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Paul in setting up this interview, Uh, you emailed me a couple of your thoughts in terms of what you may want to talk about. And you emailed me saying, Do you want details of my dysfunctional family selling my body on the first avenue at New York City, dancing with Nina Simone in a Sydney nightclub, serving beer to Marlene Dietrich at a party given by Ava Gardner and my HIV story? And I'm thinking, yes, I look all of that and more all of that and more so I'm [00:00:30] not sure where where do we start? That was the tip of the iceberg. I must say none of those things are very important in my life. But the, uh it's interesting that, um when I mentioned those and and they're big name people is that my life turned out to bumping into these people. And I think serendipity played a big part in my life because I did come from a dysfunctional family having an alcoholic father. I think that is a necessary result, [00:01:00] um, of, uh, not being fathered, Um, a father who wasn't able to behave like a father because he was in the throes of alcoholism for most of my life. And, um, because I was the youngest in the family of four. I experienced it to the full, because that's when he got worse as he got older and he died quite young at 64 and I turned 70 this year, so I'm six years older than he was when he died. It was [00:01:30] his birthday, actually, uh, last week. And, um, he, um I've learned to forgive him because this is where the dysfunction came in. I never really loved him. He wasn't one of those, um, loving fathers. He was badly fathered himself, and he passed it on. So the rest of the family, um, reacted in different ways to him. But in my way, uh, I had a, uh It probably adds to my [00:02:00] being gay as well, because I've never had the love of a man in my life. Where where did you grow up I? I was born in, uh, in a little town in the north west of New South Wales called Place of Wild Honey. And, uh, the Aborigines were there, but very much invisible. And I found later to my distress that they were on a mission station and being mistreated like all the Aborigines were in Australia. [00:02:30] But at the age of five, we moved with the, um the foresight of my mother to Gosford, which was a little town midway between Sydney and Newcastle, where my father had been promised a news agency, which fell through, actually, but, um, because we had a a news agency in moral, which he had bought, uh, after the [00:03:00] farm that he'd inherited from his father, who was a farmer. My father was never going to be a farmer. He, uh but he was given a property on marrying my beautiful mother in Sydney in 1929. And, um uh, it didn't work out. So they thought, Well, he likes books and newspapers and things like that. So they bought a news agency which functioned very well, but in a small country town [00:03:30] and a man who was really Although he was born in the country, he was bred in Sydney City and he was quite a lad. He, uh, just got together with the other men in the country town, played cards and drank, and that's all they did. This was, um, before the war I was born at the right at the end of the second World War. And so, um, five years in, which was I don't remember very much, but it was a tiny little [00:04:00] township. But it's a good way to begin my life. And then I really grew up in Gosford and And you were saying that, um uh, that that that you identify as gay so as a as a as a young child, I mean, did you did you know that? Did you know what gay was? Did you identify? I've got a little photograph here. I'll show to you. That's the youngest photograph I've ever had because we didn't have cameras when I was born. I think I was about 18 months there or two years [00:04:30] that was taken on Ocean Beach on the central coast. We went on holidays there from, um, uh, summer holidays. We went down that road and I truncated that photograph because I'm wearing a woolly, um, swimsuit there that you did with a strap around it. And I was sporting a gigantic erection. And I was so embarrassed when I got older to see me as a two year old toddler with an erection [00:05:00] that I cut it off and I don't know how symbolic that was, but and I was lost. I got lost from my mother and father on that, and I was crying and I I I'd run away. I didn't really run away, But that's the earliest photograph of me. And, um, as much as I didn't know what sex was when I was two, I was sporting an erection then and later, when I discovered what it was, I used it quite a bit in the rest of my life. [00:05:30] But I looking back, I felt a strange attraction to men. When I was a preteen boys at school, I had school boy crushes. But, uh, I was also attracted to women. And I had lots of girlfriends and, uh, didn't really have a boyfriend until I felt hook line and with my first lover when I was 23. [00:06:00] And that was in Paris in those early years as a as a, um, pre teenager or a teenager. Were there words that were being used for gay people? I mean, no, gay gay wasn't around then a, I suppose, And, uh, I remember when I finished school. I had a quite an illustrious ending at school. I was the head prefect and I was ducks at the school. And, you know, everybody expected me to do big things. My [00:06:30] but I wasn't really very academic. And I wasn't keen on studying. Although I got a scholarship to study, um, to become a teacher, which I taught because we didn't have any money. It was a poor family. And, um So I went to Newcastle University, although I would have preferred to go to Sydney. But Newcastle was good. And that's where, uh, I met somebody who had changed my life because my life had been special points of changing. Um, and I can, [00:07:00] um, look at certain things that happened. For instance, when I was a student, I went to a very small Christian brothers college at Gosford, so being the head boy in ducks wasn't any really big thing, but it just happened to be that way. And I've got AAA tail end of that story because recently I was invited back to present awards at that school because I've been a 50 50 years since I was the head boy there, and I gave a speech, [00:07:30] uh, on World AIDS Day and I came out to my old school. Anyway, that's another story. But it was a very important thing, because in those days, um, you know, being gay was not an option. It didn't exist, especially in my family. But when I went to Newcastle, I remember being attracted to looking at muscle magazines and things like that. That's when the first penny started to drop. But for two years at Newcastle University, [00:08:00] there still wasn't an outlet format until I went to Sydney. And when I went to Sydney, then the penny dropped. And so what year was this? That would I left. I was a young school leaver. I left when I just turned 16. It was 1961. So in 1961 Sydney, what was that 1/2 years in Newcastle? I went to Sydney in 63 63. Sydney had just started to have a little bit of gay culture. The purple [00:08:30] onion was open, which I didn't go to, but I used to go to occasionally to share the ivy, which was a bar with a sauna attached to it at Bondi Junction And, uh, that was my first discovery. Of all things a bit in drag and gay. There were drag queens there. Uh, so that would be 1960 three and 45 and six. I spent five years in Sydney, then been going to changing [00:09:00] universities and, um, dropping out of faculties. And then when my father died in 1967 I've been studying law. I felt free to drop law and fulfil my dream of going to France. But by then I knew that I was attracted to men, and I'd had a lot of one night stands with men that I'd picked up. And in Sydney, of course, being an international city, I'd met a few overseas people, and I was always attracted to people from other countries. [00:09:30] Actually, the first boy I lived with him for a while was from Tunisia. He was a beautiful Tunisian boy who fell in love with me. I didn't know what love was, but I do know that he was in love with me. And, um, we lived together in Darling Point in a little shack, darling Point, the most expensive part of Sydney. And, um, I fondly look back on him. I don't know what happened to him, but yes, he was in love with me. And I was [00:10:00] in lust with him, I suppose. But it didn't last too long because I could see that he was getting interested in me. And I knew I was a free spirit. I needed my freedom. And sooner or later, um uh, I managed to, uh, leave Australia and go to France, which is where I wanted to go. I always had a love affair with friends because getting back to my schooling, we didn't have a very good education system with the [00:10:30] Christian brothers. They weren't very good teacher, but there were some good ones. But because my family, when they didn't get a news agency in Gosford, they opened the first bookshop in Gosford. One bit of, um, I have to look at the good things my father gave me, which was love of books. I grew up in a bookshop. And because we had the only book shop in Gosford and the first one there, um, we attracted anybody who could read. Any literate person in Gosford came to us and so we met the right people in Gosford. [00:11:00] There weren't that many, but one of them was a French woman, French