Centrally, generated., Background. Costello's, a retrospective story written decades after the initial events.
Included in the first edition of Hunting the Famous but likely to be excluded from the second edition because of the sensitivity of the material and the potential for misinterpretation.
COSTELLO’S
I was just a crazed young man hanging around Sydney’s red light district
in the late sixties when the thread began.
I had a tendency to pass out drunk in the streets, to do almost anything
to change the way I felt. At 16 I was “rescued” from the city’s only drug
referral service for teenagers by a man called Harry Godolphin – a
strange character who always wore dark sunglasses and had a
fascination for street kids.
I was later to raise eyebrows at The Australian when I wrote a piece on
Costello’s, one of the late night bars where the goings on were receiving
considerable media condemnation during the Woods Royal Commission
which led to various reforms in child protection in NSW.
Basically it was a story about moral ambivalence.
The paper’s editors refused to run it but a reporter with some
understanding of the inner-city milieu used it as background material.
I might not write this piece in the same way now; but this is what I wrote
back then, and is pretty much exactly what happened.
It began:
“I remember Costello’s.
“It was a place where as kids we could go to get off the street, get warm,
get bought a drink, a feed, find somewhere to sleep for the night. For
many of us it wasn't the place of pedaristic evil that it is being daily
painted in the media and the Police Royal Commission.
“In the early 1970s Costello's was one of the only places in the Cross
where young people were welcome. While the evidence from some of
the witnesses before the Commission may suggest that they were
permanently psychologically damaged by what went on in the less public
realms upstairs, how much of this derives from the impact on already
disturbed adolescents of the stigma that was attached to homosexuality
in those days is a moot point.
“For a lot of us Costello's was one of the only places you could go to get
off the street, away from the cops and the wierdos. They didn't have
youth refuges in those days. There wasn't a queue of social workers
waiting to help us. No one wanted to know. Our parents certainly didn't.
“Going back home was never an option. And for many kids I'm sure it
isn't an option today. No – I don't support 12-year-old kids being sexually
abused. If there's one thing I hope to achieve in life it would be that my
own children have a happier less emotionally distressed youth than I
ever did. But let's get all this into some sort of perspective. Does anyone
seriously expect us to believe that you can't buy 14, 15 or 16 year olds in
Sydney in the 1990s? That to this day an endless stream of sexually
confused young men aren't coming in from often abusive homes in the
suburbs, seeking adventure, affection, somewhere to sleep. And that
most of them, like myself, go on to have careers, wives or lovers,
children.
“If I had to point to one thing that had scarred my life more than any
other, it wouldn't be the number of queens who admired my young
body.
“I remember, drunk as a skunk, standing at the top of William Street, and
out of all the miserable chaos of that night one phrase from a passer-by:
‘He should be at home with his mother.’”
“And around the same period, passing out literally in the gutter outside
Circular Quay, blind drunk again. Out of all the hundreds of office
workers bustling home to the North Shore, it was a gay man that picked
me up and washed the vomit off me, let me have a shower at his house,
gave me a change of clothes. It was gay men who encouraged me to
finish my schooling by correspondence. Who taught me to appreciate
music, books, the art of conversation. Who encouraged my first
stumbling efforts to write.
“Who, when I was homeless, sometimes for weeks on end, would give
me shelter, food, clothes. Who in later years helped me through
university when my own father wouldn't because only pinko communist
poofs went to university.
“Most of us came from pretty miserable home lives. We were utterly
starved of affection. But there was always a queue of queens ready to
take us home, buy us drinks, lavish us with attention, boasted about their
conquests afterwards. They were often kind, they were often lonely,
often alcoholic.
“A few I remember with affection to this day. People like old Hugh, a
retired doctor in his seventies, long dead now, who treated us all as if we
were his own children. He was too much of a gentleman to ever ask for
sex. ‘Oh no dear, you're all much too beautiful, I've already had one heart attack,’ he would say when
we offered. But he listened to our problems, cared about us, gave us
money and advice when we needed it.
“A lot of young men around the Cross were very saddened by his death.
For me, old Hugh was one of the first adult men who had ever actually
cared about me, who I was, what I was feeling; who I could go to for
help, who was proud of me for trying to complete my education.
“In the end, who was using who?
“At the back of Costello’s was the dance floor. At the front the main bar.
