BOB HAWKE at Woodford by Sean Sennett
Hidden in the trees on the outskirts of the Woodford Folk Festival is a battalion of ancient caravans that house longtime volunteers and friends who have been supporting the festival, in some cases, for twenty-five years. The caravans surround a low set bunker that locals affectionately call the Kremlin. Inside there’s a small lounge area, a bar fridge, a long wooden table and an annex for the festival’s executive director Bill Hauritz to chain-smoke and oversee operations.
Hauritz has the neatest computer desk top I’ve ever seen. With two thousand volunteers and 150, 000 people attending the festival over five days, Bill has problem solving down to a fine art. A staffer with a small crisis for Hauritz is met with, “Okay, we’ll compromise and do it your way.” Easy. Problem solved.
At the end of that very long wooden table is Bill’s mate for the last decade, Robert J Hawke. Australia’s longest serving Labor Prime Minister, the entire country knows him as Bob.
As the song went forty-odd years ago: ‘the wonder of the down under dog…’
Today he’s in a wheel chair and crouched over a cryptic crossword puzzle. Hawke is clearly frail, but his skin is tanned and his blue eyes light up when he speaks. His hair is still thick and white. On the table are his pens, various newspapers, a small bottle of pills prescribed in bold type for ROBERT HAWKE, a steel cigar clipper and an ashtray. On his collared shirt is embroidered the word golf. He could be any other Grandad. But he isn’t … he’s Bob Hawke. A person who, as much, if not more than any other, helped bring modern Australia into being.
Bob has been a long time supporter of Bill’s Woodford dream. The festival began this year with a pre-recorded message of Bob singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’.
“We almost lost him,” his wife Blanche d’Alpuget has said of the trials of 2018. But Bob has picked up. Weeks ago, virtually no one expected him to make the trip from Sydney to endure the summer heat of Woodford. But, Bob wanted to make it ten years straight. Now, here he is … at the end of that long table, puffing a Davidoff cigar and working his way through the crossword.
As we start to talk, Australia’s cricketing hopes of winning a late December Test Match against India are disappearing. Bob, who played first grade cricket in his younger days, admits he doesn’t watch the game as much as he used to.
“We’re not at our best,” he suggests matter-of-factly. “It’s very disappointing, but we have to look at it this way … we’ll come back, I’m sure of that.
“But … I don’t take it on myself to assume decisions of national importance like [advising the cricket team].”
“I’ve always been in favour of people being paid well for what they do,” he adds. “But, these blokes who are professional cricketers … I think they’ve gone too far. Money has become everything and I think that’s spoiled cricket somewhat.”
Ask him who was the best batsman he ever saw and it’s a no-brainer. At 89, he’s still young enough to have seen Don Bradman play.
“I saw him get a hundred in Perth on his way over to England with The Invincibles [in 1948].”
The eyes light up at the memory.
“It was a marvellous experience. One of the WACA players was caught out hooking. When Bradman’s team came out to bat Don demonstrated to him how to play the hook shot. I remember Keith Miller really let them fly that day. Miller was a tremendous player on and off the field. But Bradman was the best batsman I ever saw. No one came near him. Look at it his average, it’s a fraction under a 100 … the next closest Australian averages in the fifties.”
Politics and sport were often immeshed in Bob’s early life. At a young age his father Clem instilled in him that if you “believe in the fatherhood of God, you must necessarily believe in the brotherhood of man.”
As ACTU leader in 1971, Hawke attempted to shut down the South African rugby union tour of Australia. Apartheid was in place in South Africa. Nelson Mandela was in jail. Seventy-five percent of Australians wanted the tour to go ahead, but Bob leading the ACTU, coupled with an army of protesters, attempted, with trade union bans, to stop the tour before it started.
“It wasn’t always easy going against public opinion,” Hawke admits. “A bloke may have been brought up within a certain tradition and that was it. But, that kind of [racial] exclusion was not something I could or would tolerate.”
“At that time Bradman [who was looking into hosting a South African cricket tour the following year] asked me if I’d come and see him. I went to Adelaide and got a taxi out to his home. He said to me ‘Bob, I don’t think politics should be brought into sport”. I said, ‘I couldn’t agree more Don, it was the government of South Africa that brought politics into sport. They made a political decision that if a man was black he couldn’t represent his country. That’s bringing politics into sport’.
Don thought for a moment and said ‘I’ve got no argument with that Bob’. And the subsequent cricket tour did not go ahead.
The former Prime Minister was a key player – globally – in pushing economic sanctions that finally saw Nelson Mandela released from jail.
