It's hard to start such a long story like this.

I'll firstly introduce you to this guy.

After spending over two hours with this guy, I learnt how very intelligent he is, but understated by his rough exterior and real life honesty most people want to ignore; eg: loud and hard to understand.

Now the story.

I was walking down one of the few malls in the city in late afternoon when I saw this guy sitting down in front of a fire hydrant. His bags scattered around him and his donation hat in front, all casting long afternoon shadows to the left of him.

He was laying out some tough melodies on the harmonica, blatantly obvious he was putting his heart and soul into it. Pure emotion blowing through the organ.

I took a few distant shots [link] and checked my wallet for coins, I only had a note so I went to the nearest chemist and got it changed and returned.

I stood right in front of him and took another shot [link] He didn't notice, and I didn't expect him to, he was completely oblivious to his surroundings.

I threw a few coins into his hat and thought, whatever...got nothing better to do, so I sat down directly across from him in front of a lamp post. For five minutes I watched him, and the people pass around him, I watched him delve in and out of climaxing points, stopping once to hawk a big loogy onto the sidewalk, clearing the breathing passages [link]

I decided it was time for a closer look so I walked over, sat down next to him, kept drinking my mocha and then interrupted his playing with a "You're owning that harmonica big time, man."

He stopped with a big cough, laughed, and then gave me a friendly slog in the arm. His face looked familiar in a different way, i knew I'd seen him play the harmonica before, along time ago, but it was something else.

"I love to play war songs and rock 'n' roll, but my favourite is the blues."

He handed me the harmonica inscribed with the brand Johnston. He had a loud and slurred voice and couldn't keep still as he spoke, but I could understand him.

He spoke aimlessly, and without structure, confusing himself regularly or when he decided not to finish the story he started.

I offered him my name and he shook my hand.

very.

very.

firm, and then gave me his.

At first I thought he said Mugs, but he corrected me with a hit in the arm.

"No no no, Mark, Mark Stuart..."

He said his last name, but I couldn't remember and decipher it.

He asked me what I was doing in the city. I told him I was just having a browse.

"You a photographer, you do it as a job?"

I said it was just a passion of mine but I've done it before. He knew after he saw my camera (it was out when I started talking to him) that taking photo's was the main reason I was hanging with him.

"So you're a journalist?"

I explained that I am, and I'm not because I just photograph what interests me, or when i'm needed.

He broke out into a serious face and began talking about war and his life.

"What's your name again?"

- Billy

"That's...yeah, you've got a name to be proud of, William."

I told him I was born Billy.

"Alright, that's fair enough, but William is the traditional origin, I grew up where it was anyway.
Where going to fucking war meant you were pugnacious, and nothing's fucking changed. But you know someones gotta do the jobs no-one else wants to."

I agreed.

"But even guy's like you, in war, get fucking butchered for documenting the shit."

Another one of 'those' jobs, I said.

"You're right on it, but you know, it made our jobs harder having to know the key points and places of photographers out on the field, to make-damn-sure you don't skewer a bullet through on of your own, from here-to-here."

He prodded me in the chest and followed the line-of-fire around to my back, moved it to my shoulder and looked me in the eyes.

"Now Bill, I hope you never, ever kill a person. Fucking ever."

I reassured that ever.

" 'Cause I've done it before, all before...and it's fucking disgusting. I've watched men, and even photographers take a spray of bullets to their brain, a cloud of blood and their head fly's away, camera in the other direction."

My face grimmed a little and he pulled a plastic seal bag from his deep pocket.

"My dad went to war and died, I went too, and that's how I got this shit right here, and it means I'm good, I am good, but t means nothing."

Pointing to a few badges pinned to his shirt and few more in the bag.

"I was a lucky one though, unlike my dad and worlds of others. I'll show you my dad."

He handed a folded page to me and pointed to a man in a picture.

"My dad's the one with the headphones on, he was on that boat just there. HMS Newfoundland, Operation Eclipse."

[link]

He opened the page I was holding to a spread.

"He fought in Borneo, Sandakan, blowing up fucking terrorists in North Borneo jungle."


I took a photo of him and the article spread as it meant alot to him.

[link] If you look closely you can see his dad on the left portion of the article's photograph.

He rustled through all the other articles spilling out of the seal bag. A picture of agent orange infected jungle-forest, numerous other military and memorial articles and a recent one with the picture of a man that had been killed and parted with the two kids. He reformed the pile and put them back in the seal bag and in his pocket.

"Just be true Bill, and NEVER lose your sense of humour...or you're a wanker!."

"You don't have to prove shit to anyone, just yourself."

His smile lifted again and he laughed.

"Alright. Speech over...you owe me one-dollar-fifty."

Putting his back straight and hand out robotically.

I laughed and he put his arm around me in a mately way and told me he was bullshittin'.

"What are you up to tonight?"

- Going out with some friends to Fremantle, to watch my mates bands gig.

"Well, young Billy, it would be my absolute pleasure, to sometime, get pissed with you!! Not tonight though, 'cause you're goin' out, next time I see you though."

I laughed a definitely.

"Mind lookin' after my shit for a while, so I can go for a Piss?"

I smiled, nodded and started drinking my mocha again as I watched him walk into a alley-way entrance for cars, look around and then decide to keep walking, looking back once to sing and say "Billy, don't leeeeave me...like the song.".

In that gap of time, a Malaysian tourist came up to me after noticing us, gave me his email and asked me to email him because he likes photography, I got bizarre looks from elderly women and people that had most probably been attempting to eaves-drop our conversation.

Five minutes later he returned and sat down again.

"You got an ignition stick, a lighter, you're not a smoker?"

"Oh ok, good, so that means I can have your lungs? 'Cause mine are fucked!!"