If you were in any way different or remotely adventurous in Sydney in
those days, sooner or later you would end up there. As someone who
was there, raking over the coals of what happened in that bar more than
20 years ago strikes me as very odd. For everyone who was tormented,
for whatever reasons, by their early sexual experiences, there are
probably dozens of others that owe their present lives to our so-called
predators, to the kindness of strangers.”
Back then, hanging around Harry Godolphin’s strategically located
terrace with spectacular views of Sydney, long since replaced by up-
market apartments, calmed me down.
Unlike the drug counselors of today, Harry gave me my first LSD trip and
took me to see the musical Hair. The Age of Aquarius had arrived in
Australia.
Harry Godolphin died of lung cancer in a Mullumbimby Hospital while I
was on a country trip for The Sydney Morning Herald. There was a time
when the petrol company Shell in conjunction with the Royal Agricultural
Society lavishly sponsored an annual tour of New South Wales, the
perfect way to spend two weeks out of the office.
At the time The Sydney Morning Herald was lapping up rural stories.
Some years I won a prize for the journalist who had published the most
stories during the trip.
The traveling troupe was near the Riverina town of Griffith in the
irrigation districts of southern NSW when I heard the news.
The nurses from Mullumbimby Hospital had been ringing, asking who
Harry was. They didn’t understand him, didn’t know who he was and
nobody in the area seemed to know much about him.
The nurses asked if he had any family. No, he didn’t, not that I was
aware.
Did he have any friends they could contact?
I didn’t have a clue who he did or did not know up that way.
For the next few hours after hearing the news I stared out the bus
window at the burnt beauty of the passing Australian landscape.
I did not know what to do, juggling in my head an old friendship with the
commitment to file stories for the paper on the lengthy tour.
I could have got off the bus then and there and made the thousand or so
mile trip to Mullumbimby to be at the funeral. I didn’t.
I was too busy being a big pooh-bah journalist and too worried about
what not filing a few bloody stories might do to my at last burgeoning
career.
It was an absence I felt guilty about for a long time.
Ever since then I’ve made a point of going to the funerals of those I know
who have died, convenient or not, and always encourage anyone having
doubts about pulling themselves through the trauma and inconvenience
of a funeral to do exactly the same.
Simply put, they are a mark of respect for lives that were. Funerals are
also a way of supporting distressed family members, a sign of sympathy
for often sad, bewildering and pointless deaths; a way of saying goodbye
to someone who was part of your life.
Included in the first edition of Hunting the Famous but likely to be excluded from the second edition because of the sensitivity of the material and the potential for misinterpretation.
COSTELLO’S
I was just a crazed young man hanging around Sydney’s red light district
in the late sixties when the thread began.
I had a tendency to pass out drunk in the streets, to do almost anything
to change the way I felt. At 16 I was “rescued” from the city’s only drug
referral service for teenagers by a man called Harry Godolphin – a
strange character who always wore dark sunglasses and had a
fascination for street kids.
I was later to raise eyebrows at The Australian when I wrote a piece on
Costello’s, one of the late night bars where the goings on were receiving
considerable media condemnation during the Woods Royal Commission
which led to various reforms in child protection in NSW.
Basically it was a story about moral ambivalence.
The paper’s editors refused to run it but a reporter with some
understanding of the inner-city milieu used it as background material.
I might not write this piece in the same way now; but this is what I wrote
back then, and is pretty much exactly what happened.
It began:
“I remember Costello’s.
“It was a place where as kids we could go to get off the street, get warm,
get bought a drink, a feed, find somewhere to sleep for the night. For
many of us it wasn't the place of pedaristic evil that it is being daily
painted in the media and the Police Royal Commission.
“In the early 1970s Costello's was one of the only places in the Cross
where young people were welcome. While the evidence from some of
the witnesses before the Commission may suggest that they were
permanently psychologically damaged by what went on in the less public
realms upstairs, how much of this derives from the impact on already
disturbed adolescents of the stigma that was attached to homosexuality
in those days is a moot point.
“For a lot of us Costello's was one of the only places you could go to get
off the street, away from the cops and the wierdos. They didn't have
youth refuges in those days. There wasn't a queue of social workers
waiting to help us. No one wanted to know. Our parents certainly didn't.
“Going back home was never an option. And for many kids I'm sure it
isn't an option today. No – I don't support 12-year-old kids being sexually
abused. If there's one thing I hope to achieve in life it would be that my
own children have a happier less emotionally distressed youth than I
ever did. But let's get all this into some sort of perspective. Does anyone
seriously expect us to believe that you can't buy 14, 15 or 16 year olds in
Sydney in the 1990s? That to this day an endless stream of sexually
confused young men aren't coming in from often abusive homes in the
suburbs, seeking adventure, affection, somewhere to sleep. And that
most of them, like myself, go on to have careers, wives or lovers,
children.
