Bill Harding...

There are times when snippets from a long-ago past creep up on you...uninvited it may seem, but somehow having a circumstantial purpose...filling in gaps waiting to be filled...

Tonight has been one of those times...

For some unknown reason, I decided to check out an old school acquaintance...I knew he had secured fame and fortune as a writer, but in recent years, there seemed to be little evidence of his work.

At the age of 15, he was writing for the Mavis Bramston Show on TV. This was an unusual attainment for a schoolboy. But William was never your regular schoolboy.

I first met him at Yagoona Public School...He seemed a bit of a loner as I was...I smiled when he walked... He appeared to bounce from his toes and a wisp of very dark hair on his head bounced along with him...

To get out of home as much as possible, I attended Yagoona Baptist Church very regularly...I walked there...And often passed near where William lived not far from the church...

Sometimes we said 'hello', at school, in the street, but I don't remember any great dialogue...

High school days...I travelled from Yagoona station to Birrong and would see him/bump into him sometimes on the Yagoona station platform...He travelled by train to a select school I believe, but I cannot remember which one...We chatted a little about writing, but little else...

Years passed and I was working casually in the theatres in Sydney to support my University studies...The casual work involved walking/running from one Hoyts theatre to the next to be available at movie intervals...On one walk/run, (by Hyde Park? St James' station?) I saw William...at least, I thought it was him...in a long coat, head bowed, and minus the positive bounce in his walk...I was so sure it was him, but I hesitated to speak...He did not seem to be in a good place...quite dishevelled...I kept walking and regretted that choice for a long time later...I began to convince myself that he may have needed help...and I ignored him...My shyness can be quite a burden, even a curse...

Since those days, I have heard that he has become a successful screenwriter...But not till tonight, when for some odd reason I decided to research him, did I find just how successful the boy I knew as William Salmon, now Bill Harding, has become...

Excerpt from 'Two Lives in the Cross' - co-written with John Paramor. (John wrote his story and Bill wrote his)

John and I have been happily unmarried for 44 years, half of which we’ve lived together and for most of that time we’ve lived in or around Kings Cross.  

My prior encounters with the Cross had been eye-opening but minimal; the first and most glancing caught through the tram window en route to the Stadium at Rushcutters Bay with the girl who lived across the road from me in Yagoona and our accompanying mothers to see the Mouseketeers. Helen and I brought our precious ears to wear during the performance. The place, even passing through, looked lively. 

 Then there was quite a hiatus. I next saw the Cross by night, this time through the window of a TV producer’s Mini Minor heading along Darlinghurst Road in a southerly direction; bejewelled in neon, the place looked even livelier and otherworldly and sexy with promise various, pretty much immediately delivering on its unwritten mission statement. On this occasion I made footfall, our destination being dinner at the Belgrade, a cheek by jowl, cheap and cheerful Yugoslav restaurant in a Surrey Street terrace. At the next table a trench-coated stripper surmounted by a half-metre beehive of curls and daisies wrapped in protective plastic ate pola-pola between shows. 

In the closing stages of Bill's story, I was surprised to read the following comment:

I was seventeen and everything within sight, hearing, smell and taste seemed different to what I was used to – and all a vast improvement. Half a century later the site continues as a restaurant, having segued through many a cuisine to find itself today dishing out mozzarella as the Buffalo Dining Club...

I found out at fifty I’d been adopted. My birthmother worked at one stage at the Arabian Café in Darlinghurst Road and what evidence exists suggests her impregnator was a merchant seaman passing through.

Bill claimed that he did not know he was adopted till age 50? That is so odd...I knew he was adopted when I was a teenager...My mother told me...Perhaps my mother had spoken to his adoptive mother...

For more details of Bill's writing - theatre, film and TV, see HERE and HERE

P.S. It may happen that Bill finds this post...He would be puzzled about who I am...He knew me as Pamela Button. I never liked/felt comfortable with any part of my name, so happily divested one name and became Pamela Adams when I married. That has become my teaching name. But still, the name did not seem to be me. In a new life, about 14 years ago, (now tragically closed early 2019), I met a man whose surname was Wiseman and I've always loved the name Gemma. Too easy to become Gemma Wiseman - my pen name that I still use.