THE ROAD TO ECO-TOPIA

THE ROAD TO ECO-TOPIA.

The violence and community hostility that forced our hasty retreat from the 'Straddie basecamp' brought home the magnitude of the vast divide that exists between the green lobby and the majority of blue collar workers.  By their actions the Stradbroke Island community proved conclusively that people will stop at nothing if their livelihood is threatened.  I saw the same sort of thing at Chealundi and other national campaigns but it had never represented such an out and out threat to human life.  Luckily the burning car didn’t set our whole camp on fire but it very well could have, should we not have woken up in time.  It seemed rather strange that I had put my river dwelling adventures on hold to live a less dangerous existence and there I was wiping my brow after yet another close call.  I had to conclude that my time would be best spent if I gave the frontline a break for a while.  For the next few months I stayed in a friends spare room at Billongil and I did volunteer work at the Byron Bay Environment centre.   The Gippsland blockade kicked off during that time and I found myself more than content just organising car pools and photocopying escarpment maps for the protesters.  One day while I was doing an afternoon shift my old pal Captain Casual breezed through the door.  We hadn’t seen each other since the Tanalorn Festival and it was great to catch up over a joint in the tea room.  The Captain said he was only in the area for a couple of days, then he was heading back to his home in the Blue Mountains.  The room where I was staying in Billongil had been designated as a practice room for a local band, so I asked Caz if there was enough space in his van for myself and the buggy.  There was ample room in his Tarago camper for me and my gear and to top it all off he offered to put me up for a while in exchange for a little artistic help.  He and his volunteer helpers were developing a campaign to promote re-cycle bins in the Blue Mountains and I jumped at the opportunity without a second thought.  It was right in line with my new 'pro-education' resolve and besides I needed a roof over my head for the winter. 

Captain Casual is the most zealous activist for world peace and the environment I have ever encountered and he has implemented social change at every level from the distribution of pamplets on the streets to the delivery of solution strategies in the halls of power.  The information pamphlets he used to distribute at our busking shows and his skills as a public motivator helped to bring about the United Nations ‘Year of the Tree’ in the early eighties.  For the sake of the story we will call our small but effective environment group, ... 'The Union of Aspiring Planet Savers'.  The Planet Savers Organisation started life in the central business district of Sydney, in a swanky fourth floor location which was owned by the Captain’s well to do family.  He has often been heard in mixed company describing how his clan are successful merchants from “proud Phoenician stock” and our dear Captain likes to refer to himself as, ‘The Rainbow sheep of the family’. 

He has no doubt inherited the business instincts of his wheeling and dealing ancestors, but he prefers to channel his talents into the blossoming realms of the 'New Age' marketplace.   His first dealings with the public began in a Kings Cross poster shop that he ran in the nineteen sixties.  While going through his extensive archives down in the cellar one day I discovered copies of all those amazing psychedelic posters you used to see around the place. He even has the one that hung on Lee Turners wall which said, ... ’Save Water  Shower With a Friend’.  The Captain and I share a fascination with message related art and it’s been like a uniting thread that has fuelled our collaboration through the years.  We were travelling pretty close to each others orbits throughout the busking years and he was a great influence on many of my eco-inspired songs.  I was a passionate young bard who was yet to shed the role of the angry young man and quite often it reflected in my words.  One time as he listened intently to a newly recorded piece a distinctive frown became lodged in his wise old hippy brow.  When I asked him what was up he took a long concentrated pause before answering.  His reply was short but effective and it altered my ability to self edit from that moment on.  He said, ” I love the words in the chorus that say ‘Until This War Is Won’ but don’t you think it might reach a wider audience with, ...’Until Our Work Is Done’?  That diplomatic little consciousness jolt was enough to bring home the confronting truth that if I didn’t drop my mistrust of humanity then I was no better than those I hoped to inspire.

