I'm going to feed some journal entries into this conversation. I wish I had some visuals to add but the years 1979-1982 saw me without a camera. Here's a note from the Wollongong Poetry Festival of 1979:
2nd October 1979 Train down early Sunday morning to Coalcliff & a walk by myself down to the beach while Ken & Sal put together posters & magazines for the evening. I have a calm & generally gregarious weekend. By 2 p.m. a lot of people have arrived at Coalcliff - the Hammials, Denis Gallagher, ΠO, Nigel, Phil Roberts & others. We head in to the Gong but the Al Monte reception room isn't open. Check out the station & streets then back to Al Monte's to shift tables & chairs & wait over a beer or two.
Phil Roberts delivers a paper called ‘Death of the poet’ (rather melodramatically) then there's a break & the W'Gong writers read. Ken & Sal first, then some unbelievable local writers [probably including Leigh Stokes], then another break & the Sydney contingent read. Phil R. is interrupted by the response of some Pyrmont anarchist whose kid is playing with a soccer ball during the proceedings. There's a shouting match with quite a few having a say till Claire gets the reading going again. Others read - Denis, ΠO (Mayakovsky & Nelson Algren & the fuck poems shouted from a tabletop), Tranter finally (performing the ‘Foucault at the Forest Lodge’ series of pieces in a totally unsuitable dramatic manner). Then another break & a band play lounge lizard music (Girl from Ipanema) while everyone drinks on & eats lukewarm lasagne &c. Three carloads of us go to a coffee house & ruminate over the proceedings.
I sleep in the pantry & wake early, the sun up over the ocean. A morning long breakfast turns into a picnic lunch in the back yard, then in the afternoon with Kurt & Anna we go back into Wollongong to look at the Art Gallery (2 coloured photos of Micky's on display) & walk down to the beach - barbed wire & factories - tankers out on the Pacific - ought to be mines buried there. It's grey & there are only a handful of people down that end of town.
More snapshots from the Al Monte reading:
- best readings from Nigel, ΠO, Ken & Denis.
- Lyn Tranter (to the Pyrmont anarchists): ‘What are you doing with that child!?’
- Nick turning up & catching a late train home
- Les Wicks reading in the open section - very drunk (& very broke)
- a local W'Gong hippy woman reading with the ‘jazz’ band
- Donna Maegraith prefacing each poem with ‘O'-kay then . . .’
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Some photos by Micky Allan
Barbara Brooks & Sal Brereton, Coalcliff, 1980 
Laurie Duggan, Coalcliff, 1980 
Sal Brereton & Ken Bolton, Coalcliff, 1980 
Pam Brown & Sal Brereton, Coalcliff, 1980 Handy Hint to The Coalcliff Days visitors - if you click on the images they will
enlarge (this especially helps with reading scans of pages of text)
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
xmas corpses
The mere thought of a hot Christmas is enough for me now here in Kent, but that Xmas in the National Park . . . It should be noted that Kurt has the remains of the goose on his head in the photograph while I'm the closest I've ever been to a garden gnome. I wasn't, alas, around at the house a bit later when the corpses were made, but I did supply the title Xmas Corpses.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Tyre Pinch - The cyclist's nightmare resulted from a bike ride with Kurt Brereton from Sydney to Coalcliff in 1980 (exact date to be corroborated) which eventually ended at Ken Bolton's and Sal Brereton's house where Kurt (Bruno Donatello) took most of the book's photos. As I recall it was a long ride, it was awfully hot and I had a murderous hangover. My bike got a flat in the vicinity of Stanwell Tops and I accidentally pinched the inner-tube in an attempt to get the tyre off the wheel, a very bad thing. Kurt rode on to Ken and Sal's where he found Anna Couani who came to my rescue in her trusty VW Beetle (which must have had roofracks).
The booklet's 28 pages of photos and Kurt's pithy comments record the aftermath of my second-worst incident on a bike as well as being a pleasant reminder of happy times at Ken and Sal's now legendary house by the sea.
Denis Gallagher
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