Hotel had started hosting live music and that was both good and bad. Good because there was live music, but bad because it was attracting more and more of the dealers of the harder substances. The street would survive for a few more years, and the Station Hotel would give birth to a fantastic live album, called, "Live at the Station Hotel". I have to be honest, I was a bit chuffed to see I got a couple of mentions and a quote from me end up on the liner notes. But for all that in my mind, this period was the beginning of the end. This equated to three years approximately from the time Mark invited me into the Bakery, to the 'visitation' the police on the Greville Street flat. It wasn't a long time, but what a time!

    So David and I went to the extreme and rented a house somewhere out Malvern way. We had little in the way of furniture; in fact, we had little in the way of anything! Something was lacking in my life and I didn’t know what it was, but I was about to discover it. It was a Saturday and David decided to drive ‘hungry’. This is the taxi driving term for basically driving a double shift, day and night. So he was taking my day shift and driving through the night. I don’t remember why, but it was probably a need for pouring more money into the LD5 (again!).

    He had only been gone a couple of hours when suddenly he turned up at the front door. It turned out, he had picked up his first fare for the day, was going through an intersection when he was T-boned when another driver went through a red light. The cab, dear old Gay 50, was a write off. Thankfully David was fine, certainly shaken and a bit stirred up as well. We both took this as a sign. It was time to quite driving cabs! So after a cup of tea and we decided to jump in 3FQ and take a drive.

    Why 3FQ? Well that was the sticker on the windshield, kind of like (radio) 3UZ, but I’ll let you work out what it really meant. We were driving along Whitehorse Road out Wantirna way, when David pulled over. He had seen a Steam Traction Engine display, and wanted to see more.

    As he wandered around the displays I took off and found a large compound full of energetic puppies. I put my hand in and this young female came running up, and, sank her young teeth, her very sharp teeth, into my hand. I was bitten, and smitten. I had to have her; I had found what was missing in my life – a dog! It turned out she was a cross between a Labrador and a German Shorthaired Pointer (GSP). Apparently the GSP bitch had escaped and well, she was the result. It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered I had been very fortunate. Apparently the breed of GSP's hadn’t been introduced into Victoria all that many years prior and had she been a full bred GSP, she would have cost much more than I could have afforded.

    At first I called her Acid, because her bite was like sharp needles covered in acid, but she was far too sweet and besides the name also had an associated with LSD, also known as Acid, so, she became Astrid.

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    Astrid at 3months of age

    Very quickly she worked out that the ends of blind cords had plastic ends and that they were fabulous for chewing and soon all the ends of the cords were quickly destroyed. This wasn’t going to be good with the landlord, so we did a midnight flit! We figured he had our bond, so it all balanced out. I needed wheels, there was no doubt about it, and so what did I buy? I bought a Morris LD5 of course. Best of all, it came ‘signed’ with the name of a local courier, so it made sense to go to the for work. They were located in Auburn and I became a parcel delivery guy. I loved it!

    Of course being the ‘newbie, I got the absolute crap runs. Long distances out through the Western Suburbs, covering a lot of kilometers, and not a lot of parcels. But for me driving along the roads through Altona and even further out meant driving along large empty paddocks. Astrid would come with me and I would let her out and she would run along the side of the road for exercise and then lay on the floor on the passengers side, door open, watching the world pass . These were really happy times. Astrid and I became inseparable. Luckily the people whose house I was staying in, loved her as well.

    now David had abandoned his predilection for acoustic guitar and had bought a Fender Stratocaster. At that time I had no inkling of how important this would be in afew years, to both of us. There wasn’t a lot of music happening, we had met up with another guitarist, Barney, and he and David had jammed a few times and David even played a small gig with him.

    What was really strange, I still had no desire to return to playing guitar. Then, out of the blue, David announced he was taking 3FQ and driving to Northern Queensland as he wanted to see Mission Beach. I was still interested in working, and besides, he never invited me and so it was, that we parted company. It was a bit strange, as we had been living in each others pockets for so long and we had become very best friends.

    Now the house I was living in had a number of great people in it, including a young New Zealand woman whom I shall call Mo! She seemed to be as interested in me as I was with her and we began to ‘hit it off’.

