Jon Faine - Apollo and Thelma

To my parents, Solly and Eva,

who taught that you finish what you start.

A map of the Northern Territory showing the location of Top Springs.

I only met Thelma Hawks after she died. Her brother Paul Anderson, The Mighty Apollo, introduced us. To tell their story, I have to tell some of mine.

Apollo, the Iron Jaw King of Strength, Australias Indestructible Man of Steel and sometimes billed as The Worlds Strongest Man, became my favourite client when I was a baby lawyer. The Estate of Thelma Cecilia Hawks kept me busy on and off for years. Because of Apollo, I learned to never forget that the files on my desk were not only about the law, not just about the money, nor solely about the documents or corporate structures or old deals gone sour. Fundamentally, each bulging file on my desk was about people, in all their vanity and weirdness, their bewildering irrationality, their naivety, their flaws and failings. Files were people and to represent them properly, you had to learn their stories.

The inescapable contradiction was that in order to hear those stories, you had to charge for the time it took to listen to them. To sit enthralled for an afternoon to listen to Apollo while I charged him $350 an hour was plainly wrong. Trying to filter out what was work and when yarns became pleasure was not just awkward it was nigh on impossible. He did not organise his thoughts in neat stacks with labels attached. People never walk into your office with all the legal issues packaged and flagged for attention. They tell a story, and the legal knot to be unravelled is buried somewhere within.

Thelma Cecilia Hawks, born Anderson.

In 1981 Apollo and his three teenage sons unexpectedly inherited Thelmas modest wealth, tied up in a remote pub in the Northern Territory. I soon realised that I was more interested in their unconventional story than the legal problems. This seems obvious now but was shocking to me then. The tussle about money was getting in the way of hearing him tell of breaking world strength records, surviving an elephant standing on him, tugging a tram down the street by a toggle clenched in his teeth and lavish accounts of his life as a carnie touring around the nation decades earlier. As I heard more about Apollo, so too did I become more intrigued about Thelma, a formidable solo woman running a rough outback pub.

Although a strongman, Apollo was in some ways quite weak. While undeniably physically impressive, he was a fragile soul, insecure and anxious, only comfortable with himself while crushing an opponent in a wrestling match or a strength contest on stage. Away from showbiz, he struggled. Just as many comedians suffer from depression, and escape their sadness by making others laugh, so Apollo used his muscles to avoid his demons. His authority came from performing, his energy drawn from the applause and admiration of crowds. His comfort in the spotlight was matched by his discomfort away from it.

When Apollo first introduced me to his recently deceased sister Thelma, I was a naive law graduate, goggle-eyed on joining the world of work. The seductive lure of money and corporate power was opening up a tempting future, and I had glimpses of what my life could become. By the time the estate was finally sorted, seven years later, I had shed that skin. Like so many young lawyers, I decided to chance my arm at something else instead of losing sleep looking after other peoples money. Despite learning the trade of a streetwise litigator, I detoured from law to the sceptical and judgemental faux world of the media. I always expected the detour to be brief. It lasted thirty years.

Even after the file was closed, Apollos unique tale and Thelmas ghostly presence remained constants in my life. My favourite client kept popping up at the most unexpected times. Long after the estate was wound up and the money distributed, threads remained. I felt obliged to tell their story and that obligation came close to an obsession.

Apollo and Thelma grew up in the tough working-class streets of Melbournes inner north in the 1920s. The squalid and filthy lanes of their childhood were populated by sly grog peddlers and even slyer bookies, gangsters and thugs, standover merchants and debt collectors. The descendants of English, Irish and Scottish migrants, the Collingwood and Carlton gangs fought each other and the world, plotting and scheming their escape from crowded poverty and homes that were little more than slums.

Apollo chased fame, and the secretive and enigmatic Thelma sought fortune. Apollo was never satisfied, no matter what level of celebrity and adulation he reached, while Thelma cannily accumulated her riches in the most harsh and unforgiving landscape this continent can offer.

Thelma cannot be found in the official histories of the Northern Territory and is barely mentioned by any of the flamboyant tellers of colourful outback yarns. If she is mentioned at all in the occasional memoir penned by a Territorian old-timer, she is mentioned as the ex-wife of her entrepreneurial husband, Sid Hawks. Her pioneering role as a solo woman publican, ruling the roost for decades at Top Springs, in one of the most remote pubs in the country, should be acknowledged. While she relished and cultivated her local notoriety, her ghost would disapprove of the embellished stories told about her and savoured by those who stopped for a warm longneck beer all those decades ago.

Apollo is the opposite he spent his entire life seeking the spotlight, craving fame and the legend status he was eventually granted. The veneer of his public and performing life is amply documented, recorded in official archives, his exploits magnified through his enthusiastic even narcissistic pursuit of media attention. But beneath, there is a deep sadness. His three proud sons, fiercely protective of their fathers professional legacy, are less effusive about his qualities as a parent. But whatever his failures, any critique of Apollo pales to insignificance beside their entirely scathing memories of their mother, Rondahe, who abandoned them and shot through with her younger lover when they were small boys. The eldest and youngest brothers are determined that the painful truth about their mother is told, while excusing their father his shortcomings.

All lawyers are governed by the rules of confidentiality. I have the permission of my former clients to tell their family story. The three now-adult sons of Apollo, who were the ultimate beneficiaries of the estate of their aunt Thelma, have participated fully and generously in so doing and insisted on only one condition that I not try to contact their mother. I was assured that it would be detrimental to her health if ancient wounds were opened. I reluctantly agreed.

Gaining their trust and permission in the telling was one essential ingredient. The other was far more complex and much closer to home. In fact, it was at home. Without realising it was happening, immersing myself in the lives of Thelma and Apollo made me see my own family afresh, and especially one particularly emotional part.

Thelma Hawks outback pub at Top Springs in the Northern Territory is an improbable springboard from which to educate myself on the truth about Indigenous massacres and colonial atrocities, but learn I did and with a personal motivation I have until now kept private. My own sons Aboriginal heritage was always important to all of our family, but I never really appreciated or understood how profoundly everyday casual racism impacted his life. Unscrambling Thelmas story was a catalyst and revealed to me terrible things that happened a long way away but not that long ago. It forced me to acknowledge how little I knew about Australias true origin story, unrecognisably different to the scant history we were taught at school.

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