Category Archives: Autobiography

Another Coming Out Story!

April 30, 2015Article, Autobiography, biography, Gay Interest, Historybeing gay, coming out, gay closet, Mandate, Melbourne gay scene, Midnight Shifttimalderman

“Life’s not worth a damn till you can shout out – I am what I am!”
Gloria Gaynor – I am What I Am

There is nothing worse than being 9 years-old in the 1960s, knowing that you are different to all the other boys around you, and not knowing how or why, or even having a word to describe it. I was just “Different”!

My father had a word for it though..poofter, though I could never quite work out who or what these poofter people were…perhaps from a country I hadn’t heard of…maybe! In the car one day with dad in the passenger seat, and Uncle Peter…a mate of dads…driving. There was a guy walking along the footpath in a pink shirt. My fathers window was quickly opened, and in unison both father and uncle screamed “POOFTER” out the window. On observing the guy through the back seat window…I could see nothing to help me define that word! However, I have a word to describe my father! It came into my vocabulary shortly after that age. Cunt! As you can already see…this was not a family who would facilitate…or appreciate…my coming out as gay!

Now let me see…what qualities singled me out as “Different”; playing with the girls in the school yard for starters. And unlike the boys, they accepted me into their girls clique with no recrimination or name-calling. I was an excellent skip-roper, and picked up the intricacies of French skipping (done with elastic) very quickly. It could have been my playing with dolls, which my mother actually bought for me…secretly of course! Or my penchant for hiding away in quiet corners and reading books…or my total dislike of sports…my keen eye for fashionable ladies wear…my creative science fiction inspired composition (essay) writing… my artistic streak…my perchant for playing “dress up” in my mothers clothes (which perhaps lead to the evolution of my gutter drag persona…Cleo…in the 1980s)…even my over-active imagination all kept me apart from the other boys I knew. At the beach I was attracted to…and stared at…guys in Speedo swimwear. This was the era of nylon Speedo briefs, and the young men hung very nicely out of them, to say the least. Even the nylon briefs with a “modesty panel” across the front did nothing to hide their manly virtues, as the panels tended to ride up, further emphasising their manliness! And I tore adverts for men’s underwear or photos of lifesavers or any other scantily dressed males out of magazines and newspapers. These adverts, for underwear such as Jockey y-fronts, or Bonds horizontal fly s’port briefs showed no real bulges…but I could imagine them, so to me they were erotic (and now my underwear fetish). I imagined a bulge on the lycra-clad comic strips heroes of the time…The Phantom, Superman, and Batman and Robin.

I also had my first orgasm at 9…and that was something I wasn’t prepared for. I can remember it like it was yesterday. I wasn’t even looking at anything that I fancied…just sitting class, gazing out a window. An erection…which I knew nothing about…just happened. Slightly moving backwards and forwards produced this pleasing sensation…and within seconds I blew. Confusion reigned, as it was such an unexpected occasion. I never mentioned it to anyone, though there was a thorough examination of my cock at bath time to make sure everything was okay. It was! I also started growing pubic hair, which I used to pull out as quickly as it appeared as I was embarrassed by its growth. A discreet viewing of the other boys in the change room revealed no hair on them, so this was obviously a freakish thing happening just to me. My parents weren’t great with the birds and the bees stuff! However, it must have clicked with them that something was going on…perhaps a discolouration in my Jockeys…or the fact that I learnt to masturbate by rolling onto my stomach, and rubbing my cock on the sheet until I came, thus unknowingly creating stiff patches on the sheets…may have been a hint that puberty had started. Nothing like a Christian sex pamphlet discreetly left by the bedside to educate you in the dynamics of sex. I was horrified! No wonder I was confused! Thank heaven for my little stash of adverts!

So I guess I just tucked all my “Different” away. After leaving school, and starting work, I hung out with a large group of people, so I came into contact with other gay guys who were included in our group, and as with many other things in my life, I accepted them on face value. However, they were nearly all in the display areas of Grace Brothers (in Roselands shopping centre), and were very effete…something I couldn’t relate to, so I guess it sort of added to the confusion I was already going through. If gay=effete…then I mustn’t be gay. It seemed logical at the time, especially with no other role models to help guide me through the confusion. So I went through the 70s dating girls, though never making sexual advances to them. It wasn’t even something I considered doing. The girls, in turn, loved going out with me because they felt safe, and knew I wouldn’t go in for the quick grope…and I often helped them buy their clothes. Jo was a girl I used to date who was kind of my “beard” (a term used to describe girls who used to act as girlfriends to stop family from asking difficult questions). She was quite a beautiful girl and I think my old man thought she was a potential marriage mate for me. She did try to seduce me one night, but when I fought off her advances…things must have clicked with her.

The next thing I know, she’s taken me out to Oxford Street in Darlinghurst, pointing out all the gay venues to me and taking me to a gay coffee lounge called “Nana’s” in Bourke St (which became a very popular Vietnamese restaurant in the 80s) where I was introduced to the owner, Nana, and his partner Cupcake.

Author in thev1970s on a solo vacation to Magnetic Island.

