Leaving Bondi Read online

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to Major General Peter Cosgrove and all the Australian Forces who served in East Timor. I got a lot of letters from the troops. I know they did a great job up there and they’re still doing a great job. And we should all be proud of them.

  A percentage of the royalties from this book is being donated to:

  The Wombat Rescue and Research Project

  Lot 4, Will-O-Wynn Valley

  Murrays Run NSW 2325

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Begin Reading

  Stumble in the Jungle

  A Message from the Author

  So What Do You Reckon?

  Mud Crab Boogie

  Goodoo Goodoo

  The Wind and The Monkey

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Despite George Brennan’s running gag about Les Norton getting arrested for breaking into a fifty-dollar bill, then being acquitted because it was his first offence, Les wasn’t all that mean with his money. A bit tight? Maybe. Careful? Definitely. Distrustful? After watching some of the people around him whilst living in Bondi and working at Kings Cross: one hundred per cent. But mean? No. Definitely not. If it was Norton’s turn to shout or he had to spend his money on something necessary, he would. And some of the money he’d come across in his jaunts here and there, Les had certainly spread around. Which, somehow, often came back to him.

  However, Les wasn’t into the share market or real estate. He owned his own home and was more than happy with that. Even backing some of Price’s horses at short odds had lost its allure, whether they were good things or not. As far as Les was concerned, there were only three places to keep any spare cash you had lying around: In the bank. Buried somewhere, where you could get to it easily if you wanted to. Or strapped tightly to your body where pickpockets or such couldn’t get to it easily if they wanted to.

  So for an extremely cautious person like Norton to invest fifty thousand dollars in a movie, a movie that was virtually just another Australian meat-pie western, would take close to an act of God. Or whoever talked Les into it would have to be the greatest salesperson on the planet. But Les had his reasons for investing such a vast amount of his hard-earned into a dodgy Z-grade flick. It all came about through Les hanging around Ray Tracy’s Japanese restaurant next to Bondi Beach Public School.

  The way things were going in Bondi, the Gull’s Toriyoshi Yakitori wasn’t a bad place to hang for a feed and a cool one. The old Icebergs was still a pile of bulldozed rubble money-hungry developers and Waverley Council were constantly arguing over. The Diggers had been sold to make home units, so most of the punters had moved down to The Rathouse in the North Corner, which was good value, except you had to put up with poker machines and cigarette smoke and Les wasn’t a member. Les was a member of Hakoah, but mainly for the choice food. The Bondi was all right in the daytime, but you wouldn’t go there at night unless you liked drinking elbow to elbow with backpackers full of drink and western suburbs home-boys full of attitude. Redwoods had been turned into an internet cafe and most of the other bars around Bondi were either too smoky or too trendy and charged an arm and a leg for a drink. The old Rex wasn’t that bad and the VB on tap was good, only there were too many blokes there either Les or Billy had cuffed on different occasions and Les spent half the night looking over his shoulder. Norton could get all the dramas he needed working at the Kelly Club. And as Les only drank two or three nights a week because of his job, he liked to be able to relax when he did. So a bit of a sneak away from the crowds and the smoke was needed. And in this respect, the Gull’s Toriyoshi suited him admirably.

  Ray was a good friend of Warren’s and Les got on well with him as did just about everybody else. The Gull always reminded Les of Peter Fonda in Easy Rider. The same thoughtful, winsome face, the same loose brown hair and steel-framed glasses and the same plausible nature, tinged with polite curiosity. Since Les had poisoned the big Russian swimmer there, Ray had done the Toriyoshi up. The cooking was now done out the back, there was more seating and, being a local waxhead, Ray had filled the walls with old Bondi surfing memorabilia. You could sit out the front if you wanted, where there was a well-stocked bottle shop two doors away, the Japanese staff were friendly and Ray’s food was always tasty and well presented and, compared to some of the other feedbags around Bondi, extremely reasonable. Being an actor and a scriptwriter, Ray also had a good-looking French girlfriend who was always good for a perv, a blonde actress called Monique. And if she wasn’t around, there always seemed to be plenty of other girls hanging about. Because of his involvement in the film game, Ray’s Toriyoshi attracted much of the Bondi and Sydney entertainment industry from TV, film, radio and theatre; some of whom were all right and some of whom were absolute pains in the arse. Les preferred to sit out the front with Ray’s old waxhead mates when they were around.