Canadian woman who was married to an American. And, um, she used to come into our shop. Um, and her her French perfume just knocked me dead. I love fell in love with French perfume ever since. I've always bought expensive French cologne, but I managed to get her to come to our school to teach us French oral. So from a very early age, I was able to speak French. And that [00:11:30] little serendipity, I call it the luck of the draw was instigated by me. But it was luck as well. My father at a bookshop, Rose Carmichael came in beautiful French woman. And she taught me to speak 13 when I was still forming my veil and how to speak perfect French. And that stood me in very good stead for later when I dropped out of French and went to Paris. Um, just one [00:12:00] question before we go to Paris, would did you ever have any issues around? Um, your homosexuality? Well, it's funny because, um, I felt these urges and I mean, I remember having a bit of mutual masturbation with one of my school mates, but, you know, everybody did it. Um, it was forgotten because the girls were there and you were passing girls. And, uh, that was it, though, because you couldn't [00:12:30] have sex with them. And this was part of my big frustration. Of course, Is that when I started to reach puberty, which was a bit late, Um, I mean, I was probably 18 when I lost my virginity, and that was to, um, a Danish countess. So I started off at the top end. I lost my virginity to a Danish countess on the beach at where I was a beach inspector, and it was a very fraught situation because she did not want to lose her [00:13:00] virginity. She was a virgin. And when I say I lost my Virginia her I was the first time I realised I was ejaculating and, uh see, I wasn't masturbating before then either. So I was very slow arrival to the sex scene. And it was a very traumatic experience because she wouldn't allow me to have full penetrative sex because she was a virgin. But that was the first time I remember ejaculating, and, um, it was a I didn't know what it [00:13:30] was. You know, I was so ignorant about it. But soon after, of course, I discovered men taught me a lot more about sex, and it was much easier with them, and it was much more satisfying. But I was still having very good sex with girls as well. But of course, with girls came a lot of baggage. And, um, I kept on having sex with women well into my thirties and had lots of, um [00:14:00] I remember all the women that I went to bed with, but I don't remember all the men. I mean, the number of men I would have gone to bed with would number in the thousands. Whereas the women would be probably about 20 and I I know them all, and I was still very fond of them, too. Was more of a being fond of them without being in love with them. So would you use any form of label to identify your kind of sexuality? Like I mean, I? I use the word gay, but [00:14:30] I mean, would you would you use the word gay? Uh, now? Well, it's true. It took me a while. to actually say I'm gay because obviously I'm bisexual. I think most people are bisexual. Uh, it's just that a lot of them don't express it. Um, and I've noticed living in Tasmania for three years. And here, um uh, New Zealand's got a parallel. There are so many gay men who have got married because it wasn't permitted to be gay in their culture. [00:15:00] Um, luckily, I never got married, although I tried to once because I felt I wanted to settle down and, uh, there was, um I think all gay men want to settle down eventually. And I had women in love with me so I could have done it. But anyway, that's another story. It didn't happen, thank goodness. But as far as sexuality goes, I used to say I was pansexual because, um, [00:15:30] I'm a little bit like Germaine Greer, the Great um, Australian, um, female EU author, who was also a Catholic educated girl who went a bit crazy when she came out. I went crazy when I discovered sexuality, too. And I'm a very sexual person. I'm creative as well. I think it goes hand in glove and, um, for a while. Sex ruled my life. I was addicted to sex. I can quite honestly say I was a sex addict [00:16:00] in the seventies as a lot of men were. And of course, it had its effect, didn't it? I contracted HIV the very moment I did that. I even remember the person the exact moment it happened. Want to hear about it? Well, it was just after I actually had proposed to my the lady I was living with, because at that stage in my life, I had, um an absolute, uh, [00:16:30] I was a health fanatic. In a way. I knew from an early age that that, um what I ate was very important to my health. Although we grew up with a very in a very ignorant cooking household. My mother was a reasonable cook, but we just ate to live, and that was about it. But I knew that food was very important. And, um, uh, I discovered food. Possibly when I lived in Paris in my early twenties. But back in Melbourne, [00:17:00] when I was, uh um well, on to my thirties, um, I met a woman who was, um, true and Wigmore, who is a very famous health guru in the world. The woman who discovered wheatgrass juice and, um, she'd been brought to Australia by this girl who eventually became my girlfriend and near wife. And Anne Wigmore is the most charismatic [00:17:30] woman I've ever met out of the many people I've met and I've met a lot. She was one of the most charismatic, and she liked me, too. And we did have something special. She wanted me to join her, actually on one of her cruise ships where she taught health food. But she was a victim of the federal Drug Administration in America. And not very long ago, probably about 15 years ago, she died in a fire in her building [00:18:00] in Massachusetts, and I'm quite sure that was orchestrated. And she was murdered because she was bringing health naturally to people. Anyway, I met Anne and um was introduced to wheatgrass juice and also to Jane, and we ran a live food business together, and, uh, she was growing the wheat grass, and we had people come to us all around Melbourne who had, uh, diseases they couldn't [00:18:30] look after. And we believe that a detoxified body, the body can cure itself. the old Hippocratic of If you give your body the right situation will cure itself. And I've always lived by that. And that's part of the reason that I'm still here and healthy today, because I never I always knew that HIV, when it came along, would not kill me, although for a while I doubted it's, uh, efficacy. And I do have to accept now that it is a deadly virus. [00:19:00] But for quite a while I did not believe that. But anyway, the night I contracted HIV, the only time I've had unsafe sex ever. And it was after I'd broken my relationship with Jane, and that was the result of me going away on a sexual discovery weekend, which she had orchestrated to the country with an American guru of that stage with the seventies. Don't forget, we're all discovering everything, and [00:19:30] I mean, when I went to America in 1969 I mean, I cut my teeth on Timothy Leary and I was in the West Coast in the late sixties when, you know, um, sex was rampant and I was discovering myself. I was and I was a young, attractive Australian, so I was up for grabs. I was all over the place anyway, I went to this sexual weekend. And of course, um, there [00:20:00] was a lot of people talking about sex there, and I came back and told Jane that it was a lovely weekend and of course, she I we knew that we were both bisexual. Everybody was bisexual. And I told her that I'd had sex with one of the boys on the weekend and she hit me in a bit of rage. She hit me anger, and I'm not good coping with anger at all. II I regress, I retreat and I retreated very much into my shell and [00:20:30] told her that there was no future for us because I number one I was bisexual or gay, and, uh, I couldn't cope with anybody who was going to hit me. But I felt so guilty about that because I had promised to marry her. And she was in love with me that I went out and trashed myself in one of the sex clubs in Melbourne. And I think underneath it all, I knew what I was doing because I had unprotected sex was 1983 and, um I had a lot [00:21:00] of unprotected sex with one person in particular. And of course, two weeks later I had the flu symptoms which were the very well known symptoms of HIV. But because I was leading such a healthy life, I didn't test positive for another five years till 1988. By that stage, I knew that I was going to survive anyway. And the phone call I got when I'd left Melbourne because I'd spent [00:21:30] five years in the War of AIDS in Melbourne, which was a real war, as anybody who lived through that No. And I was. I remember sitting through a night with the first person who died of AIDS in Melbourne. We used to take it in turns, going to his house because I was one of the first of the, uh, AIDS helpers there. I joined the support group and he was covered in cup of cyclo and dying. And so [00:22:00] I saw what it was like to die of AIDS. And then my friends started dropping like flies. So in 88 when I left Melbourne, I needed to retreat. I went back up to Gosford. I was offered a job in an art gallery, which was a great job. And, uh, that was another seminal point in my life because, as I mentioned, I'm jumping all