A salute to Vito Comar, my uni days and life since.

Looking back from my uni days

Like most students I met lots of people at university and made many friends, none closer that Vito Comar perhaps the most amazing person I’ve ever met, and I’ve had the good fortune of meeting some amazing people. Of course I also met the Comar family including Marina who Robyn Kerr tells me is an old friend.

No account of my student days could be complete without my close friendship with Vito. We spent countless hours together, lived in at least 3 shared houses over the years including in Perth,  Sydney, Canberra and Brazil, and we even worked together in Sydney as security in Sydney’s largest building of that time, North Point which was still going up even though the bottom 3-4 storeys were shopping malls. Five of us made up the crew: Robert Bruning, actor and film producer, (check him out on the IMDB or Google him) someone who sang in the Australian Opera, another award-winning architect and academic Bill Lucas, also on Wikipedia, Vito and yours truly.  We were the keystone cops in the area opposite the North Sydney Police Station and no way were we going to carry guns. We were there on the day of the Dismissal, and the job paid well enough for us to eventually go our separate ways: me to Europe and Vito to Brazil via the Habitat conference in Vancouver.

Vito was perhaps the most creative person I’ve met. He was a consummate musician and could play any string instrument and when in Brazil played my Andian flutes with ease. No doubt if put before a drum set he would just go with the flow. With a pen in hand Vito could draw cartoons with ease and could have made it professionally as a cartoonist. And he was a dab hand in architectural drawings which, having a father who was both an architect and town planner shouldn’t be surprising.

But Vito was also a visionary who had visions of cities covered in plants and waterways, and this this in the mid 70s. I remember being in a bookshop in Paddington and meeting the legendary cartoonist Bruce Petty who gave Vito some advice. Vito made an animated cartoon on the concept of garden cities and got federal funding to go to Habitat 76 after which he spent some time in the US and then gravitated down to Brazil where he lives to the day.
Below Robyn Kerr, and Vito and I calming the spirits in Sao Paolo in 1980. 

You may know the story. His father, who was a newly appointed town planner of Darwin when cyclone Tracey hit, left his mother for a woman younger than Marina and eventually ended up in Brazil where father and son shared architectural practice. Vito’s mother returned to Italy. Marina, whose marriage failed under my eyes literally also retreated to Italy. Marina had the dream marriage and I was often invited for meals and sleepovers at their house. She also asked me to go fishing with her husband (nice guy left but his name has slipped my mind). Marina said he was getting bored. I’m not a fishing type but went a few times and my dad was impressed meeting him due to his perfect Italian. As we know it wasn’t boredom or an affair that was at issue: he came out as gay. Marina has never really got over him and still uses his name and probably always will.

In 1980 I caught up with Vito in Brazil where I spent about 11 weeks. By then he had become a Bahai and always carried Bahai literature to give to people he encountered. He couldn’t convert me but that didn’t affect our friendship. By then he also ate meat which he hadn’t as far as I know in Australia. I remember we went to Rio for about 3 days and I lived with some of his friends in Sao Paolo. I also remember seeing him off when he left to go north to Manuas where he met and married his wife and they have 3 adult children. We’ve talked a number of times on Skype and he confided to me that his marriage was ”hell” and was soon to end. But they reconciled and are still happily together.  He got a doctorate in sociology and is still passionately defending indigenous people forced off their lands. Money was tight but it was never a priority for Vito.

He visited Australia after his father died dancing away in a night club. His father played water polo and was very fit but nevertheless his heart gave way. Vito’s flights missed connections so he was exhausted after 48 hours travel by the time he got to our place in the Blue Mts where he stayed for a couple of nights before flying on to Perth. He might have stopped over on his return trip. He also returned to Perth after his mother’s death and we caught up as I was there at the time.