Yet there was one occasion when something almost happened. I would have been about 17, and worked for a menswear company at Roselands called E.L. Downes. There was a Clark Rubber store on the lower ground floor, and the manager there, named Barry, who was quite a handsome older man, served me on several occasions. I used to wave as I passed the store, and he used to sit next to me on the bus after work, as we both lived in Kogarah, though on opposite sides of the railway line. As I passed the store one lunchtime, he grabbed me and asked if I would like to go out with him. Without even a blink, I said yes! Told my workmates, and they just encouraged me…and it just didn’t dawn on me that obviously THEY knew I was gay! Talk about naive! Anyway, that weekend I met him at the station…at this time I was living with just my father (my mother left home in 1965), and there was no way I was telling him I was going out with a guy…and we cabbed it into The Cross to this VERY ritzy restaurant called “Mrs Beeton’s Tent”. I’d never been to such a sophisticated…and expensive… place, so was a bit dazzled by it all. Anyway, we got a cab to go home, and he was holding my hand in the back seat. All I could think was…what’s going to happen from here…what am I expected to do! If he asks me home, I’ll go…just to see what happens! The cab got back to Kogarah, and dropped us off at a small park in the main street. He grabbed me by the arm, and started pulling me towards the toilet block, telling me he couldn’t take me home, as he lived with his mother! A toilet block for my first sexual experience with a guy was NOT the romantic experience I was expecting, so broke his grip, said “my father’s expecting me home!” and fled up the street. Missed opportunities! Oh well, such is the life of the shy and naive! Not surprisingly, Barry never spoke to me again, and caught a later bus home from that time on.. When I think about it now, I just shake my head. Considering how outrageous I was to become…I can’t believe my actions that night!

Just after this I started renting with friends in Granville. It was around this time that I started buying bits and pieces of gay porn, and buying “Campaign” newspaper (it became a magazine at a later date). One old closeted gay guy I worked with at Pellegrini & Co knew I was gay, and he evidently wasn’t the only one. My flatmates took me to a party at the home of two gay guys they knew…John & Ray. They had me sussed out in the blink of an eye, but I ignored their innuendo and sly comments and continued to deny it. My flatmates found out by mistake when I went to Campbelltown in the latter half of the 70s to help my step-brothers (he also later turned out to be gay) wife who had had a stroke. I asked my housemates to bring up some clothes for me as I was staying a while, and…much to my horror, and despite a phone plea to ignore the magazines in the drawer (like that was going to happen!)…they unearthed my stash of gay porn mags, and actually kept hush about it until after I came out. In the interim, I had sex with one girl…Veronica…a friend of my female housemate, and who had a young daughter who actually idolised me…just to make sure I wasn’t straight!After having to fantasize about a man to get to orgasm with her, I think the dye was pretty well set…though Barry may have seen Kharma at work, as I shouted her a very expensive meal at the Millionaires Club in Darlinghurst on our first date, and she said no to sex as she wasn’t on the pill…that came after our second date. Yet I still didn’t come out, despite knowing for sure.

Me just before leaving for Melbourne at the Capitan Torres restaurant in Sydney circa 1978

However, circumstances were about to present me with the window of opportunityI needed, and the wherewithal to come crashing out of my closet!

In late 1978 my father committed suicide in bushland near his home in Vincentia, on the NSW south coast.. I am not going to go into details of life with my father, but suffice it to say it was tense. I cried a few crocodile tears, then clicked my heels and rejoiced. My sense of freedom at last was overwhelming! I don’t know what I would have done if this situation hadn’t presented itself. I could never have openly come out to him, as the repercussions could have been dire. As it was, I was moving further and further away…in a relationship sense…from all my family (I am not going into the complexities here, but…oh boy!) so it is possible that to live my own life, and be who I had to be, I would have cut them all off earlier than I did…or maybe Melbourne would have happened anyway, irrespective of anything, and I would just have cut them out of my life. I guess the simple fact was that I was an outcast…the black sheep of my family. One way or another…I really didn’t give a fuck!

In the middle of 1980, the retail company I worked for – Pellegrini & Co Pty Ltd – asked me if I would be interested in going to Melbourne and troubleshooting two stores they had down there. I jumped at the chance. So I flew to Melbourne, set up house in Cumming St, West Brunswick, and started to set in motion the cogs that would change my life, starting a whole new phase that would take me in directions I could never have imagined.

Now, this was no easy matter. Cogs can be complicated mechanisms. The two stores – one in the Myer Centre and one in Hardware Street were in a mess, and by the time Christmas 1980 rolled around, I had not even started having any social life, let alone coming out and banging my way through Melbourne! That was to come! After spending that Christmas and Boxing Day on my own with a bottle of whisky, I decided I needed to do something about it! But what? I went through the classifieds and social group listings in the gay press, mentally started ticking or crossing them out, then going through a process of elimination with the ticked ones, according to where I thought I might or might not fit in. One group seemed to stand out – Acceptance Gay Catholics. I knew not only all the ins and outs of the Catholic Church…but I managed businesses for a Catholic retailer. Seemed like a match made in heaven, so to speak! So I made a phone call, found out whose home the next First Friday Mass was held at, and the next First Friday found me heading out to suburbia to Max’s house for my first gay outing. I told no one I was not yet out, and not being from Melbourne they wouldn’t know if I was or not. Right up to the day I left Melbourne no one I knew was any the wiser.