over the place. But, you know, I had, uh, for instance, when I left Australia [00:22:30] in 1969 to 1968 my father died in 67. I was free to leave. I didn't have any money because I've been at university for six years, not earning any money except odd jobs. I got a job as a taxi driver in Sydney, earned a little bit of money, and while I was driving a taxi one of my fears I told them that I was wanting to go to France. You know, it was my dream to go to live in Paris. He said, Oh, he [00:23:00] he just got off the whole in America line and, um, they took work away. Passengers work away, Um, fair, you know, to Europe. And I said I so I went along. And so within two weeks, I had got a passport that accepted me on this ship called Cup Finish there, and it was leaving Sydney in December and [00:23:30] I was on it as a with three kiwis. We're all working our passage to the big new country America, which I had never planned to go to because, like a lot of Australians, I've been bred on Cowboys and Indians movies and a lot of American crap. And it was Europe that was I aim for. But luckily, I had a taste of expe of America. My first overseas country was America. And how long were you there for? [00:24:00] Well, I got off the ship in Vancouver, actually, because I was so sick of working my way in this engine room for 30 days. It was our first port of school was Vancouver, and it was the middle of winter. I woke up and the the dock was covered with with citrons covered in snow. It was the heaviest snowstorm they'd had in 20 years. I had about $200 in my pocket. [00:24:30] That was all. I had to arrive in Paris. I had a lot of luggage. I don't know what I do with that luggage. I think I strew it all across America because I ended up by hitching from, uh, Vancouver to, uh, New York. Well, I went by bus part of the way. Um, I was about, uh, eight months in in America most of the time in New York City. But see, I was looked after again because see, what happened to me, [00:25:00] Um, when I was living in Sydney. One of my flatmates at that time was Simon Townsend, who since became a very famous television personality with Simon's Townsend's Wonder World. I don't know if it ever came to New Zealand. He was at an enormous success with, uh, Children's television, and he was living with Mary. Jane was an American in Kings Cross, and I shared with him for a while, And Mary Jane came from a very wealthy [00:25:30] Californian family. So when, uh, Simon, when I left Australia, I told Simon I got this ship to, um California and he said, Oh, you gotta look up Mary Jane's family And they were a millionaire family in Oakland. So I mean, this is where I was. You know, I. I was fell on my feet. I had no money. I stayed with Mary Jane's sister in Oakland for a little while and then, uh, [00:26:00] lift because I knew I had to get over to New York to get to France because, uh, that was my destination. And to get to France, I had to. I wasn't going to fly it. It was when we didn't fly the sixties. Flying wasn't the first option. Also, I didn't have any money. But I always knew that I would get there. You know, the blindness of youth. I mean, the optimism of youth. I would get to Paris. And of course I did. You know, I hitchhike [00:26:30] across America and I got to New York, but my passport had run out and I was actually illegally in, uh, America by that stage because I'd only had a 60 day visa. And I went to the United Nations in New York through Mission and got a job with them, and I got diplomatic immunity. So there I was in New York with a job with the Australian Mission to the United Nations in 1969. [00:27:00] So 1968 1969. These were big years in the US in terms of civil rights, but also gay rights. Very big in America. Yeah. Can you describe for me what that was like being there at that time? Well, it was. I mean, I look back and see it more clearly now because because I was living it. You know, I didn't, um, uh, know what I was doing. I mean, for instance, I remember going to a party at the French Embassy in, um in New York, where one of the top [00:27:30] rock musicians of the day, Richie Havens, was playing at, you know, one of the great bass guitarists of all time. And I didn't even know who he was. You know, we just shook hands and said hi, because already I was mixing with French people then and but that was when Stonewall happened in 1969. And, um, I wrote about that. That's why you've invited me to give this story, because I was living in New York when the Stonewall riots happened. Which [00:28:00] did change the whole face of gay liberation in the rest of the world. And although I wasn't at the Stonewall Bar that night, I used to go out every night of the week dancing because I loved it with the disco. I loved dancing, especially with the black men who were great dancers. And I remember hearing about it in the next few weeks that there'd been, um, a drag queen revolution at Stonewall. But because I was living life to the full and [00:28:30] I didn't have a problem with my sexuality then and AIDS wasn't around. All of this happened in the background. So they witness their history, but not part of it. Then until I actually was in the 1st march in Sydney in, uh, about 10 years later, which was an echo of the stonewall there because that happened in 19, um uh, 77. I think in Sydney [00:29:00] when I was back. But I, as I said, I seem to have touched the nerves was because when I went to Paris, I, uh, was part of the student revolution there because the the the Big 68 revolution was still happening when I arrived in 69. And, um, I, uh, sympathise with the students, of course. And I was walking home one night via [00:29:30] and I could see all the police arriving at the station back from which was the campus, which was where the big activism was happening. So I joined the students in their fighting and of course, was bundled along with them into spending a night in jail. So I have a lovely memory of being an Australian in jail as part of the student revolution. And that was a very important revolution which, [00:30:00] uh, reverberated all around the world, certainly all around Europe with, uh, con Bender who was one of the leaders of it then just getting back to New York for a minute. And I'm wondering in 68 69 did you feel that the police were targeting gay Trans or, you know, rainbow people? I mean, were you ever, um, singled out as as a as a gay person? It was interesting, because [00:30:30] I think I got the job at the Australian mission because the the, uh the man who employed me, I think, was a closet queen and he fancied me and, um uh, he gave me a job. I don't know whether he was wanted to go it any further, but I certainly wasn't interested in him, But, um, New York was a city of streets, [00:31:00] and I lived on First Avenue and I could see the boys cruising First Avenue. And this is why I mentioned I was, um, sold my body for a while because what happened is the the Australian mission. After I worked there for about six weeks, I fell out of favour with the man who employed me because I didn't come to his party. And I was actually having an affair with the librarian lady librarian [00:31:30] who was a lovely Australian girl. And, um uh, she needed some sex education, I think. And, uh and I was there to give her because as well, I was going out dancing and tricking, as we called it in those days with, uh, any boy who came across my way. But anyway, I got sacked from the United Nations, and so I then was black labour. I was illegally in America and I didn't have any money. So what did I do? [00:32:00] I saw these boys on the street and I knew that I was I. I didn't have any problem meeting men. So yes, I went on the game for a little while for a very short while because I was not, um, a very tough customer. And I always had to like my clients and, um, I ended up buying, liking them too much and not making any money and really? So [00:32:30] that little career on the streets didn't last very long, But it was a solitary experience because I've ever since identified a lot with, uh, prostitutes and street people. And that's why I like going to the prostitutes collective here, which is a great in Wellington, which is a great sign of advancement in your country having a collective to look after the prostitutes because, uh, you know, they were not just a secondary [00:33:00] race. They were very low down on the on the on the ranks, and they number among my best friends. But, um, the way I earned the money actually to go to Paris there was then as a waiter, I got a job as a waiter And, uh, you didn't have to I. I had actually, uh a, um, social security card, which I've been told how to get. I mean, in the seventies, you could do you could break the law in a lot of ways in America. And it wasn't difficult to get a Social Security number, which meant that I paid [00:33:30] tax. And so I got a job as a waiter at one of the best restaurants in First Avenue as well that called the proof of the pudding. And it was heady days, you know, New York in the late sixties. It was dirty. New York, it was. I've forgotten the the It wasn't Rudy Giuliani. I think he came later, but New York was a different city. I've been back a few times since then and, uh, as much as I love the