Category: Melbourne

Well the results are in for 2020 and, yeah not so good.

I began the first day of the decade by panelling some radio on SEN for that fabulous public holiday money, then heading to the beach at Black Rock with Annika. I remember feeling a bit guilty about lying on the sand in the sun while on other beaches around the country, people were being evacuated in landing craft by the navy as the ‘Black Summer’ bushfires raged through communities. Of course, our prime minister pissed off to Hawaii and then had his office lie about it so maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.

In the days that followed, Melbourne became choked with smoke and briefly had the worst air quality in the world. You knew it was bad when you started seeing white people walking around wearing masks.

For the 4th year in a row I was an audio operator at the Australian Open. Early on when they were testing the sound and light show, I saw a spotlight cutting a beam through Rod Laver Arena. My first thought was “oh, I didn’t think they were using the smoke machine for this?” No, they weren’t. That was just the smoke from the bushfires INSIDE the arena with its closed roof.

Had a nice distraction from struggling to breathe when my good friend Tim Wray discovered my driver’s licence was being used on the Optus website, unknown to me. You can read all about that here, here and here. Also here, here, here, here and here. And here. Also on this error-riddled article that looks like it was written by a bot.

Then it was back to the ABC’s Southbank studios for the usual tomfoolery on season 11 of Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell. No better place to be for the 10th anniversary of my move to Melbourne.

The first half of the season was business as usual. Mum even came over from Adelaide to see a taping. That’s her in the yellow jacket and the same hair style as Michelle Brasier’s character:

My brother Luke enjoyed watching that on TV back in Adelaide:

But that little story about a new coronavirus outbreak in China turned into a story about people trapped on cruise ships, then the health system in northern Italy being overrun by cases, then Iran and New York and every day it seemed to just get closer and closer to home until quite suddenly the Grand Prix in Melbourne was cancelled and we got the call we couldn’t have a studio audience. Like, literally one morning Shaun was saying he reckoned we should be able to make it through the last 6 episodes with our audience and then a few hours later, nup. But I suppose we were lucky to be able to continue at all. Fortunately the ABC is an essential service.

The writers kept coming to the office for a couple more weeks and then we all just wrote from home. We were also only allowed at the taping on the Tuesday night if we were an extra in a sketch. Otherwise, we could watch a live stream at home or just wait til Wednesday night and watch it on TV with everyone else.

The show itself was a little bit different without a studio audience and it took some getting used to the sudden absence of laughter, but I think we adapted quite well. Sometimes it was better actually because you could hear every word. Personally though, nothing beats a big laugh from a crowd to give a joke that undisputed tick of approval. And when it’s a joke you’ve written, it’s the best feeling in the world. I’ve really missed that this year and I’m sure my stand-up comedian friends have missed it even more.

Not to mention no end of season wrap parties this year.

Our whole society changed this year and a lot of those changes will probably be permanent. Like additional barriers between customers and employees at supermarkets, hand sanitiser dispensers at the entrance to stores and markers on the ground to help with social distancing. Now they’re installed, I think they’re just going to stay with us. And they’ll be incorporated into the design of new buildings.

Hopefully this will spell the end for the open plan office. I am yet to meet a single person who likes them.

In March I got a call from Crocmedia to let me know they had to stop all casual shifts because so much live sport had been cancelled. Panelling their radio coverage of AFL has been one of my main sources of income the last 8 years. But I only lost about a month’s worth of work before they got me back in under the JobKeeper scheme. I ended up panelling mostly the weekday afternoon show on SEN – ‘Dwayne’s World’ with Dwayne Russel – as well as SportsDay on 3AW with Gerard Healy and Sam McClure (both done out of the same studios). It was nice to have a reason to leave the house. The 2020 AFL Season eventually resumed, but man the logistics required to make it work this year are astounding. Will make a good ESPN documentary some day.

Crocmedia officially changed its name to Sports Entertainment Network this year and Hit107 in Adelaide changed back to SAFM, as it was called when I had my first radio panelling job there back in 2008. I don’t think it’s a real radio station unless it changes its name and/or frequency at least once a decade.

Although I didn’t panel the AFL Grand Final coverage, I did panel some of the pre-game and took the opportunity to keep the tradition alive of “wearing a suit to the big games” (as Rex used to say).

We thought things might be back to normal by the time pre-production for Mad as Hell season 12 rolled around in July but just as we started, Victoria’s second wave of Covid was ramping up.

My first day back at the office was day 1 of mandatory masks in Melbourne. I did 2 weeks at the office before we were all writing from home again. But on one of those fleeting office days, I wrote this Bunnings Conspiracy fake ad, which is probably my favourite thing I’ve ever written for anything, and so brilliantly executed by Emily Taheny and Stephen Hall.

Melbourne’s second lockdown was much more severe than the first. There weren’t many reasons we were allowed to leave the house and when restrictions were at their peak, we couldn’t travel more than 5km from home unless for essential work. So like all of Melbourne, Annika and I spent a lot of time staying in. We made the most of it. Watched all of Stargate SG1, Stargate Universe (underrated show – what are the chances of a reboot?), Schitt’s Creek, and a few other things I can’t remember.

