Q Castle in the 21st Century

In 1999 Quentin Castle left his home town of Adelaide to follow his calling as an officer of the Salvation Army. When he returned to Adelaide  a decade later, he awoke to discover that it was the 21st Century.  He now wanders the streets of the future, a  man out of time facing the challenges of the world of tomorrow. These are his adventures........

This was how I felt recently when I made one of my few trips to the city center since returning to Adelaide several years ago. There was a time when I would be in town at least six days a week. Everyday I would pass through town and spend my time browsing in shops between connecting buses. Whether it was during my university days or my teaching career, the streets of Adelaide were my playground, the comic shops and record stores my regular haunts. I had even gotten to know Toys'r'us so well, that when people mistook me in my 'teachery' clothes for a shop assistant, I could direct them to the right isle. 'Pink Power Rangers are in number 3' or ' Biker Mice from Mars toys in 8', I would reply, the town was mine and I knew it backwards. I even had a regular beat that I would walk from King William St to Pultney St, scouring every model shop and book exchange for all manner of sci-fi and pop culture esoterica. I knew the names and faces of shop owners and they new me as a regular. I even had my favourite food outlets that I would frequent. I was the mighty hunter and the arcades of Adelaide were my jungle.

Christmas was always especially wonderful in Adelaide. The giant Santa, aloft the John Martin's building, looked over Rundle Mall like a mighty colossus. It was the pinnacle of the wonders on display in the store fronts of department stores, wonders that  made the city a place to soak in the magic of the season. This was the Adelaide of my youth.

Recently, after being away for so many years, I returned to my beloved home town. No longer do I need to travel through town to catch buses, so visits to the city are far and few between. I had heard recently that the giant Santa was nowhere to be seen at Christmas. I was told that there was a rather under whelming seasonal display presented in the city but I still held out hope for the beloved town of my memories. This hope began to dwindle as I existed a city park house and walked out into Rundle mall for the first time in years. As a child I loved the story of Buck Rogers, an adventurer who  finds that he has slept for 500 years, waking up in the 25th century. Sadly on this trip, this was exactly how I felt. As I exited the lifts of the park house I was struck by the simultaneous familiarity and strangeness of the environment.  There was architecture and fixings that told me I was home but beloved shops and entrances were now gone, replaced by different business's with there own additions to the premises. I stood in an arcade and stared at a doorway that used to be a glass wall, my favourite comic shop was gone. There was also once a  record shop nearby, but the one I came across  wasn't it. Time had moved on, things had changed, the colourful characters that once inhabited them, gone. I had woken up in a future world that had moved on while I had slept.

After I had attended to my business, I went for a walk to find an ATM attached to my regular bank. I was soon frustrated that  I couldn't find one, I used to know where they all were but it had been such a  long time between shopping trips. I decided to ask at an information booth that I knew was at the other end of the mall, only to find that it no longer existed, probably ten years gone. As I continued to seek help, I headed for the one place I knew I would see something familiar, a comic shop. It wasn't the comic shop of my youth but I knew that it would be full of things I found comforting, and I was right. With in moments I was in Pulp Fiction Comics, drooling over the merchandise and listening to some cool music. As I perused the titles on the  shelves, I reflected on my visit and decided that although much had changed, Adelaide was still a great town. The big Santa may have gone but the Malls Balls were still there. My favourite joke shop may have closed but the moon still hung in its orbit. My regular comic shop may be long gone but there were new ones..... and the apes hadn't taken over in my absence.

After obtaining some local knowledge in the comic shop, I headed back down  Rundle Mall to the appropriate ATM, which I suddenly remembered, was where it had always been. Some things change, somethings we forget, but this isn't a bad thing. If things never change, if we never change, we stagnate and die. Adelaide's not dead, it's a wonderful town with a wonderful future full of new wonders and magic.

BTW, if you find yourself in Pulp Fiction Comics, ask for a copy of Anthony Castle and Chadwick Ashby's graphic novel DEAD ENDS: Fables of Loss and Morality. It's a great read by two great Adelaide talents (i'm not bias at all).

