The Cathouse
Like the very important icon of our generation Hillary Duff once said, let’s go back, back to the beginning….
In 1966 my mother was born on a bridge in Balmain, Sydney, Australia and adopted out to a well off family from a good neighbourhood as surprise Christmas present for her father, as he always wanted a daughter and their birthdays were both on the 17th of that month, it was meant to be.
He loved his little girl very much, unfortunately he was to become very sick and died of bone cancer on Halloween when she was only 10, and left to the care of her adopted mother and two brothers who relentlessly abused her mentally, physically and sexually. Maybe it was because of their heartbreak, their jealousy, or maybe they were just pieces of shit. We’ll never know.
My mother ran away from home when she was only 14 and joined a circus. She would only see her adopted mother one more time, when at 18 she was hospitalised after climbing over a large brick wall in the cities cemetery and falling on her back, also on Halloween. She guesses the hospital must have made contact with her mother who from memory dropped in to finalise some inheritance paperwork she was now entitled to left by her late father and that was it.
My mum sent herself to acting college with Nicole Kidman, partied a lot with Michael Hutchins, made a pretty decent name for herself doing standup comedy in Melbourne, travelled to LA and assumably snorted the remainder of her inheritance to the bone.
In 1969 my dad was born in the western suburbs of Melbourne as the fifth child to his parents, 15 years younger than his closest in age sibling. He was an uncle before he was even born and at age 10 his parents told him of their finalised divorce. Having all of their older children well and truly moved out of home, they asked him “Who would you like to live with?” To which he responded “Uhm, whoever stays in the house I guess” - well, his father moved out with his new partner and so did his mother. As a parting gift to the 10 year old they left him a handgun and the keys. One of his older junky brothers would sometimes come to stay but did a decent stint in jail after stealing his gun to rob a bank.
My dad is lovingly known as “Mosshead” by his friends that still live in this town, and as a bit of a nomad, the rest of the country. He grew 13 inch liberty spikes dyed green and was named leader of his street gang for being the only one that wasn’t a dickhead. My dad started the worlds first ever ‘Punk Fanzine’ McMossheads Slaughterhouse illustrated by the same artist famously known for designing the Guns and Roses logo. My dad only survived off of peanut butter sandwiches till he met my mum.
It’s 1992 in a heavy metal club called the ‘Cat House’ in St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia.
A 22 year old punk lad walks up to a 25 year old goth bird at the bar and yells over the band ‘I like a girl with a fat ass’. That’s it, that’s my fucking origin story. Some 9 months later, May 25th 1993, the world got to celebrate its first ever International Thalia-Star day.
It wasn’t till my parents found themselves as the primary caregivers for a baby did they realise neither of them had ever known what it was like to have family, having never been cared for themselves, navigating how to care for one would prove more than tricky, yet their only intention for the rest of their lives.
Resuscitation
When I was 3 I woke up at midnight as my parents walked in wearing bright green mud masks, I was frightened because I’ve never seen them like that before, to which they thought was a great idea to tell me that they were aliens and turn green after I go to sleep at night. if I drink this warm milk with green food colouring presented to me, I would too be an alien and so I drank the warm green milk and went back to sleep and I think that’s where it all began??
We went on a holiday to the Gold Coast and my mum was fully into her Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, save the whales movement. The Gold Coast opened its first ever Sushi Train where my (60 kgs at best) long haired, most definitely stoned dad entered a sushi eating competition where he beat a body builder demolishing 120 plates of aburi scollops, for this he won a Malibu surfboard which was apparently worth never returning to Melbourne for as we turned our short trip into a forever holiday.
Dad got his gold medallion and became a surf-life saviour. He once saved a man who had drowned off the coast, brought him back to shore where he did CPR on this fresh pulseless corpse and brought him back to life. The man did become a quadraphonic due to the accident in the waves that caused him to drown in the first place, but was forever grateful for my dad who took a chance and saved his life, I believe they ended up in the paper together. Dad went on to do acting work after this and featured in Heath Ledger’s first movie, they became quite close mates and we attended his birthday party. I remember a story of the two of them trying to sneak into Movie World to go on rides during their filming break and security basically saying we don’t care who you are you have to pay and come through the front gates.
It was only a year later when my dad drove my two cousins to a Hansen concert in Victoria, on the way they were tragically struck by a drunk driver in a head-on collision. My cousins were safely pulled out of the car by emergency services but my father was pronounced dead on the scene. My eldest cousin ran back to the car which was up in flames and said “you have to get my uncles body out of the car, he has a little girl, if you don’t get him out I’ll climb back in” - emergency service personnel were sure the car was due to explode at any minute, however they cut the doors off my dads side of the car, and decided to try resuscitation as my cousin begged and pleaded for his life. Eventually they got a pulse, then he was airlifted to a city hospital, given his last rights by a priest and stayed in a coma for months. Miraculously he eventually regained consciousness but suffered a pretty severe head injury as well as having external pins in his leg to completely rebuild his ankle.
Prior to dads accident he had started one of his many entrepreneurial business startups, it’s a shame really, I truly believe that without the head injury he easily could have used his amazing ideas and followed through to become a success. Anyway, his injuries became the decider of our future and so became the long await to finalising compensation and experiencing homelessness in the meantime as he couldn’t work. During this time we lived in a van, however dad lovingly refers to this as the time we just “traveled around Australia”.
One night dad and I were sleeping in a shelter, mum had the van parked outside her work to sleep in when she finished, which was apparently doing admin work at a brothel - anyway.. So mums sleeping in the van on the streets of St Kilda and a man tried to break in, mum didn’t know what to do so she started barking like a dog and the man ran away. I often wonder if he got scared because there was a ferocious guard dog in the van or a crazy lady weird enough to imitate one.
I remember sleeping in the van on the streets of Kings Cross in Sydney, sleeping in the van on the streets of St Kilda in Melbourne, spending lots of time with strange adults and my only childlike friend being our dog Spunky who came on all our adventures with us.