LOTS OF GREAT NEWS
My mother was in a great state of excitement when I returned from the beach.
A reply to my letters to the advertising agencies asking me to ring them.
I did, I went to see the production manager, in a large agency. Before I knew it, I was off to work in the production department learning to prepare the material, from the creative department, for printing.
Little did I know it was to give me a good grounding for later years, long after I dropped out of advertising.
I became the proud possessor of a nice new brown suit complete with flared trousers to fit into this new dimension.
Soon, a big agency wasn’t big enough to contain my new boss. He decided to open his own consultancy inviting me to join. I went,
I was still chasing perfect waves, the bliss of catching a wave of any shape as that initial first wave feeling had never left me.
Eyes filled with light, long flowing dark hair, an exotic European girl, who radiated sensuality was the new studio manager.
Almost immediately, we were having clandestine psychedelic discussions about who’d had a Yellow Submarine or a Strawberry Field ( LSD 'tabs' were given exotic names!) the weekend before.
I was invited home to meet her 'tribe'.
I put on my brown suit, packed my choicest 'heads' and waited patiently for the bus.
From bright sunshine I walked into into a house permanently set at midnight.
I was thunderstruck. Curled up in the corner was another exotic figure. Long curly golden “Bob Dylan hair”, huge eyelashes coated in black mascara like verandahs over a pair of shining blue eyes set in an elfin like face, and atop a perfect body.
'Hanging' with the boys at the beach hadn’t prepared me to meet such ‘sublime creatures’!'They' were Kathy the wondrous night creature,’ Sandy her sister from work and Terry an actor in the famous hippie stage play, Hair, sitting in another corner rolling joints.
This was an entrée into a whole new, colorful world of actors and directors in experimental theatre and film, of musicians and poets, artists and photographers all pushing the artistic limits. And the boundaries of the mind.
My hair was growing longer, my interchanges with my father shorter. Not too secretly he was hoping for the marble with my birthdate to pop up - if he couldn’t make me do my duty hopefully the decision would be taken out of both our hands and the Government would make me do it anyhow
In the meantime, I was busy welcoming in the Age Of Aquarius!
I WIN THE LOTTERY!!!
The dreaded day arrived...the letter from National Service with the results of the lottery! With trembling hands and wobbling legs opened the letter:
Exempted! It was hard to contain my sheer joy and relief. I didn't even have to try the ploys many of my friends who weren’t exempted and who tried to avoid it - one actor painted his little fingernails red and made ‘seductive eyes’ at his interviewer to be told ... he wasn’t the style of a man the military was looking for.
Another disappeared into the waterfront where the 'wharfies' sheltered him until the armistice, already a passionate writer he became a well-known film and TV scriptwriter.
Many colorful stories emerged of ingenious ways to 'dodge the draft'.
Quite a few Bondi boys were called up, some took it as a big adventure, only to return shattered and needing lots of help and therapy.
The inherited concept of 'be a man' and keep those experiences inside destroyed so many beautiful young souls.
The protests were getting louder, a large part of the younger generation were connecting globally along with politicians and people from all walks of life transcending tribes, professions, politics into one loud voice, no labels just one combined 'mission' to stop the war.
I was regularly visiting the smoke-filled rooms of Spicer street, always full of 'creatives' sharing a growing interest in consciousness, what it was and altered states both artificial and natural.
A sense of discovery pervaded, exciting and exotic discussions as we explored new philosophies both spiritual and scientific, and our awareness of beyond our individual physical worlds was expanded.
I formed a close friendship with Kathy.
I’d also become friends with a musician, Paul Gibson. Swept up in the Indian music that was ‘turning on the world ’, he changed his name to Paul Gibsing...and started a band 'KANGURU' playing a blend of Australian rock and Indian ragas.
It was a very 'heady' period full of music, art, philosophy, surf and...'exploring consciousness' as we started to learn and have our own insights and sharing what we were experiencing.
It was clear the ancients had explored consciousness since time immemorial, and it was like we were starting to 'discover gold' as we excitedly shared new insights and experiences and many great connections were being made that were to last to the present day.
We were introduced to Shamanism, Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, free thought and even quantum physic's relationship to many of the ancient philosophies. There were also great "psychonauts" the writers, artists, and philosophers who had been tripping and exploring psychadelics before they were illegal.
A sense of adventure started to stir, my imagination was stimulated by great literature and storytelling, and along with spiritual insights I felt a strong affinity with experiences like Gurdjeff's 'In Search of the Miraculous' and Jack Keroak's 'On the Road''.