    Lynne was long gone out of life and I had been seeing a few women, and unbeknown to me, one left her legacy that would shortly make itself known. It turned out that I was Mo’s first lover and I think that occasion was accelerated one evening when a female visitor to our house was showing a lot if interest in me, and I guess Mo decided it was there and then, or not at all.

    I was still driving taxi trucks, but an accident one day took me off the road for some time and in fact if not for the skills with oxyacetylene torch and a good friendship with a mate, Doug, who not only welded a new set of steps onto the passengers side but basically rebuilt the whole passengers front side, I may never have got my LD5 back on the road.

    So because I wasn't working I used to laze around, smoking a lot, drinking a lot. Then one morning I woke up and I quickly realised it was not a hangover I was suffering from. In fact I was as sick as the proverbial dog. I don’t remember whether I took myself, or someone else took me to the doctors, but with in 24 hours I was in the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital with Hepatitis. It turned out that one of the ways of contracting Hepatitis (B), is through sexual contact and then I remembered a one-night stand with a young woman who wasn’t feeling all the best herself, and I had been got!.

    That taught me a lesson! I don’t remember how long I was in hospital but it was certainly at least a month. The good news for me was that there were no lasting effects. In fact I had a follow-up set of tests about 16 years later and was totally clean with no liver damage. Thanks to the guardian angel (yet again). the time I was back home the LD5 was ready, and I was ready.

    I had decided to head north. I had received through mutual friends a letter from Lynne and she was sharing a house outside a small town of Cooroy, about 130 Kms north of Brisbane. To get there all I needed was some money. Taxi truck driving was just not providing enough. some means or another I scored a job as a spot welder in a factory. It was repetitive work, there was no protective clothing, not even protective goggles. Fortunately I was wearing glasses because at one point I had a dose of weld splash and it resulted in my glasses being seriously pitted with molten metal. So spot welding stuffed my glasses, stuffed my clothes and I put up with it for about 3 months.

    Come late 1973 I quite with enough cash to get to Queensland and some to splash on a cassette deck for the van. I packed the van, packed Astrid and asked Mo if she would like to come and we headed off! The journey was pretty uneventful and the LD5, while not breaking any speed records, did it just fine. We had no problem finding Cooroy but then it got really interesting.

    It turned out that we had to travel around to a turn off, a dirt track turnoff that went into the State Forest. About 15 minutes drive we suddenly found a car parked at the top of a very, very steep hill. The driver obviously had thought better of driving down, because there may have been no way back up. I knew the might LD5 would take it in its stride, and down we went.

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    Location of The Farm
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    The Farm in relation to Cooroy

    It was a bit freaky, because the brakes on the LD5 weren’t fantastic, and after such a long drive, they were even less reliable. In fact one of the weaknesses of the LD5 was brake bleeding. You could bleed these buggers until you were sick of it and yet they would still be spongy. It turns out that they were meant to be pressure bled, but I didn’t know that then and besides, I didn’t have the money to spend on such luxuries.

    At the bottom of the hill was a quaint little house. It had a small entrance with a bedroom to the right, into a lounge with another bedroom to the right, into a kitchen, with a bedroom to the right. That’s what it had. What it didn’t have was, electricity, gas, heating (of any sort) and mains water. It did have a bed in all three rooms and the middle bedroom actually had a double bed and mattress, a most unusual luxury. There was a mattress in the lounge for a couch and also a couple of large cushions. There was a wood stove in the kitchen and no fridge (well for god’s sake, there was no power!) and not even a table, just some built in benches.

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    The Farm house, with Bridget & Mo

    In the front bedroom there was a young woman, Bridget and her dog Raj. Bridget also had her car called Eba. It actually took me a week or so to realise that Eba was the first three letters on the number plate –duh! Lynne was in the rear room off the kitchen and so, Mo and I took the empty middle room. Lynne was very pleased to see me and it was then that I realised I had a problem.