  They were good blokes in their thirties who rode mini-mals, liked a drink and a laugh and always had an anecdote about Bondi to relate. Most of them had nicknames like Weasel, Snoopy, Hey Joe, Short-Round, Butch van Bad Skull, Munoz, The Arm, Tounger, or whatever, and all had this strange way of talking now and again in allegorical metaphors tinged with biting sarcasm. Les was sitting out the front one night having a cold one with Weasel and Hey Joe, and evidently Weasel had been seen out on the weekend with a really ugly girl.

  ‘Nnnyyhh,’ said Hey Joe, ‘I’m glad the chick you were out with the other night didn’t have a head on her like a kicked-in shitcan anyway, the Wease.’

  ‘Nnnyyhh,’ replied Weasel. ‘I’m glad you wouldn’t crawl over broken glass with your Morts out to stick it up her behind my back anyway, the Joe.’

  Nnnyyhh, thought Les. I’m glad you haven’t got me fucked if I know what you’re talking about anyway, the boys.

  Naturally, being a writer and hanging out with the film industry in beautiful downtown Bondi, the Gull had come up with a film script. It was called Leaving Bondi. Thinking Les might be interested and looking for investors, he showed Les the script and the synopsis one night when it was quiet. The story was about an Australian Vietnam veteran who elopes back to Australia with a Japanese girl and was set in Bondi before they got rid of the old sewerage works — the murk — and started pumping all the shit out to sea beneath the ocean floor. Her father is a boss in the Yakuza and comes looking for his daughter. The Vietnam vet shoots the father and his gangsters, then ends up in a massive shoot-out with the police and the State Protection Unit before getting away with his girl through the sewers of Bondi, finally escaping through the main sewerage outlet under the golf links around Ben Buckler Point. There was waffle and moving dialogue and in the end you’re left hanging, not knowing whether they got away or drowned in several million litres of shit.

  The film was going to be shot around Bondi, Bondi Beach Public School, the Toriyoshi and Ray’s father’s house in Clyde Street, Bondi. Ray reckoned by cutting costs and using unknown actors he could shoot the film for less than a million dollars. The Gull had called his film company Murke Productions. Les flicked through the script and thought the the film company was aptly named and it was good the movie was about sewers and such, because it was the most shithouse thing he’d ever read. And figured anybody that would invest money in a clunker like Leaving Bondi would have shit for brains. Oddly enough, Ray had raised nearly all the money and was just $50,000 short of production. Les handed the Gull back his script, said he’d take a rain check and got another beer.

  One night Les was sitting out the front of the Toriyoshi with Warren, Ray Tracy and Ray’s French girlfriend Monique. Ron from 99FM was there with a Sydney disc jockey who raved on too much for Norton’s liking, and a l
ocal film director Les wasn’t too keen on either. Along with some lesbian film producer. Evidently they were the main investors in the Gull’s movie. Even Warren had sunk some money into it.

  The director was Max King, a humourless, narrow-eyed person about forty with a hunched, bony build and a narrow, bony head topped with short greying hair. He rarely smiled and always reminded Les of a snake the way his head sunk between his shoulders and his slitty eyes seemed to dart everywhere as if he was looking for a mouse or a small bird to eat. He’d made a number of films. His biggest claim to fame being an art film shot in Bali, which won a gong at some obscure film festival in Europe before fading without trace. He’d also been high up in the South Australian Film Corporation where he’d produced several meat-pie dramas and telemovies. King had lived in Bondi for over ten years, but before he moved to Sydney, Eddie said King had been in the army reserve in Melbourne where he’d also done community service for petty larceny. Because of his Balinese film connection, King always liked to wear batik shirts; tonight’s fashion statement was black, brown and yellow.

  The disc jockey was Nathan David. An average-sized, self-opinionated bigot in his thirties with tinted hair and a squashy little nose rumoured to have undergone plastic surgery. David originally arrived in Sydney from Adelaide via Melbourne. He was single, loved developers, hated environmentalists and was currently right up there in the ratings giving Sydney’s talkback kings a run for their money. So far David hadn’t been caught up in the cash-for-comment-keeping-the-greed-alive-scandal rocking Sydney radio. And often enjoyed referring to his opposition and anyone else who didn’t share his views as vile, rotten swine. Norton, however, after what he’d heard and read in the papers, wouldn’t have pissed on any of them, particularly David. And often said so. But if he ever bumped into David at the Toriyoshi, Les kept his opinions to himself. If only for Ray’s sake.

