The Life of Every Party

By Noel Tennison

Coming off the back of his successful first Book, “My Spin in PR”, raconteur, writer and PR guru Noel Tennison tells the amusing story of his life over eight decades in Queensland and Victoria during which he became probably the only man in Australian history to have served six different political parties and five trade unions, wrestled with the Catholic Church and enjoyed three marriages and six children! His experiences ranging from illegal bookmaker to top government adviser and Melbourne Press Club President provide a rich vein of humour and a unique view of Australian history starting only 30years after Federation and extending to the present day.
Here's what they said about his first book "My Spin in PR":

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329626379

Book preview

The Life of Every Party

The Life of Every Party

The Life of Every Party

Noel Tennison

Copyright © 2014  Noel Tennison: The Life of Every Party

All rights reserved under conditions described in the Copyright Act 1968 of Australia. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means - whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic - without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law. Under the Copyright Act of 1968 It is a fair dealing to make a reproduction for the purposes of research or study, of one or more articles on the same subject in a periodical publication, or, in the case of any other work, of a reasonable portion of a work. In the case of a published work in hardcopy form that is not less than 10 pages and is not an artistic work, 10% of the number of pages, or one chapter, is a reasonable portion.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author:           Tennison, Noel, author.

Title:            The life of every party  / Noel Tennison.

ISBN:             9781312400870 (paperback)

Subjects:         Tennison, Noel. Public relations

consultants--Australia--Biography.

Public relations and politics--Australia.

Australia--Politics and government.

Dewey Number:     659.2092

First Published in 2014

by the Primrose Hall Publishing Group

Sydney Australia

www.primrosehall.com

Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright. However should any infringement have occurred, the publisher and the author tenders their apology and invite the copyright owner to contact them so the infringement may be remedied. The statements, opinions and anecdotes contained in this book are solely those of the author and not of the publisher.  The publisher disclaims responsibility for any injury to persons or their reputations or property resulting from any comments, descriptions or anecdotes and the like made by the author in this book.

Many Thanks

Several people have contributed in various ways to this publication so they can each share some of the blame.

My life-long friend, Patrick Connor SVD, converted my wild exaggerations into simple truths while Anne Burrows, Cecilia Edwards, Deirdre Scott and David Sutton tried to guide my way through the paths of ‘writeousness.’ Queenslanders, Vince McCahon and Peter Toohey verified my State of Origin, while my dear wife, Jeannette, encouraged me with modest commendations like: Not Bad.

But the heavy hand of literary rectitude was applied by my old adversary in Public Relations practice, Richard Thomas, who sought revenge for past encounters by applying his code of correctness to my prose and his sense of dignity to my wickedly wanton perspective.

PUBLICATION EXTRACTS

The Age

The Australian Liberal

The Bulletin

The Herald & Weekly Times Pty Ltd

The Australian

The Telegraph (Brisbane)

The Courier- Mail

The Clerk (magazine)

PHOTOGRAPHS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Front Cover: Maria Lulianella

John Allison

Jim Bridges

Ian West

State Library of Victoria

RESEARCH

‘Big’ Jim Tennison

(Media Relations Pty Ltd)

1. The Battle of Brisbane

While I loved and admired my mother, I stand accused of contributing to her death. But more of that later.

The greatest favour she did for me was to give me life on 8 February 1931 and I reckon anyone who manages to be born at the height of a flood and in the depth of the Great Depression is probably destined for an eventful life.

Brisbane offered no indication of such turbulence at the time. It was another 11 years before the U.S. military occupied the city and we dug back-yard air raid shelters in anticipation of Japanese bombs. That was when the Allied Chiefs of Staff decided that in the event of a Japanese invasion, Queensland would be forfeited to the enemy without a fight and the first line of defence would be formed on the NSW border. This scandalous military strategy became known as The Brisbane Line.

Throughout these early years, I endured the hostility of two older brothers and a father who thought I was an idiot. The question of my intelligence level was discussed one day when I was raking grass clippings after mowing the lawn. Jack and Pat were sitting on the back steps watching me. I would have been about 7 at the time, Pat about 9 and Jack nearly 13.

‘Feed the clippings to the chooks,’ they called.

