So What Do You Reckon? by Robert G. Barrett

Author:Robert G. Barrett [Barrett, Robert G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

I have been to about three funerals in my life. My father’s, my grandmother’s and the service for a builder on the Central Coast because he and his widow were okay.

Personally, I hate the bloody things. They’re even worse than having to go to court. I’d rather be out getting drunk with some mates.

Brad Mayes was one of the most horrible drunks I knew. He was obstreperous, uproarious and the original goodtime Charlie.

He loved to laugh and was one of those rotten types who aren’t happy unless they have you laughing too.

I don’t know how many times I’d walk into a pub and Brad would have a beer in my hand before I even had a chance to get to the bar. Brad loved a cool one almost as much as he loved his friends.

I grew up with Brad in Bondi.

His father was a legendary sweep from Tamarama Surf Club and surfer from the era when half-a-dozen blokes out at North Bondi was a crowded day.

Jack ‘Bluey’ Mayes pioneered surfing films in Australia and discovered half the surfing spots up and down the NSW coast that today’s surfers take for granted.

Naturally, it rubbed off on Brad. I turned off surfing at Bondi when it started getting too crowded, became a ‘lid’ and joined Tamarama Surf Club.

Brad powered on and became a champion surfer around Australia in the ’70s.

He won a heap of contests and there wouldn’t be too many surfers around Australia who didn’t know Brad.

Yet the contests weren’t all that important to Brad. He just loved to surf. He was one of those weird blokes that would even give you a wave.

Brad hated my books.

Often I was on the end of a clout round the ears, a beer-spilling bearhug or a slap on my sunburned back from the drunken big pest, when he’d spot me in the pub and demand to know why the next one wasn’t finished.

There’s even a story going round about when he was a beach inspector at Tamarama. He’d got to a good part of The Godson and someone ran up and pointed to a poof going out to sea in a rip, screaming his lungs out.

Brad looked up over the railing, nodded and said, ‘Yeah I see him. I’ll get him as soon as I finish this page.’ And continued reading.

Brad was a legend in his own way — a legendary drinker and eater. His numerous surfing treks to Bali and the eight-course meals are legend. A dinner date with Brad was Brad ordering two T-bone steaks for himself, then eating half his girl’s too.

And on the social scene everything was giant. You didn’t go out for a drink. You went out to get giant. You never woke up with a hangover. You just got too giant the night before. A raging party with music going all night was just simplified as giant. Then you got up the following morning and went out in three-metre surf for two hours.

Of course, all the sheilas hated Brad too.

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