city, I did not want to become a New Yorker. So I mean, I managed to earn enough money. [00:34:00] And again serendipity came my way. I saw an ad in the, uh on the walls of the Y MC a in New York for a ship, a charter ship returning to Paris, turning to a had vacancies that had been chartered by a group of French school teachers. I think it was 100 and $200 or $100 to get back to France, and I had $300 by that stage. This was 1969 [00:34:30] and so I I tried. I got in this French charter ship with the people that I always wanted to be with, had a marvellous affair with one of the French women going across on the nine day cruise to a most beautiful arrival in France. You could imagine caught the train from to Paris with my Monique, my French friend from Brittany, who took me to a hotel for the night in Paris. And my first night was spent making [00:35:00] love to this lovely French woman near as well, and I couldn't sleep. I just spent the night looking at the rooftops of Paris, and I arrived in Paris with $200 in my pocket in 1969 and a dream. Uh, what was their dream? My dream. My dream was to live in Paris. And to put that into effect, though, I had when I was back in Australia, [00:35:30] applied to the French Embassy in Canberra for a job as an assistant, which is assistant, and the French are very good at helping their students learn English. They go to all the English speaking countries Canada, America, Australia and England and offer jobs for one year at a time to English speakers who have got a certain proficiency in French. And I had two years of French behind [00:36:00] me at that stage, and I'd made an application at the French Embassy before I left. But they didn't make decisions until 12 months. And so when I left Australia, I'd only just put that application in. But I was gambling that I was going to get this job as as an assistant. So when I arrived in Paris with no idea of whether I had the job or not, I stayed one night with, uh in this hotel, [00:36:30] thanks to my beautiful French girlfriend. And, um, I had the address of one friend in Paris who, interestingly, was an French for counter tenor. He was an American singing on a scholarship, and he lives in Mark, one of the most beautiful areas of Paris. And, um, I had his phone number from another French friend that I knew in Sydney. So I rang up the, [00:37:00] um, uh, Department of Education in France the next day and gave them my name and told them that I'd made an application to be in a system and they told me on the phone. But yes, you have been given a job as a I said, Could I ask where it is? Because it could have been anywhere in France, I said, I'm hoping it's in Paris, he said. Oh, you are very lucky because it's in one of the best high schools [00:37:30] in Paris, a school that Marcel Post attended. Jean Paul taught at, I mean, one of the great schools. I got a I had a job there, which was enough to keep me for 12 months in Paris. And because I loved it so much, I on the I took one of the rare occasions to reapply, and I I won a second assistant. They gave me a second job at a different school for another year. [00:38:00] So I was able to really instil my, uh, self for love, of all things French in that time and become a Parisian because I didn't know anybody else but French people. So I became a Parisian for two years and had a lot of adventures with a lot of people. And, uh, it was a very hard time. And it was there I fell in love with a man. Another big [00:38:30] experience which changed my life an American in Paris and, um, he was the love of my life. I had three love affairs, but Fred was the first one, and you've brought today a whole range of photographs of Yes, I thought I'd bring them because the three lovers in my life, though two of them were brilliant people and one of them was brilliant in another [00:39:00] way. But he was also very beautiful. The first one was an American, a New Yorker, a Jewish New Yorker. The second was a beautiful blonde German, probably one of Hitler's planned youth. Because he was born in East Germany. He was a model, and the third one was an English born Australian, uh, theatre director, one of the great theatre directors. [00:39:30] And those two have passed away with AIDS and Harry the German. I really don't know what's happened to him. The last time I spoke to Harry, he was high on the hog of, I think special K. They called it in, uh, Hollywood at that stage. Do you know what special K is? It's It's It possibly is their version of methamphetamine. [00:40:00] He became a porn star, so my second lover was a porn star. My first lover was a was a rock and roll, and the third lover was a theatre director, so they were very, very vastly different people. But, um, there are a lot of other people in between time. I'm really interested in, um just rewinding a bit where you were talking about having [00:40:30] sex with women and with men and the women you can remember. And I'm wondering for you is kind of love and sex intertwined, or are they quite different things? Well, this is this is the big thing, because I was really a part of the sexual revolution. Uh, in the seventies in particular, everybody was having sex with everybody. And, um, sex was totally divorced [00:41:00] from love. And, um, I could also see that the the girls that I was having sex with some of them could have been falling in love with me. And I was too free and too young to want to be in love, And, um, I didn't know what it was anyway. I mean, I was a very slow developer on that, uh, stratum. Uh, but it wasn't until I met Fred in Paris in 73 or two [00:41:30] when I broke down. Interestingly enough in complete mess of tears, I'll never forget. That night in his arms, I cried all night. It was an enormous emotional release because something had happened with him. It wasn't Cupid shooting at Arrow. This man, um, who was pretty came from a pretty dysfunctional Jewish family in the Long Island. [00:42:00] But he was a brilliant child of the seventies as well, and he was doing a lot of dope, and we were smoking quite a bit of dope at that stage, and he introduced me to a lot. But that's another story. Um, he fell in love with me and the the the love was just so blatantly clear. There was no question that we were in love with each other. And, um, [00:42:30] you know, we could conquer the world as well. I had a bit of money. He he thought I was exotic because I was a an Australian speaking perfect French living in Paris. And I thought he was exotic because he was a New Yorker, a city which I'd been to and lived in. But I didn't want to go back to particularly, um and he was, uh, a rock and roll singer and had a beautiful voice and wrote some of the most beautiful love songs to me [00:43:00] in the time we were together. And he'd also just come from spending a time in Spain. And he filled me with a desire to go back to Spain because I'd already been to Spain because just harking back to my first week in France when I was told that I'd got that job as a I had met on the ship in which was full of French teachers, a couple of young, um, male [00:43:30] school teachers who I'd befriended. And, um, they told me that they had a few more weeks of holiday and they were going for a car trip down to Spain and I had their contact. So when I knew that I had a job in Paris, I contacted them. God knows how I did it. We didn't have mobile phones and said, Look, do you want a companion going to Spain? And, um so I I spent the first [00:44:00] six weeks in Europe on the mainland, um, travelling with them in Spain and because they had to go back to school a bit before I did, because I didn't go back till October. They had to go back. And, um, August September, I left them in Seville and the lure of Morocco was there. I had a love affair with Morocco. [00:44:30] See, I've always been attracted to exotic places, exotic people in exotic places. And, um, I had a few, um, a $100 100 $200. American Express travellers checks. That's all I had. But I hitchhiked then down to, um uh uh, Al ja and, um which is the port to catch a boat to Tangiers somehow. Or rather. I knew I had to go to Tangiers. [00:45:00] It was that fantastic time when Tangiers was still, uh, having amazing stories written about it. Anyway, I spent, um a couple of weeks in Tangiers when I was there, and it was here. I was introduced to hashish because I'd smoked some marijuana in America. When I was there, everybody was smoking, But I never thought I'd ever had any effect by it because I I was a very naive [00:45:30] Australian. I wasn't a drinker or a smoker, but in Morocco, in Tangiers, smoking this incredible hashish from Mount Kama I knew that what dope smoking was all about then. So I immediately was thrown in to the 20th century oil to America of the 20th century. And it was an American in who introduced me to this beautiful [00:46:00] black hashish smoked in a pipe. One toke and you were done for eight hours. I mean, it is the best hash you could ever have the Rolls Royce of hashish. But, um and I never got hooked on drugs. This is one of the things. Because, as I said later, I'm jumping around the the thing a little bit here. But when I met Anne Wigmore in Melbourne and I was on a health trip eating only raw foods and drinking