The Planet savers moved out of Sydney in the mid eighties and set up a Blue mountains headquarters just out of Hazelbrook.  The transition was to a picturesque eleven acre estate with neatly manicured grounds equal to any botanical garden I have seen.  The property was christened the ‘Wisdom Gardens’ and it evolved over time to become a living showcase for the practice of Edible Landscape Gardening.  As well as fully matured examples of the best trees on the planet the estate had extensive Perma-culture gardens that were tended by an army of green thumbed volunteers.  I was living in a caravan on the property when first I became involved with the group and the daily selection of fresh fruit and vegies I used to harvest were as good as any the local green grocer could offer.  Often I made big pots of vegetable soup for the workers which were enhanced with such delicacies as artichoke hearts and home grown pinenuts.  One of Captain Casuals favourite pastimes is sprout germination and I constantly had to invent new ways of incorporating his abundant produce into the meals.  At any given moment there were fifteen or more people staying around the property in caravans, tents and tipis.   Two houses were situated at the top and the bottom of the valley and they served as fully equipped offices for the promotion of environment friendly solutions in the general community.  The Captain would best be described as a ‘Technophile’ which means anyone who holds a fascination for things technological or mechanical.  I myself lean more towards technophobia and I have great difficulty suppressing the rage when man made devices mysteriously stuff up.  Caz just says,“Oh! bother it” and buys a new one weather it be a computer, a photo-copier, a car or anything else.  From stories he has shared with the crew it seems that our jolly Captain has lived an affluent and somewhat pampered existence from day one.   The story that most summed up his charmed journey through life involved a certain Elvis Presley in a scene that took place at the Las Vegas Hilton in the sixties.  Caz was soaking up the sun by the pool and Elvis pulled up the recliner next to him with a couple of bodyguards in tow.  The king and the Captain got chatting about things gymnasium related and the conversation turned to the possibility of an arm wrestle between the two.  As could be expected Elvis won the competition and they ended up having drinks in the Casino later on in the evening.  Caz made a point of informing his campfire audience that it was one of the very few acts of macho bravado he has ever engaged in.

The Wisdom Gardens were host to many a tribal event in the hay day of their existence.  The Planet Savers network numbered more than a hundred active members at one stage and when we all came together it was a real hoot.  Our festivals were attended by clan members from as far away as Cairns, Darwin, Broome and Tasmania.  The music was always world class at these events and through them I was made aware of a wider selection of issue related folk songs.  A recorded catalogue of home crafted tunes began to take shape and it gave rise to a national song writing competition known as the 'Planet Savers Song Quest'.   Some renowned composers contributed to the project the likes of John Paul Young, Hans Poulson and Keith Potger from the Seekers.  Most of the recordings offered up were created by simple living folk with no aspirations to fame, but I saw them as much needed, people power classics with big mainstream potential.  If the songs could be re-recorded on a more modern format and performed by a cast of established international stars, I thought we might have a chance of climbing into the cerebral synapsis of humanity with our unique brand of inspirational entertainment.  As well as meeting up with Sting and Bono during my busking and night clubbing period I also made the acquaintance of George Michael, Billy Connolly, Joe Strummer and Robert Plant.  My mission in life was to round up as many mega-stars as I could and convince them to support the idea of a celebrity album for the environment.

The late Michael Hutchence was more than just a passing acquaintance and we went on to become regular drinking buddies around the traps.  Our earliest beginnings got off to a bumpy start, but we came good in time and got to know each other quite well.  The reason for the initial friction was because I had pissed him off from the microphone at a gig we did for the bikers in the Watermelon club.  INXS were relatively new on the scene and I had no idea who this pimply faced upstart was, who was trying to push in on my gig.  I was later introduced to him by BJ the club President over lines of Bolivian cocaine and tequila.  In the years that followed Micheal and I discussed the possibility of getting together creatively to record a song for the celebrity album.  We met up in Rhino Studios not long after the band bought it and arrangements were put in place to schedule some recording time.  Our first collaborative meeting was cut short by a certain Kylie Minogue who came storming into the studio in a blind seething, post ecstatic rage.  This was at the peak of those reckless and infamous days that I am sure she would prefer to forget. I was there to orchestrate a romantic, anthemistic duet with the darlings of the Australian entertainment scene and the two squabbling brats before me looked more like enemies than lovers.  Most apologetically Michael raced off after our not so happy little Dancing Queen and no compositions or recordings ever saw the light of day.  World Environment day 1990 in Sydney was the best public display ever presented by the Planet Savers.  As well as the many placards and banners we produced for the march, the crowd was entertained by a big rainbow coloured worm who was promoting organic gardening.  Planet savers pamphlets, sticker, flags and other assorted novelties were affectionately clutched in the hands of all who heard the call to ecological sanity.