So the guys all started piling in…and not exactly a pack of spunks, though a couple of lookers amongst them. Turns out the Servite Fathers conducted the masses for them. Not being under the jurisdiction of the local bishop, they were free to do what they liked.

A clone is born…Cumming St West Brunswick 1981.

After the mass there was a meal, then we hit Melbourne for a night out. My first gay club…The University Club in Swanston St. It was gay there every Friday and Saturday night. Started dancing with the guys from the group, and decided to play it safe by dancing with, then going home with, one of the older, plainer guys. At the grand age of 25 I was about to have my first gay sexual experience. It wasn’t the bells, whistles and fireworks I was expecting! In fact…it was a total dud!

Frank, naturally thrilled to bits to have a quite handsome bit of fluff come on to him (actually he made the first move – on the dancefloor! I wasn’t experienced enough to know that if you weren’t really interested, you said a polite “no thanks” and moved onto the next). I didn’t want to seem rude, so said yes when he invited me home, despite fancying a couple of the younger guys more. A steep learning curve here! So, Frank had a car and offered me a night at his place. I can’t remember where he lived now, but it was quite a drive out of the Melbourne CBD. No sooner was I in the car than he had my cock out, and out it remained all the way to his place, despite several near misses due to his…distraction! I often wonder what other drivers thought as Frank’s head disappeared from sight at every red light! Once we got indoors, I decided the ball was in his court and I would leave it up to him to drive proceedings. He assumed I was a young slut and would know how all the mechanisms of gay sex unfolded. Frank was also a bit old and stale, and not the most sexually adventurous person to go home with. From my perspective, I wouldn’t even be leaving the starters blocks with this one. Not an auspicious beginning to my gay sex life, having held myself back for so long. The next morning, it was breakfast, then finding out that I would be getting myself back into the city…on a train. Well, fuck you too, Frank!

At an Acceptance function just prior to returning to Sydney. Fred Diamond (left), Max (Centre) and me.

I started attending not just the First Friday Masses, but Sunday Evening masses as well, held in the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in North Fitzroy, and any of the other Acceptance social occasions that cropped up on the calendar. Thankfully, Frank attended pretty well none of these with any regularity, so it was quite a long time before I ran into him again. In the interim, I found out from Fred – we’ll get to Fred shortly – that he and the other young guys at the University Club that night were quite surprised to see me go home with him. Learn to say no is the first rule of survival on the gay scene!. So over the next few months I met the other members of Acceptance through the masses, or parties in their homes, and get-togethers in a few local eateries, and gay venues such as The Laird Hotel in Collingwood, Smarties Nightclub in North Melbourne, and Pokies, a Sunday night drag venue in St Kilda. My evil plan was working…I was starting to lead a gay life!

In the meantime, I wanted the world to know I was gay. I wrote to my ex-Granville flatmates and ‘fessed up…only to find out that they had known since the night they packed my luggage for Campbelltown. They had met my mother, who I had only just been reunited with prior to coming to Melbourne. On a visit to see her, they notified me by mail, they had accidentally outed me, thinking that I had notified her at the same time as them! They also informed me that she already suspected that I was gay, though she never brought the subject up with me. Years later, back in Sydney, I made no effort to hide my sexuality from her, though on a mother/son lunch in the city one day, she informed me that she blamed herself for it. It became a moot point between us, and she has never really reconciled herself to it. Tough shit! I wasn’t taking a step back for anyone!

After my rather unsettling encounter with Frank, where nothing more exciting than some oral happened, things went from bad to worse. I fell in love with Fred, who edited the Acceptance newsletter, and did a gossip column under the pseudonym of Jodi A Frean. Fred and I had a difficult sex life for the 6 months we were together, and being the innocent I was, I never picked up on the signals about his sexuality. Firstly, he was into light S&M…at least I knew that was, thanks to reading “The Joy Of Gay Sex” before venturing into the Gay void…and secondly…he was a beat quean! He, Danny (who was the second man to fuck me, and went to it like a rabbit on heat) and Jim (who gave me a handjob in the shower, after a swim at a beach house we went to for an overnight stay) were the only three Acceptance members I got off with. Another, Tony, who I should have been more attuned to, as he was more my type, had a crush on me, which I suspected, but unfortunately never followed up on.

At a Mass at my flat in West Brunswich, a very handsome man…Barry (I know…the same names seem to keep cropping up in my life)…caught my eye. He stayed after everyone else left. We chatted, he helped clean up, we drank some more wine, and ended up in the bedroom, where he had the great distinction of being the first man to fuck me. The sheer eroticism and intensity of getting fucked blew my mind! I took to it like a duck to water, and never looked back!

So, that was the start of my sex life. The next thing to do was to expand my horizons. A lot of thought went into it…I wasn’t a risk-taker so the beats held no appeal, no did the shadowy world of the sauna. I had been…unnecessarily… steeling and prodding myself to go to a nightclub in St Kilda called “Mandate”. It was to be another life-changing experience! I was terrified when I ventured there for the first time. It was unlike any nightclub I had been to before in that it didn’t have an entry where you just walked in. The door was closed, so I went and stood on the oppisite side of the street to see what was going on. It didn’t take long for it to dawn on me that, after watching several patrons arrive, that one knocked to gain entry. A security measure, obviously. So, over I go, knock on the door to find that a tiny window in the door opened, and I was being scrutinised by a drag queen. In my clone gear I obviously passed muster, as the door opened, I paid my entry, and up the stairs I went (NOTE: it was a good deal later that I found out that there were also under-stairs activities…though not my scene).