wheat grass [00:46:30] juice, I knew that I knew how to look after my body. So when I did contract HIV and when it came through in the test five years later, I had absolutely no, um, problem whatsoever about succumbing to it. I knew that I would win that battle. However, I nearly did succumb to it 22 years later. And then I realised the, uh, the danger [00:47:00] of HIV. I just want to take you back to Europe, and we'll just kind of cover off from Paris where, you know, how long were you there for and and And where did you go from there? Well, I did I. I had I had an amazing time in Paris because I was young. I didn't realise well, how lucky I was as an Australian in Paris, I was a rare one. There were other Australians there, but I didn't [00:47:30] know them. And, um, I met some great people in Paris. But after I my second year in Paris and I decided to cast my lot with Fred, we, uh, went back to Spain because he'd been living in cars, which is the birthplace of Salvador Dali. And he was mad about Salvador Dali, and he wanted to introduce me to Salvador Dali. So we went back and we lived in cars for [00:48:00] six months in the winter period. And we did meet Salvador Dali on quite a few occasions, going to his house and, um, smoking a lot of dope and living with all the other people in cars. Which then were the hideaway little village. Salvador Dali was, um, travelling all around the world. Although he was there when we were there. And, um, it's since become [00:48:30] a mecca for the rich and famous. What? What is it like meeting someone like Salvador Dali? I mean, well, it's funny. I did meet all these people. I mean, when I was in New York, um, when I was doing the streets in New York, I met Rudolph Nirav. We cruised each other on First Avenue, actually, and I saw him across the road, and I sort of I like the tilt of his cap. And, uh, I walked across the road as a euphemism or [00:49:00] to meet him. And, uh and we and I recognised him immediately, of course. And, uh, it was one o'clock in the morning and, um, he obviously had just come out of a sauna or something, because he, um uh, neither of us was burning with desire. And, of course, I was flabbergasted to meet him because I was a great fan of ballet, and, um, we spoke, uh, I knew he spoke French, So we conversed [00:49:30] in French for about 10 minutes about completely extraneous matters. And, um, he was charming, and I liked him very much until, uh uh, a car full of people stopped on the curb and whisked him off somewhere. And that was my little encounter with Rudolph. And it was It was it was equals talking to each other because we were alone on First Avenue. Now with Salvador Dali was a little bit the same. I mean, [00:50:00] I met these two very big people in in the world of artistic history, and I met them on an equal level cruising young man crew. I was 23. Rudy was about 29. We were both attractive people. And he was Rudolph in your life. And, um, we met on First Avenue. You know where where all the cruising was done in New York City. So we knew what we were there for, but, um, and and with [00:50:30] we were I was living right next door to we were living in an olive grove just around the corner from port, where he lived with Gala and his wife in his with his big eggshell house. And, um uh he used to enjoy meeting the young foreigners who were living in the area on the weekends, and we went there for afternoon tea. Well, because I mean, I didn't have a camera. I did. We knew [00:51:00] who he was. He was Salvador Dali and I because, uh, Gala was Russian. She liked speaking French When we arrived at the house for afternoon tea. Fred, my American lover wanted to see all Dali's artworks, and Dali showed him around the house, and I stayed in the kitchen with gala talking food recipes. [00:51:30] So that was about it. Uh, there was no big gaga sort of thing because we were locals as well. We were living in. And, um, we knew all the other people there were the people. I've since found out that were much more famous than I knew were there. But we were part of the furniture, too. But after that, we'd run out of money, and Fred's was trying to get a record [00:52:00] cut because, you know, I thought I was with this man who could sing, and he was a singer. But, uh, he, uh he didn't have what it took to cut the mustard. Although as a good New York Jewish boy bred in Long Island, he knew he had to know the right people to do anything. So we tried to read them out. We used Salvador Dali. We had met Salvador [00:52:30] Dali again in hotel in Paris. Um, Salvador Dali was a really lovely man. I mean, not like his madness. A little bit like uh, you know, when you meet people on their home ground, it's a different kettle of fish was a mad, egotistical dancer, And I know when he came to dance at the Michael Fowler Centre, they had to recreate a stage for him here, and he wasn't happy with it. But, um, you know, [00:53:00] things were different. When you meet people on different bases, it's all different. Anyway. My time in Europe. We went from Paris, a quick trip via Paris to London, where we thought we'd do something. But it was in London that the tables turned. Fred, uh decided that he wasn't going to make it as a singer in London. His family wanted him back in New York, and he pushed me into becoming a model [00:53:30] which I had no idea about in those days, because I was just a little Australian. But I happened to be the right height, the right shape and the right age and easy in front of the camera. And so he pushed me to get some photographs done, and the first job I did in London was for Christian Dior, and I'm just showing Gareth the [00:54:00] photograph that appeared in London Vogue. They took these photographs of me which, um, we introduced Dior men's fashion to the world. And, um, that was the sort of luck that I had with with my life. So that sold me on becoming an international model. How did you get that small look? I mean, had you done modelling before, I'd never the first time I'd been photographed. [00:54:30] Mm. So obviously, III I was I was natural in front of the camera. I mean, a lot of Australians, uh, become top model because they're natural in front of the camera. But it it worked for me. And it had its downside as well, because it trapped me. Then for about 15 years of my most productive time, I spent in front of a camera doing a few other things as well. But, uh, Fred went back to New York, and then I [00:55:00] became the European model because I'd picked up, uh, I spoke french and German because, uh, I'd lived in Spain for a while. I picked up Spanish, and then I picked up Italian because they're very cousins language. So I was finally fluent in five languages and I was able to work in them as well. So I worked around Europe in Paris, Milan, Hamburg, [00:55:30] Munich, Barcelona and Madrid and had a very wild life mixing it with, uh, a lot of the other top international models of that time. But not realising what we were doing because it was just sort of you did it. We weren't. We were paid pretty well, but not the ridiculous sums that people are paid these days. So when you look at those images now of yourself and so you'd have been what kind of mid twenties in those images the late twenties [00:56:00] So what do you what do you see? Another person. I don't recognise who it was. I mean, you wouldn't recognise it either. I share that photograph and nobody recognises me because we get older. I mean, I'm 70 this year. Mhm. But I changed slowly. That movie I gave you, which I made in in Melbourne, which was called the A Dream of Change, which was about [00:56:30] my Chilean friend who was a drama therapist. Through that movie I met Sue, who became my partner for five years. So the two people who affected me in that movie, because I was I wanted to become a movie maker at that stage, but this was the only documentary movie that I produced, and that was very much at an arm's length. Um, but, um, Aldo, who was as you saw in the movie, was a very charismatic [00:57:00] South American and Sue, who was one of the major people in the movie. She and I came together very closely, and she came to live with me in Gosford for five years until she passed away in 1993. And that was a seminal influence in my life. So meeting when I came back from Europe, Cos Aldo [00:57:30] introduced me to the world of people with disabilities. Um, and that's what the movie was about, people with disabilities. So when did you move back to Australia? But 1976 I think. And then I Then I was modelling in Sydney and Melbourne for a while and wasn't happy. I still felt a European because when I was living in France, [00:58:00] I always thought, I want to live there forever. So I went back to Europe as a model via New York, again visiting Fred on the way who had gone back to New York, but realising that we were never going to get back together because he was well on to a different, uh, track that story is a different story. I won't go into here. So I went back and, uh, stayed for another couple of years modelling in Europe. And that's when I met the second man in my [00:58:30] life who was a German model in Hamburg. And, um, he came to London with me. But it wasn't a relationship that was ever going to