The attendance figures at the Environment Day rally were larger than I had ever seen and the vast majority were normal, everyday folk from the suburbs.  The collective chant for the Rally was, ... ‘One Planet, One People, One Chance’ and I was the guy with the megaphone who got to egg them all on.  The first hundred feet or so of the marchers were bright eyed, fist raising teenagers who were out to save the world with a passion.   They responded well to my happy little traffic hazard directives and they assisted the cops at every turn.  Before me was a whole new generation of aspiring planet savers who were standing up to have their say where it mattered most.  On the six oclock news. 


                                                                                                                                     

                                                    That's me with the megaphone.

As the march came into the police barricaded intersection of Park and King streets we discovered there was a car parked directly in our path.  None other than my old drinking pal Michael Hutchence was hanging in the open door smiling and he said, ‘Hi! Steve, ... Whatcha doin?”.   He must have told the cops that he was part of the entertainment for our festivities and they let him drive through the police barrier.  In the back seat of the hire car Michael’s mother was looking most embarrassed, like David Lettermans old dear mum when he puts her on the spot.  I took my cue from the moment and turned to address the expectant crowd which was more than ten thousand strong.  My most show business MC voice was applied to the megaphone as I introduced Michael to his adoring fans and got him to join in the chant.  After the tribal chorus had been filmed by a pack of fast moving television cameramen Micheal and his mother drove out of the intersection to thunderous, cheering applause.  The footage of Micheal chanting along with the crowd was featured on all of the evening news broadcasts and it became the decisive moment in which my ‘Celebrities For The Environment’ theory was made manifest into living reality.

Captain Casual is an incurable philanthropist and he never hesitates to throw his money into worthwhile projects.  One of my fellow volunteer workers at the Wisdom gardens was an independent film maker called Roger Plant.  He and I got our heads together one day and came up with an idea for a television special called, ‘The Voice Of The People’ which was planned as an Info-tainment docco and would feature grass roots perspective’s on the global environment crisis.  Once completed it would also serve as a platform for the best of our eco-inspired songs.  Caz loved the idea and we were promptly assigned a production budget to get the thing up and running.  One of the diesel pantec utes from the perma-culture nursery was handed over for the duration of filming and we took off for the Land of the Rainbows to interview the locals.  On the street dialogue filled much of the Hi-8 tape we used, but we also got some great footage of hands on alternative progress in action.  One day we would be filming an organically nurtured plot in some exotic location and the next would be spent at an alternative dwelling getting instructions on solar power. From time to time representatives of the Planet Savers were invited to attend public schools and give lectures to the students.  Roger and I decided it would be a great idea to incorporate the environmental views and opinions of kids into our docco, so we booked ourselves in for a series of dates.   Water conservation was the theme we were given to address at the first of three western suburbs schools and I was supposed to keep the kids interested for over an hour.  The lecture soon turned into an open debate about how people would get on in the event of a reservoir contamination and it concluded with jammed highways leading to the first clean water supply.  According to the most nihilistic of the school children, thirst driven escapees would be fighting over the last reserves of bottled water and only the young would survive the ordeal.  At the second school the group discussion became equally apocalyptic when I posed the question, “How fast could you establish a food garden if the world was caught in the grip of a global fuel shortage?”.   We didn’t get to do the third school because the Administrator considered my questions far too provocative for the children.  It became apparent with the cancellation of our final lecture that I was supposed to chat away about the superficial aspects of the environment and not actually get down to the nitty gritty of what is happening in the world.  In spite of the small mindedness that prevailed Roger still managed to shoot some valuable footage for the docco and thus completed the age spectrum of the community at large. 

They say that 'a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee' and my time with the Planet Savers is living testimony it’s true.  At the end of the day it was Captain Casual who personally financed any projects the management group proposed and any he didn’t endorse got the boot.  New management committees came and went more frequently than the changing of the seasons and all of them had private agendas that determined their meeting room votes.  The same kind of backstabbing and conniving you will find anywhere in the world of business was the norm at our weekly pow wows and it wasn’t unusual for the meetings to explode in a firestorm of uncontrolled passion.  When Roger and I returned from our northern filming excursion we found that a newly formed committee had been conspiring against us in our absence.  Our production budget was in the spotlight and there was even talk of using some of the money to finance other projects.  I hit the roof when it was my turn to speak and I told all of the self righteous newcomers exactly where to get off.  I had been a volunteer with the organisation longer than most of them put together and I made this fact known in no uncertain terms.  My main opponent was teary eyed and defeated at the climax of her address and the best she could come out with was, “Well how come you two get money to go holidaying all over the country and I have to work in this fucking office all day?”.  The mood of the gathering was elevated somewhat when Roger and I looked at each other and said in unison,“We’re Special”.  