Pulling out a green container from his bag and rolling a cigarette with the tobacco in it, he continued.

"Alright, so you don't have a lighter...what about a favourite colour? hold your hand out."

I thought about it, and thought about the fact that I hadn't thought about my favourite colour in a long-while. Green, I answered.

I put my hand out as he quickly snapped his hand out of his pocket in a closed fist and opened it into my hand with a lighter.

"Shit, it's white. Oh well, looks like I'm not the magician I thought I was. You reckon you could do me a favour and count the money in my hat?"

I grabbed the hat and tipped the money onto the pavement and counted it.

$14.80.

"I'm gettin' pissed tonight Billy boy! Shit, you could even call up all your friends, we'll get a hotel room and have a party!."

Looking at my shirt he said "Nice blood stain you got there, kinda like the style at war."

He started laughing and I straightened out my shirt and said "Mark, if Jim Morrison heard you call him a blood stain he'd be spinning in his grave."

He laughed some more and asked me my age.

- 17.

"We're a thousand years apart my friend."

He started mumbling calculations.

"So when you're sixty-eight i'll be one-hundred and five...or something like that. You're gonna make it, you're gonna be top shelf at whatever you do. Just never stop dreaming, i'm a dreamer myself. A man was asked one day what he does for a job, his answer was "I'm a dreamer.", you know what he is now, the owner of dreamworld. Because he was a dreamer."

"You're gonna live a good life, have the most amazing woman in your life, screw her thousands of times and have one-hundred and eighty-nine kids, no, you're gonna have three kids. Here's the prophecy. The first kid you're gonna have will be a girl, a year later a boy, another three years later another boy, and he's gonna be the one you connect with most, it's not gonna be all favourtism he'll just be the one you connect with most. Then twelve years later you'll die. I could tell you the date...mmmbut I won't.You'll look back on this day when it happens, and think to yourself...shit, that old man was right!."

More laughs from both of us.

He picked up the money from the pavement and stood up again, before asking me to hold his wallet while he went to buy some booze.

Never been trusted by a stranger that much before.

A few minutes later I was frightened for a moment, from his re-arrival by two flying fists going by my head, after recognising the friendly laugh he sat down again.

"I've got some, sad news to share with you...the fucking grog shop wasn't open!! What the hell am I gonna do now!."

I got a text message on my phone, but got distracted by his spontaneous ramblings.

I got a call shortly after, from a friend I was meeting, I gave her directions to my where-abouts as he tried to distract me some more, purposely, by talking loudly at me and laughing.

She found us, sat down, and I introduced them to each other.

"Who is this beautiful woman you've brought here!."

- Stephanie

"Is she your girlfriend?. What! If I knew women this gorgeous we'd be married by now and have a thousand children."

He was in awe of her, and made sure he said it every few minutes, but not in a seedy way. Taking her hand and kissing it gentlemen-like.

"I'm Mark, Stephanie, and what a pleasure to meet you."

He attempted to give Steph an overview of what we'd been talking about, but, like usual, confused himself mid-though and went onto something else.

"Give me the best joke you've ever heard."

Steph and I looked at each other but couldn't think of the best joke we'd ever heard so he told us a few.

"So I was in the Borneo jungle at war, and I had my little military monopoly-money for the military shop..right..and I had this cracking headache from the heat, so I went to the shop and asked the shop attendant for some Panadol or Disprin; "Sorry sir,we don't have Panadol or Disprin in the jungle."

He looked at me in anticipation and said..."Yeah, that's the joke." before he continued the actual joke.

"So I asked the clerk why you can't buy it in the jungle and he said because the Paracetamol."

I was baffled, looking at his straight face. "Didn't click did it?...'Cause the Parrots-eat-em-all!"

I bursted into laughter at the fact of the unintentional build-up to it.

Steph got a photo of us after that [link] (She couldn't be bothered focusing), and then he asked us to do him a favour and buy him a casket of wine from the other cellar because he was kicked out of it.

Either way, he was going to intoxicate himself somehow so he handed us the money and we made our way there as he started playing the harmonica again. "Make sure you come back and have a yarn with me again, I'm enjoying it."

10 minutes poorer but 2 litres richer, we returned, looking down into his hat to see it was half-full with change again.

"Piss off again, I'm makin' more money without use."

Sitting once more.

We talked to him for a little while longer as the sun went down, but the light not completely faded.

In that time, he told me to take photo's of him approaching randoms, knowing they were going to ignore him.

A kid was blowing bubbles out front of the chemist and yelling with happiness.

"Bubbles bubbles bubbles!" Catching ones that were floating past.

"The only time you can yell and scream and make an arse of yourself in public and get away with it is when you're a child...although, I still do it."

He asked a passer-by for a lighter. When a man I saw on the trip back with the casket of wine, who gave me a stare-down, pulled out his zippo lighter and lit the cigarette, I made this frame, my favourite one, and even got another confused stare from the man.

Before we left for the last time, a bearded man came past as a helicoptered sounded above.

"It's the FBI man, they're comin' to take us away!" Mark yelled.

The random looked at him like a nut-case and replied "They 'aint comin' for me bro, they comin' for you." Looking into the sky then walking away shaking his head.

Mark's last words were; "You two are beautiful people, and I mean that, outside and in, next time I see use we'll get drunk together. Oh and by the way, I have two daughters, they live in Britain, lovely, lovely people, i'm not poor either, I've got money and a home, I just like the streets, I come here for the people."

__________________________________________________

I tried to tell the story with as much detail as I remembered it, which, I remembered by writing down all the quotable stuff a while after I left him. There was more to the story, but it's hard to remember two hours of conversation word to word, action to action.

I hope someone understands it, 'cause it took me a very long while to write, and I even lost myself.