With all the fun things in Melbourne closed, it was fortunate I had a big project to work on while stuck at home for all those months; that of editing season 2 of ‘Good Afternoon Adelaide’. Lucky for us we shot all the footage just before Christmas last year. And spending a large chunk of this year at my desk, staring at a screen and sorting through footage of my friends laughing really felt like I was still there hanging out with them.

Season 2 of GAA consisted of six half hour episodes, all of which are now up online. But if you’ve only got two and a half minutes, watch this:

And then this:

Oh and you may as well watch this one while you’re at it. And big thanks to John Hnatowych for the brilliant ident at the end and Yuri Worontschak for the Channel 9-eque music that goes with it:

And thanks to a hard won campaign to get community TV’s broadcast license extended for another year, the episodes did get to air on Channel 31 in Melbourne and Adelaide’s Channel 44, which was cool.

It was particularly difficult this time as the current Minister for Communications and The Arts, Paul Fletcher, apparently didn’t know what ‘community television’ is. Or what ‘television’ is. Or ‘community’. But I suppose it’s a bit ridiculous these days to expect a minister to have a basic understanding of their own portfolio. I mean, they only work 4 weeks a year or something.

So I guess community TV will be running the exact same campaign to stop the current federal government from killing the industry again in 2021. It’s been an annual tradition since 2014.

Speaking of Adelaide, state border closures in the wake of the pandemic (the first such closures in more than 100 years) meant I couldn’t visit my home town all year. The last few years I’ve been going back every month or two, mainly to see my brother Luke, who’d been steadily declining in health as he approached the final stages of a terminal degenerative condition called hereditary spastic paraplegia (or HSP). Our sister Alice had the same condition – she died in 2016.

After the first wave started to die down around the country in May, SA announced it would open its border to Victoria on July 24. I was really looking forward to getting over there. 7 months was already the longest I’d been away from my family and many close friends who still live there. But the case numbers remained stubbornly in the double digits and then started to take off, causing the border re-opening to be delayed indefinitely. I had a thought at that moment that I was probably not going to see my brother alive again.

Meanwhile, Annika faced a similar dilemma with her ill father in Sweden, who had been undergoing treatment for cancer the last few years. It can be tricky to drop everything and fly to the other side of the world in normal times, but now there’s the increased risk of getting Covid oneself, then the prospect of months waiting to get back into Australia, not to mention the increased cost of the flights plus two weeks of hotel quarantine upon returning. But she got permission to leave Australia on compassionate grounds and managed to make it there and be with him for a few days before he died on November 25.

I’d spent time with him the three times I’ve traveled to Sweden with Annika. He always made me feel welcome and I enjoyed his company and our discussions of history, movies and space travel. He had a keen eye for style and a great sense of humour and I’ll miss him.

Back in Melbourne, we had finally got the second wave under control and were now seeing weeks of zero new cases and zero new deaths – so called “Double Donut Days” – and South Australia had announced the Victorian border would be open again on December 1.

It really was an extraordinary effort by the entire Victorian community. Even more amazing when you consider that fighting on the side of the virus was also an opportunistic and inept state opposition, a buck-passing federal government lead by a part time prime minister and the Murdoch media pushing their usual agenda. On those days in July and August where we were seeing new cases in the six and seven hundreds, I think a lot of us had just about given up hope. But we pulled together in a way I’ve never seen before, and probably not seen by anyone round here since World War 2. Quite incredible. People will no doubt be talking about this for hundreds of years.

I was so relieved I was going to be able to see Luke after all. He had really been struggling to talk the last couple of months and he was having difficulty swallowing. That’s not good. I could still get him to laugh though when I busted out the Simpsons quotes during our video chats. He was looking forward to me visiting as well. His carers made up a sign on his shelf that counted down the sleeps until I drove over.

There was one more scare though. In November, a breach in Adelaide’s hotel quarantine and a subsequent cluster at the now infamous Woodville Pizza Bar lead to a sudden and severe lockdown. Thankfully they got on top of it and it turned out not to be as bad as first thought, but my heart rate was up for a couple of days there.

So finally on Tuesday December 1, after 11 months away, I drove from Melbourne to Adelaide. Had to stop at the border and quote a reference number to a police officer (even though the border was open, people still had to register online beforehand). It was actually surprisingly easy in the end. A few hundred metres later I was welcomed by a Stobie Pole guard of honour.

I drove straight to Luke’s house in Pasadena. When I arrived he was sitting in his wheelchair at his computer, watching Pimp My Ride (which seems to have been his favourite show this year). He was thrilled to see me and I almost couldn’t believe I was actually there. I sat and watched a couple of episodes with him and then put on some Rick and Morty season 4, which I’d been saving all year so we could watch it together. Lots of laughs, just like old times.