Now, the level of my mental retardation was to rest apparently on whether I sensibly tossed the clippings over the chicken wire fence or stupidly unlocked the gate risking the birds’ escape. So, what did I do? I poked the grass through the wire – a sign of premature perversity.

Saturday mornings featured a regular ritual. Jack could be found studying the form guide in one room and Pat writing a stage play in the other. Jack enacted the racing program of the day using playing cards as horses and matching the number taken from the form guide with the denomination shown on each card.

Races were restricted to 10 starters, which allowed Jack to spread his fingers over all the runners as they lay flat on our silky oak dining-room table. He moved the cards around the perimeter of the table allowing some to slip in front and others to fall behind with a racing commentary to match. My job was to pick up any ‘horses’ that fell off the table.

Between races I was summoned to the bedroom by Pat saying, script in hand. ‘Don’t worry about that nonsense. Come in here, I need a body on the floor.’

I then became the victim of Pat’s latest murder plot by lying with a carving knife wedged between biceps and torso with a blob of tomato sauce on my forehead. The corpse came alive in time for the next race.

Sometimes, Pat granted me a line of dialogue.

Frankly, I thought that someone as amenable and adaptable as I was should have commanded a little more respect around the house, but every Saturday, I was given sixpence and sent off to the ‘pictures.’

The sole witness to this emotional and spiritual development was my mother, Clarice. She emerged as the family peacemaker, a role she often filled when her three sisters were fighting or if my father was belting me.

It is true that I left a lighted candle burning in the tool room under the house, but the fire brigade arrived in time. It is also true that I was lured into placing stones on the railway line in the company of known miscreants, but no trains were ever derailed. I also threw palm nuts through the windows of passing trams, but I don’t know of anyone ever being hurt.

Still, police sergeant Dennis Ryan dropped in regularly with lurid versions of my exploits. I wanted to tell him that his son, Vince, gave Mary Carey two aniseed balls to let him pull her knickers down behind the church one Sunday. But I thought better of it.

Our back yard was shaped like a mini football field that became the Mecca of sport every Sunday afternoon. Feral faces appeared around 1 pm and at 1.30, teams were selected from the gathering. Jack umpired or refereed the game. I always played but Pat wasn‘t interested. Occasionally, if we were a man short, a delegation was sent to Pat’s room where a bribe was offered. Pat usually appeared in his Noel Coward dressing gown and declared his terms:  ‘I’ll only play on the side opposite him, ’pointing disdainfully at me.

Neighbours were a real problem. We were surrounded by soulless, unsporting people who cultivated vegetable gardens, savage dogs and delinquent children. The widow, White, patrolled her 1/2 acre allotment with a .22 air rifle so that recovering cricket balls was a delicate task that required strategic planning and tactical diversion. The resident at deep square leg was a Pommy migrant with one small incorrigible child who was deluged with expensive toys. We were reduced to pilfering some of the kid’s playthings through the week and then bargaining their return on Sunday in exchange for our cricket ball. Pat was aware of the situation and during one reluctant appearance at the crease he clouted the ball over two fences, tossed down the bat and haughtily headed back to his room. ‘Call me when you find it,’ he sighed.

Pat’s real moment of glory occurred every time our parents had relatives to the house. A curtain was erected across the door of the back bedroom and Pat would announce the presentation of a grand concert.

A program was hastily drawn up as Pat issued hand-written scripts of his latest comedy sketches to the assembled company of assorted cousins.

One memorable evening produced a problem when two more juvenile leads were needed to complete the cast. 

Now, there were only two kids in the district with whom we were forbidden to fraternize. One was Beryl Waugh, whose only acknowledged achievement was to attract head lice, and Jimmy Mitchell who was clearly destined for a spectacular career in crime.

Nevertheless, the situation was desperate so a ladder was placed at the bedroom window and the two social outcasts were smuggled aboard.

We gambled on the good grace of our parents to accommodate the situation.

As was his custom, Pat introduced the acts with impresariol panache announcing the appearance of two visiting artists obtained at considerable expense - Beryl Waugh and Jimmy Mitchell.

