4 responses to “A mystery letter for “Mr Melliss””

1. 

   wendy carlson

   9 Aug ’11

   Well it’s a nice story, and I would be happy to leave it at that, but in the name of art historical accuracy that won’t do unfortunately.

   I was actually employed as a researcher on an ARC large grant into the origins of conceptual art in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Ian was one of the artists I was ‘investigating’ and probably the most forthcoming if you know what I mean. I interviewed him and he corrected his own transcript, adding approximately another 30,000 words, and then I sorted through about 2000 bits of paper and assorted works of art. I tried to make sense of them by providing a context/chronography, entered the works into a very basic database, that I set up with the help of ‘databases for dummies’ not knowing at the time that he was also a professional database developer…..shook the mould off all those papers which had been stored for yonks under his mother’s house, put them into clean envelopes AND THEN wrote a thesis on ‘deconstructing the database’. After that I decided to keep him.

   BTW, the letters are quite easy to decipher. With the help of ‘cataloguing for dummies’ I duly designated the name of the institution, thus prl is Power Research Library, 1998 with the number of the work following. I made up various categories, of which Yeomans is probably the most straight forward. Easy.

   Fine romance indeed.

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2. 

   Ian Milliss

   10 Aug ’11

   To tell you the truth I can’t remember. I don’t think I ever had a meeting with him because it was around this time it all got called off. Personally I think the best thing about the letter is the Mellis bit. These days people mis-hear my name as Willis but then it was Mellis. The infamous Wally Mellish, possibly the greatest deal maker in Australian history, was still fresh in people’s minds back then. His memory can still bring guffaws of delight to older Sydney siders.

   Lucas of course wasn’t born then so he missed this.

   In 1968 Wally took a potshot at the the police who arrived at his Glenfield house to question him about stolen car parts. They surrounded the house ready for a good old style shootout then discovered his girlfriend Beryl Muddle and baby were inside. The police commissioner, the notoriously corrupt and inept Norm Allen, took control of the operation. When he went in to negotiate he ended up as a hostage himself. One of Wally’s demands was that Beryl marry him so Norm Allen was witness as well as supplying the ring and a takeaway curry wedding dinner. He also provided the already well armed Wally with an army armalite assault rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition as a good will present. The siege continued for two weeks with Wally making constant calls to talk back radio to chat about how it was all going. Eventually as everyone including himself was getting bored he made a deal to give himself up on condition he could join the army and go to Vietnam and all charges including shooting at the cops were to be dropped. They took him to the army camp where he apparently failed the intelligence test (go figure!) and was then shipped off to psych hospital. Everyone had been enormously entertained and the only real damage was to Norm Allen’s already abysmal reputation.

   One interesting sidelight (given that Lucas and I just spent the weekend involved in the Woolloomooloo and Victoria Street Green Ban Art Walks) is that Allen put detective Don Fergusson in charge. Fergusson was associated with the tabloid celebrity cop Ray “Gunner” Kelly whose ostentatiously corrupt activities included an abortion extortion racket allegedly with Fergusson as the bagman. Fergusson later made a spectacular exit by “committing suicide” in the CIB toilets in 1970. Shooting himself twice was a nice touch. In fact it is claimed he was killed by his former offsider Fred Krahe because he had some principles and wouldn’t take drug money. Krahe then worked with organised crime figures Lenny McPherson and Abe Saffron and for the developer Frank Theeman in Victoria Street. As a member of the group fighting Theeman’s development I was always highly aware of Krahe’s reputation for extreme violence and we were probably rather foolhardy in standing up to him. Apart from large scale systematic intimidation, bashings and kidnapping a group member he was ultimately allegedly responsible for organising the murder of Juanita Neilsen, the last remaining Victoria Street campaigner.

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3. 

   Lucas

   11 Aug ’11

   Oh well, if nothing else, I guess the letterhead “Random Writers” was a prophesy, thirty five years ahead of its time, for this blog post and its subsequent comments!

   Thanks Mr and Mrs Melliss! The mystery remains…

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4. 

   Ian Milliss

   12 Aug ’11

   I suppose I should add that I did actually google Jeff Moss and Random Writers a few weeks back and found nothing of use. Obviously we were going to talk because he seems to have been writing a book about Yeomans, in fact what little I can remember is that I think Yeomans himself put me on to him, but that’s all.

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