last. Although I was I was in love with him because he was a beautiful soul. But he needed me more than I needed him, I think, and to finish the relationship. Unfortunately, I had to leave Europe because, [00:59:00] uh, his career was working very well as a model in London. He was doing very well indeed, and mine wasn't so. I came back to Australia in 1977 or 1979 I think, two years later and went back to Melbourne. And that's when I started. Um, my new life and I studied a bit of movie making. In 1981 I made this movie about Aldo and Met Sue, [00:59:30] 1988 moved back to Gosford. So my life did have moments of change and I, Sarah, converted in 1983 as well. So that did have an effect on my life. I'm interested when you say that you went back to the US in. Was it 1976 1977. What was the difference between being there in, say, 68 and and then a few years later? Well, the difference is you know, they weren't that strong. I mean, my differences [01:00:00] were that I knew where I was going to, you know, I. I was a European. I knew how to negotiate the countries, and I was reasonably established on the modelling scene there. And, um uh, my languages were very handy. And, uh, I didn't tell you one interesting thing that happened on my first return trip to Australia. I'd, um, booked a flight with Air France via Bangkok [01:00:30] because I hadn't experienced the east at all. So I thought I'd have a stop over for a couple of weeks in Bangkok before I went back to see my family, who I hadn't seen for five years and, um, on the plane I'd noticed in first class because I'd walked up and down to get some exercise, a very interesting looking man sitting in first class and because I was always quick off the plane. I'm I happened to [01:01:00] go through customs at Bangkok Airport right behind him, and he heard me speak fluent French. He was a Frenchman and he asked to speak to me on the other side of the customs, and he was a movie director and he was making a French Swiss Thai co-production, and he asked me to join their team as an actor. [01:01:30] Thought of what he was really doing was wanting me to look after the leading lady, which I did. The leading lady was one of the top French actresses of her day, still the most amazing woman whom I had a most beautiful three week affair with, and we remained very close friends. The French movie was, um, didn't sink without a trace. It made the front front of [01:02:00] scope, the French magazine, and it was a story about colonial French in Thailand and because it was in the rainy season in So we, uh, the filming was very slow, and so we ended up by staying, Not just one week. It was three weeks, So I had to. I still got the telegram. I sent back to my mother saying, I'm in a French movie. I'll be three weeks late, so I didn't get home for Christmas. So [01:02:30] that was, um, another thing that happened to me. You know, II. I felt things fell across me. You know, good things happened to me and, um, meeting Sue, who was the The lady in the movie who was a paraplegic, changed my life as well because she was the most amazing person. And it showed me that you don't, um, have to have all your limbs to lead a full life. [01:03:00] So the five years I spent with her was some of the five best years of my life. So what are your thoughts on things like chance meetings and fate? And I mean, do you do Do you have any kind of underlying? Well, I, I used the word serendipity earlier. Serendipity, I think, is a chance meeting a chance happening, usually for the good. Um, for instance, I'll give you an [01:03:30] idea of a serendipitous thing that happened to me when I was back. in Australia. Um, the second time I was in Sydney, I've been working as a model. Um, and I dropped out from my both university degrees law and Arts without finishing either of them. And, um, I bumped into my French professor in the streets of Paddington because when I went to university in Newcastle, [01:04:00] I shared a distinct flair for French. And I got top marks, and Professor Hary wanted me to do an honours degree, and I failed too many other subjects to continue it. So I went to Sydney to study law. But Elva Hartley was an amazing influence. I wrote a chapter in that book of of his life. He was he was an incredibly eccentric French professor. And, um anyway, I bumped into [01:04:30] him in the street, and, uh, we recognised each other, and he never looked at anybody in the eyes. He looked down at the ground all the time. He was retired at that stage. And, um and I said, Oh, Professor, you remember me from years gone, But I said you should have finished your degree. You know, you, you you, um you showed a lot of ability and, um, that chance encounter. Er stayed with me the whole time. Because years later, after [01:05:00] Sue passed away, I was in Central Coast Lake Macquarie and had made a contact with the in Newcastle. And they invited me to go to one of their meetings in Newcastle. And it was there I met the then senior lecturer in French at the university, and I told them that I'd studied under Elver Hartley in the sixties and they were very interested that because he was an iconic professor [01:05:30] Newton John was the chancellor. When I was there, he he taught me German. Although I did German, French, double and Brin was also a fantastic, uh, professor. And again, you talk about, uh um fate. I bumped into Bryn 20 years later because he was living with his third wife, who was my friend Sue's first cousin. And Bryn, [01:06:00] of course, was the father of Olivia Newton John. And uh uh, Brynn's third wife, who was the love of his life, was Sue's first cousin, and we I got to know him on a different level just before he died. But anyway, getting back to this meeting, this chance meeting at the university I was told that I could, um, Why did I go back and finish my degree? So I thought, OK, well, that could be something I could do because I'd always [01:06:30] been starting and not finishing things. When you're a model, you live from one day to the next. You know, I've I've never really had a serious job, but, um, so I went back to university, and serendipity would have it that Elva Hartley, my professor whom I had met in the streets in Paddington those 15 years earlier, had died five years before and left a million dollars in trust [01:07:00] to the university for scholarships, which had been under, uh, legal dispute for another year or two to be released. And when I arrived back to study at the university, it was the year that the legal case had come to fruition and his million dollars had become $2 million and the scholarships which [01:07:30] he bequeathed on students. I won a scholarship to Paris to finish my honours degree. So Elva, when meeting him in the street in Paddington, stayed with me all that time I went back, finished the degree which he started because he was a very good teacher. It was in the days when universities were different. The sixties were not like they are now in the noughties. It was an old school university, Brin Newton John was the vice [01:08:00] chancellor. He was an ox, Oxford, Cambridge man. And, um, Elva was another from a different mould. But I went back in the the nineties and finished my degree and went back to Paris, squandered another six months in Paris, was never a serious student and ended up with an honours degree. And, uh then looked after my mother for 10 years. And this is back [01:08:30] in Australia, um, in Gosford, where I'm going back to in three months time. So, yeah, my life has been serendipitous in those occasions. Is that And I also believe that, uh, the life's a sort of a jigsaw puzzle, and things are filling up. And, um, you know, New Zealand was the last place I ever thought I'd come to live in. Although being in your house here, feeling [01:09:00] I could be anywhere in the world, um, that's what Wellington is like. For me. It's a It's a beautiful international gem of a city. And, um um, in 1973 When I was living in Barcelona, I, uh, met a Brazilian who was very keen to show me his, uh, extra body, um, [01:09:30] ability of going to a trance and reading fortunes. The fortune teller. He went into a trance and, um, he read my fortune, told me something about past life. I didn't know him before. Quite an accurate summation of what I did when I was younger and told me in 1972 that he saw me living in New Zealand. Yeah, which did come to fruition [01:10:00] teaching and living in New Zealand, which has happened in one way, but perhaps not the other. So who knows whether I'll come back or not? But, uh, so that was in his cards he saw. So that's why I believe that in the spiritual world, see, I'm a very spiritual person, and it was spirituality which led me to sue and spirituality, which led me to New Zealand and its spirituality, which has taken me home to [01:10:30] Gosford because I believe that in the world of spirit, there's no such thing as time space continuum that people can know the future, and not that we need to know the future. But, um uh, this man, when he went into his trance, saw me in New Zealand in the future, and he was right. I was did come to New Zealand, And, uh, but the [01:11:00] effect of, um discovering a spiritual path the same time practically the same year that I