Read Online Damned if I Do by Philip Nitschke - Free Book Online Page A

go out of my way to get the right India Pale Ale. He, on the other hand, knows the chemistry of brewing, which is knowledge that I envy. We have that, and scientific language in common; as to his politics, I just don’t know.
    To this day, I’m not entirely sure what Philip thinks of my work. It’s not an issue we’ve discussed in detail. When I’m in Hobart campaigning or running euthanasia workshops he occasionally comes along to my public meetings. I’m sure he doesn’t disagree, but like many, probably wonders why anyone would keep on with an issue like this for so long and with so little obvious gain. He uses his mother’s last name, which has provided him with a degree of ­anonymity, although staff at the university know he’s my son and on some occasions, such as the conferring of his PhD, the media have also made reference to it. While my relationship with Philip is more that of friends than of father and son, he is a ­wonderful grandson to my mother, Gwen. He calls her regularly and visits her in Adelaide. One thing Paddy did do was instil in him a strong sense of family, maybe because her family was so fractured. On his twenty-fifth birthday, Philip inherited part of the substantial estate of his maternal great-aunt. That financial freedom has produced a young man who doesn’t have much to be angry about and I see him today as a contented father and husband who dotes on his family.
    * * *
    I came to love the life and the bush in central Australia when I worked as aranger. The MacDonnell Ranges are ­stunning and I felt lucky to be there. Tourists I came into contact with would see me going about my work in a ­leisurely fashion and comment that I had the best job in the world. It didn’t always feel like it, when I was cleaning out pit toilets, or being bitten by centipedes when camping out, or ­scraping down barbecue plates, but mostly I agreed with them. I ­visited the small parks scattered over the vast area that didn’t have resident staff. That meant cleaning up, mending fences and controlling feral animals; I had the skills for that.
    I’d always enjoyed camping and it was a life that suited me—I’d roll out of my swag in the morning, put in a radio report about where I was and what I was doing, and then set about doing things at my own pace. I loved the freedom. I also got on well with most of the people I worked with, particularlyBob Darken, the senior ranger at Simpson’s Gap. He was an ex-wool classer, ex-policeman, ex-pastoralist, at one time a mate of iconic Australian actor Chips Rafferty, and a rough, idiosyncratic Territorian.
    But I got off to a rocky start. In my first week on the job, when I was still on probation, I ran up against one of the things that incense civil libertarians—an accusation is made that damages you and that your employers act upon, but one that you are not permitted to see. A letter critical of me came fromMike Reed, another ranger, and, once in the system, this letter immediately became ‘privileged information’. It wasn’t until twenty years later (when it was anonymously faxed to me in Darwin) that I learned what Reed’s specific allegations were. Some were minor, like that my vehicle had dripped oil in the Katherine Low Level Reserve camping ground where he was head ranger when I came into town from Wave Hill.However, he also denounced me to the Parks and Wildlife Service as a ‘political troublemaker’, who wanted to join the service to further the interests of the blacks in their efforts to take over control of Territory national parks. He accused me of being a communist, of having been funded at Wave Hill by unions that were themselves financed from Russia. (Interestingly, I recently met a researcher in Tasmania, who was a PhD student with the historian Henry Reynolds, doing work on the Wave Hill strike. She told me of anASIO file on me, alleging that I was a