30 Days in Sydney Read Free

Nambucca Heads. He had worked for Mother Teresa in India. He had drawn a comic strip called 'The Bong Brothers' which was much loved by all my friends, but when he lived in my house he could not even pay the rent. Yet somehow, twenty-five years later, he was the publisher of fifteen suburban newspapers and five special-interest magazines. He was the CEO of a publicly listed company. He was also a member of a syndicate heavily invested in an IPO (an Initial Public Offering of shares). He was worth 24 mill or 30 mill which was, of course, impossible.
    I first met Kelvin after I moved from one side of Snails Bay to the other, to what the taxi drivers called Lousy Road because it was so narrow. Louisa Road was low-rent waterfront on Sydney Harbour with no real downside except the brutal westerly winds and the weeks when the rusting hulks which were sometimes moored across the bottom of our yards left their generators running through the night.
    On the corner of the entrance to the street there was a brothel with plentiful parking beneath. At the other end, just by the ferry wharf, was the house one of my neighbours rented to an outlaw motor-cycle gang, and in the middle was a shipyard, a boat builder, a mixture of tradespeople who worked at the naval dockyard on Cockatoo Island, a taxi driver, an art conservator, a plumber, a writer or two, a heroin addict with no regular occupation, some general bohemians, and people like myself and Kelvin who saw my red Jensen Healey and made enquiries.
    It would take years for Kelvin to begin to accept that I might be a writer.
    You're in advertising? he asked me that first night. Apart from the large manila envelope under his arm he looked like the surfie he had sometimes been. I'm wondering, mate, he said, if you could spare a moment of your time.
    The manila envelope contained the dummy of a weekly newspaper; the one thing he needed was, well, some advertising.
    They were different times. He did not begin by predicting circulation. This, he said, as he pulled the dummy copy from the envelope, is going to blow the power structure wide open.
    In April of the year 2000 I slid into the leather-rich world of his Jaguar. How's the stock market? I asked.
    He grinned. Down three per cent.
    You could sell, I suggested. You'd still be well ahead.
    Nah, can't do that, mate. Too many people depending on me. Who? Well silly bloody Sheridan for one.
He bought into the IPO? You told me not to.
    I told him not to. But he thought I was being cagey, and he bought a lot.
How many?
    Every zac he had. Eight thou.
    What are they worth now?
    Do me a favour - don't even talk about this.
    We drove in silence from the airport. I thought of Sheridan, who was a large ebullient man, so filled with energy and affection. It was terrible to think of him really unhinged, and I quietly resolved to get in contact with him that day.
    Just enjoy being back, said Kelvin. You're on a jet-lag high. This is the moment when everything looks perfect.
    The freeway has changed.
    It's the Olympics. Everything's changed.
    But look at all these flowering trees. They're just so beautiful. You know, I'd forgotten, but we do have the most astonishing plants.
    Jet-lag high.
    They're strange and prehistoric. That's a ha-kea, right? I'd forgotten I knew its name. That's a callistemon, that's a grevillea. It's just great to know the names of things again. I've been reading this book by Flannery. I'll lend it to you.
    Got no time to read, mate.
    OK, this is a fire landscape. These are the fire-loving plants. Fire is one of the things that make this town so different.
    Yes, tell me about it. I still miss that house at Taylors Bay. I never want to see a fire like that again.
    Maybe you could tell me about that fire, for the book.
    What? And be called Kelvinator? No thanks, mate. He pointed to the red bottle-brush flowers as we whizzed past. That's a callistemon if you're interested.
    Yes, and that's a Grevillea robusta.
    Leptospermum.
    It's odd we