Dear fellow-survivors of the Sixties (especially those who cannot quite remember them)...
Let us spark up a toast to the late, lamented, JJ McRoach.
A selection from his SMH obit follows.
PIOTR ‘PETER’ OLSZEWSKI (May 12, 1948-April 9, 2024)
“The Legendary JJ McRoach” – also known as Piotr “Peter” Olszewski – was at the centre of what was called “the Carlton Push” in the late 1960s early 1970s.
The Carlton Push was that group of artists, performers, musicians and intellectuals associated with the Australian Performing Group, the Pram Factory, Morry Schwartz’s first publishing venture Outback Press and the haunts of Lygon Street: Tamani’s (now Tiamo), the Carlton Movie (Bug) House, Genevieve’s Cafe, Johnny’s Green Room, Martini’s, The Albion Hotel and, of course, the ever-present Jimmy Watson’s Wine Bar.
As a teenager, I had read with amazement the JJ McRoach marijuana column in the Nation Review (and Living Daylights) in which he noted missing bags of police drug case evidence and gave the street prices of various types of hashish and grass.
The JJ was code for “joint” but he disclosed it was Jay (for joint) and Jerilderie (for Ned Kelly’s letter). One of Peter’s many stories was the reappearance of the missing skull of the fearless bushranger and how someone delivered a skull in a box claiming it was Ned’s.
We first became friends in 1977 when he ran for the Australian Senate as the Australian Marijuana Party candidate and changed his name by deed poll for the election to JJ McRoach – which returned like an acid flashback a few years later.
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Peter wrote for the Living Daylights, Nation Review, Go Set and published a series of marijuana magazines titled Weed, Greed, Feed, Need and Seed.
But we persevered and did our own forms of cadetships.
Eventually, Peter won a reporting job at Melbourne’s (then racy, now mainstream) tabloid, The Truth, and that’s where his names caught up with him.
Peter was born Piotr in Poland. He came to Australia as a one-year-old and grew up in Maryborough in country Victoria where foreign names didn’t go down too well and became Peter.
Despite his blond hair and blue eyes, and the fact that he was a German Polish ex-Catholic, he enjoyed people attacking him for being a Jew due to his surname. He’d quietly note the anti-Semitism and give them enough rope.
In his run for the Senate, he had changed his name to JJ McRoach. The Truth’s editor, Owen Thomson, called him into his office and said that Peter Olszewski didn’t match the official records. So, he had to change his name back to Peter Olszewski.
And could he tell a story or three!
While some of them are fit for family newspapers, they are highly likely to cause a lot of trouble.
When he won The Truth job, he asked Thomson about the travel budget. “Mate, you can go anywhere you like … where there’s a tramline,” was the reply.
After an incident involving a beautiful woman, an expensive car and said woman’s gangland husband, Peter thought it a very good idea to move to Sydney, where he became part of the Packer Consolidated Press empire, winning a job first as the editor of Australian Playboy and later Penthouse and People magazine.
Peter had a penchant for very large American cars, preferably two-door convertibles. One day, he was heading out and a fellow senior Packer employee was washing his Mercedes in the cul-de-sac, blocking the exit. “Why don’t you come back in half an hour when I’ve finished,” the haughty colleague said.
Peter replied that if he didn’t move the car, now, he’d plough through it with his Yank tank. The Mercedes was moved.
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He wrote several books, starting with A Dozen Dopey Yarns: Tales from the Pot Prohibition, which covered a range of events including the creation of the Australian Marijuana Party, the run for the Senate and the campaign to legitimise discussion of the “heathen devil weed”.
But it doesn’t include the true story of how he baited the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s television news department to cover the launch of the party in the 1977 election campaign.
Peter called the ABC television news department, saying that he’d planned an entire circus at a venue in Carlton, and it would make great television with monkeys riding elephants and the lot.
Of course, there were no animals, just a large number of stoned supporters, but with the television crew there and it being mid-afternoon, they had no choice but to film and run it.
Another inspired moment was naming the group the Australian Marijuana Party – fully intended to upset the AMP (Australian Mutual Provident) Society and inspire it to complain about the theft of their name – thereby generating more publicity.
While the Marijuana Party outpolled all other minor parties – except the Australian Democrats, JJ was eliminated from the race. But NSW came within a few hundred votes of “sending a Dope to Canberra”.
A Salute to the Humble Yabby was published in 1980 and not only described the evolution and habitat of Australia’s crustaceans but had a section at the back on recipes.
Peter’s Land of a Thousand Eyes (2005) was a reminiscence on his time in Myanmar and the very pleasant and wonderful people, watched over by the paranoid and tyrannical regime.
Peter wrote five annual reviews of the Australian and global medical marijuana industries for Biotech Daily, the first in December 2019.
In his last days, he was working on a collection of true stories including his time on the Freedom Rides to gain Indigenous access to fundamental rights including country pubs and swimming pools and a campaign to North West Cape.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/nation ... 5fjq2.html