Manor from heaven

[grace]

Briefly, there was a time when opium and the like was again the religion of the masses. Forty years ago this week, Woodstock erupted in mud and marijuana and "peace, man" broke out, even though the nation was at war.

 

It came to Australia, too, in the next decade, carried by American soldiers on R&R in their music, in their backpacks and in their hazy, lazy eyes of permanent summer. Australians never needed much encouragement to coast, down tools and take it easy. Woodstock was a wave that by the time it crossed the Pacific was a ripple lapping the sands of Bondi Beach.

 

Hawthornden is perched upon a small mesa that runs off Roslyndale Avenue in the eastern suburb of Woollahra. There is enough flat land to accommodate a grass tennis court and an enormously large, fertile garden with rows of vegetables and flower beds. It was a 20-room mansion with a ballroom, servants' quarters and two dumb waiters that were used to transport drunks back to their rooms in the 1970s when hippies moved into the place after P&O Cruises no longer used it as a Sydney residence for the chairman on the Sydney leg of his grand tour.

 

There was a nominal rent, which was treated as optional if one didn't have a peppercorn that week. As part of the youthful revolution, with its rejection of wealth, the acquisition of capital and expensive objects, the notion of squatting came as validly to us as land rights did to the Aborigine.

 

Hawthornden was the pick of the squats and developed a class system before too long, based on a nebulous cool factor that could not be measured by traditional methods. The coolest couple occupied the main master bedroom with 180-degree views of the harbour from Circular Quay, across the length of the bridge, along the coves of the north shore and along the rim of rocks to the heads.

 

They had a huge waterbed tucked into the corner which gave its occupants – which at times late in the night were many – the experience the owners of the house gave to their paying passengers. Visiting international bands entered the foyer late at night, whisky bottles in hand, joints aglow in the dark ballroom. There was a makeshift band in one of the corners, a keg in another, people jumping up and down on the one spot because real dancing had not yet been invented, smoke, thick in the air like fog, and cries of "Come in, girls aplenty!"

 

Hawthornden was hippie headquarters. By day we took turns to mow the grass tennis court with our tops off, while the women, without clothes, plucked fresh fruit and leaves off stalks that looked tomato-ish. They were called the darling buds of May but when dried out and rolled gave a tremendous push to one's inner glow. It was heaven, although we never believed in such ridiculous concepts.

 

Every night was open house with a huge stew, doused with large cardboard containers of litres of wine drunk straight from the plastic tap. Within the house, couples formed, but people tiptoed at night to find another bed with another soft body, if only for the moment. Morning unfolded very slowly but most were up at the crack of noon. There were filmmakers who made the first documentary of cannibals in Papua New Guinea using Hawthornden as a studio. A medical student doing a course on the effect of cannabis on rats lived in one bedroom. Customs officers brought seized garbage bags of the stuff to the laboratory on campus and it was then dispersed to the needier of us. Another resident was studying the pharmacological effects of speed for a doctorate of philosophy with first-hand field experience. They both went on to become leaders in their fields; one is considered to one of the top medical experts in the world. He has a wonderful serve and backhand and whizzed around the court like a dervish. He never seemed to tire.

 

Another was a salesman who owned a red sports MG and wore a suit by day and cheesecloth by night. Another, my dear friend, an American, deserted from his ship during Vietnam and never left the country. He bought a farm for $17,000 and knocked back $4 million from Christopher Skase. He worked on oil rigs when he had to, and now hasn't had to since 1980. He lives on what nature and cannabis seeds have provided and claims Tab Hunter made a pass at him when he was 24.

 

There were formal dinner parties where candles gave the only light, and bowls of cocaine with tiny spoons were provided during the meals, which were hardly touched.

 

A yearly tennis tournament, the Hawthornden Cup, continued after Sam Gazal bought the house and the grounds during the great heydays of the 1980s. I won the doubles one year and my whole body shook with fear whenever I served. One of the resident movie-makers made a film of the life and times.

 

Ang Lee's film Taking Woodstock is a gentle, loving and winsome view of America in the 1960s. Young people expected to live life and never have to make a living. Work was a disagreeable option.

 

Little of the philosophy remains in our lives today. We now use the health system to repair bodies that we damaged during that time. Who knew? A full life lived loudly was the only currency. But suddenly we cut our hair, went to work and put our savings into super and, at life's twilight, find ourselves without the means to even pay for the lifestyle we had at Hawthornden for nothing. We should never have moved out.

 

Author: Charles Waterstreet - Sydney Barrister and Author

Date: 13 September 2009

Source: age.com.au

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-a...90912-flfc.html