BORN TO BE WILD by STEPPENWOLF. Story by Paul Dufficy.

Sydney 1970 – 71

By Year 11 most of us were looking for opportunities to take a break from either the danger or boredom of boarding school. On free Sundays I would head into the city and usually end up at Speakers’ Corner in the Domain. What a great place to dive into the world of local and international politics. Many of the puzzling, unarticulated, uncharted things I felt inside were being given voice by these firebrands. I listened to Indigenous activists; war protestors; anti-apartheid supporters, fire and brimstone prophets and the occasional lonely speaker without a crowd or much of a topic.

After Woodstock in 1969 I became intrigued by the counterculture in the United States and by chance, in 1970, fell into conversation with Geoff, a classmate, and I guess we were thinking in parallel. He told me about a movie called Easy Rider opening in Sydney at the Gala Cinema on Pitt Street in March. We came up with a dodgy cover story to escape and once in the cinema I’m pretty certain we were the only two people wearing school uniforms amidst the felt hats, bell bottoms, floral tops and gaudy jewellery. I pondered for some time the promotional line for the movie: ‘A man went looking for America…… and couldn’t find it anywhere.’ I also pondered drugs, motorbikes, sex, freedom and Steppenwolf’s staggering version of ‘Born to be Wild’.

All that pondering led to my plan to meet more girls. The final year of school offered those interested the opportunity to try out for the debating team. Now most of my classmates let that memo slide on by but if they’d read the fine print they might have noticed that :

1. a) the team would have to travel to other schools and
2. b) some of those schools were entirely populated by females.

Now I have to say upfront that it was not an arduous audition process in a school that considered any kind of sporting contest to be the pinnacle of human achievement.

But I’d never debated before and really had no clue about the process so with some apprehension I approached the teacher supervising the team. I knew I would have my work cut out because there was only one spot left. As it happened no one else applied so I got the job. After a few practice sessions it was determined that I would be first speaker in the hope, I think, that our future adjudicators might lose some perspective on my performance as the tournament unfolded.

My teammates could look after themselves in front of an audience which often crept towards double figures on a night when there was not much else going on in Sydney. Not so me, but I was more than happy to take a verbal beating on a Friday night just to talk over weak tea and stale cake to girls who seemed strangely as desperate as I was. The general consensus was that I was the weak link.

And there were all boys’ schools as well. On one cold and bleak late autumn night we travelled to inner-city Darlinghurst to take on the Sydney Grammar team in the last debate of the season. The topic was ‘Thou shall not stow thrones’ and we were the affirmative. As an Irish Catholic Australian whose granddad had been born in County Roscommon in 1871 and had left Ireland at seventeen to escape the grinding poverty brought on by colonisation I was all for it.

As first speaker I introduced our line of argument and then got stuck in myself. After my incendiary republican monologue the first speaker for the opposing team took to the rostrum and took to me. The smirk, his tailored uniform, foppish haircut, good arguments and impeccable, clever timing made me want to punch him. After his sardonic and sneering dismissal of my arguments he proceeded to outline his team’s case. My team mates both spoke eloquently and passionately but we lost the night. We were used to losing but on that night I realised that oratory is a wonderful thing but passionless rhetoric is both hollow and soulless. My debating career was over.

The Sydney Grammar first speaker from that last debate, like me, chose to do Arts/Law at the University of Sydney. Unlike me he was successful and after a notable law career moved into investment banking while at the same time marrying into an established Sydney legal dynasty. Later he went on to champion the republic, acknowledge and support sexual diversity, and promote the need to address climate change. When he became Prime Minister he relied on rhetoric over belief and to the disappointment of many allowed us to be led down a barren and uncaring path. A shame he wasn’t born to be wild.

Stereo Story 862