With Glenn W, the Sydney guy, at an Acceptance function. I foolishly allowed him to talk me into returning to Sydney…a mistake for both of us!

Here, I entered a world of men, and music, that set my heart blazing. There was a bar area to the left of the stairs, to the right was a communal area with a barred cruising area surrounding it, and to the rear was a copper dance floor that was to be pretty well my sole obsession over many, nany visits there. I loved Mandate. I loved its masculinity, its testosterone-charged atmosphere, the pure maleness of it. If I had to imagine Nirvana in these early coming out days, Mandate was it and in the not too-distant future, the Midnight Shift in Sydney when I returned to my roots. I had my first pick-ups there, had my first public blow-job on the edge of the dance floor, met some wonderful men including a man called Brian Pryke who I had the most esoteric sexual experience with (and communicated with for a while after returning to Sin City), and some of my worst sexual experiences including a Dutch pilot who had the most disgusting dose of smegma I have ever encountered, and left me with the gift of anal warts. We live and learn! At Mandate I was introduced to dance floor filling icons such as Lime, Phyllis Nelson, Carol Jiani, 202 Machine, Shirley Lites, Tantra, KC and the Sunshine Band, Patrick Cowley, Sylvester, Divine, Paul Parker, Seventh Avenue, Peter Griffin, Hall & Oates, and many other artists who started my ongoing love for dance music. The wonderful nights I had in Mandate will live in my memory forever.

I continued my work and socialising with Acceptance (including some cross-denominational “spiritual shenanjgans” with a member of Angays (the Anglican version of Acceptance) until I returned to Sydney. They gave me a wonderful set of friends that kept me ocvupied constantly, and a rather frantic social life. I think that what disturbed me the most about being an out gay man in a Catholic social group was the “subtle” stigmatisation that we just seemed to accept. Though the Servite Fathers, who celebrated our home masses, were unequivocal in their support for the gay community, the particularly internalised discrimination and alienation that was integral within the Catholic church itself, seemed to be tolerated more so than finding ways to support us. I always felt that much of the support came more from obligation than caring and understanding.

And while talking of the Servite Fathers, I must relate a home mass story here. First Friday Masses were shared amongst the various homes of Acceotance members. When I volunteered my flat in West Brunswick for one, I found I faced a dilemma. Confessions before mass were usually held in a private room, and the only one in my flat was the bedroom. The entire back of my bedroom door was covered in pictures of men in various poses and states of undress…mainly naked…and erect! In my wisdom, I decided that this was not an appropriate thing to have on display in a room where gay men were confessing their sins. Rather than remove all the pictures, I decided to tape a large sheet of brown paper over them. Evidently during one of the confessions, the tape gave way, causing the paper to fall to the floor. Evidently there was a brief pause in the confession as the priest eyed off the door full of naked males, then continued on as if nothing had happened. The exposition was the cause of much hilarity for the rest of the night, with the priest commenting on my “good taste in art” as he departed.

The only other churches that catered to us were St Francis in Lonsdale St, and Holy Trinity Church in North Fitzroy. And even then we could only attend masses at certain times on Sundays. It felt very alienating, and was one of the reasons for me joining the Gay Rights Lobby when I returned to Sydney. For me personally, well….I was an Athiest disguised as a Catholic…just to secure myself a social life, though going through the actions of being a Catholic, and arguing stronly against the banality of much of Catholic belief and doctrine at every opportunity, which caused me no qualms. Only once was I dressed down regarding my staunchly held opinions, and I was stronly supported by the group I was with, as they did not believe in blind faith. There is hope yet in the world.

I went on to become Secretary on the Acceptance committee, and also a member of their social activities sub-committee. But I was about to make a really fucked-up decision that was about to yet again change my life’s direction.

It was at an Acceptance barbecue that I was to meet Glenn W, who was visiting Melbourne, and lived in Waverton in Sydney. It was a period where the Pellegrini head office in Sydney were quietly hassling for my return. Glenn quite swept me off my feet, and after several months of correspondence and with a position as assistant to the General Manager offered to me back in Sydney I rather foolishly decided to return.

So ended my wonderful, unforgettable life in Melbourne. Plans were afoot for a massed goodbye for me at Tullamarine, but to avoid what would have been a very tearful occasion, I quietly flew out the night before.

Glenn W turned out to be a psychopath! Another disastrous love encounter! Would I never learn! But that is a Sydney story! As is the early days of HIV, already being hinted at in the Melbourne gay press. Hard times ahead…and just as I was starting to enjoy the life that “coming out” was presenting to me. The Sydney story was about to begin!

Tim Alderman

Mind The Gap – Sun Herald, Sunday May 28, 2000

November 2, 2014Autobiography, biography, Family HistoryKevin Pickhills, The Gap, Vaucluse, Watson's Baytimalderman

The 1965 incident with Frederick Pickhills was my family, and my brothers death. I have covered the case in my article “Kevin Pickhills – The Unspoken Name.”

Words by Glen Williams
Like the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, Bondi and the beaches, the Gap is a must-see for tourists and locals alike – a place of shattered deams, unsolved mysteries and dramatic beauty.

