By JONATHON HOWARD
LOVABLE larrikin Steve Bisley spent time signing copies of his latest book “Stillways: A Memoir” at the Warwick Art Gallery last Wednesday, 4 September.
Described as a raw, rough, poetic, funny and intensely moving memoir which depicts life as a boy from the bush, growing up in Australian in the sixties.
Young Steve was a larrikin, happy-go-lucky, resilient kid, coming of age in a simpler time.
Growing up on a farm cut from virgin scrub at the end of a lake, a farm called Stillways, Steve daydreamed about cars and escaping.
His story is about him hero-worshipping his older brother with Brylcreem in his hair; going to school as a young kid with bus money knotted into a hanky and clutching his Globite schoolcase; fighting bullies at school and dreaming about girls; being amazed at the first television in town; remembering where he was when Marilyn Monroe died.
But there’s a darker thread running through the story: the father who’d take out his frustrations by savagely belting his young children; a struggling mother who’d do anything to protect her kids; a young boy irrevocably marked by his father’s anger.
Steve broke into film in Mad Max (1979), and soon found himself in regular demand, appearing in films as diverse as A Town like Alice (1981) and The Big Steal (1990). He also appeared in TV series The Flying Doctors, GP, Police Rescue, Frontline, Water Rats, Stingers and Sea Patrol.