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    From the bottom of the hill, Taj, and my LD5 and EBA

    Despite some pretty ordinary scenes back in Melbourne involving other guys and her pretty ordinary reaction to me with other women, I was still smitten her. Yep, well that was a fine how do you do! One guy with two women. Isn't that the dream? Mo stayed with me for about 6 weeks, bless her soul. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel affection for her, I did. It was more that there was still unfinished business with Lynne. Now I knew that from past experiences Lynne would have no problem with the three of us sharing a bed, but I was Mo’s first love and I couldn’t bring myself to doing that to her. In the meantime a very pregnant Astrid, oh! I had forgotten to mention that this little happening had occurred back in Melbourne, decided to have her pups and this took some of the pressure off the whole situation for a while.

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    Mo and I, with Astrid's puppies

    For a short period things just ticked over. There were three women in the house and that was pretty cool, not that it amounted to much. There wasn’t exactly any housework to do, there was little cooked because we didn’t have much and I suspect Bridget felt the odd ‘man’ out because of the relationship I had with Lynne and Mo. Mo was undoubtably feeling strange because of previous relationship with Lynne, who I think was digging the whole situation.

    Ir wasn't hard passing the time. There were some nice walks, and a beautiful view from the kitchen window. We had nothing to smoke but there were other diversions. There were wonderful, wonderful gold top mushrooms (aka Psilocybin Cubensis) around and these certainly provided that wonderful distraction.

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    Gold Top (Cap) mushrooms

    However, the day came when Mo announced she was going home, to New Zealand and was going to train it back down to Melbourne. I had mixed feelings but decided that I should let things play out and so inevitably she left. I wondered if I would ever see her again, I didn't know it, but I would. My parting gift to her was one of Astrid’s puppies, which was probably a bit young to go, but Mo was certain she wanted him and I wanted her to have him.

    It was through Lynne that I met Barry Charles, and Andy Tainsch. They were both accomplished musicians and Barry, had and still has, a most amazing voice. Barry was also a victim of childhood polio and was forced to walk with one, sometimes two, sticks. One day, through them, I was invited to a party in Noosa Heads so I fired up the LD5 and took off with Barry.

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    Andy and Barry

    We found the party and it was a drag. Then, if my memory serves me right, Barry stuck his walking stick into the ground and a most foul smell suddenly arose, followed seeping, stinking brown muck. I think Barry had accidentally stuck the end of his walking stick into a weak point of a very full septic tank and the contents were seeking their freedom. We moved away very quickly as the party suddenly became aware of this obnoxious odour.

    We thought that maybe it was time to quietly take our leave, jumped into the van and took off. We were just leaving Noosa and all of a sudden coming the other way was, 3FQ and David!

    It was like a reunion of brothers and in many ways that is the level our friendship had developed to. It turned out that David had enjoyed his stay on Mission Beach in Northern Queensland but had got wind of me being in Cooroy and decided it was time ‘to get the band’ back together. Then in a strange twist of fate, and purely coincidentally, Lynne decided she also wanted to return to Melbourne freeing up a room, which David took.

    now David and I had developed a warm friendship with both Barry and Andy and we were regular visitors to Eumerella, the Tainsch property located near. Doug Tainsch (Andy’s father) welcomed us and along with his wife made us feel at home and we in turn welcomed the hot tea and scones and other delicacies that we were missing so desperately.

    The other thing that we discovered about their property was that it had Gold Top mushrooms the size of dinner plates growing there and I am not exaggerating. I made many journeys in vans and cars, as this continuing story will reveal, but some of the most amazing trips were made without moving very far at all.

    Many great nights were had at the little farmhouse, with Barry being a regular visitor and he and David would play guitar, I would sit with a pair of bongo’s and we would play and sing the Neil Diamond and JJ Cale songbooks.

    Barry, David & Rob - "It's Alright" (1974)

    Then David met this woman – Gypsy.

    She was a stunning looking woman who was escaping a terrible relationship with her husband, and looking for refuge with her two children, Heina and Shereen. So they joined us at the farm. The great thing was that she could cook, and make something out of nothing, and boy did we test her skills. The not so good thing was, that her kids were like young wild animals, particularly Heina, whom David and I quickly nicknamed 'Hyena"!

