WHAT COMES TO MIND … THE RADIATORS AND THE BUS NEVER TAKEN
- Bernard Zuel
- Nov 5
- 3 min read
This week, a new occasional series in the Wind Back Wednesday space, based on the work of the brilliant photographer Stuart Spence.
Each time, he will dig a photo out from his archives going back almost 50 years and challenge me to respond with what comes to mind when I look at that image. It might be serious or ridiculous, personal or historical. It might be short and brutal, long and precise. But it will be inspired by a photo I’ve not seen before, and maybe even unseen by anyone beyond Stuart himself.
We begin in a room full of diamonds, and this time I do know which way to turn.
__________________
“Unlock the door and light the fire/My head is filled with sweet desire.”
Going to school in Fairfield didn’t really register as anything of note for some years, living in Chester Hill even less so. Cheso was a western Sydney suburb so inconsequential it could only aspire to one day be called nondescript. Its one and only claim to fame was having spawned Terry “Baa” Lamb – Canterbury player, favourite of my father, and man who in the 1988 grand final helped Ellery Hanley discover Disneyland without leaving the Sydney Football Stadium. Which was nice of him, and his forearm.
These two suburbs, this whole area, was about as interesting to the rest of Sydney in the 1970s and '80s as I was to that girl from Oatley I met at debating who despite numerous long phone conversations confusingly always had something on, somewhere to be, someone about to arrive whenever I offered to trek – and I do mean trek, given it would have been a bus, two trains and another bus with long walk – across town to visit at the weekend.
“Just telephoned, I heard you say/This boy of yours is A-OK/No need for tears, I'm on my way.”
Come on! It wasn’t even the Shire, I would not have set off the Brown Alert! Brown Alert! alarms crossing Tom Ugly’s Bridge. And I could have brought a note from my parish priest to hers. Admittedly it would have been forged as I hadn’t been to mass for a good five or six years at this point, but that’s not important.
But maybe it wasn’t my skin, maybe it wasn’t my funny name, maybe it wasn’t lingering resentment over the fact we beat her team in the State competition or the possibility that I might suddenly interrupt proceedings with a “Hello! Have you been introduced to The Good Book?” while I brandished Elvis Costello A Singing Dictionary.
Maybe it was that I came from Fairfield and Chester Hill but singularly, distressingly and comprehensively failed at the very basic step of growing a proper mullet. The kind you saw in full splendour on Fess Parker (or was it only Geoff Turner? Is my memory failing?), founding member and guitarist of The Radiators, who were formed in western Sydney, forged from western Sydney, and sent out into the world on behalf of western Sydney. The kind she may well have seen on him when Radiators played the Sylvania Hotel, as seen in the photo above.
Possessed of a curly mess of Mauritian locks as I was, any and all attempts to grow a proper length, like those studly boys who always did well at the Marconi Club on a Sunday night, merely saw me grow out rather than down. Fuzzy wuzzy was fine for bouncing off if you wacked my head, but it meant I could forget business upfront and party down the back. I could forget prison tatts and rollies. I could forget schooners of New and habits of old.
But that’s not the worst part. I could forget ever saying to her, with just a bit of a sneer, those words every boy wants to deliver to his white-girl-my-father-would-like, Catholic girl-my-mother-would-like, out-of-my-league-girl-I-always-would-like …
“Don't worry, it's all right/I'll be coming home to see you tonight/Don't worry, it's OK/I'll be coming home to see you today … I’m coming 'ome!”.
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Find more work by Stuart Spence on Instagram @stuart_spence
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