                                                                                                                                       

                                            Getting some ariel shots of the perma-culture gardens.

After moving back to the Wisdom Gardens from Stradbroke Island I set up my camp in a disused, dome shaped sweat lodge that was situated beside a large pond with cascading waterfalls.  The dome sat in the shade of some tall gum trees and it was one of the most perfect studio settings I had lived in up to that point.  Things had changed dramatically since last I was in residence and the best part was the fact that the management group had dissolved into the mists of time.  As a result of dwindling volunteer numbers all of the Perma-culture plots had fallen into a state of disrepair and the only produce I could find was a handful of wrinkly old spuds.  The apple and pear orchards were overgrown with weeds and so were the once tidy bitumen paths that led around the estate.  Only a small group of volunteers remained on the property in an attempt to keep it going and support our host in his efforts to repay an ever increasing bank loan. 

The Captain’s wealthy relatives propped him up with a number of refinancing strategies, but sadly the money ran out after he exceeded a million bucks.  The Wisdom Gardens were placed on the open market and our quest to save the environment was superseded by the daunting task of trying to save our headquarters from the auctioneers hammer.  A number of hairbrained schemes were proposed by certain members of the group and it was decided that the best way to keep the property was to subdivide.  The idea was ok in itself but the hastily thought up salvage plan revealed a gaping a hole so big that you could drive a Mack truck through it.  The lawyer in whom the Captain had placed his trust was a former committee member and a militant Anti Smoking Lobbyist.  He actually wrote into the draft lease contract that any occupant who was caught smoking a ciggie on the estate would be asked to vacate their position.  On top of this no meat of any description was to be consumed in the grounds and each lease holder had to prove they peddled only eco-friendly wares or services.  I can’t imagine any proprietor agreeing to these strict terms no matter how new age inspired they are and that’s exactly how the bank saw things as well.  Right at the point of foreclosure the Captain’s family came to the rescue with yet another, absolute final handout to save the land.  The arrival of this most encouraging news meant our real estate crisis had subsided for the time being and the only hint of friction that ever manifested was when the crew ran out of pot. 

Joseph was one of the remaining devotees who stayed on the property and he lived in a fully equipped recording studio which was set up out in the barn.  He’s a multi-media zealot from the sixties who was an early pioneer in psychedelic, visual graphics and electronic sounds.  I’ve sat around with Joseph for hours at a time in his studio watching early videos of such things as the Aquarius Festival in Nimbin and protest footage from the Vietnam war.  He and I had a lot in common because we were both writing, composing and applying our skills to the visual arts.  The dome was where I started to compile my transcripts for this book and Joseph proved a great listener as I recited him my latest work down by the pond.  Karen and Phillip were others who hung around the property in it's final days and they were living in a storage shed up near the rainbow adorned security gates.  The couple were born again Christian activists who often helped Caz out around the office and Phil was also producing a ‘Christians for the Environment’ web page.  Often Phillip and I worked side by side at the office computers and he was right there to assist with my many internet blunders.  He displayed infinite patience with my endless barrage of questions and we spent long hours at the screen getting stoned and laughing at the world.  At the end of my computer sessions with Phil I had most of my music beds digitally processed and downloaded onto wave files. 