Late 1988. Vito on our deck with Thomas and I. If I recall Vito gave us the hammock. Tom will be 34 on September 4^th, a great date as it often falls on Fathers Day

There are many instances in which I remember Vito, or il bambino. On a visit to my mum and dad’s house he noticed an old war vintage leather jacket in our wine cellar. My dad said take it. Before long it was totally reconditioned and I’m sure Vito wears it today. We went to the Aquarius Festival in Nimbin in 1973, Vito in one of two buses the Student Guild bought for the occasion. Vito hired a sewing machine and stitched together 2 geodesic domes in which the bus occupants sheltered in Nimbin.  During the festival Vito had some acupuncture treatment. He wasn’t going to let that opportunity pass.

Even today people from those days ask after Vito. He left a mark on many lives and I will always value our friendship which was the core of my being.  Writing these words I realize that we are long overdue for a Skype or WhatsApp chat.

 Farewell to Perth and my life in Eastern Australia

Perth will always be my “hometown” but I moved east and have returned only for holidays and family reunions. I got a teaching job with the Commonwealth Teaching Service. But as progressive as Melrose High School in the ACT was, after just over one term I decided that teaching high school English was not for me as I had no wish to become a professional sheep dog barking at school kids. My next stop was Sydney and life near the beach in Clovelly. Vito turned up and we lived in a share house with views of the ocean that was only about 8 minutes walk away.  We then got the jobs looking after the highest building in Sydney, Northpoint. By the year’s end was the dismissal of the Whitlam Government, and time for me to become an expatriate in the UK and Europe. Eighteen months later I was back in Australia enriched by my time in Spain, Italy and London.

I went to Spain to join a March de Libertad in Barcelona and managed to get arrested and locked up in El Modelo Prison, Gerona: one night in the police station and 2 nights in the prison. Indeed hundreds of marchers were arrested but in my case an informer was behind my arrest which was easy to deduce as this guy was released early the first morning. I shared a cell with 2 members of the illegal Catalan Assembly who copped whopping fines but didn’t spend a second night inside. We could hear the chant of supporters outside.  I was the last to be released and driven handcuffed to the border by two of their Gestapo guys, had my passport stamped “Rechezado” or refused and released from handcuff into France. A letter received later via the Australian Embassy said “the security authorities said I was the promoter of an illegal demonstration. “ What was amazing was the timing of all this. When I arrived in Spain it was the anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. When I was released the big news was the Entebbe Raid the night of my incarceration and King Juan Carlos sacking the Franco’s successor and appointing Adolfo Suarez to bring about democratic elections. This transition to democracy was one big historic moment.

I enjoyed my time in London and the UK doing casual work and cycling up hill and down dale. I made new friends and caught up with old ones such as the writer Vincent Tilsley who miraculously had given up drink.  I also visited Italy and my birthplace in Sicily on a few occasions to keep my dad happy. My then 2 year old cousin Rino is now a Dr Rino Oriti, a urologist. I toyed with the idea of teaching ESL but not being European made it difficult so I returned to Australia to make some money before resuming an expatriate life elsewhere in the world. I did a TAFE ESL course and at first got a job in a government program, The Community Youth Support Scheme, which required constant applications for funding. But I hit gold when I joined the NSW Adult Migrant English Service working with adult migrants and refugees. It was a young and exciting organisation with teachers and students from all around the world. Teaching was against a backdrop of skilled migration, boat arrivals and conflicts around the world.

I worked for NSW AMES until retirement, initially employed as a casual and then as a permanent teacher. Much of the work was in migrant hostels and later classrooms in office buildings.  In many of those years I taught general English classes but then moved into specialised classes, Skillmax, for professional migrants aiming to rejoin the workforce.

I developed high level IT skills and became the defacto support person, and in the Skillmax classes was usually given the IT people as I understood the jargon used in their resumes. In addition to my support role I from time to time ran computer courses for teachers as computers were becoming central to our operation. I was able to cobble together good covering letters and resumes that led to jobs for many IT professionals. I was like a godfather to their careers.

