MEAT-EATING PIRATES WITH BIG KNIVES

The mobile rings. It's four in the morning and it's Mayhem. She is suffering a slight anxiety attack. "Did i behave inappropriately last night at the Film and TV party?" she asks. No, no, of course not. You were perfectly polite. And your etiquette was impeccable.


Apart from eating her barbecued dinner from the end of the caterer's carving knife, telling everyone she met - including her former university lecturers - that they should take dmt, and trying to smuggle her way on board a pirate ship, Mayhem was quite a civilised consort. "Oh God, i think i invited all my former lecturers over to my place to smoke dmt," she says. Well, yes, that you did. "And most of them said they would come! What am i going to do?" she asks. I don't know, Mayhem. What are you going to do? "I guess when one turns up at my front door i'll just call the police and say i have a prowler," she says. Yes, i agree, that would be the most sensible course of action.

We run into the filmmaker Nathan Jones and his friends Donna and Kate. Nathan is preparing to shoot a documentary on the modern-day treasure hunter Captain Mike Hatcher. In the mid 80s Captain Hatcher found the fabled Nanking Cargo, lying at the bottom of the South China Sea on a merchant vessel which sank around 1750. The cargo of Chinese porcelain fetched around ten million pounds at auction. The Captain is readying a vessel in Melbourne, to venture forth once more upon the South China Seas, in search of more booty. A ninety metre vessel, equipped with a dive crew, gun licenses, helicopters and a team of lawyers. I have been busily preparing to shoot stills for this documentary by losing some of my front teeth and getting tattooed.

I introduce Nathan to Mayhem, to whom he takes an instant liking, and we raise our glasses to the Pirates and adventure on the high seas. Mayhem is busily scheming ways to stow away on board the pirate ship. "What do you think i could do, Art Director?" she asks. "Does the Captain have a parrot? After all, i am a veterinary nurse specialising in birds. What if his parrot was to get seasick?" Ginger, i reply. Everyone knows you would give it ginger. No, your role would have to be that of Muse. And Wardrobe. We drink to this. "Have you ever tried dmt?" Mayhem asks Nathan. Here we go again, i'm thinking.


I see my friend Sebstian's crazy French chick from the Reunion Island, Lucile Wiegel, who's film recently received the Best Script award at the Bondi Film Festival. The short film that Lucile directed is called "Touched". A genre film, it belongs to a new genre which i have dubbed "quadraplegic pornography." I congratulate Lucile with the most inappropriate hug i can muster. But the free wine is running out of the bottle fast. And there's nothing like networking when you've left all your business cards at home and are coming down off mind-altering substances. We opt to we leave before we do too much damage to the Film and TV Institute's reputation, gunning back down the coast in the 666 Merc. Next time i hear from Lucile she will be in Amsterdam.