‘Not on your bloody life,’ bawled my father lurching to his feet in protest. The curtain was immediately drawn as bodies were bundled back out the window and down the ladder. Moments later, Pat reappeared and announced with impeccable aplomb: ‘I regret to say that due to circumstances beyond our control our two guest artists are unable to appear this evening’

Jim Tennison, my father, was 17 stone and 6ft.tall with arms that men could acquire only by swinging a pick in an under-cut mine. He maintained the village blacksmith image by juggling crates of freight as a storeman in the Queensland Railways. He sometimes used a razor strop to sharpen his razor but more often to belt my backside.

My brother, Pat, was nearly 3 years older than me and exempt from this treatment because he managed to convey an air of artistic potential that my father did not fully understand. But, as it posed no threat to Jim’s authority, he just treated it as a harmless aberration.

My other brother, Jack, was 4 years older than Pat and he embodied all the virtues of a devoted eldest son in whom his father was well pleased.

Jim Tennison was Vice-President of the Queensland Rugby League and a State Selector. He was also the sole Queensland Selector for the Australian Rugby League. He was President of the South Brisbane Sailing Club that comprised a fleet of 16ft skiffs, and he was chairman of the local ALP branch.

He could have been my hero if only I had found a way to communicate with him. But I had difficulty communicating with anyone most of the time because I had a speech impediment and my stuttering tried the patience of everyone, especially my father. He sometimes mimicked my faltering efforts and that drove me into resentment and rejection of him.

But I developed a grudging respect for the esteem in which he seemed to be held by everyone who knew him. Although a lowly storeman, Jim Tennison was renowned for his wit as a raconteur, his profound perception of politics and his love of poetry and sport.

Early in his adult life, my father abandoned the security of a comfortable lifestyle on the family cattle property at Kilkivin near Gympie to take up jackarooing and gold mining in North Queensland.  Jim’s father, Tom Tennison, relied on his other son, Frank, to run the property and look after the family’s other investment in the Kilkivin Hotel. Old Tom was disappointed at my father’s decision to go it alone and disinherited him in favour of Frank.

Later in life, Tom and my father were reconciled and the old man told Frank of his intention to include Jim in his Will. But, on the day he was travelling to Brisbane to insert the codicil, Tom had a heart attack and died on Kilkivin railway station.

Frank vowed over the body of his dead father to honour Tom’s wishes, but in the afterglow of the bereavement, Frank sustained a lapse of memory and offered my father only the Kilkivin Hotel. Jim told Frank to ‘shove it’ and I have had to pay for my beer ever since.

Old Tom Tennison drank very little, but there was one time when he relented. As the official judge at the Kilkivin races, Tom normally steered clear of the pub before a meeting. However, one day the annual picnic races coincided with his birthday and he indulged in a few drinks before the first event and had to be assisted into the judge’s box.

The starting signal was given and, at the drop of a handkerchief, the horses were on their way.

A beautiful black gelding bolted to the front with a lead of two or three lengths and held that advantage to the turn. But in the straight, the leader was challenged by a little grey mare that just got her nose in front. The black horse kicked back again on the rails and the black and the grey flashed past the post head and head. The crowd surged over to the judge’s box, appealing to the inebriated arbiter:

‘Who won? Who won?’ they called.

‘Aw, bugger it,’ slurred Tom. ‘I’ll give it to the piebald.’

There was no photo finish camera at Kilkivan to help Tom but his son, Jim Tennison, possessed something akin to a photographic memory that assisted, greatly in his role as a Rugby League selector.

Three selectors – two from New South Wales and one from Queensland chose Australian touring sides by telephone hook-up. Traditionally, Jim Tennison, as the sole Queensland selector on the panel, announced the names of the selected players on a pre-tour Saturday night to a packed audience of Rugby League followers in the old Brisbane Town Hall.

On one occasion, he caused a near riot. In announcing the names of the 1938 Australian team to tour England, he stopped two short of the total.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said to the huge Queensland audience. ‘I’ll have to spell out these last two names because, frankly, I’ve never heard of them.’ They were New South Wales’s country players who had been included at the insistence of his Sydney-based colleagues.

Jim also projected a strong Labor viewpoint, derived no doubt, from many years working in the mines. I overheard him once trying to explain a fine political point to a friend. He concluded the discussion by saying: 

‘You may have voted Labor all your life Joe, but you’ll never be a Labor man.’ I had no idea what he meant at the time but a young Paul Keating would have known that Jim was talking about the True Believers.

In summer, I enjoyed going to the sailing with my mother and father.