converted into AIDS was also a bit fatalistic because I was given a death sentence in those days. And yet I was given a knowledge of afterlife. So So what year [01:11:30] did you see Convert to AIDS 83 83. And it was, But that's when I got HIV HIV rather than aids. Well, what is a DS? Uh, AAA. I DS a DS is an acquired immune deficiency syndrome. HIV is the virus that carries that, But what happened to me 22 years after having carried the virus, my body slipped into an illness which was an AIDS defining illness, which was Pneumocystis pneumonia, [01:12:00] PC, P, which was a killer. And that was 19. No, that was 2006 when that happened. And that was the year I first came to New Zealand. And that was the year that my Kiwi Doctor in Gosford who had been I'd been seeing for quite a few years and who knew my story about refusing to take medication? Uh, did not push medication my way because it was the person's decision to take it or not, [01:12:30] and I had chosen not to take it. But I started to lose a lot of weight, and, uh, I became very, very thin to the point of having no energy and realising that, uh, that my time was coming. And I remember having a dream in one of my nights sweats, as you did, uh, wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat, realising that I could either take [01:13:00] it or leave it. Um, and I was told that I had to take it, which meant the next day going to see my doctor and having an EM. I scan being told that I was an inch away from full blown pneumonia, which would have carried me off, and I took the drugs and they brought me back to life. And now so I've been on those drugs now for about, uh, 11 years, [01:13:30] uh, 69 years taking them every day, just two pills a day, but they've My, um my city for count went down to about 70 or 80 which is very risky. And now I'm built up to 500. So I'm you know, I've made an enormous recovery and of course I know how to look after myself. And the reason why I think I did get sick at that stage is that as I said, [01:14:00] I spent 10 years looking after my mother. When you care for somebody, you forget to care for yourself. What was your first memory of HIV? A. I DS of the whole effect. Well, it's a very interesting one, and I have it crystal clear in my mind. It was 1981 in Melbourne and, um, the word had come from America that this gay plague was coming to Australia and we all went to the dentistry building at Melbourne University. There are [01:14:30] 1000 of us there, and it was hushed tones and we were hearing that this incredible disease was going to hit Australia and that, uh, 90% of people who were infected would die from it. It was a shocking thing that was happening. This preceded the Grim Reaper advertisement. But they did say 90 per cent of people and I knew that I would be in that 10%. They never said it was going to be 100% lethal. So [01:15:00] I knew whatever happened, I would be in that 10%. And that was my first introduction to and I embraced it. Yeah, I I've always been one. When you have a problem, you embrace it, you go out and you don't run away from it. You go for it and you fight it and embrace it. Which is what I did from day one. I've always been strong in the AIDS care, the AIDS, anti activism I wrote for many [01:15:30] magazines about, um uh how I thought AIDS was not killing people. And then, of course, it nearly didn't kill people. Peter Blaze. He was one of my very good friends in Sydney who was also an AIDS activist, and he wrote this article for the then Sydney newspaper, which is worth a look at. And, um, I [01:16:00] could see that people were dying of the drugs they were taking, which was basically a ZT, which was shown then to be a killer because they were overprescribing it. And I was really an activist against anti HIV anti a ZT. And, uh, it was because I refused any medication for 22 years that I'm alive and healthy today. Um, because I didn't trust the multinational drug companies. [01:16:30] And everybody knows they're out making dollars out of the AIDS um, phenomenon. And, um, because of that, the drugs that I did take were much more sophisticated in 2006, and I've been able to live with them quite easily, but I have been very big on complementary therapies. Um, I'm showing Gareth a picture [01:17:00] of me when I was writing for the Continuum magazine, which was the big anti HIV magazine at that stage. And there was a lot of people, including the then president of South Africa, uh, who was believing that HIV was not the cause of AIDS. Paul, can you read this personal? This this personal ad that you've you you placed in [01:17:30] 1997? Can you read that to me? This is This is when I was, um, single. I knew that I wasn't going to meet any body in Australia and I was travelling back to Europe and, um, I put this ad in London. It's a personal column looking for a mate. Aussie visiting Europe November through January [01:18:00] would like a pen friend continuum S sympathetic continuum with the anti AIDS activist magazine. I haven't got a copy to show you here. I'd written an article for it called Lust for Life, where I told them how healthy I was because I'm not on medication. And I describe myself perfectly well and healthy. Sick of the Aussie scene of HIV deaths. Positive since 83. Would love [01:18:30] to meet similar soul. I'm a young 52 lived in London in the mid seventies, Derek Ja's Jubilee, who was a very well known person who died of AIDS as well and will travel, speak French and German like most things could be said to be adventurous. I'm health conscious. Don't smoke or drink. I'm mainly vegetarian. Don't do the scene anymore. Needless to say, spirituality [01:19:00] is an important dimension to my life. Looking to meet an open minded, positive guy age, nationality, unimportant but prefer fitness minded AIDS dissident with whom to kick this insidious system, which is killing all our friends. I was very angry about it because I really all of my friends died. And, uh, Peter Blazey eventually died as well. [01:19:30] Who was also a dissident. But he'd had a year on a ZT. See, I mean, Rex cramp. I really do believe some people had a death wish. Who died early in AIDS. Um, I've never had a death wish, and I've always known that if my body is well looked after, it will survive. But both these two major loves of my life, these two here, [01:20:00] brilliant men died in their prime horrible deaths. How? How was that received in terms of being kind of anti medication by the wider kind of community? How? How did people? Well, yes, it was interesting because because I was so upfront about it. And, um, I worked for a in Newcastle for a while when I was living with Sue [01:20:30] and I was into complementary therapies then, and I was trying to teach people that if they looked after themselves, they didn't need to take medication, and I was living proof of it. I've been 15 years positive, not a day's illness, but it was creeping up onto me. I was having a few problems that I was ignoring. I was in denial. But nobody could really say anything against me because they didn't have any proof either. I mean, AIDS has been a big study. The whole time they've been experimenting on people, [01:21:00] people died in droves being experimented on with a ZT. How did those early years of HIV aids in Australia? Impact on the communities and I, I guess. Just talking from your own point of view. Well, I had to escape it. This is one reason why I'm still so positive and psychologically not scarred by it. Because for the first five years, from 83 to 88 I was in the hub of the fight in Melbourne. [01:21:30] And, um but I was, uh, burning out and I needed to leave again. I was being looked after somebody arrived in Melbourne from Gosford and they had a job. They offered me managing an art gallery in Copacabana, central coast, where I grew up. And, uh, that's when I started to, uh, get away from the whole AIDS industry. Although I did work a little while in Newcastle A for [01:22:00] a while, but I was always on the edge and that job I had for six months as the HIV education officer. There was not renewed, I think, because they knew that I was an AIDS dissident and they didn't want me there. And I didn't mind leaving them because I had my own life to live. Uh, AIDS has never played. HIV has never played a big part of my life, but it's always been there. And of course I did nearly die from it. So it has been a life death situation, and now I have to [01:22:30] take pills every morning for the rest of my life, seemingly so it's going to be with me until I die as well. But of course, there's no reason why I can't live until I'm 90. And, um, that's the way it could well be and a very productive life as well. Because, you know, I came for my last two years in Wellington have been incredibly productive. I I was been on the AIDS board for for two years. I'm on the board of interfaith [01:23:00] here, uh, which is part of my spiritual path. I'm the first person to join interfaith from my spiritual path here, and, um, I'm finding that quite an interesting, uh, event because certain things in New Zealand are very much in advance and certain things are very much behind. And I won't make any comment on that. You you mentioned earlier that that you're 70 now, Are there