The Biography of my Father Jon Hawkes
By Lucy Hawkes
20/5/03

I am a very lucky person because I know a lot of interesting people.  But then, everyone has interesting stories to tell if they have lived a long life.  I know I’m biased, but one of the most interesting people I know is my Dad.  He didn’t want me to write this but in the end I convinced him that his story would be fun for me to write.

Jon Hawkes was born 1946 in Tiger Bay, Cardiff, Wales.  The oldest of two brothers, his father was an Anglican parson turned academic and his mother was an eccentric Canadian artist.  She still lives in a small village in the Rocky Mountains.

He spent most of his early childhood in Trinidad in the West Indies (where calypso and steel bands come from).  He remembers following the steel bands as they marched through the streets during Carnival.

The family moved to King Island on the 40th parallel, where the wind never stops blowing.  After a year at the local primary school, he received all of his secondary education at boarding school in Launceston, Tasmania.  Before he left school he became a champion breaststroke swimmer, representing his State in open competition.

Then it was on to university in Hobart, where he spent his entire time learning the craft of theatre (and very little in the lecture theatre) – his first professional production was in the musical Salad Days in 1963 (when he was 18).

He moved to Melbourne in 1965 and began a new career.  This time as a bookseller, first in Melbourne’s legendary bookshop Cheshire’s Little Collins Street and then at the Monash University Bookshop at the height of the Vietnam War.

While at Monash he resumed his studies (philosophy, classics and English Literature), wrote for various student newspapers, spent a lot of time at anti-war protests and remained deeply interested in theatre (he was President of the Monash Players).  In 1968, he directed the national university student drama festival.  This was a very important event because it brought together for the first time, in one festival, alternative theatre companies from all over Australia, as well as the student companies.

In 1969 he finally left university to become editor of Go-Set, Australia’s first and biggest pop music and youth culture magazine.  While there he did a world exclusive interview with Mick Jagger on the set of the film, Ned Kelly (the one made in 1970).  The Go-Set group produced Australia’s first underground papers – High Times and Revolution – and introduced Rolling Stone magazine to Australia.

At the same time he became closely involved in the La Mama Workshops and was a founding member of the Australian Performing Group (the APG – later known as the Pram Factory).  This group is credited with being the birthplace of the new Australian theatre.

In early 1970, tiring of life in the fast lane, he gave it all up and moved to the United States of America, to explore other ways of living.  For two years he travelled extensively around North and South America, living on the edge, eking out a living as a tarot reader, dealer in pre-colombian artefacts and other questionable occupations.
Just before the election of Gough Whitlam, he returned to Australia, settling in Sydney as the publisher of Rolling Stone Australia and local representative of yet another countercultural magazine, The Digger.

In 1974 he came back to Melbourne to rejoin the Pram Factory – he became the group’s longest serving Chairperson, acted in many plays and, in 1978, was one of the founders of Circus Oz.  He stayed with Circus Oz (as juggler, strongman, accountant and spokesperson) until 1982.  While with the Circus, he toured around Australia and the world (including the longest season ever at the legendary Last Laugh Theatre Restaurant – 32 weeks).  He told me that, in acrobatics, the people on the bottom of the human pyramids are called 'understanders'.  He said that when he found this out he knew that that's what he wanted to be - I guess he's got his wish.

In 1982 he began a five year stint as Director of the Community Arts Board, one of the boards of the Australia Council, the Commonwealth Government’s arts funding and advisory body.  During this time he visited Cuba on an official fact-finding mission with my Mum, Sue Beal.

On leaving the CAB in 1988, he made his first (and only) venture into the world of commercial entertainment as General Manager of ‘The History of Australia - the Musical’ project.  This multi-million dollar venture ended up being the biggest disaster in the history of Australian theatre, losing nearly three million dollars – a shocking disaster at the time, but one of the great dinner party stories now.

He went on to co-found BHP.  No, not Broken Hill P/L but Beal Hawkes Perrier, an arts consultancy group that, for three years, did an amazing range of arts-related projects.

From 1991 to 1998 he was Director of the Australian Centre of the International Theatre Institute.  It was while he was there that he became obsessed with computers and databases.  He edited the most detailed performing arts directory ever produced in the entire world and designed electronic systems that automated every aspect of recording and sending out information about the performing arts.  It was during this time that I was born.  Other high points of this period were visits to Istanbul and Tokyo.

Since 1998, and his return to Melbourne, he has been an independent cultural consultant, including a stint as Associate Producer of Moomba 2000.

In 2001 he became Director of Community Music Victoria.  In the same year, he wrote ‘The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: culture’s essential role in public policy’ and continues to write material on cultural matters and be in constant demand as a speaker and lecturer (including New Zealand and Canada)

He told me recently that at the age of 55 he finally found the ideal combination of occupations.  Working as the director of an organisation that trains community activists to run group singing sessions (what he calls the practice) combines perfectly with his polemics on culture and participation (the theory) - he reckons it's not possible to be an 'understander' without constantly crossing between thinking and doing.

(In the seven years since this was written, Jon has continued to think and do.)