The Policeman's Special or Half'n'half: My Festive Drink

It's Boxing Day and there's a drink I have every year that is special, different and sums up the festive season for me. It is the old Half 'n' half, otherwise known as the Policeman's Special, the drink of champions. I was first introduced to the Police Man's special as a child, gained a taste for it and loved it ever since. It's origins for me are lost in the mists of time, but I can tell you where I came across it. In the east end of Rundle St, Adelaide, South Australia, there was an old grocers shop, Randall's Fruit and Veg (or Frut and Veg according to the dilapidated sign out the front). Run by Mr Randall, it sold all kinds of things from basic convenience items to sweets and a whole range of things in between. One of the most popular features of Mr Randall's shop was his ginger beer on tap that saw a range of city dwellers, from police officers to Hare Krishna's, frequenting the place for a draft of this wondrous drop. It was in the mid-seventies that my family moved church congregations from the Salvation Army Unley to the Salvation Army Adelaide Congress Hall which was located in the east end of the city square mile. Not far from the Adelaide Citadel was Mr Randall's shop and the informal initiation into the the Adelaide Congress Hall Salvation Army Band was to drink a pint of the mystical Half'n'half. A yard glass was even available for the more daring who thought they were man enough ( no women in the band then) to take on challenge. Although my father found the drink repulsive, it became a firm favourite of my brother and I.  Every Friday night, following the young people's band and choir practice at the Salvation Army citadel, our father would take us to Mr Randall's shop to get a pint of Half'n'half and a strap of the usually stale and tough licorice which was just gold. To us this was heaven and almost worth missing out on The Incredible Hulk TV show each week in the days before VCRs. We would climb upon the ancient counter stools fixed to the wooden floor and drink our pint of Half'n'half. We would then walk back to the car, eat our licorice strap and dream of the wondrous Saturday morning cartoons waiting for us on the other side of sleep.

By the mid 1980's Mr Randall's shop had gone. Mr Randall had retired and the shop that replaced it, which also sold Half'n'half, didn't stand the test of time. We too had moved on to comics and milkshakes, bought each Friday night from a deli/milk bar nearer to home, but the dream lived on. Each year at this time, when we don the gay apparel and troll the yuletide carol, I drink a glass of Half'n'half in memory of Mr Randall and the old days of the 'Frut and Veg shop'. Why this time of year you may ask? Because all the ingredients are here, bought for Christmas day lunch and ready for the mixing. And what is this mystical recipe you may ask? Well I've included it here for the curious and daring.

Recipe

1/2 a pint of milk

1/2 a pint of ginger beer

Method

1) Pour the milk into a glass. 

2)  Add the ginger beer.

3) Wait till a curdled head begins to form and drink.

And so there you have it. I hope you enjoy a pint or two of Half'n'half and that God brings you lots of hope, peace, joy, love and Santa this Christmas and New Year.

'Elvis and Me' or 'Drawing a Long Bow'.

A dramatic recreation complete with hound dog.

Recently it was Elvis' birthday. On the 8th of January this year, Elvis Aaron Presley would of been 79 if he was still alive...or would come out of hiding. I clearly remember the day he died. I was 5 years old and in my first year of primary school. Even at such a young age I knew that a living treasure had died and that some things would never be the same again. A few years later I remember watching my younger brother play with his Elvis Paper Doll Activity Set and explaining to him who Elvis was, soldier, movie star, King of Rock-n-roll, and why he wore such amazing sequined jump suits. But what many don't realise is that Elvis and I have a lot in common and a connection of sorts. We are both male, singers, wear jeans and married beautiful women. I own a copy of Bubba-Hotep. He was a king and I am a Castle. I even got to impersonate him as 'The Pharaoh' in an amateur production of Joseph and his Technicolour Dream Coat back in 94.  Outside of these ties that bind me to the King, I didn't believe there could possibly be much else.  I was wrong, oh so wrong.

I strongly believe that some places on this earth are nexus points of mystical and mythic power. Places such as Loch Ness, Castle Frankenstein and Hanging Rock are places where fact and the fantastic caress each other in an intimate embrace.  I believe that in Adelaide, South Australia, Semaphore Beach is one of those places. In fact in my own life, Semaphore Beach has conspired to draw my fate together intrinsically with Elvis, the King of Rock and Roll.  You may ask 'How can that can be?' I will now tell you the fantastic tale of manifest destiny that drew us together.

The  beachside view of the Semaphore Carnival

Recently I was visiting my brother who lives not too far from Semaphore Beach. We were talking about the local seaside carnival and the vintage carousel that's been there for years. This beautiful merry-go-round has been on the Semaphore foreshore for the last for 76 years. The carousel was built in Adelaide by Len Northey in the 1920’s as was one of earliest electric powered models. With its forty handcrafted horses, it is said by some to be the largest operating carousel in Australia, beating all other takers by four wooden ponies. Originally situated at Henley Beach, the carousel was moved to the Jubilee Oval for six months during an expo in 1936 and then found a new home in it’s current location in 1938 (http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2008/11/09/2414408.htm). 

Me as Billy Bigelow posing on the Carousel on the bottom right with
Jo Lawry as Julie Jordon on my left.