other issues [01:23:30] that affect, um, gay people as they aged? Uh, or is it just just ageing? Well, because, uh, there are still quite a percentage of people my age who aren't positive who are ageing gay men. Of course. Uh, it will be you in 10 years time. Oh, So I think the, uh, the canvas is being prepared for gay ageing now. And I've got a very good friend in Australia [01:24:00] who might be seeing when I go back, who is very active in preparing, um, retirement homes and aged care facilities to be gay friendly, not gay Pacific, but gay friendly LGBT Q I friendly. And, um, it's go. And he's working in government circles in Canberra to bring that into the law that people working in aged care facilities have to be educated and have to learn that there's different sensitivities for gay people in retirement homes. [01:24:30] And they have to be themselves because that's the whole aim about the fighting for equality and being oneself is that we don't have to cover up anymore because for so long we had to live double lives in a way. And that's the beauty of the law here. I mean, society hasn't caught up with the law yet in New Zealand, but it is slowly catching up. You still hear of sad stories in the provinces, but the law here is very good. And one of my attractions to New Zealand [01:25:00] was the fact that you are legally so much in advance of Australia and, um, standing on your own 2 ft in many ways. And, uh, but I think Australia needs me back to do the fight for them as well, certainly in the field of Aboriginal recognition in the constitutional level as well. So all of this plays a big part in my life. My life can't be separated. You know, I, uh, having HIV and AIDS is a small part [01:25:30] of it. But it's a very active part because it makes me aware that I'm a minority within a minority, and I'm also a minority on the spiritual level as well, although as a believer in reincarnation and karma. I belong to the great majority of the world who also believe in that. It's just that not many people care to think about it. And I do every day and can't wait for my next incarnation wherever it will be. [01:26:00] Do you have any preference? Not on this plane. There are lots of other plans to come back to, um the universe is a limitless place, and we never stop changing as soul, which is eternal. We never die. We're part part of the Godhead, part of the universal life force, which is not just this one tiny universe, the many universes that exist. And, um, [01:26:30] once we identify on that superhuman level, which is what the astrophysicists now are getting into, science and religion are coming very much together that we are a series of vibrations, really. And once we identify, um, that's where our soul is. That's where we go when we leave. But of course, we've got a duty [01:27:00] in this this lifetime to live life as loving as possible and to do as much as we can to help other people along with it. And that's been my aim and it's one of the reasons I'm going back to Australia. I've got work to do over there in this field just in the short time we've been talking. I mean, you've you've led such an extraordinary life [01:27:30] and it's been completely jam packed is more to come. I'm only beginning the next stage, but yes, when I was young, I said I had a little thing I said to myself, I want to do everything in life. I remember saying myself to that when I was very young, when I was 16 and a little boy in Gosford, I said, I want to do everything and really, when I look back on the last 60 years or 55 years, I have done a hell of a lot [01:28:00] and, uh, I have seen a lot of people come and go. I've refused invitations. It could have left me in different ways. I haven't talked about my relationship with Roy Cohn in New York, who was the major character in Angels in America, the lawyer who advised, uh, the government in those awful eras and who died of AIDS himself. He, uh, he was offered to me on a plate When I was in New York, [01:28:30] he wanted to take me to Acapulco to be his toy boy boyfriend, which I refused the invitation. But see, these things were offered to me. I could have accepted them. He was the most powerful man in America at that stage, and he's dead. Avoid. And I spent a night with him where he told me his deepest secrets, and he was [01:29:00] enormously traumatised, traumatised, ugly little man who happened to have New York by the scruff of the neck and who came out in some terrible ways. And if you saw angels in America, you know exactly how he was portrayed and that by, um uh, he was very good. Yeah. So, you know, I've had a chance to mix it with some of the biggest [01:29:30] and best in the world and come through unscathed and realise, you know, I can see you know, the unimportance of so much. And, um, I know where to place my values, and I know what's important. My constant travelling is, uh, getting me trimmer. As far as positions go, I'm still carrying a few things as you see mainly personal memorabilia. But my move back [01:30:00] to Australia will be, hopefully a few boxes and nothing much more. There were two names in the email that you sent me that I. I just want to I also want to know about, um before we end. And, uh, the the two names were, um, Simone, who you were dancing with in a city nightclub. And Marlena Dietrich? Yes, indeed. Well, I mentioned those because they're they're two of the great icons in their various worlds. And, you know, [01:30:30] I happened to meet them. And, uh, but with Nina Simone, it was just that I happened to be in this nightclub alone on the dance floor, and she'd been singing, uh, in Sydney that night. I didn't know who she was until somebody told me and we were dancing with this other black man who was in her entourage, um, on the dance floor. And, of course, since then, I'm one of her greatest fans. And, uh uh, I just seem to [01:31:00] know that I'm going to bump into people like that, you know, it will happen. And, um, it did happen to me, you know, I met the people I needed to meet when I had no idea that I was going to meet one of the greatest serial artists of the world on his home base. Salvador Dali over there. I refused an invitation from Christopher Isherwood to spend a weekend away with him when he was looking for young men because I [01:31:30] it didn't con wasn't convenient for me that weekend. And yet I'm a great fan of Christopher Isherwood's writing, and I like his spirituality as well. But, um, these were the things that did happen to me. So I have led a protected and, uh, amazing life from the point of view of meeting amazing people getting touched by them, but not totally affected by them, to change who I am. Because basically, [01:32:00] I'm just a simple little Aussie living in Wellington and, uh, enjoying the fa fabulous life that Wellington has offered me and still is. And Marlena Dietrich. Oh, Marlena. Yeah, well, Marlena was quite AAA funny experience because it was it was a gardener. Uh, was had, uh, hosting the party at this restaurant that I was the barman at in Bond Street in London. And, uh uh, she just [01:32:30] had her first night on the West End and a Gardner was living in London, I think at that stage. So they were all buddies, and the restaurant happened to be owned by a showbiz producer. And so we used to get the top people along there, and it was downstairs. They had the private room downstairs, and they had a circular stairway going up and down. And I was bringing the drinks down the circular stairway from upstairs in the bar and, uh [01:33:00] um, Ava was sitting, uh, at the top of the table with Malena and the table was full of various, you know, hangers on mainly, uh, powerful men, the smattering of gay people I would imagine. And, um, I remember, um, Marlena ordering a beer. And, um, Ava was keeping quite sober because it was her party. She's known to be a drinker, [01:33:30] but I'll never forget when the party finished at the end. Because I wasn't privy to all the conversation, but I was asked to come down to help Marlena climb the stairs on the way out. And I'll never forget following these legs. These famous legs up this circular stairway with her wiggy being precariously balanced on her very thin head. And she was pulling herself with her very strong arms up the stairway [01:34:00] because later she fell over on the stage in Melbourne and that ended her career, I think. But yes, it was an interesting little story to see these icons in the flesh. But, you know, that's what you did in the seventies. You bumped into these people. I mean, I only saw your on the stage after meeting him on First Avenue, but, uh, unfortunately, I was very sad to hear that he embraced early in the in the fight against [01:34:30] AIDS, a ZT, and he took a big dose of a ZT. And I have no doubt that that carried him away. So, you know, I do know the secret of living, and it's thinking positively, but also making decisions for yourself And, um realising that, uh, if you do look after yourself, you will survive. But the level of, uh, spirituality, which is the major element [01:35:00] in my life today and which directs everything I do is without a doubt the reason I'm here today. Yeah, because I've been guarded.
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