The adventures of Harold

By Stuart Reid

Harold Thornton, signwriter and painter, used to park his hearse at the end of my road. It must have been the least sombre hearse in Paddington, Sydney. Harold had painted it with phsychedelic ghosts (in yellow, pink, blue and orange), and people would point at it and grin. “That Harold,” they would say, “he’s certainly a character.”

Middle-aged Harold, with his short, stocky body, gnarled Disney face and mane of white hair (thinning at the front), could be seen in Paddington pubs at weekends. He would bob up and down at the edge of a group of painters, journalists and, occasionally, television personalities, and he would laugh a lot.

Harold had a dog called Van Dyke, and once, near the Bakery School of Art, Van Dyke made for me with bared teeth. At that moment Harold appeared from a nearby lane. He yelled at Van Dyke, who immediately ran for cover under his master’s hearse. “He’s a bull-artist,” said Harold, “he won’t hurt you!”

About a year ago I noticed that the hearse wasn’t around, nor was Van Dyke, and I hadn’t seen Harold in the pubs for a couple of weeks, I asked somebody what had become of Harold. “He’s up in New Guinea,” he said. And added, vaguely: “With some pirates”.

That was that. There’s no point in

persuing a perfect idea like “Harold And The Pirates”, so I changed the subject and forgot about Harold, Then, about a month ago, I saw Harold again, “a smiling, suntanned”

Harold. He told me that he’d been to New Guinea, though he had managed to avoid pirates. We had a drink and arranged to meet later at my place to talk about Harold’s Adventures in the Islands, Unfortunately, when he did turn up at my place, I didn’t get a crystal-clear picture of his adventures, Harold isn’t a merchant in facts; he deals in images. When he gets tired of explaining things in words he asks for a piece of paper and a Biro and starts to mark signs on the paper to get his message across.

The result was that after Harold had left my place for his lodgings in Oxford Street, I found that I’d taken four pages of inconclusive notes and that Harold had left behind him a page of strange squiggles and dots—in red Biro. But, reading behind

the hieroglyphics, this is the story of Harold in New Guinea.

About a year ago, a “millionaire friend” of his had asked him to go to the Gulf of Papua and paint murals in a pub. Harold agreed to go. He flew to Moresby and then on to the Gulf country in an Otter. Once there Harold had to do quite a bit besides painting. He had to work as a builder and small ships operator.

But he enjoyed himself, and he liked the locals. At one time he wanted to paint a crocodile for the pub (with a skirt, incidentally) so he asked some of the locals what a crocodile looked like. They caught him one.

Harold stayed in the Gulf for eight months, living the ideal life.

Then he fell out with his European boss, and he made for Moresby, again in an Otter, and did for a living the best he can, which is paint murals and signs very well.

He painted, or at least started to paint, a mural in the Four Mile Club. He had almost completed this when, for unspecified reasons, he decided to return to Sydney. That was about six weeks ago.

They "want art"

Meanwhile, Van Dyke had been in Stewart’s Dogs’ Home at Randwick.

When Harold arrived back in Syd ney, he got Van Dyke out of the home. Then he saw his friends and raved about New Guinea. The result was that artist John Trainor agreed to accompany Harold on a return trip to Moresby. Harold booked Van Dyke on a boat for Moresby, and arranged permits for himself and Trainor. They left for Moresby early in March.

Officially, Harold went back to Moresby to paint murals (in particular, to complete that mural at the Four Mile Club); unofficially, he went back because he feels that the locals “want art”.

But why bother to take Van Dyke with him? Because old Van Dyke is really part of Harold’s travelling art show. In Paddington when the scruffy Van Dyke is around, people know that art is not far away.

Besides, Harold thought that New Guinea would be good for Van Dyke, The dog was losing his touch. At one stage he’d been pretty good at doing abstracts with his tail, but his work had been showing a distressing chocolate box trend recently. Worse, Van Dyke had been losing his colour sense and his eyesight.

For one man and his dog, Moresby will become an artists’ colony.

An artistic long shot of Port Moresby, where Harold Thornton, artist, is making them sit up.