  The woman was Simone Mitchum. She had dark hair and dark looks, which blended in with her all-black outfit, broken up by a purple scarf and purple earrings. Simone lived in Dover Heights and also came from Adelaide, where she’d worked on a couple of King’s movies with the South Australian Film Corporation. She wasn’t introduced to Norton as a lesbian. But just her mannerisms, and the way she glared at Les for having the hide to perv on the same woman at the table she was, told him so. Despite her abrasive manner, she seemed to be fairly intelligent, and Les was curious why she, or anybody else, would invest in a Z-grade wobbegong like Leaving Bondi. Warren, a mullhead working in an advertising agency, Les could understand. But the others? Maybe they knew something he didn’t?

  The night Les was drinking there, David had just been berating everybody about his rise in the latest radio survey; mainly because he’d escaped the cash-for-comment inquiry. Now he was berating Les about putting some money into Ray’s movie. David was dissecting Les from behind a pair of dark sunglasses he was wearing so no one could recognise him while he was wearing a bright red T-shirt with his radio station’s logo across the front so no one could miss him.

  ‘Well, come along, Les,’ chirped David, in his familiar radio-announcer’s voice. ‘Ante up, my boy. This could be a great investment for you.’

  ‘Sure. Come on board, man,’ said Ron. ‘It’s a cool thing.’

  ‘Yeah, why don’t you? You miserable big prick,’ said Warren. ‘You’ve got plenty snookered away.’ He gave the Gull a wink. ‘You’ve been leaching a fortune off me in rent for years. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had all my rent money buried somewhere in the backyard in a shoe box,’ he added, as a titter of mirth ran round the table.

  Les looked at Warren impassively for a moment. ‘Yeah, that’d be right, Warren. Trying to kick you out but you won’t go’d be more like it. You greasy little bludger.’

  The Gull, plausible as ever, seemed slightly taken aback by Les and Warren’s rapport. ‘Well, hey. Like, you know, Les,’ he gestured politely. ‘Nathan’s got a point there, man. This movie could be big.’

  Max King didn’t bother looking up from the table. ‘I like the script,’ he said assertively. His words hanging in the air, as if they were impaled on an invisible wall, to emphasise his approval of the script was all that was needed.

  The Gull nodded to Les. ‘Hey, he’s right. It’s a great script, man.’

  ‘A great script?’ said Les. ‘Turn it up, Ray. A heroin addict could forge a better script than that. I read it. Remember?’

  The Gull looked at Les for a moment. ‘Not all of it.’

  ‘Ohh why waste your time,’ said Warren. ‘Les’d rather put his hand in a meat grinder than put it in his pocket.’

  Another titter of laughter rang out round the table as everybody got a chuckle out of Warren’s remark except Norton.

  Simone gave Monique another very heavy once up and down. ‘Why don’t we talk about something else,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Why don’t we,’ agreed Max King, his slitty eyes flicking sideways at Les, as if a non-film person like Norton shouldn’t even have been sitting with them in the first place.

  Les fixed his eyes on the Gull for a moment. ‘All right, Ray,’ he said evenly. ‘I’ll back your movie. How much did you say you needed the other night? Fifty grand? Okay. You got it.’

  For a moment it looked as if a nerve gas bomb had just gone off as every face at the table froze and all eyes riveted on Norton.

  ‘What was that, Les?’ blinked the Gull.

  ‘I said, I’ll put fifty grand into your movie.’

  ‘Are you fair dinkum?’ said Warren.

  ‘I’m always fair dinkum, Warren.’ Les finished his beer and rose from the table. ‘Now if you people will excuse me, I have to go. There’s a travel documentary about Kakadu on the ABC I wish to tape.’ He nodded to the Gull. ‘I’ll have your fifty down here at the end of the week, Ray. Goodnight all.’ Les turned and walked home, stopping briefly at Bates milk bar in Hall Street for a packet of CC’s.