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    'Gypsy"

    Then there was my mother, bless her soul, who would send us food parcels. I remember one time when both vans were not running. Bridget had left and so David and I hitch hiked into Cooroy, after a 20 minute walk through the State Forrest. We picked up this large cardboard box from the Post Office and headed home. Getting a lift back to the turn-off proved really hard. In fact the time we got to the turn-off, that is the dirt track that ran through the forest back to the farm, it was dark. It was not only dark, it was pouring, a real Queensland semi-tropical downpour, heavy and relentless.

    When you mix water and cardboard you have a problem. So we took the cans out of the package and took our jackets off and carried the cans in one jacket, like a swag, and wrapped the rapidly disintegrating box in the other jacket. It was so dark because there were no stars or moon, given the heavy storm, and we really could not see out hands in front of our face. I remembered that we tried. If that was not bad enough, our footwear became so sodden it was easier to walk with out them on. Then it got several degrees higher on the 'worse scale'!

    We are in Queensland! Queensland has cane toads and this area had very large cane toads. Ugly, ugly bastards and when you stand on them, they pop! We couldn’t see our hands let alone the cane toads and we couldn’t see the track, so we slowly edged our way along this muddy swamp path, through the forest, no vision, no footwear, standing on cane toads!

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    Cane Toads - Ugly bastards!


    Eventually we spotted the lights in the farmhouse, remember there was no electricity but the lanterns managed to throw enough light for us to see, and, now the rain had stopped. We must have looked a sight when we arrived back. We stripped at the door and plopped the results of our ‘hunt’ on the floor, before collapsing on the floor ourselves.

    Remarkably, much of the contents in the box were still dry due to the waterproofing of the jacket, but we discovered to our dismay that individual packets had split open, probably during the freighting process. So it was that lentils were mixed with rice, rice was mixed with flour, soup mix was mixed with everything, and, the labels had come off the cans. The meals for the next week or so were very interesting to say the least.

    The music was going so well and with the addition of Andy and his guitar and some more borrowed percussion instruments, we decided to do a gig. The location was the Kin Kin pub. Kin Kin was a town even smaller than Cooroy, which back in 1974 was pretty small. Not only did we take the music, we took our own crowd of about 25 friends and associates and, we took over the pub.

    The publican was so pleased at the influx of people (and money), that he gave us all free rooms for the night, so we played until the wee hours, repeating the same tracks over and over again. Nobody cared, everyone had a ball.

    The times in and around that small farmhouse were wonderful times. Smoke appeared, mushrooms abounded, music was frequent and the company fantastic. We must have eventually got the vans going because I also recall that one day David and I headed to a small roadhouse just outside Cooroy. Now, not only did they make great hamburgers, they had a pinball machine and David and I were, in fact still are, totally addicted to pinball. So a visit to this establishment was a highlight and a treat.

    It was also the very last meat meal that I consciously ate. Why did this occur? Well to start eating meat of any kind was becoming a rarity because it was a cost we could not afford. David and I were also becoming far more conscious about our diet and had chosen to go on a brown rice and vegetable diet, so meat was out anyway. As months turned into years I decided that not going back to eating meat was the one thing I had total control over and that I would maintain a non-meat diet. I have continued to do so.

    There is a saying that all good things must come to an end, and so they did! The exact circumstances now elude me, but I remember late one night Astrid getting very disturbed. Then we heard the sound of a vehicle at the top of the hill with no headlights, just parking lights, and it stopped. This was very unusual. We never had unwanted visitors; for god’s sake we were literally in the middle of nowhere. Then, after a few minutes it drove off.

    The event was that unusual that I decided to hook up a large spot light we had and to use the battery from David’s van to power it up. I chose his battery because it was heavy duty and I concluded would deal with the situation, far better than mine. It was a wise move, because the following night, very late, two vehicles slowly made their way down the hill. At this time there was David and I, Barry, two American sisters we had met up with, and Gypsy and the kids.

    The vehicles stopped a distance from the house and Astrid was going berserk. The one thing I had learned was that Astrid, placid gentle Astrid, would only act this way if there were danger. So I turned on the spot light! It was hard to tell how many men there were, at least four, and the light literally blinded them. We asked them what they wanted and one called out that they had heard we had some women and that there was a party they wanted to join.