You are lured here by the view – high above a seething ocean, veiled by sea spray and circled by noisy gulls. The final 25 steps rise from a road that winds back toward the city and all of a sudden here you are – white knuckled, clutching the safety rail, yet drawn closer to the edge. Free-spirited sightseers and single-minded fishermen have all looked down from this spot, captivated by the churning sea and beckoning rocks below. To get this far you must turn your back on Sydney and when you do, its soaring towers and sparkling harbour disappear – replaced by a vast, distant and empty horizon. See the tourists turn their backs to take a photo, of a windswept spot where others before them turned their backs on life.

This is the Gap, Sydney’s infamous “drop off” point, a sweeping arc of wave-blasted sandstone gouged into South Head. Long before there was a Bridge to climb and way before the Opera House welcomed its hordes, this majestic sweep of coastline, in places more than 100m high, played lively in the imaginations of locals. It still does.

It is a place of intense contrasts. Stand at the safety rail, look straight out to sea, and the full brunt of nature hurtles toward you. The noise, a screaming fury, almost knocks you over. Turn around and the harbour and city skyline are displayed in all their glory. And, like the contrasting views, life and death manage to co-exist here.

Ask a Sydneysider their impressions of the Gap and they’ll tell you it’s lunch at Doyles, and a beer at the Watsons Bay Hotel. They’ll say it’s the best vantage point from which to catch the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. And, either in hushed tones or with insensitive grins they’ll tell you, “It’s where people go to jump.”

Howard Courtney will tell you about the night out with his wife and friends which began with dinner at Doyles. One moment he was enjoying the company, the next, he was over the cliff’s edge. “We’d just finished eating and decided to take a walk up there to show our friends what the place looked like in the dark,” he recalls. “We got up to the safety rail and there we found a pair of shoes and a handbag. I looked over the Gap, and down on a ledge was a woman. I could see she was ready to go again. She was crawling out towards the edge. It was dark but I could clearly see her.”

Overcome by the woman’s plight, Courtney kicked off his shoes and socks and, calling to his stunned wife and friends to run for help, leapt over the safety rail and out of sight.

“I didn’t think,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t remember how I got down, and I suppose had it been light, and I’d seen the reality of the drop, I might not have gone. I only know my wife wasn’t too pleased. I managed to make it to the girl. She was crying and I held her and tried to pacify her until the police came. I clearly remember she had scars on her wrists.”

It was March 1973 and newspapers reported how Courtney had clambered 40 feet (12.9m) down the cliff face to reach the 21-year-old woman. She was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital in a satisfactory condition despite a broken leg, internal injuries and shock. Police said the narrow ledge had stopped the woman from plunging 200 feet (60.96m).

“I’ve often wondered what happened to her. Where she ended up,” Courtney, 65, says. “I haven’t been back to the Gap since, but I remember it as a place of dramatic beauty.”

A fence – a sturdy hardwood affair mostly, waist-high and wrapped in cyclone mesh – is intended to prevent people from getting too close to that “dramatic beauty”. But as Woollahra Council carpenters Stuart McKinlay and Bill McLeary know only too well, those wanting to be at one with the view will find a way over the barrier. “There’s a lot of maintenance work,” says McLeary, 56. “We’re often up here fixing the fence. We can’t really stop anyone,” adds McKinlay. “Most are just trying to get a closer look.”

The cheerful tradesmen double as unofficial tour guides of the area and are well-versed in the Gap’s history. As the tourist buses pull up, sometimes 72 in one day, the amiable pair will don their second hat. They’ll point tourists to the rusted anchor from the ill-fated Dunbar, wrecked in 1857 after surviving an 81-day journey from England. Before it could reach the shelter of Port Jackson the ship hit enormous seas and a gale force wind smashed it onto the rocks below. Of the 122 people aboard, only one, Able Seaman James Johnson, 15, survived. “Imagine coming all that way to die here,” says McLeary. “It’s just not fair, is it?”

The men will also gladly help tourists take what they believe is the perfect Gap photograph. “A bus will come along and disgorge a whole heap of Japanese tourists,” McKinlay says. “They’ll race to the rail and take a photo straight out to sea. I mean that photo could be of any sea, any horizon. I tell them to look behind them at one of the best views they’ll ever see. So we’ll take a photo for them, we usually try and line up the Bridge, something that says ‘Sydney’. We’re like ambassadors for tourism.”

Ask them to explain the Gap’s attraction and their initial answer is the view. “Well, as you can see, it is spectacular,” says McKinlay. “It’s also such a well-known place for the obvious reason,” he says, then falls silent. “Um … people like to jump. It still goes on but it’s kept real quiet.”

Indeed, the great unspoken has been associated with the Gap since the mid 1800s. The first recorded case of someone taking their own life here was of 35-year-old Anne Harrison, a publican’s wife who leapt to her death in 1863, after grieving for her nephew who fell from the cliff top. But the two men, who recently nailed plaques detailing the telephone numbers of Lifeline and The Salvos onto the fence, are reminded of more recent tragedies.

There was the man who, in 1993, murdered his former girlfriend then tried to end his own life by driving off the Gap at great speed. “He meant business,” McLeary says. “He tore down here at a million miles an hour, smashed through the fence and became airborne over Jacob’s Ladder – that part of the Gap where the rock fishermen clamber down.”