The flagship left North Quay at one o’clock and we could monitor the race lap by lap, arriving at each end of the course in time to see the boats rounding the buoy and raising their spinnakers. My heart belonged to a tall, proud, graceful creature 16 feet long called Violet. Her sleek body skimmed through the water like a dolphin with wings. Her colours were cerise and blue designed in the shape of a heart. Her crew loved her so much that they didn’t lean out quite so far to get that last bit of speed out of her. That’s probably why she didn’t win many races.

After the sailing or the football my father went to the hotel for a session with his sporting mates. On the occasions I was with him, he drank beer and was the centre of all conversation in the private bar. His presence filled the room. I sipped on a glass of lemonade and tried to understand what they were all talking about. Whenever Jim tried to leave, he was urged to recite an old bush ballad or one of his famous sporting poems. Like the beer, one was never enough, so he was usually required to dip deeper into his repertoire before being allowed to go home. Saturday night was the only time he drank.

Occasionally, Jim attended late Mass with my mother on a Sunday.

It was always a sudden decision over breakfast so I could never work out how Mr Stevens was always waiting at the door of his butcher shop with a bottle of whiskey to share with Jim on his way home from church. I asked my brother, Jack, about it once and he said that a good footballer always knows when the ball is about to come his way. 

On week days, Jim was home at 5.15 and I would meet him at the tram-stop to have the honour of carrying his Gladstone bag down the street.

I untied his lace-up boots and disappeared. There was no conversation. Anyway, I was very busy listening to Tarzan and the Apes or The Search for the Golden Boomerang on our wireless set.

After dinner, my father sat at the dining room table immersed in the newspaper crossword aided by a dictionary that was word-weary and crumbling into loose-leaf decay. Later, he would grab a pack of cards and play Bridge.

He dealt the four hands and bid each in turn divorcing his mind from the contents of the previous hand. He noted the bidding on a pad and then exposed the dummy and played each hand in turn. Jim Tennison was the only person I have ever known to play Bridge alone.

Saturday nights were reserved for orthodox Bridge, when regular partners appeared at 8pm. If a player was late arriving, Jack or I would have to sit in for a few hands. I trumped my father’s ace once when he was my partner and that cost me a clip over the ear. It was a good way to learn but it was a tough school.

Talking of school, I didn’t like it very much even in kindergarten, although I took great interest in the persistent efforts of Vince Ryan to remove Mary Carey’s knickers. But my stammer was a problem even when it came to saying my own name, so my mother wrote it on a piece of tape and stuck it in my pith helmet.

On day one, when the teacher asked my name, I said: ‘It’s in me hat.’ This became a running family joke for the next 20 years.

When they told me that I was to go to the Sisters of Mercy Convent School, I figured that at last I was going to be treated right. But the misnomer soon became obvious. The nuns wore the full wrap-around headgear, starched white breastplate and long black gown over lace-up boots. Suspended from the neck was a crucifix that slipped inside a black leather waistband. The ensemble was trimmed with Rosary beads that dangled from the waist in easy reach for emergency use. 

Sister Mary St. John’s level of impatience with my stuttering could be gauged by the intensity with which she fiddled with her crucifix in much the same way as John Wayne did with his rifle in the film, ‘Stagecoach.’

When giving the account of my first day at Toowong Convent that night over dinner, my father asked me how I liked the school. I feigned enthusiasm and said how nice the nuns were and how the older boys gave all the new boys like me a nickname.

‘And what did they call you?’ He asked   

‘Shit Face,’ I said, smiling.

My father choked on his casserole and my mother buried her head in her hands.

My most spectacular performance occurred when the class was standing in a semicircle reading aloud in turn. As my time approached, I started to quiver and my bladder responded by releasing urine that trickled down the exposed left leg of my short pants. I tried to rub it off against my other leg but I was spotted by Letty Lawrence with whom I was in love at the time. She nudged Patricia Mohr who relayed my predicament to Mary Talty and the three girls started giggling. Sister Mary Isadore picked up the disturbance and followed the gaze of the trio to its source.

‘You filthy boy – get outside, I’ll tell your mother about this.’