On top of my city's sentimental love affair with the sideshow ride, I also had my own connection to the carousel. Back in 1995, my first year out teaching, I was given the lead role in the school production of Carousel. The character I played was that of a handsome carnival roustabout, Billy Bigelow, who uses his sex appeal to entice young ladies onto the ride. It's while he is working that he meets and falls in love with, Julie Jordon, and love soon blossoms. Incidentally, the role of Julie was played by Jo Lawry, at that time a final year student who's currently carving out a successful career as a vocalist singing back-up for Sting (see Jo in the Oscar winning documentary 20 Feet From Stardom (2013). However Billie and Julie's romance is frowned upon by those around them, and through a series of related circumstances, they find themselves unemployed.  Soon the couple are married and Julie falls pregnant. Upon hearing the news of his impending fatherhood, Billy is over whelmed with the responsibility of being a parent, especially if the child is a girl. This sense of responsibly misguidedly leads Billy to his tragic death in a robbery aimed at ensuring his child's financial security. Following his death, Billy finds himself in heaven with a chance to return to earth to try and guide his young daughter through to a better life.

The Semaphore Carousel

With the option of building a full size carousel well outside the meagre school production budget, the director opted to open the show with a silent film that showed the meeting of the two leads on the carousel. And so it was on one sunny afternoon that some of the cast, and a film crew from the school media department, headed down to Semaphore to film the opening sequence on the Semaphore carousel. There I was, playing a carnival roustabout for the cameras, pretending to romance my leading lady, while riding the Semaphore carousel. There I was, a cinematic legend in my own lunch time, being recorded for posterity on celluloid (well video tape anyway).

As I pondered these sweet memories, the discussion with my brother turned to the ferris wheel that is also a permanent fixture on the foreshore. As he did so, a bombshell was dropped that sent ripples through mystical realms. This ferris wheel had cradled the very royal backside of the King of Rock-n-Roll himself. Now I knew that Elvis had never performed in Australia and even if he had, a trip to Semaphore probably wasn't on the cards. So what was the story with this chunk of Elvis history? In 1964, Elvis appeared in a movie called Roustabout. The movie tells the story of a singing biker, Charlie Rogers (Elvis Presley) who gets work at a traveling carnival. After being run off the road by an angry Father (Leif Erickson) who has caught him flirting with his daughter Kathy (Joan Freeman), Charlie gets work as a roustabout at their family carnival while he waits for his bike to get repaired. It is here that he meets the tough carnival owner, Maggie (Barbara Stanwyck), who is also Kathy's mother.  (IMDb Plot: Roustabout (1964). Of the story IMDb says, 

Along the way, Charlie (who's got a chip on his shoulder about being an orphan) somehow learns about family values from this vaguely dysfunctional one (IMDb Plot: Roustabout (1964). 

It was in a scene with Freeman that Elvis rode what would become the Semaphore ferris wheel and serenaded her with the the song  It's a Wonderful World. The scenes featuring the ferris wheel were filmed in a cow paddock in Seven Oaks, California, with the King riding in carriage number 2. But how did the ferris wheel come to be at semaphore 50 Years later? It arrived in Australia in 2000 when it was featured on a barge under the Sydney Harbour bridge during New Year Celebrations. In 2004 the 12 carriage ferris wheel was given an over haul with new carriages and came to reside in its current location.

(http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMBYN7_Elvis_Ferris_Wheel_from_Roustabout, https://www.portenf.sa.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/sem_bro_FINAL_PRINT_Julie2.pdf)

A few weeks later I returned to Semaphore and began to ponder these two wonderful artefacts of carnival history before me. It was there, surrounded by seagulls and sideshows, that I began to feel chills running up and down my spine.  Elvis and I were now connected by a strange cord, woven in the mystic merry-go-round that is the Semaphore Carnival. Both Elvis and I had played carnival roustabouts on film in stories that had explored the concept of the itinerants search for home and family. Both of us had ridden a carnival ride to woo our romantic leads and now these rides were only metres from each other. Both rides had searched for a home and had found it at Semaphore, ferris wheel here, carousel there. Roustabout here, roustabout there. Elvis here and me there. I even owned a copy of Joan Freeman in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Could this be coincidence? I think not! Elvis and I were inextricably connected once again, separated by time but not by space. The long bow of destiny had been drawn.

Sometimes at night when I close my eyes, I begin to hear the haunting music of the carnival steam organ. Once again I am there, riding the carousel as the sun slowly sets. As my horse circles round to the front of the pavilion, I look over and see Elvis coming over the top of the ferris wheel. We both look at each other, wave and share a knowing smile, aware that we are inextricably linked forever. And on we ride, long into the night......