The car flipped mid-flight and became wedged on a ledge. Miraculously the man survived. “He’s in jail now. They called us straight away to fix the fence.”

Neither man underestimates the dangers of their work, especially McLeary, who admits to being scared of heights. “I’ll climb over the fence, no worries,” he says. “But there’s some spots where you’re right up on the edge. Stu does those.”

Residents of the area moved here to enjoy the ceaseless roar of the ocean and that view. They didn’t intend to be caught up in the broken lives of others or to become heroes. But that is what has happened to some over the years. In the 1960s, Mrs Eve Bettke and her husband Anthony were known as “The Guardians Of the Gap”. Together they brought scores of people back from the edge. In one week alone they dragged back 27 people. News reports from the time tell how the Bettkes, who once lived across the road, kept a vigil from their house, scouring the cliffs for anyone lurking too near the edge. Often they’d invite potential suicides back to their house for a comforting chat.

Don Ritchie, 73, has lived in Watsons Bay all his life and has been involved in several rescues at the Gap. Some of the people he’s saved have actually sent him thank-you cards and gone on to enjoy life. Like the Bettkes before him, he keeps watch over the Gap from his house and has climbed over the fence to talk to people who are contemplating taking their own lives.

Ritchie has lost count of the number of rescues in which he’s been involved. He was awarded a Bravery Medal from the Royal Humane Society in 1970. “That involved a young girl,” he says. “I came home from a function in 1969 about one o’clock in the morning and straight across the road was a girl sitting on the edge in the dark.

“I went over and talked to her and as I did she kept moving close to the edge. I gave the wife a signal and she called the police. The press picked up the message and arrived first. Their arrival unsettled her so I got over and I pulled her back. She was screaming abuse at me and kicking like hell. She got a bit of leverage by pushing off the rail with her feet and she nearly pushed us both over.”

Still, Ritchie prefers to dwell on the Gap’s positive stories. “There’s often people playing musical instruments in the park,” he says. “And the music wafts up over the cliffs, it sounds beautiful against the sounds of the ocean.”

Bill Fahey, 75, remembers being called out to the Gap a couple of times a week when he was with the Police Department’s Cliff Rescue Squad from 1955 to 1985. “Mostly suicides,” he says. “but also injured fishermen and those knocked down by the seas. I tell anyone who is down in the dumps to always hold on, because a new day will bring change, hold on and wait for the new day.”

Fahey singles out one particularly macabre incident in the early ’60s that has stayed with him through the years. “A bloke had pushed his three children off then thrown himself over,” he says. “There were four bodies at the base of the cliff and we had to go and bring them back up. We got down there and there was this fisherman who just casually stepped over the bodies and kept right on with his fishing. I’ve never seen such single-minded behaviour in my life.”

There is a magnetic force at the Gap that compels people to venture dangerously near to the edge, he says. “I’ve felt it myself. Through the years I’ve spent long periods of time looking out to sea. I remember one time sitting, looking over the edge and I could feel my feet being pulled. The water definitely has a draw. The perfectly sane can feel it. But for all the dramas I’ve seen played out there, I still regard the Gap as one of the most beautiful places on the coast.”

Gap historian Claire McIntyre feels so close to those who’ve taken their lives here she’s written a book about them. “They’re not just obscure people who’ve jumped, they’re people like us,” she says.

The former director of nursing believes the Gap is a very spiritual place. “Just to be there is a spiritual experience,” she says. “There’s a definite draw, you can’t ignore it. As I got more involved in the writing of the book, my daughter was concerned that I was disturbing the dead. I totally disagree. As far as I’m concerned these people have a story and they are not just a statistic. I think I’m helping to put them to sleep.”

McIntyre says she too has felt the Gap’s pull. “I love it best on a very stormy, southerly day. I call them angry days. The waves are hurled up the sides of the cliffs and it’s almost like a suction pulling you towards it. To me the Gap is like a magnet.”

It is the role of Rose Bay Police to respond to any incidents at the Gap. On average they are called there two or three times a week, though these incidents are not always suicide related. Today, the Gap’s churning waves and jagged cliffs harbour many unsolved mysteries. Rose Bay officers are still investigating the Caroline Byrne case. Byrne, a model and fiancee of Gordon Wood – a former chauffeur of Rene Rivkin – was found at the base of the Gap in June 1995. Investigators also have their hands full with an unrelated gangland-style murder.

Local resident John Doyle has heard all the stories; the tall tales, the myths, the cruel realities. After all, the members of his famous family have lived alongside the Gap for five generations. As a boy it was his backyard, his playground. “I’ve lived here all my life,” Doyle, 66, says. “I’ve played on the Gap, I’ve been in trouble with the police for climbing down the Gap and wagging school. But it’s a pretty sombre place, really. We lost a really good mate down there. My brother Timmy was playing with him down there and he got washed out through the blowhole. That was 40 years ago now.”

Doyle, who now manages the Watsons Bay Hotel, believes the Gap proves somewhat of a disappointment for today’s tourists. “A lot of people say, ‘I’ve just been up to the Gap and I couldn’t find it’. Or they’ll tell you they’ve seen bigger Gaps in their own backyards.”