I think that’s when the nuns decided I was ‘delicate’. This description turned out to be a valuable asset when linked with my capacity to convey visible symptoms of distress. Sister Mary St Helen was most alert to this condition and often circumvented my humiliation by evicting me in advance.  ‘Noel Tennison, you look sick. Go outside and lie down.’

It has always been a source of wonder to me how women of such perception failed to comprehend the true nature of their calling.

They remain in my memory as missionary figures intent on imposing knowledge by force and belief by fear. - hardly a Christian vocation.

When the war came, school suddenly got a lot more interesting. We dug slit trenches around the classrooms and practised air raid drill.

Every police station in Brisbane was fitted with a siren, and at 11 o’clock every Monday morning, the alert sounded and the whole city prepared for an air raid. We relished the interruption to classes and there was a lot of laughing in the trenches, inspired by squeaky farts derived from our squatting position. We had to squat because the trenches usually had water in the bottom through rain and seepage. I don’t know how the nuns got on – I often wondered, but Jimmy Mitchell told me that God protects their backsides.

So we all looked forward to Monday mornings because it was a lot of fun. Then, at 12 noon, one Thursday, just as we were getting ready to say the ‘Angelus’, the siren sounded. Sister Mary Therese went white and froze with her mouth open. For a moment nobody spoke.  Then one of the class wardens burst into the room. ‘Come on, into the trenches. This is the real thing.’

We filed out in stunned silence. Nobody cared about the water in the trenches as we sat with our heads between our knees. There were no jokes, no farts and no laughing- only sounds of girls sobbing and nuns praying. I joined in the Hail Marys with gusto because I realized that the Japs were even more frightening than my father.

Nothing happened for 20 minutes and then we heard the All Clear.

We learnt later that a Japanese plane was sighted off the coast but it escaped our fighters. A lot of people were building private air raid shelters in the back yard but my father never thought it was necessary.

A few weeks after Jack turned 18 in 1942, he received a compulsory call from the Army and went to a Jungle Training Centre. My mother was devastated when he was sent to New Guinea to fight the Japanese.

I thought he was so brave and I loved playing with his rifle, but I never really thought of his being in danger. Jack was such a nice bloke, I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to kill him - not even the Japs.

[See Picture 1 in Appendix]

We had permanent daylight saving in Brisbane. School hours were trimmed to 10 am to 3 pm and all vehicles had shaded lighting called ‘brown-out’. Houses had blackout curtains and eligible males not in the services were encouraged to become air raid wardens. Uncle Ormze became an air raid warden and Aunt Evie used to say that he always looked better with his gas mask on.

Butter, sugar, tea, meat and clothing were rationed and families were issued with books of graded coupons. Losing a ration book was worse than losing money because it was our only passport to survival.

About this time, I went through a stage of piety in which I decided that I would become an altar boy.

The funny thing about people who stutter is that they never do it when speaking in a foreign language. So I not only learnt the Latin of the Mass, but at last, I was able to say something without stumbling.

[See Picture 2 in Appendix]

I got so carried away with this achievement and the prospect of sainthood that I vowed to go to mass every day for a year. Now, according to the Catholic Church, anyone who goes to mass and communion on the first Friday of each month for nine consecutive months is assured of a ‘happy death’ - a state of grace that guarantees heavenly accommodation. 

So I figured that if I did it every day for a whole year, the accumulated grace might be transferable to some other unfortunate sinner.

But I couldn’t decide at the time on a beneficiary.

Jack didn’t need it and Pat didn’t deserve it. My mother had already done the first Friday bit and my father could talk his way through the gates anyway.  Maybe, Beryl Waugh or Jimmy Mitchell, I thought.

Anyway, for 365 days, my mother woke me at 6am in time for 6.30 mass at the Carmelite Monastery in Auchenflower.

The Carmelites were a closed order of nuns who maintained their isolation behind a high wooden fence topped with barbed wire. The contemplative nature of their calling meant that most of the nuns were never seen .White faces appeared briefly every morning to receive the Eucharist through a tiny peep-hole in a lattice wall.

I had to hold the brass plate under their chins in case of an accident in delivery, so I was able to observe the daily growth of one dark incipient moustache. I imagined her doing Charlie Chaplin impersonations to amuse her colleagues during prayer breaks.

There was a running joke in our family about Fermoy hospital. It was at the end of our street and rumours were rife about people who were admitted