    We may have been many things, but naïve was not one! We called back that they were not welcome and should leave as we had a dog and were prepared to protect ourselves, constantly keeping the very bright light on them. Shortly after, they left.

    A couple of days went and nothing eventuated. Then, we took the sisters home and dropped Gypsy off in Cooroy to shop, picking her up on the way back. As we entered the farmhouse, David said to me, that he sensed something was wrong. Nothing seemed to be out of place, and remember we didn’t have much, so it was easy to see if things had been taken. The rest of the evening went uneventfully.

    Then, at about 6am in the morning, I was woken a loud crash, which was the front door being flung open. The house rapidly filled with men, we were being raided!
    Sittin’ and starin’ out of the hotel window.
    Got a tip they're gonna kick the door in again
    Id like to get some sleep before I travel,
    But if you got a warrant, I guess you're gonna come in.
    Busted, down on bourbon street,
    set up, like a bowlin’ pin.
    Knocked down, it gets to wearin’ thin.
    They just wont let you be, oh no
    .” (Truckin’ – The Grateful Dead)

    The whole event only took maybe 5 minutes and we soon understood why. One cop emerged from under the house holding a dried mushroom that we had left hanging up and forgotten about. Another came triumphantly from David’s bedroom with a shoulder bag. He asked whose bag it was and David said it was his. The cop tipped the contents out, picked up David’s Passport, opened it up and took a slab of hash out of it.

    We were gob-smacked! Not only wasn’t it ours, if we had known it was there we would have smoked it, for christ’s sake we hadn’t had a smoke for several days! It was a set-up, of course. So it was that David, Barry and I were summarily taken foot up the hill to their cars. Barry struggled, it was a steep hill as I previously explained, and he was on two sticks. So while it was hard enough for us, it was pure hell for Barry.

    Then, when we got to the top, the cop in charge turned around to Barry and told him, he wasn’t really needed and he could go back down! Bastards!

    It turned out that the man in charge was a Detective Sergeant Kevin Dorries and, what a piece of work was he!

    David and I were taken to the Nambour Police station and put in a cell that had moss on the walls and water dripping down onto the floor. My glasses were taken from me and when I complained, I was told that the policy was no ‘jewellery’. Nice touch Kevin. But he could do much better.

    Eventually David and I were led to two separate rooms, but close enough that raised voices could be heard. In my room was a large dope plant in a pot, well looked after. I was quickly told that this was one of the plants found at the farmhouse and what did I have to say. I said, I had nothing to say, as I had never seen it before and that we had no such plants on the property. In the meantime I could hear Dorries screaming at David. The cop in my room was obviously feigning discomfort, shaking his head telling me that there was no need for that to happen, as we could all be quite civilised about this matter.

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    Just like "Dorries' Dope Plant

    Oh hell, it was the old ‘good cop/bad cop’ act, and so obvious.

    Our discussions didn’t get far and we were taken back to the cells, this time split up so we couldn’t talk or hear each other. We were never offered food or drink.

    Several hours went and I was led to the interview room, this time with Dorries. He began telling me that I had to plead guilty, because if I didn’t they would take a bus full of cadets to the property, and they ‘would’ (he emphasised would) find the plantation, and then Social Services would be called in and the children would be taken away from the mother. This man was a right arse-hole!

    The one sided interrogation continued for a few more minutes, with him emphasising that they now had more than a dozen plants like the one in the room, and were assembling the cadets right then. Was he really? In retrospect I don’t think so, but there and then I couldn’t take the chance of Gypsy having her kids taken a way.

    Don’t forget, he had already planted hash in David’s passport, made Barry walk on sticks up a long steep hill only to turn him back once he had got to the top. This man had taken my glasses away because they were ‘jewellery’, which was a bit disturbing as it was hard to see what was happening, had bought a large marijuana plant in a pot, claiming it was ours, and now threatened to find a non-existent plantation and have the kids removed.