“If I had to point to one thing that had scarred my life more than any
other, it wouldn't be the number of queens who admired my young
body.
“I remember, drunk as a skunk, standing at the top of William Street, and
out of all the miserable chaos of that night one phrase from a passer-by:
‘He should be at home with his mother.’”
“And around the same period, passing out literally in the gutter outside
Circular Quay, blind drunk again. Out of all the hundreds of office
workers bustling home to the North Shore, it was a gay man that picked
me up and washed the vomit off me, let me have a shower at his house,
gave me a change of clothes. It was gay men who encouraged me to
finish my schooling by correspondence. Who taught me to appreciate
music, books, the art of conversation. Who encouraged my first
stumbling efforts to write.
“Who, when I was homeless, sometimes for weeks on end, would give
me shelter, food, clothes. Who in later years helped me through
university when my own father wouldn't because only pinko communist
poofs went to university.
“Most of us came from pretty miserable home lives. We were utterly
starved of affection. But there was always a queue of queens ready to
take us home, buy us drinks, lavish us with attention, boasted about their
conquests afterwards. They were often kind, they were often lonely,
often alcoholic.
“A few I remember with affection to this day. People like old Hugh, a
retired doctor in his seventies, long dead now, who treated us all as if we
were his own children. He was too much of a gentleman to ever ask for
sex. ‘Oh no dear, you're all much too beautiful, I've already had one heart attack,’ he would say when
we offered. But he listened to our problems, cared about us, gave us
money and advice when we needed it.
“A lot of young men around the Cross were very saddened by his death.
For me, old Hugh was one of the first adult men who had ever actually
cared about me, who I was, what I was feeling; who I could go to for
help, who was proud of me for trying to complete my education.
“In the end, who was using who?
“At the back of Costello’s was the dance floor. At the front the main bar.
If you were in any way different or remotely adventurous in Sydney in
those days, sooner or later you would end up there. As someone who
was there, raking over the coals of what happened in that bar more than
20 years ago strikes me as very odd. For everyone who was tormented,
for whatever reasons, by their early sexual experiences, there are
probably dozens of others that owe their present lives to our so-called
predators, to the kindness of strangers.”
Back then, hanging around Harry Godolphin’s strategically located
terrace with spectacular views of Sydney, long since replaced by up-
market apartments, calmed me down.
Unlike the drug counselors of today, Harry gave me my first LSD trip and
took me to see the musical Hair. The Age of Aquarius had arrived in
Australia.
Harry Godolphin died of lung cancer in a Mullumbimby Hospital while I
was on a country trip for The Sydney Morning Herald. There was a time
when the petrol company Shell in conjunction with the Royal Agricultural
Society lavishly sponsored an annual tour of New South Wales, the
perfect way to spend two weeks out of the office.
At the time The Sydney Morning Herald was lapping up rural stories.
Some years I won a prize for the journalist who had published the most
stories during the trip.
The traveling troupe was near the Riverina town of Griffith in the
irrigation districts of southern NSW when I heard the news.
The nurses from Mullumbimby Hospital had been ringing, asking who
Harry was. They didn’t understand him, didn’t know who he was and
nobody in the area seemed to know much about him.
The nurses asked if he had any family. No, he didn’t, not that I was
aware.
Did he have any friends they could contact?
I didn’t have a clue who he did or did not know up that way.
For the next few hours after hearing the news I stared out the bus
window at the burnt beauty of the passing Australian landscape.
I did not know what to do, juggling in my head an old friendship with the
commitment to file stories for the paper on the lengthy tour.
I could have got off the bus then and there and made the thousand or so
mile trip to Mullumbimby to be at the funeral. I didn’t.
I was too busy being a big pooh-bah journalist and too worried about
what not filing a few bloody stories might do to my at last burgeoning
career.
It was an absence I felt guilty about for a long time.
Ever since then I’ve made a point of going to the funerals of those I know
who have died, convenient or not, and always encourage anyone having
doubts about pulling themselves through the trauma and inconvenience
of a funeral to do exactly the same.
Simply put, they are a mark of respect for lives that were. Funerals are
also a way of supporting distressed family members, a sign of sympathy
for often sad, bewildering and pointless deaths; a way of saying goodbye
to someone who was part of your life.
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