To create his new show for the Melbourne international comedy festival, Damian Callinan raided his parents’ diaries. His mum’s records of life and love in postwar Melbourne gave the comedian plenty to work with, especially when contrasted with his dad’s retirement journals – which document the tragedy that eventually brought their relationship to an end.
As well as being great material, his mum’s diaries are unsurprisingly a cherished sentimental object for Callinan. Here, he tells us why he’d rush to save those pages in a fire, as well as the story of two other important personal belongings.
What I’d save from my house in a fire
On the night of my dad’s funeral a few years ago, we were going through his things and I found a small notebook none of us had ever seen before. It was mum’s diary from 1946. I began reading it aloud to my siblings and the 19-year-old version of mum came back to life. The diary is a time capsule of life in Melbourne after the second world war as she balanced her social life with weekly visits to read to wounded servicemen at Heidelberg Military hospital.
The diary is the focus of my Melbourne international comedy festival show. However, the journal is not all chocolates and roses. It turns out she was also a member of a Catholic cult. They wore blue cloaks, tattooed rosary beads around their necks and sacrificed the weakest altar boy on Ash Wednesday – though I haven’t cross-referenced my sources on those last couple yet.
My most useful object
Like many music collectors, I was quickly seduced by the economy of scale of the CD in the 90s. My sizeable vinyl collection gathered dust in a friend’s garage while I tested the integrity of my lounge room wall by adding yet another Ikea CD tower to my row of skyscrapers.
I didn’t know how much I missed the ritual of putting on a record until my wife, Zillah, bought me a vintage Pye Stereogram. It is easily the best thing I’ve ever been given. Apart from looking like it’s been taken from the studio set of The Mod Squad, the sound is incredible, and it’s even got a ‘loud’ button.
I’m pleased to say I am now happily reunited with my estranged vinyl family and it continues to grow and grow. I play a record at least once a day and none of us talk about the CDs packed away in boxes in my friend’s garage.
The item I most regret losing
From the age of seven, I obsessively collected footy cards. Such was the level of my addiction that I used to take my lunch money out of the paper bag and buy a packet of cards on the way home. I was essentially living on a daily diet of a single pink strip of Scanlens gum.
My nanna supported my habit by giving me her valuable collection of vintage cigarette and liquorice sporting cards. Chicken Smallhorn and Gordon Coventry now lay face to face with Bernie Quinlan and Twiggy Dunne. Despite the sentimental (and actual) value of the collection, I just kept in an old box under my bed.
In my university years when I was still living at home, my nephews often used to play with the cards. One day I was overcome with a sense of dread and checked that the box was still there. It wasn’t. Apparently one morning in my hungover state, I had said yes when they asked if they could have them. By the time I got to my brother’s place to get them back, they had already taken them to school and swapped them for a racing car set. It’s a pity I had to cut them out of my life; they were lovely kids.