  When Les got home, he knocked the top off a cold Eumundi Lager, took a swallow, then slipped a tape in the video recorder. Once that was going, he went out into the backyard, sipped some more beer and stared down at where he had all his loot buried next to the garden shed. The Krugerrands had fallen in by accident so he wouldn’t miss any, and the arse appeared to be falling out of the gold market so he’d be better off getting rid of them. Fifty grand was a lot of money to waste on a meat-pie western. But it was nice to see the looks on all their faces when he dropped his bombshell earlier, and it would be even nicer to see the looks on their faces when Les Norton, major investor, started hanging round the film set, a big cigar in one hand and a set of worry beads in the other. Also, this would consolidate his position at the Toriyoshi; the Gull would think the sun shone out of Norton’s arse now. And although Les couldn’t conceal a certain dislike for some of the poseurs and hangers-on in the movie business parading around Bondi — Ray Tracy excluded — they definitely attracted all the choice crumpet. A lot of whom were friends of Monique’s and liked to sip white wine and eat the fat-free food at the Toriyoshi. For virtually a handful of coins Les could be the next Sam Goldwyn. He could put a casting couch in the spare bedroom. And even though the government had put the squeeze on the old 10BA rort in the film game, there was still an attractive tax break for investing in a meat-pie western, so he wouldn’t lose that much in the wash-up. On the other hand, there was always the chance Leaving Bondi could get up. People might actually pay to go and see the lemon. Stranger things had happened. Norton finished his bottle of beer and got the pinch bar out of the shed.

  The next day Les saw Price, told him what he was up to and to keep it between the two of them. Price was only too delighted to oblige, as well as cop a nice pile of shiny, bargain-basement Krugerrands to add to his collection. In five minutes Les had his money, and all nicely washed through a bookie so it looked like Les had won it at the races. Five minutes later Les rang his accountant. Norton’s last accountant had moved to the Gold Coast so Les had a new one. Geraldine Hardacre. A
tall, coppery brunette who did triathlons with her husband Ivor, an insurance investigator. Gerry was one of Billy Dunne’s in-laws on his wife’s side, so she knew where Les and the rest of them at the Kelly Club were coming from. She also knew a lot of people herself and wasn’t adverse to cutting corners and going straight to the heart of the matter if need be. Geraldine quickly got a prospectus on the movie and by the end of the week the Gull had his money and Les had a fifty-thousand-dollar investment in a film by Murke Productions Pty Ltd titled Leaving Bondi.

  This had all happened before Les went to Port Stephens with Eddie. Since then, they’d both got back safe and sound, Price had slipped Les another ten thousand for the effort, and life went on. Now it was another Sunday night at the Kelly Club in late autumn. The club was empty and Les was sitting in Price’s office, wearing a char-grey shirt tucked into a pair of black trousers, about to enjoy an after-work drink. Sitting on his left, Eddie and Billy were wearing leather bomber jackets and dark trousers and deep in discussion about how much chlorine goes in a swimming pool. Price was at his desk, wearing a light green suit with a jade tie, and going over some betting slips with George Brennan. Overweight George was wrapped into a dark blue suit with a blue tie; the suit slightly crumpled as usual. Norton being temporarily left to his own devices was settled back, sipping on a cold Fourex and surmising that all up, things weren’t too bad. They could have been better. But all up, they weren’t too bad.

  Digger and her cousin had certainly made headlines with ‘their’ discovery of the submarine, and with the money rolling in, they were able to leave for America so Brendon could have his eye operation. Digger even sold her story to a woman’s magazine. ANNE ZACCARIAH, MY SECRET AGONY. SHARKS ATE MY FATHER WHILE MY COUSIN WENT BLIND. Because she didn’t like travelling to Sydney, Les had been driving to Newcastle when he got the chance. Which sadly wasn’t working out. The porking was still sensational. But Digger wasn’t the happiest drunk in the world and her cooking would kill a brown dog. Besides that, Les got the distinct feeling Digger was having it away. Not out of any disrespect or lack of affection for Les, but Les had definitely turned her into a mad raving case and having that bottled up inside her all those years, she was making up for lost time. Why buy a book — even if it was a good one — when you can join a library. Digger never let on, but Les could tell. And it wasn’t just the phone calls from old friends when he was at her house; phone calls always taken in the other room. Of course what Digger did when Les wasn’t around was pretty much her business. Not his. But Les wasn’t all that keen on sharing Digger’s sweet little whatever with strangers. And now you could bet Digger was cutting a swathe through the medical fraternity in Fort Worth, Texas, while Brendon was recovering in hospital. So Les knew it was only a matter of time before it would be the end of the affair. Oh well, thought Les. You win some, you lose some. I guess I was just born to go through life another broken-hearted clown, laughing on the outside, crying on the inside. That’s show biz. And talking about show biz, tomorrow was the first day of filming for Leaving Bondi. He took another sip of beer and felt a tap on his left shoulder. It was Billy Dunne.