    In what I thought was a moment of genius, I suddenly turned to him and said, that I believed I had the right to seek legal advice. To my amazement he agreed and pulled out a telephone book. He opened it and ran his finger down the page, stopping at a name that I couldn’t see because the print was small and besides, it was upside down from my point of view. He picked up the phone and dialled a number and handed me the phone. A male voice answered and I asked if this was a solicitor. The voice said yes. I explained that I was under arrest for possession of marijuana, and that I was innocent as it had been planted and sked how should I proceed. The advice really shook me to the core as I realised this was part of the set-up, when the voice said, and I remember it word for word. “If you have done nothing, then you have nothing to worry about”, and the person hung up.

    Wow, that was my legal advice!

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    Was it a solicitor? It may have been, but one thing was for certain he and Dorries were in collusion. There was no way out!
    A fundament of righteous men

    A barrow ideals
    The carriage of misjustice

    Crushes all beneath it's wheels

    Conspiracies of silence

    Within the temple walls

    Graveyards full of promises

    That no one can recall
    .” (Deep Purple – A Castle Full of Rascals)

    Early the next morning David and I were taken into court. The first thing that was noticeable was, that there was no one in the public gallery. There was the prosecuting police, Dorries, and the Magistrate, and us – with no representation. The Magistrate opened proceedings, and said words to the effect; he had examined the police brief and the evidence and did not require us to say anything. He understood we were pleading guilty to all charges, (never reading them out) and had found us guilty.

    We would each be fined $2500.00 and had 24 hours to leave the state of Queensland, or be jailed. The whole proceeding took less then 3 minutes. This was my first, and last, experience with a ‘kangaroo court’.

    Now the average wage in 1974 for $154.00 and in 2012 it was $453.00, so I calculate that fine today would be approximately $7,400.00. That was pretty bloody excessive!

    I don't recall how we got back home, the whole thing left be in a daze. We packed up, and I took off first, leaving David to pack his van with his stuff as well as Gypsy’s stuff. I learned later, that when he tried to start the van he found his battery had been flattened, probably severely weakened my use to power the spot light. He was pretty pissed about this.

    I had only been back in Melbourne a week. Having nowhere to go, Astrid and the pups and I lobbed at my parents house in Glen Waverley. Early on a Sunday morning there was a knock at the door. I opened it and two very well dressed men asked if Robert Greaves lived there. I told them that was me, it was my parents house and I was staying with them and asked who were they. It turned out they were two Victorian detectives.

    I asked them in, but they declined saying they could deal with it on the doorstep. They asked me did I know a Detective Sergeant Dorries in Queensland? I told them I did, in fact I had been set up him and was in Victoria having been ‘run out of Queensland’ on trumped up charges. I asked them why they were asking these questions. They were very relaxed and friendly from moment one, in retrospect, real chalk and cheese when compared to Dorries.

    They told me they were checking on everyone that had contact with him over the past few years, and one quietly said, the list was long. It turned out that Dorries had received an anonymous tip off that there were drugs hidden in a cupboard in an abandoned house. It appeared that on his way there, a young kid had wandered in and opened the cupboard. A bomb had been set to go off when the door was opened, and the kid had been killed.

    This was a terrible, terrible thing! Obviously Dorries had driven someone to such desperate actions. It was impossible to condone the act, but given my experiences with this piece of crap, I could totally understand the need for revenge. The Victorian detectives were very happy with my explanation of where I was and when, and left, never to return. I have pondered several times on this act of desperation, and as terrible as it is to admit, I was sorry Dorries didn’t get there first.

    Later, I leaned he had been ‘encouraged’ to retire from the Queensland force, had gone to the Northern Territory and scored a job with the police there, and in a final act that shows justice is not always done, was promoted to a Superintendent! I just hope that at some stage karma did eventually catch up.

    Click on the newspaper to go to the article that describes the circumstances of that bomb, and the subsequent death.

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    Then things looked up. I received a message from Doug Tainsch that he had put a word in for me with Crawford Film Productions. Doug was a writer for Division 4, a police show and being very respected, his word went a long way.

    I was about to commence a short, but fantastic career in the Television Film Industry.

    In Part VIII Of Crawford Film Productions and a drive across the Nullarbor

    Click here to start the journey across the Nullabor!

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