Yirka our only other neighbour in the grounds of the Wisdom Gardens was a half American Indian with part Chezkoslavakian extraction and he never got involved in the daily operations of the group.  The one who some called our resident witchdoctor lived in a glass front, pre-fab structure at the top of the valley, which was once a thriving retail outlet known as the Rainbow Shop.  Often when the conversation became related to things environmental he’d snap out of his normally lighthearted mood and declare in a firm voice “if humans truly wanted to save the planet then they would live as the ‘Great Spirit’ decreed”.  Yirka, Caz and I were mates from the old days around the cross and from time to time we would share comical tales late in the chilly Blue Mountains night.  So as not to disturb the sleeping children we used to congregate on a tree level balcony with possums hopping around us and our conversations were generally spiced with hydroponic buds and semi frozen vodka.  For the briefest of moments Caz would shed the role of the benevolent group commander and laugh along with the poorboys.  The pressures of life had taken their toll of late and it was good to see him getting loose and grooving with the lads.  The refinancing deal silenced the bank for a while but the Captain and the organisation still had looming debts which threatened to send us to the wall.  Caz was open to any idea that might bring in a substantial windfall, so it wasn’t to hard to convince him the Song Quest project should be further developed.  I went on to explain how three milk crates full of studio dubs had been donated to the project through the years and I had recently stumbled upon the names and contact numbers of all of the contributors.  All that was needed was a written agreement from the artists that they would give fifty percent of their royalties to a benefit fund who's aim it was to purchase the property as a public environment fascility.  If one or more of their songs did well on the international charts it could very well have cleared all of the Planet savers debts and spawned an independent label based on social and environmental themes. Caz  was all for the idea and he even dipped into his dwindling reserves to finance a digtal audio recorder for the project.  I spent the next two months or so dubbing assorted piles of cassettes onto digital tape then I put together a written catalogue of their contents.  At the end of my labours there was enough recorded material for nine albums including children’s productions with environmental themes. I eventually narrowed the list down to a selection of twelve songs which I considered the very best in the collection.  They formed a holistic but gutsy mix of folk songs with solid vocal harmonies and a wealth of poetry for the soul.  It didn’t take long before I started to imagine the songs being performed by the likes of Sting, Joe Cocker, Bette Midler and a host of other international stars.  

The name of our musical enterprise evolved to become the ‘Songs For Survival Project’ which seemed a most appropriate title as the twentieth century drew to a close.  The new name implied more than just a benefit album and a little stage light popped on above my head as I pondered a celebrity concert grand in scale.  The combined album and concert fantasy opened up a whole new dimension of wild imaginings and that’s when it hit me to create a time capsule and send the songs off into the future.  An internet web site went into the early planning stages which would see the environmental messages of our younger subscribers shared at an unearthing concert on some far off and distant day.   The Songs For Survival Project would live on through history and humanity would be just that little bit wiser as it takes another thousand year leap into the future.  My head was buzzing with excitement and I had the best bout of creative frenzy I think I’ll ever know.  I jumped straight on the captains Macintosh computer and produced a step by step plan describing the project in detail.  I proposed that the time capsule would be a giant seed which was forged from recycled aluminium and it would contain a solar powered, digital hi fi.  The Songs For Survival Album would be played at the unearthing ceremony and in conjunction a cast of headliners would perform them at a concert on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.  The date that was assigned to the digging up of the capsule was 2069 which would mark the hundred year anniversary of the original ‘Summer of Love’. I felt like I was being guided in my daily labours by the 'Great Spirit of Creation' Yirka always spoke of. Everything was fitting so perfectly into place.   Through my involvement with the music industry I had aquired all of the necessary experience to make the benefit album and concerts a success and it felt like the most noble endeavour I could ever donate my time to.   The Message to the future web site had the potential to act as an ongoing promotional lever for the Planet Savers music and as luck would have it for my own batch of environmental songs as well.  Every available second outside of the Songs For Survival project was spent compiling my recordings into a final collection format.  I eventually ended up with four albums worth of material which covered everything from traditional folk and the blues, to message related stuff and stupid old love songs.  My Eco-inspired material was included in the list of Songs For Survival contributions which would hopefully rise to the top of the charts and bring great rewards to us all.

