Last week I bumped into my past and it made me think where have all the larrikins of Macarthur gone.
My old drinking buddy mate Patrick Duffy, a criminal lawyer, whom I had not seen for probably 10 years, certainly qualifies as a bit of a wit and a larrikin, but where’s everyone else.
Dead, most of them, whispers a little voice inside my head, which of course is quite true.
Yes, the pot stirrers, the characters who gave the town’s life a bit of colour – red mostly – and the old fashioned larrikins are mostly gone.
Can’t help wondering if they would have prospered in this PC age we live in.
Maybe they would have defied political correctness, who knows, but we will just have to be content with the memories.
Currently only Steve Wisbey qualifies as a certified larrikin but he has some way to go before reaching the highs – or should that be lows – of those who stirred the pot before him.
Here’s my Top 5 larrikins, ones I got to know since moving from Mt Misery¤ to St Andrews with the family in 1980 and spending much of the next 35 years also working here:
Number 1: the former mayor of Campbelltown Les Patterson is first and daylight’s second, Your Honour. I am sporting a big, fat grin thinking of some of his pranks, including getting Japanese lunch guests drunk in the art gallery.
Number 2. John Hennessey was a pot stirrer without equal. He turned up at one council meeting wearing koala ears.
Number 3. You may not think of the late John Marsden as a larrikin but he was definitely larger than life. He told Prime Ministers, maybe even Popes, anyone who will listen really, that there were two great cities in the world, Rome and Campbelltown, and his town was numero uno.
Number 4. The late Bob Prenter was on his way to becoming one of the richest bastards in town when he had a fatal accident. But Bob always found time to hang around the pub, have a few beers with the boys while shooting the breeze.
Number 5: He’s curbed his ways these days, the Federal Member for Macarthur, but once upon a time Russell Matheson didn’t mind having a bit of fun. A mate of Prenter’s, it was quite funny being in the company of those two jokers.
¤Mt Misery is the old name for Mt Pritchard.
