Its to be expected some PR operatives are a bit confused: but a sub-editor at Teh West? What a right Charlie!
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The Worst of Perth 
Speaking of dangling (in this case out of the newspaper’s arse), just when we all thought we were going to get some syndicated proper funnies on account of Alston being on leave, Teh West’s management took it upon itself to re-run “some of his best cartoons”. Oxymoron is a word that comes to mind here … as does the its abbreviated form moron.
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And on the same page, can anyone tell me what Government Architect Geoff Warn actually said in his many hundreds of words of waffle. reminded me a bit of Zoltan Kovacs. Is planning good or bad? I don’t know.
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Even planners don’t know that! They just do it!
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i’d wager the answer is ‘nothing’.
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In September 2013, Tey Worst sent business writer Bun Gravy out to meet the late Alan Bond. To help commemorate the man’s death, we are re-running what may have been the rag’s last feature article on this most controversial of figures.
Nothing like a bit of self-aggrandisement
By Bun Gravy
“Alan,” I’m Bun Gravy and I’m a hack for Tey Worst. Are you available to speak with me?”
When told I had to interview Bondy – the high flying corporate swinger from the 1980s who broke all the rules and who had hit the news again recently after his second wife died – I decided that the whole thing was not going to be the usual hatchet job. Rather, I was going to make sure my readers would be exposed to one very fascinating, albeit polarizing, individual.
I rang. Someone picked up. I waited for the reply. Instead there was a silence, a kind of emptiness if you like, on the other end of the line. I tapped my pen impatiently on the desk. I broke the silence:
“Are you there Bondy? I can call you Bondy, can’t I?”
Still more silence. Just as I was convinced I had dialed the wrong number, his response came.
“What is the nature of the call?” he asked.
It was him – Bondy. Sure, his voice had changed over the years (although I had never heard him in person before), and his breathing was a little heavier than I imagined it would be, but it was him. My reporter’s instinct told me so.
“I am writing a feature – a feature! – on the anniversary of the America’s Cup and I was hoping we could, you know, have a chat,” I replied.
There was not a moment’s hesitation this time.
“Of course, of course. Bun Gravy – yes, I’ve heard about you. I think everyone has. Love your work.”
That came as no surprise. Everybody loves my work, because I employ a blokesy laid-back writing style that is informal, but not quite patronizing – just the thing business guys love to read.
After all, who could forget my piece on (Mr X) when I called his Mrs a nice piece of ass, and described him as the guy nobody really wants to like, but do, because this down-to-Earth exec has a country bumpkin humbleness and a degree from Kal’s school of mines.
While on the phone to Bondy I thought about Mr X – how his wealth really hadn’t changed him; how he holidayed in Busselton while all the other mining silver tails in West Perth preferred to go to the French Riviera where they probably chased other nice pieces of ass.
And I recalled my prose as well, especially the part that described how he sat through the GFC like Ali letting Foreman punch himself into exhaustion (a boxing metaphor – all great blokes’ stuff); and how he was a fit looking rooster who could run the city to surf every year. More great blokes’ stuff.
I also remembered the lunch we had at the famed Snout in the Trough, where I had pork bellies in goat’s milk, while he snacked on 700 grams of chateaubriand with a side dish of chips.
“I don’t think the people around here realize how fucked the mining sector is,” Mr X said with the candor of a drunken tourist trying to convince an Amsterdam whore to go down on him with a $25 discount.
“But you boys in the bizzo section of Tey Worst do Bun – you boys are fucking legends.”
And who could forget my searing story about the West Perth mining exec that dressed up like a bum and scabbed change from passer-bys along St Georges Terrace? Pathos? Fuck – I invented the word with that piece.
And so it was I was now trying to tee-up an interview with Bondy. Or should I call him Al? Maybe I could call him Gordon after the Gecko character in Wall Street. Was he the same as Michael Douglas? Did he have the same sophistication of someone with a nice-piece-of-ass-wife in a beach front home somewhere along the Long Island coast? Come to think of it, did he ever say “Greed is good?”
I wasn’t sure – to tell the truth I wasn’t born then, and I only saw the movie on TV one night after stumbling home drunk from the Sunday session. We were all there that night – Wattsie, Nicko and Pete – all with our futures in front of us. And what a time we had, knocking back $12 jugs of Carlton Dry before trying to crack onto the nice pieces of ass that had just wandered in from Cottesloe Beach for a few drinks. I put on the old Gravy charm, telling one of the brunettes that she also had nice tits. My line might not have worked, but it gave all us blokes a few laughs.
Those were the days, I thought to myself before remembering that Bondy was still on the other end of the line.
“What about Saturday at 1.30pm – can I drop by then?” I asked.
“Yeah, uh, sure,” he replied.
The big day finally arrived. I didn’t want to look too formal, so I put on my best jeans, a collared casual shirt and a navy blue sports jacket that made me look like I worked for the Fremantle port authority.
“My God, this is going to be one hell of a feature,” I thought to myself as I drove to his house. “We can talk about absolutely everything – breweries, blimps, Big Red, van Gogh, yachts, the Swan River, the famous laid back WA lifestyle where everybody can have a go, sign painting, Yanchep.”
I arrived and parked the car. Walking steadily to the gate, I buzzed the security buzzer.
“Yes,” a faint voice finally crackled through the small speaker.
“It’s me Bondy – it’s Bun,” I said confidently.
“Okay,” he replied. And before I knew it, the legend himself finally arrived, shuffling down the driveway in his dressing gown.
He led me into the lounge room – a place he had obviously shared many moments with his late wife.
“Tell me something about yourself,” he asked.
So I told him about my fun days at university, my connections with the business world and what a great place the Tey Worst was. I then recounted the times we’d have at the Sunday session, drinking $12 jugs of Carlton Dry before going off for fish and chips. Sometimes I’d puke – particularly if there was too much grease in the batter.
Oh, what fun times they were.
Before I knew it, it was 5pm and time to leave. Bondy led me to the gate and bade me farewell before making his way back to the house.
And that was how it happened; how it was that I managed to concoct a feature about someone who all of my readers would find most fascinating – me!
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Bond was an utter disgrace who should not have been left in charge of a pay toilet.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/alan-bond-dead-paul-barrys-account-of-a-man-who-tricked-australia-20150605-ghgzxm.html
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Bond fucked the Nade goddamm him, the Nade.
The Nade – had been a worthy rival to the Barbary Coast and Capetown’s shebeens, though never quite reaching the standards of Bugis St, Karumba’s bloodhouse or the old Darwin Workers Club.
Over Christmas with 400 boats down for refit, the Nade became little Darwin [and Darwin was a big Nade the rest of the year] bar walls festooned with laminated charts and photos of goldbullion banana prawns spilling over writhing sorting trays, some escaping through the scuppers to flick themselves backwards over mudplains and tidal flats, to lead new schools out of the North’s rivers.
Now the photos are in a museum, the guys and gals who took them are gone, and the Nade they called home during the Wet, when cyclones whipped the Timor and Arafura and boats punched south, arses bucking in the air, screws piledriving, is as silvertailed as the jets that fly in its swish new clientele. He did that.
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I too felt sorry for him in the end. I saw him eating corndogs at the Royal Show, he had a white plastic table to himself stacked with bags of corndogs. Every so often he’d get up and go to the van for extra chili. Passing journos would kick his table. You shouldve told him about your dirty weekend in NZ and how you were knocked back by the biggest moll in Warkworth and just managed to make it through the airport departure gate before her boyfriend and his Mongrel Mob buddies turned you into a mashed kiwifruit. He would’ve appreciated that, i think. It’s called people skills, building rapport with subject etc.
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