In the weeks leading up to the New Millennium I did a few trips from the mountains into Kings Cross to check out the old haunts and re-immerse myself in the Sydney music scene.  I ventured into most of the clubs where record company guys used to hang out to see if they were still around and as it happened they were.  So was everything else that goes with end of year music industry parties and before long I was buzzing around to all of the best events just like in the old days. I reconnected with some of my roadie mates from the Annandale studio who were unloading a PA in the back lane entrance of a Kings cross dive.  The lads had established squats in a large house at Stanmore and they allowed me to use it as my Sydney base whenever I was in town.  The crew were all dealing speed and it wasn’t long before I was hopping into unending lines with them.  The house was a non stop party zone which spilled into the pubs and clubs and turned my shell shocked metabolism on it’s lazy arse.  I accompanied the hell raising roadies to most of their inner city gigs and assisted them with the stage gear to get in free.  Even though I wasn’t paying any rent in the mountains I found that my pension payments were barely adequate to keep up with the crew.  To avoid appearing the poor cousin I brokered the sale of a six pound haul of grass to some Maoris that I knew in Bondi.  This transaction was just the first in a series of weekly orders which meant I could stand at the bar and shout rounds with the lads and not have to worry about the next friggin meal.  The pre-millennium silly season was in full swing and the clubs were buzzing with energy in the closing scenes of the twentieth century.  Techno music had replaced more traditional rock venues throughout the inner city which meant that ecstasy was easier to aquire than a drink of beer at the bar.  On the frenzied, flashing dance floor at Kinsellas I introduced an old pot peddling colleague to a bloke who used to work at the Pussycat.  Our informal little meeting led to a bulk transaction of ecstasy tablets with a street value of nearly a quarter of a million bucks.  I received a healthy commission for my efforts and I didn’t have to touch a single pill.  After the deal had gone through I purchased twenty of the tablets from my long established contact at cost price.  I dropped a couple of the tabs with the roadies at a party we attended in Balmain and who should be the hostess but Sylvia from the Neon Farmboy days.   She had recently broken it off with some bloke or other which left lots of room for touchy, smoochy interplay between us.   The last of my eccies were distributed among Sylvia and her girlfriends then they paired off with the roadies to dance until the next morning.  The New Millennium celebrations in Darling Harbour Saw Sylvia and I falling all over each other laughing just like in the old days when we were working together in the band.  Our sudden re-connection triggered a silly season fling that was just as mischievous and thrill seeking as ever.  Before the party aids got the better of me I managed to take in the sets that were performed by Jimmy Barnes and Paul Kelly who were headliners at the gig. 

It was reassuring to know that those long standing music industry ‘Bad Boys’ can still get a gig among all of that squeaky clean, Yuletide bullshit.  Jimmy Barnes and I used to live just up the road from each other in Elizabeth when we were both denim clad, teenage louts.  We didn’t know each other back then and the first time I ever met him was at a Cold Chisel gig in the infamous Shandon Hotel.  During the break I was leaning on my car bonnet with some of the lads and Jimmy came over to join our group.   As he sucked on a beer and chuckled with the boys he expressed his annoyance at some chick in the front row who wouldn’t stop grabbing his ankles.  Our Rock and Roll wildman cheered up considerably when we pointed out the car belonging to the little pest. It was parked just a couple along from my own.  In a classic display of stoned, delinquent mischief Jimmy scurried over to the girls car and ripped off the black plastic rear window slats.   He placed them just behind the front wheels of the girls car and after the gig he made a special point of coming outside to watch her drive off.  Jimmy howled into the night with the rest of us as she flattened the window fixture then he got one of his roadies to fix us all up with free cans of beer.

On January the third 2000 I woke up in Sylvia’s North Sydney apartment ready to get back to work.  My post millennium hangover had subsided enough that I could kiss the girl a non-committal goodbye and make my way back to the mountains carrying a load of newly acquired contacts in my briefcase.  Apparently in the time I was away from the music scene many of the old crew had come up the ladder and now they held directors positions with some of the major labels.  Among our frantic festivities no specific meetings were arranged for the new year, but the exchange of business cards was a regular feature at the bar.  Most agreed that the songs had potential if they were as good as I said and they might even be able to cross over from the folk marketplace to the mainstream arena.  I figured the tricky part was going to be striking up a deal where the first twelve songs could be re-recorded at the expense of a record company and all of the others would be released by ‘The Songs for Survival’ Independent label.  In the first days of the new millenium the Songs for Survival catalogue and it's accompanying promotional outline became hard copy and the recorded material was transferred from Dat tape onto compact disks.  My own music package was looking just as presentable and I couldn’t wait to kick off the new century by following through on the connections I had made. 