“Nelson Mandela thanked me for the rest of his life,” says Hawke now. “Australia was the first place he came to when he was released”.
So, what brings Hawke back to Woodford year after year after year. It was the love of his life d’Alpuget who first introduced Bob to Bill and to the festival itself. It’s at Woodford where you can see a band like The Waifs or the Cat Empire, catch a talk on politics, be in thrall of an endless run of street entertainers, have your chakra read, buy the Bhagavad Gita for a small donation and enjoy a festival that is – sans black t-shirts, clipboards and lanyards – the most kind hearted that this writer has ever attended.
“I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I enjoyed music from the word go,” explains Hawke. “I wasn’t much of a singer. Like a lot of people my voice developed later in life and I became … reasonable. I’ve enjoyed singing, it’s given me pleasure and quite a lot of people pleasure too… (hence him Waltzing Matilda to open the festival).”
“There so many things to like about Woodford. I have to give credit to Bill. It’s remarkable how much pleasure he’s given to hundreds of thousands of Australians. It’s given them the opportunity to hear people of quality that they wouldn’t normally have access to. And he’s put up topics of [political and social] conversation and provided the opportunity to have a discussion on things that are important. For that reason I’ve made it a priority to be here… it’s ten years in a row. It might be my last.”
Getting old isn’t for the faint hearted. Ageing has been hard on Hawke. He admits he doesn’t eat much these days. When he was PM, he’d get out of bed at 5am. With a security team in tow he’d keep fit with a round of golf at Royal Canberra before the club was open to the public for business. He earned a good handicap. Then he’d be at work for 9am and ready to go.
Through the physical hardship he tells me that post-politics its been his devotion to Blanche, and hers to him, that’s kept him going. And a sense of humour.
It’s time for a joke.
“I’ve got a good one,” say’s Hawke gleaming.
It’s a classic set up: an Englishman, a Frenchman and an Australian are swimming in a lagoon, “It’s as HOT AS BUGGERY”, Hawke says.
Unaware that the lagoon is a sacred site, the natives arrive and inform the unlucky trio that they’ve committed a violation and their chief has been called to dish out a suitable punishment.
In stilted English ‘the chief’ informs them: ‘We take off your skins. From your skins we make a canoe to always remind people to never trespass on a sacred site. Before you die you have one request.”
Hawke adopts the voice of an exaggerated Frenchman, “I would like a knife. If I must die at the hands of you savages … Viva la France!’.
The Frenchman plunges the knife into his own heart.
“Like my friend from across the channel,” says Hawke as a toffy nosed Brit, “if I must die at the hands of you savages, well … God Save the Queen’.
The Englishman plunges the knife into his own heart.
As for the Australian: ‘I want a fork’.
The Australian punctures his flesh repeatedly as Hawke deadpans, “there goes your fucking canoe.”
When the laughter subsides he offers, “It does say something about the Australian character.”
Occasionally Hawke will attempt four crosswords a day. He admits he struggles with the cryptic edition. The pursuit is a life long passion, he’d occasionally even do one when he occupied The Lodge.
“I used to do them occasionally for a bit of relief. I couldn’t give it anywhere near the time then as I do now,” he muses. “If you’re doing the PM job well, you’ve got no time for anything else. Some times you’d work for virtually days in a row. It all depended on what was happening. I fought hard to get the job and I put my heart and soul into it. You owed it to yourself and more particularly you owed it to your country.”
Earlier in the day Anthony Albanese had been booed during a forum when the subject of the Adani mine reared its head. Leadership permeates every political conversation held in the forum of Bill’s Bar.
With the current revolving door of Prime Ministers and lack of leadership, times are very different to when the likes of Hawke, Keating and Howard bedded in and led the country.
“I don’t pretend to be a leader any more,” says Bob. “People ask me for advice and I’m more than happy to do that. [Now], there’s nothing there to match leadership with belief … I don’t say that with any pleasure.”
“I think [Labour] are looking pretty good for the next election. Bill [Shorten] will never set the world on fire, but they’ve got a good team and they’ll have a good go [at winning government]”.
If he has any life advice: “it’s to take people at their face value, give them the benefit of the doubt and if you think they’re wrong talk to them and try and persuade them, but, give them the credit for what they believe in and what they are talking about.”
Held at Woodfordia from 4-6 May 2018, The Planting Festival is happening this weekend. The Planting Festival is a celebration of cultural expression through music, dance, art and folklore, and the nurturing of our forested parkland. The Planting hosts a diverse programme intended to inspire, inform and contribute to the ever-growing global environmental and consciousness movement. For more information go to https://theplantingfestival.com
Photo: James Day https://www.jamesday.com.au
ENDS