Master of suspense inspired by the Gap

How appropriate that the master of the cliffhanger, Alfred Hitchcock, should find himself drawn to the ominous cliffs of the Gap.

It was Friday, 6 May, 1960, and Hitch was in Australia to promote what has become an all-time classic motion picture, Psycho.

“Alfred Hitchcock thinks Sydney’s Gap would be ‘ideal’ for a suspense movie,” David Burke reported in The Sun-Herald, on 8 May, 1960.

He took an umbrella with him. “Just in case I decide to float over the edge,” he explained. “Before I make a picture I must always experience the hero’s emotions myself.”

“He poised his roly poly figure on a railing of the safety fence and looked down on the rocks hundreds of feet below,” Burke wrote. “The westerly blew his umbrella inside out; the renowned chins and jowl quivered with the cold. But his eyes lit up to saucer-like proportions.

“Ah, yes, ideal,” beamed the master of suspense. “I can see it all. The villain has the hero on the edge of the cliff and is slowly pushing him over backwards. We have close-up shots of their faces. Then we have close-ups of their feet, scuffling on the brink. The wind is shrieking … the waves are boiling far beneath … we know how far the hero has to fall.

“At the last moment he wrenches himself free and the villain goes over the Gap. Yes, a really ideal setting for suspense.”

Generation gap

1857 The Dunbar is wrecked in pounding seas on the rocks at the foot of the Gap after travelling for 81 days from England. Of the 122 aboard, only one survived – 15-year-old able seaman James Johnson.

1863 First recorded suicide. Anne Harrison, 35, jumps to her death after grieving the death of her nephew who fell from the Gap.

1907 The Dunbar’s anchor is recovered by divers. It is incorporated into a memorial at the top of the cliff. The wreck becomes a popular spot for divers.

1942 Police Department’s Cliff Rescue Unit is organised.

1960 Alfred Hitchcock, in Sydney to promote Psycho, declares the Gap “ideal” for a suspense film.

1965 Frederick Pickhills of Sylvania, tells Vaucluse police, “I have been over the Gap with my son. I had hold of his hand.” Pickhills was charged with the murder of Kevin Pickhills, 7. Pleading guilty in court to an amended plea of manslaughter, Pickhills was released on a five-year good behaviour bond.

1975 Sydney Harbour National Park is established. the Gap is included in the National Park.

1991 Singing star of the 1970s, Mary Jane Boyd, leaps to her death from the Gap on July 20.

1995 Model Caroline Byrne is found at the foot of the Gap in June.

2000 Police are still investigating the circumstances surrounding Byrne’s death.

From the Pen of an Ageing Dissident

June 3, 2013Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, HIV/AIDS, HumourDarlinghurst, dissident, Gay, HIV, Sydney, UTStimalderman

This article was first published in the Queer issue of “Vertigo”, the student newspaper at the University of Technology Sydney in 2002. It was published “as is”, though I have edited and cleaned it up since.

I’ve spent most of my life sitting on the sidelines of a radical’s playing field

It’s not that I’ve never had opinions; it’s always been more a matter of having different opinions, and a strong urge not to end up affiliated with the unpopular (read losing) team. So, I’ve shut up and put up where I shouldn’t have; sat back and listened to endless tirades of bullshit sprouted by individuals who have no idea what they are talking about; held a glass to the wall while the downfall of sanity was planned in another room; and watched people selling off or ignoring the weight of sane idealism. White-collar elitists undermining the structures of a blue-collar world!

Perhaps I could carry on like this; perhaps I could continue to use my soapbox as a storage devise for my now unused vinyl collection; arse-end my megaphone and convert it into a vase; or start a petition to sue the growers of marijuana for being inept at keeping me (us) permanently stoned. Nothing can change the fact that these days, I am getting fucked off by just about everything going on around me, and fucked off by having allowed myself to keep quiet for far too long.

When I crashed out of the closet in the early 80’s – at the grand old age of 25 – it was into the perfect environment for a potential dissident – the gay liberation movement. Yeah, let’s hear it for gay rights! Sure, if you can find the time between checking out the latest bar, and keeping your cock in your pants long enough to fight the good fight. Naturally, I sympathised with all the boys out there trying to make life easier for us, and sure, I had an opinion. I just didn’t want the opinion to stand in the way of a good time. Oh, I did write a letter to ‘Campaign’ (newspaper, not magazine back then) defending the rights of guys to look like clones if they wanted to – and accused those who didn’t like it as being ‘cloneophobes’. Nothing like inventing a word! Did I ever feel guilty about this lack of radical action? Sure I did, as someone yelled ‘faggot’ at me as they drove past in a car, or I read in the latest gay rag about the increase in gay bashings in the local ghetto. I even determined that I was going to the next rally, or the next kiss-in, or signing the petition that was sitting in my local pub. The problem was that I had to manage to get past the pub door, or get up before midday, or say no to a bit of trade to accomplish any of these things. So I left it for those guys to do. You know who those guys are! They are the ones who wander from club to pub with the petition that you should sign, but never seem to remember. The guys who always had their photos in the gay papers, as they tried to rally a community to action. The guys who always had letters published in the same gay rags, defending us all against the rantings and ravings of the vocal minority, who saw fit to hold everyone ransom to every other standards of morality than those we accepted as right. Yep, those guys! I admired them, I supported them, fucked if I wasn’t even just a teensy bit envious of them for being so out there, but I mean…I was just a 25-year-old male bimbo with a life to burn. I’m sure they understood!