On some of my excursions from the mountains to Sydney I managed to bump into a few of my old busking acquaintances at their various kerbside gigs.  I was interested to see if there were enough studio wise players around to form a band just in case the offers started rolling in.  Merv Mega-star was still there in his same old spot under the neon lit Coke sign and he was giving the audience his usual brand of tongue in cheek humour.  Heavy electrified guitar riffs punctuated a witty and streetwise dose of verbal gymnastics, then he exploded into his best known song, ... ‘She’s in love with a vacuum cleaner’.  Merv is the Iggy Pop’esque alter ego of Peter Bergen who is a great guitarist, drummer and harmonica player.  I thought perhaps if a record company were to sign me for an album deal I could get him to give up centre stage for a while and become a support musician in my group.  Teiwi Richards is another seasoned veteran of that dirty old street and he hails from the original occupation of Bondi by the Maoris.  He's an unbelievably talented rhythm guitarist and singer and when I spotted him he was entertaining a group of Japanese tourists beside the fountain near the cop shop.  We sang a few of the old favourites for the tourists and before I knew it I was time warping back the hay day of our busking careers.  Teiwi is one of the very few vocalists who has ever reduced me to tears.  He plays an impeccable style of rhythm guitar and his soulful lead solos are up there with the very best of them.  As I met up with the old busking crew in the same setting we had originally met it occured to me that the Cross never really changes from one decade to the next.  The characters just seem to die out or move on and they are replaced by others of the same pedigree in the unfolding cabaret of the street.  BJ my old busking watchdog had gone to live somewhere out near Bathurst and Frankie the strip club owner brought a tourist chalet some place up in the snow.   The only nightclub doorman I knew in the new environment was Moose the fun loving, thrash punk kick boxer who I used to share a flat with in Bondi.  He and I were part of the Kings Cross nightclub clan throughout the eighties and we raged hard with some of the toughest men in the business.   Moose got me into the dance club he was guarding which just happened to be the swanked up, latest evolution of the old Kardomha Cafe.   The place had long since been handed over to the wealthy techno crowd and it was no longer the throbbing den of outlaws we had once known.   I shared a couple of drinks and classic dope dealing yarns with Moose during his break then I took a final stroll down the miracle mile and caught the last train back to the mountains.  All the footage we needed for The voice of the people’ documentary was in the can so the first few weeks of the new year were spent offline editing the master tapes and building a video catalogue.  Recorded material from the Song Quest catalogue was dubbed over the final edited production and it turned into an hour long presentation ideal for release on SBS  or the ABC.  When it came time to digitally enhance the masters Roger and I found that our boardroom conspirators had finally got their way.  No funds were forthcoming for the project to go to completion and the thing still sits gathering dust among the Captains archives.  This level of disunifed inefficiency was typical of how things were with the Planet Savers and I shudder to imagine how many other worthwhile endeavours have suffered the same fate. The drafting of my memoirs came to take precedence over everything during the most of 2000.  My involvement with the daily operations of the Planet savers was reduced to token contributions because I had discovered the art of painting with words and it was all I  wanted to do.  Caz was very understanding of my situation and the only time I really saw him was when he popped down to the dome to share a joint and have a yarn.  His latest marketing innovation was a thing called ‘Mind Vitamins’ which was a range of decorative fridge magnets and stickers displaying classic gems of wisdom.  Some of the neatly scrolled little truisms were well suited to the product but others were fluffy, new age clap trap which held little significance in the real world.  The most appropriate I thought and my favourite among his catalogue of eternal truths was a thing that said, ...  ‘The  only  difference  between  the  ordinary  and  the  extraordinary  is  that  little  bit extra’. Our dear Captain was in a debt ridden mess but he was totally convinced that his latest creation was going to save the day.  As the THC settled on his security threatened consciousness he went into excitable raves about how his product was going to be sitting on every fridge on the planet within twelve months.  The Wisdom Gardens were due to go back on the open market in less than three weeks if he didn’t cough up thirty thousand dollars and his family had flatly refused to throw away another red cent.  Any test of Non-Attachment I may have experienced seemed small in comparison to the Captains lot except perhaps for the loss of Rufous.  I allowed him to go to wishful thinking extremes in my presence but at every turn I reminded him of the potential earning power of the songs.  When he had left the dome I jotted down some notes about his place in my memoirs then I dived like a feeding gull back into the sea of literary ideas.