into physical structures, emotions into material benefits.
The feeling went back to when Marcus was a boy chasing cockatoos up and down a railway line – to when, like an apprentice Roman emperor with something good in mind, he was taken aside by state assassins and shown, in a knot running along a string, the needs of power.
I N 1939 THREE MEN – an industrialist, a banker and a professor of economics – went out in a flat-bottomed boat on a coastal lake. Having heard of Marcus as the coming man, the coming bloke – gifted, hard-working in the House and willing to learn – they invited him along.
Over a few days of fishing, Marcus said, he learned something about licking a country into shape at the level of policy decisions and corrected a few ideas blue bloods had about industrial work. It gave Tim the School of Arts feeling all over again, listening to Marcus talk about ideas as tools in a job comparable to tightening a nut on a thread.
As the war came on, his party came in, and Marcus entered national life. The arms factory making rifles, machine guns, hand grenades and pistols was in his electorate. He was made the Minister of Munitions – tanks, planes and ships, not just guns, to be stamped out of metal and paid for from national funds.
By the time the Jap was in, Marcus was Treasurer and saw how to pay for destruction by building.
M ARCUS HAD NEVER WANTED ANYTHING for himself, just for himself. Now he declared he wanted a house.
Marcus, a
house
?
The builder, Don Devlin, spoke to the six men needed: two carpenters, two builder’s labourers, a cabinet-maker, a stonemason. It was all done on the mention of Marcus Friendly’s name. The tradesmen put their other jobs to the side and started with Don on the first of the month. There was never any doubt they would. For the bloke.
Friendly had an architect, Warner Tarbett II, who wore a spotted bow tie and mustard-coloured brothel creepers.
Don Devlin spat the words out: ‘Architects are the greatest damned fool-wasters of a man’s time. You’ll have to put up with me being cranky a lot. Warner Tarbett’s drawn the house plans down to the last nail. He’ll be on the site most days looking over my shoulder. I’ll try to keep him away from you. Tarbett put the idea into the bloke’s head during the war, a house at the end of the road. Tarbett was in the air force. They gave the bloke an Avro Anson, called them the Flying Brick. Tarbett was the pilot. He was like a son to the bloke.
‘Tarbett flew the Anson with Friendly aboard all over the shop, from Tassie to Darwin and up to New Guinea. It was Friendly’s Flying Brick that was bodgied in Moresby in ’44. The plane’s airspeed device was blocked by chewing gum and water was found in the gasoline. They say it was a grudge job, a louse who hated the bloke and took a step. But Tarbett saved Friendly’s life by being fussy. Always checking everything, double-checking all the time. It’s what architects are like. They never stop poking their noses in.’
The builders knew that a house was a pretty small-ticket item to the bloke, who’d worked through the war years finding money to fight the Japs without bleeding the country dry. He was the one who’d stood up to Churchill, berated MacArthur, roused the fury of his own party, argued them round, all in the deadset voice of a dogged Australian bloke, and he’d tested his brains against the best thinkers thrown at him in the arguments of the old School of Arts – and won.
Brilliant as he was, though, the builders thought he was being led by the nose by Tarbett.
It was not the sort of house that any of them would build by choice, rough-hewn, they called it. When people left the bush behind as Friendly had as a boy, it was surely for something better than a ramshackle proposition. As tradesmen they were beyond the pioneering habit of leaving timber looking as if it was dragged from the wilds – slabs of ironbark, pillars of yellow box with scabs of
The feeling went back to when Marcus was a boy chasing cockatoos up and down a railway line – to when, like an apprentice Roman emperor with something good in mind, he was taken aside by state assassins and shown, in a knot running along a string, the needs of power.
I N 1939 THREE MEN – an industrialist, a banker and a professor of economics – went out in a flat-bottomed boat on a coastal lake. Having heard of Marcus as the coming man, the coming bloke – gifted, hard-working in the House and willing to learn – they invited him along.
Over a few days of fishing, Marcus said, he learned something about licking a country into shape at the level of policy decisions and corrected a few ideas blue bloods had about industrial work. It gave Tim the School of Arts feeling all over again, listening to Marcus talk about ideas as tools in a job comparable to tightening a nut on a thread.
As the war came on, his party came in, and Marcus entered national life. The arms factory making rifles, machine guns, hand grenades and pistols was in his electorate. He was made the Minister of Munitions – tanks, planes and ships, not just guns, to be stamped out of metal and paid for from national funds.
By the time the Jap was in, Marcus was Treasurer and saw how to pay for destruction by building.
M ARCUS HAD NEVER WANTED ANYTHING for himself, just for himself. Now he declared he wanted a house.
Marcus, a
house
?
The builder, Don Devlin, spoke to the six men needed: two carpenters, two builder’s labourers, a cabinet-maker, a stonemason. It was all done on the mention of Marcus Friendly’s name. The tradesmen put their other jobs to the side and started with Don on the first of the month. There was never any doubt they would. For the bloke.
Friendly had an architect, Warner Tarbett II, who wore a spotted bow tie and mustard-coloured brothel creepers.
Don Devlin spat the words out: ‘Architects are the greatest damned fool-wasters of a man’s time. You’ll have to put up with me being cranky a lot. Warner Tarbett’s drawn the house plans down to the last nail. He’ll be on the site most days looking over my shoulder. I’ll try to keep him away from you. Tarbett put the idea into the bloke’s head during the war, a house at the end of the road. Tarbett was in the air force. They gave the bloke an Avro Anson, called them the Flying Brick. Tarbett was the pilot. He was like a son to the bloke.
‘Tarbett flew the Anson with Friendly aboard all over the shop, from Tassie to Darwin and up to New Guinea. It was Friendly’s Flying Brick that was bodgied in Moresby in ’44. The plane’s airspeed device was blocked by chewing gum and water was found in the gasoline. They say it was a grudge job, a louse who hated the bloke and took a step. But Tarbett saved Friendly’s life by being fussy. Always checking everything, double-checking all the time. It’s what architects are like. They never stop poking their noses in.’
The builders knew that a house was a pretty small-ticket item to the bloke, who’d worked through the war years finding money to fight the Japs without bleeding the country dry. He was the one who’d stood up to Churchill, berated MacArthur, roused the fury of his own party, argued them round, all in the deadset voice of a dogged Australian bloke, and he’d tested his brains against the best thinkers thrown at him in the arguments of the old School of Arts – and won.
Brilliant as he was, though, the builders thought he was being led by the nose by Tarbett.
It was not the sort of house that any of them would build by choice, rough-hewn, they called it. When people left the bush behind as Friendly had as a boy, it was surely for something better than a ramshackle proposition. As tradesmen they were beyond the pioneering habit of leaving timber looking as if it was dragged from the wilds – slabs of ironbark, pillars of yellow box with scabs of
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