During those years I put online a website called write away which showcased writing by adult migrants. It was perhaps the largest such showcase in the world and was added to the Pandora Archive of the Australian National library. Write away had input from TAFE, NSW and Victoria, and other bodies, and was hosted by the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research (NCELTR) at Macquarie University. I was backed by my boss at the time ( a good Karen) but NSW AMES whilst acknowledging it declined to support it as they didn’t own it outright. Eventually I moved on to starting a small part time web development business call Webbing It. It enabled me to reduce my AMES work by a day or two a week without any loss of income. I developed most of the websites including the official one for world heritage listed Lord Howe Island, and the International site for what is now The University of Western Sydney. Plus I did many other websites. I enjoyed working from home.

I also organised a multicultural festival over 3 days that was exhausting. This festival included an art competition with prizes including from the Sydney Morning Herald where my wife then worked for the Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson. One thing led to another and we were married in 1985. In the same year we moved to our current home in the Blue Mountains. Our son Thomas was born in 1986, and our daughter Helen in 1989 ironically on the anniversary of my mother’s death a few years previously.

Both our children went to a Montessori preschool, and Cathy my wife left the workforce for a few years to be a full-time mother. Once our kids started at the local primary school she got a position at the University of Western Sydney (UWS) working with international students. Thomas finished as school captain and then went to Penrith High, a selective school. He developed a love of acting and theatre and became involved with 3 community theatre groups, and got bit parts in local productions such as the following to right:

 He got into the state junior ensemble and received exemplary HSC awards in theatre: for Gray School a gentle satire of the aged, and an award in music for a viva voce on “the influence of Debussy on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon”. He was involved in debating, public speaking and even got to play weekend soccer. He got a Premier’s Award for his HSC ranking’

During that time he did work experience at the ABC including working with Fran Kelly and Deborah Masters on The Howard Years. We encouraged him to go for a journalism career and the rest is history. He was accepted as an ABC cadet before he’d sat for some HSC exams.

Then it was the ABC Sydney newsroom for his first year which just happened to be my first year of retirement, and then he got a regional placement in Bega where Nas Campanella was sent to replace him. It was love at first sight even though Nas has no sight, just lots of good sense and insight. They’ve been together since 2012 and were married in May 2018.

Helen was indifferent to school but has terrific social skills and emotional intelligence. She did weekend sport and a bit of theatre and asked to finish her degree in the UK in the year of the London Olympics. She got paid work in the Olympics and Para Olympics but best of all she met her current partner Malte Rohwer- Kahlmann a boy from Bremen and one of the smartest guys I know. I mean he’s read War and Peace in English – what more can I say!  

He followed her to Australia in 2014 and was with us for 8 months during which we watched the World Cup together, often in the early hours.  Malte was delighted by  Germany’s win. I even got him to watch and like AFL.  Malte has a 1^st class honours degree and sharing the same tastes in literature we got on well. He decided to also venture into journalism and has unsurprisingly succeeded well. He returned to the UK and did his Masters in Journalism at the University of Sheffield and Helen quit her job at Flight Centre and joined him in 2015. She got a one year contract with zolando.com Europe’s largest online fashion company. They liked her and on completion of her contract offered her a full time job and pay increase. She’s since applied for and had 2 promotions and I’ve lost track of which teams she’s in charge of these days. Suffice to say we’re proud of her efforts even though trips to Australia during this pandemic are highly unlikely.  Thankfully we have regular WhatsApp sessions  to remain in touch.

Malte has also been a great success reporting for DW. He’s had stints in Washington, Portugal, Mexico and been to Davos twice. He also came to Australia for Tom and Nas’s wedding.

 Sri Lanka in February 2018 for Helen’s 30^th birthday. Malte, the tall guy with the coconut, was scheduled to return to SL to report on a wild animal conference but the Easter massacre ended that. Below. A catch up in Amsterdam

 

Nas has moved on from reading the news at JJJ and wrote the ABC Disability Policy and trained top management in disability perspectives. Tom after his current leave is moving to the 6 – 9am shift on News Radio.

We are so happy to have Nas and Malte in our lives.