So, the 80’s passed me by. I never did get to any of the gay rights marches, or the kiss-in arranged by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on the steps of government house, or the first march, that political pivot point, that was to become Mardi Gras. I did, however, manage to work my way through three relationships, got the clap no less than four times, and found myself trapped in a frantic lifestyle that generally left anyone caught in its vortex an alcoholic, a drug addict, or dead! Even I, from my ivory tower of intellectual snobbery, sprouted from a bar-room stool, should have foreseen the next chance at radicalism – a bigger stage that I could have acted from, another soapbox to yell rousing, unrhymed verses from, finding uses for milk crates other than what we annually used them for – viewing a parade!

No, not even I foresaw HIV. No one knew the devastation, the heart wrenching desolation, the sheer bloody mindlessness of this pandemic like those of us in the middle of the fray. Behold, another opportunity was handed to me, and still I sat back, still took the easy road, still tried to pretend that tomorrow I would do something, tomorrow…

Sure, like many others I put up the pretence of radicalism. I joined the fringes of the AIDS groups, at least long enough to say that I had done my bit, I shouted members of ACT-UP a drink if they happened to be in the same bar as me after a demonstration; I unfolded quilt panels; attended auctions to raise money; visited the sick and dying in hospital; ranted, again, that everybody was doing something except those who should; then took myself off to the local and again, got my priorities right from my bar stool in the corner. Let it never be said I didn’t have an opinion – it was just aimed at the wrong ears. When I realised it was no longer good enough to fight this battle this way, it was almost too late, and the white-collar elitists had almost kidnapped the whole epidemic to their own benefit.

There is nothing quite like a degree, nothing quite like a network of those in the know to give people a sense of wisdom beyond that of everyone else. It was time to act! Enough of pub politics, opinions whispered into the crotch of the latest bit of trade, the mind numbing importance of yet another drink – like I really needed it – or another joint, or another tab of acid. Life leeching away at the speed of the next line of coke. I had a frightening experience – I got ill. I had another, more life altering experience – I survived the illness. I had the most frightening experience of all – I got older! When I think of all the frightening things that have happened in my life, perhaps the latter was the most frightening of all. Years flying past at the speed of light.

So, like Lazarus, I arose from the dead, marched from the hospital ward and back onto the streets. It’s too late, I kept thinking to myself. It’s too bloody late and you’ve missed the fucking boat. But no, it’s not too late. In an age of complacency and burn-out, there is time still for a yet-to-be-a-has-been radical. I find myself at a rally in support of equal age of consent for gay and straight men, not quite comprehending what makes one sector of the community more irresponsible than the other in terms of sex. All I really find is that the era of great radicals has passed, and no one seems to be moving up the ranks to fill their Doc Martens. The rally leaves me feeling flat, wondering where all the great bullhorn vocalists have gone! Even the turnout is small compared to those of the 80’s. There was no value in rallies and parades anymore. As far as these forms of radicalism go, perhaps I have missed the boat.

I join the underground world of working groups, sub-committees and networkers, and at last started to find the missing flame of righteous indignation. The written word is something I am more than proficient at, and my letter writing on anything from ugly McDonalds advertising to condom use – and misuse – becomes prolific. I discover the hidden world of ‘the article’, and start to churn them out by the zillions. I discuss, initially, disease and its impact on life, but soon find myself drawn to the palliative issues of illness, and how best to survive in a world that barely recognises your existence. Public speaking is my next step up in this alien world, and I suddenly start to realise that it is not too late to be a dissident. You just need the right soap-box at the right place and the right time. Being there when something is happening doesn’t mean that you have to act on it. Sometimes, coming in through the backdoor can be much more beneficial.

Now, as I enter the noughties, I am finding the dissident gene that I thought was missing for so long. I joined groups, both community and university orientated, and feel that in some small ways, I am making a difference. Perhaps more importantly, I am no longer just focused on the smaller issue of HIV, but see potential for being a voice in all areas of disability. What achievements and benefits I obtain for myself I also obtain for others, and vice versa. Make a difference? You bet your balls you can. Shout, yell, scream, demand. Send emails and annoy people until they are sick to death of the sight of you. By the time they reach this stage, they are willing to listen to what you say. Be patient, be diligent, be aggravating. Trust me on this. I do it regularly, and yes, things are happening – perhaps not as quickly as I would like, but they are happening. In many respects, it has given me an alternative view. I used to wonder what the attraction was – name in the paper, photographs at rallies, police record – and like most others, I thought they really just craved attention. Now, when I see a set of stairs being marked so vision impaired people can see them clearly, when I see adverts for note-takers in lectures for the same people, when lighting is fixed in badly lit areas, or just an advert in a lecture about a disability meeting in a faculty, I know what it was that they obtained from all their vocalising and protests. It is that feeling of having done something for the greater good, and that is something you can do whether you are 16 or 60, gay or straight.

Feeling peeved? Pick up your soapbox. Find a patch of grass or asphalt big enough for a captive audience. Raise your megaphone high…and SCREAM!

Tim Alderman
(C) 2013