The next day I went back again and we watched more stuff. Then Dad and my sister Hannah and her partner Nick came round and we had pizza and watched Flying High in the lounge room. It was so great. After that though, Luke went downhill quite quickly. Thursday he lay in bed and we all hung out in his room and watched fun things all day. He still laughed a few times at Rick and Morty. Friday, he was barely conscious and it was now clear he had pneumonia. We listened to his beloved Beatles and watched old home videos and reminisced about the good times. Saturday he was worse, and he died at 7pm.

Life is so precious.

A lot of people have experienced the death of someone close this year. And many wouldn’t have had the luxury of being there in person. I’m glad both Annika and I were with our loved ones. In a perfect world, I would have been in Stockholm with her and she would have been with me in Adelaide as well. Although, in a perfect world neither her father nor my brother would have been sick in the first place. But if it’s a choice between being there or missing it, and you have a choice, I say you’ve just got to be there.

We’ve known this was going to happen for a long time. In 2005, Luke started to have trouble walking. By 2009, we learned what it was and that it was going to just keep getting worse. We knew theoretically he probably wouldn’t make it to age 30. But when my sister Alice died aged 27, it was such a shock. It brought our whole family closer together as we made a real effort to see Luke and each other as often as possible. I started coming back to Adelaide more frequently (until this year).

The reality of what was to come had been hanging over us for four and a half years. Every time Mum’s name popped up on my phone, my first thought was: “Is this the call? Am I going to the airport now?”

Because Alice was only 27, I think we all assumed Luke wouldn’t make it past 27 either but he made it to 29. Each of the last three Christmases I thought would be my last with him.

I don’t think knowing it was going to happen made it any easier. But it did make us squeeze the most out of the last four years as we possible could. Luke’s life really was the best it could have been. Two trips to Melbourne (one to see Mad as Hell and the other to come to my wedding). Lots of great birthday parties, trips to the movies, his regular ‘Sunday Night Dinners’ with the extended family, lots of presents, lots of laughs. Lots of love.

Luke received outstanding care from his carers at Community Living Options (CLO). They just got him and over the last few years, really maintained his quality of life and dignity. They made sure he had fun every day, even when some of those days were pretty tough. It was also great visiting Luke because it was a surprise to find out which carers were on and always good to have a chat. Many of them I now consider part of our family too. And I want to give a special mention to Ruth and Sharon, who came with Luke on both of his Melbourne trips and spent many Christmases with us.

I also want to thank my Aunty Lorry and Uncle Graham for the years of love, and especially for their help with Luke’s palliative care towards the end. It meant my Mum (who like them, is also a GP) could just be a Mum.

Most people don’t want to talk about death or think about end-of-life care but we all have to face the reality eventually and with our ageing population, it’s only going to become more commonplace. I don’t know about you but lying in my own bed, watching my favourite shows, surrounded by people I love sounds pretty good to me.

I miss Luke so much. I have so many great memories with him. We spent so much time together growing up, riding our bikes around the backyard, going to Marion, playing video games and watching funny TV shows and joking around. He was my favourite person in the world to make laugh; usually with a line from The Simpsons.

Because of his Asperger’s Syndrome (or autism spectrum disorder, as they call it now), it was hard to get Luke to smile for photos, so I used to get him to laugh by whispering a quote in his ear just before the photo. Here’s us at our cousin Alex’s wedding in 2018. From memory the quote was “Can you pass me a handful of peanuts? No not those peanuts… the ones at the bottom”.

In fact, I’ve got tons of these.

Luke’s funeral was at the Port Noarlunga Surf Live Saving Club on December 16. It was a wonderful service with Simpsons jokes, a James Bond cardboard cutout guard of honour, Beatles music & decorations and a beautiful eulogy by Ruth McIntyre and my sister Hannah.

He would have loved it.

We were actually in the lounge room at Luke’s house 3 days after he died, discussing whether to have that Bart Simpson “Hey cool. I’m dead” image in the booklet. Aunty Lorry first suggested it and I thought it was hilarious and knew Luke would have loved it too. Mum wasn’t convinced, so there was some debate. But just at that moment, a light fitting fell out of the ceiling about a metre away from us and crashed onto the tiled floor, making a loud noise and scaring the hell out of all of us.

We all agreed that was Luke giving it his approval.

So it’s been a pretty bad year. And it’s been especially sad to see how nations one would think would know better – like the USA, UK, Sweden and others – have so badly mishandled the pandemic and caused so many people to die needlessly and left so many others to now deal with chronic illness. We are pretty lucky here in Australia.

But you know, I still feel like 2016 was worse. At least this time Trump lost. But also, I think this year has really made me appreciate the good things. A lot of them very simple things that are so easy to take for granted, like sitting in a cafe and drinking a coffee, riding a tram, hearing a crowd of strangers laugh in a darkened room, seeing family and friends.

My experiences this year have lead me once again to the same conclusions. Live life to the fullest. Do all the things you want to do. If you want to do something, and you can, don’t wait. And do what makes you happy. But you know all this already.

Suppose I better get back to it.

Wishing you a safe and dull 2021.

-DMG